by Jory Strong
Mikhail inched his face toward the corner for a view.
Exploded into action.
Pfff. Pfff. Pfff. Pfff. Pfff. Pfff. Pfff.
Pop. Pop.
Seven rounds of silenced fire met by two of unsilenced.
Pfff. The junkie and the dog disappeared around the corner.
Pounding forward, Caleb reached the end of the hallway.
Three Russians had fallen onto the poker table, four had died in their chairs. An eighth lay sprawled behind a camera on a tripod.
Jesus, Jesus, he understood what'd set Mikhail off and he couldn't blame him.
Mallory's brother was already at the bed, ski mask off, shirt off, handing it to Iosif's naked daughter, her body shivering, her arms wrapped around her knees.
Caleb's guts burned. In the Sandbox he'd witnessed soldiers pumping round after round into an enemy's corpse. Expressing the rage and pain and soul-wrenching loss that came with losing a unit member.
He felt like doing the same to the men around the table, to the photographer, to the man who ran this operation.
Dane emerged from behind one of the sedans parked in the warehouse.
"Clear?" Hayden asked.
The dog's gaze shifted to what was probably an office, the door shut, the window looking out into the warehouse covered by blinds.
If there was someone in there, they had no way out. After casing the place, Caleb knew that with certainty.
"We need to move a couple of the sedans," he said. "Create a barrier between us and the office and give the women some protection."
Dane joined Mikhail, the two of them guiding Iosif's daughter toward the prison hallway.
"Let's get it done," Hayden growled.
Caleb liberated keys from one of the dead men.
He used the alarm on the fob.
Lights flashed, a horn on one of the sedans honked.
Hayden made a second car chirp and flash.
They got in, started the engines and put the sedans into position, sliding out on the side of the dead Russians.
Sabin kicked a corpse onto the floor. He grabbed the chair the man had been sitting on. "Might as well know what we've got."
He heaved the chair toward the covered window.
All of them dropped into a crouch, watching from behind the cover of the black sedans.
Glass shattered.
There was movement inside the office.
A barrel shoved blinds aside.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.
Sedan windows blasted inward.
Bullets pinged off metal and concrete.
Mallory's heart slammed into her throat when Matthew went around the front end of the sedan, diving and crawling toward the door, dividing her attention between him and the Hounds.
The gun in Sabin's hand feinted toward Matthew and she aimed hers at him in warning.
He laughed. It was the sound of dark mists swirling above heated tar pits.
Hayden fired into the left side of the window.
Bullets punched into the wall. Shredded the blinds and made them dance.
The threat kept their assailant's finger on the trigger, chewing through the machine gun's ammo belt.
The barrage ended.
Sabin streaked forward.
He joined Matthew at the door.
Both of them kicked.
It gave.
"Hands up! Hands up!" Matthew yelled but there was the nearly instantaneous jump of his gun.
Sabin's bullet struck their target first.
She didn't need to see its placement, didn't need to step into the room and view the corpse to know that the soul wasn't tethered to it, wasn't simply lost in the world.
Next to her, Hayden cursed. His hand wrapped around her upper arm, tugging her close.
"You follow that one to Hell, Mal, into his sire's realm and you won't come back without making Sabin your mate. We'll find answers another way, maybe find Rahmiel and bargain."
Warmth spread through her, though it didn't stop her from saying, "What happened to the enemy of my enemy is my friend is bullshit?"
"Bite me." But there was amusement in his voice as he released her.
She reached the office ahead of him.
Matthew knelt next to a body with side-by-side entry wounds in the chest. She recognized the dead man from the party on Mulholland.
Sabin stepped into an open bedroom doorway. "It's clear."
Mallory joined Matthew, all of them removing their masks. She jammed hers into a pocket.
"Vadim Korotkin," Matthew said, reading from a driver's license.
Mikhail entered. "There are eleven women. The girl is Kseniya. She said her sister was taken away. A day ago, two. There's no way for her to mark time. A man came here and looked at them both. Almost immediately afterward, Zinaida was forced to swallow pills that put her to sleep. A little while later she was removed from the room."
"Can Kseniya describe the man?" Matthew asked.
"A black man," Mikhail said.
His scent said otherwise, filling Mallory with dread.
They had less than a day to find the man their sire wanted. If he wasn't the same one who had Zinaida, then there might not be enough time to find both her and him. If he wasn't the same one, then they had nothing except the hope of finding some clue here, and that hope only because Rahmiel had said his interests were aligned with the Reaper Lord's.
The dread built into pounding agony—until she remembered that Hayden had said they were looking for a witch. A witch would be capable of altering his appearance.
"I'll remain behind to deal with the dead," Mikhail said. "When it's done I'll get Kseniya and the others to safety. Some of the sedans are undamaged. I'll question the women further."
"Dane stays with you."
A safe was open behind the desk—a good thing since none of them possessed the talent to break into it—though maybe Sabin did.
"Take the passports when you leave," she told Mikhail. "Take the money. Divide it, distribute it along with the passports."
He nodded, going back to guard the women.
She ordered Sabin to search the bar and bedroom.
