He stood, glaring at me in warning. I supposed I deserved it, but it still pissed me off. I’d been taking care of myself for a long time and didn’t need an unreliable demon babysitter.
The bar went quiet. Uh-oh. We’d been made, or rather, D had been made. A pure-blooded, powerful demon of the nontempter variety tended to attract attention.
The incubus, who must have thought better of glamouring himself to seduce D, grabbed his drink and disappeared into the shadows. The imps parted and left the hapless human exposed to D’s scrutiny. The bartender, a tall, handsome-from-the-waist-up satyr, stepped between D and the human, his cloven hooves echoing through the eerily quiet bar.
“We don’t want trouble here.” The satyr lowered his head, horns gleaming in the low light and breath coming in snorts. For a guy who didn’t want trouble, he seemed ready to charge like a raging bull.
“Then you shouldn’t be sheltering wanted criminals,” D said, fists clenched and stance wide.
“Warrant?” the satyr said.
D growled. “There’s been an APB out on him for hours. It’s been broadcast. Try to keep up.”
I was going to choke on the testosterone cloud.
And Pendergrass was slinking away. I spotted him stepping behind the bar, and while the demon versus satyr stare down commenced, the little sneak pushed through the door to the kitchen. Right. My turn. I ran across the bar and jumped over the granite top…sort of. I might not have stuck the landing, but I was still a wee bit intoxicated.
Pushing through the swinging door, I entered the kitchen, startling a couple of ghouls cooking some kind of mystery meat best left a mystery. “Which way did he go?”
The ghouls pointed to the freezer, which was weird. Why would Pendergrass go in the freezer? Trap doors and hidden exits could be anywhere. I dashed through the kitchen and threw open the freezer door. Pendergrass was pushing against the back wall, presumably the hidden door, and it cracked open. I pulled out my knife and leapt on his back, planning to immobilize him by holding the knife to his throat.
He wasn’t a demon, but in my experience, anything with a pulse stopped with a knife to the throat.
“Let me go, woman,” he said.
I laughed. “Not a chance in hell. I’ve got a few questions for you.”
He yanked the door and slammed me against the wall beside it, clocking my noggin, but I held on, jabbing the knife into the tender flesh of his neck. He stilled once more as I twisted the knife. Just a little. Just hard enough to let him know I meant business.
“You’ve been a naughty boy, Keith. Word on the street is you let a big, bad, nasty demon through your portal. I want to know where Mephisto is, if you let a demon lord named Belial onto this plane, and any other unauthorized activities you’ve been up to.”
He stiffened. Good. He should be afraid. Dealing with dangerous demon lords and smuggling schemes was tricky, and he was just as likely to be torn apart by the demon he summoned as he was by the boss when I dragged his ass back to HQ.
“You Jane McGee?” he asked, muscles twitching.
I twisted my knife a little. “I’m asking the questions here. Did you summon Mephisto?”
He grunted and struggled harder against my hold.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Makes my job a lot easier.”
Pendergrass twisted, and something closed around my wrist, burning my skin with white-hot agony. I held on, stabbing at any part of his body I could hit. I scored a few hits, but not enough. He flung me off and then dragged me by my wrist as he pushed at the hidden door. Hannah stirred within me, but I couldn’t reach my black mirror to summon her.
I tried to call on whatever power allowed me to defeat Mephisto when we first met, as well as bargain with the boss, but it didn’t come. Figured. I’d have to do this the old-fashioned way. Gritting my teeth so I wouldn’t howl in pain, I threw my body back and used my weight to jerk Pendergrass away from the wall.
As Pendergrass stumbled, I saw what was holding me—some kind of glowing handcuff-like contraption powered by sigils. The other cuff was attached to the summoner’s wrist. Where had the bastard gotten that kind of demon magic? The only magic summoners were supposed to have was the kind that for creating portals. It tended to run in families, and back before regulation, summoners used it to bring demons over to do their bidding. For a price.
These days, no souls had to be exchanged, and the only thing a demon had to promise was to behave while on earth and register with the network of demon-monitoring agencies scattered across the globe. This was higher-level magic, likely provided by Mephisto or the demon lord he served.
