“Go ahead and try,” Rune said. “Only place you’re going tonight is your grave.”
“Don’t be so sure about that.”
The thug’s fingers twitched. It was all the warning he gave.
Then the gun was in his hand and exploding a fired shot. Rune dodged the bullet’s path, realizing as the round grazed his rib cage that the aim hadn’t been to kill. Not yet, anyway. No doubt this son of a bitch was saving that honor for someone else.
Blood seeped warm and wet at his side as he rolled to the floor, then came up on the balls of his feet. On a bellow, Rune launched himself airborne at the vampire. The gun fired again—a shot squeezed off in panic this time.
The bullet went wild, missing him completely.
Rune body-slammed him, driving his assailant across the bar and into the large mirror behind it. The gun slipped out of the thug’s fingers and clattered across the floor. Glassware and bottles of liquor crashed down. Broken shelving crumbled all around them.
The other male snarled and made a flailing slash at Rune with the glove’s spikes. Rune grabbed the fist as it came driving toward him. Titanium teeth cut into his fingers as he immobilized the strike and wrenched the thug’s wrist back with a savage thrust of muscle and fury.
Bones popped as they broke, tendons grinding as they severed. The male howled in agony as his hand flopped uselessly in the wrong direction on his arm.
And then, Rune’s rage really snapped its leash.
Straddling the vampire on the concrete floor, he pounded his fists into the other male’s face. Blood spurted. Teeth and fangs crunched under Rune’s relentless, punishing blows.
He didn’t stop hitting the bastard—could not stop—even after the dead man’s face was a pulpy mash of pulverized bone and destroyed cartilage.
Rune’s breath sawed out of his lungs, wheezing through his enormous fangs. His eyes burned red with rage. His veins hammered with adrenaline and anger . . . and the dawning realization of what he’d done.
He turned his gaze away from the carnage to look at his torn, gore-soaked shirt and pants. His hands were gashed and bruised. The graze in his side licked at him like an open flame. Even with his Breed metabolism, it would take hours, possibly days, for the evidence of this altercation to fully heal.
Fuck.
Carys . . .
He couldn’t go to the Chase Darkhaven now. Not like this.
And the thought of calling Carys to tell her what had just occurred—and all of the ramifications that would follow when he’d have to explain why—would be the certain end of anything they had together.
He dropped his head back and let out a roar of anger and frustration.
As his bellow echoed in the cavernous arena, footsteps sounded behind him. Multiple pairs of feet crunched in the glass and fallen debris as they neared him.
Rune tossed a searing glance over his shoulder, then launched onto his feet, braced for battle.
Half a dozen armed Breed males stood there, all bearing black scarab tattoos.
The big male in front peeled his lips back in a cold smile. “What are you going to do now, boyo? Think you can kill all of us?”
~ ~ ~
He was late.
At five minutes past the hour, Carys had told herself not to worry; Rune would arrive at any moment. Five minutes late wasn’t like him at all, but it wasn’t cause for worry either.
He would be there. He knew what this night meant to her.
He wouldn’t let her down.
At least, that’s what she’d been telling herself as she sat beside her mother on the sofa in the Darkhaven’s living room, trying not to notice the increasingly impatient expression on her father’s face as his long fingers tapped idly on the arms of his chair across the room.
Now, it was eight minutes after nine and still no sign of Rune.