Cecilia stared at him, shocked into silence by the layers of his audacity. Firstly, at the implication that Devon had gone to see Dahlia out of some concern for her wellbeing and not because he intended to coerce her into the vampire equivalent of marriage. Secondly, the fact that he knew as much as he did and hadanybelief that his brother might still be alive.
She didn’t know much about Felix, but what little Dahlia dared to share with her gave her a pretty good idea that he wasn’t the kind of man you lived to cross twice.
“Why?” she breathed. “You can’t get revenge on someone like?—”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be fucking dramatic. I don’t want revenge. I wantrestitution.I’m owed a lot of fucking moneyfrom the Amauris if they killed my brotheranddestroyed half my bar. I’m gonna collect.”
Duke didn’t notice her incredulous stare. He was too busy fiddling with her phone. He didn’t bother looking at her until he held the device out to her. “Now, you’re going to be a good girl and give Dahlia a call.”
A breath exploded out of her — not quite a laugh, but close. “What do you want me to say to her?”
“You’re going to tell her that if she doesn’t give me what I want, I’m going to shoot you.”
Her throat spasmed. “And what if she says yes?”
Duke clicked his tongue. Laying his hand on her knee, he gave her a pitying look. “Then I’m still going to shoot you. He was my brother, you know? Fair’s fair.”
Her stomach dropped. Either way she was fucked. The only choice she had was how badly she and her best friend would suffer.
Cecilia wouldn’t have classified herself as particularly brave or selfless. She was soft and hadn’t experienced much hardship in life besides being caught between two parents who despised each other. She was not hero material.
But she was a damn good friend, and she’d sooner throw herself off the rusty fire escape than put Dahlia in harm’s way — or leave her with the lasting trauma of hearing her friend’s murder over the phone. That need to protect the only family that meant anything to her burned as hot and deadly as the power in the battery pack of Duke’s gun.
Ignoring the phone, she leaned forward as much as her captor would allow. Her lips pulled back in a mockery of her normally sunny grin. “Duke, I say this with absolutely zero due respect: gofuckyourself.”
The butt of Duke’s gun cracked against the soft rise of her cheekbone. The skin split as Cecilia’s head whipped to one side hard enough to make her neck crack.
She’d fallen off a bike once when she was seven and smacked her chin on a curb. Dahlia had run as fast as her scrawny legs could carry her to find an adult, leaving a dazed Cecilia to sit beside her abandoned bike, blood trickling down her neck.
Until the moment Duke struck her, falling off her bike was the most painful injury she’d ever sustained.
Stars exploded in front of her eyes, but it took what felt like a long time for any pain to register. White noise filled her ears as her nerves struggled to catch up with the brutal strike. Her brain didn’t seem to know what to do with the information it’d received.
Her vision went wobbly as reflexive tears filled her eyes. She stared out the window, blinking hard several times, and tried to get her bearings again. Her pulse throbbed in her cheek like the beat of the awful music the DJ played in the bar.
Movement beyond her warped reflection in the window made her squint. It took her a second to realize what she saw wasn’t some pain-induced hallucination.
There reallywasa man pulling himself up the rickety old fire escape.
Or at least, she thought that’s what it was. It was hard to tell with a dark, glossy visor covering his face and the way he swung his massive body up over the railing, straightened his arms without letting go, and smoothly rocked his legs forward.
A year had passed since she saw more than a glimpse of him, but something in her recognized him instantly.
My phantom.
She didn’t have time to consider what his end goal was. The animal part of her brain understood. It compelled her to turnaway from the window and squeeze her eyes shut half a second before a pair of black combat boots shattered the glass.
Shards rained down on her as the vampires reached for their guns. She lurched forward, throwing herself off the chair and onto her hands and knees just in time to avoid losing part of her head to a plasma bolt.
The acrid scent of it seared the inside of her nose as she crawled away. Glass sliced her palms and bare knees but she didn’t feel it.
Pressing her back against the kitchen cabinet, she swallowed a scream as a massacre played out before her.
The man in black didn’t appear to have a gun. He didn’t even have a knife. While the three vampires each had bolt guns, he fought with nothing more than his gloved hands.
Matte black claws slashed at the vampire who’d held her in the chair. His gun clattered to the ground as a dark smile spread across his throat. In the span of a heartbeat, his mouth opened and his head flopped back, almost completely separated from his neck. Blood erupted in a geyser across that lovingly upholstered chair and window as he collapsed onto the floor.
I’m going to have to reupholster that chair again,she thought, too stunned to do much else.
