Beyond Possession (Beyond #5.5) (14 page)

She barely noticed. All she saw was Catalina.

Her sister was tied to a chair in the center of the room, illuminated by a half dozen of Tatiana's most expensive candles. The room was cloying with the scent of them—jasmine and rose and lavender, with the soft light turning the scene into a cruel mockery of seduction.

Tears stained Catalina's face. Blood smeared her mouth. She looked dazed, wounded, as if she couldn't understand how her sweet dream had twisted into a nightmare—until her gaze locked with Tatiana's.

Shame. Terror. Both of them enraged her, but Tatiana shoved it down. She was so, so good at hiding it by now, she could do it one more time.

"I've got the Stone bitch," the one holding her said, swinging his flashlight around to shine in her eyes. She squeezed them shut as fast as she could, but it was too late. All she could see was the bright afterimage.

Wallace made a pleased noise that was barely audible over the sound of the fallen man's wailing. "Excellent. Not that she does me much good now. Shit's blowing up, isn't it?"

Another pained yelp came from the back room, followed by another slap. Six came stumbling through the door, hitting the floor before rolling back to her knees.

One of the men charged after her, his gun drawn and already swinging toward her head. "The bitch damn near bit my fucking finger off," he roared. "And O'Kane's whore smashed Locke's balls. We should put them down."

Catalina whimpered. "Wallace..."

He ignored her. "Locke got careless." He picked up a bottle of massage oil from the nearest shelf and studied the label. "So did you."

Six bared her teeth. "Get careless again. I'll bite off more pieces."

The man took a hasty step back, leaving Wallace mostly isolated. If he hadn't been standing so close to Catalina, Tatiana would already be on him, guns be damned.

If.

She curled her fingers into fists and watched him. "You could still make a run for it. You haven't touched an O'Kane yet. Dallas can take Locke apart while you're getting out of the sectors."

"Christ, you're stupid." His face squinched up in disgust as he flipped open the cap on the bottle. "O'Kane knows how this works. My men don't move without my orders. And pretty little Lexie's bleeding. You do the math."

"It doesn't look good," Lex agreed blandly. "You're practically a dead man already."

Catalina whimpered again, and Tatiana shook off the hand holding her to take a step forward. "It's going to be okay, honey. I promise."

Wallace squeezed the bottle, and oil splashed on the floor just in front of her feet. "Careful, big sister."

Oil and open flames. Her nightmare surged, a thousand times worse, because now Catalina was a part of it. "Fucking hell, Wallace. Let her go. All she ever did was care about you."

"Isn't that what they say about the road to hell?" He upended the bottle and watched it dribble slowly onto the floor. "Paved with good intentions, or some shit?"

Tatiana glanced at Lex, but the woman gave the tiniest shake of her head before inclining it toward Wallace, and Tatiana could almost hear the words.
Keep him distracted.

The floor was slick. She had to step to the side to avoid it, but it drew Wallace's gaze with her. "So what is this? Spite?"

He sighed. "It's logical progression, dumbass. Catalina wasn't useful, and you refused to play ball. That leaves
force
."

The man standing in a room with Bren Donnelly's cage-fighting girlfriend and Dallas's bloodthirsty queen thought
she
was an idiot. It was almost laughable. "Do you really think you're walking out of here?"

"Mmm." He laid his free hand on top of Catalina's head. She recoiled, and he pulled her up straight by her hair. "One way or another, this ends tonight."

She jerked away again, tears rolling out of her eyes, and he splashed the oil across her face and down the front of her dress.

Fuck Lex and her signals. The world narrowed down to her need to get the bastard's hands off her sister.

To get
her
hands around
his
throat.

She was shifting her weight to move when Lex yelled, "Now!" The room exploded into action, Lex and Six lunging off the floor and straight at two of the men. A wickedly sharp knife zipped out of Emma's hand, past Tatiana, and lodged in Wallace's shoulder.