It didn’t matter. I had to keep the bastard from dragging me out of the bar and to a secondary location. I wasn’t a damsel in distress. I was a demon hunter.
I slashed my knife at the cuff, but it didn’t make so much as a scratch. Switching tactics, I twisted and moved behind Keith, putting my full weight into pulling on the magical cuffs. A sick pop and gasp of pain told me I’d pulled the bastard’s arm out of his socket.
“Let go, or I’ll pull your arm off.”
Keith muttered another incantation I didn’t understand. The cuff disappeared, but not before it sliced my wrist. I collapsed to the ground, bereft, as if someone had ripped my soul right out of my body.
He couldn’t do that, could he?
Keith made a grab for me, but something burst through the freezer door like a whirlwind and slammed into him. It was D. He and the summoner tumbled into the darkness beyond the hidden door. I stayed put, exhausted and probably going into shock, which made no sense. I’d had worse fights. The only thing I could do was place my knife against the black mirror around my neck and give Hannah could get a taste of the summoner’s blood. She could track him. Eventually.
But she didn’t respond. I couldn’t believe it. Of all the times to leave me high and dry.
That was my last thought before I closed my eyes. Then, the world went dark.
Chapter Sixteen
Things were obviously a bit fuzzy after I recovered from passing out. We’d made it back home, and D had tended to my wounds before tucking me into bed. He’d given me another demon potion that probably had some sort of sedative in it to help me sleep.
It worked, but a little too well. I woke up around two in the afternoon feeling well and truly hung over. Crap. I’d wasted half a day. I only had three days left to figure out how Mephisto got here, secure the portal and summoners who helped, and avoid being dragged to the hell realm for mandatory military service.
Three days until the boss came to claim my soul before going after my family. Alexi had been keeping tabs on them and had some of his demon informants trailing them as well. If I didn’t make decent progress today, I’d have to have Alexi grab them, haul them to my safe house, and guard them until I found a get-out-of-a-soul-bargain-free card. Those things were hard to come by.
I rolled over and ducked back under the covers. I needed to get moving, but between my throbbing head and lead-weighted limbs, it just didn’t seem to be an option. How pathetic was that? I’d fought through a lifetime of demonic possession, bad luck, the loss of my best friend and would-be boyfriend, and the hell of combat training for demon-tracking fieldwork, only to be taken down by an evil little bastard named Jose Cuervo.
Come to think of it, maybe I could make it through hell realm militia basic training. But I didn’t want to. Once had been more than enough.
But with all that truly excellent motivation, I couldn’t seem to lift my head from the pillow. What was wrong with me? The feeling reminded me of surgery, or what I’d heard about it. Thanks to Hannah, I rarely got sick. Injured? Oh yeah, but I couldn’t remember the last time I had a cold, let alone a hangover. Hannah always healed my injuries, and I assumed she kept my body, the body she shared with me, healthy. But the fatigue and malaise plaguing me was what I imagined coming out of anesthesia in a thick fog of dread was like, missing a part of myself that had been removed.
The delectable scents
of coffee and bacon distracted me.
The glorious aromas traveled from my nose to some deep-seated part of my brain that contained my center, the core of my being, my purpose. If portals were the gateway to the hell realm, bacon was the gateway to heaven—or at least to getting my ass out of bed and into action.
I rose with extreme caution and shuffled toward the aroma of my salvation, practically drooling in anticipation. Or maybe that was just the horrendous taste in my mouth. It was a toss-up. Mara must’ve made breakfast. It certainly wasn’t the twins. If anything, they’d probably taken pictures of my incapacitated ass in compromising positions and posted them all over social media. It was kind of their thing.
When I made it to the kitchen, the sight that greeted me left me breathless and made my heart melt in a puddle of sticky goo.
D stood in the kitchen—my kitchen—his long, lean torso draped over my counter as he sipped a cup of coffee and read a book. He was reading a book, in my kitchen, and it was so ordinary yet completely amazing and—
“Holy guacamole, where’s your shirt?”
