Midlife Demon Hunter: The Forty Proof Series, Book 3

by Mayer, Shannon

  Alan spilled out because I wasn’t quick enough to stop him this time.

  “Bree—”

  I snapped my fingers at him to shut his face.

  Putting the binoculars to my eyes, I scanned the platform.

  A big throne had been set up, its back to me, and several goblins stood next to it, one wrapped in thick ropes.

  “That’s got to be Grimm,” I muttered, feeling very 007 as I swept my gaze across to the other side of the throne.

  When I saw the tall and very human figure that stood there, I wanted to clamp my hands around his neck and squeeze until his eyeballs popped out. But it was the Silver Lady next to him who really had my attention. She’d been with him this whole time, dragging the stuffing out of him, which was awesome.

  It also meant she might know where my friends were being kept here in Goblin Town.

  I put my hand up to her, hoping she’d see me.

  Nothing.

  I lowered the binoculars, trying to think my way through our problem. My gran had always said no problem was impossible to solve—you just had to consider the tools at hand. Robert was invisible to most people, but could goblins see him? I realized I hadn’t outright asked Bridgette.

  Which reminded me of another potential problem: she wasn’t even supposed to be here. “Will they hurt you if they see you?” I asked her.

  “They might kick me back out, but they won’t hurt me,” she said.

  And then I looked at Alan.

  He glared at me. “What?”

  He could talk to the Silver Lady, and he could probably get there without anyone seeing him. “I need your help.”

  He burst out laughing. “Tough shit. I’m not doing anything for you.”

  I shrugged, grabbed him by the ear and started to stuff him back into the bag. He pawed at my hands, fighting me, but I had him all the way in except for his head in a matter of seconds.

  “Wait. Stop. What if I make a deal with you?” Alan whined. “Don’t put me in the bag anymore, and I’ll do what I can to help you.”

  I grimaced and shook my head. “Yeah, you’ll have to do better than that. Robert is my backup plan, and he is far more trustworthy. And you’re a pain in my ass even as a dead man.”

  “Friend,” Robert whispered.

  Alan wormed a hand out of the bag, holding it out to me. “Okay, okay. What if I help you with this . . . whatever this is, and you . . . you help find out what happened to me.”

  I pursed my lips. “But if you get in the way or start yapping, I’ll stuff you back into the bag.”

  “Okay, okay, deal.” He held his hand out and I took it, yanking him from my bag. Confusion stole over his face as he glanced around. “What do you need to do in Vegas?”

  I pointed to the front gates, not bothering to point out that this wasn’t exactly Vegas as he knew it. “There’s a woman next to Davin the dick. She’s a ghost like you. I need you to get her and bring her to me.”

  “I hate him.”

  “Yeah, that makes two of us,” I said, and Alan gave me a quick nod.

  And just like that, my ex-husband was in on a job with me. The four of us made our way to the back of the podium, ducking and dodging between doors and alleys, staying hidden as best we could. Sure, I could have sent Alan up by himself, but I didn’t exactly trust him to do the job. I wanted to be on the scene to make sure nothing went wrong. Or, more realistically, to help turn things around when they inevitably did go wrong.

  The clothing that Gerry had made for me made me all but disappear. There was definitely a 007 feel to the moment.

  It was only once we got closer that I could see the herd of goblins gathered between the podium and the massive doors. All of them had their backs to us. I ducked under the raised platform and motioned for Alan to go up.

  He climbed the wooden structure and disappeared from view.

  “Yes, hello,” he said. “My name is Alan, and my miserable ex-wife says you need to come see her.” A pause. “Ah, no, don’t do that. I said don’t! Woman, get off me. Ouch, damn it!”

  I tipped my head to one side and looked at Robert. He shrugged and lifted both skeletal hands. Bridgette motioned to me. “I’m going to get around the front, see if I can see what’s happening.”

  I moved to stop her, to tell her to stay with us, but she was gone before I could grab her. Damn it, splitting up was not a good idea.

