The streetlights flicker on as Niko pulled onto Eureka Boulevard. He didn’t look ready to talk, and I didn’t want to put my foot in my mouth again, so I kept quiet and used the time to evaluate my feelings. Was I upset that I wasn’t planning a weekend of fun with friends or that my evening was going to be spent doing work that most people would tell me was a delusional fantasy?
Niko turned to drive in the opposite direction as the construction site, and I got my answer in the form of a stab of disappointment. I’d been looking forward to tracking down the teens. I squelched my sigh.
The BMW’s purr changed to a growl as Niko accelerated, pushing me into the soft leather. I tried not to compare the BMW to my Honda. My car was only five years old, and it was reliable and efficient, but it had not been designed with this sort of luxury in mind—or this kind of power. Mr. Pitt had mentioned bonuses for hazard pay, right? Surely a demon qualified. Would one demon captured equal a down payment on a car like this?
“Where are we going?” I asked. Better to risk embarrassing myself than contemplate how shallow my motivations were.
“There’s a spot near the hotel that’s seen increased activity. It feels like a spill-over source.”
“Do you think there’ll be a hound there?” I asked, then could have bitten my own tongue when Niko gave me a quick, knowing glance.
“It’s a possibility.”
He didn’t add anything else, and I realized he was going to make me work for my answers. Annoyance helped clear the last of the proximity-induced fog of lust. “If there is, what do you recommend I do?”
“With pet wood? Not a lot. You’ll need a net, for sure. If you don’t have one of those, your best bet is a lux lucis–enhanced knife, preferably thrown so the hound can’t get too close to you.”
I blinked at his matter-of-fact tone and for the first time wondered about the things he’d killed and what sort of toll that had taken on his mind. The hound I’d encountered hadn’t looked much different than an abused dog in normal sight. I didn’t think I could kill a dog, no matter how evil it was. I also thought Niko was giving me a lot more credit than I deserved if he thought I could throw a knife at a moving target and hit it.
“What’s so special about a net?” I asked.
“Hound nets are made with natural fibers that hold lux lucis better than metals, so you can charge them before you throw them over a hound. The lux lucis will hold them captive until you’re ready to deal with them.”
I swallowed hard at the thought of pinning a dog down before killing it. It seemed worse than killing it with a thrown knife. At least then it had a fighting chance.
What have I gotten myself into? I asked myself for the thousandth time.
To my surprise, Niko pulled into The Golden Goose’s lot. The parking spaces close to the strip of businesses were crowded, but Niko parked even farther away than necessary. From across the long parking lot, I examined the bar. The other businesses were still busy with customers and employees, but the bar had barely opened its doors to the Friday-night crowd, and at a little before five, it was hardly more active than it had been on Wednesday night when Bridget and I had made our appearance. Wednesday felt like a lifetime ago.
“Give me the guns,” Niko said, snapping me back into the moment.
I handed over the weapons and their holsters and Niko got out and put them in the trunk. I got out, too, and eyed the tacky yellow goose in the backlit sign above the bar’s door. I blinked. The world turned off its lights. The Golden Goose was located in an outdated strip mall where landscaping had even been an afterthought. There were no trees or bushes to offer shade to the parked cars, and the only thing that relieved the nearly solid charcoal landscape in Primordium were the white and gray souls of people walking to their cars. Though I could see a few people through the windows adjacent the bar, The Golden Goose was still impossible to see into through its tinted black windows.
I dismissed the other businesses one at a time. I doubted that the local nerds or a demon would have had a need to visit the chiropractor’s office or Realtor. Farther down the strip was a tanning and beauty salon—which I ruled out, remembering the pasty skin and oily hair of the majority of men I’d encountered—and a dentist. Again, not a place you’d typically visit unless you’re a local, doubly so if you’re one of the soda-junkie fans from the convention. I wondered if the nerds even bothered to brush their teeth, and I shuddered.
The Golden Goose had to be the place, and everything looked fine from the outside.
