by SM Reine
“I can deal with rough customers.” I was breathing hard now, and it wasn’t because I’d been fighting against him. His smell was overwhelming in the nearness of my bedroom. His sweat and my incense mingled to form a head-spinning perfume. “I did it before you came around, and I’ll be doing it after you leave.” It hurt to even say that.
“You don’t deal with customers like my gang. And not like the Needles.” Cooper dropped down to give me a short kiss. I strained up against him.
But then he stood and left, slamming the door behind him.
XIII
I shook as I got dressed. It was hard to put on my string bikini when my fingers trembled so hard, but I did. And then I put a short latex skirt over the bottoms, jammed my feet into knee-high platform boots, and stuck a kitchen knife down the calf.
Cooper thought I didn’t have sense. He was wrong. I had sense all right. I had a sense that I was going to stab the fuck out of the assholes that had followed me to Lobo Norte. I’d wait until they were drunk, and then I’d finish them off. Forget the truce—I’d risk everything to get rid of these assholes. Even my life.
I’d never killed a man before. I’d definitely never killed an incubus. But I’d seen people die, and I’d done cadaver autopsies in school, so I knew where everything important was located. I was pretty sure I could hit a heart if I was aiming for it.
On impulse, I grabbed The Devil. His leer made my trembling slow.
“I’m going to kill you tonight,” I told him. I half-expected the card to set my hands on fire, but nothing happened.
Shoving it down the waist of my skirt, I pulled my braids back with a headband, put a sexy gold cuff on my bicep, and headed out to serve drinks.
The rear door of the bar stood open to let air circulate. Night had fallen, but heat clung to the desert, and there were no swamp coolers without a working generator. I stood in the doorway for a minute, letting the noises wash over me. The knives in my boots felt heavy and cold.
The cross-draft carried voices to me, along with the clinking of glasses. Big Papa was already entertaining. “Nice to see you out here,” he was saying. His rumbling voice was distinctive.
“You wouldn’t meet us anywhere else. We didn’t have a choice.” I was guessing that was one of the Silver Needles.
“I’ve got better shit to do than heel when a demon snaps his fingers.”
“We don’t want you to heel. We want a partnership.”
“I don’t talk business without drinks,” Big Papa said. “Tequila?”
That was my cue.
But now that I was there, outside my bar, the idea of trying to infiltrate had me frozen. It was one thing to think I’ll kill all those assholes when I was alone in my trailer. In practice, it was something else entirely.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat and headed inside, careful not to make noise as I slipped behind the bar.
There were eight men sitting at three tables in my bar. Six of them were Fang Brothers, including Cooper and Mad Dog. One of the others was the pale-skinned man that had blown the generator. The other was new—not Peyton, thankfully. Judging by his narrow shoulders, black eyes, and sleek black hair, he was probably an incubus.
I grabbed fresh glasses, took a bottle of tequila off the shelf, found a tray. I poured shots.
“You heard me,” Big Papa said. “Drinks. Now.” He wasn’t speaking to me.
Cooper got up to fetch the tequila. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me. I could tell he was thinking of throwing me over his shoulder and hauling me out of the bar again, but if he did, they would wonder why. They would ask questions. I’d be no safer.
Fury flashed through his eyes. I didn’t react. I walked right past him like I didn’t know him, as if he didn’t make my blood burn and my body thirst. As if he really were a stranger.
I kept my eyes lowered as I stopped beside the table, tray resting on my shoulder. The men ignored me. I set the drinks down.
“We’ll give you lethe,” said the new incubus, grabbing a shotglass. I watched his long, slender fingers from the corner of my eye and wondered if they would match the handprints burned into Kelsie’s breasts. “We’ve got two crates just outside town for starters. More in Los Angeles, once you get there.”
They wanted the Fang Brothers in LA? A shot glass slipped out of my fingers and spilled across the table.
Big Papa growled at me, jerking back in his seat.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, turning to grab a rag.
Cooper already had one. He wiped up the table, his gaze hot on my face as he struggled not to speak.
