“You look like an angel,” he whispered.
I scoffed. “I can promise you I’m not.”
But he didn’t seem to be listening. “I wonder if you taste like an angel?” He whispered it reverently, but now I was getting freaked. Romanus was suddenly there, hauling Rouen to his feet.
And then he bit him on the shoulder. Hard. The fuck?
He murmured something in a guttural language, and Rouen seemed to snap out of it. I jumped to my feet and backed away from them both. “Dude. What the hell was that?”
Romanus just stared at Rouen, who hung his head. Then he turned his blue and green eyes to me.
“We feed from the sun's light. But that’s because it is just a concentration of energy. Of life. Angels possess that very life energy in their veins, which means the blood of angels is very...potent to us. Hard to resist.”
“I’m not angelic, and neither is my blood,” I protested weakly. It was the longest sentence I’d ever heard him speak, and I found myself a little lost in the very cadence of his voice.
He stepped closer to me, this huge mountain of a man, uh gargoyle, and I resisted the urge to reach out and touch his slightly luminescent skin. How hadn’t I realized last night that it had a faint shimmer to the golden tone, like it was dusted with flecks of gold.
He leaned down, so his face was close to mine. My hindbrain was yelling to run, because that was what normal humans did in the face of terrifying demons that could crush you in an instant. But I wanted to lean forward and capture his full lips with my teeth. God, no one was ever going to accuse me of being normal.
“But you aren’t completely human, are you Red?” His growling voice came out as almost a purr this time, and it thrummed down to my core, making me wet.
“Human enough to know I don’t taste good,” I protested weakly.
Romanus inhaled deeply, his pupils dilating until there was barely a ring of color around them. “I’m gonna have to reserve the right to disagree until I taste for myself.”
I had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t talking about my blood. My heart thumped wildly in my chest, making me short of breath, and a wave of excitement rolled over me. My eyes darted to Rouen, who stood slightly behind Romanus, but his pupils were equally as dilated. I wonder if they shared, then I chastised myself for the stupidity of the consideration.
“Rella, are you okay?”
Charlie's voice snapped me out of my lust induced trance, and I threw him a thankful look. Whatever they made me feel couldn’t be natural.
Romanus snarled, and I blanched.
“I’m good, Charlie. Actually, I was hoping you could take me to see the family.”
“Your family or…”
“No, Charlie. The Family. Capital F.”
Charlie groaned. “Aw, man.” He pulled his shirt over his head and ran a hand through his tousled hair. He did bedhead well.
“Can you set it up or what? I need to know what they know. None of my police contacts will be any good for the kind of information I’m after. Please, Charlie?”
When I’d become a cop, we’d drawn a big, thick line in the sand. Anything work related, for either the Mulligans, or me, was completely off limits. If I wanted to talk to them about anything nefarious, I had to make an appointment through Charlie and they’d treat me like any other cop. It stopped family functions from being tense.
“Fine. But you are so gonna owe me. This means I have to sit on the other side of the table to you and pretend I’m tough, and you know I hate all that macho posturing bullshit.”
I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around his chest.
“I owe you more than one, Charlie Bear.”
His big hands spread across my back as he hugged me in return, and I took a huge breath in. How anyone could smell so nice after just rolling out of bed was beyond me, but something about Charlie's scent had always made me feel fuzzy, even when I was a kid.
“Okay, you go get your tough face on and call me with the meet details? I need a shower, like ASAP. I stink.”
Rouen let out a laugh, the intense look gone from his eye. “I think you smell kinda good.”
My eyes flicked to Romanus, but his face was impassive.
Charlie leaned down and murmured in my ear. “I don’t like leaving you here with those two. They are dangerous. They make the hairs on my arms stand on end.”
Someone scoffed. “We have good hearing, kid. You should be scared of us. In this form we are a nightmare, but shifted we are your very worst nightmare made real. The only thing scarier than us is Lucifer in a bad mood. She’s safer with us than she would ever be with you.”
