Damnable Grace (Hades Hangmen 5)

“Yeah,” I said and, as I watched her face, I realized she did the fucking same to me. “You give me peace too.” By her huge smile, you’d think I’d just told her I was the answer to all her prayers. Fuck, I was starting to wonder if she would become the answer to mine.

Phebe traced the lines of my tattoos, then fucking blew me apart when she said, “What if this is simply the dark before the sun?”

“What?”

“What if we are being held in midnight, AK? Both of us locked in the dark of our pasts. Together. And maybe we must endure the darkness for a while.”

I swallowed, eyes fixed on hers.

“But then, one day will come the sunrise. The darkness will end, and the sunlight will pour in. Sunrise, AK. Just imagine.” She smiled and nearly broke my fucking heart. “We can chase the sunrise together. We can be the sunrise . . . together.”

“Yeah,” I said, unable to get the word ‘sunrise’ from my head. I wanted that. I wanted the fucking sunrise. I wanted the sunrise with Red.

“AK?” She pushed my hair behind my ear. “Can we stay here longer?”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing we had another week we could kill.

“Good.”

So I made love to her again before we fell asleep.

And not a single nightmare came calling.

*****

I woke, alone, blinking in the dark of the evening. Still feeling raw from last night, from actually sharing my fucked-up past with someone, I walked out of the bedroom. The cupboard had been packed away and closed—but without the lock. The spilled food had been cleaned up. But it was the center wall that had me losing my fucking breath.

Two pictures.

Two pictures hung on the wall, held up by small nails.

Zane and Devin in one, and Tina, Dev, Zane and me in the other. I didn’t hear her step beside me, but her hand came around my waist from behind, and she pressed a kiss to my bare shoulder blade. “They deserve to be shown,” she said softly, then moved to the counter. She took something in her hands and brought it to me. I tried to see what it was, but she was on her tiptoes and threading something over my head before I could. It smelled clean, whatever it was. And when I felt the familiar feel of metal against my skin, I knew.

Devin’s dog tags.

My heart beat too fast, and I didn’t dare look down. “They boasted your brother’s name. They fell out of the cupboard when I was putting everything back.” She paused. “I do not think that happened by chance. I think it meant that you were meant to have them, wear them, proudly.” I couldn’t speak, but almost fell apart when she said, “You were not to blame for what happened. You must begin to forgive yourself, or how else will you move on?”

“And you?”

She smiled weakly. “I will endeavor to accept this too. I replay the memories of each time I saw her in my mind. There are not enough. I should have more, but I am beginning to understand that that was robbed from me. And . . .” She took a deep breath. “And not my doing.”

“I’m fucking proud of you.”

Her eyes fell. “Thank you.” Looking up through her long lashes, she said, “I am proud of you too.” And fuck, I didn’t expect the blow that compliment dealt.

Phebe walked over to the picture of Zane and Devin. “He looks like you and your brother.” She smiled. “More like you.”

“Yeah,” I said roughly, still unused to talking about them all like this. “That’s what Dev and Tina used to say. A mini-me.”

“I wonder what he looks like now,” she mused, then moved back to the kitchen.

I walked outside and started a fire in the fire pit. I sat down in the reclining chair and tipped my head to the sky. Looking at the stars with Devin’s dog tags around my neck, I wondered what Zane’s life had been like. I wondered if he loved Claire and Tom like parents. I wondered if he remembered much of his mom and dad . . . I wondered if he remembered me. I wondered if he liked bikes, like me and his dad always did. My stomach sank . . . I wondered if he hated Dev for what he did. I wondered if hated me.

“AK?” Phebe came outside, carrying something in her arms. Her face was bright and excited as she laid it on the ground. “What is this?”

I leaned forward to see Dev’s old vinyl player. “It plays music,” I said, remembering how Styx and Ky had said the cult bitches didn’t know shit about technology.

“It does?” she said, and her face lit up like Christmas. I couldn’t help but smirk. Her hand ran over the record player and she sighed. “When we used to go out and recruit, when we fished the men, we always had one purpose. To seduce them. But I had a secret.”

