Heart of Fury

Chapter 1

Chapter One

The child stood behind the bar, no more than five years of age, still and gray as a stone. Blood had long ago soiled her dress, and her hair hung in limp locks to her waist, hopelessly matted.

She smelled of the old forests of home, damp and heavy with decay.

Gabriel hadn’t seen her in nearly forty years—not since the night he’d marked ten years in Sin City. Ten years since his brother Dorian had nearly decapitated him and he’d walked out of Ravenswood without a backward glance.

That night, her dark eyes seemed to hold a particularly urgent warning, though he couldn’t have said what it was. Any number of his choices deserved judgment. Scorn. His first decade out west had passed in a blur of gambling, booze, drugs, women, blood slaves—all part of the epic building of his empire and the search for that elusive something that’d left his eldest brother unrecognizable.

Obsession.

If Gabriel could find it, he’d reasoned back then—if he could lose himself so completely in the madness of some insatiable desire—perhaps he’d also find confirmation that he wasn’t so cold and broken after all. That a heart could still beat passionately in a chest that’d long ago been excavated, even if it beat for something destructive.

But all Las Vegas had offered Gabriel was a constant ache for home, a fathomless hunger that made him dizzy on the best of days, and a mountain of sin he could never hope to scale—only to profit from. Immensely.

And, of course, there was the child.

He’d been alone in one of his clubs that night too, the last he’d seen her. And drunk. And no closer to un-f*****g his life than he was now—more than two thousand miles, four decades, and hundreds of terrible decisions later.

Why the hell she’d chosen today to reappear, Gabriel knew not. Cared not.

“I can’t help you,” he told her, as he always did.

And she lingered, saying nothing, as she always did.

Never speaking. Never moving. Never aging. Merely watching him with haunted, empty eyes as bottomless as they’d been the morning she’d knelt beside her mother’s corpse in the woods and shook the woman as if the force of her tiny fists had the power to awaken the dead.

Gabriel downed another shot of bourbon. Dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “Take your revenge, girl, or leave me to plotting mine.”

No response but the eyes, unblinking and ever watchful. Ever judging.

“I said leave me!” He whipped his glass in her direction. It passed right through her, taking out a bottle of rum on the shelf behind her in an explosion of amber and glass.

The girl flickered in his vision but didn’t vanish, existing as she did in the space between all things. In his mind. In his memories. In the hell that surely awaited him on the day—sooner than he’d hoped, perhaps—a witch figured out how to end his immortal life.

“Bloody damned witches. Ghosts. Demons.” His lip curled back on the last word, thinking again of the woman who’d betrayed him. The monster he’d bound in the back of the club, still bleeding. “The whole lot of you can burn.”

Another shot, straight from the bottle this time, and a slice of mid-day sun spilled suddenly into the darkness, chasing off Gabriel’s pitiful thoughts and the child both. He winced at the intrusion, the daylight a sharper pain than it was even a week ago.

The scents of his brothers flooded his awareness, irritating and impossible to miss.

“We’re closed,” he grumbled.

“For f**k’s sake, Gabriel.” Dorian approached with heavy, determined footsteps. Aiden followed behind, four newly appointed royal guards left outside. “Whose blood are you wearing now?”

Gabriel finally glanced up from his seat at the bar, where he’d been thoroughly floating his liver for at least an hour, and grimaced. Until Dorian had mentioned it, he hadn’t even felt the cold, sticky wetness of the demon blood soaking his shirt.

“One who no longer needs it,” Gabriel replied. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone.”

“Actually, I do mind. I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.” Dorian clamped a hand over Gabriel’s shoulder, concern and exasperation warring in his gaze. “What the hell happened to you? Where’s Jacinda?”

Jacinda. A tremor rippled through Gabriel’s muscles. He hissed, forcing his attention to the bottle, lest he inadvertently choke his brother in the witch’s absence. He scraped at the label with his thumbnail, watching the paper bits curl and peel away. “Don’t ask.”

“Lovers’ quarrel?” Aiden took the adjacent barstool, looking over the smashed glass and spilled booze. Leaning close to Gabriel, he sniffed and said, “Doesn’t smell like witch’s blood.”

“That’s because it’s demon blood, detective,” Gabriel corrected. “A crucial difference all of us would be wise to learn.”

Dorian narrowed his eyes. “Which demon? And if you tell me it’s another of Chernikov’s, we’re—”

A sound like a wounded beast echoed from the deep recesses of the club, strangled and wet.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. Honestly, the f*****g demon couldn’t have been less compliant if he were Chernikov himself, resurrected from oblivion just to torment him.

Dorian’s eyes widened. “And who the bloody hell is that?”

“The former owner of the blood. I’ve been questioning him.”

“Questioning? Or torturing?”

“Potato, po-tah-to.” Gabriel sighed. He almost wished the ghost-girl were back instead. A f**k lot easier dealing with her than explaining the events of the last twenty-four hours to his brothers—a thing he’d been dreading ever since he’d wiped out the mages at Shimmer.

Dorian turned toward the demon’s choked sounds.

“That one’s not talking,” Gabriel said. “Trust me.”

