Steal the Night (Thieves #5)(31)

“Uh, so Daniel would kill you instead of Louis.”

“But we have contracts with the vampires,” he argued, looking for a way out of the trap he was in.

Sighing for the na?ve demon, I explained a little fact of life to him. “Those contracts are for full-bloods only. Is your boss a full-blood?”

He nodded, obviously stunned at the turn of his circumstances. “Yeah.”

I felt a little for the poor guy. “Okay. Let me tell you what happened. Marini got a real taste of me last night and it made him a little crazy. He decided he has to have me. He doesn’t want to fight Daniel, so he called up your boss. Your boss decided the best way to handle the situation is to use you as a scapegoat. If you manage to pull it off, Marini will get what he wants and more than likely he has a way to fake my death or something. I’m sure the trail leads back to you so Daniel has someone to take his rage out on. If you fail, Danny just kills your ass and Marini assumes he’s so happy I’m safe he doesn’t ask questions.”

“That’s not fair.” The demon had managed to turn a lovely shade of pale.

“You’re preaching to the choir, buddy,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’m a companion. No one asked if I wanted every vampire on the plane chasing after me. One day you’re just a normal girl and the next you find out you’re the vampire equivalent of Kobe beef.”

“What am I going to do?” he asked more to himself than to me but I chose to answer.

“You give me back to Daniel and beg his pardon. And then you should probably run like hell. It won’t be hard. Just let this host go and find a new one. You get a new face and a new life.”

“My boss can find me,” he explained. “He can find me anywhere I go. He won’t just accept that I left.”

I shrugged, not sure what else to tell him. I wasn’t the one who had forced him to join the mob. “Sorry.”

He frowned and his face took a turn for the stubborn. “No, I do the job. They think I can’t manage this, well, they’re wrong. I can certainly handle one small female and then I’ll take my money and do exactly what you suggested. I’ll take a new host and hide. I’ll leave my boss his cut and get the hell out. I can go to a completely different plane with that kind of cash.”

He was pulling me along again, and I knew the time for logic had passed us by. It was time to go with plan B.

“Help!” I yelled across the empty parking lot, and he immediately did what I needed him to do. He pulled me against his chest, my back firmly against him. His free hand wrapped around my waist and the gun found my side.

The thing that makes kidnapping so precarious is the inherent need to have the kidnappee comply with your nefarious plans. For the most part, a kidnapping victim assumes that they can be killed at any moment and only their compliance will save them. I was not under that assumption. In this guy’s case, it was even worse. He really needed me alive and whole to have any hope of getting out of this job with his head attached to his body. It made it easy to maneuver him into a position where my skills in accessorizing came in handy.

I brought my Italian-made, four-and-a-half-inch stiletto down as hard as I could on the bridge of his foot. He was wearing sneakers that did next to nothing to protect him from that mini sword coming down on his flesh and bones.

He howled his pain and dropped to his knees. I then wrapped the silver chain of my bag right around his neck, which immediately started to smoke. I don’t know why silver works on demons and vampires. I only know that it does. He gasped and tried to get his fingers in between the silver chain and his neck, but the silver burned his fingers as well and he begged me to stop.

“Leave this host,” I ordered him.

“They’ll kill me.” He tried to twist away.

“Fine, then I’ll kill you first.” I put the toe of my bootie into the small of his back. I just needed enough leverage to let the silver do its job. It would eventually slice neatly through his throat, but there would be a lot of pain first.

I felt the instant the demon let his host go. The body I was garroting kind of went limp for a moment and then he started fighting again, but he was so confused about what was happening he didn’t know which way to go. His flesh had stopped smoking, and he was able to touch the chain at his neck. I pulled my foot out of his back and in one quick motion had the chain over his head. He fell forward and moaned a whole lot.

“Are you okay?” It was a dumbass question. The poor guy had been the vehicle for a demon. He wasn’t okay.

“What happened?” His voice was lighter and younger now that it was back to being his own. His fingers found his neck, and he rubbed the raw places with a wince. He looked down and jumped back when he saw the gun at his knees. “Why the hell do I have a gun?”

“Dude, chalk it up to a really bad trip.” It would be easier to live with if he thought it was a dream or a hallucination. If I told him the truth, he would either assume I was crazy or worse, he would believe me and spend the rest of his life praying it never happened to him again.

I hustled back to the lighted street and saw Dev and Daniel standing outside the bookstore. Dev had a bag in his hand. They couldn’t have been out there too long because they still looked merely annoyed. They hadn’t reached a state of panic, and I was grateful for that. I slowed down and caught my breath.