DAMIEN’S guitar case was right where he’d left it, leaning against the wall near the lift doors. Sionn grabbed the handle and hoisted it up, intending to put it someplace he wouldn’t forget it, when he caught a strong scent in the air. It was curiously metallic and with a faint offal overtone, a familiar smell that made his belly roil.
“Those cleaners were supposed to be—” He took a single step to round the corner, then froze in place, shocked at the dead man sitting in one of his dining room chairs.
He didn’t know the dead man, although his slack, waxen features looked vaguely familiar. What drew Sionn’s eyes was the blue-haired woman zip-tied to a chair next to him. Unlike the man, her limbs were attached, and a healthy flush churned pink into her cheeks. Her eyes were large and wild, and a gag made out of rags kept her mouth secured. Wiggling furiously, she flung her head to Sionn’s right, repeating the action over and over until the chair creaked beneath her shifting weight.
“Leigh!” Sionn felt something hit the guitar case, and he turned, catching sight of a blond man with his arm raised and his hand around a Taser. The device’s two leading lines were strung out, its connectors lying helplessly on the floor as the device discharged its shock into its endcaps.
The asshole… it was the only name Sionn could think to call the man… was bigger than he’d imagined. For some reason, Sionn’s mind had constructed a thinner man, more along the lines of Damien’s lithe body, but the bright-haired villain in their own personal melodrama was built more like a chunk of hewn granite.
A very ugly chunk of granite. Solid and something that would pack a wallop if used on someone’s skull.
“Jesu,” Sionn swore, holding the case up to block the Taser coming at his head. It was easily batted aside, and the man growled, advancing on Sionn with a hitching gait. “Miki boy, you’ve got my respect.”
He didn’t need to wonder if the blond was the same man who’d killed Damie’s mother or attacked Miki. The beating Sinjun’d given the man was still evident on his face. Mottled bruises turned his hatchet-sharp cheeks alarming colors, and one eye was still violently bloodshot, its socket probably blown out or chipped. The swelling turned his attacker’s already harsh face to a grotesque mockery of flesh, more gargoyle than human.
The lumbering stumble he made toward Sionn didn’t help dispel that image, especially when he lifted his arm and Sionn spotted the wicked kitchen knife clenched like a talon in his right hand.
Light caught on the steel blade’s sharp edge, running a line of silver along its length as it descended. Armed only with Damie’s heavy case, Sionn twisted his arms about, trying to bat the knife aside. Its tip caught his shirt, tearing down the length of his chest, and he felt a stinging kiss as the edge sliced into his skin. Grappling Sionn’s arm, the blond shifted on the balls of his feet, trying to get a clear shot at Sionn’s body, but his lack of grace ate at his balance, throwing him off-kilter. His greater weight pushed Sionn back, and they fell, sliding across the recently polished floor.
The guitar case skittered over the wood, skating in slow arcs until it came to rest against the wall across from the elevator’s doors. The blond’s knife flew into the air, and Sionn lost sight of it under the blur of the other man’s arms and grasping hands. Kicking out at the man’s legs, he tried to stand up, but his foot caught on something wet, and Sionn went down again, his left knee slamming into the floor. He tasted blood in his mouth, and Sionn sucked at the bite he’d made in his own lip. The floor was dotted with more blood, and he briefly wondered how deep a cut he’d gotten on his shoulder, when he saw another flash of metal coming out of the shadows above him.
“Shite.” It was time to take a page out of Miki’s book. If it worked for the singer, it would have to work for him. Sionn caught one of the heavy dining room chairs with his outstretched hand and heaved it up above his head, just in time to block the blond’s advance.
The man had either found the formerly airborne knife or had another at the ready, because the blade punctured the chair’s seat with a good four inches of deadly steel spurting out from the upholstery and stopping a hairsbreadth from Sionn’s nose.
Twisting the chair aside, Sionn caught the man’s arm with the seat back, pulling the knife out of his grasp. Using the chair’s girth to block the man’s next attack, Sionn struggled to get to his feet, nearly falling again when his sneaker hit a patch of blood on the floor.