Dark Beauty Read online

  “Meet me at the address on your phone when Dice catches up,” she says quietly, and then suddenly she’s gassing the car, managing to slide between all the wreckage without hitting anything in her woven path.

  My phone buzzes almost immediately, and I glance down to see a message from a number I don’t know. But as promised, there’s an address. When did she get my number?

  Yeah… She needs to stop turning me on.

  ***

  KIMBER

  “Care to tell me what the fuck is going on now? I’m assuming you weren’t really summoned,” Gage growls, looking frustrated as he exits his car with Dice.

  I’m leaning against my car, my arms crossed over my chest, and I grin despite his obvious agitation.

  “Sheila said I could only use people I completely trusted. Considering the people I trust the most seem to trust you, I thought I’d use you and Dice. I don’t want to call in Ella unless I have to.”

  “Why not Ella?” Dice asks, looking down at his black-polished nails, bored out of his damn mind as usual.

  Even though I was raised by her grandparents, I’ve always considered Ella to be my little sister. I’d die to protect her.

  “Because there won’t be enough protection for her. The Somage can’t be involved with this source, so as long as we’re using her, it’s just the ones we trust completely that won’t be in jeopardy. My sister is a rare species with royal blood in her veins. We’re going after slave rings that would slice their own mothers’ throats to get at something like her.”

  Gage and Dice look at each other, having a silent conversation and leaving me out. That pisses me off.

  “No,” Gage announces, shaking his head while looking back at me. “If you’re not using the Somage, then you’re not tracking this down. Dice and I will take it from here.”

  He can’t be serious.

  “The hell you are,” I growl, taking a step toward him, even though we remain at least five feet apart.

  Gage smirks, looking so damn smug and cocky in this moment that I could slap him.

  “Yeah. We are,” he drawls, now looking too in-control as his eyes flick to the isolated house at the end of the long driveway.

  “You’re not going in there without me. First of all, you’d never make it past the threshold. Secondly, this is mine. I’ve worked on this for years, even before I joined the Somage. If you think you can just—”

  Before I can finish those words, Gage is suddenly in front of me, caging me in against my car as he brings his face dangerously close to mine. As though I’ve forgotten who the hell I am, I lose my breath and shiver—I frigging shiver.

  The cool steel of his shiny lip rings distracts me, taunts me, and dares me to get closer. Then he opens his mouth to speak, and I get a glimpse of the piercing in his tongue. Really? Does he have to tempt me in every way possible when I’m trying to think of the various ways I can inflict pain?

  Jackass.

  His eyes drop to my lips, and he runs his tongue across his bottom lip, letting the metal bar become more visible as he pushes closer.

  “You’re a gatekeeper, Kimber,” he says in a voice that shouldn’t be so seductive right now. “You’re a rare breed—even rarer than Ella, since there are only two of you in the world. And the other is a powerful changer that can take care of himself. You—” he lets his eyes trail down me in a way that has my blood heating and my mind cursing my traitorous body “—can’t be here. As I said, we’ll handle it from here.”

  With that, he vaporizes from in front of me, and Dice walks by, hiding his grin behind his hand as he follows the stupid sexy dark user that I really hate right now. Why the hell am I reacting like this? No. I’m not some stupid girl or freshly changed immortal that can’t control my hormones.

  Steeling myself and trying to rid the unwanted effects that dick has left me with, I turn just in time to see Dice sailing backwards, yelping as he thuds to the ground in front of the sad looking home. Gage is nowhere to be seen, so I guess the bastard managed to get across the threshold, which shouldn’t be possible if what Sheila told me is true.

  I curse myself again when my knees wobble, but I steady myself and head to the house, ready to kick Gage’s ass for belittling me and treating me as though I’m a child. If he wants to play games, I’ll show him exactly how childlike I’m not.

  Heading toward the threshold, I silently say the words Sheila gave me, blessing my entrance, even though Gage apparently didn’t seem to need them.

