CHAPTER ONE
Dez
“Say it again,” Dez purred. She watched his lips as he uttered the words she so longed to hear.
“Hot, dark, Columbian, deep inside you.” His words came out in a sensual whisper causing her mouth to water with anticipation.
“Mmmm,”
She closed her eyes and tipped her head back, imagining the level of
satisfaction in her near future. “Let’s do it now,” she begged, “come
on, it’s been almost four months. I swore I would never go this long
without it again.” She leveled a deadly stare at him to make sure her
urgency was understood. “I need this, Vegas. My body needs this.”
“You’re desperate, huh?” His reply was playful.
“You have no idea.”
“Alright, but we have to take care of business first.”
“I got this.” A wicked smile crept across her face.
Coffee will have to wait just a tiny bit longer.
Turning
her attention back to the task at hand, she fired several shots in
quick succession, taking out the three possessed men currently stalking
toward them across the wide expanse of the run-down warehouse building.
Once, the complex had been home to a series of crystal meth labs, and in
a not-so-bright maneuver, a group of demons had set up shop inside a
band of tweakers. The condition of their bodies showed the drugs had
taken their toll long before the demons came along, their mobility
limited to a slow limp. Dez had watched plenty of demons function
absolutely fine in bodies with broken necks and signs of advanced decay.
Meth, on the other hand, actually did enough damage to limit their
motor skills.
“There
are two more somewhere here,” she said as she stepped over one of the
fallen bodies. She could feel the presence of the other two lurking in
the shadows, but the demons weren’t making any moves toward them. They
were in no danger. All it would take is one command and the demons would
be forced to do as she wished, which included being able to bring them
to a complete standstill. However, she and Vegas both enjoyed the hunt
to a certain extent, so she didn’t often use that aspect of her demon
powers.
They
had bounced from one city to another since her little brush with death
in the desert. Although spending lots of alone time with Vegas had been
fun, she had reached her breaking point and ached for the extravagantly
comfortable life she had built for herself in New York. The novelty of
sleeping in shitty roadside motels had long worn away, even if she
didn’t have to spend it alone anymore.
Her life had changed.
She had changed.
Everything
she thought she knew about who she was and where she had come from had
been nothing but a pack of lies specifically designed to bring her to
that fateful moment in the desert.
After
centuries of belief that she had perished at her own hand following
Dez’s birth, Catalina, her biological mother, had turned up to complete
the charge set forth by the Daughters of Eris. The long-hidden sect of
the witch covens had taken it upon themselves to usher in the apocalypse
by way of unleashing a demon hoard onto the human plane of existence,
and then to play the hero of the day by wiping them all out in one fell
swoop. Dez’s blood combined with a heavy dose of celestial magic was the
key to the second part of their plan and had it not been for Vegas,
they would have succeeded in their mission.
And she’d be dead.
After
spending some much-needed downtime at Charlie’s house to recuperate,
she and Vegas had both become rather antsy, desperate for some normalcy.
The pair set out on the road, having already sent Kade back home, and
had been hunting ever since. They had come to grips with the fact that
hunting demons would have to be part of their daily lives, but it had
become their entire life. This last stop━a shitty little New Hampshire
town made most famous by its mass production of methamphetamine━had Dez
craving the comforts of home and a cup of coffee from the best café the
city that never sleeps had to offer.
“I
won’t even make you go out and get it for me,” she informed him. “We
can just stop on the way home. We’ll stock up on coffee and those little
cranberry cake things.”
“Those are good,” he agreed.
“Yes, they really are. See? You’re getting excited. I knew it.”
“Dez,”
he replied, “I never said I wasn’t excited about the prospect of going
home, or that I can’t be swayed by promises of the smoothest coffee in
existence. I’m excited.”
“You
don’t sound excited.” Glass smashed in a room down the hall pulling
their attention away from a conversation which was going nowhere fast.
The small betrayal of their location was all Dez needed to finish the
job. She swiftly moved toward a small row of rooms along the southern
wall of the structure. The boarded-up windows enclosed what she assumed
were small offices once upon a time. As she passed and cleared each one,
she could see that as of late, the small rooms were being used as labs,
each used to cook meth. All of the rooms contained glass bottles over
burners, which were connected by clear, plastic tubing. She recognized
the basic setup from news broadcasts about meth labs being raided by
police in the city over the last few years. As she crept from room to
room, she noticed that none of the labs were active. The overwhelming
smell of rubbing alcohol slammed into her with every doorway she stepped
to, each room taking her breath away and making her eyes water. She
couldn’t imagine living with or anywhere near that odor. Not for the
first time, she found herself questioning why anyone would choose this
brand of drug production to make their money. The acrid odor aside, the
chemicals required to cook meth are notoriously unstable, most meth lab
raids either resulting in or a byproduct of the lab exploding.