I whirled around, the urge to protect Charlie making me narrow my eyes. “Back off. I don’t need your protection. I’m more than capable of kicking your ass myself.” Romanus raised a brow. “Fine, probably not, but I can call Luc quicker than you can say grrr, so stay out of my personal space and we’ll get along fine.” I turned back to Charlie. “Luc trusts them, and you know Ace would stake him with the demonesses if they murdered me in the shower, so it’ll be all good. Go. I’ll be fine.”
I pushed him towards the door, because I kind of did believe what I was saying. Hope always said that Luc loved us, and she’d know, being an empath and all. It was hard to hide your feelings with resting bitch face when you had an empath as a pseudo-child.
Charlie turned at the doorway and opened his mouth to say something.
“Love you!” I said and shut the door in his face.
I turned back to the gargoyles in my living area. Rouen was smiling, perfect white teeth glinting in the sun, and I noticed his incisors were longer than a human. As were the bottom ones. They were some serious chompers.
Romanus just scowled.
I ignored them and headed straight for the bathroom. I would feel better behind the flimsy lock. I grabbed my gun from the locked nightstand and took it into the bathroom with me. “Stay out of the bathroom, or I will shoot you in the head first and ask questions later. Got it?”
Rouen gave me a grin and a snappy salute, and Romanus just grunted something that sounded like an affirmation.
It had been a hell of a week.
I sat across from Uncle Joe, Uncle Colin, Cousin Marty and Cousin Paulie inside the Hammer and Pinwheel bar, which was in the shadiest district in Boston. The bar was the base of the Mulligan Family operations, and it lived up to every mob cliché you could conjure.
“Where’s Johnnie?” I asked as I sat down. They usually had five at these kind of meetings in case they needed to vote.
“Johnnie is escorting Granny Mulligan, Mam and Aunt Clary to Manhattan to see Hope in the hospital. They’re taking her a gift.” Paulie’s shit eating grin made me instantly suspicious. Paulie was a couple of years older than Charlie and me, and he used to pick on us terribly, in the way only an older brother/cousin could. I didn’t bother asking why the female Mulligans taking Hope a present was so amusing, because he wouldn't tell me. That wasn’t why we were having this meeting.
Uncle Joe looked at Romanus and Rouen over my shoulder, and if he was fazed by the big gargoyles behind me, he didn’t show it.
“What’s with the muscle?”
I shrugged. “New bodyguards slash pains in my ass. Everyone's been a little on edge since the thing with Hope…” I trailed off, and anger crossed every one of their faces. They were old school mob. Women and children were off limits. No innocent bystanders. Plus, they loved Hope. While they’d been disappointed with my choice of career, in their eyes Hope was the epitome of the Blessed Virgin herself. The fact that someone had hurt her got their good Catholic misogynistic pride all riled up. I didn’t tell them that the gargoyles were demons. They didn’t know Ace and Luc were Fallen, though Luc gave them knowing looks at all the family functions. I’d only ever seen the Uncles uncomfortable once or twice in my life, and each time Luc was the cause.
“What can we do for you, Estrella?” Uncle Colin asked, straight to the point as always.
“I need to know who traffics people in Boston.”
They looked like I’d slapped them with a fish. “We don’t deal in that kind of thing, you know that Rella,” Marty chastised. “Besides, I heard you quit the PD.”
Seriously, cops gossiped more than old ladies. “Bernie needs to learn to keep his mouth shut. This question is of a more personal nature. Luc and I found that Hope was meant to be sold by traffickers from Estonia. I want to know if anyone here would have a name I could track down. It can’t be that big of a community that no one knows nothing. People talk, there's chatter on the market, someone knows something. I just want to know what. I just need a start, so I can make the bastards pay,” I implored.
For the first time ever, I’d shocked them to silence. “And what do you intend to do with them once you find them, Officer Jones?” Uncle Joe asked, his head cocked, making the cigar in his mouth slip to the left.
“I’m going to make the hurt, Uncle Joe, and then I’m gonna make ‘em die. No one fucks with my family. No one.”
