“Nikolas, you heading out?”
I grabbed my phone from the counter and looked up as Wayne, one of the warriors stationed in Los Angeles, walked into the kitchen.
“I’m on my way to meet up with Chris and the others at Blue Nyx.”
Chris and I had stopped by the club to visit Adele the moment we got to the city two days ago, only to find out the succubus was out of town and not due back until today. Adele knew more about the Los Angeles underworld than anyone else in the city. Two young Mohiri in the company of two werewolves would not go unnoticed for long, and if anyone knew where to find them, it was Adele.
We’d spent the last two days scouring the city, visiting every club, informant, and cheap motel we could think of. LA’s supernatural community was the biggest in the country, and there were hundreds of species living here. It also had one of the largest vampire populations, which made me even more desperate to find Sara and get her away from here.
She’d called me again last night. It was a different number and she didn’t speak, but my gut told me it was her. I’d spent the short call trying to get her to talk, to no avail. I consoled myself with the knowledge she must be missing me too if she felt the need to call. I wished she would talk to me.
Wayne clipped a knife sheath to his belt. “I just heard that two girls were attacked by a vampire at a motel over near LAX. Everyone else is out, so I’m going over there. I could use some backup.”
I immediately thought of Sara and Jordan, and my stomach dropped. “I’ll go with you.”
Chris and the rest of the team were on route to Blue Nyx when I called to let him know where I was.
“You need me to come there?” he asked.
“No, go talk to Adele. She’s our best bet of finding Sara and Jordan if they’re here. I’ll meet you there.” I wasn’t going to take the chance of missing the succubus if she decided to leave town again.
The motel was a pay-by-the-hour dump with a flickering neon sign and peeling paint. A prostitute who couldn’t be more than sixteen approached me before I’d even shut off my bike, and I sent her on her way with a hundred-dollar bill and a warning. Not that I expected her to heed my advice to go home for the night.
As Wayne and I entered the lobby, a short balding man in a crumpled suit passed by us, reeking of cigarette smoke and sex. I knew before I went to the room on the third floor that Sara wasn’t here. She’d never stay in a rat hole like this.
“Prostitutes,” Wayne said as we stood in the doorway, looking at the bloody scene. “God, they can’t be more than eighteen.”
I stared at the two naked girls sprawled across the bed with their throats ripped open, their eyes wide and unseeing. I’d seen so many vampire victims in my lifetime I’d thought I was numb to it. But the sight of these two filled me with revulsion and rage. The longer I went without finding Sara, the more I feared her ending up in the hands of a monster like the one who’d done this. The thought shook me so much I had to leave the motel to calm down.
“The clerk called the police before we got here,” Wayne told me when he came outside five minutes later. “They don’t usually respond as quickly to this part of town, but they should be here soon.”
There wasn’t anything we could do for the girls, so we left. Wayne returned to the safe house to monitor activity from the control room, and I went to meet up with Chris at Blue Nyx.
After the scene at the motel, I wasn’t in the best of moods when I pulled up behind the black brick building that housed Adele’s club.
One of her security guys opened the back door for me when I rapped on it.
“Evening, Dolph.”
The seven-foot ogre gave me something that resembled a smile. “Evening, Mr. Danshov.”
The club was crowded with the usual patrons: demons, weres, Fae. Adele’s was one of the few places in the city where species that never mixed in the real world could party together. Although party was a loose term for what was going on here. It was after midnight, the time when Adele’s succubus magic was at its strongest, and when her customers cast off all inhibitions and took part in the real reason they came here.
All around me, I could hear couples and threesomes engaged in sex on the couches in the dark corners. On the dance floor, a blond faerie kissed a voluptuous nymph while one of his brethren pressed against her from behind. Soon the trio would leave the floor and find a corner of their own – or they might not. Faeries were notorious exhibitionists.
I found Chris talking to the bartender while the four warriors who’d accompanied him stood like sentries observing the room.
“How was it at the hotel?” Chris asked.
“Bad. Two dead prostitutes. We left before the police arrived.”
He grimaced. “Vampires don’t even try to hide their kills anymore.”
“I know. It’s getting bad out there.” I looked up at the window on the second floor that overlooked the club. “Have you seen Adele already?”
“Briefly.” He smirked. “I told her you were on the way, and she wanted to wait to see you instead.”
“Great,” I muttered.
I made my way to Adele’s office. A burly ogre named Bruce guarded the door, and he nodded in greeting at me.
