Desire Unchained

Desire Unchained by Larissa Ione





Prologue





Three Years Ago …





“He’s gone. Let’s call it.”

Shade ignored his partner and crunched another series of compressions into the shapeshifter’s chest. Beneath his palms, cracked ribs grated with each downward stroke.

One–one thousand, crunch. Two–one thousand, crunch. Shade’s own heart was pounding, pumping enough blood per minute to fuel Underworld General’s lava-thermal generator, but the patient’s heart didn’t so much as spark. Three–one thousand, crunch. Shade’s thigh muscles screamed with pain, cramping after Gods knew how long kneeling in blood next to the patient. Four–one thousand, crunch. A tingle spread down the dermoire that encased his arm from his right shoulder to his hand as he used his specialized gift to force the patient’s heart to beat.

“Shade. Stop.” Skulk, Shade’s half-sister and paramedic partner, put a dainty gray hand on his arm. “We did all we could.”

Knowing Skulk was right didn’t make giving up any easier, and Shade didn’t have enough breath left in his lungs to curse about it. Panting, he ceased CPR and sat back on his heels on the filth-strewn floor of the abandoned brewery. His arms trembled from exertion, and his stethoscope hung heavily around his neck.

He ground his teeth as he looked into the glassy eyes of his deceased patient. The vic was just a kid. Fourteen, maybe. He’d probably only recently learned how to shift out of his human form to whatever species his family belonged to. The telltale birthmark of a true shifter, a red, star-shaped mole behind the left ear, had barely formed.

“This is bullshit,” Shade muttered, standing. Nearby, the two False Angels who had called in the report to the hospital stood, their sweet, virginal appearances belied by the sinister glint in their eyes.

“You didn’t see who dropped him here?” he asked.

One of the angel impostors shook her head, her golden hair swishing against her white gown. “He was just lying there. Peaceful.”

“He looked peaceful with half his organs missing?”

The other False Angel smiled. “Touchy, touchy.” She trailed her fingers suggestively along the low-cut neckline of the gown no true angel would wear. “How about we help you relax, incubus?”

“Yes,” the other one purred. “I’ve always loved a man in uniform.”

The first False Angel nodded. “Veragoth does so enjoy haunting police stations.”

“Mmm …” The female called Veragoth twirled a strand of hair around a finger and swept her hungry gaze from Shade’s face to his feet. “But I’m starting to think I should be hanging out with paramedics.”

Yeah, his black, BDU-style medic uniform made all the females hot even when he wasn’t casting off the fuck-me pheromones that came standard issue for Seminus demons. But for once, Shade didn’t feel like getting naked with two beautiful females. He was exhausted, angry, and damned sick of the newest rash of demon mutilations. Worse, no one gave a rat’s ass that someone was chopping up demons for their parts and selling them on the underworld black market. It had been going on since time began, but few cared.

Shade did.

He was the asshole who got called to scenes where he rarely made a difference in whether or not the vic died. Most were too far gone. Or dead.

Skulk holstered her radio and dug through the jump bag for a fresh pair of gloves. “Since shifters don’t disintegrate aboveground, Doc E wants the body. Let’s scoop it up. We’re done here.”

We’re done here. Too many calls ended like that lately.

Cursing, Shade helped Skulk load the kid’s body onto a stretcher and wheel it to the rig. The black ambulance, one of two servicing Underworld General Hospital, was protected by a spell that rendered it unnoticeable to humans, but here, the cloak wasn’t needed. They were in a quiet part of New York City, a formerly industrialized area that had been abandoned during Prohibition and was only now starting to build up again as a residential neighborhood.

“Let’s roll,” Shade said, and slammed shut the rig’s rear doors.

It was Skulk’s turn to drive, so Shade climbed into the passenger seat, popped a stick of gum into his mouth, and concentrated on filling out the run sheet.

Patient’s chief complaint? Deadness due to organ removal.

Patient’s response to treatment? Still fucking dead.

“Sonofabitch.” Shade pinged the pen at the dash. “This sucks—” He cut off, suddenly shaken by a rumble deep inside him, an earthquake in his very soul. Pain rolled up from the epicenter, spreading through his body until the tsunami of agony slammed him backward in his seat.