Enemy Mine (10 page)

Ah, another sadistic bastard. Why wasn’t she surprised? Vegas was among the worst of the worst. His kind fed on the pain he inflicted on others. It was why she had not initially been able to detect the stench of the Hellkeeper reigning supreme inside him. The two were so much alike their odors blended, but tonight the Hellkeeper was in full control and his stench now permeated the room.

Selena reached behind to the small of her back and withdrew a black-pearl-handled switchblade from its satin sheath. “Let me guess …?” she said, showing him what she held. She pressed the small switch, and the six-inch blade flicked open with a warning click.

“Yesssss,” Vegas said, slowing his approach. His excitement was evident in the glassy shine of his eyes, and the sheen of sweat that broke out across his upper lip. His burgeoning erection was hard to miss. He slid his hand behind him and slowly withdrew an impressive butcher’s knife.

Selena’s blood warmed. “Ah, just like the Boy Scouts, you’re always prepared.” She flipped the blade in her hand over and caught it by its razor-sharp tip. “I was a stellar Girl Scout.”

Nikko watched, fascinated, from his vantage point behind the door he’d cracked open at the top of the stairway. What the hell was Selena doing? Playing a deadly game of chicken? He watched her move around Vegas with the grace of a ninja. He ignored his initial instinct to protect her when Vegas pulled his blade. Something in the way Selena held herself, the way she handled the switchblade, held him back. Lightning quick, she stabbed the thug in the thigh.

Nikko flinched, her strike surprising him.

Vegas grunted, taking a swipe at her but missing by a foot. She was already on the other side of the room. Circling … With panther grace, she stepped around Vegas, taunting him with words. She stuck him again. Vegas swiped at her in a wide arc. Selena jumped back as his blade barely missed slicing her belly open.

“Close,
señor
, but not”—she lunged, jabbing him in the arm that held the knife, and withdrew—“close enough.” Vegas’s eyes turned murderous red. He was bleeding from three different wounds.

Transfixed by what was playing out before him, Nikko realized his jaw hung open. Cassidy and Cross needed in on this, but he knew if he uttered a single word, Selena would know she had an audience. It would throw her off-balance—potentially get her hurt. Nikko shook his head in silent awe. Vegas was in big trouble.

“
Punta!
I’m bleeding to death!” Enraged, Vegas lunged at Selena, his blade finding flesh this time. He got her on the waist. She turned with a roundhouse kick, sending him sprawling on his back. She jabbed him in the thigh. Higher this time and deeper than the first strike.

The assassin bellowed in pain.

“Cruz,” Cassidy’s voice called in his earpiece, “what the hell was that?”

Nikko couldn’t respond, so gingerly he tapped out in Morse code on his mic to stand by and listen to what was going down.

“Copy,” Cassidy whispered.

“Oh, c’mon, Madeo, I just nicked your femoral artery.” Selena tossed the bloody knife in her hand, expertly catching it by the handle. “I could have severed it.”

Vegas dropped his knife and grabbed at his thigh, frantically trying to stem the steady blood flow.

“Relaaax,” she crooned, “you have some time. Instead of five minutes to bleed out, I’d say you have a good ten or fifteen.”

“Punta!”
he hissed.

“I can save you, Madeo. But it will cost you.”

He glared at her. “What do you want?” His voice had deepened.

The hair on the back of Nikko’s neck stood straight up.
What the hell was that?

Selena continued to walk slowly around Vegas, taking her time, making him squirm. “Actually, I don’t want anything from you, I just want that dirty Hellkeeper hiding inside of you to come out and play.”

Madeo’s skin blanched white. He dropped to his knees, slipping in the pooling blood at his feet.
“What?”
he gasped.

“You’re possessed, Madeo,” she explained matter-of-factly. “The only way to unpossess you is for the daemon who is too cowardly to show himself to leave your human body. Because if you bleed out, your imminent death will force his hand. You die, he dies. Unless—”

“You would challenge Hell!” a voice blasted from Vegas, the force of the breath so harsh Selena’s hair flew backward and the door Nikko hid behind slammed shut.

