by S. J. Day
CHAPTER 3
“Time to get to work, babe,” Eve parroted under her breath. She paused on the threshold of the corridor that emptied into the casino and set her hands on her hips. “Smug bastard.”
I caught that, Reed chided. Watch your back. It’s crazier than usual out there tonight.
So I’ve been hearing. Eve scanned the crowded space for anything overtly irregular, not an easy task in Las Vegas.
The muted throbbing of the mark on her deltoid acted like a proximity warning. The level of pain told her the Infernal she hunted was in the same building. The trail wasn’t stone cold, but she wasn’t yet getting warm either.
Her fingertips tapped an impatient staccato on her hips, bringing the feel of her gown to her attention. She sighed. It was time for Cinderella to change back into her working clothes.
She was heading toward the elevators when her attention was caught by a slight commotion by the entrance. Her head turned. Five Elvis impersonators, each one in a different color pantsuit, formed a V-shaped formation just inside the revolving glass door. They paused there, affording everyone an opportunity to catch the impressiveness of their multihued collective presentation. Dressed in sequined pantsuits, capes, and gold-framed aviator sunglasses, they caught the eye and held attention. She whistled.
In unison, they pivoted on their heels and made a beeline in her direction.
Eve looked over her shoulder at the corridor she’d just vacated. The theater where the impersonators were vying for a $250,000 grand prize was located behind her. From this distance, a track of Elvis singing “Such a Night” was barely heard, but easily recognizable.
Her inner alarm bells started clanging hell for leather.
Gut instinct was a Mark’s best weapon, and Eve had learned to follow hers. Unlike Infernals, who had various supernatural gifts to call upon, Marks had only enhanced bodies and a mental connection to handlers who were forbidden to assist them. Eve’s ability to heal fast and move faster wasn’t enough to keep her alive. She relied more heavily on her intuition and intellect than she did on her extensive combat training.
Turning about, she set off at a brisk pace.
Trying to kick ass in a ball gown was going to blow big-time.
With every step she took, the throbbing of her mark intensified. Any lingering thought of changing her clothes was abandoned. If there was a chance of ending the hunt now, she was better off taking it. Otherwise, she could be searching for the Infernal all over the city. Considering the number of security cameras in Las Vegas, that was too dangerous for her. Things had a tendency to get messy when she was involved. At least here at the Mondego, any disasters could be controlled and made to disappear.
As she approached the theater entrance, the guard recognized her and swiftly ushered her inside. The sight that greeted her made her smile, despite the gravity of her mission. Female fans were frenzied over the impersonator on stage, a handsome young man with bedroom eyes and impressive hip action. His singing was noteworthy, too, but she doubted many women were paying attention to that.
She was surprised at the large number of Infernals in attendance. Who knew demons had a thing for Elvis?
“Who are you looking for?”
She turned her attention to the female Infernal beside her. The detail (a.k.a. hellspawn insignia) around the demon’s throat revealed her to be a mare from the court of Baal, one of the seven kings of Hell. Her Priscilla Presley glamour was impressive and sure to draw more than a few admirers in this crowd.
“No one in particular,” Eve replied.
The Infernal laughed. Mares were the source of nightmares, and the females found it easiest to lure a victim to sleep by seducing them into bed. From there they could feed off the distress and misery their mind-rape caused.
“Marks are shitty liars,” the demon scoffed.
“And demons smell like shit. Guess that makes us even.”
A ripple of hatred marred the surface of the mare’s glamour, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared. “Well, you’re obviously not after me, so happy hunting. Hope you get your ass kicked.”
The demon strolled away and was swiftly lost in the stream of attendees cruising the aisles.
Eve darted in the other direction. She knew a problem when she met one. The mare would spread the word that a Mark was on the hunt, and Eve would lose the advantage of surprise. Since the nearby demons couldn’t know which one of them was on the chopping block, they’d all react defensively.
