Page 55 of Whiskers on Kittens

“Wait. Our targets?”

“Lucy has decided he’s going to attend to certain matters personally. I keep telling him to quit peeking, but he saw something he really dislikes, so he’s going to pay a personal visit. There is definitely going to be some bloodshed tonight. That one is going to experience a little hell on Earth before going straight to hell, where our daughter is going to be waiting with her stallion. When her stallion wants a turn in the dungeon, you know the fucking asshole’s sins are bad. We’re going to raffle off dungeon time for this one, I’m sure.”

I raised my hand. “How do I get a ticket?”

She laughed and shooed me into the bathroom. “Shower first. Then we’ll discuss the dungeon issue where the men can give their input. It’s time for Easton to get some steel in that spine so he can be a sword for you.”

Dressed in tight jeans, a black blouse that offered the slightest hint of cleavage, and low-heeled boots that almost went to my knees, I prepared for war. Darlene put a new jeweled collar on my throat featuring rubies and diamonds, designed to draw attention to my chest. I found the succubus’s choice of attire amusing, but as I could move in it well, I went along with her flow.

She led me through the penthouse, stopping at the pool long enough to confirm the heels were still at the bottom. At a snap of her fingers, a devil appeared, and she pointed at the abandoned footwear, asked for it to be retrieved, and to be prepared for an evening of action, excitement, and bloodshed.

The shoes disappeared along with her summoned minion, and she led me off to join the hunting party.

To my amusement, the Devil had transformed his formal dining room into a war room, and he even had a scale model of the warehouse we needed to hit along with blueprints. To my amusement, there were miniature figurines of us, our new mafia friends, and our targets. In terms of raw numbers, I worried.

We were outnumbered approximately three to one. “That warehouse is packed.” I eyed the different levels, which became a series of one bed and bath apartments with communal rooms littered throughout. After checking the scale, I determined the apartments were roughly a thousand square feet each on the third level, six hundred on the second level, and five hundred on the first level. The warehouse, according to the blueprints, seemed to be a superblock merging what should have been four standard blocks together. As an avenue would have cut through the warehouse space, the warehouse had an extra hundred feet to work with.

“The lot is nineteen hundred feet in length, six hundred and twenty-eight feet in width, and most of it is what?” I asked, checking over the blueprints. The warehouse’s builders had gone as close to the street as they could, trimming off only five feet from the sidewalk. I began counting apartments, flabbergasted over how many might be living in the building. “Is this legally zoned to be apartments?”

“No, it isn’t. It’s zoned to be a warehouse, and a team of practitioners keeps illusions running around the clock to prevent inspectors from checking into their activities. I have a team currently disabling the practitioners permanently. They will be unsolvable missing persons as they were escorted directly to my dungeons for our daughter to attend to. She’s quite miffed right now.”

“Miffed is one way to put it,” Darlene muttered. “If we brought her and Malcolm out right now, half the city would end up cursed. He’s in no mood to rein her in, and he’d feed her all the power she needed for that stunt. It’s much better off for everyone that she’s tending to the house and the incoming fucking assholes.”

Lucifer sighed and shook his head. “That girl. We’re working on that. She has quite the temper, especially when there are little ones involved. There are six stories total, but the apartments on those floors aren’t occupied yet. They’re finished, but that’s a new development. There are over three hundred apartments in that complex, and half of them are occupied. If this group were permitted to continue their efforts, this would be for the single men of the group. There is a second superblock up for sale they’re trying to acquire for the women and children.”

“Trafficked?” I asked.

“Indeed. And the women would be expected to share the apartments with a minimum of two women per unit. Children would be sharing with one woman, with four children per apartment. They care nothing of the comfort of the women and children,” the Devil stated. He huffed, and he eyed the scale replica of the apartment. “Everyone in this complex is guilty, so don’t feel like you need to worry about verifying anything. You’re after the paper trail, and my daughter will handle peeling out any relevant information from them during her entry interviews.”