When mobsters look proud, you know your life has taken a wrong turn somewhere. “We know who handles the go between in Boston. Usually it’s forced labor in this area, but they’ll know. They all dabble. Once you’ve sunk that low, there ain’t no filth you aren’t willing to wallow in,” Joe said, scribbling on a piece of paper.
“Do you need an army?” Uncle Colin asked, and his eyes flicked back to Romanus and Rouen.
I shook my head, smiling fondly at them. Sure, I didn't agree with most of their actions, but they offered me back up without question, just because that’s what family did. They had your back.
“Nah, Uncle Colin. A small group is better for tracking and infiltration. I’d like to borrow Charlie for a while though, if I could? I need a computer guy.”
Uncle Joe waived away the request. “Of course. If you need any clean weapons, let me know. I know a guy with some quality product.”
I stood, smiling, and they slid out of their chairs. I went around and hugged each one.
“Thanks guys. I’ll take you up on that before I leave.”
Joe patted my cheek. “Be safe, Estrella.” He slipped me a piece of paper with the name and address I needed.
I just nodded, because I could make no promises on that front.
They all turned to Charlie and gave him a pointed look. He sighed. “I’ll catch you up in a sec, Rella.”
I knew they were making sure he knew to protect me. While they might approve of my bloodthirsty actions, their natural misogyny made it hard for them to send a woman out to do a man's job. Especially when that job included killing.
According the Mulligans, the men were sinners and the women were martyrs. Little did they know I was more than comfortable with the denizens of Hell.
The Gargoyles escorted me out of the Hammer and Pinwheel. They took up the same formation as we walked in. One in the lead, and one bringing up the rear, me wedged in the middle like a sandwich. My mind wandered down a dangerous path, wondered if they did anything else in pairs, a woman sandwiched in between. I let out a little huff, as electricity shot straight to all my happy places.
We stood on the footpath, the cool early spring sun warming my face, and I was suddenly the focus of two very intense gazes.
“Uh, you guys can’t read minds, can you?”
Romanus narrowed his eyes. “No.”
Rouen grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “But we have acute senses. We can smell tiny changes in human physiology. We can hear a heart rate accelerate before a man strikes, or the smell of a lie.” He leaned in close. “The sweet scent when a woman is aroused,” he purred next to my ear, and my pussy tingled. His nose flared. “Yeah, that scent right there. Fucking delicious. The way your heart is pounding right now, I think you might like it if I took you down that alley and showed you just what I can do with my tongue. What do you say?”
HELL YEAH! My pussy yelled, fighting the part of my brain that cared about self-preservation. I panted a little with the effort, but I took a step back and out of his intoxicating personal space. I blinked to get my brain cells back online.
“Uh, so apart from good senses, what else do you guys do? If you don’t turn into rock monuments that hang out on churches.”
“We turn into dragons,” Romanus said it as if his answer was as mundane as scrapbooking and crocheting stuffies.
I blinked.
“Small dragons,” Rouen clarified. “Like the size of a sports car maybe.”
“Oh, just turn into car sized dragons. That’s all.” My tone was flat because, holy crap! “Well, okay then.”
Charlie, with his impeccable timing as always, pushed through the bar door. He looked at me and rolled his eyes.
“Let’s go.”
We walked to the parking lot at the back of the bar, and all piled into Charlie’s SUV. I slid into the back, because I’d already argued with Romanus this morning about calling shotgun. Apparently, I was easier to protect in the back seat. Whatever. It wasn’t worth the grief.
“What did the Family say?” I asked Charlie as we pulled into traffic, fiddling with my seatbelt around my jacket. Rouen’s hands wrapped around mine and guided the seatbelt into the clip.
“You know the usual stuff. If she is harmed, don’t bother coming home, she’s worth a hundred of me, the role of a man, all that macho shit. You know the Uncles. Old school.”
My fingers buzzed where Rouen had touched my hand, and I was only half concentrating on Charlie's words.
“Do you wanna stop at home and grab your gear? Your gun at least?”
