Infernal: Bite The Bullet (14 page)

“Beastrider is connected with Dante?” I asked.

Gracie nodded. “He’s been using the band as a
front to move his property between his international clubs. He likes to share
his favourites around.”

Jesus, I thought, just how deep did all of this
go?

“By the time Daniel was coming down from the high,
he was fully primed. He sailed right into their trap. One day he’s dancing at Infernal,
the next he’s up to his armpits in debt, and he’s Dante’s branded property.”

I thought back on all the money Daniel had
flashed, the apartment I was sure we couldn’t afford to rent, the parties. He’d
been so proud of the better life he was providing for us. And all along it’d been
a trap, a way to lure him to his death.

I felt Konstantyn’s hand come to rest on my
shoulder and I covered it with my own, feeling his tension. I knew he was
listening as intently as I was. Whatever Daniel had gone through, his sister,
Mariya, had most likely suffered the same fate.

“Did you see him, after that?” I asked.

“Not much, you know?” Gracie sniffled, her lower
lip trembling as she took another drag of her cigarette. “He keeps them locked
up, for use by him and his friends. I only saw him that one time.”

“Where? When? Please tell me.”

“Somewhere underground, in the city. I don’t know
exactly. They put a sack over my head every time they send for me. Sometimes,
their games go too far. They won’t use the hospital, because the wrong people
might ask questions, so they bring me in, to quieten the screams, and give
everyone a little peace.”

“You inject the victims with drugs?” I felt sick
at the thought.

Gracie nodded, letting her head sag forward on her
neck. “I’m not proud of what I do,” she said, whispering to the ground, “but at
least it takes the edge off their pain.”

“To take the edge off, not to kill them?” I’d
assumed, because Daniel was dead, that all the others were too. “Are you saying
he keeps them alive?”

“Yeah,” Gracie exhaled. “Like I said, he likes to
share his favourites. They have their own doctor, the Butcher. He patches them
up, just enough to keep them going.”

Jesus. There were living victims. This changed
everything.

“Were you taken to see Daniel?” I pressed.

Another nod, and when she lifted her eyes to mine,
I saw the horror of what she’d witnessed.

My throat closed over with grief, but I couldn’t
look away.

“Oh, Lord,” she cried, “I couldn’t believe what
they’d done to him.” The burnt-down cigarette shook between her fingers. “I
couldn’t leave him there like that. I had to do something. But in the end, I
think I made it worse.”

“What do you mean? What did you do?”

“I was trying to help him. I unchained Danny, and
I carried him out of there.”

“How?”

“I hardly know. I was so scared of being caught. I
wandered the tunnels ‘til I found a manhole, and I carried him up onto the
street. I left him there, under some godforsaken bridge, and I hoped to hell
somebody would find him before he died there. I had to go back down. If I
didn’t, I was good as dead myself.”

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

“Have you been back since?” Konstantyn asked.

Gracie nodded her head. “A few times, I guess.”

“How many are down there?” I asked shakily.

Konstantyn squeezed my shoulder.

“I don’t know exactly. Ten, fifteen maybe. Like I
said, they move them around.”

God, there were other living victims, suffering
through the hell that killed Daniel.

“Tell me,” Konstantyn demanded, “do you remember a
blonde girl, accent like mine. Same eyes?”

“I’m sorry,” she said sadly, and shook her head.
“I just go where they send me.”

Konstantyn closed his eyes and inhaled deep.

“Tell me something,” I said quietly, and Gracie
looked back up at me. “Why did you help my brother?”

She answered me with a question. “Why is he
helping you? Why are you helping him? Why does anybody risk everything for
another human being?”

Konstantyn and I exchanged a fleeting glance,
before looking quickly away.

She’s talking about love, I thought.

Gracie had been in love with my brother. The
knowledge flared in my eyes.

“He didn’t feel that way about me,” she said
quietly. “He never even knew.”

We left her there, sprawled and sobbing on the
floor. What else could we do? A pity party wasn’t going to bring Daniel back.

“We have to do something,” I said. “We have to get
those people out.”