“Miss Adele is waiting for you.”
Adele was reclining on a couch by the window, and she stood in one fluid movement when I walked in. She wore a silver dress that hugged her like a second skin, and her long blonde hair hung around her shoulders. Silver flashed in her violet eyes, and her skin was flushed from feeding off the sexual energy below.
The Mohiri had a no tolerance policy for Incubi and Succubi that fed off humans because the humans always died from such encounters. We made exceptions for demons like Adele who used her club to feed. Her patrons knew she fed from their energy, and they came here for the high. As long as she stayed clean, she was allowed to live.
“Nikolas,” she purred, gliding toward me. “It’s been far too long since you visited me.”
“Hello, Adele. I see things are well for you.”
She inhaled deeply. “Business has never been better.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“I added two new rooms on this floor, and they are quite luxurious. For my more discreet customers.” She stopped in front of me and gave me a sensual smile. “Maybe this time you’ll finally accept my invitation to sample the delights of Club Nyx.”
Her hand slipped inside my jacket, grazed my abdomen, and then descended to the waist of my jeans. I caught it before it could go any lower and took a step back with a shake of my head.
Adele pouted without a trace of embarrassment and went to pour herself a glass of wine. “Next time, perhaps. What else can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for two Mohiri girls who came to LA two days ago.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Two Mohiri girls. Ah, maybe you are looking to sample some delights after all.”
I ignored her suggestive comments. “The girls are with two werewolves, so they’ll be hard to miss.”
Adele lifted a delicate eyebrow. “Mohiri and werewolves. I’ve seen a lot of things in this city, but that’s a new one.”
“I take it you haven’t heard anything then?” I said with a touch of impatience.
“No, but I’ve been out of town for the last week. I just got back tonight. I can put out some feelers and see what I come up with.”
“Thank you. That would be appreciated.”
“Always a pleasure to assist the Mohiri.”
She sat on the couch and crossed her legs so the slit in her dress showed bare skin to her hip. “I’m curious though. Since when do you track down runaway children?”
“One of them is the granddaughter of a friend.”
I wouldn’t reveal my true connection to Sara. Adele was an informant, but I didn’t trust her beyond that. I had many enemies, and if one of them learned Sara was my mate, they’d hurt her to get to me. I’d do anything to save her.
“I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for her then. Los Angeles is not a good place for young Mohiri on their own.”
“I know.” I smiled. “I’ll leave you to your business. You have the Mohiri contact number if you find anything.”
“Yes. I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear something.”
I started for the door, but stopped and turned back to her. “There is someone else I meant to ask you about. You haven’t heard anything about Madeline Croix being in LA, have you?”
Her glass stopped halfway to her mouth. “She’s the Mohiri who ran off years ago. You still haven’t found her?”
“No. I heard recently she might be here, and I figured I’d ask since I was coming to see you anyway.”
She licked her lips. “I don’t think I’ve heard about her. I’ll ask around, discreetly of course.”
I nodded my thanks. “I hope to hear from you soon.”
“How did it go?” Chris asked when I rejoined him.
I inclined my head toward the main door, and he followed me outside.
“She hasn’t heard anything yet. She said she’ll see what she can find out.”
He let out a breath. “Well, if anyone can find them in this city, it’s Adele. It might take her a few days though.”
The meaning in his words was clear. I had to try to be patient for the next day or so. I hadn’t exactly been the best company since we left home, something he’d pointed out more than once.
“I asked her about Madeline too, but I didn’t say Sara and Madeline are related.”
Chris’s brow furrowed. “You think Madeline is in LA?”
I shrugged. “Something brought Sara here.”
A warrior named Hans walked up to us. “Anton was doing a sweep, and he found three dead vampires less than a block from here. He said we should come check it out.”
I wasn’t sure what was unusual about dead vampires, but I went anyway. We found Anton in an alley on a quiet street, bent over a body on the ground. When we got closer, I saw it was a dead mox demon. It looked like she’d been fed on by more than one vampire.
“I can’t make sense of it,” Anton said when we entered the alley. “Look around and tell me what you see.”
We did as he asked. Near the mouth of the alley lay a beheaded vampire. From the look of it, he’d been killed by a sword. Further in, I saw two more vampires. One had a crossbow bolt in his crotch, and his head looked like it had been ripped off. The other one was in half a dozen pieces at the back of the alley.
Chris stepped over a severed arm. “It looks like they were taken apart by an angry mob.”
