Page 78 of Filthy Fae

“We’ll head up to Morte’s room. I’m assuming he’s in?” I asked as I carefully slipped my wallet into my back pocket.

“Yes, but you’ll need the key. He’s not supposed to open the door to his room until his challenge is over.” The man’s face flushed again, reddening even his neck this time. “I—he didn’t say that to me. It’s just what we’ve, you know, guessed, and—”

“He’s not in any trouble at this time,” Jane said. Her attention had already returned to her phone screen. Holding out her hand, she waggled her fingers. “We’ll need the key. We don’t want to jeopardize his next challenge. We just need to check in on him.”

Clearly, we had done enough to convince him because the clerk handed over a small square of plastic, nodded, and thanked us.

No one said a word as we headed across the brightly lit lobby to the bank of elevators. A family of four waited for the lifts, but after one look at our group, they grabbed their kids and rushed down the hall toward the stairwell.

The metal doors slid open, and we entered and turned to watch them close us in. Soft music played, leading into an announcement about the hotel’s seafood buffet. Guilt and anger rose in me like a tumultuous tide, higher and higher.

My fault.

My fault.

“Mack, what the hell is going on?” Darrel growled.

I couldn’t take it anymore. Something broke inside me, and I spun and punched the elevator wall. I had only lashed out a couple times in my life, and I had always held back my strength. Not this time. The explosion of sound from the impact echoed through the space, and when I pulled my hand away, there was a gaping hole in the metal where my fist had connected.

I would have to replace the hotel’s elevator, and the burst of violence made me feel no better. All I felt was misery. I had wanted to bring Scarlet into my life.

What a fool I was.

Chapter Thirty-One

Darrel

I’d seen Mack fight only once, the day we’d had a showdown with my brother. Otherwise, the man the man gave the impression that he was a pacifist compared to all of us hotheaded alphas. He always seemed to calm Scarlet and make her see reason when she was hellbent on sacrificing her own welfare for others. But that hole in the wall said that Mack may be a fun-loving, light-hearted dancer, but he was a fun-loving, light-hearted dancer who could probably kill a dragon with a single punch.

He pulled his fist to his chest and whispered an oath. “Damn it. This is my fault.”

His explosion of anger shocked me out of my simmering fury, and I found myself shaking my head. “Unless you coordinated this with your sister, Mack, this isn’t your fault.”

Everyone in the elevator except Mack gaped at me like I’d said something shocking. When I reviewed my words, they seemed logical, and it took me a second to realize why they were so stunned. I’d always despised the fae, and now I’d done a complete one-eighty.

Well, fuck.

The elevator doors slid open, and we all emptied out into a wide, cream-colored hallway. At room three hundred and forty-two, Jane stuck the key card into the receiver.

We opened the door into a wide space, clearly a suite with a sunken living room. Giant tripods stood along one wall, pointing into the center, their recording lights on. A sign reading “Quiet, Recording in Session” pointed toward the door.

The area seemed trapped in a hush. At the center of the floor were three concentric circles of what looked very much like salt granules. A large tome laid open to one side of the salt circle next to a bronze goblet filled to the brim with a liquid that smelled like blood.

A young man stepped into view in the doorway at one side of the room, looked over at us, and lifted a hand in a wave. He had an oval face and a small, upturned nose. His hair was the same silvery gray color as his sister’s, flowing over his bare shoulders. He wore tight leather pants that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The guy was probably only a few years younger than us, and although his stature was that of a full-grown man, something in his expression screamed that he was still a child.

Crossing to the goblet, he dipped his fingers into the blood before coming to stand before the cameras.

We all watched, frozen in shock as Morte began painting symbols in blood across his chest. “I’m preparing myself to complete the fourth champion challenge. These harmless protection symbols could be painted with any type of ink anywhere on the body, but I don’t like to mess around.” He gave the cameras a smoldering look. “I use blood on the biggest canvas I have available.”

Lifting my foot, I kicked the first tripod, sending it crashing into the next, and that one into the one after that, on until all of the cameras on that side of the room smashed to the floor.

For just one second, Morte stood blinking at me, his bloody fingers pressing into his own flesh. “Why would you do that?” he whispered. “The challenge.”

I crossed the room in two strides and wrapped my hand around the man’s throat. I didn’t squeeze, but it took every ounce of my restraint not to tighten my fingers. “Where did the demon take her?”

Morte grabbed at my fingers as terror filled his eyes. “Take who?”

“Scarlet,” I roared.