“I don’t see anything amiss,” I said when Niko came up beside me. I took a moment to admire his soul, which radiated strength and confidence with nearly visible pulses of pure white. I blinked to normal vision to help pull my gaze from him.
Of course, Niko in normal vision was just as hard not to ogle. Especially his lips. I’d never known a man to have lips that fit the stereotypical “begged to be kissed” description before, but his brought the phrase to mind. They were also moving as he spoke, and I made myself focus.
“This is the place. I can feel it from here. You check inside the bar. I’ll check the back. Try not to draw attention.”
“Okay,” I said to Niko’s back. I shouldered my purse and marched toward the bar. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I figured I’d know it when I saw it. Since the outside looked clean, that meant I could watch Niko walk away without a twinge of guilt.
I happily admired how well he filled out his jeans until I ran into the hitch of an exceptionally long truck.
“Oww!” I stifled the urge to kick the hitch to let it see how it liked it, but since I was afraid the truck’s owner might misconstrue the gesture, I hobbled along, embarrassment making me pretend that nothing had happened. I consoled myself with the fact that if I could walk on it, my leg wasn’t broken.
Limping up to the front door, I checked Niko’s status. He was about to slip down the side of the building, but he’d paused to watch me with a puzzled expression. I straightened and gave him a jaunty wave, then rushed inside the bar.
A band was setting up a stage and equipment on the right side of the bar, and all the empty couches and chairs had been rearranged to accommodate the loss of floor space. The pool tables were similarly deserted, and the bartender was futzing about the garnish station. The TVs were on and muted, and the lights were low. With the tinted windows blocking the outside world’s fading evening light, it was impossible to tell the real time. No one had bothered to turn on the music yet, which lent a strangely intimate feel to the place, like I’d interrupted everyone during nonwork hours.
Only two people sat at the bar.
Shockingly, I knew one of them.
“Madison? What are you doing here?” Tim asked.
I strode across the floor, secretly pleased that Tim remembered me and that he was standing so he could greet me with a friendly hug. His golden brown hair had received an expensive cut in the last few days, like he’d upgraded from a hairdresser to a movie-set hair stylist. He was dressed much the same as last time, in light gray slacks, a white shirt, and a gray and blue checkered tie—and once again, he’d found a blue that matched his eyes, though I’d swear that this time his eyes were darker, closer to navy than sky blue. They practically twinkled as he pulled back from the hug.
The smile he flashed warmed me, and I shook my head at my rampaging hormones. Tim should have paled in comparison to the last man I’d seen, but when I smiled up at him, I had a hard time remembering exactly what Niko looked like. I congratulated my decision to not remove the makeup Joy had so artfully applied. I probably looked ten times better than the last time Tim had seen me, if you disregarded the braided hair.
“What a surprise to find you here again,” I said, avoiding Tim’s question.
“A pleasant surprise, I hope,” he fished.
“Of course.” We smiled at each other a moment longer, then I took the seat beside his at the bar and he eased back onto his stool, br
ushing against my knee as he did so. The touch distracted me, and when I looked up, Tim was signaling to the bartender for a drink for me.
“Oh, I’m not—” I caught myself before I finished the sentence and admitted I hadn’t come to the bar to drink. What other reason could Tim assume I’d be there for? I couldn’t exactly confess I was there to check out some possible evil creatures in the area. Even in my head, the idea sounded preposterous. I did squirm a little in my seat, wondering how I was going to explain this to Niko when he arrived.
Tim was waiting for me to finish my sentence.
“Ah, I’m actually waiting for a coworker,” I said, giving him a weak smile.
“Oh? A new friend from the new job? Sounds like things are going well.”
“They are. I work with some really nice people.”
“I’ve been curious since we spoke: What does working in a bumper sticker company entail?”
“So far, not much,” I said ruefully. “Mostly training and odds and ends.” I didn’t feel like talking about my job, partially because it reminded me that I was rather bad at it, but mostly because it reminded me that I should actually be working and not talking with a handsome man. “What about you? How’s—what was it again? Marketing?”