D looked up and flashed me a wicked grin. Oh my God, between sleep mussed hair, a way past five-o’clock shadow, and sinfully charming smile, I must have died and gone to bad girl heaven.
Wait, was that a contradiction?
“Sorry.” He said it, but he didn’t mean it. “Didn’t mean to scandalize you. Should I go get decent?”
He took a slow sip of coffee as I stood and stared in awe, mesmerized by how he savored his morning cup of joe as it slipped past his lips, and he swallowed it down the column of his throat. He licked his lips and winked before standing up to his full height, giving me an eyeful of broad chest that tapered down to mouthwatering abs and a trim waist, an enticing trail of dark hair drawing my gaze and daring it to slip down to drink in the bulge below the waistline of pajama bottoms.
He looked like a dream. I, no doubt, looked like a hot mess. And I still felt weird and not quite myself. Had I killed essential brain cells by keeping company with my dear friend tequila? Maybe it had been wrestling with a summoner who used demon magic to whammy my ass. I searched for Hannah’s presence in my subconscious, but all I got back was silence. I decided to let her be for now since she seemed content to either be incommunicado or as cryptic as a prophecy from Nostradamus when she bothered to talk to me.
Dropping my gaze, I pushed a lock of tangled hair behind my ear. “No, you’re fine. I should probably go freshen up. Still mad at me for jumping the gun and going after Pendergrass without you?”
How humiliating. I normally had no shame, but where D was concerned, I’d apparently hit the mother lode.
I didn’t dare look up, not even when he moved to stand in front of me, giving me a great view of his bare feet. I was surprised, though I shouldn’t have been. No gnarly toenails for this guy. He was too perfect.
“Jane, look at me.” His voice was soft, kind, unlike last night when he’d dragged me out of my apartment to go on the hunt. Fierce and gentle by turns, just as he had been when we were growing up.
But could I trust him? Could I trust myself around him? Not likely. He already had me dripping with lust. No big deal there. I’d appreciated men and the amazing things they could do for a woman’s body since Mikey McFarrin had given me the first big O I’d ever received from someone other than myself. That boy had magic hands. I had no doubt D would rock my world in bed, in the shower, on my sofa, against a wall…
I really needed to get a grip.
It wasn’t fear of the physical that had me ready to bolt. I’d hit that in a heartbeat. No, the problem was D and I had a history. There was too much between us for anything to be simply physical, and I didn’t relish the thought of having my heart trampled beneath his beautiful feet.
“Jane.” He whispered my name again, coaxing me to meet his gaze. He ran a finger down my temple and along my jaw, his touch leaving a trail of fire in its wake. I had no choice but to look at him. He was so close I could feel the heat of his body wafting over me along with his scent. He’d been in the shower and smelled of something warm, spicy, and sensual. I wanted to lick his damp skin, to savor him like smooth whiskey.
“I’m not mad, not anymore. Wish you’d work with me and let me watch your back, but I get it. You’ve got trust issues. So do I. But one thing hasn’t changed. You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Always have been, always will be. You’re the only thing that’s kept me alive the last ten years.”
Wow, talk about silver-tongued devils. That was possibly the most heart-melting praise I’d ever received. I wanted to believe him, but that was laying it on pretty thick.
“Where’ve you been for the past ten years?” I straightened, jutting out my chin and channeling my inner wronged woman. “Someplace without phones? Mail? Passenger pigeon service?”
He sighed and looked away. I’d have called it guilt, but it seemed more like pain.
Or shame.
No, he was that lonely, frightened demon boy in my closet again, hungry and lost and looking for a home. So much for wronged woman outrage and bravado.
“D.” It was my turn to reach out to him. I cupped his stubbled jaw with a shaking palm. He leaned into my touch, placing his large, warm hand over mine and making me dizzy with his closeness. “What happened to you? Something bad?”
He stiffened when I asked the second question, and his gaze met mine again, hard and distant. “I was summoned to the hell realm and bound by a demon lord,” he said. “Couldn’t get away until I came into my full power. I couldn’t answer when you tried to summon me all those times over the years. I really wanted to.”
