“Well, damn,” he said.
“Put the other glass down, turn around, and place your hands behind your back.”
“Actually, there’s something you should know too,” he said.
“Oh?”
“I know exactly who you are, Harmony.”
His eyes rolled in their sockets. Their color ran from white to bloodshot to pus-yellow, like two rancid eggs burbling in a dirty skillet.
“And now I have to do this the hard way.”
He flung the glass in her face, tainted wine splashing her eyes. Then he came at her.
* * *
The second the elevator doors closed, Coraline attacked. Not like Ethan. She came at Jessie with her hands and her mouth, throwing her against the back of the mirrored cage, kissing her like she’d been poisoned and the antidote was on Jessie’s lips. Jessie’s shoulders thumped against the glass and she responded with a feral hiss and a smile.
“Let’s get something straight,” Coraline whispered in her ear, punctuating it with a flick of her tongue. “You’re a one-night stand. I’m going to fucking destroy you tonight, and I’m not even going to give you my phone number in the morning. You’re going to spend the rest of your life pining for me.”
Jessie laughed. “Oh, is that how you want it?”
She swung Coraline around, slammed her against the mirror, and pinned her there, their tongues twining until the elevator rumbled to a stop. She broke away and grabbed her hand, almost yanking her off her feet.
“Your room,” Jessie said.
She was just down the hall. Coraline didn’t turn the lights on. She strode into the shadowy room, shoved Jessie toward the bed, and turned to the credenza.
“I’m losing my buzz. One second. Got a bottle of wine at the contract signing.”
“We could have stayed down in the bar if we wanted to drink.”
Coraline popped the cork on the wine. The bright silver label gleamed in the dark, and blood-red cabernet splashed into a pair of glasses.
“Not with our clothes off,” Coraline said. She glanced over her shoulder. “Like I said, losing my buzz, and I’m not fucking you sober. Strip.”
“I’m a present,” Jessie said. “You have to unwrap me.”
Coraline turned and thrust a glass at her. “Planning on it.”
They clinked glasses. They drank, deep, pounding down the bittersweet wine.
“Delish,” Coraline said.
Jessie started to respond, then paused. Blinking, squinting, uncertain, like her thoughts had suddenly slowed to a molasses drip. Coraline plucked the empty glass from her hand and set it on the credenza.
“Aw,” she said, “what’s wrong?”
“Feel…dizzy.” Jessie’s voice slurred.
“You should lie down.”
Coraline gently guided her backward, Jessie unsteady on her feet, and pushed her onto the mattress. Jessie’s eyes rolled back and her lashes fluttered as her lids fell shut. Coraline stood there a moment, studying her, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest.
“Damn shame,” she murmured. “Missed opportunity. Would have been fun. Another life, another time, you and me would have gotten on like a house on fire. But duty calls…”
She turned back to the credenza. Her phone glowed in her hands, a slender rectangle of light. She tapped out a text message.
Temple is neutralized, she wrote. Confirm when you have—
Coraline looked to the mirror and froze.
Jessie was standing right behind her. She’d slipped her amber contacts out. Her eyes glowed ice-blue in the shadows.
“That dosage would have worked fine on somebody with human blood,” Jessie told her. “By the way, I can see in the dark. Saw you drop the tablet in. Whoever briefed you about me did a lousy job.”
Coraline set her phone down.
“Well,” she said. “Damn.”
“Yeah.”
Jessie cracked her knuckles.
“I hope you weren’t lying when you said you like it rough,” Jessie told her. “Because we are absolutely about to get rough.”
18.
The world was a blur, Harmony’s eyes washed in red wine, as Ethan lunged at her. She sidestepped his punch, trained reflexes kicking in. Her hand latched on to his wrist. She twisted it, her other hand grabbing his shoulder, forcing him into an arm bar and turning his momentum into a weapon. He kept going, propelled past her, and crashed into the table.