  Innocence is a light darkened only by truth.

  I’m not exactly sure why those words were chosen, but I feel the protective veil around the house lifting, granting me entrance. Apparently Sheila and this girl both know a powerful charmer, and fortunately they needed chants to gain admittance, since they’re no more a witch than I am.

  Entering the house, I’m surprised. It looks like a polished, modern home, whereas the outside looks like a rundown, dilapidated tragedy. Then again, this girl is trying to lay low.

  Walking over the tile floor, I proceed with caution, warily looking over everything, but there are too many things here for me to inspect. There are so many dolls, hundreds of them. How am I supposed to speak to her if she’s hiding amongst them?

  “Son of a bitch!” Gage growls, his voice resounding down the hall as a litany of other curses fly from his sexy lips. No. Not sexy lips. Just lips, dammit.

  Grr. I really hate him right now.

  Just as I round the corner to the hallway, I stop. It looks like a hall of mirrors—a never-ending passage way.

  “Gage?” I ask cautiously, wondering if it’s an illusion cast by the girl or by the dark user.

  He’s suddenly appearing at my side, and I gasp when I see blood drizzling down his forehead, slipping out from under the inky black hair.

  “You could have warned me she’s a demon,” he growls, looking around the room, worrying now where she might be.

  “Let me the hell in!” Dice demands.

  I yell out the passage, and he says it aloud, breaking through the veil as I did. Just as he joins us in the doll-filled room, a red-haired baby doll stands up from a tiny rocking chair.

  “What the unholy hell?!” Dice shrieks, jumping into the air high enough to slap his head on the ceiling, and he drops back to the ground with a heavy thud. “Fucking demons,” he hisses, earning a glare from the red-haired doll who then turns her attention to me.

  “Where did you learn that passage?” the baby doll asks in a baby’s voice.

  So damn creepy.

  I shudder as Gage looks down to me, his teeth grinding because he knows he can’t answer that question. He’s really tall.

  Why the hell am I focusing on him?

  Turning my eyes away from him, I devote my attention where it belongs, and I stare into the glossy eyes of the freaky doll.

  “Sheila, alpha female of the Arasian lioness werecat pack, gave it to me.”

  The doll is freaking me out with the unblinking, glassy eyes that roll up and down my body squeakily. Dice cringes and scoots back farther, as Gage steps in front of me protectively.

  Really?

  Just as I’m about to shove him away, the doll drops to the ground as the life leaves its squeaky eyes. We all look around, trying to figure out which doll she is possessing now.

  “I told you that you’re not working this case,” Gage growls, his eyes still trained on the herd of innocuous looking dolls that could be harnessing this rare creature.

  “And I told you I was. Get the hell over it,” I say, refusing to look at him since my body contradicts my mind when my eyes are on him.

  Just then, another doll comes to life, leaping from the couch, and I duck just as she throws out her hand. Gage is hit by the demonic power that is diluted by her possession and by her true self, but it’s still enough to make him curse and stumble backwards while clutching his shoulder.

  “Sheila wouldn’t have given you that. Not even on her deathbed.”

  Quick
ly, I pull out that damn worthless stone that’s attached to a necklace, and I toss it into the air. The doll leaps, flips, and catches it midair, before flipping backwards and landing on the black leather sofa.

  “She said you’d be wary. But she gave me that to prove I’m here for the right reasons.”

  The doll looks up at me, her eyes looking sweeter than they should, and finally, a sigh passes through its lips before it drops like the other one, lifeless once more.

  “That shit makes my skin crawl,” Dice says as he comes toward us, putting his back against the wall as he watches all the dolls.

  “Why did she send you?” another doll asks from behind us, eliciting a shriek from the incubus.

  This doll is closer, wearing a princess dress and a misleading expression of invitation.

  “Because I’m here to offer revenge,” I say, unlacing one cuff and letting it fall to the floor to expose my own slave marks.

