Alayna pouted prettily and sank onto the bed, her lime-green miniskirt hiking up her thighs enough to reveal a tantalizing hint of pink silk panties. “I’ll wait. But hurry. You promised me all night.”
“Feel free to get started without me.” Summoning his most dazzling grin, he shot her a flirty wink that charmed the pants off all the females. “Check out the toys in the corner chest if you need inspiration.”
The thumping got even louder, the beat more grating, and Mace lost his smileandhis erection. He donned his shirt so violently that he ripped a couple of the seams as he stormed down the industrial-wide hallway in search of the source of the racket.
All the rooms in what used to be a technical innovations complex were soundproofed, but for some reason, music was dampened in parts of the main building and amplified in others.Othersbeing the upstairs living quarters.
As expected, the doorway to his youngest cousin’s room was where noise went to die. You’d never know Crux lived here unless he was playing video games in the game room or raiding the fridge. No sounds came from Rade’s room, either, but that guy never made any noise. He was like a lone hellhound on a hunt: watchful, patient, and silent…until he attacked.
And then, it was his prey that made the noise.
Mace didn’t bother glancing at the doorway to Logan’s room. Logan, son of the Horseman known as Death, had moved in with his fiancée, Eva, a while back.
Which left two occupied suites: Blade’s and Sabre’s.
Mace put his money on Blade. Sabre’s taste in music ran a lot less annoying. And yep, the metal frame around Blade’s doorway, painted in the red and black of his favorite football club, rattled with every beat. Just like Mace’s bones and teeth. What the ever-loving hell—
“Mace!”
Startled, he wheeled around, cocked and locked, ready to kick some ass. Then he felt like an idiot when he saw Crux, hunched over in the hall, his hands covering his ears. His bed-mussed, tawny hair stuck up inmatted tufts, and he was wearing baggy sweats, his face pale and contorted in pain.
“Are you going in there? Tell Blade to turn down his music. My head’s killing me.”
Mace dropped his fists to his sides. “Still? Didn’t you go to bed early last night because your head hurt?”
“Yeah.”
Crux winced at a series of deep, booming drumbeats, somehow losing even more color. He now had the corpselike pallor of anobhirrat’smaggoty insides.
Mace threw a gentle arm around his cousin’s bony shoulders and guided him toward his room. “Go back to bed. I’ll handle this.”
With a weak nod, Crux ambled through his doorway. Poor kid. Mace remembered the hellish weeks leading up to his transition, thinking things couldn’t possibly get worse. They had. Much, much worse. And any day now, the first of two maturation processes would begin for Crux, and his world would become a tsunami of misery.
Boom. Boom.Boomfuckingboom!
Mace pounded on Blade’s door. “Yo, Blade!”
No answer. No surprise, either.
Mace threw open the door.
Blade’s apartment was dark, illuminated only by the weak, rainy-day-afternoon light from the windows overlooking the backyard. His shadowy form blocked the kitchen window, where he stood motionless, palms braced on the counter, his gaze focused on something—or nothing—on the tennis court below.
Mace thumped his fist into the sound system controls on the wall. Silence. Blessed silence.
Startled, Blade tore himself away from the window, rounding on him with an angry curse. “Mace. What the hell? What do you want?”
“Peace and quiet would be nice.”
“You could have just lowered the volume.”
Mace shrugged. “Could’ve but didn’t want to.”
He glanced around at the living room, decorated in rich browns and mahogany, his cousin’s leather furniture draped with a cream afghan that his mother made to “brighten up the place.” Also brightening up—and cooling down—the place was a gleaming blue coffee table of non-melting ice, crafted by demons from Sheoul’s Frigidoom region. Masumi’s ornate jade vase sat on top of it, and since the bathroom door was closed, Mace assumed she was inside. Nothing unusual about any of that.
But…Blade had tossed his battle gear across the back of the sofa instead of hanging it on the rack on the wall. The guy was a neat freak—more like Stryke than he’d ever admit—so yeah, something was up.
“What’s going on?”
