Rapture (Fallen Angels #4)(33)
Author: J.R. Ward

Better than Coors Light, though.

“You stick with her,” Jim said as they walked into the lobby. “I don’t want her on her own.”

“Isn’t he the soul?”

“I think so. And assuming he is, she’s the key to this.”

“You sure?”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at her. That’s all I need to know.” Jim nodded in the direction of the reporter who was stepping out of the lobby elevators. “Get on her. I’m going to wait for Devina to show up here.”

Ad was not interested in getting foisted off on the GF. He wanted to wait for the demon. He wanted to stand nose-to-nose with her and pray for her to make another crack about Eddie—just so he could show her how much she wasn’t getting to him anymore. And then he wanted to stare in her eyes as her frustration flared and she was forced to attack him physically.

At which time he could game-over it. Fight to the death. Go out like a warrior.

The bitch would no doubt beat him, but oh, the joy to take pounds of flesh off her. And the relief to have everything over.

“Adrian? You with me, my man?”

“I want to stay here.”

“And I need you on that female. She’s got to stay alive long enough to influence him. If Devina gets a goddamn whiff of that connection they’re pulling? That woman’s going to end up a floater in the Hudson—or worse.”

As Jim stared at him, the subtext was based on logic—the strongest person had to face the demon, and right now that was not Ad. And not just because he didn’t have Jim’s extra flashy moves.

“Do you want to win,” Jim said in a low voice. “Or do you want to f**k us.”

Ad cursed and turned away, locking onto the trail of the woman and jogging off in the conventional way—because it was too messy to disappear in front of even casual observers.

As she headed for the elevators to the parking garage, Matthias’s chippie walked like she was on a mission, and he envied the purpose. Didn’t envy her her ride as it turned out. The POS had an engine and a roof—other than that, there wasn’t much to recommend the thing.

For shits and giggles, he disappeared himself into the backseat—and onto what turned out to be a Library of Congress’s worth of old papers and magazines. The good news was that she picked just that moment to start the engine—but she still heard the noise of his invisible ass compressing countless pages of newsprint. Whipping her head around, she stared into the space he was taking up, and to be nice, he gave her a little wave, even though as far as she was concerned, she was alone in the damn car.

“I’m losing my mind,” she muttered as she threw them into drive and took off.

Good driver. Quick on the gas pedal, efficient in her routing.

They ended up in the western part of downtown, at a motel that was only a step up from a dog kennel. After they got out—him remaining invisi, her clearly on the hunt—they joined a convention of cops and reporters who were focused on a room over on the left—

Adrian frowned and abruptly plugged into the scene for real. As the woman he was responsible for approached the badges holding the line at the yellow crime scene tape, he breezed past the flimsy barricade and penetrated the crowd of busy-busy at the door.

What the hell, he thought to himself.

Devina was all over the place, her residual stink hanging in the breeze as if a garbage truck had backed in and left a dump of loose-and-juicy all over the place.

Adrian pressed inside and had to cover his nose to keep from gagging from the stench that didn’t reach the sinuses of the humans.

Hello, dead girl.

On the far side of four or five cops, a body was visible through the open door of the bathroom: pale legs, tattoos on the thighs, clothes that were twisted around her body as if she had struggled. Her throat had been slashed, the blood soaking the sparkly thing she’d obviously considered a shirt as well as the chipped tile she was sprawled on.

She was a blonde—thanks to L’Oréal: The remnants of a hair-color kit were all over the counter, and plastic purple-stained gloves lay in the trash. And her hair was straightened—thanks to the Conair dryer and a short brush that had dark strands at its core, lighter ones at the tips of the bristles.

“Damn you, Devina,” Ad muttered.

“Is the photographer here yet?” a tired looking man barked out.

The CPDs glanced at one another, like they didn’t want to give him bad news.

“Not yet, Detective de la Cruz,” someone said.

“That woman drives me nuts,” the guy muttered, cocking his cell phone and starting to pace.

As the uniforms clustered around the detective as if they wanted to watch the photog get her ass chewed, Adrian took advantage of the clear shot into the loo, going inside and getting down on his haunches.

Hoping he didn’t find anything, Ad lifted the hem of the blood-soaked blouse. “Oh, come on…”

Underneath the sparkles, the pale skin of the stomach had been scored with symbols, runes not meant for the human she had been, or the men and women who found her, or the family who would mourn her.

They were a message from Devina.

That Ad was going to make sure Jim never, ever saw.

Casting an eye back at the knot of uniforms around that detective, Ad double-checked that the cell phone call preoccupation was still giving him some privacy. Then he passed his palm back and forth over the flesh that had been marked.

Fortunately, the skin still had some remaining vitality left in its cells. But the removal was sluggish.

“—get here, now,” that detective bit out, “or I’ll take the pictures myself. You have fifteen minutes to come on scene—”

Ad frowned in concentration, throwing everything he had into the effort. The runes were carved nearly a quarter inch deep in places, and they were rough, as if made by a jagged knife…or more likely, a claw.

“Come on…come on—” He looked over his shoulder. The kaffeeklatsching was over, and the detective was heading back.

Retracting his hand, he jumped to his feet—and then remembered that he was still invisi.

“Who touched the body?” the detective blurted. “Who touched this f**king body?”

Shit. The shirt was still up just below her br**sts. Not where the thing had started out. And the skin was flushed in an unnatural way, given not just the victim’s ethnicity, but also where she was in her dying process. Still, the objective had been met and that was more important than any confusion the humans were going to have sorting what was doing out.