I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. “Don’t need a weapon. These guys turn into dragons.”
Charlie swerved, and a taxi laid on its horn. Charlie flipped him the bird out the window.
“Say what?” He stared at me in the rearview mirror. “Seriously?” He flicked a look at Romanus, who just gave a single nod. “Rella, don’t take this the wrong way, but your family makes mine look like the fucking Brady Bunch.”
Preach.
“I think we should still go and get something a little more human to threaten people with. Probably wait to unleash the dragons on Boston until it's absolutely necessary.”
Yeah, that was probably a good point. “Okay, weapons first, then we are gonna pay,” I looked down at the paper clutched in my hand, “Alonso Alverez a quick visit.”
Hollywood always portrayed the bad guys as being the same. Cold, living in dingy rooms and tenement buildings, twitchy and trigger happy. As a cop, I knew that wasn’t true. Sometimes the worst monsters look completely normal.
As I sat in front of Alonso Alverez’s house in the suburbs, this truth had never hit me harder. He had a beautiful whitewashed house, with a wraparound porch and a tire swing in the front yard. Kid’s bikes laid abandoned beside balls and barbies on the front lawn. There was even a white picket fence.
Alonso Alverez was living the American Dream. All financed by selling people into slavery. I was going to throat punch that guy as soon as he told me what I wanted to know. And then I might let Romanus eat him in his dragon form.
I turned to Charlie. “No name dropping. Keep the Mulligans out of this.” I slipped out of the car and stood on the sidewalk. “No violence unless we are defending ourselves, okay?” Rouen shrugged, and Romanus stared me down. “I’m serious. We will get our fill of bloodshed, but this guy is just a middle man. We’ll scare the shit out of him, but that's it.”
I walked through the sweet little waist high gate, down the path past the standard roses, and up to the solid oak door with stained glass panels. I wanted to put my fist through it.
I pressed the doorbell, and the sound of little feet running towards the door made me tense.
A little girl, about five, with curly brown hair haloing her cherubic face, answered the door.
“Hello.” Her voice was friendly and completely without fear. Anger riled in my gut, but I pasted a smile on my face.
“Hi, is
your Dad home?”
“Sure,” she said, shutting the door in our faces, but I could hear her yell for her father behind the solid wood.
When it opened again, I was looking at a handsome man in his mid-forties. He had an expensive haircut, a brand name polo shirt, and an artfully trimmed goatee.
When he saw us, his face shut down into an impenetrable mask. We probably made quite an impression as a group.
“Can I help you?”
“You let a child answer the door? Do you have no fucking common sense?” I whisper-yelled at him, in case the girl was still in earshot. I couldn’t contain my disgust.
He stepped out of the house, shutting the door and placing his body between it and us. Like one man would be able to stop us if we’d been someone more nefarious.
“Who the hell are you to come here, to my house? How did you find this address?”
I'd been slightly worried we’d got the wrong guy when we’d pulled up, but his words chased away any lingering doubts.
“You should know better than anyone, Alonso, that shit has a way of following you home and dirtying your nest. You’re lucky really, that it was me and not someone less concerned with innocent life. Someone who decided that trafficking your daughter would be a worthy way to punish their competition.”
Alonso turned a little grey, but I felt no sympathy.
“I don’t traffic kids.”
I gave him a sarcastic round of applause. “Someone get him a humanitarian award. You just traffic the desperate, which is so much better.”
I was done with this piece of shit. I pulled my gun from my waistband and held it to his gut, angling myself so I blocked the view from the picture window, where any little eyes could be watching. To them I’d look like I was telling him a secret, which I was.
“I need to know who is in charge of the Estonian ring, either their branch here, because I know they’d have one, or their one in Europe. I need names and locations, otherwise I’m gonna let my friends here paint your pretty white fucking fence bright red. I have zero problem with wiping a piece of shit like you from the planet, and they’d enjoy it too,” I said the whole thing with a scary smile on my face, and I found I meant it.
Hell's Redemption- The Complete Series Boxset Page 34