With a scream, he dropped the bottle and yanked the knife free of his flesh. "Shoot them," he ordered, then reached for the candle nearest him.

Tatiana didn't think. She charged him, crushing her hand down onto the flame to put it out before the candle slipped from his fingers. Her weight carried them back two steps, but Wallace was still half again her size.

And her knife was still in her fucking boot.

He slung her back around, smashing her into the display of massage oil. Plastic bottles scattered, but she grabbed one from the middle shelf and popped open the top with her thumb.

Wallace grinned down at her, lifting the knife, and she whipped the bottle around, spraying chili-oil-infused massage oil right in his fucking eyes.

He screamed again, clawing at his eyes, just as two shots rang out. She wanted desperately to look, to make sure the women fighting for her were still okay—

Wallace swiped at his eyes, and Tatiana drew her leg up, kneeing him hard in the balls and snatching her knife free at the same time. He howled and thrashed at her, catching her across the arm with a lucky swing.

She ignored it and slashed the blade across his throat.

He continued to swing, flailing wildly. He hit the table laden with lit candles, and Tatiana had a lifetime to watch one wobble on the edge before tipping to the oil-splattered floor.

Flames licked into life immediately, catching the scattered drops of oil and spreading across the floor as Wallace went down. Smoke curled up, heavy and thick, blanketing the room in what seemed like a heartbeat.

Catalina screamed.

By the time they got near Tatiana's shop, Zan knew there was something wrong. He could feel it in his gut, a sick knot that made him feel hot and cold at the same time. Smoke drifted through the streets. That wasn't unusual—shit burned during blackouts, both from the necessity of heat and light
and
vandalism—but the cloyingly sweet scent in the air was.

It smelled like burning perfume.

"Dallas—" The rest of his words turned to ash in his throat as they rounded the last corner. The windows of the shop gleamed with an angry red glow, and the smoke was escaping through the cracks around the windows and doors.

Fuck. This was going to kill Tatiana.

The front door slammed outward, spilling smoke into the night, and Emma staggered out, dragging a bleeding, coughing Six with her. Bren rushed toward them, and Zan blinked.

Six and Emma were supposed to be with Lex, and Lex was supposed to be with—

He ran for the door, heedless of the choking smoke billowing out of the opening doorway. "Tatiana!"

"Zan!" Tatiana's voice was raspy and frantic, and he heard the scrape of wood before he saw her and Lex struggling to pull a chair toward the door—a chair with her sobbing sister tied to it.

One of the chair legs was already smoldering. He snatched his knife from his pocket and began to cut through the ropes. Catalina thrashed, slicing her arm on his blade, but it was better than burning alive in a fucking chair.

Once she was free, he hauled her over his shoulder and stumbled out the door, his eyes stinging from the smoke and the heat.

By the time he set her down, Dallas and Lex had Tatiana out the door. She sagged between them, smudged and bloody, but when she caught sight of Catalina, she tore away from them and staggered the two steps to throw her arms around her sister.

Scowling, Dallas ghosted his thumb over Lex's split slip. "Is Six okay?"

"Nothing some med-gel won't fix." Bren's voice sounded like sandpaper.

"Cruz, round up Stuart and as many others as you can. We have to contain this, or we'll lose the whole damn marketplace."

"On it." Cruz took off.

Dallas touched Lex's cheek. "You okay to get them to Doc?"

"Only because Wallace is already dead." Soot and blood streaked her face, but she didn't look weak or scared. She looked pissed the fuck off. "Hurry, before the fire spreads."

"You got it, love." He kissed her once, hard, before breaking away.

Next to Zan, Tatiana swayed. "Zan? Help me with her?"

He barely heard her over Catalina's hysterical sobs. She'd been hurt but, for now, his gaze skipped over Tatiana, snagging on her arm. "You're bleeding."

"I know." She stared past him, her face stricken in the glow of the fire slowly consuming her shop. "It's okay. I'm okay."