“He’ll talk to me,” Dorian said. “I’ve got a way with demons.”

“And I’ve got his f*****g tongue.” He kicked the wet slab out from under the bar where it’d landed earlier, still slick with blood. Then, at Dorian’s irate expression, “What? You told me I can’t go round killing them. You never said anything about mutilation.”

Dorian rubbed his forehead and sighed into his hand. “Still alive, then, I presume?”

“Caught in a devil’s trap, going nowhere fast.” Gabriel glanced toward the back of the club, the same shadowed booth where he’d recently taken out the demon Mikhail.

He Who Likes to Watch.

Gabriel hadn’t bothered asking the new bastard’s name—had no idea whether he liked to watch, too—but he’d plucked out his beady black eyes with a cocktail fork anyway. It was almost as satisfying as ripping out his tongue, though he didn’t know where the eyes had ended up.

Perhaps Jacinda would happen upon them the next time she mixed one of her infamous drinks.

A bitter laugh caught in his throat, quickly dashed by his anger.

Dorian stalked back into the shadows, returning only seconds later, his face grim. To Aiden, he said, “Phone Isabelle, will you? We need to exorcise that monstrosity before he re-spawns and word reaches Rogozin.”

“One more Chernikov castaway down. Pity.” Gabriel let out a hum of mock sympathy, then took another swig from his bottle, the room growing fuzzy around the edges. Was it the booze? The curse? His own shite karma, finally come to bite him in the arse?

Dorian seethed. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you had a good reason for this?”

“Thank you,” Gabriel replied.

“The reason, Gabriel. Out with it.” Impatience sliced through Dorian’s every word, stabbing at Gabriel’s gut, picking apart seams he’d been trying to stitch back together for their entire lives.

Beyond the burn of the liquor, guilt spilled into his chest, hot and prickly.

He hadn’t wanted Dorian involved. The mess with Jacinda, the curse, Duchanes... Gabriel should’ve been able to handle it on his own. Between forging the new supernatural council, managing the ever-fraught Rogozin alliance, planning a f*****g wedding… Dorian had enough on his plate.

Gabriel closed his eyes, the guilt simmering. No matter how many centuries passed, he never stopped feeling like the errant little brother, running himself breathless to impress the others only to realize they hadn’t even been watching him. “Dorian, I… I’m sorry. This wasn’t—”

Sunlight sliced through the darkness again, silhouetting another vampire in the doorway and cutting Gabriel short.

“I was in surgery. I came as soon as I could.” Colin rushed past the guards and into the club, bringing with him a blast of winter air. Shock filled his gaze as he took in the sight of Gabriel’s blood-soaked shirt. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“You called Colin too?” Gabriel asked.

“We were worried,” Aiden said. “How much have you had to drink? It’s barely noon.”

Gabriel dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “For fifty years, this family existed in separate worlds without exchanging so much as a birthday greeting. Now I can’t pass a single afternoon without fending off a barrage of needless concern? You’re all bloody suffocating. I need more bourbon.”

He slid off the barstool and headed behind the bar in search of another bottle. He found it, along with the scotch Dorian favored, and filled glasses for all of them.

“Tell me what happened, Gabriel,” Dorian said with another sigh, the alcohol doing nothing for his dwindling patience.

“Well, let’s see.” Gabriel leaned against the shelves behind the bar and casually scratched his jaw as if he’d been asked for nothing more crucial than an accounting of his liquor collection. “Jacinda and I followed a promising lead on Duchanes last night, only to discover that the demon who provided the intel—” He thumbed toward the booth. “—was setting her up for an execution by a cult of mages calling themselves the Keepers of the Dark Flame. I slaughtered them, naturally, which had some very interesting side effects on my witch. I suppose that’s because she’s not a witch, but a demon. A hybrid, if we’re being technical. I’m not sure exactly where the family tree branches off, but she also has a sister—an original succubus, of all things—who’s now roaming the city, likely plotting its ruin. But take heart, brothers. The sister of the woman I so stupidly fell in love with happens to be the very demoness who bound Father’s curse all those centuries ago. So…” He shrugged and downed his shot, then poured another, raising his glass in cheers. “One mystery solved.”

“A succubus?” Colin said, at the same time Aiden said, “In love with her?”

“Yes,” Gabriel said to both. “But the whole ‘I’m plotting to rip out your heart later’ bit put a damper on things this morning.”

“Wait.” Aiden blinked rapidly, clearly trying to find sense in a story that had none. “You’re in love with a succubus? I thought you had it bad for the witch?”

“Keep up, Aiden,” Gabriel said.

“Fascinating.” Colin had the look—the same their father used to get when he’d made some new discovery. “I had no idea succubi could manifest outside the dreamspace.”

Dorian took a bit longer than the others to find his words, and when he did, they exploded out of him in their usual dramatic fashion. “For f**k’s sake, Gabriel! A mage cult? A succubus? The curse? What the f**k are you on about?”

“That’s… too many questions in one breath.” Gabriel slumped forward and laid his cheek on the cool surface of the bar, his eyes falling closed. The room spun, but he was beyond caring.