  “Stop it, stop touching me, you damn woman and your grabby hands!” Alan screeched, and then he was tumbling off the back of the platform. The Silver Lady followed him, albeit far more gracefully.

  Her eyes locked on mine, and I motioned for her to come closer. I knew goblins could hear well, but I was hoping their senses weren’t as sharp as Sarge’s.

  “Can you help me find my friends?” I barely whispered the words, but a scuffle immediately started on stage. I looked up to see a face shoved against the floor, an eye peering at me.

  Well, shit.

  I stared back, but the eye didn’t move.

  “Get his face off the floor!” roared someone from above. “Keep him facing forward. I want her to see his slimy face!”

  Grimm.

  He was pulled off the boards, and the Silver Lady motioned again for Alan to hold out his hand.

  “I don’t want to touch her,” he grumbled. I pointed a finger at him and then to her, using my best angry eyes.

  Reluctantly, he held out his hand. “You’d better hold up to your part of the deal.”

  His eyes widened as he touched the Silver Lady’s hand, and then he gasped and pulled back. “She showed me where they are. Under the Tits and Bits.”

  Of course he’d noticed that place. I motioned for him to come with me, gave a slight bow at the waist to the Silver Lady, and then took off. Not exactly running, but hurrying as quickly as I could. Tits and Bits was about halfway down the Strip with a big neon sign featuring a naked goblin lady. The typos were the worst; I could only imagine the fun Jinx would have with her red pen in this town. The image above the sign seemed as anatomically incorrect as their typos were grammatically incorrect. Her bits didn’t look anything like mine—there was too much here, and not enough there, and pieces that I’m sure were toothlike. I’ll say that much and leave the rest to the imagination. But if everyone’s undercarriage looked like that, I could understand why some men might think they bite.

  As we reached the building, the creak of wood and metal groaned through the air. I twisted around, twinging my back hard, which only made me gasp for the wrong reason. The right reason would have been the fact that the massive doors were opening, which meant we were closing in on midnight. Sarge and Jinx would be out front, hopefully, but they’d only be able to distract the goblin crowd for so long, and I didn’t want them getting hurt either if the king lost patience. Our time was running out.

  “Hurry.” I pushed Alan ahead of me, and he went straight through the door. I tried the handle, but it was locked. I knocked, hoping for a guard we could bonk over the head, preferably one with a massive key ring, but no one came to answer the door. Apparently the goblin king thought the prisoners didn’t need a guard.

  I stepped back and took a deep breath. “I can do this. I can kick the door down.” I swung forward with my foot as hard as I could—and the door bit back.

  In other words, it didn’t move so much as an inch. My foot hit the door and all that force was pushed back into me. I bounced backward hard, landing on the ground with an expulsion of air from both ends.

  Alan stuck his head through the door to laugh at me. “You’re an idiot.”

  I rolled to the side, my butt and ego bruised. “Shut your trap.”

  I pulled one knife free and used it to cut through the deadbolt. That’s how sharp they were, these knives Crash had made for me. Cut through steel, cut through magic, cut through bad guys.

  I kept the knife in hand and pushed the door open into what was clearly a goblin strip joint. The room I stepped into was dim; only a few candle-fille
d chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and most of the candles had guttered out.

  A series of stripper poles circled the room, each one in front of a large table covered with black cloth, with a main stage that had three poles set up.

  Alan stood in the middle of the room. “Where is everyone?”

  What he really wanted to know was where the strippers had gone. I didn’t even give him the time it would take to roll my eyes. I hurried through the room, avoiding touching anything. I had friends who danced for a living, and they were honestly some of the coolest people I knew. But given what I’d seen and smelled in Grimm’s hotel room, I didn’t want to rely on the cleanliness of goblin strippers and, worse, their clients.

  “You need to lead the way,” I reminded him.

  “They’re in the back, past the main stage, in the last room on the left,” he said as he slipped ahead of us, almost strutting.

