At my elbow, Vincent tossed his cigarette away, pulled out his glass-rimmed phone, and rattled off a quick message. He had his keytones set to silent so I couldn’t hear, and he shot me an unnerving little smile as he tapped
SEND
.
On the table, Joey’s phone buzzed.
My skin prickled. I didn’t like secrets. I’m used to hearing everything.
Joey picked up and glanced at the screen. No reaction showed on his face, but he dismissed the dripping blue fairy and snaked up from his chair, slipping his phone away.
He moved fluidly, nothing wasted, his gaze on Vincent until he leaned to whisper in my ear. We’re almost the same height, Joey and me, and his hair slid softly on my bruised cheek. “Go get us a drink. I need to talk to you.”
He smelled of fresh mint, burning cool and invigorating. My nerves jangled. To Vincent, he meant. He was getting rid of me. Damn it. I forced a weak smile. “Margarita, right? Extra salt?”
“Funny. Scotch, of course. Make it a double, and whatever you’re having.”
“Your shout.”
“Naturally. Otherwise they’ll think you’re bribing me.” He breathed in, scenting me, the tiny inward rush of air a hot tease on my neck, and under his skin, something invisible writhed, the groan of hidden serpent muscle a temptation in my oversharp ears.
Heat pooled deep in my belly. I wanted to bury my mouth in his hair and inhale. My mind stuttered for something to say, some way I could promise him that whatever the slur on my character was that Vincent didn’t want me to hear, it wasn’t true.
He could trust me. I’d die for him. I died for him every night, when he wouldn’t touch me or smile for me or treat me as his equal.
But he swallowed and leaned away, and the moment fled.
And all I could do was walk away in a cloud of desire and frustrated sweat, imagining the million and one ways Vincent could steal my master from me.
Joey watches her walk away, and for too long a moment, the room fades from view, leaving only her swaying hips, that sharp-cut satiny blue hair swinging hypnotically around shapely shoulders, nightclub lights licking rainbows over her delicious female skin.
Beautiful Mina, strong but frightened and delicate under her gangster-hard shell. That athletic body, so inviting. Sober for once, no sparkle ripping her nerves tight or splashing wild words from her pretty red mouth. So desperately sad and vulnerable, she makes him ache in places he does his best to forget about.
A laugh twists in Joey’s throat, aimed at himself. He’s known her since she was a teenager, when they all teased him about her schoolgirl crush on him, a wide-eyed puppydog thing he always discounted for gratitude. Now, she’s a quivering whipcord of intoxicating, sensual woman, and when she looks at him like that—eats him alive with those haunting ruby eyes, both predator and quivering prey—he can’t help but imagine what it’d be like
if
.
If she didn’t work for him. If he weren’t a monster. If his enemies weren’t stalking in shadow, waiting for the first tiny crack in his ice-walled façade.
But she does, and he is, and they are.
She lifts her chin to glance back at him, those seductive crimson eyes tilted under glitterpainted lashes. Strobes flash on her scraped cheek, and Joey’s tongue forks, pushing at his lips, longing to search the air for her vibration. Her lost bloodscent makes him warm and twitchy, the snake jealous and quivering inside. He tasted her once, foolish kisses he couldn’t resist, and ever since, the memory of her succulent flesh and her hot, supple mouth has taunted him at the most inopportune moments.
Strong, yet so delicate. Feminine. Impossible. Always he fights the weird urge to shelter her, leap between her and danger with a swipe of venombright talons and a fanged snarl, protect her even though he pays her for that, not the other way around, and she’d rip his skin off five times out of ten if it came to a fight.
Already she distracts him too much, and to show an ounce of weakness in gangland is death.
She turns away, and he bites his tongue, his own tart blood a sharp taste of reality. The room slams back into view, dazzling.
As if she’d ever want more than his money.
Her disgust is too apparent, in the way she freezes and stammers whenever he’s near, afraid of losing his confidence and her job if she shows just how much she loathes what he is.
Always different. Always weird, disgusting, evil, even when he was small, the sick little boy with snake eyes and forked tongue and venom-splashed fangs he couldn’t control. Even in this faeweird world of wings and rainbow skin, Joey’s a freak.
Shapeshifter
. It’s ironic. The word reeks of enchantment, simplicity. Switching from one to the other in a puff of smoke. Not crackling bone and stretching flesh and the agony of displaced nerves. He’s freakish, a grotesque faeborn aberration. A long time ago, he tried to be normal. It took only so many flinches and retches and averted eyes to figure that was impossible.