“Why didn’t you call us sooner?”

Dorian again, his insistence like an ice pick to Gabriel’s skull.

“Wasn’t drunk enough.”

“Clearly, neither are we.” Dorian downed the scotch. Sighed. Refilled his glass. Sighed again. Then, in a voice burdened by the new weight these revelations would surely add to his life, “Start from the beginning, Gabriel. Leave nothing out.”

Gabriel rolled himself back into a standing position and let the story spill forth—as much as he could remember through his bourbon-and-demon-blood haze. He told them about his search for Duchanes, the meeting at Shimmer out on Montauk, Jacinda’s glamour magic, the mages.

The near-sacrifice that still had his stomach twisting into knots.

Thanks to some misplaced sense of loyalty—or, hell. Maybe it was shame at his own failure to recognize just how dangerous his little witch truly was—he didn’t get too specific about Jacinda’s response to the murders, saying only that the whole thing sent her into a kind of magical overdrive. He suspected they would’ve pressed him for more details had the next bit not commanded their full attention.

Viansa.

He told them about her break-ins—the one in his apartment as well as the one in his head—and everything Jacinda had deigned to share after the fact.

Far too long after the fact, as far as Gabriel was concerned, but there it was.

His chest tightened again with the hot, sharp sting of her betrayal. He washed it down with another drink, then said, “So it seems, brothers, the traitorous witch is not only half demon herself, but has somehow unleashed a dangerous succubus on this city—one who can’t be smoked out. One who has the power of hellfire, the ability to get inside your head and turn you right f*****g inside out, and a fierce determination to lay waste to any who dare oppose her.”

Gabriel finally looked up at his brothers, finding every one of them staring at him open-mouthed, their faces paler than usual.

Dorian was the first to shake off the shock, quickly snapping back into authoritarian big-brother mode—Gabriel’s least favorite.

“We need to find Viansa before she causes any more damage.” Dorian pulled out his phone. “Did she leave anything behind?”

“We fought with her in my penthouse,” Gabriel replied. “There may be something she touched. That is—unless her sister’s destroyed the evidence.” He wouldn’t put it past the witch. Demon. Whatever the bloody hell she was. “Who are you texting?”

“Cole. He should be able to pick up her scent from your apartment and track her from there. Hopefully, the trail hasn’t gone completely cold.” He finished firing off the text, then speared Gabriel with another scornful glance, his reproach slicing right to the bone. “Next time you decide to set the world on fire, brother, I’d appreciate the courtesy of a phone call.”

“Cole can’t help you,” Gabriel said, trying to ignore the burn of shame in his chest. For f**k’s sake, he’d been alive since before the invention of the printing press, yet Dorian had the uncanny ability to send him straight back to his childhood with a single raised eyebrow and a few curt words. “He’s in Jersey, looking into those real estate leads on Duchanes.”

“Bloody perfect.” Dorian chucked his phone onto the bar, where it skidded right off and crashed to the floor.

“Hope you got the insurance on that one, mate,” Aiden said, eyeing up the broken pieces. “It’s D.O.A.”

“Just like us if we don’t clean up this mess,” Dorian snapped. Then, to Gabriel, “What else can Jacinda tell us? Surely she can manage a locator spell. Get her down here.”

“Jacinda can no longer be trusted—not that she ever could.” Gabriel swallowed another shot, the alcohol burning as much as the admission he knew was coming next. “We need Isabelle.”

“Never thought I’d hear such a thing from you, Gabriel Redthorne.” The witch in question pushed through the doorway, limned in light and trailed by the faint scent of incense. She carried a leather case full of magical tools and potions—something she rarely left home without, now that she was bonded to the Redthornes and constantly on call, running interference on one supernatural emergency or another. “So what’ve you got for me, boys?”

Gabriel opened his mouth to speak, but Dorian took over instead.

“In no particular order,” he said firmly, “an eyeless, tongueless Chernikov demon to banish. A deadly, mind-jacking succubus to track down. And finally, if it’s not too much trouble…” He smacked the back of Gabriel’s head in that special brotherly way that bordered on infuriating. “A drunken vampire to sober up, preferably before anything else goes to seed today.”

“Hate to rain on your parade of endless optimism, Dori,” Aiden said, “as pleasant as it always is. But…” He turned his phone to show them something on the screen—a video from a social media feed, the shot zoomed in on Union Square Park. The guy streaming it muttered something about “an uncanny experience” and “images that were definitely not safe for work.” That was all Gabriel processed before the sight shocked him numb.

The whole area was packed with people—not unusual, given the holiday pop-up markets that lined the park pathways this time of year.

But rather than shopping for gifts, every last adult was naked, engaged in the only activity that could possibly chase off the frigid December air.

“A spontaneous public orgy?” Isabelle grabbed the phone and stared down at the screen, her brow furrowed. “In broad daylight, in the middle of winter? And goodness, look at those poor kids!”

Children had been left to wander the park alone, some crying, some mute with confusion, all of them abandoned as readily as their parents’ clothing, inhibitions, and minds.

Dorian closed his eyes and sighed. “It appears we’ve found our succubus.”