“A mob with swords and crossbows?” I asked absently, bending to examine one of the bodies.
I stood and walked over to the mox demon. She had on a flimsy red dress; the kind people wore to a place like Blue Nyx. I’d lay odds she’d come from there before she was attacked. A place like that was bound to draw vampires looking for an easy meal. Most of Adele’s customers were in a euphoric, drugged-like state when they left the club, easy prey for a vampire. Since vampires couldn’t get past Adele’s ogre security, they’d wait for their meals to come to them.
“Demons?” Chris suggested.
“That’s my guess.” I straightened and looked around the alley. “Who else would come to the aid of a mox demon?”
“Good point.”
Anton called for backup, and we spent the next hour removing the bodies. Once we had all the parts bagged and in the van, the other warriors took them to an industrial park to incinerate in a furnace they used often.
Chris and I resumed our new nightly routine of visiting various underworld clubs in the Los Angeles area. The problem with LA was its size. Without a way to track Sara, it could take weeks to find her. I was afraid we didn’t have weeks with the escalating violence here.
If Sara was here, she wasn’t hiding out in a hotel room. She was out here searching for Madeline. She’d proven she was stronger than we’d thought, but sooner or later, she was going to run into trouble she couldn’t handle.
As the night wore on, I found myself checking my phone and wondering if she was going to call again. Even though she hadn’t spoken when she’d called the last two nights, it eased my mind a little to know that wherever she was, she was thinking about me.
I’d given up on hearing from her when my phone rang just after 3:00 a.m. It was another unknown number, but I knew it was her before I answered.
“Hello?”
Silence.
I walked down the street, away from the were bar I’d just left.
“Sara? Will you talk to me tonight?”
I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t answer, but it didn’t stop the pang of disappointment. Before now, I hadn’t known it was possible to crave the sound of someone’s voice. Part of it was the bond that made me need my mate, but a bigger part was me. I missed her.
“Okay.” I let out a breath. “Tristan said you sounded tired when you called him today. I know you’re not sleeping. You know you can call me anytime, even if you’re not ready to talk yet.”
I looked up at the sky that would start to lighten in a few short hours. “It’s late. You should try to get some sleep. Call me again tomorrow so I know you’re all right. And Sara…I need to hear your voice, too.”
The line was so quiet I thought she’d hung up. Then, I heard a small sound like a muffled sob. “I’m okay.”
I closed my eyes, my shoulders sagging. They were just two whispered words, but they told me she cared and that she was hurting too. She might not be ready to talk things out, but she was reaching out to me.
The silence on the other end of the line told me she was gone. I turned back to the bar with renewed hope warming my chest. Tomorrow, she would call again, and I’d coax a few more words out of her.
If I didn’t find her first.
* * *
“No luck?”
I shook my head as I walked into the safe house control room. “They were there two days ago. Garrett told me Sara sold him some very nice diamonds in exchange for cash and weapons. Roland was with her.”
Chris spun in his chair to face me. “Where did Sara get diamonds, and how the hell does she know someone like Leo Garrett?”
“I don’t know. I’m almost afraid to find out.”
I sank onto a chair and rubbed my eyes. “Garrett’s main business is gun running, but his hobby is fencing fine art and jewels. He said a mutual business acquaintance introduced him to Sara, and that she was quite the businesswoman. He wouldn’t tell me how much money or diamonds were exchanged, but he said both parties were happy with the deal.”
Chris stared at me. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“You and me both.”
He blew out a puff of air. “I take it Garrett didn’t know where Sara and Roland are.”
“He said he didn’t, but who knows with a man like that. I asked Dax to look into him and see if he can find something to lead us to Sara.”
A phone rang. Wayne, who was sitting at another computer, answered it. He wore a puzzled expression when he came over to us.
“Westhorne just got an anonymous call from someone claiming to be a friend. He told them there is a pretty nasty gulak demon in Los Angeles named Draegan, who is running drugs and human slaves. The guy wouldn’t say how he got our private number, but he said we’d want to check it out.”
Chris and I stood at the same time. If there was one thing we hated more than vampires, it was slavers. It didn’t surprise me to hear that a gulak was involved. I’d dealt with enough of their kind to know they thought of humans as nothing more than chattel.
“Where can we find this demon?” I asked.
Wayne grinned. “I’ll tell you on the way. I’m not missing out on this one.”
