Page 3 of The Rogue's Curse

“Nice try,” Shea said, brushing idly at his neck. “I got a taste for your sweet little wood poison after I met Kristina. Did you think you’d put me down with a needle and some pine sap?”

Jesus.

Paris drew a knife and staggered to his feet. He drove Shea back with wild slashes that left his chest sliced open in a crooked X. Then his blade stopped short as Shea grabbed it with his bare hand. Blood poured from his slashed palm, but he twisted the knife out of Paris’s grasp and threw it across the room.

The smell of his blood was powerful, frightening even…a primal signal that would have warned vulnerable prey to run from the encroaching predator.

For all his bluster, Shea was moving slower now, veins bulging on his temples and neck. Sweat poured from his brow. The poison was having more of an effect than his bravado suggested.

They tussled in a whirlwind of bone-cracking blows. He vaguely heard male voices telling them to move; Shea’s men and his both, trying to help them by shooting the other, but he ignored it. Shots rang out around them. Alarms screamed. A female voice came over a loudspeaker telling people to evacuate to the MARTA station. He vaguely heard a much closer voice saying, Intercept them at the MARTA station.

That was someone else’s problem. Shea was his.

Paris drove a wooden stake into Shea’s gut and was rewarded with a satisfying roar of pain. It left him open to take a blow to the face that certainly cracked his jaw, but he didn’t care.

He was winning. Painfully and slowly, but he was winning, dammit, and if he dropped dead, he wouldn’t care as long as Shea’s head hit the ground before his.

After landing another hard blow and a second dose of wood poison via Shea’s thigh, he shattered the other man’s knee and sent him to the ground. While Shea struggled to get up, Parispounced on his back. Wrapping his arms around the other man’s head, he prepared to take the kill, glorious and messy. His screaming subjects weren’t here to see, but that didn’t matter. As the first vertebra gave way, Shea roared and leaped into the air.

Hismomentum crushed Paris against the ceiling, and he flipped them in the air to slam Paris onto the ground under him. The shock of it broke his grip, and Shea hurled him against the nearest wall. He crumpled in a boneless heap, but still, he managed to get up. Everything hurt, but he was so close. It was almost over.

Almost there.

Almost free.

Shea grabbed Paris’s throat and slammed him against the wall. Plaster crumbled around him.“This was your city. It’s mine now,” the man said, his voice rough and cracking. His skin was corpse-pale with two feverish spots of red on his cheeks. If Paris could just survive a few minutes longer, Shea would be done.

Carrigan Shea hadn’t gotten that message, apparently.

Before Paris could manage a witty retort, Shea drove his fist straight through Paris’s body armor. There were no words for the pain as the other man’s hand slithered up inside his ribcage, invading and grasping and violating inside him. He retched, but still Shea drove his hand deeper, scraping against bone and viscera. Blood soaked his white shirt sleeve. “To whom should I deliver your heart and your head, Mr. Rossignol?”

“Fuck you,” he bit out, slamming his face into Shea’s brow.

Unfazed by the blood streaming in his eyes, Shea spat in back in his face and laughed. “If you are the best that remains of Alazan’s court, I have nothing to worry about, do I?”

“Paris!” someone screamed.

“I want you to know that every drop of blood spilled after this is on your head, boy,” Shea said. “You don’t deserve to be a vampire, but what would anyone expect from one of Alazan’s brood? Toothless and weak, just like your coward king.” His fist tightened inside Paris’s chest, and he felt a distinct sensation of bursting, of something spilling inside of him that should not have been spilled. Shock rolled through him, and his body went ice cold. Instinctively, he grabbed Shea’s arms to hold himself up. With one limp hand, he tried to find another weapon, but his fingers found only empty holsters.

The building shuddered with a series of explosions from below. Shea’s head whipped around, and someone shouted, “Sir!” from across the room. Gunfire rang out, and a slug ripped through Shea’s cheek, exploding from the other side in a spray of blood and bone.

Despite the gory ruin of his face, Shea grinned. “Kristina, was that you, love?”

Another shot rang out, but Shea was already on the move. Yanking his hand free of Paris’s chest, he let him fall to the ground in a bloody heap. Paris choked up a thick gout of blood and tried to get up.His vision blurred as men converged on Shea and ushered him out a back door.

I can...

He fell, vision going dark.

His feet scraped against gritty stone. He wandered down a long, winding corridor with only a guttering torch in one hand. Its flickering light slithered along the walls, which shimmered with movement.

In the distance, claws clacked on cold stone floors. Voices whispered from the shadows. When he spun to look around, there was no one present, no doors nor windows, but still he heard them laughing and mocking.

Weak.

Failure.

Unworthy.

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