Witch Hunt (13 page)

She gave me a nervous smile. She was holding some kind of stone scepter that looked much too fancy for an awkward teenager.

“Are you a good man, Agent Cèsar Hawke?”

You want to talk about things that make me useless? Women were number one. Children were number two. Combine both of them by sticking a vulnerable young girl in front of me, and I turn into a giant sucker. This kid was way too young to be dressing up like an infernal priestess and hanging out in Helltown, no matter what she’d done or who she thought she was.

Every single one of my protective instincts went nuts in an instant. Like a big raging beast was trying to break out of my chest.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, lowering the gun. “Who are you?”

She cocked her head to the side. “Who am I? Who are
you
?”

“I’m Cèsar,” I said again, slower this time, even though she’d already said my name. “What are you doing here? How did you end up in Helltown?”

Her smile turned weird. Her eyes unfocused. “I think you are probably a good man, Cèsar, but that doesn’t change anything.”

Wait, her eyes weren’t unfocused.

They had just focused
behind
me.

I turned.

And there she was: Isobel Stonecrow, holding a folding chair in both hands like she thought she was a WWE wrestler.

She swung. The chair struck.

I was out before I hit the ground.

I didn’t feel it when I went unconscious. It was like I blinked, and suddenly I was in a chair with ropes tethering my ankles and left wrist. Isobel Stonecrow was kneeling on my right side, quickly knotting the cord on that arm.

I couldn’t react as quickly as I normally would have. The world was swimming around me, spinning and flipping and blurring like I’d just had another rough night with a bottle of tequila. I swiped at Isobel too slowly. By the time my fist grabbed at the place her throat had been, she had already dodged, grabbed my arm, and pinned it back to the chair.

She wasn’t alone. Another priestess of the Hand of Death was behind her, watching with an amused grin that she couldn’t hide behind her fingers.

Yeah, laugh it up.

“He’s ridiculously handsome,” the priestess said, giving Isobel a thumbs up. “Nicely done.”

The corner of Isobel’s mouth twitched. “Can I have a minute, Elora?”

“You can have fifteen. Or maybe twenty. However much you need.” Was she waggling her eyebrows?
Jesus. Women.

The priestess slipped past Isobel. I twisted, trying to see where she was going. I couldn’t turn far. For all I knew, there were a dozen priestesses back there giggling at me really quietly.

“What the fuck, Izzy?” I asked once I was reasonably certain that we were alone.

One thick eyebrow arched, lips twisting. “Nobody calls me Izzy.”

I didn’t even know why it had slipped out like that. I sure as heck wasn’t feeling in a “pet names” mood with her. Probably the concussion talking.

Tried to jerk my wrist free. She had already knotted the rope.
Damn
, she was fast.

“You hang out in Helltown?” I asked as she backed away from me.

“Sometimes,” Isobel said. “It’s a place to settle when I’m not on the road. I have friends here.”

Friends? More like coworkers. She was wearing the robes of the priestesses of the Hand of Death, all black velvet and glittering iron jewelry. I would have been lying if I said that the way the corset lifted her breasts wasn’t totally awesome. But even if I’m a sucker for beautiful women—and I am—I’ve got my limits.

“Let me go,” I said.

“All I want to do is help. Don’t be afraid.”

A scoff. “I’m not afraid.” Not
that
afraid, anyway. But you try being held hostage by someone in Helltown without losing your cool. I’d heard stories of agents going into Helltown and never coming out again—some of them rumors, some of them definitely not. I didn’t want to be another cold case. I might have been sweating a little.

Like I said, there’s nowhere hotter than Helltown.

Finally prying my eyes free of Isobel in all her robes and demon jewelry, I took a long look at the room where I was now momentarily trapped. I was fairly certain that it was underneath the gas station temple. It looked like a basement. There were floorboard joists over my head. The walls were bare concrete stained with moisture. No windows. Just torches. Fucking
torches
, like we were in the Temple of Doom.

Isobel had three big baskets behind her. She grabbed one of them and hauled it closer to me.

“Let me out of here,” I said.

“Not until you believe me. I’ll untie you once you’ve seen the truth, and you can decide what to do after that.”

