Page 132 of Cursed Lifeline

Darkness fills my brother’s stare. “Enough to understand it doesn’t pray for company, only for a savior.”

Shaking my head, I chuckle in disbelief:“Brevity is the soul of wit.”My brother eyes me curiously. “Being a savior takes becoming a living sacrifice.”

“I can help with that,” my brother grins.

“I bet you can.”

He shakes his head.

“Not the way you’re thinking.” Brushing past me, he gestures for me to follow and says, “I have a plan.”

Forty Six

Viktor

song: start a war | Klergy & Valerie Broussard

Shakingout of my suit jacket, I place it over the back of my chair and take a seat behind my desk.

My brother’s eyes roam around my office, taking in a space that oddly almost mirrors his across town. Leaning back in my seat, a smug smile pulls at my lips as he realizes, we’re not as different as he thinks. What’s more, with Evangeline’s help in the caves of her ancestors, I was able to start to pull myself out of a hell that’s kept me paralyzed from moving forward and obtaining the life I’ve always wanted.

When I found out our travels would bring us to Sin City, I made arrangements to open my own club on the strip. After all, I wasn’t going to arrive begging for a place to sleep on anyone’s couch, especially not my brothers.

As he steps further into the room, Felix eyes the rich wood floors, marble countertops, custom furniture and dramatic lighting like he’s just been given a challenge to level up his game. His questioning stare falls on me a moment later as he continues to walk about the space and he wonders how I was able to secure such an elaborate establishment. I won’t lie and say I didn’t call in a few favors to some immortals who helped secure and furnish the club. After all, they owed me big time for helping them out of some troubles of their own before my blood oath was ever sworn to Ember. With their help, I also got in contact with a few distant members of the coven who started conducting business in some illegal ventures before I got here that have paid off plentifully. I’d say I feel remorse for what kind of business I run, but let's be honest, what club on the strip doesn’t capitalize off some sort of underground, criminal act - including my brothers.

The difference between mine and theirs is, I quite literally take my business underground.

“Nice digs,” my brother finally says, as his gaze meets mine and he sits in a chair in front of my desk. Picking up my business card from an organizer on the edge, he turns it over in his hands and says, “Bloody Brawls, unleash the beast within.”

I smile wickedly.

Flipping it atop my desk, he leans back in his seat, shakes his head, and says, “Clever.”

“I thought so.”

A silent, tense moment passes between us as we weigh each other's intentions and try to decide if we’re indeed going to trust one another after all the years we’ve spent hating each other.

Finally, my brother says, “Is this your intelligent plan to break the curse?”

“Got a better one?”

Felix stays quiet, and eyes me with malice. After another strained moment when he still hasn’t answered, I say, “My club is not like the MMA, boxing, Jiu-Jitsu, or other fighting clubs tourists and locals encounter on the strip. Not only that, but in the short amount of time I have been in Vegas, I have secured some intel underground that could prove beneficial in flushing Ember out of wherever she is hiding.”

“Underground?” Felix asks.

I nod.

“What makes your underground connections different from other links to Ember I can seek out through the money laundering, crime, prostitution, drugs and violence that regularly floods this city?”

“Well for starters, I quite literally take business below.”

I point to the floor, and Felix’s eyes follow the action. His brow furrows. He shakes his head. After a few seconds, his confused eyes lift and find mine.

“To the tunnels,” I elaborate. He still doesn’t say a word. So I continue, “To over 600 miles of an underground world right below the street where the locals, tourists, and police walk overhead daily.”

“I’ve heard of the tunnels,” Felix sighs. “There isn’t a local who doesn’t spill their story to any gossip hungry tourist, or officer who doesn’t try to enforce ordinances to keep the homeless who inhabit them from getting out of hand, but dabbling in that kind of hell is sure to get you infected with a sickness we’ve both never come across in our immortal existence. If anything involving the tunnels is part of your genius master plan, I think I’ll pass.”

Felix rises from his seat and starts to walk to the door.

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