  I kept moving, Robert a half step behind me.

  The door behind the long bar was locked so I headed up to the main stage, passing by the poles, saying nothing as I approached the back to check the door. Alan and Robert could probably get away with speaking since so few people could see them, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.

  “What, you don’t want to give it a go?” Alan laughed as he stepped out to the side of me, grabbing a pole and pretending to swing around it. “Remember when you did pole fitness? God, what a joke. Such an embarrassment. You really shouldn’t have been shocked that I didn’t want to see you quote, dance, unquote, for me.”

  My chest constricted with that old pain, from a time when I still cared what he thought about me. When I still cared what his friends thought about me. When I wanted him to love me and had yet to realize that no one who loved you would treat you like that. How could that hurt now, in the middle of everything that was happening? I turned away from him, unwilling to let him see the pain on my face. Because I wasn’t good at pretending. I just wasn’t, and he knew it.

  I picked up my pace. I just had to get my friends out of here, that was what I needed to focus on.

  Robert bumped my shoulder with his. “Friend.”

  And just like that, the hurt slid away a little—enough that I could pull my head up. I snapped my fingers at Alan and his jaw snapped shut. Good enough for now. I would deal with him later.

  As in exorcise him right out of my life.

  The door behind the long black and silver sparkling curtains was unlocked, and I turned the handle, stepping through into the inky darkness. I dug around in the bag at my hip and found a flashlight. Only I wasn’t quick enough.

  A sharp point pressed against my belly and hands gripped me from both sides.

  “We got her now.”

  24

  A light blinked on above my head and my eyes slammed shut. Probably not the best response when I had a sharp, pointy object digging into my belly and several hands restraining me.

  Robert gave a low growl.

  “Hang tight,” I said. The hands tried to drag me forward, but there was very little weight behind them. I forced my watering eyes open and found myself looking at female versions of Grimm with big bat ears, bigger eyes, and lipstick that was about ten shades too neon for their incredibly pale skin.

  “Oh, the king will be so giving us so many pleases! This is the one he wants, he showses us her pictures!” said the one in front of me, the one holding a damn nail file at my belly.

  They tugged on me and I dug my heels in. One of the goblin women moved behind me, so I just sat right on top of her.

  “Hey, get your big butt off me!” she screeched as she started shoving. The nail file got pushed a little harder and I jerked a hand around, smacking it out of the lead goblin lady’s clammy hands.

  “Knock that off,” I snapped and pushed upward onto my feet, deliberately putting extra oomph into the push on the goblin under my butt. The women—four of them, to be exact—stepped a little away from me.

  “You can have the prisoners. He be wanting you the most.” The lead bitch lifted her chin and looked down her nose at me. Impressive considering how short she was. The thing was, I couldn’t have them running off and getting help, but I also didn’t really want to kill them. I mean . . . even I wasn’t that cold.

  So I went for a little reverse psychology.

  I smiled at the lead bitch. “I’ll make you a deal. You run to tell the king I’m here—I’m sure he’ll appreciate that you were too afraid to fight me and will reward you for not even trying—and I’ll run to get my friends out before you get back.”

  Before they could so much as shake my hand, I took off as fast as I could, doing my best to ignore the throbbing in my knees, following the natural curves of the back halls. “Eric, Feish, Suzy, Kink!”

  The screech of the goblin girls behind me told me that they weren’t running to the king, so I’d bought us a little time.

  Robert hurried along but kept trying to turn around. “No, don’t hurt them. They aren’t really that dangerous,” I said.

  “Oh, she did not say we weren’t dangerous, did she?” one of the goblin strippers caterwauled, and then something hit me in the back of the neck.

  The nail file. And it stuck. “Son of a bitch!” I yelped and pulled it out of my neck, a little trickle of blood running down my shirt. “That was not nice. You are not ladies!”

  “Get her!” one of the others screamed.

  Robert grumbled, but he kept pace with me, and then I heard a shout of a familiar voice ahead of us. “That sounded like Suzy.”

