Zoey Rogue (2 page)

Covered in her attacker’s blood with a shin that was surely broken, Chrissy just stared after her, shaking.

Zoey left the young woman and darted towards the sounds of fighting, where her best friend Vikki was probably lopping off heads. She almost smashed into another of the men as she barreled through the kitchen. This one had blood on his hands, which meant there was at least one more victim in the house. The second victim was probably a college-aged girl like the one Zoey rescued.
Although the woman in the living room had been stripped naked, she was otherwise unhurt, aside from a limp.

She got off lucky.

“I’ve got five!” Vikki’s breathless voice came across the communications piece in Zoey’s ear. “Ten bucks says I finish them off before you get here!”

One of the two other members of her team – Team R – present for the raid, Vikki was Zoey’s main competition every time they went out. The third member, Ginny, monitored the operation from the van parked across the street.

“You’re on. Be there in a few.” Zoey answered. She blocked a strike from her opponent. “That the best you can do, asshole?”

Zoey felt the sex magic in the air that the creature before her was trying to use to manipulate her. It made her blood move faster, and she drew it into herself. Instead of influencing her, it was like a drug, one that left her intoxicated – and able to use as a weapon against him.

He had a kitchen knife in one hand and lunged at her. She pushed him back with his own magic then slashed twice with her pewter daggers. He slid to the floor without a sound.

Her phone vibrated. She glanced down and saw the phone number of her boyfriend flash across the screen. She hesitated. He tried calling twice before their op tonight; maybe something was wrong. She answered and continued through the house, seeking out more of the rapist bastards – known as Cambions. Born to human mothers and Incubus fathers, Cambions existed for one purpose: to gather sex magic by any means necessary. Sex energy was a drug to them, one that made them frenzied with the need to collect it.

“Hey, Eric,” she said.

“Hi. I’m guessing you forgot the list?”

Zoey paused mid-step, wracking her brain for what list she was supposed to remember.

“You said you were going grocery shopping after studying. Kinda hard without the list,” he said, laughing.

“Oh. Um, I, uh got caught up with stuff.” Shit! Where had she told him she was studying this night?

Zoey heard sounds from the basement. The door was open, the lights on. She smelled something … bad. Familiar. Something that told her they were going to need more body bags than she had in the van.

“Basement,” she said into the microphone.

“Got it,” Vikki responded via the earpiece in her right ear – the one connected to their communications devices for the operation.

“You got caught up in the basement?” Eric’s voice came through the other earpiece.

“Oh, no. I mean, we, uh, found something intriguing in the basement of the library, and I was in such a hurry to get here, I forgot the list,” she managed.

Before she was able to charge down the stairs, an armed Cambion leapt out of the doorway. Zoey ducked a blow.

“You sound out of breath.” Eric sounded both puzzled and frustrated. “Is studying at the library a full contact sport now?”

“Sometimes -”

Block

“- when you’re reading -”

Jab

“- about the Mayans.”

Slash.

The Cambion dropped. Able to overhear what Zoey said through her microphone, the two other members of Team R were laughing into one ear, almost drowning out Eric’s words.

“I thought the library closed at seven.”

Zoey glanced at her watch. It was nine.

“Well, not when Vikki is sleeping with the night watchman.”

“That girl gets around.”

“Yeah.” She bent over to make sure the Cambion was dead.

“So the Mayans took precedence over groceries,” he said then waited for her to laugh at the corny joke, like she usually did.

“Hmmm,” she replied, attention elsewhere.

“Anyway, I’m at the store now,” Eric continued. “I can’t read your writing about ice cream. I want to get it right.”

Zoey felt like shit every time she lied to him about what she was doing, especially when he was sweet enough to call before buying the wrong kind of ice cream. She sighed then straightened and trotted down the stairwell to the basement.

“I’m sorry I forgot, Eric. I just got a little…oh, Jesus this is bad.” Even knowing what she was going to find, she still almost gagged at the scent of decomposing bodies. She covered her mouth with her hand.

