by SM Reine
She was still on about that? “If you’re stashing kids in the temple, then what comes after that might be a call to the cops.”
Isobel frowned as she dropped the basket at my feet. “Kids? You mean Ann?”
“Is that the name of your little diversion upstairs? How did she end up here? Kidnapping?”
“She’s vedae som matis bougaknati.” Whatever the fuck that meant. “Don’t go near Ann,” Isobel said firmly. “You have to listen to me, Cèsar. I can help you. I want to help you.”
I strained against my bindings. “Yeah, I can tell. That’s why you lied to me about being able to talk to Erin and tied me to a chair.”
Her eyes lit with fire. “Fine. You think I’m a fraud? Let me show you how much of a fraud I am.”
She kicked over the basket. The lid flew off and hit my shins. Bones spilled out—dry human bones. I would have recoiled if I hadn’t been attached to the chair.
There were no drums this time, no fake accent, no chanting.
Isobel extended her hands over the bones in front of her, palms facing the ground. She closed her eyes.
“Come to me,” she whispered.
The magic slapped me upside the head like a folding chair. My eyes burned and sinuses tingled and I sneezed three times in quick succession. The room blurred. All that magic that I had felt in at Shady Groves Cemetery was back, strong enough to choke me.
Once I could see again, all of the oxygen vanished from my lungs.
There was an apparition in front of me. The full figure of a naked, hairless human man, who looked baffled to be in the basement. His dark skin looked inhumanly gray. And—Jesus—I could see the basket through his shins.
He was a ghost.
His mouth moved, but Isobel spoke for him, still whispering, still in her true voice. “Where am I? What’s going on?” Her eyes were empty, like the ghostly figure had taken control of her.
“Holy hell,” I said.
Isobel stepped around the apparition to touch my shoulder. The ghost’s empty stare followed her movements.
“Do you believe me now, Cèsar?” she asked softly.
Oh yeah. I believed her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Isobel had parked her RV behind the Temple of the Hand of Death. She dragged me to it, delicate fingers encircling my wrist, eyes on the surrounding road and the creatures milling between buildings.
I must have been unconscious longer than I’d thought—it was starting to get dark by the time we left. Dangerous time to be on the streets of Helltown, even for a woman dressed like a priestess. During the day, only the corporeal, daywalking demons could go outside, making it relatively safe for visiting OPA agents. Once night fell, shit got real.
The OPA specifically forbade agents from entering Helltown in the afternoon to make sure that they wouldn’t be there at nightfall.
I didn’t trust a lot about the OPA right now, but I trusted their sense of self-preservation.
Isobel shoved the door to her RV open and pushed me inside. I held my breath when I stepped onto the upper step, prepared for her magic to overwhelm me. All witches have a habit of marking our territory with wards and curses, which can be enough to fuck up my nose if the witch is powerful. And Isobel was definitely powerful.
Yet I didn’t sneeze. I didn’t feel even the slightest tingle.
The RV looked even more retro on the inside. She had shag carpet, a beanbag chair. Her furniture was upholstered in plasticky white material. All she was missing was a lava lamp. But even though her kitchen counters were covered in jars of herbs and bags of—oh Lord, was that blood? I didn’t see an altar.
“Don’t you cast magic in here?” I asked as she climbed in behind me, slamming the door.
“Not exactly,” Isobel said. She dropped the velvet skirts. They puddled around her ankles, and she kicked them away. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts underneath, which clashed with the remaining corset in a sexy kind of way.
“What’s ‘not exactly’ supposed to mean?”
She tossed her veils to the floor and climbed into the driver’s seat. “It means that I’ve never had a dead person in my RV, so I’ve never had to cast a spell in here.”
The engine groaned to life and my eyebrows climbed toward my hairline. Vehicles weren’t meant to work within Helltown, not with all the infernal energy. Mechanics got all gummed up. “Then how’d you get the RV working?”
