Page 92 of The Firebrand
Other people are here, too.
Celene approached the bars, gripping them in her fists. She rattled them, shouting, “Hey, out there.”
When she got no response, she shook harder. “Hey, motherfuckers, talk to me.” Then louder, “Motherfuckers!”
“Kur, shut her up.” A voice carried in from outside her vision.
A large, washed-out blond man drawled, “Back up.” When he snarled, he flashed large canines along with feral, golden-brown eyes.
Celene gasped.
What the hell? He’s no Venezuelan jailer. The guy’s not even human.
****
Rein’sgaze darted around his great room. Pillows were neatly propped on his couch. The coffee table was clutter free. The kitchen was spotless, no dirty dishes waiting in the sink, and no clothes littered the floor. He listened. No laughter. No footsteps padding through his condo. No frustrating female arguing with him. No tall auburn-haired Earther waited for him with steam coiling in ribbons around her hips. No freckled human snuggled her head against his chest.
After he lumbered into the bathroom, tugging off a bloody T-shirt, he slid grungy tactical pants down his legs. Stepping out of them, he opened the shower door to turn on the faucet.Cold. He stepped under the water, mesmerized by the dirt and blood sluicing off his body before it circled the drain.
Since Braelyn’s departure, he had chosen missions that could fast-track him to the Evermore. Assuming his afterlife destination wasn’t Angor instead. First, he’d taken an assignment to neutralize a warlock who used his manipulation power to rape underage female Aeternals. Since the mage had few skills, he was a disappointment, unable to deliver the pain Rein was looking for. So, after cornering the asshole, he cut off the pervert’s appendages with a spell. When the serial rapist tumbled to the ground staring at bloody stumps, he promised to reform. Rein listened. Tired of the pedophile’s whining, he jammed a hand into the guy’s chest to pulverize his heart.
Later, Kole asked if the punishment wasn’t a little much.
Rein said, “No.”
He followed up that assignment with two more. After both, he was still standing, barely injured.
Today’s job was a solo mission to take down a harpy who had escaped onto Scath via a portal. It happened sometimes. The wilding had slipped through as an unwelcome stowaway. Rein found a dead satyr, the harpy’s meal ticket out of Darque, near a gateway site in Aerilon. She had munched on him before she disappeared. Nearby ylven farm workers reported on her after she snatched one of them from a cornfield. Her second meal.
Finding the creature, Rein stood in the center of a mountain meadow, arms wide, offering himself as dinner. When she spied him, she tucked her wings, zipping through the sky like a heat-seeking missile. She scratched, bit, and slashed. Claws. Sharp beak. Dagger-pointed feathers. The works.
Rein absorbed the pain.Hell. He was grateful for it. It quenched his frenzied thirst. But when he figured he’d suffered enough, he latched onto a leg. She flapped her midnight wings, trying to escape. From there, it was a tug-of-war. She thrust upward. He leveraged downward. To keep her from winning the battle, he drew a stiletto blade and drove it into her feathered chest. Unfortunately, he missed her heart.
Bellowing, she shook him loose, soaring into the sky. Since hell hath no fury like a female pissed, she returned. She dived, strafed the ground, and tried to flay him with her talons.
His mage skills were useless. Harpies her age were immune to most spells. Mesmerizing her was out. If he locked onto her eyes to use his vamp skill, she’d have turned him into an imitation granite boulder.
So, he snagged a clawed foot again on a fly-by. When she swooped to the sky with Rein in tow, he withdrew a second blade and sent it to her heart. They both dropped to the ground.
His leg had broken during the hard landing, but it was on the mend. Now he was washing off the evidence of a fun-filled day.
Physical suffering, his or someone else’s, was easier to deal with than his emotions. Without pain, he worried he’d fall over the edge of the abyss. It was staring at him now.
Brae was on Earth. He was not there to protect her. Rumor had it she was doing a gig with the Alliance. That meant macho assholes were drooling to get a piece of her. Worse, when she finished training, she could walk into danger at any moment. She was a goddamn reporter, not a warrior.
Rein turned off the faucet, snagged a towel, and dried off. After he slipped into loose sweats, he beelined for the liquor cabinet. With a full goblet of pinot in his belly, he clunked the empty onto his coffee table. Lighting the candle across the room with a snap of his fingers, he sat cross-legged on the Turkish rug, staring into the flame.
Breathe. Breathe. Control.
It was time to wash away the violence of his past. It was time to wash away the memory of an auburn-haired human female, to rid himself of the effect she had on his stability. When done, he’d lock his emotions behind a brick wall because if they escaped again, he would bathe in the world’s blood. To save her, he set her free. In doing so, he caged himself.
Resting his arms at his sides, Rein tugged on a memory, the event that had taken him to India.
She ran in front of him, her long hair whipping in the breeze as she stumbled over her own bare feet, exhausted from the chase. She, along with an accomplice, had just killed a pre-Awakened demon. They lured him with the promise of sex, stole his money, and slit his throat with an iron knife.
With ease, Rein had snapped the neck of her drug-addled satyr partner. He then turned his attention to the nymph who hot-footed it away from him, the terrifying bludfrenzied pursuer. Though in those days Scath was a more savage realm than today, he was almost a legend—a feared predator, the blood-crazed male with soulless, red streaked eyes and lifeless lips, relentless in his search for prey.
Rein’s justification was that he chose victims to suck and fuck whose lives were meaningless, corrupt. After all, the young demon they had just killed had parents who adored him, possibly a lover, a hope for a bright future.
