The old vampire.
Yanking the sickly girl toward the stage.
His hand was gripping her wrist so hard I was sure there would be bruises as soon as he released her.
She wasn't actively screaming or making a scene, but she was yanking and frantically begging.
I was no lip-reader, but I knew certain words when I saw them.
No.
Please no.
Don't.
I don't want to.
Please!
But her pleas were ignored as the bloodsucker dragged her onto stage, and strapped her to a St. Andrew's Cross.
My stomach knotted as he reached up to yank down her dress, pulling it until it exposed her from her shoulder to her ankles, leaving her shivering in just a nude thong.
Sitting there, I felt something innate, yet almost foreign start to well up, something that used to be an important part of me, but had gotten more and more buried over the years.
Rage.
This was pure, undiluted rage.
It was something that made me rise up in my seat, ready to charge across the stage, and rip that fucker's throat out.
But as soon as my ass left the seat, a wall slammed into me, an actual, physical, yet invisible, thing that knocked me back down, pinned me into place.
Across the bar Thysa's gaze had slid to me, a brow raised, like she knew exactly what was happening.
Mind changed, the wall eased as I hopped up and made a beeline for Thysa instead.
"You're not going to stop this?" I asked, barely able to keep myself from shouting. "Consent is what this shit is all about," I added.
"You don't need to remind me how protocol works in my kink club, Drex," she said, voice cool.
"She begged him not to."
"The subs always beg them not to. Unless we have some spirited brats in for the night. They always beg their masters not to whip them. It's all part of it."
"This is different."
"You can't possibly know that," she shot back, shaking her head even as the paddle landed with a smack that ricocheted off the walls, making my stomach tighten again.
"She said no, Thysa," I snapped, feeling the wall slam into me again when I took a step toward the club owner. I didn't intend to put my hands on her, but the wards this place had must have misunderstood the anger coursing through my system, burning me up from the inside out. "Fucking shame on you," I growled as the smacks of the paddle got harder and faster, as the woman's cries filled the air.
Cries.
Actual cries.
Not just the kind that came with a little fun pain.
I turned toward the stage again, trying to surge forward, but this time the wall pushed so hard against me that it was literally moving me backward through the club, pushing me out the door, then slamming down as a barrier, refusing me entrance again.
Frustrated, I paced around the property, moving along the lines of the ward until I felt some of the murderous rage start to settle down a bit, making the boundary more bendy than solid.
It was right about then that I saw the back door slide open with an awful creaking noise.
Two women emerged.
A curvy Black woman who was half-carrying another woman out of the building.
Not just any woman.
That woman.
Who was beaten so badly she could barely walk.
A paddle was rough enough to endure on fleshy skin, but on someone who was all bones? I couldn't imagine how she was feeling.
Tortured.
Humiliated.
Betrayed.
In that moment, I wasn't thinking clearly, if I was thinking at all.
The ward fell away when something just the opposite of anger flooded my system as I rushed forward.
"Is she alright?" I asked as the one woman made shushing, soothing noises at the other who was making loud, hiccuping sobbing sounds.
"No," she said, giving me a hard look. "Does she look alright?" she added, half-carrying the woman.
"What is going to happen to her now?" I asked.
The woman's gaze lifted, held mine.
"He is going to kill her. He's been doing it slowly for months. He's getting closer and closer every day."
"Can't she leave?"
"How? How could she possibly leave?" the woman asked, tone just this side of desperate.
It was right in that very moment that I lost my fucking mind.
"If I took her," I declared.
"What? How? What are you?"
"A demon," I told her. "And I can throw her over my shoulder, and run." I half expected her to scoff at me, to scream, to call her bloodsuckers out to beat the shit out of me. Or, at least, try to. "What's the worst that could happen?" I asked when I saw uncertainty there. "I won't kill her. I won't even hurt her."
"I'm supposed to trust the word of a demon?"
"That's fair," I agreed. "I couldn't possibly do anything worse than what he's been doing to her, than what he just did to her."
"I... I can't..." the woman said, looking back at the door. "They will ask," she added, choosing her words carefully.