  The doll grabs my hand, jerking it closer so that she can inspect my wrist, and Gage bristles, a blue and red orb forming in his hand as he prepares to destroy the possessed princess.

  The doll flips him off, which is actually a pretty comical sight. Then she turns to stiffly wobble into the never-ending hallway. The illusion becomes fractured, looking as though it is short-circuiting when it flickers between a never-ending hallway and short one.

  Finally, the illusion shatters completely, turning into just the short distance to the back of the house just as the doll disappears into a room.

  “She’s a demon,” Gage says, scowling at me.

  “I’m aware of that,” I mumble, feigning the same boredom he showed me earlier.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he growls.

  “Are you just going to keep repeating everything you’ve already said?”

  His lips tug into an angry snarl, and to piss him off even more, I patronizingly reach up and pat the side of his smooth cheek.

  Ah, hell. I really shouldn’t have touched him.

  Though I remain unaffected on the outside, my palm burns and tingles from where it touched him, and I pull it back down, trying not to tremble when he moves closer.

  “How do you know Sheila?” a girl’s voice asks, drawing all eyes to the hallway as she struts toward us in her true form.

  Dark, short hair is styled in a bouncy bob cut, and she’s dressed in a pair of black jeans and a black, midriff showing v-neck shirt vest. Just like most of our world, she’s stunning enough to be seductive. Of course… then she could kill you with very little effort. There’s a reason Alyssa refers to our world as being full of deadly beauties, and this one was designed to kill as efficiently as a bitten fey.

  “I saw her in a vision,” I say, ignoring Gage when he starts cursing me for exposing my secret. I’m not worried about this girl telling anyone, considering she’s not exactly on good terms with anyone who would be interested in me.

  “And?” the girl prompts, crossing her arms in front of her.

  “And I went to speak with her. I’m trying to find the slave rings and shut them down. But I don’t know how to find them. She said you could help me, so I came to see if you’d be willing.”

  She narrows her eyes at me, and her blood red lips slowly curl into an eerie grin. “So she told you what to expect before you got here, and yet these fools storm in unaware? I don’t think so.”

  A red glow forms around her slowly, steadily growing in warning. Shit. Stupid dark user and idiotic incubus.

  “I said Sheila told me. I never said anything about them knowing.”

  She tilts her head, seeming to still be weighing my words for lies. Unlike the alpha female, this girl can’t sniff out a lie, and her time in slave prisons has her untrusting and paranoid—rightfully so.

  “Prove it.”

  Gage steps up, trying to shield me like I’m a damn damsel in distress, but I shove him hard. He barely moves, but it pisses him off enough to earn another glare for him.

  “I know what you truly are,” I say, refusing to look at the confused expressions I can feel Gage and Dice sharing.

  “Oh?” the girl asks, trying to seem as though this is all of no consequence to her.

  “Yes. And I know that people would pay a lot of money for a demon with a conscience. Which is why I’m here. They’ll come. The only way to shut them down is to go on the offensive.”

  “Demon with a conscience,” Dice scoffs in disbelief. “Bullshit.”

  The girl’s smile spreads, and it actually creeps me out a little, because she’s naturally ominous.

  “You realize there are more rings out there than one person can ever really destroy.” She skates over the fact I’ve just basically exposed her secret—one that shouldn’t be possible.

  “No there’s not. There are only a little more than a handful of major rings. Shut them down at the source, and the small ones will crumble. People need leaders. And very few people are capable of leading such rings. We kill the sources. The rest will fall under the chaos. It’ll set a precedent of what’s to come to anyone brave enough to try to step up.”

  The girl’s smile slowly falls. “Ambitious. You sound like you have a death wish to me.”

  “Sounds the same to me,” Gage adds, not being the slightest bit helpful. Why did I bring him with me? I’m starting to see why Kane hates him now, and it’s not just because Gage and Alyssa dated.

