Sin & Surrender (Demigod of San Francisco #6)(90)

They had a good idea of who’d made the threats. Daisy had seen a few of them clustered together when leaving the Summit building yesterday, the shoes familiar. One of them had even worn the ring she’d noticed in the surveillance video. She’d quietly pointed them out to Amber, who was confident one of them was on Demigod Rufus’s team. If one was, they all probably were.

At Demigod Rufus’s lodge, though, most of the golf carts had been taken. They were probably at the Summit building, gossiping and schmoozing, or else just drinking. It was only late morning, but the whole event had been thrown off the rails.

Still not winded, they slunk around corners, entered the Summit building, where interior bars and restaurants were positioned on the west side, and blended in with the crowd. Daisy had been trained by Zorn for over a year now, and Amber for six months—not a lot of time. Even still, this felt perfectly natural to her. Effortless, almost. If someone happened to glance her way, she simply slipped behind someone else, playing it off as though she’d been moving that way all along. Her short and slender frame was a benefit, allowing her to hide behind women as well as men.

Near the doorway of one of the interior bars, a pair of scuffed boots caught her eyes’ attention. Next to those walked the runners she’d memorized. And she saw the tarnished silver ring on a swinging hand.

Zorn turned into gas, the easiest cover and one that allowed him to stay close, as she slipped behind a doorway. Amber paused in walking, looking down at her phone, her hair obscuring her face and her body language distracted. It was the look of a million people, and despite her leather and weapons, the eye cataloged her as a known quantity and slid right by. So easy.

The scuffed boots belonged to a man of medium height with messy brown hair, stubble, and a belching problem. He led the tall guy with the runners away from the bar. They met up with a woman whose combat boots Daisy didn’t know, plus another group of boots she did.

Ta-da.

“Time for bait,” she said for Zorn, and slipped out of the doorway. The group was headed to the far exit, smelling faintly of beer and bourbon. They were starting to let their hair down as the week droned on. She would’ve been happier if they’d been stone sober, but whatever. She didn’t have time to wait.

Amber cut across her path and then slunk through a group of people chatting about the gods’ visit. They didn’t give her any notice. Zorn increased his distance, so when she eventually waltzed in front of her target group, making Scuffed Boots stutter-step so as not to trip over her, he’d be behind them.

“Hey, ain’t that that Chester?” one of them said.

She started, glanced back with a frightful expression, and then hunched, playing the scared little rabbit. She headed toward the nearest exit, hurrying her steps.

“Why yes, it is,” another said, his voice low.

“I feel like a little fun, how about you all?” one asked.

“Should we? That’s that new Demigod’s kid,” one of them answered.

“That new Demigod ain’t gonna know who roughed up her kid if her kid can’t talk. She doesn’t have the blood bond. Not our fault if she accidentally dies because she can’t withstand a little beating.”

“Nah. I’m out.”

Daisy, nearly to the exit, hurried to the side and into a hall, not seeing who took off. It would be the smartest thing they ever did.

“Coward,” the leader said, and they turned after her, following her around the corner instead of heading out the door, too stupid to know it was a trap. Zorn followed behind, and Amber would go around back and cut through the building to make sure there was nowhere for them to run.

Daisy stopped at a dead end, turned, and put up her hands. A group of five, two less than the crew that had delivered her hate mail, crowded in front of her, excited expressions on their faces, and a couple with alcohol-hazed eyes. The one in the back would go free, she decided, the woman whose shoes she didn’t recognize. She nodded slightly to Zorn to convey the message.

“Looky, looky,” the leader, Mr. Scuffed Boots himself, said.

“You have no pride in your footwear,” she said, straightening up and then loosening, dropping her Little Miss Rabbit act.

Scuffed Boots frowned, his confusion probably from her change in demeanor. “Huh?”

She pointed first to his boots, and then to the footwear around him. “I know you’re the ones who left me the love notes in pig blood. Well, pig blood and paint, but whatever. Cute messages. Unoriginal, though.”

Scuffed Boots puffed up in pride. “Your kind doesn’t belong here. Consider this your exit pass.”

“What’s amazing is, by being a close-minded, intolerant turd, you’ve shown that you are no better than a Chester. And now you’ll be killed by one. Oh the irony.”

Without wasting another second or allowing them to activate their magic, she attacked, sprinting forward while throwing her knives. The first landed in the base of Scuffed Boots’s throat, a little low, but the second stuck him right in the eye. One-in-a-million shot. He went down before he could fire off one of his useless magical flares. Clearly that would be the token dead guy.

Another shocked her with a blast of static electricity, painful but not fatal. She pushed through the pain and raked her blade across his throat, not deep enough to kill. She jabbed him in a couple more places, just so he hurt real good, was hit by another blast, used him for a shield, and threw a throwing star at the guy in the back before Zorn could slice him with the machete.