“An entire crate of lethe cubes every month,” the incubus said. He still hadn’t even bothered to look at me. I was invisible, just background dressing in a bikini. “And then ten thousand dollars a week.”
“For what?” Big Papa asked.
“Finish the cage fights. But don’t pick the two or three strongest to join the pack. Pick the top ten, maybe twenty bikers, and change them.”
I walked away with my tray, going back to the bar. The back of my scarred neck prickled. It was hard acting normal, pretending that I wasn’t in the room with one of the demons responsible for destroying my life.
“That’s a lot of werewolves,” Mad Dog muttered.
“We want a lot of werewolves,” the other incubus said, the one who had threatened Gloria. “You heal all damage that isn’t inflicted with silver in minutes, even as humans. Right? That makes you a practically unlimited food source for the Silver Needles. That’s all we want out of your guys—fucking for food. Not so bad a fate, right?”
Big Papa grunted. “It’d make y’all invulnerable.”
An invulnerable incubus mafia in my home city, where my family lived.
“We brought some people with us that want to be changed,” the incubus went on, oblivious to my shaking hands and pounding heart behind the bar. “Men and women who are already down with the plan.”
“Your plan isn’t good enough,” Big Papa said.
“Is it the offer? Name your price.”
“A hundred thousand a month. Unlimited lethe, delivered wherever I want. Me and my boys, my gang, we’re not going to be trapped in Los Angeles while you try to fuck all the new wolves to death.”
“Done,” the incubus said.
“Fine.” Big Papa slammed his fist on the table. “More drinks.”
I hurried to obey.
The incubus said, “But there’s one other thing that we need. There’s a woman somewhere in Lobo Norte. You might have seen her. She used to belong to the Silver Needles, and we want her back.”
They wanted me. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind.
But they hadn’t realized who I was yet. Maybe they hadn’t seen any pictures of me, or maybe they just hadn’t looked all that close at the stripper serving them drinks. At least, not at my face.
I couldn’t let them see my panic. I kept my features smooth as I set fresh drinks on the table. It forced me to get close to the demons, brushing my bare skin against their leather jackets.
The smell of the incubus’s cologne was familiar. It brought me back to my darkest memory at a beach house in Los Angeles, to that week when I had been at the mercy of the mafia’s favorite torture method. They had used an entire bowl of silver needles on me. A few hundred of them. They’d shoved all of them through me one at a time until I felt like I was on fire.
“All you have to do is volunteer.” That was what the incubus had told me. He’d made it sound so innocent, so appealing. If I’d agreed to fuck him, the needles would go away.
But then he would fuck me to death, just like Big Papa mentioned.
So I’d kept my mouth shut, prayed that someone would find me, and let them stick another needle in. That wasn’t the part that had scarred me, though. It had been when they ripped the needles out. That was what had eventually formed the ridges of bumpy white tissue along my neck and shoulder, leaving me permanently disfigured.
“Did you check the Ranch for your woman?�
�� Big Papa asked, glancing at me as I stepped back again. Big Papa wasn’t stupid. He had to know they were asking for me. But he hadn’t given me away.
“Yeah. We thought we had her, but when Mac fucked her, she just about fell over dead. She was a half-succubus anyway. Wrong woman.” The incubus said it so casually, even though he had just confessed that one of his men had tried to kill Kelsie. “We didn’t sense her at the Ranch. Figure she’s gotta be hiding somewhere else.” Hiding right in plain sight.
“The folks who run Lobo Norte are out of town right now,” Big Papa said. “There’s a woman with them. You can see her when she comes back.”
The incubus smiled unpleasantly. “I think we will.”
I stood behind him with the tray, staring at the back of his leather jacket, thinking about plunging one of my kitchen knives between his shoulder blades.
Do it. Just do it, Ofelia. End him now.
Cooper was seated at Big Papa’s right hand, all his muscles tensed as he watched me. He’d intervene if I did something. I was certain of it.
