“Must have been terrifying,” Konstantine said.
“I imagine he hadn’t been expecting me, no.”
“I meant for you.”
She looked up and found him watching her.
“You were so small.”
“So was she,” Lou explained. “Well, smaller. More like a pony.”
Konstantine watched the beast on the ledge sleep, her head tucked toward her tail. As if sensing eyes on her, she peeled open one eye and huffed.
Konstantine looked away first. “She’s probably seven meters long now.”
“She looks bigger than when I saw her last,” Lou said. “It’s hard to imagine that she might still be growing.”
“How did you become…friends?” he asked.
Lou didn’t know how to answer. Were they friends? In a way. But how could she explain the sense of connection she had with Jabbers? How sometimes Lou looked into its eyes and saw herself.
“Slowly,” she said to the fire.
Konstantine seemed to sense her reluctance to talk anymore tonight. He removed the two sleeping bags from his pack and laid them beside the fire.
“I don’t have pillows,” he said, gesturing at the pile of luggage.
She considered making a joke about all the things he’d brought but decided against it. He was the one who was carrying it.
He removed his boots so his woolen black socks poked out the bottom of his jeans. His black t-shirt was tight across his chest. Just in the hours they’d been traveling together, a shadow of a beard had begun to form on his jaw.
She liked the look of it. She wondered what it would feel like to kiss him like that.
He put one hand under his head and regarded her. With the other he patted the sleeping bag beside him. “Aren’t you tired?”
Tired was something Lou felt in her mind, rarely in her body. Now, by the fire, her body was relaxed. With a gun and a large knife at the floor by her feet, and Jabbers at the open mouth of the cave, she felt more than safe.
Konstantine was watching her, waiting for her answer.
“No,” she said. “You should sleep if you want to.”
“You’re very beautiful,” he said. “I can see the fire dancing in your eyes. Did your mother have brown eyes too?”
“No,” she said. “They were blue.”
She stopped short of saying, I have my father’s eyes.
Jabbers lifted her head to regard something in the distance that Lou couldn’t see.
Small flaps on the side of her head opened and closed. Lou wondered if those were her ears. Whatever she was hearing was far out of Lou’s range.
Truth be told, Jabbers wasn’t the most interesting thing in the cave. Konstantine bathing in soft light and looking cozy in his fresh clothes was almost too much to resist.
“Will you lie down beside me?” he asked, his lips looking thick enough to bite.
Lou smiled. She could do one better.
She rose from her place and crossed to him. In a fluid moment, she threw a leg over his lap and settled her weight onto his groin. Her legs squeezed either side of his body, eliciting a groan of pleasure from him.
He searched her face from under dark lashes. “Your shoulder—”
“It doesn’t hurt,” she said. “Ever since we got here, it stopped hurting.”
And strangely this was true.
“But if you—”
“Shut up about my shoulder, or this isn’t happening,” she said, leaning forward and grazing his chest with hers.
His eyes dilated at the word this.
* * *
Konstantine needed no further encouragement. He leaned up, seizing her mouth with his. His fingers brushed her skin, finding the hem of her shirt.
Yes, yes, yes, his mind chorused.
“Worry about yourself,” she said, lifting off of him long enough to pull her shirt and bra off in one movement.
This only excited him more. A low buzz began to tremor along his skin. With a snap of her fingers, she undid the top of her pants. That small motion felt as if she’d unsnapped something inside of him too.
So long. I’ve waited for so long.
“You want to—” he began, disbelieving. So long.
“Yes.” She stepped out of her pants, leaving her underwear on.
“Here?” He craned his neck to look at the beast, who was watching them. Desire pounded through him, but so did a tremor of fear. He found, strangely, that one seemed to intensify the other.
“Here,” Lou insisted, a smile playing in the corner of her mouth.
She tugged on the bottom of his pants. He lifted his hips to oblige her. The flames threw shadows across her naked chest and stomach.
He thought of the first night he’d seen her.
Then she was just a girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen. She’d appeared in his bed like a dream. Her thick dark hair had been much longer then. It had cascaded nearly to her waist. Her cheeks rounder, girlish. She hadn’t yet acquired any of the hardness she’d accumulate over the years. With her lips parted, split like a cherry, wrapped in the nightmares of her father’s death, she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
And those nighttime visits—as far and few in between as they’d been—had only made him want her more.
Fifteen years, he thought. I’ve wanted this for over fifteen years.
She pushed him down against the sleeping bag, sitting astride him again. She began by grinding her body against his. Each contraction of her muscle made something in him tighten deliciously.
Their nipples grazed and he shivered.
He felt her moisture through her underwear and longed to touch her. He traced the edge of the underwear with his finger.
“I want more than that,” she said, and the air left him.
“Yes,” he said, his desperation high in his throat. “Yes.”
That’s when she pulled her underwear to the side and slid onto him.
A long, agonizing groan escaped him. His hands found her hips, pinning her onto his lap, her soft flesh yielding in his hands. He wanted to sear this image of her into his mind forever. Her naked, covered in shadows and firelight.