As
Dez neared the end of the row of offices, she pushed her senses out
into the ether. She fully expected to find the hate-fueled presence of
two demon minds just beyond one of the nearby doors. Instead, she found
the same dull hum she had encountered previously. At close range,
drug-addled or not, the demons’ psychic energy should have been
unmistakable. She started to wonder if demons weren’t the only creatures
she was going to bump into in the filthy warehouse building.
Dez
signaled to Vegas, indicating she wanted him directly in front of the
doorway when they opened the door. She would open the door from the
side, and he would be there to cover her, just in case anything
particularly nasty decided it was a good day to test its luck.
She reached for the door handle. Loud enough so she was sure the room’s inhabitants heard her, she yelled out.
“Don’t
move!” Any demons inside would be forced to follow her command. Anyone
else would probably just assume she was a cop. She turned the knob of
the door as silently as she could and pushed it. The door hinges creaked
as it swung into the office.
“It’s clear,” Vegas said.
“Definitely
not empty, though,” Dez replied tapping her index finger to her temple
reminding him that she had felt the presence of two minds in the room.
She brought her gun up in front of her and crept into the room. She
quickly spun around making sure there was nothing hiding behind the
door. With the exception of the large wooden desk serving as a table for
the cook operation, the room was empty. She was about to close her eyes
and reach out into the ether again when a tiny movement pulled her
attention downward. The small gap at the bottom edge of the desk
revealed a delicate human foot, and whoever it was attached to was
trying their best to pull it back in hopes of not being seen. Dez
pointed her gun at the wooden panel covering the front of the desk.
“Since
the particular people I’m looking for wouldn’t be able to move right
now, I’m guessing you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Dez
tried to keep her voice calm and pleasant, which sounded completely at
odds with the words coming out of her mouth. “I have a loaded sidearm
pointed directly at where I assume your head would be, and if I think
for one second you’re about to do anything stupid, I’ll pull the
trigger. Come on out of there, nice and slow.”
There
was a rustling noise under the table and a small hand gripped the edge.
The dirt-caked fingernails were chewed to the quick. The delicate pixie
face peering back at her, framed by disheveled brown and honey-blonde
streaked hair, was not what Dez had expected. The girl’s eyes were
bright blue, not that different from her own, and clear of any demons,
supernatural or otherwise. Aside from her clothes being covered in dust,
she was clean. Whoever she was, she didn’t appear to be the type to
frequent a meth lab. Not anymore, at least. The girl’s slender arms hung
at her sides, tiny pale scars the only remaining evidence of long-since
healed track marks betraying her past addiction.
“Heroin?”
Dez asked. The girl self-consciously grabbed her arm, covering the
scars, and nodded her head slightly, never taking her frightened eyes
off of Dez’s gun.
“But
you’re clean, right?” The girl nodded again, a nervous twitch to her
movements. “Then what are you doing here?” The girl opened her mouth to
speak, but before she could get a word out, Vegas interrupted her.
“You’re
not alone.” The girl turned her attention to him, her eyes widened with
alarm and recognition, and she nervously shook her head. She hesitantly
glanced down and waved her hand to someone unseen. More rustling and
another set of tiny hands led the arrival of another girl. The new
girl’s hair was dyed black, her lighter brown roots grown out far enough
for Dez to know it’d been a long time since she’d seen the inside of a
salon. She was in far worse shape, her gaunt appearance assuring she
wouldn’t be a poster child for walking the rocky road to sobriety any
time soon. Her hands twitched and she started lightly scratching her
neck, probably without even thinking about it. She was younger than the
first girl, but not by much if Dez had to guess. She lowered her gun and
nodded to Vegas for him to do the same. Both girls relaxed but only
slightly.
“How long have you been clean?” She posed the question to the older girl, knowing the question was wasted on the younger one.
“I just got my one-year chip,” the girl replied, referring to a milestone for many in addiction recovery programs.
“What are you doing here? A meth lab isn’t exactly a good place for a recovering addict to be spending their time.”
“This
is my little sister’s best friend. I came here looking for her. I knew
this is where she comes to buy. When no one had seen her in a few days, I
figured this is where she had ended up. We’ve been stuck here since
yesterday morning.” She paused for a moment, then her tone completely
changed, as if she were just waking up. “Were they zombies? I didn’t
believe zombies were really possible, but those were zombies, right?
Those things definitely looked like zombies. We hid in here when we saw
them. Her mom would kill me if I got her turned into a zombie. Did you
know zombies were a thing?” Her words came out in a rush, the tangle of
thoughts spilling out of her.