  I picked up speed—okay, hobbled a little faster—and rounded the next corner. There was one door, and someone was drumming on it from the inside.

  “Back up! Robert, keep the goblins busy but don’t hurt them,” I yelled as I took out my knife and cut through the deadbolt—better than trying to kick it down from my side. If Eric and Suzy hadn’t been able to do it, then there was no way I’d manage. A tiny explosion of purple and green sparkles poofed into the air around the blade of the knife, and a sudden boom of thunder shattered the insides of the building. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears, but figured the damage was already done.

  I’d tripped the alarm, and now it was a race against time to get everyone out of Goblin Town.

  I opened the door, and Feish fell out and into my arms. “You found me again!”

  I hugged her quickly, made eye contact with Suzy, who gave me a nod, and Eric, who followed suit.

  “Where is Kinkly?” I asked.

  Suzy held out her hands. Kink lay in her palm. “I’m here, but the shitheads broke my wings.” I reached for her, but she shook her head. “No fussing our britches now. We have to go, that boom will bring them down on us.”

  I turned as a body of a tiny goblin stripper went flying over our heads, clothing flapping open and her tits and bits bared to the world as she screeched, reaching for us one last time.

  Robert laughed. “Not friends.”

  The other three lady stripper goblins cowered away from him. “Let’s go.”

  We ran through the building, past the poles, and into the street, where one quick glance proved that Kinkly was all too correct.

  The goblins were coming in a wave of bodies, all but trampling over top of one another, the king somewhere behind them. There was no way we’d all make it out without some sort of distraction.

  “Robert, show them the way out.” I shoved my friends, but their feet stuttered, and I knew they weren’t going to just leave me unless I gave them a good reason. “Go,” I said. “Tell Crash to come get me, he’s waiting outside the wall.”

  That got them moving. Of course, I didn’t tell them that Crash was currently passed out from some spell Karissa had laid on him.

  Tomato, tomaaato. The thing was, running from anything was no fun. I’d done it before. I didn’t plan on doing it again. I stood in the middle of the street with my arms crossed as I waited for the goblins to reach me. As if I didn’t give one teeny tiny poop that they looked l
ike a veritable tsunami of limbs and bodies.

  A wash of air rolled toward me ahead of them, and I couldn’t help my nose from wrinkling.

  “Bums and feet,” I muttered. To my right, Alan appeared.

  “Shouldn’t you be running? I don’t want you to die, you know,” he said.

  For just a moment, a small bit of hope for his personality peeked through the clouds of his asshole behavior. But he kept speaking, as was so often the problem with Alan. “I mean. If you die, then we could be really stuck together in death, you know? That would suck.”

  I glared at him. “It sucks now, you dumbass.”

  The goblins slowed in front of me and I gave them a jaunty salute. “Where’s your king? Hard to tell as he’s not on the throne now, and you’re all pretty damn short. Like a sea of toddlers with giant ears.”

  A low muttering rolled through the crowd along with some serious giggles. If they liked insults, I’d be free and clear in no time. But this wasn’t a crowd of giants, easily swayed by bad language and salty phrases.

  Goblins had at least twice the brain capacity of giants.

  A figure pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Over his head, I could easily see Davin headed our way too, and a set of guards smacked a path through the other goblins as they dragged Grimm forward.

  “Three days,” Grimm yelled at me. “Three days and you couldn’t even do that! So much for your reputation!”

  The goblin king stopped about six feet in front of me. His deep green skin made his brilliant eyes pop, and his ears were tufted with black fur. Or maybe it was feathers, hard to tell. He wore a hell of a lot of gold around his neck and across his hands. And his clothing was tailored to his extra small body. A little too tight around the crotch.

  “You were with Roderick and the council members in the hotel that morning,” I said, certain he was the goblin I’d seen. “Also, a word of advice: you need to let that inseam out, or you’re going to have trouble with motility,” I said, my mouth working before any sort of a filter kicked in.