Dark Descendant (24 page)

available, but I wasn’t about to sweat legalities at this point.

As I pulled into a “space” blocking a narrow alley, the door to the house across the

street—the one where Alexis had instructed me to meet him—flew open. I blinked in surprise

when Alexis charged out at a dead run, vaulting the ornamental railing that lined the stoop and

taking off down the street like the hounds of hell were after him.

Maybe I’d watched too many movies, but my immediate thought was that he’d planted a

bomb in the house and was running to avoid the explosion. I slammed the car into park and

decided I didn’t care why Alexis was running. I only cared about Steph.

The wounds on the bottoms of my feet had been superficial enough that they had already

healed, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d been raw and bleeding. I still would have leapt

out of the car and dashed up the steps. Alexis had left the door open when he fled, so I burst right

in, not pausing for even a moment to consider the possibility of ambush.

“Steph!” I screamed, desperate to hear her voice, to know that she was alive and okay.

“In here!” answered a voice that most definitely was not Steph’s.

Dread making me shiver, I followed the sound of Blake’s voice.

I found them on the floor in a room toward the back. The house was up for sale and

completely empty, but I suspected the room was meant to be an office, based on the

desk-and-shelf combo built in to the wall.

Blake was kneeling on the floor, leaning protectively over Steph, her head on his lap. Her

elegantly coiffed hair was a bedraggled mess and draped her face like a veil. She was naked,

though Blake was doing his best to tuck her torn dress around her body to restore her modesty.

Her shoulders were shaking with silent sobs.

I stopped in the doorway, clapping my hand over my mouth to stifle my cry.
She’s alive
, I

told myself over and over, though the nudity and the tears reminded me of the difference

between
alive
and
well
.

“Oh, Steph,” I whispered, my heart breaking.

Blake pulled her gently into his arms, rocking her as he cradled her head against his

chest. His own eyes when he looked at me were rimmed with red, the evidence of his sincere

distress giving me another shock. He did a double-take when he caught sight of me. I’m sure I

looked like I’d been dragged behind a pickup truck on a gravel road, and I felt drafts in places I

shouldn’t feel drafts while fully clothed, but I didn’t give a damn about my appearance.

“I’m going to kill him,” I growled, not sure if I meant Alexis or Jamaal at the moment.

Maybe both.

I remembered seeing Alexis fleeing the scene, and my anger rose another notch. “You let

Alexis get away. And where the hell were you, anyway? You were supposed to keep her safe!”

He flinched at the virulence of my tone, but rebounded quickly. “Somebody spilled a

whole glass of red wine on me,” he said. “I went to the men’s room to clean up. She was right

outside …” His voice trailed off and he gathered Steph even closer. “He locked me in, and he

took her,” he said. “I wasn’t delayed for long, but I had to hurry after him. I couldn’t stop to look

for you, didn’t have time.”

The expression in his eyes hardened. “As for why I let the bastard get away, would you

really rather I left Steph alone and chased after him?”

I let out a harsh breath, wishing I could hit rewind on my life. “No. Of course not.”

I forced myself farther into the room, though seeing Steph’s pain was almost unbearable.

Blake stroked her hair away from her face, and the hollow ache inside me went from bad to

worse. I staggered and almost fell.

He’d beaten her. Badly. Both of her eyes were blackened, and her lip was split and

swollen. A ring of bruises circled her neck, where Alexis must have choked her.

All at once, it was too much. The beating I had taken. The horror of putting out Jamaal’s

eye. The constant pump of adrenaline through my system as I ran my losing race against time.

And the awful, sickening revelation of what that sadistic bastard had done to my sister.

The room spun and bucked around me, and my brain shut down. My legs crumpled and I

fell to my knees on the carpeted floor. I didn’t quite pass out, but it was a near thing.

“Nikki,” Steph rasped.

I fought to push back the gray fog that surrounded my mind. Falling to pieces would be

the easy way out, and I was never one to do things the easy way. I swallowed the huge, aching

lump in my throat and blinked to hold back tears.

Steph was holding her hand out to me, and I shuffled toward her on my knees until I was

close enough to take it. Her fingers curled around mine in a surprisingly firm grip.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Her voice was rough and hoarse, either from screaming,

from crying, or from being choked nearly to death.

My jaw dropped as I looked at her battered face, at the tears that stained her cheeks. “Am

I
okay?” I fought a hysterical laugh. After everything Steph had been through, she was worried

about
me
?

She sniffled and blinked away some tears. “You look like someone shoved you through a

paper shredder.”

For a moment, I’d actually forgotten what a wreck I must look. But I would be healed in

a few hours, and Steph …

“I’m fine,” I assured her, the sound breaking in my throat as I struggled not to cry.

“You are not. And you have a lot of explaining to do.”

Even in her obvious distress and with her ravaged voice, Steph managed to imbue those

words with a tone of command. I wondered if Alexis had revealed his supernatural nature to

Steph while he …

I stopped myself from going there, although the question remained in my mind. If his

threats were anything to go by, he’d never intended to kill her, figuring that leaving her alive and

suffering would hurt me more. But he was an arrogant bastard, and he might have figured she’d

be too terrified and traumatized to say anything about any supernatural powers he might reveal.

“Let’s get you taken care of first,” Blake said gently when I took too long to answer. “We

can do explanations later.”

“Have you called an ambulance?” I asked Blake.

“No!” he and Steph answered at the same time.

I understood why Blake would object—he was worried about the potential of police

getting involved in
Liberi
business—but if he thought I was going to let him stand in the way of Steph getting the medical care she needed, he was sorely mistaken. I squeezed her hand a little

harder.

“You need help, hon,” I said, but Steph shook her head.