Matthew and Hayden took the desk while she went to the safe.
She emptied it, placing bundled cash and passports grouped together with rubber bands onto the floor at her feet. Behind them was a ledger.
"Got something."
She removed the book, turning and placing it on the desk, pushing a script aside before opening the ledger. It was columned with coded names and dates and amounts.
Matthew touched writing to the far left. "This looks like what was on the back of the women's pictures."
"Identifying them," she guessed. "And the amounts, what they owe him? Or what he sold them for? And the other column, who has them now?"
Hayden closed the ledger. "There's nothing useful in the desk. I've got his phone but it's going to be a burner. Time to get out of here."
Sabin joined them at the doorway.
"Anything?" she asked.
A shake of his head said nothing, or nothing he was willing to reveal in front of Matthew.
They left the office. She stopped next to Mikhail and Dane near the hallway entrance while Haden and Sabin kept going.
"I'll meet you at the Jeep," she told Matthew.
He hesitated but followed Hayden and Sabin out.
She walked over and looked at the men who'd died at the poker table, then at the photographer, as if somehow proximity might give birth to regret, sorrow, some sense that they deserved a justice other than this one.
It didn't.
"What did the man who took Zinaida look like?" she asked Mikhail.
"Kseniya said he was white with blond hair and blue eyes, shorter than I am."
"It would take a lot of magic to not only change features, but to change skin color."
"Yes."
Wouldn't a man that powerful be known to other witches? Wouldn't he be easy for the Satanists t
o find, or the Medusa?
Maybe he'd handed Zinaida off to the man they were hunting.
No, that didn't feel right.
The scent of sand and sunshine and date trees eradicated that of gun powder and blood and vacated bowels.
Mikhail's hand came up, gun pointed behind her.
Dane crouched, hackles raised and eyes burning red.
She turned.
Rahmiel had his arms spread, inviting Mikhail to shoot, fingers waggling in a go ahead, do it gesture.
"It's okay," she told her brothers, moving to stand between them.
The unlit cigarette at the right corner of Rahmiel's mouth dipped and lifted as he smiled. "What? No more bloodshed?"
Instinct made her grab at opportunity. "Does it matter so much that I'm his only daughter?"
Rahmiel's eyes crinkled at the corners. He plucked the cigarette from his lips, inspecting it before dropping it into the pack in his shirt pocket.
"Does it matter? That depends on you. There won't be another for a thousand years, less the twenty seven you've been alive."
A jolt went through her, a shockwave of possibility at understanding she had value she could trade upon.
His smile was its own kind of deadly.
"Why are you here, Rahmiel? What do you want?"
"The better question is, what do I have to offer, besides answers?"
He closed his hand, opened it. A soul orb sat on his palm. "It belongs with the one I gave you in the morgue."
His gaze slid from her to Mikhail and back. He opened and closed his hand again. A second orb sat next to the first, though it was captured fog, howling desolation that made her ache with a sense of waste and loss.
"Add these two to the other. All three belong together."
And she knew.
Too late, too late, too late.
For Viktoriya and Iosif and Zinaida.
"What do you want, Rahmiel?"
His gaze flicked to the dead men, to the office where Vadim Korotkin lay. He rolled the orbs in his palm. "It would be tempting to claim this is enough. But sadly it's not. A Hound, when I need one. A favor for a favor."
"Done," Mikhail said.
Rahmiel's gaze slid to him then back to her, considering, measuring, wondering if she'd let her brother bear the burden.
Dane's bulk pressed against her. She touched her shoulder to Mikhail's. "Together we'll owe you two favors, one for each orb."
Rahmiel smiled, firing one orb after another toward the warehouse ceiling.
Mikhail caught the first.
She caught the second.
Rahmiel pulled the crumpled pack of Camels from his pocket, tapped it, retrieving a cigarette. "I'll see you in the days after your sire enjoys his Earthly hunt."
He disappeared as quickly as he'd arrived.
"I'll take the orb," Mikhail said.
She handed it off, joining the others at the cars.
Hayden was already in the Jag, Sabin in the passenger seat.
She leaned down, mouth close to Hayden's ear. "Blond hair, blue eyes. Shorter than Mikhail."
A slight nod acknowledged it.
There was nothing more she could do until Hayden had a lead on their prey. There was nothing more she could do for Iosif and his family, and it was better for all of them if Matthew wasn't at the Brass Ring.
That's what she told herself. That's how she justified what she intended.
"Call me when you have something."
Sabin's smile flashed white. "Going to spend time with your human p—"
The gun was out and aimed.
He laughed. She pushed away from the Jag, getting into the Jeep and staying behind Hayden until peeling off in the direction of Echo Park.
"I'll just follow you to the Brass Ring," Matthew said.
"I'm not going there. I'm going home."
He didn't believe her.
It didn't matter.
They reached the apartment building. She parked in front of hers.
Steps from the Jeep he blocked her. His scent held anger, the fading smell of gunpowder and adrenaline, all of it mixed with desire.
I want you to be happy. I want you to have what I have in Phillip and my three beautiful, wonderful children.