“Okay. The rules of the cage match will change,” Big Papa said. “We’ll bite all the guys you want. That’s fine. But first, they gotta survive fights against my boys. Next fight, every single match is going to be against these guys.” He jerked his thumb at the other werewolves arrayed around him, including Old Yeller, Mad Dog…and Cooper. “We’ll keep each fight to five minutes. Fangs will kill everyone they can. Anyone who survives for that whole fight gets to be changed.”
The incubus drank another shot. “Sounds fair to me.” His eyes sliced over to me. I felt glare like hands gripping my shoulders. “That one of the Ranch girls?” I wasn’t even important enough for him to ask me personally. He was asking Big Papa.
Do it. Stab him.
My hand crept toward my boot.
The door opened, slamming against the wall. I jerked my fingers away.
Gloria and Johnny stepped in.
Relief flooded me, so powerful that my muscles liquefied instantly. I had to grab one of the nearby chairs to keep from falling over.
“What’s going on?” Gloria asked, eyes narrowed.
Big Papa shoved back his chair and stood. He was just as broad as she was, but much taller. “We’re having a meeting.”
She tossed her head back, meeting him glare for glare. “You’ve got a motel for that. My bar’s not open. Get out of here.”
“You talk to me like that, woman?” he asked.
“Yes. I do.” She lifted one fist. A canvas bag hung in her grip. “Get out of here. Now.”
Whatever was in the bag, it made Big Papa falter. His nostrils flared. The other werewolves reacted more strongly. They shied back, muttering among each other. The only one who remained quiet was Cooper.
The incubi stood, too. “Is this her, Papa?” Mac asked.
Before he could answer, Gloria snapped. “Out!”
To my amazement, the men left, filing past her one by one. Johnny rocked back on his heels looking smug. He’d always enjoyed their power over the biker gangs. He didn’t hesitate to show it. That arrogance was less dangerous on him—he wasn’t a woman, wasn’t a biker, wasn’t a threat or offensive. The Fangs and Needles barely looked at him on their way out.
Cooper was the last through the door. He looked at me over Gloria’s head, and there was the promise of pain in his eyes.
I was in trouble for putting myself in danger. Big trouble.
Then he, too, was gone.
Gloria kicked the door shut behind them and rounded on me. “You let them take over my bar. And you said you could take care of Lobo Norte on your own.”
My muscles hurt from relaxing after all that tension. My eyes stung. My cheeks burned.
Instead of answering, I burst into tears.
XIV
Gloria looked over the evidence of witchcraft in my trailer with a snort of disdain. She tossed my ritual knife aside, planted her hands on her hips, and said, “Really, Ofelia?”
I hadn’t had time to clean up my home before she dragged me back there, and I couldn’t make any excuses. I was done crying. I was done being a freaked out mess. I met her gaze with a fierce glare of my own. “Yes, really. There’s more to me than giving men boners. Get over it.”
Another snort. “Talk like that again and I’ll cut your tongue out with your paring knife.”
She probably meant it. I clenched my jaw instinctively.
“Ofelia saved Kelsie with this stuff,” Tatiana said. She had caught us on the way out of the bar and invited herself into my home. A week earlier, I would have protested letting one of the Ranch girls through my door. Now I was happy to see her and hear the news she had brought me. “She’d be dead if not for her.”
“You should probably stay out of it,” I muttered. Once Gloria was pissed about something, there was no slowing her down.
Gloria grabbed me by the chin. “I leave Lobo Norte for a week and a half, and look at you. Look at you! Hanging out in the whorehouse, casting magic, letting demons into my town, giving the bar to werewolves—”
“I didn’t give it to them!” I interrupted. “I can only do so much against Big Papa!”
She slapped me upside the head. Not hard, but it stung. “You’re not stripping on my bar again,” Gloria said. “You’re done.”
That hurt a lot more than the strike. “You can’t evict me.”
“I’m not evicting you. Are you too stupid to see that I’m trying to protect you?” she asked, exasperated.
I blinked. “Huh?”
“You know why Johnny never let you work at the Coyote Ranch?”
It took me a second to catch up with the change in subject. “Because he fucking hates me and doesn’t want me to have the money.”
