Page 1 of Savage Blood (Den of Shadows #6)

Chapter

One

My heart pounded, and chills raked over my spine as a ghost stared back, grimy stone and iron bars surrounding us. The steady drip of water, or maybe another prisoner’s blood, interrupted the silence.

Had I lost my mind, or was I really looking at High Lord Ruin Bacchus?

“Don’t be afraid, beautiful.” He reached through the bars, and his fingertips brushed my cheek as the chains rattled around his wrist. “I’m not a frightening specter here to harm you. I want to help you.”

Ruin’s words penetrated the fog clouding my brain, and I jerked away from his touch as my last memories of him tumbled forward.

“Did you want to help me when you bound me on that table and let Nadia perform a spell to remove the Infernal Sol?”

His hand drew back into his cell and wrapped around the bars again. Lanterns hanging from the limestone walls in the corridor painted him with flickering light and shadows. The angles of his face had sharpened, and dark circles bruised beneath his haunted eyes.

When was the last time Ruin ate more than a few scraps of food?

“You wanted the amulet out, didn’t you?” he asked.

“And who were you helping when you abducted all those shifters, held them captive, and slowly killed them as you stole their souls?”

“My kind, of course.” The high demon shook his head, navy hair falling across his sharp cheekbone. “The responsibility of looking after them fell on me. What would you have me do?”

I rolled onto my feet and stood, glaring at the crouching former high demon lord of Savannah. “Harming innocent shifters is not the route you should’ve taken. And what about all those demons you tested your formula on?”

Ruin shrugged and sat back on his haunches, revealing healing cuts and bruises on his pale, tattooed, bare chest. More signs of torture covered his arms. “They knew the risks.”

“Did Warin?”

He flinched when I mentioned Fane’s brother. “Maybe I should have been more careful with him.”

Waves of fury rushed through my bloodstream like molten lava. “If you had, my friends wouldn’t have died. That sweet, innocent little girl?—”

I choked back the rest of the sentence as my throat convulsed, unshed tears blurring the monochromatic gray surroundings.

Crying wouldn’t get me anywhere. Neither would arguing with Ruin.

He dragged his hand through his navy hair, his gaze a little clearer than it had been when he first emerged from the shadows of his cell.

“I never meant to hurt him.” His shoulders dropped, and his forehead rested on the bars. “Or you, Tate.”

“But you did hurt us and a lot of other people.” I studied the high demon while his violent death in the lab played through my mind. “How are you alive? You literally evaporated right in front of me.”

Wrath was right to suspect that his brother hadn’t met his maker. Perhaps being his twin allowed Wrath to sense Ruin’s essence still out there, alive and well.

Maybe not well, exactly. But alive.

“I don’t know why I’m still breathing air.” His nose crinkled. “As foul as it is.”

The stench of damp rot, death, and despair perfumed the atmosphere in the dungeons just like it had when Karn ruled the demon city of Vlehull.

Walking the perimeter of the cell, searching for weak points, I scoffed. “Bullshit. You expect me to believe you didn’t plan that?”

Ruin sat on the floor, his palms pressing into the dirty stone as he leaned back. “One minute I was gripping the Infernal Sol inside of you. The next, blinding agony encased me, and then I woke up in an Underworld forest.”

My boots scuffed the stones as I halted and angled toward him from the opposite side of my cell. “You just magically transported to the Underworld without a portal?”

“I don’t know.” A shaky sigh left him as he stared out into the dim corridor. “My memory is fractured, and I think I lost time. It’s possible I was somewhere else before the forest.”

I prayed it was the latter. If the Infernal Sol could carry creatures to different realms, it was a hundred times more powerful than any of us thought. And Barric would do even worse things than he already had .

“How did you get involved with The Collective?” I asked, kicking at a bar, finding not even one microscopic ounce of give to it. “Why do they have you?”

“I was traveling toward Razinhelm when I had the strangest urge to go south.” Ruin curled the chain attached to his left arm around one hand and gripped it so tightly that his knuckles turned white as bones bleached in a desert sun.

Like with shifters, The Collective must have used the Infernal Sol’s magic to lure Ruin in.

“And these motherfuckers came out of nowhere, chasing me.” A growl rattled his throat. “Me, the fucking high lord of Savannah.”

Arctic air blew down my spine, freezing my muscles as memories of a vision crashed over me. A male had been running through an eerie forest, catching himself on the ground as he fell. Those tattooed hands had belonged to Ruin. I’d witnessed The Collective hunting him down.

