He never got a chance to finish his sentence. I stepped deftly back from the side of the table. The motion unbalanced his already unsteady feet, allowing me to turn his considerable momentum against him. In one swift shift of my arm and shoulder, I condemned him to fall on the floor. He stared up at me, stunned.
“Enough!” The oldest beast had risen to his feet. His fists slammed down onto the tabletop. Silverware jumped. Another cup tipped. The club’s surrounding patrons had started to turn toward the commotion, curious and judgmental. Spittle flew from the corners of the elder’s mouth. “I don’t have to take this shit from you!” He pointed a finger at me. “And you can bet I’m never gonna forget that ugly mug.”
“Yes, you will forget,” I said. “By the time I’m done with you.”
The shifter’s massive, meaty face went purple with fury. Using both hands, he swept up the largest, heaviest glass he could reach and hurled it at me. I dodged and heard a shriek, followed by an explosive impact.
He let out a roaring battle cry, leaping with surprising agility over his group to get to me. I grabbed him first by his shirt, breathing in the potent stench of everything he’d drunk.
“I didn’t come here to start a fight,” I said. That was a lie. The fight was my sole objective. “But I can finish one.”
He bared his teeth. “This is about to be the worst night of your life, boy.” The others were pulling in on all sides, so tightly that I couldn’t see the rest of the club anymore. I welcomed the fury, the readiness to finish them. I lifted my opponent off his feet and thew him back. He staggered backward into the laden table, dropping to one knee.
The rest of his party fell on me. Punches, bites, kicks. I took it all, and the pain came and went just as fast. But I launched at them, striking them, one after the other, my hits cracking into their faces and chests. It sent them flinging backward. It all blurred into one great heap of chaos, and as messy as it grew, I started to understand why Seth loved fighting so much. The adrenaline was addictive.
I grabbed a vamp by the throat and hurled him into a bear shifter, both of them throw off their feet.
A fist came flying toward my face. I grabbed it midair and twisted the attached arm away. I threw a vicious knee to another attacker’s groin. It all would have been so much easier if I was allowed to kill them.
But no. Except for Seth’s mark, Orion typically liked to reserve lethality for himself. And he had made it extremely clear that the only choice we had was to follow his egotistical whims if we wanted to see our rewards.
“Gentlemen!” The word rang out across the room, reverberating almost like a musical note. It was too late to stop the right hook I had already aimed at a vampire’s face, or else I would have. The crack of my knuckles against his jaw echoed in the abrupt lull that followed Orion’s interjection. We all turned.
He stood amid the wreckage of the booth unruffled, looking as though he were floating above the torn vinyl and splintered glass in a long black coat. A fork stuck out of the seat at an angle; he pried it out and set it down. Then he looked at me. We nodded slightly at the same time. An implied passing of the baton.
Like Seth, I had done my part, messily or otherwise. Now Orion had control, just the way he wanted. I stepped back, smoothing the wrinkles out of the front of my shirt and running my fingers through my hair. No worse for the wear. All I’d lost was another night catering to Orion’s whims.
In the end, a small price to pay for the spoils he had promised.
Back in heaven, I had everything. The perfect life. Friends. Future. Job. Except, I made a terrible mistake that cost me everything and got me thrown out. Each time I thought back, I kept thinking about falling literally out of the sky.
The ferocious wind tearing at my hair and wings.
My heart carved, and it took me too long to accept I’d become a fallen angel. That I was alone.
The only world I’d known had dissolved around me and my choices rapidly narrowed. I didn’t have a clue how to even begin atoning for my past mistakes when I remained furious at how fast I was tossed aside.
So, I did the next best thing to survive…I had struck a deal with a vampire.
Chapter 3
Orion
“Gentlemen.” I repeated myself to make sure I had captured their attention. “Is this really necessary?” From the corner of my eye, I saw Logan do his usual disappearing act. Gone into the shadows, only to reappear at a moment’s notice. Sometimes I envied him for being able to shift between the mortal realm and his.
The sharp heat of the raging inferno he had stoked was focused on me, and only me. A lesser being might have crumbled beneath the pressure, been reduced to a quivering pile of ash.
But I had been burned countless times before.
“You…” The alpha shifter glared at me through the swollen mask of bruises decorating one side of his face. Parts of his beard had been torn out, one patch clear down to the skin. There was blood in the hair; I could smell it. For all his reserve, Logan had done a decent job. “I ought to have known you were creeping around here somewhere. They told me you were a coward.”
“Oh, did they?” I smiled, hiding the chill of rage that rocketed down my spine. “I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.”
“What the hell is going on here?” the head bouncer from the club bellowed. He was a mountain of a man who might have willingly wrestled a bear, shifter or otherwise. He grabbed two of the pack by their thickly muscled shoulders. “Actually, you know what? I don’t give a rat’s ass! You’re out, all of you!”
It was at this point that Logan materialized again to help herd the unruly group out the front door, including their Alpha. The rest of the club patrons who hadn’t already run out, stood their distance and watched us. I marched after them outside into the icy night.
I felt a little sorry for whoever ended up with the thankless task of cleaning up the mess at the club, but not sorry enough to regret a single moment. Collateral damage was a necessary, perhaps even an integral part of the way business was done in certain shadowy circles in Anchorage.
I would know. This place was my city. Mine, and no one else’s. I had worked hard to keep it as mine for a long time. And I would do everything to keep it that way, and out of the hands of these intruders from Seattle.
“What kind of bullshit do you think you’re pulling?” The alpha lumbered to his feet, drawing up to full height. He was taller by a significant margin, and clearly thought the difference signaled an advantage for him. He moved up into my space, deliberately casting the bulk of his shadow over the spot where I stood. “Anchorage is going to be under new management real soon. I’d pack my bags if I were you.” By the time the last word left his lips, less than two feet separated us on the snowy asphalt.
“I’ll paint the streets with grizzly blood before I let that happen.” It took every ounce of willpower I had not to clench my fists until my knuckles hurt. “Don’t ever forget who was here first.”
The alpha shrugged. He grinned again. The patches of skin showing through on his chin and jaw had slowly begun to shrink as new hair grew over. His teeth lengthened. Massive, cruel claws sprouted from the tips of his fingers. The seams of his shirt swelled near to bursting.