Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

I’ve said before I’m a bleeding heart. No matter how much I told myself Jamaal had deserved what I’d done to him, I couldn’t help feeling awful about it. Which is why I called Anderson while I was barreling down the street, trying to keep my speed to something that wouldn’t inspire the cops to pull me over. If the way my own wound had healed after the car accident was any indication, Jamaal would be in pain and without an eye for at least a couple of hours, and I didn’t want to leave him alone in that parking lot. Aside from any pity I might feel for his pain, I also didn’t want any innocent bystanders to stumble on him. I didn’t imagine having his eye taken out had improved his mental health.

Anderson answered on the first ring. “Nikki! Where are you?”

I blinked in surprise at the alarm in his voice. “On the road,” I said. “Alexis—”

“Has your sister. I know. I just got off the phone with Blake.”

Anger overwhelmed my fear, turning everything red. “Where the fuck was he?” I yelled. “He was supposed to be protecting her.” I couldn’t restrain a sob, and I had to blink away the tears that obscured my vision. I couldn’t afford tears, not now.

“Explanations later,” Anderson said curtly. “Do you know where he’s taken her?”

I blurted out the address. If one of Anderson’s people was closer than I was, then maybe they could get there in time to help Steph.

“And where are you ?” he asked.

“Still in Chevy Chase, but going as fast as I can.”

There was a hesitation on the other end of the line, as though Anderson was surprised by my answer. But then, if he’d already talked to Blake, he knew when Steph was taken, and he had to wonder why I wasn’t already halfway to the rendezvous.

“Jamaal delayed me,” I said, no longer caring if that made me a tattletale. “You might want to send someone to the country club to pick him up. He’s not in very good shape at the moment.”

“I’ll call you back,” Anderson said, then hung up abruptly.

I frowned at the phone. Why had he hung up on me like that? Even in those few words, I’d been able to hear the rage in his voice, but it was Jamaal he was angry at, not me. Right?

I closed the phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat. It didn’t matter who Anderson was angry at or why he’d hung up. He was at the mansion, too far away to help. I’d deal with the fallout from my fight with Jamaal later.

The phone rang a couple of times as I sped through the streets of the city, cursing every red light I couldn’t afford to run for fear of police intervention. I ignored it, because at the speed I was driving, it was safer to keep all my attention on the road. I wouldn’t do Steph much more good if I wrecked the car than if I got stopped by the cops.

The minutes ticked away, and though I tried not to, I couldn’t help checking the clock on the dashboard every time I could spare the attention. I let out a sob when Alexis’s deadline came and went, although I’d known from the moment I’d run into Jamaal that I wouldn’t make it in time. I prayed Alexis would hold off for just a little while, give me a little grace period, since he knew just how unreasonable his deadline had been.

I turned the final corner a good ten minutes past the deadline. The street was quiet and secluded—which, of course, suited Alexis’s purpose. There weren’t any legal parking spaces available, but I wasn’t about to sweat legalities at this point.

As I pulled into a “space” blocking a narrow alley, the door to the house across the street—the one where Alexis had instructed me to meet him—flew open. I blinked in surprise when Alexis charged out at a dead run, vaulting the ornamental railing that lined the stoop and taking off down the street like the hounds of hell were after him.

Maybe I’d watched too many movies, but my immediate thought was that he’d planted a bomb in the house and was running to avoid the explosion. I slammed the car into park and decided I didn’t care why Alexis was running. I only cared about Steph.

The wounds on the bottoms of my feet had been superficial enough that they had already healed, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d been raw and bleeding. I still would have leapt out of the car and dashed up the steps. Alexis had left the door open when he fled, so I burst right in, not pausing for even a moment to consider the possibility of ambush.

“Steph!” I screamed, desperate to hear her voice, to know that she was alive and okay.

“In here!” answered a voice that most definitely was not Steph’s.

Dread making me shiver, I followed the sound of Blake’s voice.

I found them on the floor in a room toward the back. The house was up for sale and completely empty, but I suspected the room was meant to be an office, based on the desk-and-shelf combo built in to the wall.

Blake was kneeling on the floor, leaning protectively over Steph, her head on his lap. Her elegantly coiffed hair was a bedraggled mess and draped her face like a veil. She was naked, though Blake was doing his best to tuck her torn dress around her body to restore her modesty. Her shoulders were shaking with silent sobs.

I stopped in the doorway, clapping my hand over my mouth to stifle my cry. She’s alive , I told myself over and over, though the nudity and the tears reminded me of the difference between alive and well .

“Oh, Steph,” I whispered, my heart breaking.

Blake pulled her gently into his arms, rocking her as he cradled her head against his chest. His own eyes when he looked at me were rimmed with red, the evidence of his sincere distress giving me another shock. He did a double-take when he caught sight of me. I’m sure I looked like I’d been dragged behind a pickup truck on a gravel road, and I felt drafts in places I shouldn’t feel drafts while fully clothed, but I didn’t give a damn about my appearance.

“I’m going to kill him,” I growled, not sure if I meant Alexis or Jamaal at the moment. Maybe both.

I remembered seeing Alexis fleeing the scene, and my anger rose another notch. “You let Alexis get away. And where the hell were you, anyway? You were supposed to keep her safe!”

He flinched at the virulence of my tone, but rebounded quickly. “Somebody spilled a whole glass of red wine on me,” he said. “I went to the men’s room to clean up. She was right outside …” His voice trailed off and he gathered Steph even closer. “He locked me in, and he took her,” he said. “I wasn’t delayed for long, but I had to hurry after him. I couldn’t stop to look for you, didn’t have time.”

The expression in his eyes hardened. “As for why I let the bastard get away, would you really rather I left Steph alone and chased after him?”

I let out a harsh breath, wishing I could hit rewind on my life. “No. Of course not.”

I forced myself farther into the room, though seeing Steph’s pain was almost unbearable. Blake stroked her hair away from her face, and the hollow ache inside me went from bad to worse. I staggered and almost fell.

He’d beaten her. Badly. Both of her eyes were blackened, and her lip was split and swollen. A ring of bruises circled her neck, where Alexis must have choked her.

All at once, it was too much. The beating I had taken. The horror of putting out Jamaal’s eye. The constant pump of adrenaline through my system as I ran my losing race against time. And the awful, sickening revelation of what that sadistic bastard had done to my sister.

The room spun and bucked around me, and my brain shut down. My legs crumpled and I fell to my knees on the carpeted floor. I didn’t quite pass out, but it was a near thing.

“Nikki,” Steph rasped.