“What?” he asked, confusion in his voice.

“I gotta go.”

“Just real quick – tell me what flavor.”

“French vanilla.” She hung up.

Eric was not happy. But at the moment Zoey was more concerned about the mess in front of her. It looked like the Cambions were using this safe house for weeks; the bodies of almost two dozen women were decaying in the basement. Some were buried under mounds of dirt, others stacked like old newspapers.

Near vomiting from the scent, Zoey couldn’t help the sorrow that descended over her. Cambions targeted girls her age – around twenty-one. Unlike her, each one of the girls in the basement probably had a family that missed them and a boyfriend they didn’t have to lie to every day about who they were.

“Why do you always say I’m the one sleeping around?” Vikki complained over their radio.

“Because you always do,” Zoey retorted. “We’re gonna need about twenty more body bags than planned and a morgue crew.”

“Mayans, Z, really?” Ginny asked, amused. “I’ll put in the order.”

“That means the bosses will find out,” Vikki grumbled. “We’re in enough trouble as it is going on unauthorized missions.”

“We saved someone from the fucking Cambions,” Zoey said. Unable to stand the smell, she returned to the main floor. “You’d think Heidi would be more concerned about that instead of not scheduling two missions at once.”

“Two girls,” Vikki said. “Though this one needs a doctor fast.”

“Got it,” Ginny said. Stationed in the van to monitor things in case all hell broke loose, Ginny was also in charge of contacting their headquarters, the police or providing back-up support as needed.

“What’s a Cambion?”

Zoey spun. She’d forgotten the girl in the living room. Her gaze swept over her. The girl managed to wrap herself in a blanket, probably the one from the couch. Her right shin was swollen and black.

“You’re gonna need some ice for that.” Zoey went to the fridge and opened it. There was nothing but beer in the fridge. She yanked open the freezer to find frozen bags of vegetables.

“Rally at the van,” Ginny directed.

“Roger,” Zoey said into the microphone. She grabbed two bags of vegetables. “Anyway, Cambions are, um, these beastly half-human males born to human mothers and Incubus fathers,” Zoey explained. “They kill girls our age to collect sex energy to sustain themselves and then give the extra to their evil Incubus overlords. If you ever have a chance to cut open a Cambion, you’ll find these little things that look like batteries, where the extra energy is stored.”

The girl stared at her for a long moment. “Oh.”

“My job is to track and kill them, before they rape girls like you and then shove you in the basement to rot,” Zoey finished.

The girl’s gaze went to the open door of the basement. She grew even paler.

“That sounds good,” she said. She was weaving on her feet, a sign she was about to pass out.

“You should sit down,” Zoey advised. “We’re almost done here, then we’ll call an ambulance for you. We’ll ice your shin in the meantime.” She lifted the bags.

The young woman nodded. Limping bad, she returned to the living room and sat down on the couch, clearly in shock by her dazed expression. Zoey trailed her in and lifted her injured leg to the coffee table. Placing a bag of frozen vegetables on the swollen shin, Zoey set the other within reach.

“Just in case it takes the EMTs more than a few minutes to get here, okay?”

“Okay,” the woman repeated.

“Were you invited here or just decided to drop by?” Zoey asked, interested in discovering where the Cambions might be recruiting their victims.

“I’m not sure,” the woman replied. “I mean, I wasn’t invited. I was at a party down the street and walking to my car. Something just…pulled me.”

“That feeling was the Cambions using their sex magic to lure you in. If you ever, ever, ever feel that again, you run the other way fast,” Zoey said. “You got that?”

The woman nodded, tears in her eyes again. “I don’t want to lose more shoes.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of a minor issue,” Zoey said, unable to stop her laugh at the shocked woman’s words. “I mean, I normally find these bastards at clubs. If you want to talk about being upset over shoes – try kicking someone in the chest with a four-inch heel. The heel snaps off every freakin’ time. I go through like, two pairs of shoes a week. I buy in bulk now.”

