Touch If You Dare Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011 by Stephanie Rowe

  Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Jamie Warren

  Cover photography by Stephen Youll

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  FAX: (630) 961-2168

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For MIG, for showing me my path.

  Chapter 1

  Sometimes rescuing a bunch of almost-dead warriors from black magicked pit vipers was just the kind of thing a man needed to help him forget the fact that he could not, for the life of him, figure out how to knit.

  Jarvis Swain, the Guardian of Hate, ducked as the bright red snake launched itself at his throat, sprouting wings as it hit the air. He whipped his sword up just in time to de-fang it before it clamped its gums onto his jugular. “Since when do these suckers fly?”

  He ripped the scaly mutant off him and tossed it out the door of the Hotel of Love and Healing, the pit of doom and despair where injured warriors were taken to recover or die after Angelica, Death’s psychotic grandma, had tortured them until they were on the bleeding edge of death.

  After a hundred and fifty years of incarceration, Jarvis and three others had escaped from Angelica’s Den of Womanly Pursuits two weeks ago. They’d kicked Angelica’s crazy-bat-shit-ass, saved a girl, and made a deal with Angelica’s heir, Mari Hansen, to free the rest of warriors.

  Two weeks post-escape, and Mari was stonewalling (so much for thinking Angelica’s dethronement would make Mari become sane and reasonable) and the remaining warriors hadn’t been released. Jarvis and his team of fugitives had decided to start plucking out the good guys one by one. First stop was the Hotel of Love and Healing. Any poor bastards still in there needed help—and in a big way.

  Jarvis and his teammate Nigel Aquarian were rocking the sick bay rescue while their cronies, Blaine Underhill and Christian Slayer, played decoy with Mari and her assistants (no need to deal with a bunch of overly talented, lethally brainwashed, estrogen vessels of hate, if it could be avoided).

  “These vipers aren’t pure snake.” Nigel flexed his hands, and two dozen three-inch knives exploded from his fingertips, careening across the cavernous room. Twenty-two vipes dropped to the cement floor, graphite blades winking in the centers of their murderous little foreheads.

  Nigel might be an artist, but the man also had the aim of a Roman god. “Angelica cross-bred the snakes with ladybugs a few weeks before we bailed.” Nigel’s hands were charcoal black now, and ash was sloughing off his palms. “Bastard went right for my left nipple. Still healing from it.”

  “Angelica’s a she-bitch-from-hell, but I gotta tip my hat to her vision. I always felt ladybugs had more potential than anyone gives them credit for.” Jarvis thwacked another swarm of incoming vipers as he took inventory of the Hotel. Only six beds were still occupied, and every occupant was slow dancing so intimately with death that not one had even cracked an eyelid at their entrance. How many nights had he spent here, flipping off Death?

  He swore as he remembered Death sitting on his headboard, waiting for him to finally give up. Those deadly shadows looming over his bed, daring him to accept the peace and relief they offered. Reminding him that if he decided to revive this time, he’d be back in the Hotel again, dying again, fighting for his last breath, again, in another week. A day. An hour. A never-ending cycle of torture, torment, and hell.

  Jarvis saw the cleave marks in the first bed’s posts, ones he’d left his last time here, when the pain had been so intense he’d left raw strips in the wood, clawed by his own fingernails. His grip tightened on his sword, and a bead of sweat broke out on his brow. “Coming home can be a bitch,” he said quietly.

  Nigel inclined his head in silent acknowledgement. “What do you say we retrieve these poor bastards and get the fuck out?”

  Get the fuck out. Jarvis glanced toward the door. Yeah, still unlocked. They weren’t trapped this time. They were in control now. They could leave whenever they wanted. He forced his grip to loosen and shook out his arm. “Let’s torch the place on the way out.”

  Anything to wipe the nightmares from his soul. Nigel had his art. Blaine had his cross-stitching and his woman. Everyone on his team had something to cleanse the boils from their souls. But not Jarvis. The hell he carried inside him wasn’t about to be placated by a session with a pair of lavender knitting needles and turquoise angora. He had no artistic reprieve, and he’d never be soothed by the tender touch of another human being, let alone a woman.

  He could imagine it, though. He’d bet his ass it would feel like a fucking angel to have a female touch him the way he’d seen Trinity touch Blaine.

  But peace was not for him.

  He’d have to settle for torching everything that had ripped the marrow from his bones over the last one hundred and fifty years, in hopes that turning his aggression outward would keep the monster within from ripping him to shreds.

  “Yeah, let’s blow this place to hell,” Nigel agreed. “Eliminate all evidence that it ever existed.”

  “Sounds good to me—” Jarvis swore as a reptile shot out from behind a pile of chains and went for his crotch. “These snakes must be female.” He whacked it aside with his sword. “No male would fang a man’s balls with a neurotoxin. Necrosis of the testicles is just not done between guys.”

  Nigel thudded him on the shoulder. “I’d protect your boys with my life.”

