Jennifer Estep - Spider's Bite

Roslyn stopped at the entrance to the hallway and fixed us with a flat stare. “Carlyle’s in the third room on the right. You’ve got thirty minutes before I send one of the bouncers to check on the girls. Be gone by then.”

I gave her a curt nod. The vampire stared at me a second before she turned on her boot heel and stalked back the way she’d come.

“C’mon,” I said in a low voice. “Let’s see what our friend Chuckie C. is up to.”

Donovan counted the doors, and we stopped in front of the appropriate slit. The detective looked at me. I nodded, and he grabbed the knob and slowly, quietly, slid the panel to one side. The opening stretched out horizontally about two feet, but it was barely taller than an eye. There was enough room for both of us to stare inside.

Donovan Caine and I put our eyes close to the opening. The slit revealed a small room with a plush couch off to one side, along with a round table and a few chairs. The tops of several liquor bottles sat on a shelf just below us. A bar set against this wall hid the peephole. A mirror ball spun around overhead, splashing silver light everywhere.

Charles Carlyle hadn’t wasted any time. One of the girls already had her head buried in the vampire’s crotch. He had his hand up the other one’s skirt, and his tongue down her throat. Smacking and sucking noises drifted out to us, along with a few moans from the ladies. The girls were pros. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought they were really enjoying themselves.

Donovan Caine shifted beside me, no doubt thinking about what had happened between us at the bar. A shame, really, that we’d been interrupted.

The scene went on for maybe three more minutes before Carlyle got his rocks off. The hooker who’d been on her knees wiped off her mouth, crawled up, and joined the other one on the couch beside Chuckie C. Both of them murmured nonsense about what a big, big man he was and how they only pretended with other guys, but with him, their pleasure was real. My lips twitched. Funniest damn thing I’d heard all night.

Carlyle fondled the two girls for a moment longer, then spanked them both on the ass — hard — and zipped his pants up. “Scram, girls,” he said. “I’ve got company coming.”

Company? That sounded promising.

Carlyle threw a couple of C-notes at the girls, which they tucked into their push-up bras, before blowing him kisses and leaving the room. Chuckie C. let out the sigh of a satisfied man, then got to his feet and hitched his pants back up into their proper position. I hoped the bastard had enjoyed that blow job. It was going to be the last one he ever got.

The vampire headed toward the wall where Dono van Caine and I stood peering at him. For a moment, I thought perhaps the stocky vampire had spied us spying on him. But he reached for a bottle and splashed some whiskey into a square glass. Getting himself a drink. He was so close to us I could have stuck one of my knives through the peephole and given him a shave. That moment would come soon enough.

Carlyle had just knocked back his first slug of whiskey, when the door on the far side of the room opened, and a man stepped inside. Carlyle blocked my view, but I could still see the other guy was a giant, with salt-and-pepper hair and a bulky frame that was slowly going to fat.

“About time you got here,” Carlyle said.

“Sorry,” the giant replied. “Some of us have been busy.”

Donovan Caine stiffened beside me. Because the deep baritone of the second man belonged to his boss — police captain Wayne Stephenson.

“Whaddya want to drink?” Carlyle asked.

“Whiskey, and a lot of it.”

Carlyle made a couple more drinks. Stephenson took a seat at the table, and Carlyle handed him one of the glasses and set the bottle on the table. Stephenson knocked back the amber liquid like it was water and poured himself another. Took a lot to get a giant drunk. Dwarves too. Humans and vamps were the only ones who couldn’t hold their liquor.

“I told you on the phone, meeting was a bad idea,” Stephenson muttered and downed his second drink. “Everybody’s crawling all over my ass about the Giles murder. Did you know the bastard was a personal friend of the mayor? His college roommate or some such shit. Pompous moron’s called me twice today.”

Carlyle took a seat opposite the giant “And I told you she wanted an update. In person.”

Stephenson’s pale eyes flicked toward the door. “She’s not coming here, is she? Bad enough I risk being seen with you. If she walks in the door—”

“Don’t worry,” Carlyle said. “This place is totally anonymous. Nobody cares what you do or who you do it with, as long as you don’t skip out on your bill. As for the elemental, she had other fish to flay tonight and sent me instead. So your skin will stay right where it is — for now.”

Stephenson drew a white handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his suit and mopped his forehead with it. I could smell the stench of his relief all the way across the room. “I wish I’d never gotten involved in this mess.”

“You wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t fucked all those ten-year-old girls on your daughter’s soccer team,” Carlyle’s tone was light, conversational, like he was talking about whether it might rain tomorrow.

Donovan Caine let out a low, guttural growl. The sound a wolf might make before it ripped out your throat. His hands clenched into fists, and I heard his teeth grind together through his clenched jaw. So Stephenson was a pedophile. Would have been easy for the Air elemental to get her hooks into him. All she’d need would be a picture, just one, and the police captain would have been hers.

“What about the assassin?” Carlyle asked. “Anything on her?”

Stephenson snorted and poured himself a third drink. “Bitch is a fucking ghost. None of my snitches know who she is or what she looks like. And none of the tips we’ve gotten have been worth a damn, I’m starting to think that sketch Caine gave us was total bullshit. I think she’s gone. Out of town and out of the picture.”

Carlyle digested the information. “What about the old man’s son? The banker?”

Stephenson shrugged. “Finnegan Lane told his bank he was taking a vacation because he was so heartsick over his father’s murder. I imagine he’s on an island somewhere by now.”

“What about Caine? Has the detective surfaced yet?”

Stephenson mopped more sweat from his forehead. “No, I can’t find the fucker anywhere. He wasn’t stupid enough to go back to his house. He hasn’t reported in for work, and none of his buddies have seen him. He’s gotta still be in Ashland, though. He doesn’t have the resources to disappear like Lane does.”

Carlyle leaned forward and speared the giant with a hard, flat stare. “You need to find the detective. Caine is a loose end that needs to be clipped off before he starts unraveling things. The elemental wants you to find him — ten minutes ago. I showed you the picture of the old man at the barbecue restaurant. You know what happens when she doesn’t get her way.”

Stephenson tossed back another drink. Some of the liquid courage must have finally kicked in because he glared back at the vampire. “I called Caine just like you wanted. If your crew had done its job and held on to him until the elemental got there, we wouldn’t be wondering where the detective is and what he’s up to. And I wouldn’t be wondering when your boss is going to kill me. She’ll kill you too, you know. As soon as she thinks she doesn’t need you anymore. Bitch is crazy. Does she really think nobody will notice what she’s doing? All the wiseguys she’s hired? The fact she’s building her own crew to take on Mab Monroe’s organization? And that she’s using money from Mab’s own company to do it?”