“I have talented witchy friends,” Isobel said, turning on the headlights. I stood behind her, hands braced on the back of her chair, as she wrenched the wheel to the right and got onto the bumpy road. “They know things.”
If she knew the kind of witches powerful enough to shield her RV against infernal energy, then I wanted to know those witches, too. Heck, the entire OPA would want to know those witches. If we could bring our SUVs and BearCat assault vehicles into the neighborhood, it would change the game in a big way.
Later. After I wasn’t a fugitive anymore.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Isobel shot a smile over her shoulder at me. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”
The shadows were growing long, stretching in spindly fingers over the pavement. The darkness didn’t have that blue cast to it that sunset often gets. It was black. Blacker than black. The shadows weren’t just shadows, and they were creeping toward the RV.
The engine grumbled, floor bucking under my feet as Isobel drove toward the nearest exit.
A group of men appeared in the street. They were all narrow-shouldered and wearing studded leather jackets. They didn’t walk. They sauntered, slouched, almost slithered, until they stood in the middle of the road in front of us.
Just a glance at the three of them filled my head with dirty mental images of lips and tongue and fingers. I wasn’t gay or anything; everyone with a pulse would get desperately horny around these guys, and I wasn’t any exception. Most humans were useless against a demon’s thrall.
They were incubi. The whole reason I avoided the north side of Helltown.
Monique must have told them that she’d run into me.
“Run them over,” I said.
“What?”
“You heard me!”
Isobel slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop on the gravel. Her bumper stopped inches from their legs. The trio of incubi didn’t even twitch.
“Are you crazy, Izzy? Don’t fucking stop!”
She twisted the wheel, tried to move forward. One of the incubi stepped in front of the RV. Pressed his pale hand against the windshield.
His thrall rolled through me.
Incubi are demons that look like humans in all the ways that count. They’ve got faces like ours. Two arms, two legs, all the normal parts. But they don’t come from Earth. They come from somewhere much hotter and darker. And they don’t survive by eating food like normal people do.
They feed on sex. And they can make anyone desire them using their powers of thrall.
That probably sounds like a useless power, as far as demon talents go, but have you ever tried killing someone that you desperately want to fuck? Let me tell you—it’s a hell of a defense.
And these guys didn’t just want sex.
They wanted me dead.
Even knowing that they were out to kill us, dirty thoughts flashed through my mind. It built quickly as the incubus shoved all his demon energies at us. Naked bodies, big, long dicks, dripping pussies.
It wasn’t the first time I’d faced an incubus. I knew how to break free.
We needed distance.
“Isobel, go!” I said.
But her eyes were glazed over, breath quickening. Her hands dropped from the steering wheel into her lap.
One of the other incubi was approaching our door.
I wanted to rip off my clothes and let him enter. Who cared if he wanted to kill us? It would be sweet, orgasmic death. I wanted to let him have me. I wanted to let him have Isobel. I wanted…
Distance.
He opened the door. I slammed it shut and locked it. Through the window, I got a great look at his jacket. I wasn’t surprised to notice that it was being held shut by silver needles. That was a mark of the local incubus mafia—the gang that ruled Los Angeles and, not coincidentally, loathed my guts.
“You can’t fucking have us,” I said. It was hard to speak. I wasn’t actually sure that the words made it out of my mouth. The thrall was turning me stupid.
Lord, I wanted him. He wasn’t even attractive. Way too square. Way too male. But his black eyes smoldered and it took all my strength to turn away. If I kept staring, I was going to open the door for him—and I didn’t want him and his silver needles to be able to reach me.
Isobel still wasn’t moving. She was rubbing between her thighs, groaning softly.
At another time, that would have been a fun distraction. But not now. “Sorry, baby,” I muttered, shoving her out of the chair. She didn’t even fight me as she spilled to the floor.
The other incubi were approaching the windshield now. In about five seconds, I was going to be surrounded by so many demons that I’d be helpless to the desire, just like Isobel.