  “I’m not going to lie; I’m not afraid of dying if it means saving hundreds of innocent people. My life is not more valuable simply because I’m no longer trapped behind bars.”

  Finally, I see her eyes shift, and the girl I’ve been trying to appeal to loses the red gleam in her otherwise golden brown eyes. The red power buzzing around her begins to slowly evaporate, and she takes a steady breath.

  “Then I’ll help you. I’m not afraid of death either. Besides, there’s someone I need to find.”

  Sheila told me to expect this. It’s how I knew I could convince her to help us.

  “Your sister,” I say, nodding. “Was she in the same ring as you?”

  She pulls the choker off her neck, exposing a barbed ring tattooed onto her flesh. The barbed ring has branded her as well. She really has been traded too often, all of them searching for the highest bidder.

  “I don’t know where she is. But I heard talk of three others like me. One has to be her. I spent five years in the rings. It’s really not that long,” she says grimly. “My twin sister was stolen at age six. I’m not sure what I’ll find because of how much damage that amount of time can do, but I have to try. I hope you have more than an incubus and a dark user, visionary.”

  Ah, shit. How does she know what they are? Gage revealed his power, but Dice hasn’t.

  “How the fuck do you know what I am?” Dice demands, quickly making sure to step behind Gage when the girl looks over to him.

  “I walk between dead and alive better than anything you’ve ever encountered, worthless fey. I sense power. I read it. Which is why they want me so damn bad. I can tell if someone is fey or not, and if I’m around them long enough, I can tell you every fucking power they have.”

  She’s wrong there. She referred to me as a visionary.

  “Or you figure shit out easily, considering I used my power and Kimber divulged the fact she’s a visionary. The incubus hasn’t made a move, but he has the smug, sarcastic nature involved with almost all of his kind. One lucky guess doesn’t make you able to do something like that. Last I checked, demons don’t own that power,” Gage growls.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose while mentally cursing myself for ever bringing him. Just because he was friends with my family decades ago, that doesn’t mean I should have trusted him. He’s really horrible with people. How the hell did he ever run the Somage?

  “I also know that she’s something else, but I don’t know what exactly,” she says, grinning condescendingly at him.

  “So you can’t actually tell what a fey is,” Dice snarks, rolling his shoulders back like he�
�s suddenly badass.

  “It’s not like a flashing neon sign appears and announces what power I’m sensing,” the girl drawls, casting her gaze to her nails as she idly examines her red polish. “I have to have come into contact with it before to know the identity.”

  “I repeat,” Gage snarls, “demons don’t have that power.”

  “What do you know about half demons?” she asks, her eyes still on her nails with absolute casualness, and Gage’s mouth goes slack. He quickly regains composure while shaking his head.

  “I know that’s impossible.”

  “It was,” she mumbles, looking away from her nails and refocusing her attention on him. “Until some dumbass unlocked the gates of purgatory and released all kinds of forbidden shit.”

  I’m fairly positive I just went pale, and like a protective dick, Gage comes to wrap his arm around my waist while steadying me.

  “What the hell do you mean?” I ask in a rasp whisper.

  She studies me with shrewd eyes, her expression changing ever so slightly.

  “Didn’t know? Almost twenty-two years ago, the gates of purgatory were opened to allow some dick and bitch to walk out. But they weren’t the only ones or the only things to escape. All I know is what I’ve heard in the rings. For over two decades, shit has been forming, being born, and the fey world is changing rapidly. And it’s coming in heavy doses. The night the gates opened, fertility was unleashed like a nasty virus, and our horny world procreated like mad. My sister and I were among many that were conceived that night. And my demon father left my human mother as soon as his pants were zipped without knowing what he created.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit. How did we not know this?

  “I thought only spirits were released,” I whisper while turning my wide eyes toward Gage.

  His jaw is tense, but he looks down at me with defeated eyes.

  “That hole was where everything the fey world wanted the forbidden to be banished to. But I never really thought something like this was possible. If half breeds are being born with humans—”