Her mother's voice was springtime breeze. She wasn't sure of what she could have with Matthew, not until the hunt was behind them, but for what remained of the night, she could have what she'd wanted for days. Him. This.
She put her hands on his chest, soaked his warmth through her palms. She felt the kick of his heartbeat and thrilled at the deepened desire that threaded his scent like a river cutting its way through mountainous terrain.
Always before she'd experienced sex as a quick physical connection without intimacy, sometimes without more than the exchange of names. It would be different with him.
It wasn't just physical attraction. Physical attraction would be easy where everything about him was complicated, because he was human. Because she wasn't, and was getting less so.
"Come in with me?"
* * * * *
Chapter 30
Matthew's lips firmed. But his heart sped beneath her hand. His need was a heady aphrodisiac feeding her own.
She fought against licking her lips, against pressing to him, nose touched to the strong line of his throat, tongue darting out to taste.
"Taking one for the team, Mallory? Keeping me busy so I won't be there when your brothers and the asshole go after whoever has Iosif's other daughter?"
Her throat constricted, desire driven back by her failure to reach Zinaida in time to prevent her death.
Too late. Too late. Too late.
But Matthew didn't know that. He couldn't, not unless she brought him fully into her world. She wasn't ready to attempt it and he might never be ready for it.
Hands dropping away from his chest, she stepped back. "Forget I asked."
Jesus. Jesus. Don't—
Only he was already grabbing her, jerking her to him, trapping her against the Jeep, his mouth claiming hers.
The kiss was teeth and tongue and fury.
He'd never wanted a woman as badly as he did her. She invaded his thoughts, his dreams. The more he was with her, the harder it was to imagine a life without her.
He swallowed her taste down along with the soft sounds of pleasure she made and he reveled in being able to elicit them from her. His hands roamed, shoved beneath her jacket and encountered the gun.
He'd killed before, in the line of duty, overseas and at home, but tonight he'd killed for her regardless of whose bullet struck Korotkin first.
It should bother him. It should have warning bells ringing so hard that his body vibrated with the message he was in too deep, that he needed to get away from her, not get closer, that if he wasn't careful, tonight would only be the first time he killed for Mallory.
Fuck.
Heat scorched through him with the word. Raw, ferocious heat that burned away sanity and resistance. A hand tangled in her hair. His body ground against hers.
The desire riding him wasn't the aftermath of a fire fight and coming out alive, it wasn't related to the job, it was more primal, more all-consuming.
More. He had to have more.
The need for it gave his tongue the will to retreat from sensuous battle, gave his lips the strength to pull from hers though there was hesitation, a heated lingering before complete disengagement.
"Let's take this inside."
Her husky laugh held feminine amusement, not victory.
Holding hands, they got to the front door, got in.
Stop at the couch.
It was a last, weak grasp at sanity.
It failed.
Steps inside her bedroom, their jackets were stripped away between kisses. Their guns went gently to the floor.
She pushed the dark tee he wore upward and he pulled it off, a rush of pure lust arrowing downward at having Mallory's hands on him, roaming, dark eyes following them, making his blood h
eat another hundred degrees.
The muscles of his abdomen clenched when her fingertips swept over them on the way to snap and zipper. Between the catch of his breath and low moan at being freed, he managed a husky, "You like the direct approach."
The curve of her lips, the molten black of her eyes were the embodiment of feminine sensuality, feminine power. Her hand found him, encircled him, the stroke of her thumb making his hips jerk. "Is that a complaint?"
"Fuck no."
Her laughter filled his head with white heat, challenged him.
He gripped her hair, dragged her lips back to his, plundered her mouth.
Foreplay was overrated.
After denying himself, he wanted her now.
A jerk sent the buttons of her shirt sailing to the floor.
Another had breasts bared, tight nipples stabbing into his chest and sending streaks of pure heat straight to his dick.
He kicked off shoes. Toed off socks. Shoved his jeans down.
Released her hair in favor of stripping away her clothing, a shudder going through him with the first full body press of her skin to his.
He couldn't wait any longer. He already felt like he'd waited a lifetime.
He tumbled her onto the bed and covered her, the feel of her beneath him nearly enough to make him disgrace himself by coming before he got inside her.
He took her mouth. Kiss following kiss, raw need and feral desperation engulfing him when her legs wrapped around his waist.
Enough sanity remained to say, "Condom."
"I'm safe."
Need shuddered through him, intensified by what she offered.
He hadn't been with a woman like that since a college girlfriend.
Don't—
But his discipline deserted him at her slick opening, going completely AWOL with the first shallow thrust.
His hands sought hers, found them, their fingers entwining. He held hers to the mattress as lips fused, as tongues twined and tangled, as pleasure became the only agenda.
Hers first.
Delivered with measured thrusts. Hard thrusts. With the press and rub and grinding of pelvis to clitoris.
Then his, coming with the fast pistoning of hips, with exalting rush, leaving him lightheaded and drained of fight.
"That took the edge off," she said.
He laughed and rolled to his side to get a better look at the scenery he'd ignored in his haste to get inside her.
