Mancuso shook his head. “No, we had a good run. I don’t care what you said. No one plays around with his soul and gets away with it.” He puffed on a cigar, smoke drifting toward the ceiling.
Mancuso was a heavyset man with heavy jowls and sad, beady eyes. He didn’t offer us seats despite the comfortable leather sofas scattered around the room. That was okay. We didn’t want to sit anyway. Our presence made the damned uncomfortable. We, on the other hand, despised them for selling their souls for material gain and fame, but we needed their cooperation.
“What do you want me to do?” Mancuso asked.
Bran pulled a rolled-up scroll from the inside pocket of his trench coat, and a dagger from the belt around his hip. The scroll was dark-brown and thin like animal skin, the edges darker and uneven as though cut by fire. He unrolled it to reveal a list of names. The letters glowed fiery orange against the dark background.
“Antony J. Mancuso,” Bran read.
A contract appeared out of thin air. Square and made from the same material as the bigger scroll, the words written on it were in the ancient language of Nephilim and angels. The only recognizable words were Mancuso’s name.
Mancuso watched Bran with shiny eyes as though he was fighting tears. He snuffed off the smoldering tip of the cigar on an ashtray. “How long do I have after I cancel the contract?”
“You’ll get your soul back right away,” Bran explained.
“I meant my health, the reason I gave up my soul.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Remy said impatiently from where he stood by the door. “Because of us, you are about to cheat hell.”
“No one cheats hell.” Mancuso picked up his cigar and placed it between his lips with shaking hands. “Or death.”
“Stop puffing on that garbage and you’ll add ten more years to your life,” Kim added bluntly, blue eyes flashing.
That was Kim for you. She spoke her mind, damn the consequences. Mancuso didn’t even look at her despite her nasty tone. Instead, his gaze kept swinging between Bran’s face and the contract.
“Give me your finger,” Bran said, gesturing to Mancuso.
Mancuso heaved forward and extended a chubby finger. No one spoke as Bran pricked his finger and blood pooled from the punctured hole then dropped onto the parchment. It smoldered at the wet spot then burst into flame, leaving behind nothing.
“Why don’t I feel different?” Mancuso asked.
“You had a massive stroke, Mr. Mancuso,” Bran said. “You couldn’t talk, eat, and walk before you signed with me. You are talking to us.”
Mancuso stretched his arms and wiggled his fingers, a smile flitting across his round face. “Yes, I am. So David Lee’s voice…?”
“Will be okay even after he cancels his contract,” Bran finished patiently. “We’ll be back after he’s done with his last song.”
Mancuso was the promoter at Zone, the hottest new club on Union Square in New York City. He was famous for plucking garage bands out of obscurity and turning them into overnight teen sensations. But his most successful band, a punk rock group called Hellboys, weren’t young. They had had their time in the limelight in the late nineties. Then their lead singer, David Lee, lost his voice to drugs, until two years ago when he ‘found it’ and the group had an amazing comeback.
No one knew how David Lee’s voice recovered. Doctors called it a miracle. Fans didn’t care. The truth was known to a select few. Us. The Cardinal Guardians, children of the Nephilim, whose sole existence was to rid the world of demons.
David Lee had sold his soul to Bran when Bran used to collect souls for a demon queen. Mancuso had introduced them to each other.
We filed out of Mancuso’s office and headed upstairs to the VIP lounge. We had a clear view of the dance floor and the stage, where David Lee was singing his heart out while sweaty bodies writhed and arms flailed in a rhythmic daze.
I felt the urge to sway to the pulsing beat, but we weren’t here to dance. All of us—Izzy, Kim, Sykes, Remy, Bran and I—were dressed in black hunting clothes, which blended well with the Gothic outfits most of the clubbers wore. Anonymity was everything in our line of business. No one was supposed to know we existed.
Across the table, Sykes turned his chair and started whispering in the ear of a giggling human girl. Next thing, the girl slid her fingers through his blond hair, gripped his head and whispered something back. Somehow he always found time to flirt or make out with some girl even in the middle of a mission.
Remy, seated next to him, drummed his fingers on the table, oblivious to everything and everyone, his gray eyes staring into space. He’d been acting weird the last couple of months. Sykes insisted Remy needed to get laid. I think dealing with humans on a daily basis was getting to him.
The “girls”, as I often called Kim and Izzy, wore bored expressions though the two were critiquing the outfits the women at the neighboring tables wore. Kim, golden blonde hair professionally styled and makeup impeccable, and Izzy, with skin a shade of brown that attracted light in ways that defied description and a dark curly mane, lived and breathed fashion. Unfortunately, they could be so catty sometimes. Even though they wore black shirts and trench coats like the rest of us, their black leggings and designer thigh-high boots were not standard Cardinal Guardian issued. But the boots were very handy when hiding the special weapons we used when hunting demons—knives, daggers, and sickles.
Bored with eavesdropping on their conversation, I went back to studying the dancers. Dry-ice smoke rose like the Lazari from the stage as the band started their next number, an old favorite that sent the predominantly teen and twenties crowd screaming. I tried to block the noise, their thoughts, which were loud, and their emotions, which were varied, but couldn’t completely do it.
Bran’s story was complicated, but then he was a complicated guy. Coronis, the most powerful demoness of all time, had kidnapped his grandparents and forced their only son, Bran’s father, to marry an alpha demoness. As a result Bran had grown up among the demons and like every faithful follower, he’d moved into the soul-collecting business when his powers appeared at the age of sixteen. A year ago, he found us, the Guardians, his grandfather’s people, and switched sides. To save his soul, he had to cancel every contract he’d ever enticed a human to sign.
Three months ago, we’d acquired a list of Damned Humans who’d sold their souls to demons in the last several millennia, Bran’s included. As a result, we’d given up beach time to chase Damned Humans. Looking at Bran, you couldn’t tell he was worried. He was cool like that. Being the oldest in our group might have something to do with it. He’d just turned twenty. The other Cardinals were nineteen—they all had summer birthdays—and I would turn seventeen in three weeks.
Like most Nephilim, Bran was startlingly handsome, with an angular face, wavy, shoulder-length black hair, broad shoulders and a tall, masculine body. His most striking features were his emerald green eyes, which now reflected the strobe light flashing around us. I caught the gaze of a girl at our neighboring table and smiled. She glanced away but within seconds, she was back staring. Even though Bran never seemed aware of it, he attracted more attention than the rest of us wherever we went. Something about the way he carried himself was mesmerizing, like he could chew you up and spit you out without losing sleep over it. He was a badass when badassness was called for.
I shrugged.
I couldn’t sleep if I tried, not with the noise level. Still, I rested my head against his broad chest and closed my eyes. Despite being seated upstairs above the bar, the rotating strobe lights still reached us. I hated strobe