"No, you're not." Pain radiated out from her in tangible waves that twisted his gut, but her physical well-being trumped everything else, even the spread of the fire. He stripped off his shirt, tore it down the middle, and hastily dressed Catalina's wound before returning his attention to Tatiana. "Here. Let me."

With her sister still clutched in one arm, Tatiana held out the other. He wrapped the cotton gingerly around her arm and secured it by tying the fraying ends.

There was something loaded about the moment, a fragility even more dire than the blaze raging behind him. But there was no
time
for conversation or promises, even if either of them was in any condition for it.

So Zan brushed her tangled hair back from her face and stared into her eyes, willing her to understand. "Take care of your sister. I'll fight the fire."

She turned her face into his hand, her lips grazing his palm. "Thank you," she whispered, and that was all she had time for. Emma and Lex eased Catalina from her arms, and Six, sporting her own bandage, got an arm around Tatiana's shoulders.

They disappeared through the thick smoke, and Bren shoved a dented metal bucket into his hands.

Under Dallas's direction, they lined up—people from the market closest to the old well in the center of the square, and O'Kane men on the front lines. The heat from the growing fire singed Zan's face and arms, and his throat grew scratchy and sore from inhaling the hot smoke.

It was hard work, maybe futile, but they battled on, desperate to stop the spread of the flames, if nothing else. And, as the hours passed, it became clear that was all they could do. Tatiana's shop had been gutted, only the barest skeleton of the structure still standing.

Finally, even that came crashing down. The building groaned as if in pain, and the men scattered as the roof collapsed. A wooden beam that had been reduced to nothing more than an oversized, smoldering ember flew out, knocking Hawk to the ground.

He swore and rolled away, but when he tried to stagger to his feet, his knees buckled. Finn lunged to grab him, dragging him farther from the wreckage. The beam had caught him across the arm and shoulder, burning through his shirt and blistering his skin. Hawk only gritted his teeth and hissed through the pain.

"Watch the surrounding buildings," Dallas shouted.

They had cleared one alley of anything flammable and coated the wooden walls of the closest building with wet, sticky mud. The building on the other side was brick, less likely to catch fire, but it had received the same treatment, just in case.

But the fire was already burning itself out. Cruz and Jasper continued to lead the fight against the dying blaze as two women helped Hawk to his feet. Zan backed away, flexing his aching hands, and looked for Dallas.

He was standing with Stuart, and he waved Zan over. "Six came back to report a little while ago. Wallace and most of his men were dead when the fire started, but all of them were still inside."

"Good," Zan rasped.

"Stuart's going to set up a crafter meeting in a few days." Dallas met Zan's eyes. "I think I'll drop in on this one personally. Make sure everyone knows where the O'Kanes stand when it comes to the Stone girls."

Right now, the more important question was where the Stone girls stood on the O'Kanes. The last thing Tatiana had wanted was to be part of something bigger than her shop, and now...

Dallas's offer of security and protection was honest, sincere—and that didn't matter. Tatiana's shop lay in scorched ruins, and the only thing she had left was the good grace of the O'Kanes. And it wasn't enough—no, it was worse than
not enough
. It was the glittering cage she had always feared.

She would be taken care of. Safe, comfortable, fed—and Zan would lose her.

If he hadn't already.

It took Lex less than twenty-four hours to win Catalina's unswerving loyalty, which was the final answer to the question Tatiana had asked herself the first night she'd laid hands on Zan.

He hadn't been a trap. Not one set by Lex, in any case. If Sector Four's queen had truly set her sights on conquering Tatiana, Tatiana wouldn't have had a chance.

Catalina didn't, and it stung a little. Watching the baby sister she'd struggled to protect melt under Lex's rough, hard-edged protectiveness
hurt
, like having her nose rubbed in what a terrible job she'd done. It was one more slice on a bleeding heart, and just as jagged as the rest of them.