And now Mina’s doing it, too.
He cracks shifting knuckles and spins away, his human body hot and aching.
Fuck it. Can’t concentrate with a hard-on.
And concentrate he must, if he wants to stay alive. Vincent is a weaselly little scumbag, but he’s not stupid or harmless. And always hunchbacked Iridium watches with mismatched eyes, twisted and compelled, waiting for a glimpse of weakness. Only strength and ruthlessness keep Iridium in check.
But even the thought of warming his smooth black snake skin on Mina’s magnificent body, sliding over her sweet curves, slicking his tongue into her hot wet crevices, wrapping it around her hard little bit of flesh and making her squirm and moan and come, her body heat glowing like fever and her every sigh and shudder a snakebright glory . . .
It’ll never happen. Joey doesn’t have lovers. He’s taught himself to do without, and it’s better that way. Too difficult to lock the snake inside, so deeply unsatisfying, it only frustrates him. And it took only one accident—one nameless girl long ago, with shock-wide eyes and sick green toxin choking her breath away—to prove that letting the monster out is unthinkable.
Joey’s fingers twitch for his absent cigarette, webs crackling out as his nerves stretch and search for chemical stimulation. He sweeps up his cane and rakes his nails on the lacquer, agitation an ants’ nest on his skin. He’s quitting, and it fucking sucks.
Vincent offers him one. Joey waves it away, his mouth parched. He beckons, and Vincent follows him over to the wall where it’s dark, away from sly metalfae eyes and clever, sweetpointy magical ears.
Beside him, a green fairy girl in denim shorts and torn fishnets kisses her scarlet-haired banshee deep and slow. Their sugary lips melt together, a dim neon halo shining from lustswollen wings. Eyes closed, breasts molding on breasts, slim green hands sliding between satiny thighs, the sweet melodyspelled moan of desire.
The fairy drops to her knees, easing up the redhead’s skirt to slide her long tongue in. No underwear, and the hair there is scarlet, too, neatly trimmed. The fairy sucks, drawing out swollen pink flesh and licking it lovingly.
Joey rips his gaze away, his own tongueforks slithering hungry. She doesn’t even look like Mina. “You’d better mean what you just sent me.”
“It’s a no-brainer, boss.” Vincent lights up, ash flaring. “She’s guilty as a fairy in a sugar factory. Think about it. Who else knew about that ambush?”
“You did.”
Vincent laughs and puffs artful smoke away. “I’m not the one picking asphalt grit outta my face. Do I look dumb enough to sell you out without taking a hit to cover it up?”
Joey cuts a sharp laugh. If he knows one thing about Vincent, it’s that looks mean nothing. “And she does?”
“Just watch her, boss, that’s all I’m asking. See where she goes tonight. Who she goes with. That Diamond’s got a lot to offer that we don’t, you know what I’m saying.”
Spines press against Joey’s scalp from the inside, threatening to burst out. He itches to slam his brass-topped cane into Vincent’s smug face. Diamond’s reputation with the girls is legend. Rumor is, Mina and Diamond knew each other once. It’s all too believable, a stunning, hot-blooded woman like her. Nothing less would satisfy her. But the image of glassy fairy hands—anyone’s hands—caressing his woman’s naked skin lights Joey’s blood with pure reptile envy.
His vertebrae crackle, ready to slide apart. He grits sharpening teeth, his forking tongue alive with malice. “Choose your words, kid.”
Vincent drags on his cigarette, infuriating, that tempting smoke drenching Joey’s senses like a succubus’s rapture, irresistible. “Hey, I’m just a realist. Whatever you’re doing to her in bed better be g—Jesus fucking Christ, Joey.”
Joey’s neck stretches and snaps tight like rubber, and his nose quivers to a stop an inch from Vincent’s tobacco-fragrant mouth. Burning fangs snap from his gums, rich snakevenom sparkling like fury on his tongue. “Accuse her again without proof, and I’ll rot your filthy skin off.”
Vincent backs off, his cigarette tumbling to the floor in a tiny rain of sparks. “Sure, boss. No offense. If I find anything, you’ll be the first to know. Just forget I said anything.” And he rakes sleek fingers through his hair and slinks away.
But too late. The accusation’s made.
Sick suspicion burns deep in Joey’s veins, where the snake’s blood runs cold.
He reshifts his spine with a crunch, his mouth sour as he jerks those hungry fangs back into aching gums. He doesn’t want it to be true. But he can’t afford to ignore his instincts.