She was still on about that? “If you’re stashing kids in the temple, then what comes after that might be a call to the cops.”

Isobel frowned as she dropped the basket at my feet. “Kids? You mean Ann?”

“Is that the name of your little diversion upstairs? How did she end up here? Kidnapping?”

“She’s
vedae som matis bougaknati.
” Whatever the fuck
that
meant.
“
Don’t go near Ann,” Isobel said firmly. “You have to listen to me, Cèsar. I can help you. I
want
to help you.”

I strained against my bindings. “Yeah, I can tell. That’s why you lied to me about being able to talk to Erin and tied me to a chair.”

Her eyes lit with fire. “Fine. You think I’m a fraud? Let me show you how much of a fraud I am.”

She kicked over the basket. The lid flew off and hit my shins. Bones spilled out—dry human bones. I would have recoiled if I hadn’t been attached to the chair.

There were no drums this time, no fake accent, no chanting.

Isobel extended her hands over the bones in front of her, palms facing the ground. She closed her eyes.

“Come to me,” she whispered.

The magic slapped me upside the head like a folding chair. My eyes burned and sinuses tingled and I sneezed three times in quick succession. The room blurred. All that magic that I had felt in at Shady Groves Cemetery was back, strong enough to choke me.

Once I could see again, all of the oxygen vanished from my lungs.

There was an apparition in front of me. The full figure of a naked, hairless human man, who looked baffled to be in the basement. His dark skin looked inhumanly gray. And—
Jesus—
I could see the basket through his shins.

He was a ghost.

His mouth moved, but Isobel spoke for him, still whispering, still in her true voice. “Where am I? What’s going on?” Her eyes were empty, like the ghostly figure had taken control of her.

“Holy hell,” I said.

Isobel stepped around the apparition to touch my shoulder. The ghost’s empty stare followed her movements.

“Do you believe me now, Cèsar?” she asked softly.

Oh yeah. I believed her.

ISOBEL HAD PARKED HER RV behind the Temple of the Hand of Death. She dragged me to it, delicate fingers encircling my wrist, eyes on the surrounding road and the creatures milling between buildings.

I must have been unconscious longer than I’d thought—it was starting to get dark by the time we left. Dangerous time to be on the streets of Helltown, even for a woman dressed like a priestess. During the day, only the corporeal, daywalking demons could go outside, making it relatively safe for visiting OPA agents. Once night fell, shit got real.

The OPA specifically forbade agents from entering Helltown in the afternoon to make sure that they wouldn’t be there at nightfall.

I didn’t trust a lot about the OPA right now, but I trusted their sense of self-preservation.

Isobel shoved the door to her RV open and pushed me inside. I held my breath when I stepped onto the upper step, prepared for her magic to overwhelm me. All witches have a habit of marking our territory with wards and curses, which can be enough to fuck up my nose if the witch is powerful. And Isobel was definitely powerful.

Yet I didn’t sneeze. I didn’t feel even the slightest tingle.

The RV looked even more retro on the inside. She had shag carpet, a beanbag chair. Her furniture was upholstered in plasticky white material. All she was missing was a lava lamp. But even though her kitchen counters were covered in jars of herbs and bags of—oh Lord, was that
blood?
I didn’t see an altar.

“Don’t you cast magic in here?” I asked as she climbed in behind me, slamming the door.

“Not exactly,” Isobel said. She dropped the velvet skirts. They puddled around her ankles, and she kicked them away. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts underneath, which clashed with the remaining corset in a sexy kind of way.

“What’s ‘not exactly’ supposed to mean?”

She tossed her veils to the floor and climbed into the driver’s seat. “It means that I’ve never had a dead person in my RV, so I’ve never had to cast a spell in here.”

The engine groaned to life and my eyebrows climbed toward my hairline. Vehicles weren’t meant to work within Helltown, not with all the infernal energy. Mechanics got all gummed up. “Then how’d you get the RV working?”

“I have talented witchy friends,” Isobel said, turning on the headlights. I stood behind her, hands braced on the back of her chair, as she wrenched the wheel to the right and got onto the bumpy road. “They know things.”