So I didn’t give them five seconds.
I slammed my foot on the gas.
The RV didn’t have much juice behind it, especially in Helltown, but it lurched forward. I knocked into two of the incubi, who hadn’t backed up fast enough. One of them fell under my wheels. The bump was way too satisfying.
The guy at the door ran along our side, slamming his hands into the door. I couldn’t hear what he was shouting over the engine noises.
Every fiber of my being wanted to stop the RV—every fiber except that narrow sliver of self-preservation that was screaming. Stopping would mean death. So I kept my foot flat on the pedal.
The last incubus fell away. He couldn’t keep up.
I swung the wheel around, turning a tight corner. The iron arch leading back to civilization appeared at the end of the street.
We passed through the barrier. My heart contracted and my sinuses itched.
The instant that we were out of Helltown’s wards, Domingo’s cell phone rang.
I didn’t answer it. I drove faster.
The more distance I put between Helltown and me, the faster the thrall faded. It took three blocks before I could think of anything but turning back and letting our attackers have their way with me.
I dared a look over my shoulder at Isobel as I careened down the streets. “Izzy? You okay?”
She was pulling her shorts up and buttoning them, cheeks flushed bright red. “I’m fine. I think.” She sat in the passenger’s seat, twisted around to watch Helltown disappear through the back window.
“Are we being followed?”
“I don’t see anyone,” she said. She let her head drop into her hands. “I’m so sorry about that, Cèsar. That was my fault. I never should have gone back to vedae som matis duvak—they were probably watching for my RV.”
“Wait, what? Why would the incubi be after you? I thought they were after me.”
She frowned. “Huh?”
Interesting. It seemed we had a mutual enemy. “Not a friend of the Silver Needles?”
Isobel stuffed her breasts back into her corset.
“No,” she said flatly.
Domingo’s phone rang again, interrupting us. This time, I answered it. “Domingo here.”
It was Suzy. “You still in LA, Cèsar?”
I had never been happier to hear her voice before. I didn’t bother asking how she knew that I had my brother’s cell phone. Suzy knew everything. “I thought you were done with me.”
“I’ve come to terms with the fact that you’re not leaving town until you’ve got your answers. So you want to talk to Erin Karwell or not?”
“You found her.”
“I’m breaking about fifty laws that most Americans don’t even know exist to tell you this. I could lose my job. I could be imprisoned. I could be killed. I hope you’re grateful.”
“Oh, I’m grateful. I could just about kiss you,” I said.
Isobel gave me a side eye. I ignored her and kept driving.
“Don’t go all sappy on me.” But Suzy’s voice had softened. “Her body wasn’t taken to the usual morgue. She was sent to Bittman Labs, out in Torrance.”
Torrance? That wasn’t anywhere near the scene of the crime. But I knew where it was, so I got into the turn lane. “I owe you, Suze.”
“Hell yeah, you do.” A pause, and then, “Do you still have the necrocog?”
“She’s with me right now.”
Isobel gave me another look, this one more warning. The same kind of look Aunt Raina used to give me before beating sense into my ass with a chancla.
“I guess that’s good,” Suzy said. “I’m going to meet you at Bittman Labs. I’m on my way now.”
“Don’t. You’ve gotten yourself in enough danger.”
“Did it sound like I was asking for your opinion? I’ll meet you around back in, what, half an hour? Maybe forty-five. Don’t go in without me.”
Suzy hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” Isobel asked, a hard edge to her voice.
“Suzume Takeuchi. Suzy. The woman we visited.”
“Your coworker at the Office of Preternatural Affairs? The place that’s sending guys out to execute us?”
“That has nothing to do with Suzy.”
“Are you so sure about that?” When I stopped at the intersection, Isobel grabbed my arm, forcing me to look at her. “If someone in the OPA is out to get you, how do you know that you can trust anyone that works there?”
