staring at me with a look of blank surprise. Heh. Serves you right, sweetheart. You shouldn’t make up stories about imaginary villains until you’re certain they won’t come true. “Who dares interrupt my—”
“Yeah, you know what?” Harry asked.
His staff snapped forward and an invisible truck hit me at thirty miles an hour.
I flew backward, thirty feet or so, and hit a stack of loading pallets.
I went through them.
That hurt.
I hit the wall behind them.
I did not go through it.
That hurt even more.
I landed, dazed, and wobbled to my feet with the help of my demon. No problem, I told myself. I’d planned to fall back to this position in any case—just not quite that vigorously.
The circuit box for the building was on the wall two feet to my left. I reached out and killed the lights.
“Crouch down!” Harry shouted to the woman he thought he was protecting. “Stay still!”
My demon and I adjusted to the darkness almost instantly. The Stygian had done the same. She had produced a wavy-bladed dagger from nowhere and was running toward me on silent feet, her eyes narrowed and intent.
I threw the prop knife I’d been holding when she was ten feet away. She slipped to one side, and it went spinning through the air, striking sparks off the far wall. Her knife struck at me, but I slammed the edge of one hand against her forearm, knocking it away before it could do more than scratch me. I followed that with a pair of sharp blows to the body, driving her back a step, and then drew my kukri from beneath the red blanket-robes, slashing at her head. I missed her, and the follow-up rake at her eyes that I made with my other hand failed to connect as well.
In the background, Harry had his priorities straight. He’d brought forth a little light from his amulet, and was cutting the child free from the makeshift altar. I felt my mouth stretch into a fierce grin.
“So smug,” hissed the Stygian, her reptile eyes flat. “But not for long.” She raised her voice into a terrified scream. “Let me go! Don’t touch me!”
Harry, holding the child over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry, spun toward the sound, raising his blasting rod, and began hurrying toward me.
“Run, Venator,” hissed the Stygian. “But the Blood of the Ancient Mothers is in your veins now. Enjoy your last hours.”
The nick on my arm, the tiny cut from the dagger, suddenly felt very cold.
The book was out of Harry’s hands. The child was safe.
I fled the building.
6
The wound was poisoned.
Without my demon, I don’t think I would have lasted more than an hour. Even with its support, I was having trouble staying steady. The pain was horrible, and my whole body poured sweat even as I shivered with cold. The Hunger can usually overcome any kind of foreign substance—but while my demon might have been a powerful one, it was not well fed, and I’d been using it hard all night. It had little strength left with which to fight the poison.
It was difficult, but I persevered for three hours.
That was how long it took for me to track the Stygian and catch her alone.
The sweep of my kukri had missed her head—but not the hairs growing out of it. And while my grasping fingers had not found her eyes an instant later, they had snatched those hairs out of the air before they could fall. The tracking spell the skull had taught me had been good enough to let me find the Stygian, despite any countermeasures she might have taken.
When she entered her hotel room, I was half an inch behind her. She never knew I was there until my lips touched the back of her neck, and I unleashed my demon upon her.
She let out a sudden gasp, as my Hunger, starved for so long, rushed into her flesh. Though she might have had the mind and thoughts of a dozen alien beings, she had a mortal life force and a mortal body—a woman’s body, and, as I had told the skull, a rather lovely one at that.
She tried to struggle for five or six seconds, until her nervous system succumbed to my Hunger, until the first orgasm ripped a moan of equal parts ecstasy, need, and despair from her throat.
“Shhhh,” I told her, my teeth gently finding her earlobe and my hands roaming. “It won’t hurt. I promise.”
She cried out in despair again, as her body began moving in helpless acquiescence to desire, and my own reservations flickered and died before the raw, aching need of my Hunger.
I spend most of my life fighting my darker nature.
Most of it.
Not all of it.
I bore the Stygian to the floor and fed her to my demon.
Lara would help me get rid of the body.
7
A long, long shower and the cleansing force of the rising sun had been enough to wash away the illusion that had obscured my true features.
I visited my brother at his office the next day.
“How’s business?” I asked him.
He shook his head, scowling. “You know what? I’ve been doing so much gopher work for the Council and the Wardens, I think I must be forgetting how to be a private eye.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, I went up against this complete joke of a bad guy yesterday,” he said. “Kidnapper. I mean, you should have seen this loser. He was a
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“And somehow he manages to get away from me.” Harry shook his head. “I mean, I got the kid back, no problem, but the little skeeve skated out on me.”
“Maybe you’re getting old.”
He glowered at me. “The worst part is that the chick who hired me, it turns out, isn’t even his mother. She was playing me all along. The kid’s been missing for three days, and his
“Where’s the chick?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Harry said, exasperated. “She’s gone. Stiffed me, too. And good luck trying to get the kid’s parents to pay me for the investigation and rescue. There’s a better chance of electing a Libertarian president.”
“The perils of the independent entrepreneur,” I said. “You hungry?”
“You buying?”
“I’m buying.”
He stood up. “I’m hungry.” He put on his coat and walked with me toward the door, shaking his head. “I tell you, Thomas. Sometimes I feel completely unappreciated.”
I found myself smiling.