The boss had been way off about D then, assuming his lack of response meant he was dead. Instead, a more powerful demon had summoned him. I’d assumed my boss was powerful enough to break any other demon’s hold, but it appeared I was mistaken.
Unless the boss was lying at that, too.
Speaking of powerful, D clearly was. He’d been more powerful than a tempter demon when we’d been younger, too. I had no idea what his rank was in the demon realm. But even demon lords were vulnerable when young. I’d worried that D might have been injured, lost, or that he’d simply vanished. Then my wounded heart and teen brain assumed I’d done something to frighten him off or repulse him.
Then I’d figured he was dead.
“Who summoned you?” I asked, anger rising. I was a highly trained demon tracker and investigator. I could find the bastard. D would want to get his own revenge, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t help.
Better to be angry with the jerk who’d taken D away from me than be mad at myself for how I’d treated him since his return.
He pulled away, taking a step back as his gaze darted warily around the room, like a wounded animal caught in a trap. I didn’t think he’d answer me, but when he regained his composure, he said, “I was summoned by my father.”
His father? Wow, talk about awkward family reunions. His absentee father had summoned him to hell, a father who didn’t let him come back to earth. My absentee father walked out on us, but at least he didn’t haul me away and keep me prisoner.
Judging from D’s reaction, it hadn’t been warm or welcoming. I had about a million questions, but all I could think to say was, “That had to suck.”
Damn me and my big, fat, stupid mouth. “What I meant was, I’m very sorry that happened to you. Want to talk about it?”
“Not especially.” He ran a hand through his thick mass of dark hair. The move gave me a chance to ogle his mouthwatering bicep, but I chastised my inner ho-bag, telling her to pipe down. For now. If she was a good ho-bag, I promised I’d let her come out and play later.
“Oh, come on.” I followed him as he walked back into the kitchen so I could prod him for more information. He poured me a cup of coffee, God bless him. “You can’t just say you were summoned by your dad, who kept you trapped in the hell realm, and leave it at that. Why are men so weird about talking?”
&nb
sp; His scowl softened, and he offered me a sideways smirk. “Why are women so keen on talking?”
“That’s easy.” I stole a piece of bacon off his serving plate. Was there any food more perfect than bacon? “Superior emotional intelligence.”
He grabbed a plate and started filling it with bacon, waffles, and fresh strawberries. I reached for the cabinet before remembering I needed a step stool. Boice kept the dishes on the highest shelf just to be an ass. Freakin’ tall people. D surprised me by handing me the plate he’d been filling, turning me around, and parking me on one of the barstools flanking our kitchen island.
“Eat,” he said and turned to fill his own plate.
I did, savoring a bite of crispy waffle topped with strawberries and whipped cream. But I wasn’t about to drop the conversation. “Changing the subject?”
He walked back over to the kitchen island and sat down across from me. “You’re not eating,” he said, looking at my plate and pointing.
“I had a bite.” I took another, irritated by his refusal to share. I chewed and swallowed politely before I continued my interrogation.
“Are you going to talk to me?”
“Are you going to eat?”
Jeez, what were we, five? Going toe-to-toe with D used to be my favorite pastime. The guy was as snarky as I was, and he wielded pop culture references with the same mastery as a samurai wielded his sword, or at least he used to. It would probably take him a little while to get current now that he was back on earth. But much like me, he was a master of deflection. I’d have to bring my A game if I was to win a serious conversation with Mr. Tall, Dark, and Tight-lipped.
I grinned as a wicked plan unfolded in my devious brain. “What if I let you feed me?” I eyed his plate. Chockablock full of food porn in the form of a savory waffle topped with delectable white sauce, fresh fruit, and a mountain of whipped cream, it had me salivating almost as much as its creator. “Will you talk to me then?”
His gaze went molten. I watched as he cut a corner of waffle, making sure to capture just the right proportion of the delectable flavors. Leaning forward, he held his fork in front of my mouth and said in a low, husky voice, “Open.”
Catching Hell Page 15