A Demon's Work Is Never Done: Latter Day Demons, Book 2 (6 page)

Yeah. I wondered how long the royal couple's composure would last if my Thifilathi appeared and offered to take them to hell.

* * *

Lexsi

"Why do you think someone would copy your son's crimes?" I asked. I wanted to feel them out. If they didn't believe Loftin guilty, it would come out now.

It did.

"Loftin was convicted on purely circumstantial evidence," Gerald Qualls said immediately.

Lie
.

"Do you have any idea who the real culprit was, then?" I asked.

"The police have files and files on possible suspects," Anne said.

Partial truth
.

Her voice was rough—almost a gasp. She had emphysema, according to the reports. She'd chosen to meet us without her oxygen tank—it just didn't go well with her dress.

"It's my guess that whoever did the original murders killed those women in that shelter," Gerald insisted.

Lie
.

"Where is Loftin now?" Kell broke in.

"Why, in Heaven," Anne snapped.

Big lie
.

"Tell us the truth," Kell said, placing compulsion. "How much did you pay to get Loftin out of prison?"

"Two-hundred million, disguised as an investment," Gerald said immediately while Anne nodded.

"Where is Loftin now?" Kell asked.

"They took him. We had him in a safe place on our ranch, and guarded day and night. They took him." Anne wrung her hands.

"Is this before or after he killed those women in the shelter?" Kell demanded.

"After. He promised us he'd be good if we got him out. He did that," Anne wept. "That's why we sent him to the ranch. He came home as he always did, covered in blood and happy. We had to do something."

I wanted to vomit at her explanation. All along, they'd known their son was a psychotic murderer, and they'd done nothing to stop him.

"Where do you think he is?" Kell asked.

"I think he's in South America," Gerald answered. "That's where the investment was."

"I hope they're taking care of our boy," Anne continued to weep.

"Who died in his place?" I asked.

"Some homeless man, I think," Gerald said. "A drain on society. Deserved to die."

"I'm done." I stood and shook my head at two who'd become so wealthy that anyone else was expendable to them. Too bad the laws of state and country got in their and their son's way, most of the time.

Yes, they'd likely paid their way past many a smaller crime, but Loftin's murderous tendencies finally led to an arrest and conviction.

I didn't feel sorry for either of them.

"We can have you killed," Anne coughed as I turned to walk away.

"Try." Kory's smaller Thifilathi appeared before both of them. Anne coughed a shriek while Gerald scooted his chair back in alarm.

"You will forget you saw him this way, and you will never pay anyone to commit a crime again," Kell responded smoothly.

We walked out. Jorden, who'd waited outside the door and likely heard everything said with his sensitive ears, nodded to all of us and led us toward the door.

We'd see ourselves out, thank you very much.

Chapter 4

Lexsi

"So Qualls is in Peru, if my guess is correct," Kory said. Jorden had taken us to a restaurant in Austin for lunch. I wasn't hungry—meeting with Loftin's parents left me feeling queasy.

"You need this," Jorden came back to our table after a brief visit to the restaurant bar.

"What's that?" I asked when he set the bottle in front of me. "I don't drink beer," I added.

"It's hard cider. Crisp, sweet and alcoholic. I think you need at least two or six to get over what we just dealt with."

I sipped tentatively from the bottle. Jorden was right—the cider was good. If it would take the edge off, I was more than willing to drink it.

Kory sat so close beside me we could have been mistaken for one person at times—he knew I was upset.

"Want a taste?" I held the bottle up. Kory took it and drank half its contents.

"Good," he said. "Order more."

Jorden wasn't drinking—he was our designated herder/driver. He talked to Opal, too, while Kory, Kell and I sat at a table in an upscale restaurant at the airport and drank the bad taste of the Qualls away.

* * *

A second night in a hotel went as well as the first. When we arrived in D.C., Jorden informed us that we had a meeting scheduled with Opal the following morning. He didn't give particulars on the phone conversation he'd had with her, either.

"Do you think it has something to do with Loftin Qualls?" I asked Kory as we followed the carpeted hallway toward our connected rooms.

"Probably," he rolled his shoulders to get kinks out of them. We'd been stuck in chairs most of the day and I could tell it made him restless.

"Want to work out before we go to bed?" I asked.

He almost stopped walking as he considered my question. The alcohol we'd consumed had left our systems long ago—High Demon metabolisms tend to do that.

"Yeah," he said. "Let's see if the concierge has something we can wear to exercise."

They did—the hotel was equipped to handle visiting statesmen and foreign dignitaries, so of course they had something.

Clothes and shoes were delivered to our rooms quickly, too.

"Meet me downstairs," Kory said before closing his door to change.

