“The flesher’s almost at the block,” he warned.
Loren fixed her hair again; it kept coming loose from her stupid hat. She wished she couldn’t be seen; that she could hide herself from the many curious onlookers. If only Dallas had performed the invisibility charm again.
Loren was about to ask Darien something, but the doors swung open then, and the Butcher emerged.
—
Darien kept an eye on the door the whole time, making sure no one shut and locked it as he sat in an office that was as much a dump as Dennis Boyd’s.
Cardboard boxes were stacked from sticky floor to water-stained ceiling, and oil paintings from centuries past hung lopsided on molding walls, olive-green paint peeling off in strips. A statue of Okapi, God of Mercy, sat atop a filing cabinet, among a mess of grease-stained takeout bags and downright filthy magazines. Above the desk was a neon sign that readGo fuck thyself,the loopy scrawl burning a steady vermilion.
Unlike the knucklehead of a bouncer out front, the Butcher hadn’t batted an eye when Darien had announced that he wasn’t going anywhere without Loren and Dallas. Once he was finished retrieving the information he needed from this meeting, perhaps he would teach the wolf a lesson and punch his teeth down his throat.
“I know it’s not the answer you were looking for,” the Butcher was saying. He sat across from Darien at the metal desk, Boneweed smoke rippling from his mouth. “But it’s the truth.”
“Any chance she might’ve been hired from the outside?” Darien’s gloved hands drummed the soiled armrests of his chair. “Even to fill in for someone for a one-night run?”
Casen was shaking his head, his stringy shoulder-length hair swaying. “I keep my circle small, and I know my dealers by name. It’s how I root out the bad eggs; I get to know them personally, and I’ve learned to smell a rat long before they squeal.” The seven-foot-tall warlock tapped the ash off the trip with a scarred hand nearly the size of a dinner plate. “If Shadowback’s sister was selling for me, I would’ve been the first to know.”
“Chrysantha’s disappearance seems to be linked to a new circle of Darkslayers invading our turf,” Darien said. “Have your eyes on the streets given any indication of this being true?”
“I didn’t peg him as Darkslayer. But I had an anonymous client arrange to pick up a shipment of Blood Potions and chemicals last week. He was branded like you.” Although his own was bare, he gestured to his unshaven neck, to where a tattoo would’ve been, if he’d had one. “A phoenix or some shit.”
Where she was perched beside him on a stool of blistered leather, Loren straightened, her mouth parting as if she wanted to say something. But she didn’t.
“Hellseher?” Darien said.
“Warlock.” Interesting. Considering the Sight was a necessity when it came to tracking targets, the Darkslaying circles in Angelthene had only ever consisted of hellsehers, or at the very least hellseher halfies. This new ‘circle’ was starting to look a hell of a lot more like a cult than a band of copycats. “That’s why I said he didn’t peg me for a Darkslayer; he lacked the Sight.”
“Any idea who this anonymous client was?”
“My clients usually have a middle-man do the picking up for them at the drop-off point.” He butted out the last of the trip, the glass coffin-shaped ashtray near-invisible in the cloud of blue smoke. “I’d be surprised if it was the actual client who’d shown up for the trade.”
“Any chance you could recontact them?”
“If he had half a brain, he’d have used a burner phone.” A pause. The warlock looked him over with eyes so brown, they were black. “What’s your take on it, Cassel? Why would a warlock wear a symbol in the same place as a Darkslayer? Wannabes or some shit?”
“A cult,” he suggested, half-shrugging. “How large was the purchase?”
“Unusually large. The difference in quantities seemed odd. The Blood Potions were purchased in individual vials, but the chemicals were ordered by the vat.”
“Would you care to write down the compounds for me?”
The names scribbled on the back of a business card of the Doghouse Strip Club concluded the questions Darien wanted to ask, but as he was heading for the office door, the girls on his heels, Casen’s voice stopped him dead in his tracks.
“If your sister didn’t owe me so much cash, I might’ve considered giving you a call the next time I get a BP deal that raises red flags.”
Darien frowned. “What cash?” he said, turning on a heel. The warlock was still lounging at his desk, half-invisible behind the cloud of sour smoke that burned Darien’s eyes.
“She never told you?” The Butcher was wearing the closest thing to a smile, his teeth a stained white beneath a beard of wiry black hairs. “Ivyana owes me half a mil. She borrowed from me when that swindling husband of hers conned the wrong people out of their money. She became concerned they would retaliate, so she paid his dues for him.” He looked Darien over. “That’s one sweet sister you’ve got there.”
Darien bit his tongue as a curse word bubbled to the tip of it. Jack and his fucking gambling addiction. Darien was always giving him shit for it, which was likely why Ivy had gone to someone like the Butcher to borrow money instead of asking her own brother.
“I’ll cover what she owes you,” Darien said. He dug his phone out of his pocket and stepped up to the desk to do the transfer.
But the Butcher said, “I don’t want the money, Cassel.” Darien paused. “I’ve thought of a far more entertaining way for your sister to pay me back.” He heaved himself to his feet with a heavy grunt and beckoned with a wave of his hand. Dallas and Loren stepped aside to let him pass. “Come with me.”
The Butcher led the way into the damp hallway, toward the Chopping Block, trench coat rippling against his ankles. Darien ignored Loren and Dallas’s searching gazes as he followed behind him.