What the Hell is that? What is a Hellkeeper? Can Selena handle it?
Confused and a little intimidated by what he did not understand, Nikko carefully opened the door. The scent of sulfur permeated the air. Nikko covered his nose, it was so repulsive. His eyes, though, were riveted on Selena.

The woman had balls. She didn’t appear fazed in the least by this new threat. She moved behind Vegas, grabbed a hank of his hair, pulled his head back, and stuck him in the neck.

He screamed, trying to twist out of her grip. She dropped him as if he were on fire and nimbly stepped back. The screams morphed into deep demonic growls.

“I challenge Hell, Malphas. Now, I challenge you to show yourself,” Selena said as she continued to move around Vegas.

Nikko’s heart beat like a drum in his chest. What the hell was going on here? Daemons, Hellkeepers. Selena challenging one to a fight?
What the fuck?
Nikko tapped on his mic.

“Welcome to my world, Cruz,” Cross softly said in Nikko’s earpiece. “Hellkeepers are powerful daemons who possess potent magic. From what I’ve just heard, I suspect your Selena is the rogue daemon hunter the Order has put a sizable bounty on.”

Fuck
, Nikko silently mouthed, not fully comprehending what Cross’s words meant.

Vegas collapsed onto the floor, the pool of blood widening around him.

“You would take a human life to draw me out?!” the daemon voice blasted.

Selena shrugged. “It won’t be the first time. Besides, it’s not much of a human life.”

Her calm demeanor amazed Nikko. He suspected when that thing came out, it was going to be nasty and she’d need help.

“Selena!” Vegas cried, dragging himself toward her. His hands reached toward her, his bloody fingers scraping her toes. “Save me! I will give you anything!”

She contemplated him for a long moment, and with each heartbeat more blood pooled on the floor. “You have nothing worth saving, Vegas.”

“You will burn in the fifth Hell for this!” the Hellkeeper roared.

“I doubt it,” Selena calmly said. “Show yourself, Malphas. You have something I want.”

“Your girl has some balls, Cruz, and she’s going to need them,” Cross whispered in his earpiece. “Malphas is the Keeper of the Fifth Hell.”

Keeper of Hell? Daemon hunter? How could Selena, a mere mortal woman, possibly have the power to kill something so powerful?

“No mortal can match a Hellkeeper without some serious assistance,” Cross said.

Selena turned and reached into a hidden sheath on the wall behind her and withdrew two silver swords. The serious assistance?

She stood above Vegas, who had stilled as the blood around him grew in diameter. “Show yourself, Malphas!” she commanded. “Or die forever locked inside a mortal!”

Deep, demonic laughter shook the room. Selena smiled triumphantly as vapor snaked out of Vegas’s gaping mouth. Nikko watched, too stunned to move as the tip of the vapor began to take shape.

“The daemon will emerge as a vapor,” Cross said, “then materialize into its natural form, probably some type of animal.”

The vapor formed a large beak, then the head of a bird.

“A bird,” Nikko whispered.

“A raven,” Cross clarified. “To destroy it, she’ll need to remove its heart.”

Selena stood close, her swords at the ready. When the head was fully formed, she hacked it off the body that began to take shape beneath it. The daemon roared. A minute later, hacked-up bird parts littered the marble floor.

“Where is the uranium cask?” she demanded.

Nikko’s head snapped back. If his heart rate had not been elevated before, it was now. He heard Cassidy’s sharp gasp.

The yellow beak opened and hissed vapor at Selena. She covered her eyes and stepped back. The wings reattached to the body. “Ask Vegas!” Malphas taunted.

Selena dragged Vegas’s body away from the raven. She pulled off her slinky top and quickly wrapped it above his thigh where she had stuck his vital artery and formed a tourniquet.

Nikko swallowed hard. She was bare-chested and—damn, she turned with those swords in her hands, her hips swaying, her back straight, her breasts sitting up so firm and high—

The bird’s torso flew at her. She hacked it in half, then dug the black eyes out of the head. “You are so not worthy, Malphas,” she gritted as she twirled her swords like batons; then with the precision of a surgeon, she cut the shape of a pentagram in the center of the feathered chest. The daemon screamed. “You are a discredit to all daemons!”

