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Luke watched the door from the driver’s seat of Nick’s BMW. The information that Nick had received from Tiberius indicated that Gunnolf’s man in LA, a vile little were-cat named Feris Tinsley, kept an office in the back section, which he habitually visited every evening at twelve-fifteen. Before that, Tinsley spent an hour or two in the main section of the pub, drinking bourbon, eating corned beef sandwiches, and copping a feel off a waitress named Alinda.
Since Alinda was neither appreciative of such affection nor fond of shapeshifters, the elfin female had been more than happy to provide information and assistance when a gorgeous man like Nick had come around asking questions.
Not only had she told Nick that Hasik was due to meet with Tinsley that evening, but she’d agreed to enter the access code on the back door to allow Luke to slip into the back of the pub through the alley. In exchange, Nick would arrange new employment in a new city.
A fresh start for an elf who’d come to the wrong town and fallen in with the wrong people. Luke considered it a fair trade.
As for the job for which he’d come—killing Ural Hasik—he considered that a fair deal, too.
Luke paged through the electronic file on his phone, the images of beheaded vampires burning his eyes and boiling his blood. Ural Hasik had used no stake, but had instead left his victims degraded in death, spread out over the ground to molder and rot.
The darkness within hissed and tensed, tightening and twisting, alive with fury. Alive within Luke.
“Soon,” Luke said. Soon the serpent would have satisfaction.
He checked the clock on the dashboard, put the car into gear, then eased around the block and into the dark alley. He left the car near the street and walked the short distance to the pub’s rear entrance.
He saw her immediately. A wisp of a girl standing by the back door, holding a sack of garbage. She wore tight red leggings and a transparent shirt, her small breasts pressing against the gauzy material. Fear tightened her features as she looked up at him. A small pink tongue darted out, and she tossed the sack into a nearby trash bin, then turned back to the door and keyed in the access code.
She opened it, slipped inside, and Luke caught the door before it slammed shut. Smooth as silk.
He waited a moment, giving her time to move from the back section to the front of the pub. Then he pulled open the door and slid inside, easily finding the door to Tinsley’s office. Normally, he would have already changed into mist, foregoing altogether the risk of being seen by witnesses or by the target as he materialized silently behind him, knife in hand. There weren’t many percipient demons walking the earth, but one of the most prominent was determined to see Lucius staked, and he was not inclined to give Ryan Doyle more ammunition.
Now, though, with the detention device, transformation wasn’t an option. Not only that, he needed to make the bastard talk. Capture. Interrogate. Kill. Which meant his voice would register in Hasik’s mind, even if he were able to take the pup from behind. He’d have to remove the body and hide it someplace where it wouldn’t be found until the window for Doyle to look into the werewolf’s mind had passed. That would shave off time from his furlough, but he had no other option.
Within, the serpent stirred and Luke’s skin tingled in anticipation as he moved quietly toward the open doorway. He paused outside the door, his back to the wall, then eased slowly around until he could peer inside.
Hasik sat at a desk, his hulking form dwarfing even the huge stainless-steel monstrosity. “Don’t like the bitch,” he said, as Luke searched the room for Feris Tinsley. He found the black cat perched on a bookcase opposite Hasik. The cat leaped, transforming mid-jump into Gunnolf’s LA minion. The mangy were-cat’s crimes against the vamp community were at least as wicked as Hasik’s, and Luke eased back against the wall, his mind humming, the darkness within boiling in anticipation.
“You just spent a half hour laying out the score for her, and I didn’t see her flinch once. She’s in,” Tinsley said.
“She ain’t one of us.”
“Gunnolf trusts her.”
“Gunnolf’s fucking her,” Hasik said. “Wouldn’t mind that myself, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna trust the bitch. She’s got Gunnolf whipped. She shouldn’t be involved. Not with this. We’re already getting closer to the humans than I want. Now we’re adding her kind to the mix? It’s too dangerous.”
“You’re second-guessing Gunnolf? Do you have a fucking death wish?”
“I came up with the plan,” Hasik growled.
“And a damn good one,” Tinsley conceded. “Stage a few vampire attacks. Bloody human deaths. The kind that make the news. Humans won’t have a clue, but it’ll look to the Alliance like Tiberius can’t control the vamps.”
At the door, Luke squeezed his hands into tight fists, fighting back an eruption of fury. At least now, no interrogation was necessary.
“Got to hand it to you, Hasik, it just might work. But you listen to me. Gunnolf knows what he’s doing. She may be a fucking bitch vampire, but she’s also a powerful ally to the Therians, and you damn well know it. Caris is as tied in to the vamps as you can get. Hell, she used to bang Tiberius.”
Caris.
Immediately, Luke pictured the chestnut-haired female with cat’s eyes and a tiger’s temperament. He tilted his head back, finding the fresh scent of a female vampire. Sharp and woody, like a forest after a rain. She’d been here, in this room, and not so very long ago. Once he had thought her an ally. A good match for his leader and mentor. But then she’d rallied the charge against Tasha, arguing for termination rather than salvation. Now her defection from the vampiric community and alignment with the Therians was proof that she had only grown more despicable with time.
A slow burn rose within him, and he had to tamp down hard on the serpent, now screaming for release. He wished that she were there, in that room. Because right then he’d happily add her to the butcher’s bill, and return to Tiberius with news of not only his enemy’s death, but a traitor’s as well.
Since she’d already left, it was time to take what he could get.
It was, he thought, time to kill.
He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out the key to Nick’s car. He tossed it to the far corner of Tinsley’s office, where it landed on the concrete floor with a sharp ping. As he’d hoped, both Hasik and Tinsley turned in that direction, away from him. When they did, Luke snipped the last thread of his control and let the serpent rage. Then Lucius Dragos burst over the threshold, his knife out and flying.
