Touch If You Dare

Sometimes rescuing a bunch of almost-dead warriors
from black magicked pit vipers was just the kind of thing a man needed to help him forget the fact that he could not, for the life of him, figure out how to knit.

Jarvis Swain, the Guardian of Hate, ducked as the bright red snake launched itself at his throat, sprouting wings as it hit the air. He whipped his sword up just in time to de-fang it before it clamped its gums onto his jugular. “Since when do these suckers fly?”

He ripped the scaly mutant off him and tossed it out the door of the Hotel of Love and Healing, the pit of doom and despair where injured warriors were taken to recover or die after Angelica, Death’s psychotic grandma, had tortured them until they were on the bleeding edge of death.

After a hundred and fifty years of incarceration, Jarvis and three others had escaped from Angelica’s Den of Womanly Pursuits two weeks ago. They’d kicked Angelica’s crazy-bat-shit-ass, saved a girl, and made a deal with Angelica’s heir, Mari Hansen, to free the rest of warriors.

Two weeks post-escape, and Mari was stonewalling (so much for thinking Angelica’s dethronement would make Mari become sane and reasonable) and the remaining warriors hadn’t been released. Jarvis and his team of fugitives had decided to start plucking out the good guys one by one. First stop was the Hotel of Love and Healing. Any poor bastards still in there needed help—and in a big way.

Jarvis and his teammate Nigel Aquarian were rocking the sick bay rescue while their cronies, Blaine Underhill and Christian Slayer, played decoy with Mari and her assistants (no need to deal with a bunch of overly talented, lethally brainwashed, estrogen vessels of hate, if it could be avoided).

“These vipers aren’t pure snake.” Nigel flexed his
hands, and two dozen three-inch knives exploded from his fingertips, careening across the cavernous room. Twenty-two vipes dropped to the cement floor, graphite blades winking in the centers of their murderous little foreheads.

Nigel might be an artist, but the man also had the aim of a Roman god. “Angelica cross-bred the snakes with ladybugs a few weeks before we bailed.” Nigel’s hands were charcoal black now, and ash was sloughing off his palms. “Bastard went right for my left nipple. Still healing from it.”

“Angelica’s a she-bitch-from-hell, but I gotta tip my hat to her vision. I always felt ladybugs had more potential than anyone gives them credit for.” Jarvis thwacked another swarm of incoming vipers as he took inventory of the Hotel. Only six beds were still occupied, and every occupant was slow dancing so intimately with death that not one had even cracked an eyelid at their entrance. How many nights had he spent here, flipping off Death?

He swore as he remembered Death sitting on his headboard, waiting for him to finally give up. Those deadly shadows looming over his bed, daring him to accept the peace and relief they offered. Reminding him that if he decided to revive this time, he’d be back in the Hotel again, dying again, fighting for his last breath,
again
, in another week. A day. An hour. A never-ending cycle of torture, torment, and hell.

Jarvis saw the cleave marks in the first bed’s posts, ones he’d left his last time here, when the pain had been so intense he’d left raw strips in the wood, clawed by his own fingernails. His grip tightened on his sword, and a bead of sweat broke out on his brow. “Coming home can be a bitch,” he said quietly.

Nigel inclined his head in silent acknowledgement. “What do you say we retrieve these poor bastards and get the fuck out?”

Get the fuck out.
Jarvis glanced toward the door. Yeah, still unlocked. They weren’t trapped this time. They were in control now. They could leave whenever they wanted. He forced his grip to loosen and shook out his arm. “Let’s torch the place on the way out.”

Anything to wipe the nightmares from his soul. Nigel had his art. Blaine had his cross-stitching and his woman. Everyone on his team had something to cleanse the boils from their souls. But not Jarvis. The hell he carried inside him wasn’t about to be placated by a session with a pair of lavender knitting needles and turquoise angora. He had no artistic reprieve, and he’d never be soothed by the tender touch of another human being, let alone a woman.