“No doctors,” she said firmly. She forced her swollen eyes open enough to meet my gaze

squarely. “He didn’t do anything to me that won’t heal on its own in time. And I suspect siccing

the police on him would probably get them killed. I don’t know what he was, except that it’s not

human.”

Crap. That meant Alexis had spilled at least some of the beans. I wanted to pretend I had

no idea what she was talking about, to keep her sheltered from the knowledge of how formidable

a foe Alexis was. I wanted to urge her to go to the hospital, to talk to the police, to do all the

normal things that a rape victim should do. But I was too run-down to manage it. I might be able

to say the words, but I wouldn’t be able to make them convincing.

“We’ll bring her back to the house,” Blake told me. “She’ll be safe there.”

I was too depressed and guilt-stricken to argue. We helped Steph get back into what was

left of her dress, and then Blake gave her his tuxedo jacket to cover up in. I retrieved my car

from its illegal parking space and pulled up right in front of the door as Blake carried Steph out

and bundled her into the backseat.

“I could have walked,” I heard her grumble as Blake climbed in after her. I supposed he’d

come back to get his own car some other time.

“But carrying you made me feel less useless,” he said.

I glanced at his face in the rearview mirror, then had to look away from his raw

expression. He couldn’t know Steph very well, but despite my earlier suspicions, it seemed

obvious he genuinely cared about her. And that he felt almost as guilty as I did about failing her.

NINETEEN

I drove back to
the mansion in a daze. Steph lay curled in the backseat, her head once

again on Blake’s lap as he soothed and petted her. Her tears had dried up long ago, but I knew

there would be more to come. The wounds Alexis had inflicted on her psyche were far worse

than the physical pain, and I wished like hell I were still a mortal so I could have the pleasure of

killing him.

Blake called Anderson while we were en route, giving him an update. I couldn’t hear

anything Anderson said over the phone, of course, but I swear I could
sense
his anger. I wasn’t

sure who he was angry with, and I wasn’t sure I cared. I did my best to retreat into a numb sense

of unreality, not ready to deal with the emotions that roiled within me.

When we got to the house, Blake once again insisted on carrying Steph, despite her

protests that she could walk. Maybe it made him feel better to be gallant, though I couldn’t help

noticing how she curled into him, her arm slung around his neck, her head resting just below his

chin. Protests aside, it seemed she needed the comfort, too. Maybe he was doing it for her sake

after all. I raced ahead to hold the front door for him, then followed him into the entryway and

came to a dead stop.

Anderson was waiting there for us, and he wasn’t alone. Jamaal stood beside him, his eye

thoroughly bandaged. I expected him to be in a towering rage after what I’d done to him. Instead,

he took one look at Steph’s battered form as she cuddled against Blake’s chest, and lowered his

head in what looked a hell of a lot like shame.

The rage I’d been fighting since the moment I’d seen what Alexis had done to my sister

came boiling up through my chest. It was all I could do not to hurl myself at Jamaal and try to

scratch his other eye out.

“Take her upstairs,” Anderson ordered Blake, who nodded and headed toward the grand

staircase. “Not you,” Anderson continued when I made to follow Blake.

“But—” The look in Anderson’s eyes made me swallow my protest. I didn’t want to let

Steph out of my sight, but a part of me knew my own emotional turmoil might do her more harm

than good. The last thing she needed was to worry herself over my well-being after what she’d

been through, and she was enough of a mother hen to do it. Curling my hands into fists, I stayed

where I was and watched as Blake carried her upstairs.

Slowly, I turned back to Anderson and Jamaal. Jamaal still stood with his head bowed,

his shoulders hunched like he was trying to make himself smaller. Maybe he sensed me looking

at him, because he raised his head and met my gaze for a moment. The expression in his

unbandaged eye was bleak. He opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and

returned his gaze to the floor.

“There are no words,” I thought I heard him say under his breath.

One thing I can say for Jamaal, he’s no actor. I doubted he could fake remorse if his life

depended on it, and I knew what I was seeing was genuine. He had convinced himself every

word out of my mouth was a lie, and therefore he had never believed holding me up would

actually hurt anyone but me. Now that he was faced with the truth, his malice had drained away.

He might be genuinely sorry for what he’d done, but that didn’t do Steph any good, and

therefore I didn’t give a damn.

“Tomorrow morning at nine,” Anderson said to Jamaal, his voice cold steel, “we will

hold a tribunal in my study to determine your punishment.” Jamaal nodded his acceptance

without looking up. “You’ll spend the night downstairs.” In one of the cells, I presumed. “Go.

Now.”

Jamaal bowed from the waist and, still keeping his gaze fixed on the floor, backed out of

the room and away. It was as submissive a gesture as I’d ever seen, and it made me wonder just

what kind of punishment this tribunal might sentence him to. For all that I was nominally a part

of Anderson’s merry band, I didn’t know all that much about them.

Anderson turned to me when Jamaal was gone, his expression somber. Had Jamaal told

him about the ring? Was I going to be having a tribunal of my own? At the moment, I wasn’t

sure I cared.

Anderson looked me up and down, inspecting the damage. The cuts and scrapes I’d

suffered from rolling around on the asphalt were all well on their way to healing, but from the

feel of it, several of the deeper bruises still had a ways to go. My head ached fiercely, but I

suspected much of that was the aftermath of the stress rather than real physical injury.

Anderson shook his head. “I never would have guessed he’d do that,” he said. “I knew he

still suspected you, and I knew he was unstable, but …” He let his voice trail off, and for the first

time since I’d met him, a look of true uncertainty crossed his face.

I heaved out a sigh. “It’s not your fault,” I told him, and despite my anger at the
Liberi
in

general, I realized I meant it. Maybe if I had told him about Jamaal’s nocturnal visit, he’d have

been able to head off tonight’s disaster. Keeping quiet had seemed like the honorable thing to do,