Page 36 of Beggars, Sin, and Wine

“Yes, it’s entertaining, but focus, Benji. Our mate is in the basement and we can’t open the door without you.”

People like to underestimate Benji because he looked like he’d just come off the stage from performing at a K Pop concert and had the puppy dog eyes down. He was also eccentric on a good day.

But Benji was extremely dangerous. Shadow demons had always been feared. They could cloak themselves in any shadow and use them to kill people in some pretty graphic ways. Benji wasn’t just a shadow demon. He was also half werewolf.

After Benji got a little comfortable and realized he was safe, he wanted revenge, but he also wanted to make sure he never got taken again, so he started training. We had plenty of werewolves in our village, but no shadow demons, so Benji figured out that side of himself alone.

Werewolves were bigger than regular wolves, but Cas had once described Benji’s shadow wolf to me. Benji could make him any size he wanted, but Cas said even when Benji was trying to be a shadow puppy because he wanted something, he was flat out terrifying. Cas told me to imagine the scariest version of Cerberus, but with one head, and could appear in the tiniest sliver of shadow to rip your throat out and that was Benji’s shadow wolf.

Benji grabbed both Cas, and me and gave us passionate kisses.

“It was stupid as fuck I couldn’t do that while we were pretending. Going to kill some bitches so I can open the door and we can get our mate. I’m going to do a bunch of shit neither of you would do and I regret nothing. Tootles.”

Ah, fuck. I couldn’t see what was going to happen even if I was on the other side of the door, but I could only imagine. Benji couldn’t get revenge on his basement captors, but he could get revenge on our mate’s. And Benji was a total peacock, so he was going to showboat when he took them out.

I almost felt bad for them. I mean, I didn’t. These were all terrible people but Benji had wanted revenge on these people for decades. He finally had the chance to get it and now we knew they had our mate. They had done something to her that she lashed out and killed one and now they were starving her.

I was guessing they had some big, strong orderly down there guarding the more dangerous supernaturals. All the supernaturals upstairs were getting their revenge and taking their time with it based on the screams behind me. I wasn’t a vampire or a shifter, but even I could smell blood and where some of the humans had pissed and shat themselves. I didn’t feel bad about that either. I was stuck in one of these places before indoor plumbing and they had no problem leaving us in filth.

Whichever big, strong orderly was guarding the basement started shrieking in fear. Cas had described Benji’s shadow wolf to me enough that it was kind of expected. The rest of the basement had been waiting for our sign and Benji was a giant, terrifying one.

Those cells wouldn’t hold us without the wards, at least, they wouldn’t without a lot more extra precautions they didn’t have when they had Benji here. Supernaturals usually policed our own because human jails couldn’t handle us most of the time.

I was pretty sure if there was anyone else down there, the residents had already broken out and taken care of them. We were so close to rescuing our mate. We just needed Benji to open the door. I hoped someone who worked here was still intact to open the bio lock.

The door to the basement was reinforced steel, but something slammed against it so hard, it buckled in on itself. Ugh. Benji was showboating and playing. His shadows were insanely strong and ripped the mangled door off the hinges. Benji’s aura was muted because he was probably covered in gore and I was sure, grinning like a psycho.

“Welcome to tonight's performance. A reminder there will be no flash photography and if you think you’re going to need to cough, please unwrap your lozenge now,” he said, giving us a deep bow.

“An ear just fell out of your hair, Benji,” Cas said.

Gross. But also sexy.

Kat came zipping up to us and she felt pissed as fuck.

“Mine,” she snarled. Her mates were down there. I felt her try to calm herself. “We have a problem. Hannibal had some booby trapped secret passage behind the bookcase in his office. It leads to some tunnels, and it’s too dangerous for any of us who don’t know where the traps are to go after him.

“I nearly got my head cut off, but I did find where he dropped his cell phone. He has zero security on the damned thing, so I got right into it. We’ve got his contacts and messages, but we’ve got more than that. Hannibal has his cell phone linked to a smartwatch that’ll tell us exactly where he ends up if you still want to give your mate his spleen. I think you have a little pancreas on your chin, Benji. Now, if you chuckle fucks would like to get the hell out of my way, my mates are down there. One of them is traumatized and I think the other would like to punch me in the face for ignoring her.”

“And our mate is down there, too,” Cas growled. “Mine.”

“Well, go get her, big guy. And you’re violating her boundaries pretty early coming down here, even though she probably set it because this place fucks with your head, so don’t burst in there all caveman and scare the shit out of her.”

Big problem. We were so close to her. We were all caveman at this point. And Kat had no room to talk because she was pretty much cave woman about getting to her mates, even if she said one of them was mad at her.

We didn’t know her name, but she had set a boundary. Cas was about to break it and throw her over his shoulder so we could take her home to heal her.

Everyone in the basement was waiting for the sign. We didn’t know what it was going to be, but we knew it would be soon as we all had our magic back. I’d been hoping it was sooner than later because everyone in the basement wanted their revenge for what they did to us down here.

It all came to a head a few hours after I felt my magic fully return. And that was when it all hit the fan. Everyone was on edge because we wanted out, but no one could really talk or plan how we were going to help. I found out Jezebel whispered it to the next vent, and they played a game of telephone on our side and she used her mate connection with Calamity to pass it along to the other side.

Everyone could only whisper to their immediate neighbor if they weren’t Calamity and Jezebel. Jezebel was spending most of her time soothing her mate rather than planning.

I should have expected the sign was going to big since they said it was going to be Benji. He was the only one who could get through a steel door with a bio lock easily. I’d talked to Benji through our mental link enough to know that I probably shouldn’t have expected anything else.

I heard Benji loudly announce himself by doing the anticipation quote from the Rocky Horror Picture Show and then everyone started screaming. Like, even the supernaturals he was here to save. I couldn’t see a damned thing because of my door.

Shadow demons were feared because a lot of them took work as paid assassins. They could slip in any place with a sliver of shadow, kill someone, and get out with no one knowing they were there. The Coalition wards were probably the only thing that could keep them out and no one really knew what they were using…until my mates got here and broke them.

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