Page 4 of The Rogue's Curse

Eerie blue eyes slitted open along the seemingly endless corridor. A figure coalesced in the shadows and lunged for him. Massive jaws opened to reveal gleaming silver teeth. He cowered, trying to shield his face. As icy, stinking breath puffed against his clammy skin, he was jolted into awareness by a terrible realization.

He was dreaming.

No!

He fumbled for his pocket, fending off the slavering monstrosity with one hand. “Wake up,” he tried to say, though his lips felt thick and heavy.

Razor-sharp talons slashed at his arm, at his face, at his—

“Paris, get up,” Dominic swore. “You have to stay awake. The building is going to blow soon, and we can’t afford any more trouble.”

He opened his eyes and realized his face stung from a slap. Staring down at him, Dominic was battered and bloody. Deep slashes marked Paris’s arms, marking the defensive wounds from his dream. The cloying smell of decay turned his stomach.

Shit, shit, shit.

“Any trace of the nightmare?” he croaked.

“It just got you this time. Fortune smiles,” Dom said, offering his hand. “Come on.”

“I’d hate to see Fortune angry if this is her smiling.”

Then he grabbed Dom’s arm and hauled himself up, realizing that Shea had nearly scraped him out. Dom handed him a vial of blood, which he swallowed in one gulp. The little jolt was enough to get him moving and not much more. “Where is he?” he rasped, trying to catch his balance on shaky fawn legs.

“He’s gone,” Dom said. “Come on.”

Paris growled and lurched toward the back corner of the club, where Shea had fled. “We have to find him and—”

“He’s gone,” Dom said sharply, pulling him back. “We have to get out, or else we—” Gunfire rang out, abruptly cutting off his voice as his head whipped around. Blood burst from his temple, and the light went out in his friend’s brilliant eyes. He stared in horror as Dom fell in a clumsy heap, fingers twitching. The helmet, the goddamned helmet, lay at his side, blood spattered on the visor.

In a rush, Sasha bolted for them. “We have to go,” he said. “It’s over.”

He could only stare at Dominic, with his handsome face mangled on one side. His carefully groomed beard was ruined. It wasn’t right.

What the hell was he going to tell Rachel? And Julian?

He’d failed. How could—

Dom’s finger twitched, and a low groan rumbled in his chest.

Desperate, wild hope spiraled through Paris as he knelt at Dom’s side.“Help me. I have to get him out of here. He has to go home. He needs Rachel. She’ll take care of him,” he said blankly.

“Paris, he—” Sasha stared down at him, then nodded. “Okay.”

He and Sasha struggled to get Dominic up, slinging one limp arm over his shoulders, supporting his friend’s dead weight.

Not dead. Not fucking dead.

Kristina ran down a flight of stairs from the upper level with two humans in tow. “Stay close to me, or I have to leave you,” she said to them. When her gaze fell on Paris, she winced. “We have to go. Safira cut us a path. This way.Sasha, take the rear,” she said. After reloading her gun, she beckoned for them to follow.

Paris was barely aware of anything except the excruciating pain in his chest and the impossibly heavy body of his old friend, one of his best friends, the one who’d always had his back. As he followed, he heard Kristina speaking quietly. Jonas, get us out.

Outside Shea’s wrecked hall was a chain of small offices, mostly empty. Halfway down the hall, acrid smoke billowed from an open door, the remnants of Safira’s shooting. The office wall had been blown open, and he could now hear the distant sound of sirens.

Kristina hoisted one of the humans on her back like a child, then climbed through the jagged hole. With her hostage screaming the entire time, Kristina dropped floor by floor, deftly catching window ledges until she could hit the ground without shattering her legs. Sasha followed her lead with a brawny human man who prayed the entire way down.

Paris grabbed Dominic, tossed him over his shoulder, and climbed out. He made it down one floor, and the building shuddered with another explosion. Goddamn hunters were way too good at blowing things up. He lost his grip and fell, instinctively wrapping himself around Dominic before they hit the ground.

The world went white, and then mercifully dark.

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