“The sooner you leave, Kel y,” Torque said drily, “the sooner he’l join you.”
She turned, realizing they weren’t alone in his suite after al . For a moment, she looked irritated; then her gaze swept over Torque, warming with interest.
The resemblance between him and Torque was so slight as to be almost nonexistent. Like his twin, Shadoe, Torque had taken after their mother in his facial features. He was shorter than Syre by half a foot, lean in the waist and hips but thick with muscle in the thighs, arms, and chest. His brutal y short hair was spiked in opposing directions, the thick Asian locks dyed a shocking green at the tips. It was a style that suited both his sloe eyes and his sharp-edged lifestyle. Torque managed a chain of clubs that offered haven to fledgling minions while also catering to the hungers of elder vampires.
Licking her lips, Kel y offered, “Why don’t you join us, too?”
Torque’s face stayed hard, his heart too freshly shattered by the loss of his mate, Nikki, to even think about sex. “Sorry. Sharing pu**y with Syre is a bit too incestuous for my tastes.”
“Incestuous?” She frowned and glanced at Syre, who appeared to be about ten years older than Torque’s mid-twenties appearance. “No way are you related.”
Syre caught her gaze and murmured, “Go.”
The compulsion settled into her mind and she nodded, exiting the room with a dreamy smile.
“They never believe me,” Torque said, coming deeper into the room and dropping into a black leather wingback.
“How are you?”
“You keep asking me that.”
“You keep being evasive.” He knew his son’s pain, had experienced it himself when he’d lost his mate so very, very long ago. And Torque was a naphil, one of the nephalim children he and the other Fal en had created with their mortal mates before their fal . The nephalim were halflings, part angel and part mortal. Unlike the Fal en or minions, they had souls. They felt joy and pain more deeply; Syre’s lingering grief was a shadow of what his beloved son felt.
“I’m terrible,” Torque said bluntly. “The Alpha told Vashti the truth: there was anticoagulant in the blood we found at the site of Nikki’s abduction, which makes it possible he was set up to take the blame. I’m back at square one looking for whoever took her from me.”
“We’l find them,” Syre promised, vengeance hot and fierce in his veins. It was the overriding emotion in his life of late, as his careful y constructed world crumbled around him.
“Don’t count on it. The cabal in Anaheim has been slaughtered. Every single member.”
Syre hissed out his breath. “An angel somewhere is covering his or her tracks. Whose side are they are on? They steal Lindsay from Adrian and deliver her into my hands, then vanquish the vampires who saw to her delivery.”
“Who the f**k knows?” Torque’s booted foot rapped out a frustrated staccato on the hardwood floor. “Even if it is an angel, there’s no guarantee it was a Sentinel. It could be a winged class of demon who took her from Angels’ Point, for al we know.”
“Who else would have access to stored lycan blood but a Sentinel?” Adrian’s cryogenic storage facilities were wel guarded by Sentinels. Not even the lycans themselves had access to their own samples.
“You’re assuming there’s only one individual responsible for both Nikki and Lindsay’s abductions.”
“Occam’s Razor,” Syre murmured, his mind shifting through the known facts.
“Fuck Occam. I’d like to shove his razor up his ass.”
Brows lifting, he refocused on his son. “Use your anger to strengthen your focus.”
“None of us have our head in the game, Dad. We’re al reeling.” Torque took a deep breath. “But the reason I interrupted your afternoon snack is Vash. I just got off the phone with Salem, and he’s concerned about the Alpha.”
“So am I.” He would never forget the sight of Vash pinned to a tree by a bristling, infuriated lycan—a breed she had just cause to revile.
“He f**ked her last night.”
A long moment passed as Syre’s brain struggled to process the impossible. “Be careful how you speak of her.”
“How else am I supposed to say it?” Leaning forward, Torque set his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands. “I know how she feels about lycans, and this one is under suspicion for Nikki’s kidnapping.”
“But we seem to have discovered that he’s not responsible.”
“Let’s not forget the lycan she tortured for information. What are the chances the Alpha doesn’t know about that or that she was hunting him when she did it? You ever heard of a lycan not avenging the unprovoked death of a packmate?”
“You think he forced her? Or extorted her cooperation in some way? Is that what Salem said?” Syre’s voice was low and furious. The thought twisted through his mind, rousing a murderous ferocity.