Free Scarlet Dusk by Megan J. Parker Page A

renewed—and refreshing—distance from Celine as they were led into a large, extravagant office.
    “I see the bastard still has a taste for the finer things, eh?” Zane mused, letting himself fall into one of the cloud-like leather chairs and quickly letting his arms fall across both of the arm rests so as to not offer any unspoken invitations to Celine to sit on one of them, Zane let his eyes drift around the room.
    The staff member, still shaking from Zane’s earlier stare-down, asked if they’d be needing anything else.
    Zane nodded, “Yea. I’d like you to tell Mister Ben to quit jerking off and roll his ass in here double-time.” He narrowed his eyes at the wide-eyed young vampire, “And if you change so much as one word of that request, I’m going to cut your balls off and feed them to my associate here.”
    The staff member bolted from the room before he had a chance to see Celine flinch at the suggestion.
    Zane chuckled, Mister Ben…
     

    “Zane, you sonuvabitch!” Ben, the club’s owner and one of Zane’s more trusted informants, gave the tires of his wheelchair a sharp push and, free to raise his hands in resignation, let himself roll into the room, “Not even in my club more than ten fucking minutes before you’re making my employees piss all over themselves. ‘Least you haven’t started in on my female staff members, though”—he let his eyes shift to Celine as he reclaimed control of the wheelchair and began maneuvering behind his desk—“it would appear you’d have no need to.” Smirking and settling in behind the polished mahogany desk, “I’m sorry, I haven’t had the honor; you are?”
    “She is with me on business, Benny,” Zane interjected before Celine could think to offer her name or her role in this visit, “ Clan business! You play along—give me the information I want—and I might even leave her here for a few hours to let you two get acquainted while I follow through with my investigation.”
    Celine’s eyes widened, “What? Zane, I—”
    Zane gave her an icy glare, silencing whatever was about to come.
    Ben took all of this in, an intrigued and entertained arch taking hold of his brow, and reached for a silver-plated letter opener on the corner of his desk before beginning to clean his already manicured nails with it. “Not that I’m not enjoying all of this, but you have come in at a rather busy hour, and I am a businessman who’s presently losing money with every passing second. Would you mind terribly if I insisted that you cut to the chase, big-league chew?”
    Zane straightened up and leaned forward, “One of our clan members was kidnapped.” Though he wasn’t aware of doing so, he realized that his left hand had worked its way into his coat pocket and he was beginning to rub his thumb across the banded length of blonde hair. Despite being aware of this nervous reflex, he didn’t stop himself from indulging; finding the effects somewhat therapeutic to his growing tension. “The attacker’s in a—” He shook his head, “The attacker’s an ykali, so I imagine he’d be hard to miss.”
    Ben chortled at that, “An ykali ? Yea, I’d imagine something like that would be hard to miss… if there’d been any around. Are you pulling my leg with this shit, Zane? You come into my club— my place of business!—and drag me away from my work so that you can tell me some fairytale sob story? Does this clan member even exist, or are you shitting me with that too?” He shifted the letter opener to scratch under his chin before pointing it towards Zane, “What’s this really about? And why are you toting this ginger around? Word on the street is you’re banging Vailean’s kid; some blonde spark-plug if I heard correctly.”
    Zane growled and leapt from the chair, bringing both of his fists down on the center of the desk. The polished mahogany surface split, caving in under its own weight and sending all of its contents to the floor.
    Ben watched the