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One of the hardest things she’d ever done was to pay Evan a final visit. She’d wept when she told him that her superior had shut the investigation down.
Evan had grown very calm and Iris knew he’d begun the process of acceptance, that he would probably never see his wife again.
A week later, Iris had received a report that included a picture of a very pregnant woman shot down in a drug raid. She knew at once the woman was Evan’s wife since she had a photo of her. Besides, every witch instinct she had told Iris who the woman was
. For whatever reason, Heather’s captors had decided to use her to run drugs.
Evan had confirmed the woman’s identity. He’d taken Heather back to Phoenix, buried his wife and their unborn son, and she’d never seen him again.
But the way Evan had been so desperate to recover Heather during those early days and weeks now burned as Iris’s prime motivation. Somehow, she would be part of the process, no matter how long it took, to create a decent society within Five Bridges.
Her own unfortunate path to becoming an alter witch might not have been something she’d asked for. But she’d come to accept her fate and intended to make the most of it.
Even if it meant heading into the worst part of Crescent, into a place known as home to several death squads.
~ ~ ~
A few minutes later, Connor descended in stages down to the street, though he remained levitating. The noise was almost deafening from the constant honking of cars, to women shouting and music exploding from one establishment to the next.
Several vampires were in the air, levitating in a drunk way. One of them slammed into the running lights of a one-hour hotel, sending sparks flashing as he tumbled to the sidewalk. Hard.
“Oh, dear God,” Iris murmured.
Connor followed the line of Iris’s sight and saw why she sounded distressed. The vampire’s skull had cracked open and blood poured onto the cement.
He turned her away from the carnage, levitated above the traffic and flew across to the entrance of the House of Big Sex. A red sign flashed steadily, ‘Big-Women-All-the-Time’.
Connor knew better than to try to enter the establishment once he touched down on concrete. He slowly moved Iris off his boot, but kept his arm around her waist, holding her tight.
He hadn’t discussed strategy with her, which meant on some level he trusted her instincts to go with the flow. He knew she’d been a TPS officer for over nine years and he relied on her experience to help see this encounter with Gary through.
Big Nuts had some of the meanest shifter bouncers and bodyguards of anyone on the Row. Two of them approached him now, mouths in tight, grim lines, eyes small and feral, noses sniffing the air. Very shifter.
He addressed the taller one, meeting his gaze dead on. “Alejandro. We need to see your boss.” He knew by long habit how to read the hierarchy among the fur-beasts and Alejandro, with the sides of his head shaved clean and heavy tattoos running from his scalp down the sides of his neck, was an alpha.
He ran Gary’s entire security force.
Alejandro met his gaze, nostrils flaring as he swept his dark, beady eyes to Iris. “No fucking witches allowed. Bosses orders.”
“He’ll want to see this one. She knew the bridge would blow and we’re both alive because of it.”
Connor had a decent working relationship with Big Nuts, primarily because Gary only accepted willing workers and never killed them off. Of course, by the time each came to him, they were strung out on flame, which made it easy to control the women who worked for him.
Alejandro shifted his gaze several times between the two of them. He didn’t look convinced and gestured for his partner to form a barrier between Connor and the door. He disappeared inside for a moment.
When he reappeared, he signaled for them to follow.
“Here we go,” he whispered to Iris.
To her credit, Iris moved right with him, not hesitating once, though he did notice she kept her palm on the butt of her Sig.
Once inside, he slowed his pace, needing a moment to adjust. The women in Big Nuts’s stable were all large women, some even super-sized with narrow strips of silk tucked between erotic rolls. Several were actively engaged in a variety of sex acts with various patrons. The club hummed, moaned, and screamed with activity.
“Do you see that?” Iris whispered. She was doing a good job of keeping pace with him since Alejandro was moving fast across the expansive club, heading to the hallway beyond.
“You mean the women?” Was she referring to the obvious? Or was it something else?
“Several of them are pregnant.”