She wiped at her eyes as he grabbed the empty tumbler. He swung it against the credenza. It shattered, half the glass turning to jagged shark-tooth shards, a makeshift weapon in his fist. Harmony jumped back as he thrust it at her chest, then again. Her leg hit the edge of the bed and she fell onto the mattress. She rolled as he dived at her, falling off the edge and tumbling onto the floor. The broken glass ripped a furrow in the mattress and sent puffs of white cotton dancing in the air.
She rose in a crouch and drew her gun. Ethan shot out a whistling kick. His polished shoe slammed against her hand hard enough to send a lance of pain jolting up her arm. Her fingers went slack. The gun fell, clattering to the carpet, spinning out of reach.
He threw the glass aside. Then he threw himself, landing on her, cracking the back of her head against the carpet as he straddled her arms and wrapped his hands around her throat. His thumbs dug in, cutting off her air supply, starving her. Ethan leaned close, his sweaty face twisted in a grimace.
“Could have been so easy, but no, you had to make me work for it.”
Spots bloomed in Harmony’s vision. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t exhale, worthless air trapped in her swollen chest and scorching like lit gasoline. She twisted her wrists, struggling to get a hand free. She wrenched her right loose and tactics riffled through her mind like playing cards. She could go for his eyes, his nose, his neck—she calculated angles and distance, hunting for the option that would inflict maximum damage with a single strike.
Her body decided for her. In the space between seconds, as time slowed to a crawl and her vision burned away like a movie reel on fire, the world devoured by celluloid cigarette wounds, an alien hunger surged inside her.
For a moment, she was back in that seedy hotel room in Jersey City, talking to Romeo.
“And you’re…changing. At first I got tired after we got together. Last time, I was sick for two days.”
Her open palm clamped against Ethan’s chest, right over his heart.
“Like you’re pulling something out of me,” Romeo had told her. “Siphoning it out.”
Harmony pulled.
Ethan’s hands froze around her throat. His jaw dropped. His muscles went rigid, his entire body trembling. Harmony latched on to something inside him and yanked it like she was fishing, the catch of the day fighting on the end of her hook. Her addiction, the core of aching hunger Nadine had forced inside her, unfurled Venus flytrap petals.
She drank him in. His psychic energy, the demonic taint in his blood, his power. She drank it down and devoured him from the inside. Her hunger became ravenous, out of control, and she knew she wouldn’t stop until he was dead. She couldn’t stop.
She didn’t want to stop.
He yanked his hands away and shoved himself backward, off her and onto the hotel carpet. He scrambled back on his hands to get away from her. His eyes were human again, wide with terror.
“The fuck did you do to me?” he gasped, panting. He forced himself up, getting to his feet and running, stumbling, for the door.
Harmony rose. The stolen power surged inside her, a wildfire in her veins. She held out one cupped hand. His power was hers, a rush of raw magic converted in the reactor of her heart. A sphere of blue-hot flame erupted in the palm of her hand. Effortless.
Ethan ripped the door open. As he looked back at her over his shoulder, she saw that a streak of his hair had turned skunk-tail white.
The door swung shut. Harmony curled her hand into a fist and snuffed out the flame. She wasn’t letting him get away. She took
one step and nearly fell, knee buckling. Her spirit was burning but her flesh was weak, exhausted from the fight. She grabbed her fallen gun off the floor. Then she forced herself to move. Across the room, out the door, just in time to see Ethan lunging into the elevator cage and hammering the buttons. The door glided shut between them and the lit numbers above slowly counted down.
She hit the stairwell, clinging to the bare metal railing as she staggered down concrete steps lined with yellow paint. Curling around and around again, down to the bottom, holstering her weapon before pushing out into the lobby.
The elevator rattled open. Empty. Ethan had gotten off on the second floor, looking for another way out. She was about to turn and fight her way back up the stairs when a voice turned her around.
“Helena?”
It was Neptune, still wearing her ribbed aquamarine dress from dinner, a slender silver purse cradled in the nook of her curled arm. She stood in the heart of the empty lobby.
“Are you…okay?” Neptune said. She took a tentative step closer. “You don’t look okay.”