Instead of riding our bikes, the three of us took one of the Escalades parked in the driveway. Wayne drove us to a tall glass apartment building in West Hollywood.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked him when we entered the pink marble lobby.
Before he could answer, a human security guard called to us from behind a desk. “What’s your business here?”
“We’re here to see Draegan,” I said in a voice that dared him to object.
He looked us over warily and nodded. “Top floor. Apartment 3010.”
An unhappy tagg demon opened the door to Draegan’s apartment as we approached it. The bald, red-skinned demon glared at us over his large nose and waved us inside.
“This night just keeps getting better,” he grumbled as he shut the door and followed us down a short hallway.
The first thing I noticed about the place was it was almost completely white, reminding me of a clean room. It was also trashed. It looked like someone had thrown a party that had gotten out of hand. Way out of hand if the dead ranc demon and two dead gulaks on the floor were any indication.
Down another hallway someone was shouting, but the words were muffled. Based on the deep guttural tone, it was the gulak we had come to see.
Aside from Draegan and the tagg demon, the place appeared to be empty. It looked like Draegan’s guests had taken off when the killing started. The question was, who had done the killing? A rival demon perhaps? Gulaks didn’t have many friends, and they were often engaged in turf wars.
“What happened to his horns?” Chris asked, drawing my attention to the ranc demon that had charred nubs where his horns should be.
“The short one did it.” The tagg demon scowled and bent to pick up an overturned chair. “I knew I smelled something off about her.”
Chris frowned. “Was it another demon?”
The tagg demon snorted. “More like a pair of hellions. But I guess you already knew that or you wouldn’t be here.”
Before I could ask what he meant by his remark, a bellow came from the other end of the apartment.
“Wilhem, you worthless piece of shit! You better not have let anyone else in here tonight or I’m going to wring your fat neck.”
Wilhelm swallowed fearfully. “I-I’m sorry, Draegan. I didn’t have any choice.”
“Like you had no choice when you let those two bitches in here?” Draegan growled. “They killed Crak and Lorne and cheated me. Cheated me! No one steals from me and gets away with it. When I find those two, they’ll wish they’d never heard my name.”
“Um, Draegan,” Wilhelm stammered, glancing nervously at us. “You have guests. You might want to –”
“Get rid of them,” the gulak roared, his voice coming closer. “I’m busy. Do you know how much I could have gotten for that blood contract? That little bitch owes me big.”
Something that sounded like a fist slammed into a wall, and then the gulak thundered into the room. Ignoring us, he picked up a curved blade from a table and strapped it to his waist.
A gravelly laugh rumbled from him. “I can’t wait to get my hands on her. She’ll pay me back every cent in my bed. And when I’m done with her, I’ll sell her to Rhys. He prefers humans, but he won’t pass up a chance to sample some young Mohiri flesh.”
Blood began to roar in my ears as a growl tore from my throat. Someone said my name, but it sounded far off. All I could see and hear was the gulak demon who would dare touch my mate. I was going to rip the forked tongue from his mouth for the things he’d said about her.
Draegan stared at me with a mix of anger and surprise. “Who the hell are you?”
The tagg demon said something that made Draegan’s scaly face turn a sickly gray. He snatched up a long curved sword and bared his teeth at me.
“That bitch…girl came in here and tore up my place,” he yelled, backing into the living room. “I didn’t touch a hair on her head. Tell him, Wilhelm.”
I stalked him. Wilhelm said something, but I’d blocked out everything except the gulak. His words about what he’d planned to do to Sara were stuck on replay in my head, and each time I heard them my body shook from the rage threatening to consume me.
Draegan’s legs hit the couch, and he maneuvered around it, never taking his lizard-like eyes from me as I advanced on him. I noticed vaguely that my vision had turned the white room the color of watered-down blood.
Metal flashed. I didn’t remember drawing my own sword, but it rose to meet Draegan’s blade in a shower of sparks.
He staggered backward from the blow, pain flashing across his face. He might be stronger than every other demon he knew, but brute force would not save him this time.
I struck before he could recover, stripping the scales from his left arm.
He bellowed and swung wildly at me. I deflected it easily and nicked his thigh, then his chest, then his ear. Each cut drew another roar of pain from him and sent droplets of black demon blood across the once pristine room.
He panted heavily, but I pushed him relentlessly, wanting him to suffer for every vile thought he’d had about Sara, wanting him to know exactly who was going to end him.
