Lore vs. The Summoning (7 page)

I glanced at them. "Yes."

"You will be careful." It wasn't a question. It should have been because I was rarely careful when it came to things like this.

"You'll get them to their homes safe and unharmed by anyone," I said back in a similar tone.

His lips lifted in an indulgent smile. "Of course."

I gave him a stiff nod then turned to go back inside. His tepid hand grabbed my wrist to hold me back. I stopped walking because I thought it was what he wanted and because I was concerned that if I moved away any more than that, he'd pull me back against him.

"You can leave if this is too dangerous," he said at a softer volume from closer to my ear. "I'll understand if you can't finish it."

"It isn't too dangerous." It was probably a lie but I was a little weirded out that he'd sought me out for this task for the vampires but was now trying to get me to stop. Was this sexism talking now? "Besides, someone in the Covens hurt my dad. Like you said, it's probably the same person that is doing this. I have to finish this."

Tone hardening he replied, "Vengeance is never worth dying for."

"I won't die for it."

"See that you don't."

I tugged forward out of his cool grip. He let me go this time. I didn't breath in relief until I was back inside the basement. Then I realized how much of an idiot I was.

How could I be relieved that I was back in the basement? I'd been captive to an evil asshole, killed two of his men, and released all of his prisoners. I was now going to voluntarily put myself back into a cage to wait on him. There was absolutely no reason to feel relieved.

With my legs stretched up against the top corner of the cage, my back lifted half off the wall, I sat thinking because it was the only thing I could do now.
 

There
was
a good reason for my relief. Each time I was around Aiden, which seemed to be happening more and more frequently these days, I had to resist urges. There was something about him that drew me to him. It was powerful, unlike anything I'd experienced with any other man, or vampire for that matter. I couldn't trust myself around him because if I gave in to those urges, Aiden would be killed. I couldn't handle that kind of guilt.

He might be undead but until I saw him kill someone innocent with my own two eyes I was going to assume he didn't deserve death. After all, he'd saved my ass twice. Or was it two and a half times now that he'd brought me a gun? I supposed that distinction was up in the air. I still had to
live
through this.

The piece rested uncomfortably between the back waistband of my jeans and my skin. Just having it there, cold, heavy and with the safety on, made me feel a little more secure. A little security was good at a time like this.

I didn't really have a plan. The fact that I'd had to save five women had put a crimp in the one plan I did have. Chet wasn't going to be in the mood to talk to me now, at least not about demon summoning. I'd hoped he got loose lipped when he was doing whatever it was he did with the women Michael brought to him. I hadn't realized they weren't killing the girls. Not that it was a bad thing that they weren't. But now I had to come up with some new way to get information out of the asshole.

A dark figure appeared in the room beside me. I turned my head with a quick intake of air; it was what passed as "startled". The mist-coated suit, kohl black hair and slate eyes of my guide were an unexpected sight. I didn't greet him because of the surveillance that was most certainly still rolling. The cameras wouldn't pick him up because he wasn't really in this realm. He was in the Spirit Realm.

"Convince him to leave you alone," he said in his deepest of voices. The tie was indigo today. That wasn't good.

My eyebrows lifted at him in question.

"He cannot follow you. He cannot help you. He cannot
touch
you," Kastio practically snarled the final verb.

I lifted my hands, palm up, and shook my head. I hope he understood Laura sign language for,
what the fuck are you talking about
?

"Convince him or he will be killed," my guide insisted.

I stared at him for a long silent moment. He was talking about Aiden. Now? When I was locked in a three-foot by three-foot cage waiting on a kidnapper to realize I'd killed two of his goons? Kastio thought now was a good time to remind me that Aiden Bruce would be killed if I made a misstep where he was concerned?

"Why?" I demanded instead of simply agreeing. I'd asked the same question a few times before and always he'd given me some cryptic answer.

"Because it has to be," Kastio said right on cue.

Yup. See? Cryptic answer.

"Not good enough," I snapped and pulled my legs down in front of me. It was easier to appear in charge when I was upright.

His slate eyes went dark, from gray to nearly black. That was probably a bad sign. But what could he do to me from the Spirit Realm?