My eyebrow rose in question.

“I loved to dance.” She shrugged. “The brothers that took us eventually let me do it, as they said it made the men want me more. But I did not do it for them. When the music played, I lost all my worries. I lost . . . myself . . .” She laughed and shook her head. “I am a silly woman.”

I got up from my seat and went back into the lodge. I found an extension cord and brought it to the player. Phebe watched me curiously as I switched it on and it crackled to life. I moved the pin and couldn’t help but huff out a laugh when a familiar song burst through the speakers.

Phebe gasped when the music filled the air around us. “What is it?”

I made my way back to my seat, rubbing the back of my neck. “Bowie. ‘Heroes.’” I paused. “Dev’s favorite song. He used to play this song on repeat.” So I had put it on repeat too.

Phebe closed her eyes and swayed to the beat. Her white off-the-shoulder dress swung around her legs. Her long red hair hung in loose waves, brushing against her freckled skin as she moved.

She smiled and got to her feet. Completely lost in her own world, she lifted her arms in the air and her body swayed to the beat. Her hips moved to the rhythm of the song. . . and I couldn’t fucking look away.

I lay back on the reclining seat, keeping my eyes fixed on her as she let Bowie’s words dictate her movements. And I saw it. I saw why man after man would be sucked in by her. The smile on her lips widened as she danced, her pale skin looking bright white against the firelight. And then she opened her eyes. She opened those fucking perfect blue eyes and they landed straight on me.

She took hold of the hem of her knee-length dress and swayed the material in her hands as she came toward me. And fuck, but she seduced me. Bitch was dancing for me, and I knew this was just her. No tricks, no training, this was her feeling the beat and doing what she fucking wanted.

Hottest thing I’d ever seen in my life.

The track ended, then came back to life. She laughed when she realized it was on repeat, completely giving herself over to what she loved. Not thinking about her kid, or Lilah’s face. About Meister or the fucked-up hell she’d come from.

Her gaze locked on mine as she danced in my direction. She lifted her leg and straddled my lap. Her arms looped around my neck, and she tipped her head back, exposing her long pale neck. Her shoulders kept the beat, and her hips ground against me. I hardened in an instant. She felt it, I could tell, because when her eyes lowered, they were leaden. Reaching down, I pulled my cock from my jeans and lifted up her hips. I placed my tip at her pussy and guided her back down. Phebe’s moans were drowned by the music. But she kept moving to the beat, my hands running all over her body. I watched her as she danced, as she took me.

She danced and she danced until she came, taking me over the edge with her. Her head fell forward on my shoulder, and she laughed. I tipped my head back, catching my breath. “I like this song,” Phebe said breathlessly.

I nodded and smirked. “I always did. Like it even more now.”

She giggled. “I like these lyrics. The talk of being heroes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” She smiled and laid her head on my shoulder. Her head kept time to the beat as Bowie sang about heroes seven more times. “Phebe?” She lifted her head. Her eyes were tired, but they were so fucking alive. “You’re movin

g in with me when we get back. You ain’t going back to Li’s. You belong with me.”

Red eyebrows rose in shock, but then a fucking melting smile came on her lips. “I belong with you,” she said and lay back on me, wrapping her arms around my waist.

Making love, she’d called our fucking. I thought about that, running over the words in my head.

And fuck, bitch was right.

She’d hooked me in, I’d taken the bait, but unlike the other unlucky bastards, she was never leaving me . . . because I’d hooked her in too.

For good.

Chapter Seventeen

Phebe

One week later . . .

“Sapphira?” My feet ran over the hard ground, propelled by the racing of my heart. The man pulled her into a big building. I ran, breath stolen as I followed them inside.

I choked on the smell. Then saw the man touching her leg as he pinned her down on a bed and pushed potion into her arm. Sapphira’s head fell to the side, and her brown eyes stared lifelessly at me. Her big brown eyes, with that notable freckle to the side of the left.

“Sapphira!” I ran forward and took her hand. All I felt was bones and coldness. I pushed it against my cheek, trying to wake her from her stupor, but her eyes just stared.