Harmony caught a glimpse of herself in a mirrored strip along the wall. Her hair was a mess, her tie dangling at a crooked angle, her face ruddy and glistening with sweat. Red smears marred the skin of her neck, the imprints of Ethan’s murderous thumbs.
Jessie, she thought.
* * *
Jessie flew backward and the hotel-room mirror fractured against her shoulders, filling the shadowy suite with the shrill crackle of broken glass. Coraline threw a punch. Jessie dodged left and Coraline’s knuckles slammed into the mirror, raining razor-edged shards and spatters of blood. Neither of them was pretending to be human anymore. Coraline’s demon blood came out to play, her eyes egg-yolk yellow and her face a twisted road map of veins that glowed like ultraviolet paint under a black light.
Jessie snapped out her foot and kicked Coraline in the hip. The assassin fell back, stumbling. She grabbed one of the chairs and swept it up, thrusting it at Jessie like a lion tamer. Jessie grabbed onto the chair legs and charged, shoving it forward, using it to slam Coraline up against the wall. Coraline went low, sweeping out one leg and knocking Jessie off her feet.
The chair came down and shattered against Jessie’s back. She slumped, pushing herself on one arm, dazed but still moving.
“Why don’t you just stay down,” Coraline hissed. She held on to the broken chair leg, brandishing it like a club.
“I was about to go down, until you tried to poison me.” Jessie grabbed Coraline’s ankle and yanked hard. “Your loss, bitch.”
Coraline’s ankle turned. She fell, thumping to the carpet. The chair leg whistled through the air. Jessie caught it and they wrestled for the club, kicking at each other as their bodies twisted.
“You wouldn’t be able to handle me in the sack,” Coraline said through gritted teeth. “You know what this is for me? Foreplay.”
She had both hands on the chair leg. She wrenched it away just as Jessie’s fist plowed into her gut, knocking the wind out of her.
“More like a perfect Friday night,” Jessie said.
She grunted as Coraline swung the leg, cracking it against her shoulder. She grabbed Coraline’s wrist and jerked it down, pinning her arm behind her back.
They froze for a second, down on the hotel-room carpet, eye to eye in the dark.
Then their lips met. Coraline’s fingers went slack. She dropped the chair leg. Her free arm curled around Jessie’s waist, tight, as Jessie’s knee slid between her thighs.
* * *
Down in the lobby, Harmony shoved herself away from the wall and staggered toward the elevator. Her mind was a tempest and she couldn’t hold on to a single thought; they fluttered around her like butterflies. She had to get upstairs, had to find Jessie. Hopefully, she’d taken the woman from the bar back to her room. Otherwise she had no idea where to start looking—
“Helena?” Neptune said. Still standing there, ten feet away, anxious.
“Sorry,” Harmony said. “Need to find my partner.”
“Partner?” She blinked. Her head turned and dipped, just a bit. “Oh. I…I didn’t know you had someone.”
“No, not that kind of—” Harmony sighed. “I mean my coworker. I mean, we’re so close, I think of her as my partner, but we don’t have that kind of—I mean, I’m single.”
A little spark came back to Neptune’s eyes.
“Oh.” She paused. “Oh. Your nose is bleeding.”
Harmony felt a warm trickle on her upper lip. She put her hand to it, her fingers coming away sticky and red. Neptune opened her silver purse, rummaging fast.
“I’ve got some tissues—”
The elevator chimed. Harmony waved a shaky hand at the door as it opened.
“Neptune, I…it’s not you, okay? I’m glad you came, but I’m not doing too good right now—”
“Let me help. Please?”
She came close, wadded-up tissue in her hand, and gently pressed it to Harmony’s nose.
“Tilt your head back. Look, I didn’t…I didn’t come here expecting anything. Okay? I just wanted to talk. Still want to.”
She looked Harmony in the eye.
“I lied to you tonight. And I feel bad about it. Something is very wrong here, and I want to make it right. Will you let me?”
She needed to find Jessie, to make sure her partner, her friend, was all right. But Neptune had information. Information that might stop something terrible from happening. Stash her in my room, she thought, make her safe, then go hunt for Jessie. Neptune will keep.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she said.