Beside him, the scarlet banshee shrieks and shudders, clutching her fairy lover’s hair. Spellsong dulls the fairy’s eyes and blanches her apple skin white, but she doesn’t care, and as her girlfriend sighs in aftershock, she presses her cheek against that shivering white thigh and whispers,
“I love you.”
Mina could be the traitor. Her shy smile sheltering rank deceit. Her hypnotic redjewel eyes masking poisoned lies. Swallowing her revulsion like acid and using her body and her face and her quivering jasmine scent against him, after everything he’s done for her.
Sick self-disgust prickles his guts. He didn’t drag her out of drugsmeared oblivion for reward’s sake. He never wanted gratitude for saving her life.
Just not to have her spit on his compassion by betraying him to his enemies.
Stupid to trust her for a moment.
Snakemuscle roils in his limbs, stabbing his bones with a deep yearning ache he knows won’t fade, not tonight. The heat torments him, luring the snake out. His human body perspires under his clothes, itching at him to rip them off, breathe, stretch, change.
He forces himself to move slowly, calmly, only a tiny quiver ratcheting his hands as he lights a cigarette and drags deep. The chemicals spread in his blood like shivers from a hot shower, stroking his nerves just a little looser.
Fuck.
He inhales once again. Lets the tranquil smoke out. Slides calmly to the table, stubs the half-smoked cigarette out with a jerk of his wrist. He flips up his cane and walks to the steel mezzanine rail, where below, bodies crush and mingle in pale nightclub smoke crisscrossed with green lasers. Leather and lace and hot bare skin, shining limbs, fresh rainbow wings, the strobelight flash of eyes.
He scans the neonwhite bar for a glimpse of sky blue hair. There she is, one long leg hooked into her stool’s rung, that luscious blue waterfall streaming over her shoulders, her long throat gleaming as she kicks back a beer. Her breasts swell against her tight leather, so soft and feminine, glistening damp in the heat. If he shifted, he’d smell her sweat.
His heart stings bitter, and distantly he wonders why. He’s usually clinical. Practical. In gangland, life is simple. On any given day, either someone’s your friend or they aren’t, and his venomsharp instincts have never failed him before.
But even the suggestion of her betrayal hurts.
All the more reason he must distance himself from her.
He never wanted to be in charge. Liked it better lurking in the background, cleaning up messes, whispering calculated advice to cool his vampire prince’s hot temper. But now the boss is dead, and there’s no one else left. Joey has no choice. And it was a lot easier to be cold and objective when someone else was making the decisions.
He can’t trust her. She’s charming him, using his weakness to lure him astray. But he can’t trust Vincent, either. He’ll watch them both, test them, feed them different lies and see where they resurface.
Joey taps curling claws on the railing, conviction hardening like ice. Pretty Mina can’t hide, not from him. If she’s seeing Diamond on the sly, he’ll know about it. If she’s a traitor, he’ll find her out. And when he does, he’ll pin her down, let the snake burst cold and hungry from his skin, and eat her heart.
Even if it breaks his own.
Iridium hunches sore and shivering at the table, his fractured metalsense painting harsh glowing edges along the iron railing, the gritty steel floor, the smooth globe of the snakething’s brass-topped cane.
As Joey retreats, Iridium grates a rusty giggle at the freshmint stain of frustrated need. Vincent’s tricks, so blunt and jealous. So easy to trick cold, calculating Joeysnake into dumbthinking chaos.
Iridium likes chaos. It counterpoints the screaming zoo inside his head, voices and whispers and horrid groans that never cease. Not unless he blots them out with realer, more urgent sounds, screams, whimpers, the warm splash of blood.
Harsh nicotine smoke drifts, shimmering with heavy metal glitter, and Iridium coughs bloody iron shards and stubs Joey’s half-lit cigarette out harder. Pain lances up his crippled arm, deformed bones burning. Always, the pain, his bent spine crackling, the torture of misshapen muscles and overstressed joints popping gristle and blood, the excruciating rot of rust in his aching wings.
He can’t fly. Never could. Crooked metalfairy, always spoiling the fun.
He eases back, vertebrae grating like acid on gravel. His barbed wire bracelets pierce his wrists, the ooze of steely blood calming. At least he can control that pain.
Speaking of fun, there’s Vincent’s girl, Flora, dancing, flaunting her slim green thighs, her perky little breasts jiggling under falling rosepink curls. Behind her, two vampires kiss, a pale black-haired gothic girl and a muscle-bound blond. Bright crimson splashes over their chins.