He could imagine it, though. He’d bet his ass it would feel like a fucking angel to have a female touch him the way he’d seen Trinity touch Blaine.

But peace was not for him.

He’d have to settle for torching everything that had ripped the marrow from his bones over the last one hundred and fifty years, in hopes that turning his aggression outward would keep the monster within from ripping him to shreds.

“Yeah, let’s blow this place to hell,” Nigel agreed. “Eliminate all evidence that it ever existed.”

“Sounds good to me—” Jarvis swore as a reptile shot out from behind a pile of chains and went for his crotch. “These snakes must be female.” He whacked it aside with his sword. “No male would fang a man’s balls with a neurotoxin. Necrosis of the testicles is just not done between guys.”

Nigel thudded him on the shoulder. “I’d protect your boys with my life.”

They’d all done exactly that a thousand times already. It was why they were all still alive. And intact. “Back at you, my man.”

“As always.” Nigel took out another trio going for his own manly bits. “Plentiful little suckers, aren’t they?”

“Breeding like rabbits. They have no idea what’s coming now that we can fight back.” Jarvis began to whip his sword over his head in a dizzyingly fast circle, channeling the dark energy of the room into his weapon. Adrenaline rushed through him at the realization that this really was different than it had been for the last two centuries.

He wasn’t hog-tied and strung up by his balls, forced to take whatever hit came at him. He was in control now, and he was going to embrace every damn minute of it. He drew even more dark energy into the blade, turning himself from an ordinary combatant to one more lethal than any human being could comprehend. Stacking his sword with extra hate was kind of like the difference between sticking a match into a pile of newspapers or a stack of dynamite. Explosives were always an excellent choice when the lives of defenseless victims were at stake.

His blade began to glow with that heinous purplish mutant color. He smiled.

He casually nicked the wing of an incoming bug. It immediately exploded with enough force to take out ten more of its buddies and a chain-link chandelier. “Now that’s what I’m talking about—” Then he caught sight of the poor sod in the nearest bed and noticed a shock of white blond hair on the filthy pillowcase. Mother of hell. It was one of his favorite newbies. “Pascal,” he barked. “Get up. It’s time to bail.”

The kid didn’t move, but a scaly beast dive-bombed the youth, fanged teeth going right for the pretty boy’s charming dimples. “Hey!” Jarvis lashed out with his sword and bisected a snake a split second before its teeth sank into Pascal’s face. “This kind of shit doesn’t happen anymore,” he snapped as he scooped the rookie up and threw him over his shoulder.

“I’ll take him out,” he shouted at Nigel. Granted, the kid was a disrespectful pain in the ass with more guts than strategy, but the kid’s appreciation for life had helped keep Jarvis sane for the last fifty years. He sure as hell wasn’t going to leave him behind to get turned into dinner for Angelica’s pets. “You deal with cleanup.”

“You got it.” Nigel’s palms began to smoke, and then dozens of micro-sharp knives exploded from his palms. They shot across the room, hitting his prey with unerring precision. “This kind of action is good for my muse.”

Jarvis paused as Nigel engaged the enemy in a full-scale assault. His skin itched with the need to unleash some of the hate festering inside him. “Next time, I get ass-kicking duty.”

Nigel grinned. “Stop whining, and go rescue the kid. You know you love the hero role. It’s your shtick.”

“Shut up.” Yeah, he’d taken the hit when Angelica had intended to kidnap his brother a hundred and fifty years ago, but that was his job. Protect his brother. It wasn’t about the glory. Assigning him a hero complex was insulting as hell, and they all knew it. One of these days, he was going to behead the next one who said it.

Pascal’s muscles began to twitch. Incoming torture-induced seizure? Jarvis lightly squeezed Pascal’s shoulder, trying to give him comfort. “Easy, kid. We’re almost out.” Jarvis turned toward the exit just as the door flew open.