Neptune eased her onto the elevator. The tissue was almost soaked through, ivory turned to cherry red. She dug out another one and tilted Harmony’s head farther back.
“Do you get nosebleeds a lot?” she asked.
No. Then again, she didn’t siphon the magic from an unwilling demon-blooded assassin a lot either. She still wasn’t sure how she’d done it. It had come naturally to her, as easy as riding a bike. Ethan’s stolen power ran riot in her veins, throbbing, aching for an outlet.
“I think it’s the climate,” Harmony said. “The heat, the humidity. Florida is kind of a lot.”
Neptune giggled. “I think ‘Florida is kind of a lot’ should be our new tourism slogan.”
As they got off the elevator, Harmony’s phone began to buzz. She lowered her head just enough to check the screen.
“Gotta take this.” She carefully put it to her ear, keeping the screen away from the bloody tissue.
“Hey,” Jessie said before she could get a word out, sounding breathless. “Are you alone? Are you somewhere you can talk freely?”
“I’m with Neptune,” she said. “Ethan turned out to be a real jerk, by the way.”
She hoped Jessie could read between the lines. As always, her partner didn’t let her down.
“Yeah, my date turned out a little different than expected.”
“Are you okay?” Harmony asked.
“Oh, I’m good,” Jessie said. “I’ve got company for the night.”
In the background, a furious voice shouted, “Untie me, you fucking bitch!”
At her side, Neptune’s eyebrows lifted. She’d heard that.
“What room are you in?” Harmony asked. “I’ll be right there—”
“Nooo,” Jessie said. “No, I need to conduct a very vigorous interrogation here. My methods will be deeply unorthodox. Unorthodox, inventive, and invasive. I wouldn’t want to scar your delicate psyche by allowing you to witness them.”
“If you’re sure,” Harmony said.
“Give me…four or five hours? Actually, you know what? Just wait until I call you back.”
Jessie hung up.
“Your friend is…” Neptune’s voice trailed off when she couldn’t settle on a word.
“Adventurous,” Harmony replied.
19.
Harmony sat in the chair by the window, head back, filling the trash basket at h
er feet with a growing collection of bloody tissues. The stream had faded to a tiny trickle. She felt shaky, drained, her skin flushed with heat even as the room’s air-conditioning pumped out a steady gust of cold air against her pale cheeks.
“I’m gross,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m gross.”
Neptune perched on the edge of the bed, watching her, wringing her hands.
“You’re not gross,” she said. “I work with marine life all day. Believe me, I know gross when I see it. I’m lucky if I can get through the day without being covered in slime. That and uninjured.”
“Uninjured?”
“I work with special marine life. I’ve nearly been impaled by a stingray. I’ve been stung by jellyfish more times than I can count—”
“But you hand-feed the sharks,” Harmony said.
“Oh, they’re sweeties.” Neptune studied her. “That’s not the first time you’ve asked me about the sharks.”
Harmony blotted her face with a clean tissue. No more blood, only the rusty smear on her hands and her upper lip. She tossed the tissue into the wastebasket, got up, and ambled into the bathroom. Neptune hovered in the doorway while she washed up.
“You had something to tell me,” Harmony said.
She soaked a hand towel in warm water and reached for the soap. She let Neptune take her time. The woman was either afraid, ashamed, or just wanting to get the words right before she spoke them. From the look on her face, eyes down and cheeks tight, it was some combination of all three.
“Before you arrived, Dr. Cranston took me aside. He said that at some point during dinner he was going to pretend he’d forgotten a name. And I was supposed to say ‘Natalie Cooper.’ He made me repeat it, like, five times, just to make absolutely certain I remembered.”
The smear on Harmony’s lip vanished under the towel. The wet white cotton turned the shade of cherry blossoms. She glanced at Neptune.
“You have no idea who that is, do you?”
Neptune shook her head. “No. And the thing about being contacted by someone from Diehl Innovations before you? That’s a lie. I’ve reviewed our financials with Dr. Cranston, so I know that’s a lie.”
Right to the Kill (Harmony Black Book 5) Page 13