Kastio's deepest of voices was thick with some unnamed emotion. I suspected it was probably anger. "I do not make this threat lightly, Laura."
 

I hate, haaated, when he used my name. The way the vowels dripped off his tongue was almost like a prayer. It was seriously disturbing.

"Nor do I give you direct orders," he pointed out. And I knew he was right.

"What about Fate?" I asked and hoped it wouldn't be useful information for the cameras.

Kastio's black eyes swiveled away from me. He was usually robotic in his lack of emotion. But that had clearly been a guilty response. Guilt after being asked that question meant one thing: he was screwing with Fate!

Whoa. Did that mean Aiden figured into my fate? It had to, didn't it? Did that explain why I was so dramatically pulled to him?

What in the world could Fate have planned involving a vampire? I played over the things Kastio had said to me. He'd said that I couldn't "think of taking up with the vampire". Taking up meant getting involved with, didn't it? Fate wanted to hook me up with a vampire? Why would that be a bad thing? Vampires were notoriously fickle creatures. He'd quickly get bored of me once he'd gotten what he wanted and then he'd drop me for the next flavor of the month.

With a quick shake of my head I pushed the thoughts of Aiden and Kastio aside. We were going to discuss this, later. "Not the time for this," I said firmly.

I heard Kastio push a heavy breath through his nose. He flickered out of sight leaving behind a man-shaped cloud of mist as usual. The particles shot out in all directions.

Back against the inner wall I pulled myself to rest until someone arrived. It would hide the gun from my captors and I might be able to stick my feet through the bars for a good stretch. I focused on my cute green and black argyle socks and the tiny frayed edges of my jeans to keep from thinking about what had just transpired. When my thoughts automatically drifted back to contemplating how the vampire figured in, I got desperate enough to mentally recite famous soliloquies from Hamlet.

CHAPTER SIX

I'd been halfway through the soliloquy from act three, scene three when I heard the exterior door open. My recitation ceased in order to listen to the footsteps. At least three different pairs of feet were drawing toward me. It was about damn time.

The man I assumed was Chet swept into the room with his retinue of Rhino thugs fanning around him. "Douche" was the word that immediately popped to mind. He had on a white linen suit ala Stef from
Pretty in Pink
, two decades out of style, but instead of shaggy blonde hair he had a buzz cut. Oh, and Chet wasn't pretty like Stef. Even against the backdrop of four Rhinos, when anyone looked attractive, Chet barely managed to shine. Maybe it was the drill-sergeant-that-never-gets-to-take-leave look that was stuck on his smashed face.

Chet glanced from the body of Tracksuit to the clothes that had once housed his Rhino enforcer. Then he looked at me. There was malevolence in his eyes that couldn't be mistaken for anything else. He was going to kill me. Or at least he was going to try, really, really hard. Hell, he might even get his hands dirty trying to do it himself.

He walked until he stood directly in front of my cage. Considering the gun in my pants, it wasn't the smartest of positions for him to be in. But shooting him now would be a silly idea.

"What did you do with the girls?"

My eyebrows lifted at the surprisingly feminine voice that had asked the question. Chet wasn't a small guy but he sounded like Mickey Mouse. I had to bite my tongue to keep from smirking or laughing. No wonder he traveled with a pack of Rhinos. No one could take threats uttered in that voice seriously.

"I ate them," I answered with an irreverent wiggle of my right eyebrow.

Chet responded by shouting in high-pitched outrage and kicking Tracksuit. I suspected that was a metaphor for their entire relationship. Maybe I'd done the badly dressed doofus a favor.

"Get her out of there," Chet ordered one of his goons.

Now I knew without a glimmer of a doubt that Chet wasn't the brains behind the demon summoning. Anyone who could see two dead bodies on the floor, note the release of their other prisoners and then free the remaining person could not be running a secret crime ring. His foolishness was good for me. I'd let them remove me from the cage before killing any of them because I suspected someone here had information I needed. I just hoped one of them was sniveling enough to give it to me.