  They’d all done exactly that a thousand times already. It was why they were all still alive. And intact. “Back at you, my man.”

  “As always.” Nigel took out another trio going for his own manly bits. “Plentiful little suckers, aren’t they?”

  “Breeding like rabbits. They have no idea what’s coming now that we can fight back.” Jarvis began to whip his sword over his head in a dizzyingly fast circle, channeling the dark energy of the room into his weapon. Adrenaline rushed through him at the realization that this really was different than it had been for the last two centuries.

  He wasn’t hog-tied and strung up by his balls, forced to take whatever hit came at him. He was in control now, and he was going to embrace eve
ry damn minute of it. He drew even more dark energy into the blade, turning himself from an ordinary combatant to one more lethal than any human being could comprehend. Stacking his sword with extra hate was kind of like the difference between sticking a match into a pile of newspapers or a stack of dynamite. Explosives were always an excellent choice when the lives of defenseless victims were at stake.

  His blade began to glow with that heinous purplish mutant color. He smiled.

  He casually nicked the wing of an incoming bug. It immediately exploded with enough force to take out ten more of its buddies and a chain-link chandelier. “Now that’s what I’m talking about—” Then he caught sight of the poor sod in the nearest bed and noticed a shock of white blond hair on the filthy pillowcase. Mother of hell. It was one of his favorite newbies. “Pascal,” he barked. “Get up. It’s time to bail.”

  The kid didn’t move, but a scaly beast dive-bombed the youth, fanged teeth going right for the pretty boy’s charming dimples. “Hey!” Jarvis lashed out with his sword and bisected a snake a split second before its teeth sank into Pascal’s face. “This kind of shit doesn’t happen anymore,” he snapped as he scooped the rookie up and threw him over his shoulder.

  “I’ll take him out,” he shouted at Nigel. Granted, the kid was a disrespectful pain in the ass with more guts than strategy, but the kid’s appreciation for life had helped keep Jarvis sane for the last fifty years. He sure as hell wasn’t going to leave him behind to get turned into dinner for Angelica’s pets. “You deal with cleanup.”

  “You got it.” Nigel’s palms began to smoke, and then dozens of micro-sharp knives exploded from his palms. They shot across the room, hitting his prey with unerring precision. “This kind of action is good for my muse.”

  Jarvis paused as Nigel engaged the enemy in a full-scale assault. His skin itched with the need to unleash some of the hate festering inside him. “Next time, I get ass-kicking duty.”

  Nigel grinned. “Stop whining, and go rescue the kid. You know you love the hero role. It’s your shtick.”

  “Shut up.” Yeah, he’d taken the hit when Angelica had intended to kidnap his brother a hundred and fifty years ago, but that was his job. Protect his brother. It wasn’t about the glory. Assigning him a hero complex was insulting as hell, and they all knew it. One of these days, he was going to behead the next one who said it.

  Pascal’s muscles began to twitch. Incoming torture-induced seizure? Jarvis lightly squeezed Pascal’s shoulder, trying to give him comfort. “Easy, kid. We’re almost out.” Jarvis turned toward the exit just as the door flew open.

  He whipped his sword into position, ready for murderous breasts and hostile mascara wands—

  A cosmetic dentist’s wet dream glided into the Hotel instead, and Jarvis relaxed at the sight of another male. As with all soulless bloodsuckers, the vampire was too thin to be taken seriously as a badass, and giving him a spray tan would be an act of mercy.

  What was a vamp doing inside the Den? The undead were too emotionally fragile to make good subjects for Angelica’s studies. They were going to be destroyed if they stayed. “Get out,” Jarvis warned, striding toward them, ready to shove them to safety if they didn’t respond. No more suffering. No more. No more. No more. “This is not the place for men. These women aren’t the ones you want to be using to satisfy the bloodlust thing.”

  The vampire held up a melodramatic hand with long, well-manicured fingernails and a way-too-stereotypical large black ring with a family crest of some sort on it. “I’m here for you, warrior.”

  “My soul’s already got a lien on it.” Pascal twitched again and let out a low moan of distress. Urgency tightened Jarvis’s muscles, and he gripped the kid more securely. Pascal needed freedom, and he needed it now. “Call me on my cell next week. Kinda busy right now.”

  Twelve more tuxedo-wearing vampires appeared behind the first one. A baker’s dozen of the undead. Arms were folded, shoulders were back, and chins were raised loftily in that “I am so much better than you” disdainful look they must practice diligently as soon as they were converted.

  Jarvis raised his sword and let it burn with his poison. “Get out of my way.” He kept his voice low. A promise of no mercy—

  The lead vampire’s eyes flashed red, and his fangs elongated. “My Lord, you are not going anywhere.” Behind him, his cronies went caveman: fangs as long as tusks, skin like stale marshmallows, eyes going cherry-bomb. Battle stance for hemoglobin junkies.

  Under normal circumstances, thirteen parasites with big canines and bad fashion sense were no match for two magically enhanced ex-torture victims with serious attitude problems. Odds were with the good guys. But throw in a nearly dead kid fading fast on Jarvis’s shoulder and his buddy occupied with a bunch of rabid pit vipers?