I feared the answer, but I said, “Just spit it out, Lucifer. What has you so riled up you’re handling this personally?”

Lucifer picked up five different miniatures and set them in front of me. “These assholes train children in the art of the sex trade.”

Right. All right. I didn’t need to know anything else. I turned to Easton and asked, “Want to fight over the bodies?”

“Normally, I would say no, but today, I feel it would be rude to refuse such a gracious offer.”

Excellent. The news had motivated the cop. “I don’t want to know the details, I don’t need to know the details, and I feel I’m sufficiently motivated at this point in time. Have the kittens been treated well up until this point?”

“They’re scared, they’re hungry, and they’re tired, but they have not been abused. They are safe enough for the moment.”

The ‘for the moment’ part worried me. I checked the date. “We have just under a month before Christmas Eve. How long until we can get these kittens into custody?”

“In theory, you could have them in custody by tomorrow morning, but you would have to go on quite the romp across the country to keep them in your custody. If you were to wait a week, you would still have a romp across the country, but you’d be doing so with a few more pursuers than you appreciate.” Lucifer retrieved his phone from his pocket and checked the screen. “If you were to gain the kittens at the end of the raid, a possibility thanks to your mafia contacts, you can have them settled here for a day or two and explain the situation to them, get them fed, and bond with them. This needs to be a Christmas miracle, so we’d have to use the mobsters’ tricks to delay your triumphant return home until Christmas Eve. I recommend you tour the various amusement parks with the kittens. That will more than make up for the scares they have had lately—and resolve a few parenting issues that will not be made again with a slightly longer wait. He yelled at me. We can’t return the kittens early. It has to be a Christmas miracle. Christmas Eve, apparently, counts.”

According to Lucifer’s expression, his father had dealt him a cruel blow or three.

“It’s true. He has a reason, and whatever that reason is, it needs to be Christmas Eve or Christmas. You could hole up here and blitz back to Chicago for Christmas Eve, but I think it would be more fun to go on an adventure. We’ll put on The Sound of Music in our theatre to start the party. The kittens haven’t seen it, and they’ll love it. But we’ll make sure they understand why the delay on getting home.”

“They’re starving. We retrieve them tonight,” I growled.

“You heard her, Lucy. We will bust the warehouse, and then we’ll make that mafia group earn their stay in New York.” Darlene grabbed her phone, dialed a number, and said, “Carrie, darling. I need you to talk with your bosses and get your best men and women on watch for the kittens. Lucifer and I will be attending the warehouse raid so your men and women there will be safe and attended to. Make sure you send over the ones with a kinder nature. There are five pedophiles up for execution, and Lucifer is willing to let you mortals have a chance for the kills. You’ll have to fight the lycanthropes over it, but my husband has made his opinion clear: we are escorting everybody in that place straight to our dungeons. The lycanthropes are quite upset the kittens are starving, so make sure your men and women know. Chocolate protein shakes would be a good start for them. A six pack for each group will work. There are five kittens, and they’re so underfed at this point one shake is all they can handle. And yes, let them know the kittens will be weak and they’ll need to be carried. They can walk, but it’s heartbreaking to watch them. They’ll be in good paws once they’re in our residence. The doormen downstairs will be keeping a watch out for you and the kittens. Good. We’ll see you tonight.”

I growled, and a moment later, Easton drowned me out.

“I’ll need you two to be ready for reception when the kittens arrive,” Darlene stated. “You’ll be in your animal form, Easton. The layabouts will redecorate the penthouse while you’re gone, and we have little antlers and hats for you along with harnesses with lights. Easton, you’ll give them cart rides until they have a chance to recover. Their viruses are active and the poor little darlings will be shifting soon because of this incident. Lucy will take care of that, and when they’re ready to shift, he’ll teach them.”

As I hadn’t shifted for the first time until my twenties, I hissed at the idea the kittens had been so stressed and mistreated. “Their viruses spiked that badly?”