The woman didn’t seem to know what to do and then smiled. Zoey’s gaze lingered. She shook her head and rose, feeling bad for her, but happy she was alive.

Wiping off her weapons, Zoey’s thoughts went to Eric. She was going to need a really, really good plan to make this up to him. It was so hard leading a double life; she almost understood why she was the only one she knew who tried. She may have been born a Halfling in a society that consisted of evil and death, but she chose to try to be normal.

“Z, you owe me ten!” Vikki said cheerfully. “You never win bets.”

“Dammit! I’ll keep trying, though!” Zoey said. “How many did you kill?”

“Seven. You?”

“Ugh. Two. So I’m only what? Four ahead of you for the year?”

“You’ve never been ahead!” Vikki snapped.

“The hell I haven’t!”

“Uh, oh. I just got a super angry message from Heidi to return like, now. So, if you’re done killing Cambions, come back to the van,” Ginny interrupted. “She’s blaming Zoey, as usual.”

“Why do I always get blamed?” Zoey complained. With a glance around to make sure no more Cambions were lingering, she trotted through the bottom floor of the house to double-check, before returning to the living room.

“Because you’re short. You stick out.” Vikki laughed.

Zoey rolled her eyes. She was the only half-Succubus – known as a Halfling – that didn’t share the typical Succubus body type: six feet tall, slender and willowy with a gentle shape and a face that was able to stop traffic.

No, Zoey was…cute and sexy. Average height, above average prettiness with an hourglass shape rendered firm by hours of training a day. The other members of Team R, like Vikki and Ginny, were flawlessly beautiful killers.

“Stay here. The paramedics will be here soon,” she said to the traumatized young woman on the couch.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Just be careful. There are a few places around here like this one. Okay?”

The young woman nodded.

Zoey started out the front door, listening to Vikki and Ginny talk, when the girl called out to her.

“Wait!”

Zoey paused, hand on the hilt of a knife, in case there was another attacker.

“I, um, feel like I need to send you…flowers. Or a thank you letter.” The young woman tried to get to her feet, failed and sagged back on the couch.

“It’s okay. I do this for a living,” Zoey replied, not unkindly. “Killing those things is all the reward I need.”

“Can you tell me your name at least?” the young woman asked.

Zoey hesitated then took pity on her. “Zoey.” She reached down to snag the frozen vegetables that had fallen off the girl’s leg and replaced the bag.

“It’s a pretty name.”

“It’s awful. I’m the last one called for everything,” Zoey replied.

The young woman smiled faintly. “I’m Chrissy.” The woman was around Zoey’s age, tall, with cocoa skin and an exotic tilt to her eyes. She was pretty enough to be a Halfling or Succubus, without the glow of sex energy.

“Nice to meet you. I have to go, but be careful from here on out.” Zoey left. She trotted down the front steps and jogged across the street to the waiting van. Vikki stood outside the open side door, stripping out of her bloodied clothes, unconcerned with anyone who might see her flawless body.

“How mad is Heidi?” Zoey asked with a grimace. She climbed into the passenger seat. Ginny was on the driver’s side, dressed similarly in all black.

“Totally pissed. No, epically pissed,” Ginny said. “I don’t know. She’s always a bitch anyways.”

“Vikki! Come on!” Zoey called over her shoulder. “Eric isn’t happy. Need to get home!”

“Whatever,” Vikki replied. “You shouldn’t be dating a human anyways.”

“You said I wouldn’t last a month and it’s a year later,” Zoey pointed out.

“When he gets sick of you ditching him for the Mayans, you’re gonna have a meltdown.”

Zoey said nothing, suspecting her friend was right. But she wasn’t going to deal with that tonight; no, she’d rescued someone from the horrible Cambions. She was going to give herself the small victory, before Heidi - the Internal Affairs Bureau’s operations chief who managed their team’s missions – kicked her ass.