“Why don’t you ask Maron how she took care of Vito? It might be useful information.” Samael’s voice was deceptively mild as he settled in his chair and steepled his fingers under his chin.
It was a test. The perfect test. Would her partners follow her lead in a situation where she had the advantage of previous experience, or would they prove to be just like Shax? Never trusting her fully, always thinking they knew best on any hunt. It would tell her exactly what she needed to know in the one trial run she had with them. No doubt Samael had chosen the case for just that reason. He was a wily bastard, she’d give him that.
Kobal eyes sparkled with mischief. “I would have asked, but it says right here in the file. She faked being a hooker.”
“Are there pictures?” A brief, wicked grin flickered across Raum’s face.
The blond demon’s eyebrows waggled suggestively. “No pictures, but maybe she still has the outfit.”
She grabbed the file from him and smacked him with it. “In your perverted, adolescent dreams.”
“Well, yeah.” He chuckled and fended her off. “I’d still respect you in the morning, I swear.”
The utter sincerity in his voice cracked her up. She knew she shouldn’t laugh because it would just encourage him, but she couldn’t help it. The two of them amused her. She shook her head and sighed. “You’re incorrigible. Can we focus on the job, now?”
“Sure, boss lady.” Kobal shrugged and slid his hands in his pockets. “You’ll take point on this assignment, since you’re the one who knows our target. Tell us what we’re doing.”
The right words, sure. But words were easy to say, not as easy to live with in the heat of the moment. She noticed Samael watching the by-play between them with keen interest—and approval—and she wanted to kick him. So, she liked the men he’d picked for her. Or maybe the men had gone to the boss and asked for her. She didn’t know, and she refused to let herself ask. Telling them about her past changed nothing for her just as it changed nothing for them. They were still at an impasse.
“Well, the first thing to do is some recon on his current location—and that of his goon squad.” She dropped the folder to the desk and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Let’s get this show on the road. Samael, you know where to send us.”
“Yep.” He waved his hand, and a roiling, roaring wave of black fire engulfed them.
Chapter Four
They dissolved into nothingness, speeding through the black until they appeared in an alleyway. Half of Kobal’s body was in a dumpster, which was why they always arrived wherever they went as insubstantial shadows. It wasn’t just because they didn’t want humans to see them arrive—the mortals wouldn’t remember it anyway—it was because untangling themselves from the middle of a brick wall or garbage can could take a while. Demons couldn’t die, but that kind of mess would suck. And it might let a target slip from their fingers, which no self-respecting hunter would allow.
“Okay, which way?” Kobal stepped out of the metal bin and materialized.
She drew in a deep breath, widening her senses to let Bruno’s essence come to her. There. He was near. She could sense him. That familiar instinct to hunt her prey flooded her being, a relief after a day of feeling shaken up and tossed around.
Opening the slender bonds that sex had given her with her partners, she sent the information thrumming along those tethers. It felt good to have those ties. She’d sever them the moment they got back to the silo. She quelled any inner protest that might have risen at the thought.
This bond with them was no deeper than her bond with Lilim or any of the other partners that came before her. If the excuse rang hollowly in her mind, she ignored it. It didn’t matter how good the sex had been. That meant nothing. She’d had amazing sex before. Maybe not quite that amazing, true, but she’d never had any more trouble walking away from a lover before. At least not since her last male partner. A shudder of self-loathing ran through her.
Striding down the alley, she let her senses carry her in the direction of Bruno. The closer she got, the riper the stench of his darkness became. She swallowed the bile that stung the back of her throat. Even after all these years, that scent reviled her. She’d never gotten used to it, but she’d learned to suppress her reaction. Bruno’s stink was far worse than Norris’s had been, and there was no way she’d entrap something that ugly on her own, even for a few minutes.
She nodded toward a rundown, two-story warehouse, just as Raum and Kobal said, “There.”
“Yep.” The street was largely empty. Only the unsavory elements would stick around this kind of warehouse and factory area after quitting time. Everyone else had already gone home for the day. Which meant the humans that she sensed nearby could become a problem. She noted where those signatures emanated from, hoping none of them got in her way. There was a comfort she didn’t want to acknowledge in having two large, experienced hunters at her back.
Kobal sucked in a deep breath as they slipped behind the warehouse. “There are a lot of them in there. Bodyguards?” He lifted his hands and shrugged. “Crime boss is a job that comes with enemies.”
Raum dropped to his haunches and laid his fingertips against the building, closing his eyes, and she felt a pulse of his power dance over her skin. What he was sensing, she didn’t know. His forehead creased, then relaxed. “It’s not paranoia if they really are after you.”
He smiled a little when Maron and Kobal snorted. Then he nodded and rose to his feet.
“A little ghostly recon, just to be sure we have correct numbers and placement?” Kobal cracked his knuckles, a gleeful grin on his face.
She could feel the adrenaline buzzing through him. The need to take action thrummed along the thin link between them, filling her too. Her muscles tightened and she forced them to relax when she went incorporeal, blending into the night. “I’ll take the second floor, just to make sure nothing’s going to come down on our heads. Raum, you take the bottom floor. Kobal, make sure there’s no one outside to give us any nasty surprises. Be back here in five minutes.”
The two demons nodded silently, taking her orders without protest. They slipped into the shadows and were gone. She flowed through the wall of the warehouse, noting the humans she passed as she moved toward the staircase. Eight men, and she could feel more nearby. She shuddered when one of them walked right through her while he came down the narrow staircase. The building had an air of neglect and ill repute. The perfect place for a man like Bruno to conduct his business.
A quick tour of the upper floor revealed a few more men, all armed. Whatever was going down tonight required a lot of guards. Or maybe this was Bruno’s standard operating procedure. A man like him had to have a lot of enemies. There was a hum of anticipation, though, as if they were waiting for something. Or someone.
Keening sobs stopped her in her tracks. She turned toward the noise, which came from behind a closed door on the far side of the building. Unease twisted through her as the helpless, hopeless crying grew louder. It sounded like more than one voice making that sound. She slipped through the door and would have needed to resist the urge to gag if she’d been in human form.
There were almost a dozen girls trapped in the windowless little room. Not one of them looked over seventeen or eighteen. Babies. They were emaciated, half-naked, huddled shivering and sobbing in one corner as far from the door as possible. It was pretty obvious from the bruises, bleeding and torn clothing that more than one had been raped. Recently.
Maron backed out of the room, rage pumping through her. She wanted to put a fist through something…preferably Bruno’s face. It took everything she had not to burst into a wall of unholy flame and burn her way through this building in retribution. She shuddered and stepped aside as a couple of his thugs passed through her insubstantial body to check the locked door that caged the teen girls.