Konstantyn nodded.

I followed him down the dingy stairwell and out
into the dark street.

“You know the location of the underpass where your
brother was found?”

I nodded numbly in response. When you’d spent
months of your life mulling over the last moments of a loved one dying alone,
and how you might have prevented it from happening, that kind of detail was
indelible.

“Then I can locate Dante,” Konstantyn said, his
voice rough. “First, we go back to your place. I need blueprints for the
tunnels and disused tube stations underneath the area where your brother was
found. From there, it will be a simple process of elimination.”

He was planning on going in then. I tried to put a
rein on the frisson of excitement that buzzed in my veins.

“What will you do? If you find them?”
When you
find them.

“Whatever is necessary,” he said quietly, and I
knew. He would kill to get his sister back, and to free the others. If I had
his skills, I’d have been doing the same, but it went unsaid that Konstantyn
would be going in alone this time. I knew enough to acknowledge that an
untrained civilian would only be a liability in that kind of rescue situation.
And it would be a rescue mission, not a search for bodies, I told myself, but dread
weighed heavy on my heart all the same.

The first fat drops of rain were splattering the
pavement when Konstantyn entered my apartment armed, securing each of its four
tiny rooms before beckoning me inside and double-locking the door.

Making the gun safe, he laid it down on my coffee
table, leaving me wondering when my home had turned into a war-zone.

I rummaged through the kitchen drawers for my
dog-eared copy of the London A to Z, opened it up on the counter, and flicked
through the pages to find the spot where Daniel’s body had been found. I felt
Konstantyn’s presence over my shoulder.

“Here, this is the place. They found him under
this bridge,” I said. My finger trembled as I stabbed at the map.

It was too much. Staring at the stupid map, I fell
apart under the weight of Gracie’s revelations. She’d tried to help my brother,
and likely killed him in the process. Had she not taken him out of there,
Daniel might still be alive. Suffering, but alive.

Was I selfish to even think that way? I’d seen the
photographs. If it were me, I knew, deep down, I’d be better off dead. Then
again, if Konstantyn’s boast was true, then Gracie carrying Daniel up onto the
street might be the key to finding Dante’s underground torture chambers, and to
saving all those other victims.

My brother’s death just seemed too high a price to
pay.

A great sob wracked my body and my face crumpled,
breaking the composure I’d fought so hard to maintain.

Konstantyn gripped my upper arms and spun me
around until I was facing him.

Through the wash of my tears, I watched his eyes
tighten and knew immediately he regretted the move.
Put a gun in my hand and
I will kill for you
, that pained expression said.
Give me a ride or die
scenario, with impossible odds, and I will stare death in the eyes for you.
But confronted with an emotionally incontinent woman, Konstantyn looked
helpless as a lost boy.

He shook his head and his fingers flexed on my
arms, like now he had hold of me, he didn’t quite know what to do. “Please
don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry.” I shuddered and scrubbed at my wet
cheeks, but it was useless. Every tear I wiped was just as quickly replaced
with another. “Just give me a minute. I don’t want you to see me like this.” I
hugged my chest and tried to turn away.

He didn’t allow me to.

His warm hand on my cheek guided me back to his
face and I watched his eyes darken with murderous determination.

“I will kill the ones who did this to your
brother,” he said roughly.

My heart clenched and fresh tears welled against
my will. “You’re not helping.”

His brows pulled together, questioning.

“Being nice to me only makes it worse,” I
explained through another bout of ugly crying that made my chest seize.

“I mean it. I will kill them with my bare hands.”
He sounded so assured, I had to smile.

“I believe you,” I said on a quavering breath. The
sincerity burning in his eyes was all the promise I needed.

His thumb caught a tear as it fell, his warm palm
still cradling my face. “Don’t give them your tears, Neva.”

“I can’t help it.” I was defeated. Exhausted.
Broken.

“I can.” He knotted a hand in my hair and captured
my hitched breath with his mouth and I yielded.

His kiss was everything I remembered it to be:
brutal and demanding. Alive.