Using the intensity of the mark’s throbbing as a homing beacon, Eve flowed with the current of traffic. She was rounding the front row when the impersonator on stage pointed at her and called out, “Hey there, pretty mama.”
She shook her head violently and began to move away, pushing aggressively through the milling crowd.
“Hold up,” he drawled, detaching the microphone from its stand and leaping agilely to the theater floor. The orchestra continued playing “Viva Las Vegas” without his accompaniment. The attendees around her surged forward in response to his new accessibility, but the crush didn’t deter him. He caught her by the elbow with surprising dexterity.
The moment she was snared, Eve smelled the mark on him. Sweet like candy, the scent of Marks could be cloying when contained in an enclosed space, like the atrium at Gadara Tower. Here in the theater, it was a welcome relief from the reek of Infernals.
Distracted by her surprise, Eve allowed the impersonator to serenade her up a set of stairs on the side of the stage.
A Mark impersonating Elvis? It made no sense. Not all Marks were hunters like her—and clearly this guy wasn’t, because he was singing instead of dealing with the Infernal influx in the area—but they all had important jobs. Some were secretaries; others were chauffeurs. The list of duties was endless, but they all kept the marked system running smoothly. So what was this guy’s story?
The impersonator gyrated around her stationary form, whispering, “I think the one you’re looking for just ran back there. Yellow pantsuit.”
He stopped in front of her and jerked his chin toward the left wing. She simultaneously noted that he kept up the Elvis-inspired drawl even when whispering, and that his facial resemblance to the King was uncanny….
She stared hard. He winked, turned around, and resumed wooing the crowd.
Eve hopped toward the wing on one foot while pulling her shoe off the other. She repeated the action on the opposite side, then set off at a run on bare feet, with heels in hand. Pushing her way through the line of numbered impersonators waiting in the wings, she gained the hallway leading to the rear of the backstage area.
Engaging what she jokingly called her “super sight,” Eve caught a flash of yellow rounding the corner at the far end of the hall. Her mark sizzled beneath her skin, and her jaw tensed. Adrenaline and bloodlust flowed thick and hot through her veins, inciting a highly addicting level of excitement. That was her biggest hurdle in acclimating to the mark: she got off on hunting and killing things. What did that say about her?
“You can run…,” she muttered, looking for some sort of weapon among the various backstage props. She snatched up a wooden spear with a plastic tip. Marks were supposed to be able to summon flaming swords and daggers, but she’d learned she couldn’t rely on their appearance. Her skepticism regarding God and his motives had put her on some sort of Celestial blacklist, which didn’t help bolster her opinion of the Almighty.
When she rounded the corner, she saw a door ahead. Two people were shouting obscenities at whoever had recently shoved them out of the way to run through it. Eve spotted a microphone stand and paused. Switching the spear to the hand dangling her shoes, she grabbed the stand with her free hand and wrenched the rod out of the weighted base. Then she continued her pursuit. Pushing the bar latch on the door, she stumbled into a stairwell.
The only way to go was up. Eve tucked her shoes into the open space beneath the stairwell and listened to the demon’s pounding footfalls as he raced upward. A small arr
owed sign read “To the roof,” and she set off after him, the metal risers chilly on her bare feet.
Why head toward a dead end?
Unless he had an agenda…or planned to fly away.
Her mind quickly riffled through the known classifications of demons, sorting out those who had the gift of flight. When she reached the roof, she was ready to rock. She threw the door open and bounded out to avoid an ambush, rending the slit in her dress from knee to waist in the process. Her focused search for yellow mitigated any regret.
Beautiful things in her life got broken; she was resigned to that now.
She was midair when she caught sight of her quarry running across the roof. Drawing her arm back, she launched the metal pole like a javelin, jagged end first. Air whistled around the projectile before it struck its target. The vampyre stumbled from the blow and fell to his knees, cursing.
Eve landed in a crouch, wincing at the pain of impact to her bare feet. Waiting with fists to the ground and spear at the ready, she left the next move up to the demon.