“I’m about to close a big deal, if I’m not mistaken, and I don’t think I am.” He winked at me, like I was in on a secret.
I felt myself relax. It was nice to flirt and chat with someone normal. No talk of demons or hounds or evil or souls. Just ordinary get-to-know-you casual conversation.
Tim glanced around the bar, and I took the opportunity to study him. My memory had not done him justice. He wasn’t Niko or even Dr. Love status, but he was nothing to scoff at, either. Realizing I was staring, and I made myself look past him. I followed his gaze toward the back of the bar and wondered how Niko was doing and if he’d found anything. If he had, I was sure he could take care of it by himself. Plus, he’d told me to blend in, and I’d arouse suspicions if I abruptly abandoned Tim now.
I took a sip of my drink. Tim had ordered me a peach margarita, one of my favorite drinks. More points for him.
“Where’s your friend tonight?”
“Bridget? I don’t know. This was more of a work thing.”
“That’s right. When did you say your coworker was getting here?”
“Any minute now.”
“That’s too bad,” Tim said, making a production of looking at his watch. “I’ve really got to be running.” He stood and pulled a twenty from his wallet. “Hopefully I’ll see you again soon,” he said, and there was a definite leer to his grin. “By the way, I really like what you’ve done with your hair.”
“Thanks. Bye.” I watched him leave and was surprised to note that I was glad he was gone. His final glance had rubbed me wrong.
Shaking off the whole encounter, I turned back toward the bar to check to see if he’d left enough to cover my drink or if I needed to add any money. I was pleased to find my drink and tip were covered.
“He was the best-looking one we’ve had in here all week, and you had to go and run him off,” said a voice two stools down.
I turned to look at the only other customer in the bar, a bleach-blond woman in her late forties, fighting a winning battle against aging. She was dressed in standard office apparel: a pencil-thin black skirt that was just this side of being too short, and a button-up blouse that had probably made use of a few more buttons when she was still at the office.
“I’ve seen better,” I said, thinking of Niko.
I remembered my purpose and blinked, annoyed that I’d allowed Tim to distract me. It would have been interesting to see what his soul looked like.
It was a good thing the blonde had turned back to the TV and her drink, because I got a good look at her soul, and my face contorted the way I imagine it would were a slug to swim across my tongue. She was covered from neck to knees with imps, each of them twice the size of my fists, all attached like leeches to her soul, sucking away with stomach-churning greed.
She wasn’t the only victim. The bar had been dipped in atrum. It coated the furniture, bar, and floor. Imps sucked on the band members, three vervet dancing among the liquor bottles behind the counter, and Tim’s vacated stool was a fountain of imps erupting from the plastic cushion. How many had left clinging to Tim? How many were attached to me?
I leapt to my feet and did a quick inspection of myself. Two imps clung to my left foot, another to my knee, my hands were smudged with black, and a sharp cold feeling behind me told me I likely had an imp or two clinging to my rear end.
All those wasted hours at the convention finally paid off, and I clinched tight against the need to scream and jump spasmodically, but it was a close thing.
Unattached imps drifted like dust bunnies on an unseen breeze across the floor, swirling around my feet and the base of the blonde’s stool. Several small imps broke away from the herd and latched on to me. Even more leapt for the other woman. The rest drifted away toward the band members.
I clung to the lip of the bar with a white-knuckled grip and tried to figure out what to do. Mr. Pitt hadn’t let me kill the imps at the convention because he hadn’t wanted to raise the suspicions of the demon, and because he didn’t think I could take them all out before . . . I didn’t know how to finish that thought. Before I was overwhelmed? Pulled under? Killed?
Now’s not the time to think about it, I told myself, but I couldn’t get the picture out of my body of being dragged to the ground under a wave of imps and sucked dry, until all that remained of me was a mummylike corpse of atrum.
“Can I get you anything else?”