Eduardo and Joey were friends of Suzy’s. But I shook off the thought as soon as it crept over me. A lot of crazy shit had happened the last few days, but if I could trust anything, it was my taste in friends. “You don’t know Suzy,” I said. Isobel made a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat. That sound was enough to take me from offended to pissed in two seconds flat. “How do I know I can trust you? You’re the one fucking around with demons in Helltown.”
“I’m the one the incubi in Helltown want dead,” she said dryly.
I winced. “Good point. The enemy of my enemy, or…whatever.”
“She’s been in Helltown,” Isobel said.
“What? Who?”
“Your Suzy. I asked around. Does she usually wear business suits and throw money at all her contacts? She was in Helltown this morning. Yesterday, too.”
That was news to me. But it didn’t mean anything. Suzy had multiple cases, just like I usually did. She could have been chasing down anyone. “We can trust Suzy.”
A smile flickered over Isobel’s lips. “I hope so, because you’re staking both of our lives on it.”
The light turned green. We got on the freeway and headed for Torrance.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There was only one car in the parking lot when we got to Bittman Labs, and it wasn’t Suzy’s. Isobel passed the building at a crawl, leaning forward to squint out the windshield. “Is that hers?” she asked.
“No, Suzy said she’d be around back.”
Isobel hesitated, knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Last chance to escape with our lives.”
“I won’t have a life if we leave,” I said.
She parked the RV behind the morgue.
Suzy was already waiting for us on foot. No car in sight. She gave me a look through the windshield that could have curdled milk—or maybe that look was for the giant teal beast that came groaning around the corner.
I jumped out.
“Hey, Scooby,” Suzy said by way of greeting. “Nice Mystery Machine. Why is your bumper bloody?”
It was Isobel who responded from behind me. “It’s incubus blood. Don’t worry about it.” She clambered out of the RV, pulling a t-shirt over the corset that had more holes than cloth in it. The Cabo Wabo logo was stretched over her ample breasts.
Suzy’s expression changed completely as she looked Isob
el up and down, hand resting almost casually on her hip where she usually wore a holster. No gun tonight. Probably for the best. The two of them together were a real Odd Couple, all right—Suzy buttoned up tight in a suit and tie, Isobel fast and loose.
“Agent Takeuchi,” Suzy said, extending her hand. “We haven’t officially met yet.” It was hard to tell what she was thinking, but the vein that had appeared in her forehead made me think it wasn’t real good.
After a beat, Isobel shook her hand. “I’m Isobel Stonecrow.” Was that a moment of hesitation before she said her name? Man, I wanted to run her face through our databases. See what other pseudonyms she might have.
“Why is there incubus blood on your RV?”
Suzy didn’t know about my history with the Silver Needles, and I didn’t want to have to explain why incubi might be attacking me. When Isobel opened her mouth to reply, I interrupted her. “We can talk later. We’re in kind of a rush with Erin now, aren’t we?” I asked.
“I guess so,” Suzy said. “Where are your supplies for the spell, Stonecrow?”
Isobel glanced at me.
I answered for her. “She doesn’t need them.”
“But the ritual sites we’ve found…”
“Fake,” I said.
“Interesting.” I’d seen Suzy in a lot of weird moods before, but not this one. She was usually brash. Aggressive. But this chilly thing, this was new. She jerked a thumb toward the back door. “I called ahead. Rob left it unlocked. Just gotta go in.”
She turned and headed inside.
Isobel hung back, hesitating to follow.
“Problem?” I asked.
“This is going to sound like the obvious statement of the day, but there are a lot of dead bodies in there.”
And she could probably hear every last one of them. I wouldn’t be eager to go inside either. “Could you call up Erin from out here?”
“I need to be closer than that.”
But she didn’t look like she was in a hurry to make that happen.
Suzy opened the back door, propping it against her foot so that it stayed open. “Coming?”
“I’m coming,” Isobel said, but she still didn’t move.