“We need that information,” Cassidy hissed.

Selena set a sword aside and reached into the daemon’s chest. As she did, one of the clawed feet rose from the floor and grabbed her sword, rising above her head with it.

“Behind you!” Nikko shouted, shoving open the door.

Selena swung her other sword around to stop the attack, but Malphas’s other claw grabbed it out of her hand. His wing swooped up the first sword, and as her attention was drawn to it, his head reattached itself to the filleted body.

Nikko dove at it as it rose, bringing both swords down on Selena. She turned and stabbed the Hellkeeper in the heart with the switchblade. She screamed as the blades sliced into her back and shoulder, but the Hellkeeper screamed louder. Her hand was buried deep in its chest. Malphas’s body struggled. Selena held fast.

“Tell me what I want to know, Malphas, and I will spare you.”

“Apollyon knows your secret—if you destroy me, he will destroy you by destroying your dau—”

Selena ripped the nanorian from Malphas’s chest. It beat hot and powerful in her hand. Already she felt the power of the five as the four stones around her neck warmed in welcome. Elation swelled. Two more hearts to collect.

Her gaze clashed with Johnny’s astounded eyes. Tension poured off him in chaotic waves. Why had he helped her? Debilitating emotion she could not describe clogged her chest. She opened her mouth to ask him why, when he despised her, but she didn’t. His answer didn’t matter.

She had been aware of him the moment she detected his scent at the stairway. She had not wanted to take the nanorian from Malphas so early, she wanted information from him, but when he was about to expose her secret, she had no choice. She had come too far to care that Johnny looked at her now as if she had a raging case of herpes. Let him think the worst of her. It would keep him away, and his mind off their painful past.

She wiped the stone down her belly, leaving a bloody trail, and at the same time realized she was bleeding. Her back burned like hell. She pressed the bloody stone into one of the three empty settings in her necklace.

“Jesus, Selena, you’re bleeding everywhere.”

As if he cares
. Ignoring Johnny, she knelt beside Vegas, not caring that her knees were soaked in his blood. She felt his carotid for a pulse. He was alive. Barely. She needed to get inside his head before he died. Not for Joran, but for Los Cuatro. Vegas’s subconscious would retain whatever information Malphas had gathered while possessing him. As Apollyon’s messenger, Malphas would know where that cask was.

She drew in a deep breath and looked up at Johnny. “I must do something. To do it, I need you to take a hike.”

He sank down beside her, his gaze wary. “After that show, I’m not going anywhere, especially now that I know for certain you’re in the hunt for that cask.” He touched her bloody shoulder, and his voice lowered a decibel. “That’s deep. You need to get to a doctor.”

She sat back on her haunches and looked hard at him. He
needed
to go while Vegas was still alive. If she did not get in and out of Madeo before he drew his last breath, it would be hers as well. She had never before slipped completely into anyone’s head. Leaving her body to enter another’s left her vulnerable to possession. But she had no choice. The only way she was going to get the information was to leave her body and enter his.

“My business with Vegas is
my
business alone.”

“Not if it involves national security.” Johnny moved in closer. “Now tell me, what the hell just happened here?”

She moved back and stood up. “I can’t explain right now. But trust me when I say, for the sake of national security,
I
need you to go, now!” She didn’t even know if she
could
possess a body, but damn if she was going to do it in front of him.

“You have a hell of a lot of nerve asking for my trust. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Damn you, Johnny! Vegas has information I need!”

“We want the same thing.” His gaze dipped to her bloody, bare chest and he swallowed hard.

Despite the warmth in the room and her dire situation, her nipples pebbled. She shoved past him as a vampire and a mortal woman she instinctively knew was the vampire’s lover came rushing through the same door Johnny had been hiding behind. They both looked at her in shock, whether from the blood or her bare chest she did not know and did not care.