I jumped and whirled to face the bartender. A vervet perched on his shoulder and licked the man’s check, leaving behind a slimy black trail.
“Are you okay?” the man asked, taking a careful step back.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the vervet, but I fought for control of my expression. It wasn’t easy. I managed a smile that had the bartender backing up another step. “I’m fine.”
I whirled toward the door and slammed into a blazing white, an imp-free chest.
“Niko!” I breathed with such relief it sounded intimate.
Niko took in the scene with one glance. “What are you doing?”
“Panicking,” I whispered, too happy to see him to try to play it cool.
“I see what you mean,” said the blonde behind me. It took me a moment to realize she was referring to my earlier comment: Tim didn’t hold a candle to Niko’s macho-modelesque good looks.
Niko met my gaze. We were separated by only the few inches I’d bounced back after slamming into him. He had one hand on my arm to steady me, the other resting at his back, where I guessed he probably had some sort of weapon concealed. He was taller than me by a good five or six inches, but with him looking down at me from so close, I could almost reach up and plant a kiss on his lips.
His eyes darted over my face, and the corners of his mouth tightened. Apparently kissing was not on his mind. With a warm hand to my back, he guided me away from the blonde toward the couches.
“What have you done so far?” he asked quietly.
I gave him a blank look. I doubted he wanted to hear about me flirting with Tim.
“I didn’t know what to do,” I said. “At the convention, Mr. Pitt wouldn’t let me touch anything. Can I do that here? I’m afraid the others will notice, but I need to get these things off me! They’re disgusting! I don’t know how much longer—”
“Whoa, slow down. Yes, we’re cleaning up the place, so you can take out whatever you like. Start with the ones on you.”
I didn’t wait for him to finish. I gathered lux lucis and pushed it into the imps I could see on my feet and knee, and more carefully into the ones I couldn’t see on my behind. Then I pressed against the smudges on my hands. The black blotches of raw atrum didn’t want to disintegrate, and my soul looked taxed from my exertions once it
was clean.
“There’s a couple of trees out back. Go recharge, then go to my car and get a net.” He pressed his keys into my palm and my fingers convulsed around them.
“A net?”
“A hound’s been here recently, and I want to be prepared. Do you have your pet wood?”
I rummaged through my purse until I pulled it free.
“Not the handiest location for your only weapon.”
There wasn’t anything to say to that, so I used a diversionary tactic. “How do we get the imps off the woman?” Aside from doing some karate around her. While it’d worked for the few imps on the construction worker, I didn’t think the lady would sit still for a full-body fondle conducted about an inch above her skin. At least not by me. I eyed Niko again. She would probably sit through anything he asked.
“I’ll show you. Remember, though, you only want to attempt what I’m going to do if you can handle all of imps in the vicinity. You wouldn’t be able to do this right now.”
As true as I knew his words to be, I didn’t like hearing them.
“Don’t stick around too long, either,” Niko said. “Once you understand what I’m doing, go recharge and get that net. Don’t let any more imps stay on you.”
I nodded to show I understood, and swallowed my sarcastic comments. It wasn’t Niko’s fault that I couldn’t do my job as well as he could, but it felt like he was rubbing salt in a wound with each cautionary statement.
Niko sauntered over to the bar, casually brushing his hand along the back of an atrum-tainted couch along the way. Lux lucis spread from his hand outward across the couch, eating away at the atrum until the couch was a normal nonlife charcoal color in Primordium.
Cool trick, I thought. The only thing similar that I knew was a ward, but the wards that Doris had shown me how to make stayed only where I placed the lux lucis. The energy hadn’t spread at all. Tentatively, I touched the back of a nearby chair that was smeared with atrum. I gathered a trickle of lux lucis into my fingertips and pressed it to the fabric. When I lifted my hand, five white dots remained in the middle of the atrum, and they began to fade even as I watched. I put my fingers back to the fabric and tried to push lux lucis out the tips, envisioning it flowing down the chair.
A Fistful of Evil: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 1) Page 17