With two feet of pole protruding from both the front and back of his torso, the vamp ran both hands through his blond hair and glanced down to inspect the damage.
“I’d chide you for missing my heart, luv,” he said with a clipped British accent. “But I heard you have shoddy aim.”
That stung. So she’d been aiming for his shoulder…. That she couldn’t throw worth a damn wasn’t the point. She had gone out of her way not to kill him. It was that gut-instinct thing again.
She sized him up. He was tall, lean, and golden. She couldn’t imagine a person looking less like Elvis than this guy, yet the yellow sequined jumpsuit looked strangely good on him. He was checking her out, too, and the calculation in his eyes was unmistakable. Gripping the pole with both fists, he began to pull, hand over hand, divesting himself of the impalement in unhurried increments.
If this guy had stayed put or exited through the crowded casino to the busy Las Vegas Strip, she would have had her hands tied by the crowd around them. Instead, he’d led her to a perfect place to kill him. Of course he’d thought that result would be reversed, and maybe he was right. Maybe she’d blown her chance to vanquish him. But she knew something was off. She wasn’t going to take him out before discovering what it was.
“That was too easy.” She broke the spear over her knee, creating two weapons with splintered ends.
Nothing came easy to Marks, especially kills.
A slow smile curved his mouth. He brandished the pole with deadly elegance. “Let’s make it harder then, pet.”
CHAPTER 4
The vampyre lunged to his feet in a rush of fleshy, featherless wings and blood spatter. Eve feinted to the side, then spun around, using her canted balance to put weight behind her thrust. She shoved half the spear into his lower back. The momentum of her pivot crashed her into him and they both went down, the microphone stand clattering against the rooftop before rolling out of reach. She twisted away, narrowly missing a kick to the shoulder.
Scrambling to her feet, she asked, “What are you after?
The vamp regained a kneeling position and reached around to his back, laughing. “Who says I’m after anything?”
“I was giving you credit for being caught so quickly, but maybe you’re just stupid.”
He pulled the stick out of his flesh and brought it around. As he pushed to his feet, smoke rose from the sizzling blood coating the wood. “Sammael was spot-on about you.”
Right about what? Eve adjusted her grip on her remaining half of the spear and crossed the fingers of her other hand. She also sucked in swordsmanship, but give her a gun and she could cause some serious damage. Unfortunately for her, guns weren’t much help with most classes of Infernals. “Of course Satan was right. Why do you think he’s the boss? He’s smarter than the rest of you.”
The vamp growled, then spooked her with a mock lunge. “You won’t be so chipper when I hand you over to him. Lilith taunts him because you don’t wear the bloody necklace he gave you. He acts as if it doesn’t matter, but I know it does.”
“It didn’t fit the neckline of my dress,” she managed past a tight throat. The damn necklace. She’d known it would come back to bite her. Satan hadn’t given her protection against his own minions for nothing. At some point, he expected the “gift” would benefit him in some way, and Eve doubted she’d come out ahead when it did. What creeped her out most, though, was the realization of how closely he must be watching her to notice that she rarely wore the piece around her neck. “He knows better than to take it personally.”
“You never wear it,” the vamp insisted. His stance was wide, his hands flexing. “He says you don’t need it. I say you need a firmer hand.”
Circling the vamp, she forced him to rotate to continue facing her head-on. “He sent you after me to prove his point, right?”
After all, Satan didn’t care which of them survived this encounter; either outcome would entertain him. “And you’re dumb enough to go for it,” she goaded. “Why? I’m betting on Lilith. She’s got you pussy-whipped. She has a plan to irritate Satan, and you’re the collateral damage.”
The vamp glared and licked the tip of a fang. “You’ll be the one sporting scars, luv.”
He was probably right, but she wasn’t going to think about that now. “Really? I think Satan is using me to get rid of you. You’re not worth his time, so he’s betting on me.”
“This is Vegas.” He assumed a classic Elvis pose. “A city built on playing the odds. Of course, there are ways to even them up a bit.”