The feel of her contracting around him.
It’s happening, it’s happening, it’s happening.
And she felt even better than he’d imagined. Her flesh and muscles were softer than the hard planes of her body had led him to suspect. Her motions gentler than all the aggression she carried like a shield.
His eyes fluttered closed against the barrage of pleasure. It was a wave overtaking him, drowning him.
“Stay with me,” she breathed into his ear. She grasped his chin and squeezed.
His eyes fluttered open. “Sei perfetta.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she laughed, low in her throat, before running her tongue along his lower lip. “But I like it too.”
14
Diana stood at the window behind the thick curtain and watched King work at his desk. He was leaning back in his chair, speaking on the phone to someone unimportant, about a case she didn’t give two shits about.
Yet the voice feed was being delivered to the laptop on the table beside her. “If you want her in, you’ll have to talk to the DA. I can’t subpoena people. I don’t have that authority.”
His face broke into a grin, his belly shaking.
The laughter echoed through the line a second later.
A short delay then.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered to her, really, as she replayed Lou’s words—or lack of them—over and over in her mind.
Her flat refusal. Her borderline disinterest in Diana as a partner. She’d never felt so dismissed in her life.
You’ll regret that, Diana thought coldly. Once you realize what I can do.
And because Diana was busy orchestrating her plan, she couldn’t follow King, Piper, or the landlady Melandra personally now. She sent Blair and Spencer, the two most capable members of her twenty-person t
eam, to do that menial task.
Blair was the only one who knew everything. Spencer, more than most. The rest simply believed they were working on an undercover operation to stop a high-profile pornography ring.
Diana wanted to keep it that way.
When she needed additional tails for Daniella and Piper, she pulled from the workers, saying only that the girls were in danger. They were young enough that it could be true. Not children, but young women were always in danger.
Lookouts were posted in the café across from The Herald, the newspaper where Daniella Allendale worked, and they also walked Daniella’s neighborhood.
King and Melandra were easier to track. They were creatures of habit, their schedules often overlapping, even sharing a Belgian Malinois between them.
It was a beautiful, obedient dog, Diana thought, and she wouldn’t mind having it for herself.
Because Diana couldn’t be seen, her access to the group was by proxy. She had the cameras in Piper’s apartment, but she also had two lookout positions. Adjacent to Madame Melandra’s Fortune and Fixes had been an apartment for rent. Diana paid the exorbitant price—not understanding why everything in the French Quarter was so expensive—and could now look through one of the apartment windows directly into King’s with the help of a small telescope. She saw the red leather sofa, a large coffee table, and a sparse kitchen with garish black and white tile that hurt the eyes to look at. Below that, she had a decent view of most of the shop. The register and part of the stairs leading up to the apartment.
A second apartment had been rented on Royal Street, providing a view of King’s desk inside the detective agency. The view didn’t stretch all the way to the door marked Ms. Thorne, but that was okay. Diana would make do.
Piper had the most sporadic routine of the three. She floated from King to Melandra to Daniella. She also set up a card table in Jackson Square and read fortunes for hours into the balmy night. Sometimes she went to clubs on Bourbon Street and stayed until closing time.
Diana took all this in about them, about their life, and was disappointed that it all seemed rather ordinary.
No one showed up with suspicious packages. No strangers stopped in for cryptic conversations. They were, on the surface, exactly what they looked like—an eccentric group living out their lives in a tourist district—not a front for a high-powered criminal investigation unit.
Maybe things were simply quiet. Lou was “with Konstantine”—a name that had turned up nothing in Diana’s search. Moreover, when Diana had tried to search directly for Louie Thorne, nothing had come up either. There were only three articles that she’d been able to find about her father, Jack, the slain hero, and only in the first one was Lou mentioned, and only as a byline.
The girl was not on social media. She didn’t appear in any online photos or public records. She didn’t have a driver’s license or voter’s ID. She—
A rough knock on the apartment door.
“Come in.”
Spencer shoved the door open with one hand and shuffled into the room. Under his arm was a manila folder, his smile bright.
“What do you have for me?” she asked, already sensing his excitement.
“Something very, very interesting.”
She looked at the hobbled man with a scarred face and receding hairline.
In truth, Spencer disgusted her. It wasn’t his appearance. It was the way he looked at her, spoke to her, fawned over her.
But his work and his loyalty were assets she couldn’t bring herself to throw away, not when every choice, every resource had to be managed so carefully.
“Show me,” she said, sliding the curtain closed. She didn’t want King to look up suddenly and see her face.
Spencer pulled two photos from the manila folder. In one, half of Lou’s face was cut by the light of a gas station sign. It was a 7-Eleven, and given the sea of Asian faces around her, she would guess the 7-Eleven was in a Chinatown or maybe Asia itself.
The second photograph was a screen capture of Lou in a cobblestoned alley, the collar of her leather jacket pulled up to hide her neck, her eyes hidden behind those damned mirrored shades.
