“We thought you’d make a good offering,” he said, speaking quietly to keep my knife from digging deeper into his skin. The area around the tip was mottled already as the silver burned him.
The word offering certainly caught my attention, especially when paired with the symbol I’d seen on the door. And at the crime scenes.
Then it clicked where I’d seen it before.
At the ceremony site when they’d opened the gates, that stupid upside-down seagull had been one of the sigils marked on the alley, one of the things that had called Belphegor and the red demon up to the surface.
These motherfuckers were kidnapping girls and using them as part of a demonic sacrifice.
Didn’t vampires have anything better to do with their time these days? Was starting the apocalypse really such a big thing right now that it was a bicoastal issue? Fucking demon-loving-vampires everywhere.
“Do I seem like a good offering to you now?” I asked.
He started to shake his head but thought better of it as the silver singed him. “No.”
“Did you take those two girls last month? The ones who were dumped in the park?” I knew the answer, since I’d touched the charcoal dust myself. They’d done the ritual right there and left the girls afterwards.
It must not have worked so well, what with Hell not being unleashed on the city yet again.
“Did Davos tell you to do this?”
He didn’t reply, which was the only answer I needed.
“Where is Sig?” This was as good a time as any to ask the question, since he seemed willing to talk about some things, and I wasn’t sure how long my little knife would keep him back.
“Who?”
Bruno didn’t strike me as a great actor, so I had to guess his response to my question was genuine. Still, it seemed suspect he wouldn’t know Sig’s name. Even a new vampire knew who Sig was, considering how important his rank was in vampire society.
So this guy was either a liar or an idiot, and I wasn’t sure which one was most likely.
Maybe both.
“The Tribunal wants your boss dead, did you know that? Have you seen what happens to little goons like you when their masters get killed? It’s not pleasant, I’ll tell you that much.”
“What do you know about it?” he snarled.
“I know I’ll be the one submitting your name for a warrant of your own when I get out of here. And I’ll be the one delivering on Davos’s. Whatever it was he had on Sig to stay the hand of execution, I don’t care. Davos is going to die, and I’m going to do it myself.”
Bruno chuckled, then stopped abruptly as the knife dug deeper. “You can’t kill him. You’re a nobody. He’ll split you open and shower in your blood.”
I smiled at him and withdrew the knife.
As he realized he was free from the threat, his lips curled back to reveal his pointed fangs. Only when he looked down did he see the silver blade sticking out of his chest.
“You’ll find I’m very hard to kill,” I said.
Chapter Twenty
It’s really hard to get out of a wall.
As much as my vision had adjusted so that I could see and kill Bruno, I was still a human stuck inside a pitch-black and very narrow space, and I was damn near blind.
On the plus side, the vampire had nabbed both me and my clutch in one fell swoop, so I rummaged through the little purse and activated the flashlight feature on my phone.
I had a number of missed calls, including one from Simone, another from Holden, and one from Shane. There was nothing from
Desmond, but he knew I was working tonight, so I hadn’t expected him to call me when I was in the middle of hunting. He was good like that.