  Well, shit.

  ***

  Not that there’s ever a really good moment for a woman to find out she doesn’t have the cojones necessary to be a murderer, but now had to be one of the top ten most inconvenient times for Reina Fleming to make that discovery.

  Seriously. It was D-day. Her sister was going to die in forty-eight hours. There was no time to discover the save-your-sister-plan Reina had been working on for the last eight years was fundamentally flawed. It had taken almost a decade to orchestrate this moment. Was it really possible that she was going to blow it?

  No. It wasn’t.

  It was simply pre-harvesting jitters. This was going to go perfectly.

  Reina took a calming breath as the werewolf whose soul she was supposed to harvest trotted down the ramp of the chicken house. His toenails clicked on the splintery wood, and each little tippety-tap ripped another hole in the hope dying inside her—

  No. You’re going to be fine, Reina. Don’t panic.

  “So, there he is. The big baddie you’re going to drop kick into the Afterlife to get your promotion to Reaper.” Trinity Harpswell, Reina’s dearest friend and world famous black widow killer, held up her iPhone, comparing the picture on it to the four-legged chicken snatcher in front of them. “Same beady eyes, torn right ear, and a star-shaped wand burn on his left hip. Maxwell Smart has sent more fairy godmothers to the Afterlife than the entire Disney franchise. He deserves to do some late night bonding with Satan. Go to it, girlfriend.”

  But Reina couldn’t get her feet to move. She just stared with increasing dismay at Fur Face as he sat down and began licking the feathers from his front paw.

  Trinity shoved her doomsday black hair out of her face and shot Reina a frown. “What’s wrong?”

  “He looks like Roger.” The single-use disposable sickle Death had given her to cleave Max’s unwilling soul from his murderous little body dropped from her fingers and thudded to the crusty dirt of the chicken playground. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  Trinity retrieved the sickle from the chasm it had cleaved in the ground. “Roger? Who’s Roger?”

  “A werewolf puppy I rescued when I was six. He slept on my bed for a year until he healed enough to revert back to his human form.” Roger was the only living creature she had ever managed to save. That one success had been the nugget of hope she’d clung to as she buried loved one after loved one. Seven sisters and her mother. All dead. Everyone she loved except her youngest sister, Natalie. And if Reina didn’t harvest this pooch’s soul, Natalie would soon be dead, too. Oh, God. “I can’t fail her—”

  “You’re not going to.” Trinity slapped the handle of the sickle into Reina’s hand. “As Death’s most promising assistant, you’ve carried more than a million souls to their final destination, and you hand out popcorn whenever someone dies. This is your thing!”

  “I know, but it’s different to rip an unwilling soul from a living body. Not the same thing as guiding a soul to its final destination after the person has already died.” Failure to cleave meant Death wouldn’t promote her to Reaper. No promotion meant she wouldn’t have the power to switch her sister’s soul to a living body when hers finally quit in forty-eight hours
. “Dammit! It feels like murder!”

  “It’s not murder. You’re simply fulfilling a basic tenet of our existence, which involves guiding souls to the Afterlife.” Trinity set her hands on Reina’s shoulders and squeezed. “You’re just panicking because this is your last chance to save your only remaining family member from the horrific death that has claimed everyone you love.”

  Her last chance. “Oh, God.” She took a breath, trying to control the desperation building inside her. “You really think I can do this?”

  “Think deedub payback, and that should fire you up.”

  Reina’s fist tightened around the embossed leather handle of the sickle. “I hate deedubs.” The demonic leprechauns of hostile origin had stolen everything from her when they’d attacked her family that awful Valentine’s Day so many years ago. She’d done everything to protect her loved ones from the gradual onset of those awful deedub symptoms, but each family member had eventually succumbed.

  And now it was Natalie’s turn. Her sweet, loving, baby sister had no one to help her except Reina, who had failed to save anyone else in their family. Reina fisted the sickle, but her fingers felt numb. Like she couldn’t work them. “Come on,” she whispered. “You can do this—”

  “Hey!” Trinity grabbed her shoulders and yanked her close. “It you don’t do this, your sister will die a really brutal, horrible death. Every last person you have ever loved will be dead, all because you weren’t able to kill one deserving serial-killing monster. Can you live with that? Can you? Because I think it’ll eat at your gut, gnaw at your soul, chip away at your heart until you’re a broken shell of a woman who can do nothing but mourn for a chance to do it again, an opportunity you will never, ever get.”

  “Oh, God. That’s horrible.” Reina felt like someone had chained a cement block to her heart and tossed it in the English Channel where her sister, Jeanine, had drowned so happily on her sixth lap. The blackness of the night sky became too oppressive, the dripping of the rusted faucet by the henhouse seemed to mock her loneliness, and her mother’s bracelet felt cold, heavy, and dead on her wrist. “You’re really good at that.”