Burned - Moning Karen Marie (книги онлайн бесплатно серия .TXT) 📗

I consider the hidden panel. If I were him, I’d have a panel on this side of the desk, too. I reach beneath the drawer, groping for anomalies in the smooth wood.

There are none. I press gingerly, walking my fingers gently around on the bottom of the desk, down the legs, around the many carvings.

Got it!

A tiny notch in the center of an ornate scroll.

When the second panel slides out, I’m once again disappointed. No knife. Just rows and rows of square black buttons like those on a computer keyboard. None of them are labeled. Just smooth black buttons. I have no clue what they’re for.

I poise a finger above one of them, debating. Knowing Ryodan, I could inadvertently blow the whole club if I push the wrong one.

I sigh. Surely not. Surely he’d make it red if it was the destruct button, right?

Holding my breath, I poke the first one on the left.

Nothing happens.

I glance around the office quickly to see if some other hidden panel suddenly slid silently out. As far as I see, nothing has changed. I punch the one next to it.

Again nothing.

I punch four more in quick succession.

Not a damn thing. What the hell are these buttons for?

I blow out an exasperated breath, lean back in his chair, prop my feet on the desk, fold my arms behind my head and close my eyes, imagining I’m him, trying to fathom what he might want so close at hand.

I pretend I’m Ryodan, sitting in his office, where he watches the world on his monitors, where he receives reconnaissance, where he controls and nudges the fine details of his kingdom.

Still stymied, I open my eyes and stare around the room.

The monitors. Holy cow. There must be places in his club he likes to keep tabs on that he prefers no one else see.

I kick my boots off the desk and sit up straight. This time when I begin punching buttons, I keep a close eye on the screens on the wall directly in front of me.

Aha! Just as I thought, these control his private cameras! The ones that monitor places visitors don’t get to see.

The first one on the left makes the image of the main stairs speckle out on the seventh screen from the right and reveals their kitchens.

Oops, guess he knows I was regularly raiding them while I stayed here.

A white-haired man with burning eyes stands at the counter, eating … oh, no. I didn’t want to see that. I punch it off hastily.

The second button wipes out a shot of the kiddie subclub (apparently he liked to keep an eye on Jo) to reveal a dark, shadowy room, ornately paneled with a lovely transom ceiling. It’s empty.

I keep my eyes trained on the cameras at the ceiling in front of his desk. The third button causes the live feed of the Sinatra subclub to vanish, replacing it with an overhead shot of a state-of-the-art gym, paneled with mirrors.

Kasteo is stretched out on a weight bench, pumping iron, massive muscles rippling as he does deep, wide flies. He’s bare-chested and as heavily scarred as the others.

To his left, nearly lost in shadow, a woman lies, similarly supine, mimicking his movements with smaller dumbbells.

I gasp, and push slowly to my feet. I don’t believe my eyes. I hurry around the desk and stand directly beneath the monitor a few feet above my head. “Kat?” I exclaim softly. “Kat is working out with Kasteo? What the hell?” Is she here of her own choice? Did Kasteo abduct her? Did Ryodan lock her away with him? He’d pretended not to have any idea where the missing headmistress had gone!

I watch for a few moments then hurry back around the desk. I want to know everything. This is unbelievable.

I punch the next button. A shot of the balustrade at the entry vanishes and I see a long shadowy corridor. Lor is stalking down it, and I wonder where he’s going in such a hurry. I lose him and punch the next button. As I’d hoped, I’m able to follow him down the hallway. I punch three more buttons tracking him through what I realize must be the servers’ wing. When I punch the fifth, I gasp again as Lor reaches out, grabs Jo from behind and spins her around. I see their mouths moving, she’s angry, he’s pissed, too, but I can’t hear a word. I study the panel irritably, feeling cheated by my reality TV, trying to locate a volume button but no such luck. When I glance back up, Lor has Jo turned around, facing the wall, shoved against it. He’s holding both her hands in one of his, trapped against the cool glass surface.

I can see her profile. She’s not angry anymore. She’s turned on as hell.

With his other hand he undoes his belt, shoves her short skirt up, and before I can give them the privacy the moment demands, he’s up against her, pushing inside her.

Her back arches, head drops back, and the look on her face is—

“Just as I suspected, everybody is having sex but me,” I mutter irritably.

I punch the screen off and hurry to the next one.

And stare blankly at the screen for a long, pained moment.

“No,” I finally manage to say. “He would not come back here first. He would come to me.”

But he wouldn’t. And he didn’t.

Barrons is back.

Standing in a room I can’t place, a deep gash of a stone chamber. I think, Please tell me it’s not the sex club I’ve heard so many rumors about. Please tell me I’m enough.

Ryodan moves into view.

Where are they? What are they doing? Why didn’t Barrons come to me, tell me he was back?

I watch the screen, never taking my eyes from it. Minutes creep by and nothing changes. They don’t even appear to be talking. Just watching something.

I shake myself from my trance and punch the next button.

The Rhino-boy club disappears, revealing another dimly lit stone room.

A shadow moves in the darkness.

What the hell is down there?

What are they watching?

The thing separates from the shadows, stumbles toward the light, cringes and stumbles back again.

I suddenly can’t find enough oxygen in Ryodan’s office to breathe.

My hand flies to my mouth as I stare, staggered.

Dageus MacKeltar is not dead.

PEOPLE

SIDHE-SEER (SHEE-SEER): A person on whom Fae magic doesn’t work, capable of seeing past the illusions or “glamour” cast by the Fae to the true nature that lies beneath. Some can also see Tabh’rs, hidden portals between realms. Others can sense Seelie and Unseelie objects of power. Each sidhe-seer is different, with varying degrees of resistance to the Fae. Some are limited; some are advanced, with multiple “special powers.” For thousands of years, the sidhe-seers protected humans from the Fae that slipped through on pagan feast days when the veils grew thin, to run the Wild Hunt and prey on humans.

MACKAYLA LANE (O’CONNOR): Main character, female, twenty-three, adopted daughter of Jack and Rainey Lane, biological daughter of Isla O’Connor. Blond hair, green eyes, had an idyllic, sheltered childhood in the Deep South. When her biological sister, Alina, was murdered and the Garda swiftly closed the case with no leads, Mac quit her job bartending and headed for Dublin to search for Alina’s killer herself. Shortly after her arrival she met Jericho Barrons and began reluctantly working with him toward common goals. Among her many skills and talents, Mac can track objects of power created by the Fae, including the ancient, sentient, psychopathic book of magic known as the Sinsar Dubh. At the end of Shadowfever we learn that twenty years before, when the Sinsar Dubh escaped its prison beneath the abbey, it briefly possessed Mac’s mother and imprinted a complete copy of itself in the unprotected fetus. Although Mac succeeds in reinterring the dangerous book, her victory is simultaneous with the discovery that there are two copies of it, she is one of them and she will never be free from the temptation to use her limitless, deadly power.