She turned to look at him when he spoke her name, but her eyes remained wide and unfocused, as if she didn’t really see him. When she let out a thick, almost unrecognizable laugh and closed her eyes again, he started toward her.
Something was clearly wrong, and he had a really bad feeling he knew what it was. Earlier Thorne had said she was sleeping off her high. What he’d failed to say, but which seemed painfully obvious now, was that she’d been drugged.
He saw the foul vomit stains on the thick Oriental rug covering portions of the room and paused. “Oh, shit.”
No way the Lina he knew would willingly do this to herself. She just wouldn’t.
“Lina, wake up,” he whispered, but before he could get close enough to touch her, he heard the soft click of a door closing behind him.
His throat clenching, he whirled around, but instead of the dark fae he’d expected to see, it was Lina’s ex Thorne.
“She’s pretty out of it,” Thorne commented. “I doubt she even knows you’re here.”
“You asshole.” Worry and rage coalesced into a thick, bitter knot in the pit of Dagan’s stomach. He focused all his anger at Thorne, starting toward him with a growl, but the hubrin demon pushed away from the door and stepped inside the room.
“How’d you get in here?” Thorne asked as he sidestepped Dagan, honest curiosity coloring his voice. “Should have been impossible without him knowing.”
Before Dagan could respond, Thorne gave a nonchalant shrug. “Guess it doesn’t matter. Belpheg wants you alive, but I’ve decided I don’t like you, and I sure as hell don’t like the way you look at Lina. Now I have a reason to kill you.”
Without further warning, he lunged for Dagan, raising his right hand. It was only then that Dagan saw the syringe held tightly in his grip.
Shit. He could guess what was in that tube, and he wanted nothing to do with it. Twisting to the side, he barely managed to avoid the tip of the needle as Thorne shoved it toward his arm. He reached for Thorne with his right hand, catching hold of his neck. Using his hold for momentum, he slammed the demon to the floor.
Thorne went down, his arm buckling inward. The tip of the needle lodged in Thorne’s gut. Thorne looked down, blinking in surprise.
Wasting no further time, Dagan leaped on Thorne, straddling his thighs and depressing the contents of the syringe into Thorne’s stomach. Thorne grunted, and a shudder went through his body. From what Dagan had seen of past score users, he expected the hubrin demon to be racked with debilitating convulsions, but he’d failed to account for one key factor…
Apparently Thorne was or had at one point been a hard-core user.
The hubrin demon’s eyes rolled into the back of his head for no more than a fraction of a second before refocusing on him and filling with an unholy light. “Woo-hoo!” He gave Dagan a wide grin. “Feels so good. Almost forgot how fucking fan-tastic it is!”
When the veins in Thorne’s neck popped out and the demon shoved his palms into Dagan’s chest, effortlessly throwing him off, Dagan had just one thought.
Oh, shit.
He’d just inadvertently given the dick more fuel for their battle.
“I see you’re no stranger to score,” Dagan said conversationally as he pushed to his feet. Maybe he could use talk to distract him. Score users weren’t known for their laser-beam focus.
Thorne chuckled and leaped up, carelessly tugging the syringe from his flesh and tossing it to the side. “Nope. Lina and I could shoot it up with the best of ’em, back in the day. Bet she failed to mention that when you two were fucking.”
He didn’t rise to the bait, but instead angled to the side, mentally assessing the hubrin demon. He was taller and a bit wider, but Dagan had discounted that before because the demon didn’t seem to have any real fighting ability. However, that meant next to nothing when drugs were involved. He’d seen motivated score users do some pretty impossible shit.
As if proving his point, Thorne launched himself across the room, landing on Dagan like a spider. He went down like a bag of bricks, and the demon wasted no time in pummeling his face with his meaty fists, the drugs lending him strength and incredible speed. One particular blow caught Dagan square in the jaw, jerking his face to the side. He spit blood onto the Oriental rug. The dark fae’s household staff would have a hell of a time cleaning that up.
“You’re nothing.” Thorne let out a crazed laugh, his eyes glazing over. “Fucking worthless.”
The hubrin demon’s words caused an unexpected spark of memory to flare in Dagan’s brain.
Mammon’s fist caught him unexpectedly, knocking him to the ground. “You are nothing but a worthless brat. I don’t know why I even bothered to collect you.”