“They’re gone,” Vegas answered.
“But that’s what they were, right? Zombies?”
“Not exactly,” Dez replied, “but arguably similar. How many of them did you see when you came in here?”
“Three,
I think.” Dez turned toward Vegas and flipped the switch. She let her
demon senses take over. She felt once more for any other presences in
the building. She blinked her eyes, returning them to their normal icy
blue, and an excited smile spread across her face.
“That’s all of them. You know what that means.”
“Time to go home,” Vegas responded, his own smile matching hers. Dez turned back to the girls.
“So, what’s the plan here? Are you taking her back to her parents?”
“Yes
but I know someone who might be able to secure her a bed at a good
rehab center up north. They helped me sober up and my counselor there
might be able to help her. I’ll get her home and make some phone calls.”
Dez pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, opened her address book,
and selected the icon to add a new record.
“What are your names?”
“Tessa,” the older girl replied, her voice shaking, “and this is Kaitlyn.”
“Nice
to meet you both. I’m Dez and this is Michael. Tessa, what’s your phone
number?” Dez typed in the digits as the girl read them off and clicked
the save button before tucking her phone back in her pocket. “I’m going
to check in with you soon, just to make sure you’re okay. If you ever
need anything, anything at all, look me up at Onyx in New York City. Can
you remember that? Onyx?”
“Yes, Onyx. Got it.” Her reply was polite, but the look in her eyes said she wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.
“I’ll
help you out in any way I can, you just have to promise to keep that
shit out of your veins. It kills people. There are much better things
you can be doing with your time than pumping your body full of that
shit. If you find yourself in a rut, I can give you work. There is no
situation you don’t have a way out of. Consider me your
get-out-of-jail-free card. Use it if you need it. Are you okay to get
home or do you need a ride?”
“Um, no, we’re okay. I can get us home, I mean. Can I, um, ask a question?”
“Of course.” The girl turned her attention toward Vegas before continuing.
“Are you a vampire?” She stumbled a bit on the last word.
“I
am,” he answered, no point in attempting to hide his true nature. His
golden eyes instantly gave him away, but the girl had to ask.
“He’s not what you pictured?” Des asked.
“I
don’t know. I thought you’d be paler or something.” She stared at Vegas
for a moment before speaking again. “And, if they weren’t zombies, what
were those guys?”
Dez
looked to Vegas for guidance. Without any words necessary, his eyes
conveyed his feelings. He felt the same way she did. How much she knew
was up to Tessa at this point. The girl had seen and been through
enough. If it earned her anything, it was the truth.
“How much do you want to know?”
“Just the basics, I guess.”
“They were demons. Well, people possessed by demons.” The girl stared in thought for a moment before responding.
“Demons?”
Dez nodded, surprised by the girl’s lack of panic. “Wow. Bummer.
Alright, well, we’re going to go home now. I’m starving and I’ve had
enough weird for one day.” She quickly looked to Vegas. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Before you leave, what’s the name of my bar?”
“Onyx, and it’s in New York.”
“Good.
Okay, be safe.” Tessa took Kaitlyn by the arm and guided her out from
behind the desk. The pair hurried out the door toward the exit of the
building. Dez watched them go as she and Vegas strolled toward the same
exit. She couldn’t imagine losing herself to an addiction, but over the
centuries, she’d watched it happen to countless numbers. She watched it
ruin lives and tear families apart. But there was something in Tessa’s
eyes, a spark she didn’t want to see extinguished like so many before
her. Tessa had hope. She’d recovered from an addiction that could have
taken her life at any time, and now her path could lead anywhere.
“Are we taking in strays now?” Vegas cocked his eyebrow at her as he wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“No strays, smartass.”
“I
know, I’m just playing with you. I think what you offered is sweet. I
just don’t know where it came from. You don’t like people.”
“I don’t know. There is just something about her. Call it a gut feeling.”
“Good enough,” he replied, pulling her closer briefly to place a light kiss on her forehead. “So, dark roast?”
“For starters, I am thinking a perfect cup of medium roast. Then, maybe a mocha latte or a classic cappuccino.”
“You’re going to be bouncing off the walls of the penthouse,” he said as they strolled toward the exit.
“I can think of a few ways to burn off the extra energy.”
Storm Cursed
Wild Country 
Crescent City 
Untitled
Wings of the Wicked 
The Devil You Know
Bestselling author JENA GREGOIRE was
born and raised in New Hampshire, USA, and despite her abhorrence for
any season which dares to drop to a temperature below seventy degrees,
she still currently resides there with her two children and several
furbabies. Always a passionate reader, her love of urban fantasy books
inevitably morphed into a love of writing them. She is currently working
on two series – the Hellfire series and the Executioner series.
