Too easy.
Or maybe she was just too good because Jana had just taken out her prey, destroyed the evidence, and even been given a getaway car. A chauffeured ride away from the scene of her attack.
Not bad for a night’s work.
Poor Zane. The guy obviously thought he was the big, tough demon badass. He’d be realizing soon enough that there was a new sheriff in town.
* * *
“I didn’t get the demon.” Zane rubbed the back of his neck, felt every ache and pain in his body, and met the stare of his boss, Jason Pak, head-on. “When I got to the house on Francis Street, the place was a damn inferno.” The flames had spread so quickly that the firefighters thought accelerants must have been used to soak the place.
Everything just exploded. The woman’s voice whispered through his head. Yeah, the house had exploded all right. With a little help.
He exhaled and dropped his hand. “The bastard had a victim with him. He was still hunting.” Not just hunting, but acting like a vamp. Trying to bite prey. No longer slicing them with claws and knives, but biting, vamp style. What the hell? “She was lucky to get out alive.”
Pak’s leather chair creaked as the owner of Night Watch leaned forward and flattened his palms on the desk. “Was she?”
Zane’s shoulders straightened a bit. “I pulled her out of the flames.” That good deed had to be worth something, right? No matter what most folks thought, he didn’t spend his whole life telling the world to screw off.
“Where is she?” Pak’s fingers drummed on the desktop. There was a skeletal staff in the Night Watch office then. Most of the bounty hunters were out on cases. Dragging in prey.
Pity. This time, Zane wouldn’t have any prey to bring in.
“The EMTs took her to the hospital,” he told Pak. “She’d sucked in a lot of smoke, and that jerk-off Jacobson bit her.”
“Any other injuries?” Pak’s dark gaze was steady.
“Uh, no. None that I saw.” He hadn’t smelled blood on her, but the smoke had been clogging his nose. He didn’t think the woman had been hurt. But she’d trembled against him.
Desire? Fear? Or pain?
“What did she look like?”
Zane blinked at that. “Ah … pretty. About five-foot-four, curvy, black hair, blue eyes—”
“Could have changed her appearance,” Pak murmured and his fingers stopped tapping.
And Zane got a really bad feeling in his gut. “Uh, excuse me?”
Pak’s black brows shot up. “Did I ever tell you I thought you handled yourself damn well when all that shit went down with Dee?”
Dee. Dee Daniels was another bounty hunter in the office. She’d watched his ass, he’d watched hers, for years. He’d trusted the woman with his life more times than he could count. Then she’d become a vampire.
“I do my job,” Zane said quietly. Just like he’d done his job when Dee changed. He’d protected her and made sure the assholes after her were taken down. “No matter what happens, I do my job.”
Pak rose and walked around the edge of the desk. A ghost of a smile curved his thin lips. “Good. You know the job has to come first.”
What the hell? The job always came first for him. Zane sucked in a sharp breath. “Jacobson’s body wasn’t recovered on the scene. The fire department was still there when I left, digging through the rubble, but—”
“But you don’t think they’ll find a body? Or what’s left of one?”
“Jacobson was a demon.” Demons and fire always mixed. “The guy was low level, but he should have been strong enough to knock the flames back, at least for a few moments.” A few moments would have been all the guy needed for an escape.
“You want to keep searching for him.”
Hell, yeah. “He’s my collar.”
Pak didn’t blink. That dark stare just weighed him.
“Uh, boss?” Pak didn’t usually get all quiet and focused like this unless he was out in the swamps, talking to the gators. The guy was a charmer, a being born with the ability to speak to animals. On the weekends, Pak would spend hours with the twelve- to fourteen-foot gators that loved to snap and feast in those muddy waters.
“I’m going to give Jude the Jacobson case,” Pak said.
“The hell you—”
“Jude can go back to Francis Street. If Jacobson got away, he’ll catch the guy’s scent.”
Jude Donovan was good at catching scents. But then, Jude was a white tiger shifter, so he’d fucking better be good at sniffing.
Zane locked his muscles. “Jude’s good at tracking, but so am I, and you know I don’t stop on a case until I’ve got my prey.” Especially not if the prey was a demon. He always brought the demons down. Or put them down, depending on the case.
“Jude’s got Jacobson,” Pak said, staring up at him.
Fuck. Every muscle in Zane’s body tightened and his hands clenched.
“Because I need you on something more important,” Pak told him.
“What?”
Pak shook his head. “You can take the fire, Jude can’t. That means he can’t take her.”
Her.
“I don’t think an accelerant was used on Francis Street,” Pak said, “Just like no accelerant was used three nights ago at the fire on Biltmore that took out two vampires, or at the three fires in New Orleans that occurred over the last few months…. Fires all aimed at supernaturals.”
Okay, Pak sure had Zane’s attention. Someone was targeting supernaturals?
“They were aimed at the Other, but it looks like humans were caught in the crossfire. Two human scientists died.”
Hell.
“ ’Course, the arson investigators think an accelerant was used because those fires burned so fast and so hot.” Pak reached behind him and scooped a manila file off the top of the desk. “A woman was spotted at the crime scenes. Average height. About one-hundred-thirty pounds.”
Zane’s gut clenched.
“Witnesses saw a blonde, with curly hair, running from the other fires.”
Blonde. Maybe she changed her appearance. Now he knew what Pak meant. “The woman tonight was a victim.”
Pak stared back at him, that dark stare unblinking. “You sure about that?”
Too much doubt was in Pak’s voice, and Zane realized that no, he wasn’t sure. In this world, you couldn’t be sure of anything or anyone. Damn. He might have been played. Jaw clenched, Zane demanded, “Just what am I dealing with here?”
“If I’m right, the woman you’re looking for is a human with a very special gift. A gift of fire.”
Shit. An Ignitor. A human who could create fire from nothing, who could let it burn fiery hot and so very fast. A human who could destroy too much.
“You’ve had experience dealing with Ignitors,” Pak said.
Zane’s head jerked in agreement. Not the best experience.
“I want you to find this one. Find her, and bring her in.” The briefest of hesitations. “If the woman from tonight isn’t the one we need, clear her, and move on. But I expect to have the Ignitor who is making these fires contained within the next forty-eight hours.”
Well, it would be easy enough to find the dark-haired beauty with the bedroom eyes. The EMTs had taken her in. She’d still be at the hospital now.
Unless she ran. Unless she wasn’t the victim. Unless she screwed me.
Zane forced his hands to unclench. “Sometimes Ignitors can be hard to contain.” He paused, because the question had to be asked. “Is this a kill mission?” With Ignitors, there wasn’t always a choice. If the fire raged too hot …
Kill or be killed.
“We want her alive,” Pak said. Then the cagey bastard added, “For now.”
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2008 Cindy Roussos
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has reeived any payment for this “stripped book.”
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-2605-1
ISBN-10: 0-7582-2605-5
First Kensington Trade Edition: December 2008
First Kensington Mass Market Edition: April 2015
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-874-6
eISBN-10: 1-61773-874-3
Kensington Electronic Edition: April 2015
Cynthia Eden, Midnight Sins
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