“Sounds like someone I know.”

“I feel.”

“With your dick, maybe.”

“Hands and tongue, too.”

“So, why didn’t you kill her?”

“I found her standing outside Temple Bar, watching street mimes. Eyes brilliant, up on her tiptoes, at the back of the crowd, one hand shoved in a pocket, the other cramming a cheeseburger in her mouth. Bouncing from foot to foot trying to burn off some of that excess energy she always has. There were guts from a recent Unseelie kill in her hair. Never had friends, went to school, celebrated a birthday or Christmas, none of those rites of passage by which humans mark their time and so highly prize.”

I blink. Ryodan is talking about human experiences like he understands them? Like he’s actually given one ounce of thought to a moment of it?

“Alone. Living on the streets. Dirty. Torn jeans. Two black eyes, bruises everywhere. Not one person in the world gave a bloody damn she was alive except to use her. And she knew it.”

“That’s why you didn’t kill her? Because she was young and dirty and a beat-up, unwanted kid? World’s fucking full of ’em.”

“It was what she did next.”

What could make the implacable, imperious Ryodan change his mind? This was a man of steel who made rules and enforced them without question.

“What?”

His face changes, eyes distant on a memory, and he smiles faintly. I realize I might not know him at all. Perhaps no one does.

“She threw her head back and laughed. The kid fucking laughed, eyes shining. Like there was no greater adventure she could possibly be on. Like life was turning out to be the most exhilarating, fantastic roller-coaster ride she could ever have imagined. Fuck the pain. Fuck the misery. In the middle of the hopeless, brutal hell her short existence on this Earth had been, that girl laughed,” he finishes on a near whisper.

That was Dani. Nothing broke her. Ever. Not even if it meant splitting herself into pieces to deal with things, so she could laugh and want to go on living.

“You don’t snuff a life like that,” Ryodan says softly. “You honor it. You take measures to protect it, even from itself when necessary, and keep it alive.” The ghost of a smile vanishes and his face is once again a smooth, urbane mask. He clips, brisk and businesslike, “She was reckless, convinced of her own invincibility. She’s no longer reckless and far more powerful. We currently have two primary objectives: stop the cosmic anomalies that threaten to destroy this world, and get Dani back. Not necessarily in that order. I expect your full attention on those two matters. Nothing else. I’ve others addressing my secondary concerns.”

Ryodan stands up and walks around the desk, a signal even I can read for Lor to get up and leave. I’m surprised he’s letting him. Lor’s got hell to pay, and Ryodan is the devil that collects.

Taking his cue, Lor rises. “Sure, boss.” His brow furrows like he’s hunting for words. After a moment he adds, “Like I said earlier, I didn’t go looking for Jo.”

“But you plan to fuck her again.”

Lor rubs his jaw, sighs but doesn’t answer.

Ryodan changes into the beast faster than I believed possible. One instant he’s a man—the next his clothing is in tatters on the floor.

A nine-foot-tall, horned, black-skinned slathering monster with feral crimson eyes slams his fist through the wall of Lor’s chest and rips out his heart.

The beast holds the bloody thing up—God, it’s still beating!—narrows its eyes then licks it, forked black tongue unfurling with grace around the delicacy.

Then he looks at Lor, who’s jerking convulsively, gushing blood from a huge jagged-edged hole in his chest, framed by an explosion of bone fragments, taps him lightly on the shoulder and pushes him over.

Despite enormous fangs distorting his words, I have no problem understanding them.

“Never. Fucking. Lie. To. Me. Again.”

Lor crashes to the floor, dead.

The beast drops Lor’s heart on the floor where it lands with a wet splat, turns and swipes the wall panel with a prehensile, taloned claw, and stalks out.

I stand staring dumbly, then realize my chance to leave without risking exposure is leaving. As I race through the door after him he changes back into a man as quickly as he became the beast.

A naked man.

I close my eyes.

Well, most of the way.

29

“It’s who we are, doesn’t matter if we’ve gone too far”

MAC

We’re halfway down the hall and I’m hot on his heels, wondering how Ryodan manages to change so swiftly from beast to man, when it takes Barrons a full minute or two to complete the transformation. Then I move on to wondering exactly where Ryodan plans to go naked, thinking maybe I’m about to see the man’s private quarters, which I’m admittedly anticipating, when my hair suddenly shoots straight up in the air, blasted by a brisk wind.