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“I’m surprised she talked to you about all that.”
“I want to kill that male, even though he’s already dead.”
“That line forms at the rear.” Sahvage scrubbed his face with his dagger hand. Then he dropped his arm and looked off to the side. “?’Scuse me.”
The brother headed over to behind the bar, grabbed a tall glass, and threw his palm out in a distracted way. Bringing over a bottle, any bottle, it seemed like, he poured himself not so much two fingers as an entire fist. Then he tossed it back. The whole thing.
As he righted his head, he grimaced. “I hate gin,” he muttered as he poured himself another serving.
After that also went down the hopper, he nodded and came back around. “Okay, sorry. I didn’t expect this.”
“I get it.”
“Do you love my cousin?” Sahvage asked. “I mean, bonded love. Like the real, core feeling, not any of that surface attraction bullshit.”
“Yes, I do. I knew from the moment I saw her standing next to you in the garage of Luchas House. That first night I saw her… I knew she was the one for me.”
“All right. And what does she feel for you?”
“She told me she loved me last night.”
Sahvage nodded. Then he took a deep breath. “Okay. You have my permission to ask her. Whatever she wants to do is okay with me—but it’s her call.”
“I agree. It’s up to her.”
“Okay.”
“All right.”
“Deal.”
“Roger that.”
Having run through the list of yuppers, they both nodded back and forth like their foreheads were tennis rackets. And then they stood there.
“Sooooo…” Lassiter glanced around.
“What do we do now?”
“I’ve never done this before. I don’t know.”
“Me either.”
There was another long pause. And then they both shrugged and started walking out.
Halfway down the lineup of billiards tables, Sahvage glanced over. “You mess with her, I’m gonna kill you. Doesn’t matter that you’re immortal, I’ll find a way, even if it’s just making you wish you were dead.”
Lassiter started to smile and put out a fist for bumping. “I knew I liked you. And I’d expect nothing less.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
As Lash considered whether or not he was going to meet the demon at nine o’clock, he was clear on one thing: He did not want any help from her. Firstly, he wasn’t interested in anything’s opinion as to what he needed for the Lessening Society, especially something that shopped, fucked, and went psycho for a living. Secondly, if what actions he did take just happened to overlap whatever it was she babbled on about, she’d feel like he owed her, and who the hell needed that complication.
In the end, however, he did decide to go back to that Victorian walk-up. He had another reason he had to head over there, and if she showed up, fine. He didn’t have to hear her out. Besides, what was he saying, that he couldn’t handle her?
That was fucking weak.
Re-forming on the front steps of the decrepit apartment building, he glanced around at the abandoned street, then proceeded through the door. The cellar stairs were right there, and as he descended, he could smell the days-old blood before he even bottomed out in the lower corridor.
Coming up to the bathtub, he wasn’t surprised to find that everything had congealed into a semi-solid. Soon, it would start turning brown.
The door to the storage room was open a crack, and as he flared his nostrils and caught the scents of dirt, mineral deposits, dank mold, and something vaguely meth-lab-ish, he was not happy.
No sickly sweet stink.
Inside, he immediately looked to the black ink puddle in the far corner. Fuck. That permanently dead, miserably stupid security guard had up and left. And as he considered the remains that had been rolled out of that van at the Tudor mansion, he came to the only possible explanation there was. Somehow that slayer had dragged himself off, traveled somewhere—likely still in downtown given all his bullet holes—and found a vampire to kill.
So where was he now?
“Fucking hell—”
Overhead, the entrance he’d just used opened and footsteps proceeded into the walk-up. Lots of footsteps.
Stepping out of the storage room, he waited by the tub—with one of the three guns he had on him in his palm. His second batch of inductees, the drug-dealing punks, had had a nice stash of weapons at their disposal, and now that he was their new boss, they’d shared.
“Share” was probably the wrong word.
He’d left them behind at that apartment building to get him a list of names for the next wave. Then it was going to be training time. He just needed enough warm bodies—
Sorry, cold bodies.
And then he could…
His thoughts drifted as what came down the stairs started to fill the hallway.
What the… fuck?
Instead of all kinds of human men, gathered by the demon after she’d fucked them, he was confronted by a bevy of… street beauties. And not as in prostitutes.