Someday
, I thought to myself,
I want to be able to change clothes while he watches
.

* * *

Kordevik

I'm certain she didn't intend for me to catch her thoughts, but I did. I almost didn't convince my cock to behave while I dressed in shorts and a tee. The athletic shoes delivered by the hotel were serviceable, but weren't what I would have chosen for myself.

It didn't matter. Lexsi wanted me. I wanted her. That's what mattered. I just had to convince her that the bite wouldn't be scary or awful, and that I was the High Demon she needed to spend the ages with.

When she walked into the exercise facility on the third floor, I was already lifting weights.

She went straight for the treadmill, to run off her frustrations.

"I'll give you a thousand dollars to take your shirt off."

I hadn't even noticed the woman who'd walked in after I'd been at it for half an hour. Deliberately, I allowed the four-hundred-pound weights I'd been lifting to drop to the floor with a clang as I turned toward her.

"I'll give you two seconds to leave me alone," I snapped at her. Most women would have recoiled at the anger in my voice. Not this one. She didn't even blink.

"You don't understand," she said, extending a card held between red-painted fingernails. "I'm a fight promoter. I can get you a high-paying job in less than a week."

"Lady," I growled at her, "I have a job."

"Something wrong?" Lexsi had gotten off the treadmill to join me.

"It's nothing," I said. "She offered a job. I declined."

"Oh. Are you the girlfriend?" Red nails turned toward Lexsi. "Your boyfriend here could be turning down millions in earnings as a wrestler."

"My boyfriend gets to make up his own mind," Lexsi said, her eyes narrowing as she frowned at red nails. "If he says no, he means it. Find somebody else."

"Is there a problem?" Kell walked in with Jorden. They'd come looking for us—had probably tried calling us in our rooms.

"I want to hire him," red nails jerked her head toward me.

"He has a job," Jorden pulled out his badge. Red nails' eyes widened. So that's what it took to get her attention—a threat from the authorities.

"My apologies," red nails held up a hand. The four of us watched her open the glass door of the facility and stalk through. I figured she'd have slammed the door shut, if it were possible. I released a pent-up sigh.

"That'll get your blood boiling late at night," Lexsi frowned, still staring at the door.

"Come on, you," I pulled her into the crook of my arm and planted a kiss on her cheek. "Let's get our exercise done, then listen to what Jorden has to say."

* * *

"I got this information after our interview with the Qualls," Jorden began. We sat at a table at the hotel bar, Lexsi's and my hair still damp from quick showers, while Jorden explained what he'd heard from Opal.

"Reports are coming out of Peru's border countries, with descriptions and images of women's bodies being dumped in remote places. The few photographs we've seen are of decomposing bodies, and without further evidence, we can't prove Loftin Qualls had a hand in it. Mind you, there haven't been any reports of missing women from those border countries, so these are likely from Peru."

"And with the new regime in power in Peru and no official information coming from there, this is all we have, isn't it?" Lexsi asked. She toyed with her napkin while waiting for the cocktail waiter to bring her a glass of cranberry juice.

"Yeah. The boss asked for permission to bring in some of our forensics teams, but we're still waiting for a response. She says that bodies of seals and other—well—creatures, are still washing up on nearby shores. I doubt Loftin is involved in that; we know it was going on in the Bay area before Loftin's miraculous escape."

"It's a Sirenali, you can bet on that," Lexsi snorted. "I saw pictures of the dead seals found in San Francisco Bay. The bites are roughly shaped like a human's mouth—but the sharp teeth," she shivered.

"We've seen the same thing," Jorden acknowledged. "The boss said the same word—Siren-what's-it."

"Sirenali," Lexsi repeated. "If you want to see a good one, ask Anita to change for you. You don't want to see a bad one," she added.

"The boss said something like that, too."

"We are dealing with at least two psychopathic killers, then," Kell said, his face expressionless, his words measured and even. "Sirenali love warmer, fresh waters and won't willingly go into cold saltwater. This one—he is ignoring the cold and salt his kind deplores, merely because he enjoys killing so much. A very dangerous thing. Tell me, Agent Billings, are there reports of missing sailors or fishermen in the same areas?"

"A few reports," Jorden rolled his shoulders, as if the information made him uncomfortable. "Mostly local fishermen in small, not-so-sturdy craft."

"Then he's turned to killing humans, too, and is clever enough to choose those whose absence could be explained easily enough."

"Yeah." Jorden wiped the sweat off his beer bottle with a thumb. I watched as a bead of moisture traveled down the bottle until it dispersed into the napkin beneath it.

"Cranberry juice," the waiter arrived and set Lexsi's drink in front of her. "Beer," he placed the bottle in front of me. "Anything else?" He was far too cheerful at midnight for my liking.