“Because I told him what happened to you,” she said.
It was like a second slap. I glanced at Tatiana, but she was tinkering with my altar and pretending not to listen. “I asked you not to tell anyone. Especially Johnny.”
“I told him. Okay? He was gonna take you as one of his whores, so I told him, and he changed his mind. The Ranch girls are all volunteers. They’re happy to be there. Part-succubus, so they feed on fucking. Makes them feel good in all the ways. Johnny loves them, doesn’t want them hurt, and he didn’t want you hurt, neither.”
I stared at her, unable to process this shift in attitudes. The idea that Johnny might not hate me… No. It just didn’t jive. “I’m not a half-succubus,” I said slowly. “That’s why he wouldn’t take me, isn’t it? Not because he was trying to be nice to me.”
“Give him some credit. You’re not human. You’d have worked out fine.”
“What?”
“You’re not human,” Gloria said. “Don’t know what you are. Not a demon or angel. I can feel it.” She tapped her temple. “But you’re not human.”
“You’re not,” Tatiana agreed without looking over at me. She was digging her fingernail into the wax of one of my candles, drawing a line around its circumference. “I don’t think a normal witch would have been able to heal Kelsie, since she’s half-demon and all.”
I snatched the candle out of her hand and slammed it back into the ceramic mug. “You people are insane.”
“I didn’t want you fucking bikers or doing magic because you’re supposed to be hiding in Lobo Norte,” Gloria said. “You’re not hiding if you’re broadcasting all over the place!” Her long-nailed hands fluttered through the air. “No wonder they sent the card to you.”
The card. She knew.
“Thanks for checking in with me, Tatiana,” I said tightly. “I’m glad to hear Kelsie’s okay.”
She stood up, wiping her hands off on her skinny jeans. “But it was just getting good.”
I wasn’t going to talk about The Devil where just anyone could hear. But when I opened my mouth to tell her off, Gloria stopped me by jerking The Devil card out of my waistband. I didn’t think it’d been sticking out. I had no idea how she’d known it was there. “I got on
e of those cards when I was your age. Not this one. It was the Ace of Pentacles. But I remember this.” Gloria tapped the back graphic with her fingernail. “Came with the same note, too.”
“What note?”
She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket. It was limp from sweat, the ink blurred. She’d obviously been sitting on it for the entire drive. I unfolded it carefully.
It was a poem written in looping cursive. “The wheel of life turns / and the Forbidden yearn / for a world that no longer exists. / Solve the card and you’ll find / you can leave this behind / and join the rest of us in the mists.”
Dumb fucking poem.
“ I could have written this in middle school,” I said.
“And it hasn’t changed in twenty years,” Gloria said. She didn’t sound like she found it as amusing as I did. “Except for this.”
She turned the page over. My name had been written on the back, and someone had added a note in different handwriting: “Can’t wait to meet you. N.K.F.”
The sight of my name in the exact same calligraphy that had been on the outside of the tarot card’s envelope made my stomach flip. “You found this in the mail? You hid this from me?” Each word came out a little louder until I was almost shouting. Dangerous thing to do to Gloria. I was already aching in anticipation of her slap.
Tatiana’s mouth opened wide in surprise. “Oh! That’s a tarot card, isn’t it? Wait here, I have something to show you. Three minutes. Don’t go anywhere.” She darted out my door, leaving it hanging open.
Painful silence stretched between Gloria and me.
I’d never quite trusted her. It was hard to trust anyone in Lobo Norte. But I did trust that she’d be honest with me. She’d never stolen my tips. She always told me when the gangs were going to roll into town. She’d taught me everything I knew about stripping and bartending.
Yet I was stunned she would have kept mail from me with my name on it, much less that she knew what it was.
“Yeah, I hid The Devil from you,” Gloria finally said. “I cut it up with scissors and scattered the pieces on the wind. You got sold for drugs when you were a kid, tortured by the Needles, ended up in Lobo Norte. The Ace of Pentacles ruined my life. You don’t have a life to ruin. I thought it’d kill you.”