My body caught fire. Months of grief and
frustration came pouring out in a savage lust, and I wanted nothing more than
to let myself drown.

Through the salt-taste of my tears, I kissed him
back with all the violence of my ragged emotions.

Needing more, I ran my hands over the short
bristles of his hair, but there was nothing to hold on to. I settled for
grappling at his top and clawing his muscular shoulders, hauling him closer.

He palmed the small of my back and jerked me
against his body.

I melted instantly into his power with a
tear-rough moan.

He was so hard and unyielding, every part of him
crushed to my skin, and it was what I needed in that moment, a wall of strength
to hold me up when I was weak. I’d fought so long on my own, struggling to keep
it together. I’d thought I was strong. I wasn't.

“I want you.” He spoke the words against my lips
in that guttural accent and I became liquid at my core.

“Yes. God yes.” I framed his stubbled jaw with my
fingertips and kissed him again, fiercely.

His strong hands imprinted the rounds of my ass
and he rode me up his body with the powerful grace of the dancer he was. The
thick ridge of his erection nestled between my thighs, and desperation escaped
my throat in a breathless moan.

When his lips found the sensitive hollow of my
throat, I shivered, clamping my legs around his hips and wrapping my arms
around his neck, even as my head fell back in surrender, opening myself up to
the sensual, sucking torture of his mouth.

He carried me, vined around him like that, until
my spine collided with the wall.

Konstantyn growled against my tongue-wet skin and
I felt his need intensify in the squeeze of his hands on my ass and the
grinding roll of his hips that rode his steel-hard cock over my throbbing
centre.

He had me pinned, caught between a rock and a hard
place, and the friction was maddening, stroking my lust to a tingling knot that
pulled tighter and tighter with every curl of his hips into mine.

Aroused to the point of pain, I pleaded for
release, but he was relentless.

He hunted my mouth, penetrating me with his
tongue, opening me up to the invasion. I was so caught up in the feel of him
moving against me that I didn’t even realise he’d moved us again, until his
hands were prising my limbs from his body and I tumbled back onto the mattress
with a cry of surprise.

Flushed, breathing ragged with desire, I bounced
into the sheets. Konstantyn stood between my legs, his muscular torso flexing
as he peeled the sweatshirt over his head. The look in his dark, green-flecked
eyes was such pure predatory lust, it sent a frisson of fear skittering over my
heated skin. The half-naked man towering over me was my every fantasy made
hard, unyielding flesh. He would take what he wanted from me, without apology,
and I would love every part of my surrender.

Transfixed by the raw beauty of him, my eyes scrolled
down his rippling, gauze covered abs to where he tugged at his belt buckle, and
the sound of the leather sliding free, coupled with the huge bulge straining
his fly, had me salivating for what I’d tasted once before. Knowing what
awaited me as the metal teeth of the zipper parted around his pulsing erection
only heightened the core-clenching anticipation of finally having him inside
me.

But Konstantyn had other ideas. I should have
known he’d torture me before giving me what I wanted most. Fisting the
waistband of my yoga pants in one hand, he yanked them down my thighs. As he
knelt to remove my shoes, his eyes fell between my legs, to where I knew my
panties must be soaked through. He made a noise I could only describe as
animal, and my sex flooded with heat as I watched his nostrils flare and his
pupils dilate.

His rough hands mapped my calves, riding up the
sensitive skin of my inner thighs, spreading me wide for his mouth. I clutched
at handfuls of the sheets and my stomach tightened in anticipation of what was
to come.

Bristled kisses burned a path to the juncture of
my thighs, and then he took me roughly with his mouth, sucking at my swollen
lips through the thin, wet barrier of my panties. My toes curled and I bit down
on a cry of pleasure, desperate to come, but loath to fall from the high he had
me riding. He swept my panties to one side and even his hot breath felt cool on
my throbbing flesh. I shivered, but he was only getting started. The assault of
his tongue and fingers was simultaneous, a wicked, dual invasion, pushing deep
inside me and parting my folds in a wet dragging stroke.