If she knew the kind of witches powerful enough to shield her RV against infernal energy, then I wanted to know those witches, too. Heck, the entire OPA would want to know those witches. If we could bring our SUVs and BearCat assault vehicles into the neighborhood, it would change the game in a big way.

Later. After I wasn’t a fugitive anymore.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Isobel shot a smile over her shoulder at me. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

The shadows were growing long, stretching in spindly fingers over the pavement. The darkness didn’t have that blue cast to it that sunset often gets. It was black. Blacker than black. The shadows weren’t just shadows, and they were creeping toward the RV.

The engine grumbled, floor bucking under my feet as Isobel drove toward the nearest exit.

A group of men appeared in the street. They were all narrow-shouldered and wearing studded leather jackets. They didn’t walk. They sauntered, slouched, almost slithered, until they stood in the middle of the road in front of us.

Just a glance at the three of them filled my head with dirty mental images of lips and tongue and fingers. I wasn’t gay or anything; everyone with a pulse would get desperately horny around these guys, and I wasn’t any exception. Most humans were useless against a demon’s thrall.

They were incubi. The whole reason I avoided the north side of Helltown.

Monique must have told them that she’d run into me.

“Run them over,” I said.

“
What
?”

“You heard me!”

Isobel slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop on the gravel. Her bumper stopped inches from their legs. The trio of incubi didn’t even twitch.

“Are you crazy, Izzy? Don’t fucking stop!”

She twisted the wheel, tried to move forward. One of the incubi stepped in front of the RV. Pressed his pale hand against the windshield.

His thrall rolled through me.

Incubi are demons that look like humans in all the ways that count. They’ve got faces like ours. Two arms, two legs, all the normal parts. But they don’t come from Earth. They come from somewhere much hotter and darker. And they don’t survive by eating food like normal people do.

They feed on sex. And they can make
anyone
desire them using their powers of thrall.

That probably sounds like a useless power, as far as demon talents go, but have you ever tried killing someone that you desperately want to fuck? Let me tell you—it’s a hell of a defense.

And these guys didn’t just want sex.

They wanted me dead.

Even knowing that they were out to kill us, dirty thoughts flashed through my mind. It built quickly as the incubus shoved all his demon energies at us. Naked bodies, big, long dicks, dripping pussies.

It wasn’t the first time I’d faced an incubus. I knew how to break free.

We needed distance.

“Isobel,
go
!” I said.

But her eyes were glazed over, breath quickening. Her hands dropped from the steering wheel into her lap.

One of the other incubi was approaching our door.

I wanted to rip off my clothes and let him enter. Who cared if he wanted to kill us? It would be sweet, orgasmic death. I wanted to let him have me. I wanted to let him have Isobel. I wanted…

Distance
.

He opened the door. I slammed it shut and locked it. Through the window, I got a great look at his jacket. I wasn’t surprised to notice that it was being held shut by silver needles. That was a mark of the local incubus mafia—the gang that ruled Los Angeles and, not coincidentally, loathed my guts.

“You can’t fucking have us,” I said. It was hard to speak. I wasn’t actually sure that the words made it out of my mouth. The thrall was turning me stupid.

Lord
, I wanted him. He wasn’t even attractive. Way too square. Way too
male
. But his black eyes smoldered and it took all my strength to turn away. If I kept staring, I was going to open the door for him—and I didn’t want him and his silver needles to be able to reach me.

Isobel still wasn’t moving. She was rubbing between her thighs, groaning softly.

At another time, that would have been a fun distraction. But not now. “Sorry, baby,” I muttered, shoving her out of the chair. She didn’t even fight me as she spilled to the floor.

The other incubi were approaching the windshield now. In about five seconds, I was going to be surrounded by so many demons that I’d be helpless to the desire, just like Isobel.

So I didn’t give them five seconds.

I slammed my foot on the gas.

The RV didn’t have much juice behind it, especially in Helltown, but it lurched forward. I knocked into two of the incubi, who hadn’t backed up fast enough. One of them fell under my wheels. The
bump
was way too satisfying.