Bitten Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 3)

Zee suddenly appears in the room with black smoke spiraling around him like death on a leash. The devil himself would shudder in fear.

Gage drops the guy and jerks me away. Zee stalks toward the guy, whose eyes widen as his lips part in disbelief. He tries to dematerialize, but Zee grabs him ju

st like Gage did, and his dark, black eyes glisten with a deadly promise.

“Where is she?” Zee asks, but it doesn’t even sound like him.

It sounds unnatural, gravelly… fucking terrifying.

Gage holds his hand up when the others try to come in, and Thad pulls Kimber and Roslyn back as Roslyn shifts into human form again.

“I… I don’t know,” the guy stammers.

Zee’s dark smile could scare the dead into deeper graves.

A bloodcurdling scream sounds out, and red starts pouring from the guy’s eyes as Zee keeps him against the wall, doing who the hell knows what. Blood runs like tears down his face, and he sobs as Zee tilts his head to the right.

“Try again,” he says with an edge of danger like I’ve never heard.

The guy starts turning an angry shade of red, suffocating, and Zee smirks like he’s getting off on the pain he’s inflicting. It makes me hungry, wishing it was me, and Gage actually has to pull me back before I go to take over.

I swallow down the knot in my throat as the guy gasps, catching air.

“I don’t know,” he whimpers in a rush.

More screams pierce the room as blood starts oozing from his ears, and Zee leans in close, whispering something to the guy as one eye explodes. Karma retches, turning away, and Gage curses while pulling me farther back.

The screams are so pretty, so tempting…

“Where are they?” Zee asks again.

“They’re in an underground facility… two miles… north from here,” the guy says through his garbled, muffled strain. He rattles off exact coordinates that I can barely understand, and Gage starts to go to Zee. Zee snaps the guy’s neck, and he backs away as the guy falls to the ground.

“You shouldn’t have killed him,” Gage barks.

Zee turns his black eyes on Gage, and the dark user tightens his lips and steps away like he forgot Zee isn’t Zee right now.

“I’m going to kill every fucking one of them.”

He disappears from the room, and I barely manage to dematerialize fast enough to tail him. He lands in front of me, and he stalks over to a seemingly innocuous piece of ground, but I can feel the spell barrier from here.

He walks right through it like it’s not there, and he throws a hand out, using magic like he has all the control in the world. He peels back earth and metal to expose something beneath. I slam my fist into the barrier over and over, trying to break in, but it’s stronger than the one that surrounded the house.

Zee disappears into the hole, and I punch harder, trying to get to him before Slade does. Panic fuels me, and the barrier finally gives way. I stumble and drop into the opening without any grace or finesse, landing hard on my side.

I look up just as Zee cradles a lifeless, bloody Leah in his arms and roars louder as rain pummels its way into the opening. Blood is spilling from her neck, and her eyes are closed. But I can hear her slow, shallow heartbeat still working.

“We can save her, Zee,” I say cautiously, but those black eyes meet mine, and he growls at me.

Zee is gone right now, and the primal thing in his place is ready for a fight if I get too close. I could knock him on his ass… Possibly. I’m not sure at the moment. Or I could let him take her, even though I know what he’ll be compelled to do.

“Go,” I whisper, deciding I don’t want to lose it and leave the others with two psychos off a leash while Leah bleeds to death. “Go,” I repeat.

He growls at me again before disappearing from sight, and I blow out a breath just as Gage drops into the hole, landing on his feet as his eyes run over all the stains of blood left in the underground bunker.

“Fuck! You know what he’s going to do!” he yells at me, pointing an accusatory finger like I don’t already know what I just sentenced Zee to endure.

“It was that or me risk losing it by tapping into power to fight him that I can’t control. Do you think you could take him right now?” I snap, glaring at him.