“I have money, jewels, weapons. Take them all,” he cried desperately as his strength began to wane. “I was angry about my men. I never meant to hurt the girl. I swear.”
“My mate,” I snarled, low and deadly.
“Mate?” he croaked. His eyes darted around the room, but there was no escape for him.
He let out a roar and threw his sword at me. I sidestepped it, and it sank into the wall behind me.
In the next instant, Draegan spun and ran toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, his leathery wings unfurling behind him.
My knife buried itself to the hilt in the gulak’s back, pinning one of his wings securely to his body. He flailed and tried to stop his forward rush. Too late.
Glass shattered outward as he flew through the window. The good wing flapped uselessly for a second, and then he was gone. His scream followed him down, ending abruptly when he met the ground.
No one in the apartment moved for several minutes. The roaring in my ears receded, my body stopped trembling, and the room turned white again.
It wasn’t until I lowered my sword and walked to the window to look down at what was left of Draegan that Chris came over to stand beside me.
“You okay?” he asked over the wind whistling through the broken window.
I nodded stiffly.
He peered at the dark shape in the courtyard far below. “Wayne, we’re going to need a cleanup crew. A big one.”
“On it,” Wayne called from the other side of the apartment.
Chris looked at me. “I guess that’s one way to work off some of that pent-up aggression.”
I scowled, and he held up his hands. “Hey, you haven’t exactly been Mr. Congeniality for the last week.”
“With good reason.”
His hands lowered. “I know.”
I stared at the sea of lights, and felt a moment of despair. Sara was out there somewhere, and I didn’t know what she was doing or if she was safe. Los Angeles was a cesspool of vampire and demon activity. How long did we have before she and her friends ran into another Draegan or Price? How long before they found themselves in a situation they couldn’t fight their way out of?
“I have to find her, Chris.”
“We will.” He looked around the apartment. “What were Sara and Jordan doing in a place like this?”
I inclined my head at the tagg demon, who hadn’t moved from his spot. “Maybe he knows.”
Chris walked over to the demon. “Can you tell us why the two Mohiri girls came to see Draegan?”
Wilhelm gave a jerky nod. “The dark-haired one told me she was here about a debt. Draegan said it was a blood debt.”
“Blood debt? Whose?” Khristu. Sara, what are you mixed up in?
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
Chris pointed to the three dead demons. “What happened to them?”
Wilhelm’s gaze flitted nervously to me as if he was afraid I’d blame him for whatever had gone down earlier tonight. “Draegan passed out from the Glaen, and –”
“Glaen?” Chris and I said together.
Why would a demon touch a Fae drink? It was poison to them.
“It’s a game some demons like to play,” Wilhelm explained. “They drink shots of Glaen until one passes out. The girl played Draegan for the blood debt. No one’s ever beaten Draegan, and Crak and Lorne didn’t take it too well. They tried to stop the two girls from leaving, and you can see how that worked out.”
I looked around and my gaze fell on a crystal decanter on a side board, containing a luminescent white liquid. Sara had duped a gulak demon into a drinking contest he couldn’t possibly win. And no one could have known she was half Fae and immune to the stuff.
Glaen. Jesus. If I wasn’t still wound up from my fight with Draegan, I would have laughed at the absurdity of it all.
Wilhelm cleared his throat. “What are you going to do with me?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. You can leave after you help us sort out a few things.”
Tagg demons were not aggressive, and they were vegetarians for the most part. Most of them ended up working as servants for other demons. Certainly nothing that deserved a death sentence.
He let out a deep breath. “I’ll help however I can, sir.”
“We’ll bring in some people to go through Draegan’s files. You can assist them. Any money you find here is yours as payment for your services.”
“Yes, sir!”
The way his eyes lit up told me his former employer kept a substantial amount of money on hand. I didn’t care. It wasn’t like we needed it.
“Who was this Rhys Draegan mentioned?” I had a suspicion about what he was, and it was hard for me to say the name without wanting to hit something. The thought of Sara anywhere near one of his kind made bile threaten to rise in my throat.
Wilhelm flinched. “Rhys is an incubus. He and Draegan did business a lot.”
My fingers tightened around the hilt of my sword. I wanted to bring Draegan back so I could kill him all over again. God only knew how many innocent human girls he had sold to the incubus, or what horrors they had suffered before they died.
“Do you know where I can find this incubus?” I could no longer take my anger out on the gulak, but I would rid the world of his incubus friend. Draegan wasn’t the only demon getting a house call from me tonight.