"We're good," Jorden handed him a credit card.

"I ran that woman's picture through our database," Jorden said when our waiter walked away. "The one who approached you in the gym?" His eyes locked with mine.

"What about her?" I asked.

"Charlene Devangi. She's an agent and fight promoter," he said. "She represents Tiburon's opponent in the upcoming match in Las Vegas."

"You think it was accidental, then, that she happened to show up while we're working out?" Lexsi asked.

"I hear they have spies everywhere," Jorden said. "Including outside private gyms and such. Who might have told her where you were?" he asked.

I went still.

"Farin," Lexsi breathed a disappointed sigh.

* * *

Lexsi

"She's crying, now," Anita reported. "She didn't realize they weren't just fans, standing outside Tibby's gym asking about the guy who'd sparred with Tibby awhile back. It's obvious they've been watching the gym for weeks and saw Kory go in and out."

"Oh, no." I had a headache, and it was getting worse by the second. Why had Farin felt it was all right to tell anyone that Kory was in D.C.?

"They must be really interested to get that bitch on it and to D.C. so fast," Anita grumped.

"I'm worried they're not only into fight promotion," I responded. "I don't trust anybody, anymore."

"Oh. I see what you mean," Anita said after thinking about it. We were having a face to face via computer, and she was now just as unhappy as I was about the situation. "They connect Farin to you, and Kory to you, and then Farin to Tibby, and presto—they're trying to wiggle their way in, so they can take you and kill the rest of us. Especially since they failed so miserably to do that a few nights ago."

"Yeah, provided Granger isn't so pissed he wants me dead with the rest of you, because they now realize we're working for the government. How's Watson?" I changed the subject.

I didn't know that would be the wrong question to ask her; Anita's face became a mask. "Eating. Sleeping. Griping. That's about it."

"Typical werewolf," I attempted humor. It fell flat. "Tell me he's not still pining after that two-faced bitch of a girlfriend," I began.

"Maybe we'll talk about that another time, okay?" Anita dropped her eyes. I'd hit the nail on the head. I wanted to hit Watson on the head, too.

"Look, tell Farin to stop crying—it would have happened eventually, I'm sure. Just tell her that information about all of us should be guarded carefully from now on."

"I will. She feels bad enough, I think, that she'll never open her mouth again."

"Tell her to be careful. Tibby, too. She's been kidnapped once. We don't need that kind of dangerous inconvenience in our lives again. It's how we lost Martin."

"Tibby's entire family is going to Vegas, and I think that's unusual," Anita said. "I believe they intend to act as bodyguards for him. For Farin, too. They're pissed about Martin, you can count on that."

"Poor Martin," I sighed. "We still haven't mourned properly for those we lost."

"When you come back, we'll have a memorial. How's that?" Anita asked.

"I think that's a good idea. You choose where and when. Okay?"

"Yeah."

"Look, I gotta go," I said. "I have an early meeting, and I didn't get much sleep last night."

"Then get in bed," Anita scolded. "We'll be fine—I'll make sure of it."

"Thanks," I said and ended the call.

* * *

Peru

Laurel Rome

"Laurel, my love, it is only a temporary setback. We'll make sure of his death next time."

"That's not acceptable," I snapped at Berke. "He was supposed to be dead. Dead-dead. Not pretend-dead."

"My love, Deris is consulting with his uncle. You have nothing to worry about."

"Fuck his uncle," I snapped.

"Dearest, Morgett Blackmantle is a very powerful warlock and a partner to Dervil for many, many years. He has placed Deris and Daris at your disposal, you know."

"Berke, don't make me regret letting my husband die," I fumed. Yes, Jamie was dead—I had several online newspapers that bore photographs of the burned pile that was once my home in LA. Jamie was hidden in the closet, away from human eyes. He'd died in that fire with nobody the wiser, until afterward. Federal authorities reported his death two days earlier, after sifting through the debris. I'd seen the report in an online newspaper.

I really didn't care—Jamie's money was the most attractive thing about him since the beginning.

The money was mine, now. All of it. Berke had no legal claim to any of Jamie's bank accounts, no matter how much he resembled my deceased husband. It made me glad we'd never had kids—I didn't have to share. The fucking Feds had locked up everything I hadn't already transferred, and that made me want to murder all of them, beginning with Kory Wilson.

The Kory Wilson I'd thought was already dead.

To take my mind off frozen assets, I considered Dervil's promise of wealth beyond imagining if I invested in his new drug.
People will kill to get it
, he'd told me.

I didn't care who died, as long as the money came back to me in the billions, as he said it would. So many people said love was the most important thing. They were delusional.

Money
was the most important thing.