The Rhino faction had one saving grace: they preferred hand-to-hand combat to guns. With hands as big as melons it kind of figured. I mean what gun could they wield anyway? I just had to make sure I disabled them all before they could get those meaty fists on me.

A goon with cornrow black hair started forward with a set of keys he'd produced from his pocket. He got the lock undone in record time, unlatched the handle and swung the metal bars aside without blinking. Obviously Chet kept his smarter muscle with him. I'd have to take that into account when figuring how to handle this now that I had no plan.

The goon grabbed hold of my ankle, the ankle that was still smarting from the last Rhino, and tore me from my box. Again I spilled onto the ground, nearly losing the gun wedged into my waistband onto the floor. I attempted to shove it back down without them noticing.

Chet gave the goon a gesture that apparently meant:
grab her by the collar and choke her to her feet --
because that's exactly what he did. I'd managed to fix the gun so it was snug and frickin' freezing against my backside by the time the goon had followed the order. Seconds later I hung dangling and choking from the melon fist.

"Who killed them?" Chet demanded in his mouse-like voice.

"My head is a little fuzzy," I replied truthfully. If Chet were a pure shapeshifter he'd be able to sense a lie so I couldn't tell one. I thought it was obvious who had killed his men but apparently the idea of a woman coming in and causing this kind of mayhem was unthinkable to him.

Oh, right, shapeshifter.
 

I should have remembered most of them were misogynist bastards. Hell, the majority of the Underground was. Aside from the Covens, females were a painful minority. And the witches were evenly spread across both sexes since they'd stopped breeding for absolute purity. The decided majority of males meant they still behaved like it was the dark ages and women were property.

Another gesture had the goon shaking me with a teeth rattling gesture. My concussion did not approve. I saw spots, huge polka dotted spots, and pain spiked through my skull to the tune of their dancing.

"Ung," I grit out and instantly felt less-than because of it.

"Who killed them?" Chetey Mouse repeated.

"Shaking me isn't helping to clear my head, brainchild," I replied derisively.

"You need your head cleared?" Chet's hand did something more complicated. I had a feeling I wasn't going to like this.

The Rhino bashed my head into the metal bars on the cage beside me. It hurt, but all things considered it wasn't actually too bad. I pretended to howl in pain and hoped the shapeshifter couldn't sense untruthful agonized outbursts.

"Who. Killed. Them?"

"I have a concussion. I'm not slow or special," I shot back and for it earned another bash into the metal bars. One slammed directly against the spot Michael had no doubt whacked earlier. This time my agonized outburst was genuine.

"Who are you protecting, fatty?"

The cracks about my weight were really starting to get to me. While I wasn't waif-like, I was a respectable size twelve. Well, maybe not respectable, but c'mon, in today's obese world a size twelve wasn't too shabby. I couldn't help that I had a serious weakness for cheesecake and double cheese pizza. Besides, they wouldn't be worrying about my weight when they were fighting to suck in their last breath.

Another slam against the metal was applied when I didn't immediately answer. It was just as well. I'd have said something snarky anyway.

They were going to move on to something worse soon. They had to. I mean it would be insane to keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result. Now was the time to act. I couldn't risk that they'd find my gun and relieve me of it.

I reached forward to dig the nails on my left hand into the cornrowed Rhino's leathery skin. Wishing him ill was all I needed to do to start this game. Once I'd seen the black snake up his arm, I reached my right hand back for the gun. Before they could process what was happening, I'd aimed it at the farthest Rhino's right eye and squeezed the trigger.

Apollo's Warning slowed the scene down to a crawl. Surprisingly there was a bullet headed for my head. My head! Not only was it unheard of for a Rhino to carry a gun, my brain was the one thing I wasn't certain I could heal. And these guys weren't supposed to be smart enough to go for the brain!
 

I slid down out of Cornrow's hands before time resumed its normal flow. The shot rang out, bullet narrowly missing my skull. The heat of it fluffed my hair on its forward trajectory. I followed their attack up with one of my own, aiming at the next farthest Rhino's right eye. They were getting closer. I was screwed if they all jumped me at once because I doubted that even though they looked like professional wrestlers we'd be pretend-fighting.