What he did find of interest was a rolling metal cart protruding from the doorway the second wolf had appeared from. Its shelves were covered with a dozen five-gallon-size aluminum bowls filled with a putrid stew. Giselle had said she kept 10 percent of her meals; the rest went to feeding the pups. Which meant the contents of those bowls—and the puppies’ stomachs—was an amalgamation of evil from an assortment of Infernals.
He looked again at the beasts that were creating a racket that was capable of shattering mortal eardrums. Those that were close enough to the dead wolf at the rear door were extending their long tongues to lap at the widening pool of blood. Those that were too far away continued to beat themselves against their cell bars.
Alec lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, pushed the muzzle between the bars of the nearest cage, and squeezed off a round. It was a dead-on hit to the temple. The bullet went clean through and embedded in the wall on the other side. The beast sat and growled, the picture of forced docility. It looked at Alec with a malevolent gaze. There was no visible wound.
“Shit.” Adding a prayer to the mix, he shot the Infernal again, this time between the eyes. The beast became even more accommodating by sliding into a prone position. Same result—no injury and an embedded bullet in the cement block.
The guns were behavioral tools.
“How the hell do I kill you, if I can’t even hurt you?”
One of the other hellhounds was lying on its belly, licking at the wolf blood that was creeping beneath the bars. Its tail was protruding from the cage into the hallway. Crouching, Alec used a trick Eve had taught him and summoned a flame-covered dagger. He pressed it against the appendage. It was like pressing against solid stone. There was no penetration, no scorching. The creature snarled and glared at him, but was otherwise unaffected.
“Fan-f**king-tastic,” Alec muttered, sending the blade back with a flick of his wrist. It had been centuries since he’d run across an Infernal he didn’t know precisely how to vanquish.
He was about to abandon the kennel and make Charles tell him how to kill the damned things when he noted that the tail he’d touched was damaged, its end chewed off and healed raggedly. Pivoting, Alec looked at all the hellhounds, noting that some had torn ears, while others had scars on their limbs.
So . . . they weren’t completely impervious to injury.
They were caged separately. Fed separately. But clearly at one point they hadn’t been. Were they vulnerable only to each other? Or were they just protected against Marks?
Alec moved to the dead wolf, whose corpse was beginning to smoke. One arm in particular was nearly severed, the elbow area having melted into a gory puddle. Gripping the wrist, he picked it up and carried it back to the distracted hellhound. He crouched and hammered the severed hand downward, claws first. They sank deep into the tail, causing the beast to leap away with a furious roar.
“Gotcha.” Alec grinned. He couldn’t kill the dozen with one clawed hand, but he had a better idea.
He returned to the office he’d searched earlier. Via the computer, he quickly acquainted himself with the kennel setup. Each cage floor was hydraulic, lowering to an underground dog run set up like a maze, with each pup segregated from its siblings by cleverly placed walls. A set of drawn schematics pinned to a corkboard above the desk showed that live bait was occasionally brought in for hunting and training. The kennel doors could be opened remotely for cleaning while the pups were below.
Alec smiled. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
He left the office. Moving to the metal meal cart, he pulled it completely out of the doorway it protruded from and wheeled it down the hallway. The beasts went wild. He paused by the first cage and lifted a bowl.
“Requietum.” His voice resonated with command.
All the Infernals immediately quieted and sat, waiting. There had been other commands listed in the office, but the rest of them were only useful if you wanted something hunted. The pups eyed him with obvious malice, obeying him only because they were instinctive creatures that wanted nothing so much as to eat.
Shifting with lightning speed, Alec entered the first cage. He dumped the contents atop the Infernal’s head and shifted back out. Rinse and repeat, all the way down the line. The last two were the hardest, since the first few were screaming in protest by the time he reached the end.
Spattered with the noxious meal, he shifted back into the office and locked the door. With a quick downward wave of his hand, he removed all traces of puppy food from his clothes. Then, he hit the release for the cage locks. The subsequent collision of powerful bodies was like listening to eighteen-wheelers crashing on the highway at top speeds. Alec grinned and text-messaged Abel—Not going to make the conference. He cc’d Raguel’s phone, too, since Abel was unreliable about using his.
Outside the office door, the screams were deafening.
“Ten minutes.” Eve looked at Reed, who was rubbing the back of his neck. “If—and that’s a big ‘if’—Molenaar was walking at a slug’s pace, and Claire is right about last seeing him at eight-thirty.”
They stood outside the video rental store where Claire had last seen Molenaar alive. They’d occupied the same spot a half dozen times over the course of the last forty-five minutes and the conclusion was undeniable.
“That’s not enough time,” he said, “to cross the distance from the store to the alley, pin him up, then mutilate his body . . . Not while using bare hands. Magic . . . maybe.”
“So, how did the killer gain time?”
He shot her a bemused look. “Good question. She did say the time could be closer to eight.”
Eve shook her head. “Not possible. We entered Anytown at eight.”
Reminded of the ticking clock, she glanced down at her watch. “We have to head back. It’s five minutes to three.”
“Did you get what you needed here?” His fingers circled her wrist.
“Yes, I’m all set.” She wondered if he noticed how often he reached for her, both mentally and physically. Luckily, their physical connection seemed to short-circuit the mental, which afforded her some privacy, but she wouldn’t have bitched even if it hadn’t been convenient. Right now, she needed to be touched.
To say she was smarting from Alec’s personality transplant would be the understatement of all time. Eve had a few absolutes in her life—her parents would always be married, her sister would always be wild, Janice would always be her best friend, and Alec would always be madly in lust with her. The loss of one of those made her doubt the others, which in turn made her wonder if there was anything she could count on at all. Silly to pin so much on the affections of one man, but there it was.
“Are you sure?” Reed insisted. “No coming back?”
