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father, she had needed to get out and find a way to laugh and smile. Funny how thinking about Io over the past couple weeks had been about the only thing that had been able to do that.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    After unlocking his shackles, it took Apostle over an hour to crawl out of the corner he had been confined to for the past several weeks and reach the bathroom in the opposite corner of the room. Who would have thought a commode would feel like a luxury item? But after weeks with only a pot to piss in, properly relieving himself like a civilized gent brought him back to the land of the living.
    Bishop had always been ruthless, but he seemed even more so now. Apostle never would have imagined that Bishop would subject him to such abhorrent accommodations, or that he would have allowed those scorpions to sting him. But not only had Bishop allowed it, he had encouraged it, pulling each deadly creature out from its aquarium, one-by-one, and placing it on Apostle’s body. The fucking things seemed trained to sting only him, because they never hurt Bishop.
    Maybe it would have been better if he had died in Chicago, after all, because at least he wouldn’t feel like death without the funeral right now.
    Through the poison haze in his mind, Apostle recalled walking into his Chicago home two months ago to find his twin brother’s decimated body alongside those of his team. Something very powerful had crushed them from the inside out, leaving them in virtual puddles of flesh. The entire living room had looked like it had been through both a tornado and an earthquake, the floor ruptured and the furniture broken and flung in disarray.
    The only answer as to what had caused so much damage was a vampire. Well, more like a mixed-blood vampire. Only a mongrel could possess power like that. Full blood vampires certainly didn’t come pre-packaged with an instant natural disaster at their disposal, but mongrels could possess powers strong enough to do that kind of damage.
    That fucking Micah obviously had powerful friends. Two-faced, Indian-giving asshole. Micah had come begging Apostle to kill him—a task Apostle had gladly accepted. To kill a vampire as old and strong as Micah would have been a marvelous notch in his belt, and he had wanted the notoriety of taking down the legend himself. Micah was well-known in the dreck community, and he was highly feared for his lethal skills with a knife and his fearless manner of fighting first, asking questions later. No one wanted to cross Micah, and Apostle had been thisclose to removing him as a roadblock that stood in the way of dreck progress.
    Which bit Apostle’s ass no end that his moment of triumph had been thwarted by that human wench, Samantha. The bitch had shown up and shot him in the shoulder before he could finish the job on Micah in that goddamn parking garage. Apostle knew he should have killed her when he had the chance, but she had startled him and his team, and they didn’t want to risk exposing themselves further than they already had. Still, not a day went by that he didn’t regret not taking her down that night.
    Oh, but he had gotten the last laugh. It had taken him some time, but he had tasted revenge when he had tracked her to Micah’s apartment to come face-to-face with the bitch again. This time, she had been helpless—no gun and no Micah to protect her—and Apostle had bitten her, giving her a lethal dose of his venom. No doubt, the catastrophe at his Chicago home had been retaliation for her death since Micah had allegedly taken her as a mate.
    Touché. Except that they had missed the real target—him—and killed Deacon, instead.
    The irony of enduring Bishop’s punishment after surviving the attempt on his life had made Apostle delirious with laughter more than once. Micah and his powerful mongrel friend had wished him harm, and in the end they had gotten it, hadn’t they? But Apostle wasn’t dead, which was the only in-your-face he had against Micah. Still,