She jumped back from a wild swing of his fist. His goal had been to knock her off her game and it had worked, but she didn’t let it show. Sometimes, like now, a Mark’s best weapon was their bravado. “I take it you’re not talking about counting cards.”
“Location, location, location.” He tried to kick her, but she blocked him with a downward chop of her forearm. “And making sure every one of your Mark mates from Mesquite to Baker was…indisposed, increasing the odds that you’d be the one sent after me.”
Fists clenching, Eve bit back a curse. Once again, other Marks had been placed in the line of fire because of her. She was gaining a reputation for making life harder for others. That perception was compounded by the mistaken belief that having Cain as a mentor made her life easier. Pretty soon she would have a similar number of enemies on both sides.
She exhaled and steeled her nerves. The vamp had deliberately done something heinous to get on the short list to be vanquished. She wasn’t going to ask how he’d pissed off the seraphim. What mattered was that he’d deliberately crossed the line for the sole purpose of getting to her. Someone, somewhere had suffered because of her. Maybe multiple people.
The thought made her homicidal.
Eve wrapped one arm loosely around her waist, leaving the hand holding the spear hanging at her side. The façade of vulnerability was calculated. When the vamp sidled closer, she lashed out.
Striking him in the temple with one fist, she followed with a kick to his shin. When he leaped toward her, she met him halfway, their bodies colliding with teeth-rattling violence. His greater weight shoved her back. An inch away from hitting the roof in a pained sprawl, his wings burst free.
Spinning in the air like a speeding bullet, they left the safety of the roof in a flurry of wings and sequined cape. The Mondego’s lights and neon signage swirled in a kaleidoscope around them. Eve wrapped her leg around his, calf to calf, ankle to ankle. Hanging on for her life.
The moment she locked on to him, all traces of amusement faded from his face. Eve wished she could find the situation funny. It really should be. Just a few months ago, the thought of flying over Las Vegas with a blond, vampyric Elvis in a yellow jumpsuit would have been a teenage acid trip come back to haunt her. That she found it so “normal” now sparked a level of frustration and fury she’d thought was long gone. She was pissed enough to almost forget she was terrified of heights.
&nb
sp; Almost. Not quite.
The vamp hissed. He bared pointed fangs, his irises red and laser bright. His hand fisted in her hair and yanked her head back, exposing her neck.
Damned if she’d be the in-flight meal.
Rubbing her leg up and down the length of his like a lover, Eve shimmied his pant leg up and worked his sock down. The moment her anklet met his bare skin, his wings and fangs retracted instantaneously.
They dropped like a stone.
The vamp screamed and clutched her tighter, as if she could save him from the inevitable crash.
Their downward spiral increased in speed with every rotation. Blood rushed through her ears, nearly obliterating the sound of his frantically flapping cape.
“There’s more than one way to wear a necklace,” she yelled, hoping her timing wasn’t skewed by her dizziness.
A parked Mondego service truck rushed up to meet them. She jerked hard to the left, positioning the Infernal beneath her. They hit the roof of the cab with enough force to crush it and burst all four tires. The pain of the collision was softened by the vampyre, whose bones shattered audibly. His inhuman scream sprayed a fine mist of blood into her face.
Eve briefly registered the agony of sharply angled metal digging into her thigh. She lifted her head, wincing at the feel of the semigelatinous body beneath her. The vamp gurgled as she shifted. He’d heal in time, but she wasn’t going to let that happen.
“When you get back to Hell,” she wheezed, “tell Satan if he wants his gift returned, he’ll have to come get it himself.”
With the last of her strength, she angled the stub of the spear and pushed it through his chest cavity, finding his heart and finishing the job. He burst into ash.
Broken, Eve closed her eyes and sank into oblivious darkness.
CHAPTER 5
“I will not mention the destruction of yet another vehicle,” Gadara said while pacing in front of the windows of her Mondego suite. The view behind him was of the Eiffel Tower and a thriving Las Vegas strip.