Page 4 of Griffin Undone
My breath choked off in my throat. Hazel eyes. The mysteries of humanity stared out of those eyes, swathed in a cocoon of softness that dared me to wrap myself up inside it.
Fuck. No wonder the Anigma leader was watching her like she was a rare steak dinner. That gaze was dangerous. I’d given up softness a long time ago—it only got you killed. You or the people around you.
And Maddox loved delivering the final blow.
I told myself to look away, screamed it in the deepest recesses of my mind, but still her gaze held me captive. One short moment stretched into eternity—
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
The words whispered through my mind on an all too familiar path. Maddox. Narrowing my eyes, I met the gaze of my enemy head-on across the dim room.“You’re a thousand years old. Could you get any more clichéd with a hello like that?”
Maddox’s laugh rolled like used motor oil through my mind.“Considering it’s been five hundred years since the last time you laid eyes on me, I’d think you’d be happy with us both being alive. Hello, brother.”
Every muscle in my body tensed almost to breaking.“I’m not your brother.”
I hadn’t noticed the song ending, but at that very moment, the woman stood from her place behind the piano. I turned my head, gaze tracking her movement across the room as I forced myself to breathe away the anger surging in my chest.
“Beautiful, isn’t she? Do you want her, Arik? She’d make a tasty snack. Too bad I plan to rip her throat out after I drink my fill.”
“I see your MO hasn’t changed.”
Maddox’s smile was all teeth as he tracked the woman as closely as I did. When she approached his table, Maddox said something too soft for even my animal to pick up.
The woman startled. I couldn’t see her face in that moment, turned as it was toward my enemy, but her body language screamed unease. She wasn’t working with Maddox, then. A twinge of pity surprised me. Whatever Maddox wanted with her, it wasn’t good.
“I dunno, Maddox. I don’t think she’s that into you.”
A flash of white teeth appeared in his sun-dark face, though those amber eyes remained fixed on the woman.“All the better.”
The woman shook her head and continued through the room, her movements hasty, lacking the grace her body had held at the piano. I watched, helpless to pull my focus away. That alone shouted a warning in my head—dangerous for me, even more dangerous for her. Especially with Maddox here. I knew better than to signal interest of any kind where that fucker could see. Maddox had taken advantage of my weaknesses plenty in the past nine hundred years. His hard-on for me was the only weakness I’d found in him, and I had every intention of exploiting it.
Of course, maybe there was another way. I could use the attraction surging inside me to my advantage. The woman could be the bait I needed to reel Maddox in. What was one human compared to taking out my mortal enemy?
“You’re wondering what it is about her, aren’t you? You know there’s something, even if you can’t put a finger on it,”Maddox said in my mind.
“I’m wondering something, that’s for sure.”
Maddox chuckled.“Keep wondering, brother.”He gazed hungrily at the woman’s retreating figure.“She’s special, Arik. So special.”
I kept my smile inside.“How?”
I caught the shake of Maddox’s shaggy head.“That’s not how this game works. Or has it been so long you don’t remember?”
“I remember.”Every detail. Every human I’d dared to get close to who’d died, just for knowing me. My chest echoed with remembered rage and pain, but my words were casual in my mind, my gaze secure on the female as if nothing else mattered.
“I thought so.”Smug satisfaction dripped from his words.
A few yards behind me, three Anigma soldiers stalked into the room, taking the same route I had. They formed a wall of muscle blocking off my exit. I met the biggest one’s gaze as anticipation surged in my blood. Apparently it was time for a game of a different kind.
I strode into the crowd. When the goon squad followed, herding me toward the front door, my griffin reared its head. I passed the end of the bar where the woman now stood, absorbing the hit of vanilla in my nose, then pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped onto the street. Frigid winter air slapped me in the face as the Anigma soldiers who’d remained outside walked into the light to meet me.
I didn’t bother to hide my grin. “Evening, boys.”
ChapterTwo
Kat
Normally nothing registered while I was lost in the music. The experience was a bit like drowning—my entire focus, every hint of awareness within me was submerged beneath the flow of sweet sound and the power of the vibrations traveling from my fingers to my chest to my vocal cords and back again. For a short little while every night, I wasn’t alone. I was part of something bigger—and far more beautiful—than myself.