A manic laugh burst out of him, and some of the haze returned to his electric blue eyes. “Hiding in a cave like a scared bunny, the wolves and bears got me. But they didn’t want to eat me. They have bigger plans. Apocalyptic plans.”

Ice slid through my veins, and I wasn’t sure if it was the familiar crazy vibe suddenly coming off Ruin or his words that spooked me.

What exactly did he mean by apocalyptic plans ?

“It’s like looking into a mirror, isn’t it?” Ruin rolled smoothly to his feet and stood, the chain on his wrists hanging down near the ones on his ankles. “Of course, you’re still the fairest of them all, Tate.”

I abandoned my useless search for weak points in the cell and slowly made my way back toward the bars separating us. “ You barely came in contact with the Infernal Sol, and it totally mind-fucked you.”

Ruin clenched his jaw as he shook his entire body, as if trying to shed the effects. “If it’s capable of doing this to me, think about how it’s affecting all of them.” He ticked his head toward the ceiling, indicating The Collective roaming upstairs.

“Barric certainly isn’t all there.” He never really was, though. It had all been an act. “What do they want with you?”

“Besides torturing me?” He motioned to the marks mottling his chest. “The Infernal Sol whispers in Barric’s ear, instructing him on how to perform all their little demonic rituals.

It must have told him, as the former leader of the Nosterium, my power would be very useful.

The amulet probably led him right to me. ”

I toyed with one of the power-suppressing cuffs on my wrists.

Yep. Still firmly secured.

Malbraxis manacles had shoved my inner wolf deep inside, and I wasn’t even sure I could bring out my talons, especially since a cuff was locked around each wrist. One usually did the trick for most nightworlders, but Barric took extra precautions after my previous attempt to escape when we entered the Underworld.

“So they’ve been using you to amplify the rituals when they sacrifice bitten shifters.” My fingers absentmindedly worked out a knot in my long raspberry-colored strands. “What’s their endgame? I doubt they’re doing all this just to kill bitten shifters one at a time.”

“I have no idea. They’re pretty good at keeping their mouths shut around me.” The edges of his lips quirked into a sinful smile. “Well, I’ve been working on one. ”

My brow arched. “You’re trying to seduce one of them into betraying the others for you? Good luck.”

He tsked. “Oh, Ms. Teague, have you forgotten how irresistible I am?”

As he slowly licked his lips and those eyes darkened into a hypnotic shade of midnight blue, images of us kissing penetrated my mind. Ruin was a master of seduction, and his brand of charm was as intoxicating as it was addicting.

Heat crawled up my throat and into my face as the high demon stalked toward me, his disheveled state and the chains dragging behind him only making the vision even more appealing.

For shit’s sake, I was seriously demented.

My neck tattoo tingled as if reminding me I had a mate, who wasn’t the demon currently trying to tempt me into his deadly orbit again.

An ache swelled in my center, and my heart clenched as I replayed my last moments with Fane. His expression when he realized Barric had me nearly shattered me into a million pieces. And those words…

Had Fane really—finally—told me he loved me?

Please don’t tell me I imagined it.

I choked back the anguish and returned my focus to Ruin. “Your allure has lost all its appeal now that I know the real monster behind your pretty disguise.”

His smile didn’t fade at my harsh words, and he leaned against the bars, still looking like a fucking model. “But you’ve always had a thing for monsters, beautiful.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Just stop already. I need to concentrate so I can contact Fane. He’s probably going out of his mind right now.”

“I certainly would be if I lost you. ”

My lips thinned. “He didn’t lose me. This is just a temporary separation that we will quickly rectify.”

At least I hoped we would.

“Of course.” Ruin winked. “Fane won’t let anyone keep you from him for long. I would know, wouldn’t I?”

My eyelids closed, and I leaned against the cold, rough-hewn wall, trying not to remember the torture I endured at the hands of Lord Karn the last time I was in this dungeon. Instead, I pictured Fane with startling clarity.

Those mismatched irises seared into me as that wicked smile turned my stomach upside down. My fingers felt his silken strands of midnight hair between them as his soft lips brushed over my throat.

Tingles radiated from my neck tattoo all the way down the ones on my arm and to the delicate one inking my hand. Fane’s leather, fire, and cinnamon scent filled my nostrils as the memory of his calloused hands running down my back materialized.

Unbearable heat exploded through my body, and I hunched over as a scream burst from my mouth.

What the ever-loving fuck!