“I’m sure.” They hadn’t examined every crack and crevice of Anytown, but an exhaustive search wasn’t necessary. She didn’t have the same feelings of dread she’d had at the start of the exercise, a familiar cloud of foreboding that had hovered over her from the very beginning of training. All this time, she believed the sensation of being disliked and an outcast in her class had been externally generated. Now she understood that disquiet came from inside her.
“Unless the Ghoul School team decides they want to stay,” she equivocated. “Then we’ll have to revisit.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied with that. “They think this place is going to be lit up like Times Square. I doubt they’ll decide that’s conducive to filming eerie-looking night vision footage.”
“I don’t know. Linda isn’t doing this as a lark.” She related what the young woman had told her earlier.
“This Tiffany person,” he began when she finished. “She’s the European Mark you want me to check up on?”
“Yes.” She glanced up at him and felt her stomach clench. He was boyishly handsome when he smiled, but when he was somber, he was devastating.
“Why? They can’t be reunited, babe. Not unless Linda gets marked.”
“Don’t say that,” she admonished. “I don’t expect that Linda will ever know what happened to her friend, but she’ll be all right. She’s got Roger to lean on when she needs to, and a calling that gives her purpose. It’s Tiffany I worry about. I think if she knew about Linda’s blog and the show, maybe she’d find some comfort in knowing how much her friend still loves her.”
“Marks are cut off from their old life for a reason.”
“You promised.”
Reed shook his head. “That was before I knew what you wanted the information for. Rules are rules.”
“Hey, I don’t know what you want from me. There’s a lot of ground to cover between wild gorilla sex and washing a car.”
His slow smile made her toes curl, not exactly a convenient thing when walking in combat boots. “True.”
She didn’t really believe sex would be the forfeit or she never would have agreed. Reed wanted her to come to him on her own. Since he wouldn’t take her during the Novium, he certainly wouldn’t take her for a bet.
“It’s not as if Linda’s actions are covert,” she argued. “Her weblog, episodes of the show, their website, the website of the network . . . It’s all public domain.”
“So let the Mark find it—or not—on her own. If you’re claiming inevitable discovery, allow her to discover it inevitably.”
“If you renege on our deal, I’m free to do the same.”
He growled, looking so disgruntled she couldn’t help but find humor in it despite her worry over Alec.
“Hey.” She bumped her shoulder into his. “Just say the deal is off and you’re free.”
“So you can sucker some other poor soul into trouble with you?”
“You’re claiming selfless motivation?” She laughed. “That might have more impact if you weren’t blackmailing me.”
“You started it by dragging me here.”
“You would have come, regardless,” she countered. “I just got myself invited.”
She was pretty sure she could have swayed Montevista, if she’d had to. At worst, she could have proceeded without him, which would have forced him to tag along for safety’s sake. But she was much happier to have Reed with her. Despite his rough edges, she enjoyed his company, and while he was a risk to her in many ways, he was also protective. Sometimes.
They passed the boundaries of Anytown, then reached the street. Turning left, they headed toward the duplex.
“You just barrel through everything,” he grumbled, “rules be damned.”
“Break the deal.” Her voice was low and taunting. “I double dog dare you.”
Reed met her gaze with narrowed eyes. “Not on your life.”
His look promised all sorts of wicked consequences and a fission of attraction moved through her.
Eve shrugged it off by necessity. “I don’t understand what you and your brother are fighting about.” Or why she had to be stuck in the middle.
“What does Cain have to do with anything?” he snapped.
Growing cautious at his harshness, she replied carefully, “You tell me.”
He stopped and faced her, his back to their destination. Blocking her way. “Explain your convoluted female thought process to me.”
“Can’t you read my mind?”
“Not without screwing up my own.”
“If I’m going to be the rope in your tug of war, shouldn’t I know what the war is about?”
He gave her an aggravated look. “What does Cain have to do with finding this Tiffany person?”
“You obviously don’t want to find her for me,” she explained, “but you want our little agreement more. I have to think that has something to do with Cain. You don’t seem like the type of guy who breaks the rules arbitrarily.”
And a bet with her was arbitrary, no doubt.
Reed’s lips thinned and a vision of her bent over his knee popped into her head. “When I do something with you because of Cain, I’ll let you know.”
“Spanking isn’t my thing, caveman.” She crossed her arms. “And I’m not talking about you and me. I’m talking about you and Cain.”
“You can’t say it’s not your thing until you’ve been spanked properly.” He caught her elbow and pulled her toward the duplex.
“We were having a discussion,” she protested.
“No, you were prying.”
“Alec said it had something to do with a woman.”
Reed stared straight ahead. “On the periphery.”
“And the fact that you are both interested in the same woman now doesn’t signify?”
“Not anymore. Now there’s just one of us interested.” He glanced at her. “Note that Cain’s defection didn’t affect me at all. What does that tell you?”
“That you don’t think he got over me that quickly either.”
“He’s an archangel, babe. Archangels don’t feel love like you know it.”
“Are they celibate?”
He laughed. “Hell, no. They can even feel fond of a lover, like an owner with a pet. But love . . . that is reserved for God.”
Eve sighed. Until she spoke with Alec at length, in private, she wasn’t jumping to any conclusions. “So get back to the origins of your fight with your brother.”
“Get over it, Eve.”
“Were you ever close?”
Shrugging, he said, “My mother says we were once, but I don’t remember it.”
“Your mother says?” Not past tense.
The wry smile he shot her was a knee-weakener. “She’ll tell you all about it when you meet her. Like most moms, she loves to share embarrassing childhood stories.”
Eve was too stunned to reply. Alec and Reed . . . with their mother. The singularity of meeting the Original Sinner had nothing on the thought of seeing the two potently virile men she knew with their mom.