Crave

stomach of the girl at Devina’s place—

As Jim burst to his feet, Adrian stepped into the line of sight, blocking the view. As well as the way in.

“What the fuck is on him?” Jim hissed, hanging on to Dog.

Adrian just shook his head as the lights went out in the far room and something hit the floor. Like one of Eddie’s combat boots.

“We’re not talking about anything,” the angel said quietly. “We’ll work for you and do what we have to to help you win, but you’re not welcome in our cesspool, Jim. He and I have been together too long, and in case you haven’t noticed, you just showed up on the job.”

A deep, guttural voice rose through the darkness: “Come on, Adrian.”

That sure as hell wasn’t the female sending out the demand. And for once, Ad, who wasn’t into taking orders, seemed in the mood to comply.

“We’re right next door if you need us,” the guy said before he disappeared into the darkness and the sex. “Just holler.”

And then everything was shut up tight.

Jim sank back down onto the chair and resettled Dog in his lap. Stroking the animal’s rough fur, he had to force himself to stay where he was. He wanted to break into that other room and demand that Adrian see a shrink and Eddie talk about what those markings were. But come on—everyone was half-naked and soon-to-be totally naked. And then pneumatics were going to get started.

“Hell . . . fuckin’ hell.”

Closing his eyes, he saw the patterns carved into Eddie’s back and remembered the moment he’d busted into Devina’s bathroom and found that innocent young girl upside down over the tub. Her blood had been bright red against the white porcelain and all over her pale skin and her blond hair. She’d been slaughtered and marked by the demon, her skin scratched raw with symbols.

Just as Eddie’s had.

Devina had obviously gotten her claws into that angel. And Jim was going to need the details on that one.

Refocusing on the laptop he’d bought that afternoon, he cleared the screen saver with a swipe of his finger. The Dell had only civilian speed and memory, but then again, it wasn’t like he was going to be commanding satellites off its keyboard—and the Caldwell Courier Journal Web site had come up easily enough.

As he returned to the archives, that picture of the girl was a raw wound on his brain. Dead bodies were nothing new to him, and yet that one had burrowed into his brain stem and set up shop in the heart of his CPU.

He wished he could have at least given her a proper burial. But when he’d entered the room, he’d broken the spell that had protected Devina’s sacred mirror so they’d had to leave. After that, the remains of the girl had disappeared.

Which was what brought Jim to the newspaper. Somebody would be looking for their daughter, and the body—or at least pieces of it—would eventually be found: Adrian maintained that Devina usually just dumped what was left as opposed to destroying it because that would cause more pain to the family and friends.

Such a peach that female was.

And it made him wonder whether permanently missing was better than defiled and destroyed. Hell of a choice.

In the search box, he entered things like “blond woman found dead” and “blond woman homicide” and “blond female killed.” Nothing—well, a lot of somethings, just none that fit what he was looking for. The results were too old either in age, because his victim had looked to be only about eighteen/nineteen, or the articles were from six months to a year ago whereas his girl had been killed very recently: The blood had been fresh, and her body, though mutilated, had appeared to be in relatively good health, which made him assume she hadn’t been tortured or starved for a period of time prior to her death.

When the CCJ didn’t give him what he wanted, his next stop on the information superhighway was the national database of missing persons. He searched the state of New York.

Oh . . . man. So many.

So much damn suffering out there in the world: nights that were filled with parents or husbands or wives or sisters and brothers wondering if the one who had been taken from them was dead or alive or in agony caused by another.

“Christ,” he whispered.

And he had been part of this, hadn’t he. On a worldwide scale, he had perpetrated crimes that had created holes in other people’s lives. Yes, the vast majority of his targets had been evil men, but he knew for a fact that many had had families, and now he wondered what he’d left behind. Even if the paterfamilias had deserved to die, what kind of trickle-down chaos had he created? He knew that a couple of his targets had been renowned for loving their kids: They might have been enemies with dangerous resources on a political calculus, but they hadn’t been bastards at home.

“Shit, Dog . . .” There was a snuffle and then a cold wet nose bumped against his hand. “Yeah, let’s start wading through all this.”

Dog raised his scruffy head and yawned so wide he let out a sound like a hinge squeaking. Then with another snuffle, the mutt rearranged himself in Jim’s lap, curling his little paws in and relaxing.

Jim tried to smooth the fur that had been messed up by the repositioning, but Dog’s wiry coat made that wasted effort. Silly animal always looked like he’d been blown dry by a set of box fans and then hit with four cans of Aqua Net.

Faces . . . names . . . stories . . .

As a moan percolated up from next door, he thought of the last time he’d had sex and got nauseated. The idea that’d he’d come inside his enemy was enough to give his cock a case of the never-again shrivels.

To think the other two had done her as well—

At first, the sensation was hard to place. Something was . . . just off. And then the vague huh-what? coalesced to the back of his neck until he was convinced cold air was being exhaled on his nape.

He wrenched around, but nobody was there. And the chills persisted, flickering down his spine, turning into a fleet of ants that teemed over his back.

Jim got to his feet and set Dog on the carpet.

Isaac, he thought. Isaac and Grier . . .

That house . . .

The spell at the house.

He was out of the hotel and back to Beacon Hill in the work of a moment, landing in the rear garden. The incantation he’d thrown remained in place, the outside of the town house still glowing, and now that he was in range, he knew he’d been right to come.

Devina was here. He could sense her evil, parasitic presence.

And yet everything appeared quiet: Through the plate-glass windows in the back, the kitchen was dark, with nothing but a distant hall light throwing illumination. No shadows moving, no alarm screeching, no guns going off, no screaming.

With a great beat of his wings, he levitated up to the third-floor terrace and landed in silence. Walking over to the French doors, he kept himself invisible to the human eye and peered in. The blond attorney was in her bed, lying on her side facing a little TV, apparently sleeping.

She seemed just fine.

Matter of fact, everything appeared just fine. Yeah, sure, he could sense that ghost hovering around—but it wasn’t a threat to her or Isaac. . . .

The vibrating alarm in his spinal cord was still going strong, however, and he was inclined to listen to it rather than go with this illusion of A-OK. On a blink, he walked through the glass door and stood in the center of her room, braced for action.

Which appeared to be a waste of muscle tension.

Again, there was nothing out of place, no sounds. . . .

Frowning, he walked past the bed and through the closed door across the way. On the landing at the head of