There was nothing in the photos that Diana could see, except Lou.
“What am I looking at?” Diana asked. Irritation nipped at her ears.
“Look at the time stamps.”
Tokyo 6:15. Amsterdam 22:23.
“So? She stopped off in Amsterdam before heading to Tokyo.” She was traveling with Konstantine.
“Look at the time stamps again.”
“An eight-hour difference.”
“No.” He shook his head excitedly. “An eight-minute difference. Considering time zones.”
She looked at the photos again and did the math in her head.
“You’re telling me that in a matter of eight minutes Lou went from Tokyo to Amsterdam?”
Spencer nodded so enthusiastically that his glasses slid down on his nose. He pushed them back up.
“That’s impossible. The time stamps must be wrong. Or maybe these were on two different days.”
“It’s the same day. I’m absolutely sure of it.”
“No,” Diana said, thrusting the photos back at him. “There’s an error. People don’t just travel across time zones in minutes.”
Spencer’s excitement faltered. He was clearly disappointed by the direction this conversation was going. “Maybe they can with the right technology or—”
“Check again,” Diana said.
“But if it’s real,” Spencer insisted. “What if it’s tech you could use against Winter.”
How thoughtful. His enduring loyalty, his permeating desire to help her fulfill her greatest wish. Something warm stirred within her.
“Spencer,” she said quietly.
Her tone alone stopped the blabbering. She slid her hand down the front of his chest to his crotch. There she traced the thin outline of the metal cage with her probing fingers.
“Do you like your new gift? You haven’t said,” she asked softly, her mouth dangerously close to his. This was the sort of thing he enjoyed, she knew.
“Y-yes,” he said. “Very much.”
“Do you like the idea of wearing a cage for me?” she asked coquettishly. Her nails tapped against the metal wires encasing Spencer’s penis.
“Yes, yes I do.”
“Would you like it better if I took it off? If I said the word.”
He moaned, his eyes rolling closed at the thought. “I’d love that. Yes.”
She gripped his chin roughly. “Tonight. If you’re a good boy and check the time stamp again. Or better yet, tell me where the hell Lou is now.”
“Of course. Of course, I will.”
At this she let her hand drop and turned away from him, opening the curtain again on the New Orleans street.
Below, King regarded the open file on his desk, tapping a pen lightly against the tabletop.
Tokyo to Amsterdam in eight minutes. Ridiculous.
“And stop reading so much science fiction. It’s rotting your head.”
15
Konstantine must’ve replayed the memory three hundred times before breakfast. As he showered, hot water pounding his neck and shoulders. As he brushed his teeth and selected his clothes—a black button-down, tight pants, and leather shoes. As he shaved, styled his hair, pushing it back from his eyes.
As he walked across the piazza, hands in his pockets, and up the steps of the large stone church that served as the Ravengers’ stronghold.
Even as Stefano, his right-hand man, gave him the update for the two days he’d been gone, his mind remained in La Loon, fixed on the sight of Louie’s naked body awash in firelight.
“Did you hear me?” Stefano asked in Italian. He sighed. The low light sparked in his dark eyes. Today he wore an Armani suit, his nails gleaming from a manicure.
“No,” Konstantine admitted. “Just tell me the last part, about Riku Yamamoto.”
“They want more money,”
Stefano said. He waved his hand. “What has you so distracted today? Bad vacation?”
Again, the feeling of Lou sliding onto him, the wet, slick sensation of her contracting. Her hand shoving against his chest and that look in her eyes when—
Stay with me.
His groin tightened.
Stefano arched a brow. “That well, huh?”
“It had its moments,” he said, and the moment he was buried to the hilt inside Lou had been the best of it. He was only glad that he had not climaxed instantly, given how badly he’d wanted her and how the years of longing and waiting had made the desire nearly senseless.
La Loon itself was a nightmarish place. It wasn’t only the disorienting landscape, or that all its organisms seemed oil-slicked and iridescent.
It was mostly the creature, which despite Konstantine’s reasoning terrified him.
It was unlike anything he’d ever seen—or wanted to see again.
The fear his brothers must’ve felt in the moments before their death—though deserved—must have been immense. Still, as frightening as that place was, and as alarming as Lou’s strange connection to it and its ruler, he was glad that he went.
Lou had shown him a part of herself that she’d shown no other man without also killing him. And that meant more to Konstantine than he could articulate.
His phone rang, spinning out a tune on his desk. Stefano fell back, willing to wait for his master’s attention. Konstantine appreciated that about his oldest friend.
At first Konstantine wondered if this was about the specimens. He’d delivered his vials to a lab he trusted for its discretion and longed to hear the results, if only because he thought it might please Lou. But this would be an unusually quick response.
It wasn’t the lab. Konstantine knew the number on the screen. In English he said, “Hello, Mr. King.”
“Hey. Wait, one second. Let this train pass.”
The detective’s voice was swallowed by the deafening roar of a passing train. The whistle was loud enough that Konstantine pulled the phone back from his ear.
Devil’s Luck Page 10
