Page 4

Great. Just great.

Suzie Myers narrowed her eyes slightly at the barrel of the gun inches from her nose.

It was late Saturday night and she’d just been about to close up Occulta . Dane Wilder, her head bartender, had left but a moment ago with Gary Evaneski, their doorman. Though the pair had gone to great pains to pretend they were headed their separate ways, Suzie knew they would end up together at Dane’s place in Japantown.

After eighteen months of stolen glances and circling one another like two bears debating whether to fight or fuck, the wizards had finally succumbed to their mutual attraction and were now unofficially dating. Or, as Lisa Burnett, one of Occulta ’s other bartenders liked to put it, Gary was dipping his wick in Dane’s honey pot with the aggressive enthusiasm of someone who intended to make up for lost time.

We really need to expand Lisa’s vocabulary. Maybe I should give her some books to read. Suzie swallowed a forlorn sigh. And if someone doesn’t use my honey pot soon, I’m gonna shrivel up like a dried prune.

Zach Mooney’s broodingly handsome features flashed before her eyes then. She clenched her teeth.

It had been a week since she’d last seen the Argonaut demon. Seen being a metaphorical word. Her cheeks warmed when she recalled the scalding kiss they’d shared in front of the entire bar. He’d said he’d call but she hadn’t heard from him since.

“Goddamn tease,” she muttered to herself.

An irate voice intruded upon her dismal thoughts.

“Hey, didn’t you hear us, bitch?! I said give us everything in the cash register!”

Spit peppered her face. Cold metal pressed into her cheek, leeching the warmth from her skin. Suzie ignored the weapon digging into her flesh and focused on the guy holding it.

His pupils were large, black circles in sunken orbits set in a pale, sweaty face. Though he was likely in his late twenties, he looked two decades older and had the gaunt appearance of someone who was sick. But it wasn’t an illness that was making his hand shake and sending sporadic twitches coursing through his skinny body. He was an addict. And, judging from what Suzie could smell from him, his favorite poison was Reaper Seed.

Though Bostrof Orzkal had purged San Francisco of the devastating drug smuggled from the Shadow Empire, elements of the underbelly of the city still had some supplies left over and were selling them to the highest bidder, the scarcity racking up prices to exorbitant levels. This had seen a rise in crime in certain parts of town as those dependent on the drug looked for alternative means to fund their addiction.

The gunman’s two companions looked no better, the rank odor wafting from them carrying the chemical scents of a cocktail of street drugs.

They must have been staking the place, waiting for Dane and Gary to leave.

Suzie chewed her lip as she considered her options. The trio had barged through the front door of her bar presuming she wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight without her staff around. After all, everyone in the city knew the bartenders and doormen who worked at Occulta were wizards and witches of a certain caliber.

In the end, she chose the least troublesome of her choices.

“How about I let you walk out of here? We’ll pretend none of this ever happened and I won’t tell the cops on you.”

The man holding the gun stiffened at her calm tone. He stared at her like she’d grown another head.

“Are you crazy?!” He dug the barrel deeper into her face and let out a bark of deranged laughter before cocking his head to address his friends. “Hey, did you hear what this whore just said?!”

Suzie lowered her brows as the gun ground into her cheekbone. “Watch the face, dipshit.”

The man froze.

Stars exploded in front of Suzie’s eyes as he backhanded her across the face. Her head snapped to the side. She blinked, stunned.

Fuck. Is it the drugs that made him so fast?!

She could tell he was no magic user. And he definitely was not an otherwordly. Something hot trickled down her chin, distracting her. Suzie wiped it and stared numbly at the blood on her thumb. Heat bloomed in her belly.

“I said to watch the face, asshole!” she snapped.

The man’s expression turned ugly. Movement flashed at the corner of Suzie’s eyes. She caught his arm before he could strike her again.

The guy cursed and jerked back. His eyes rounded when he saw the faint radiance dancing across her fingers where she’d grasped his wrist.

Suzie squeezed until she felt bone grind against bone.

He cried out, the gun tumbling from his suddenly limp fingers. It clattered noisily onto the ground. Metal hissed as his companions flicked open their switchblades. A predatory gleam overcame their dull expressions as they closed in on her, their gazes raking her denim shorts and T-shirt clad figure with fresh interest.

Suzie shuddered in disgust. Fire licked her veins as she drew on her magic. A bolt of anger tightened her stomach. The last thing she needed was for her bar to be wrecked all over again.

Dammit. Looks like I’m gonna have to go with the second option after all.

“Need a hand?”

Suzie’s head whipped around, as did the three men’s.

A different kind of heat rippled through her when she saw the Aqueous demon who’d just strolled inside Occulta . Her gaze wandered over chocolate brown hair she wanted to sink her fingers into, blue eyes that simmered with a hint of redness and danger, a sexy smile that made her toes curl, and a body she yearned to explore with her mouth and hands.

The man she hadn’t been able to get out of her mind for the past two weeks was just as devastatingly hot as she recalled. Suzie swallowed, the heat pooling low in her belly having nothing to do with magic and everything to do with desire.

The last time she and Zach Mooney had been in the same space, their tongues had been glued together and there had been nary a hairbreadth between their straining bodies.

The demon’s gaze stayed locked on hers as he exited the foyer, the crimson glow that darted in the depths of his dark pupils hinting at his otherwordly nature. He leaned a nonchalant hip against a booth close to the entrance, ignored the intruders gaping at him, and studied her broken lip with a faint frown.

“You okay?”

Suzie shook herself out of the lustful daze she’d fallen into. “Yeah. Give me a minute.”

The three men exchanged panicked glances. She had to give them due credit. Despite the drugs coursing through their systems, it was clear they could tell Zach wasn’t human.

Light flared across the bar, etching everything in sharp relief and chasing the shadows away. The men cursed and squinted. The little color they had left drained from their faces when they saw the white orb that had exploded into existence above her right palm.

The guy whose wrist she still held glared at her as if she’d committed some ungodly sin. “You’re—you’re a witch?!”

Zach bit back a smile. Suzie wrinkled her nose.

Though she’d wished to keep her identity as a Level One witch a secret from the agencies who governed the otherworldly and magic wielders in the city, she’d had no option but to reveal her powers a few weeks back, when Cassius Black, the most feared and ostracized angel on all the continents, had showed up at Occulta with his merry band of Argonaut agents and practically destroyed her bar after they were attacked by a group of black magic sorcerers.

Cassius’s own status as a legendary Empyreal had also become public knowledge during the battle that had almost cost him his life. Suzie’s mother had once told her about the time she had witnessed Cassius’s true abilities, but she’d long thought it hyperbole brought on by Stephanie Keller’s dementia. A once powerful witch who’d helped Cassius bring down Tania Lancaster, the sorceress and black magic necromancer whose sect had terrorized Europe for a quarter of a century, Stephanie had broken the pact pressed upon everyone who had seen Cassius’s true form during one of her less lucid spells when she’d revealed that particular secret to Suzie.

If not for her mother’s achievements and the high regard in which she was still held by her former companions in Hexa, Suzie knew Stephanie might have ended up in trouble for breaking the covenant all had taken on the fateful day Cassius felled Tania Lancaster.

“Better grit your teeth,” Zach warned the men gawking at Suzie as if she were a monster. “This is gonna hurt like a bitch.”

“Wait!” the guy who’d been holding the gun mumbled. “We’ll leave! Just don’t— aargh! ”

The spell bomb struck him in the chest and carried him straight across the bar. He crashed into the wall next to Zach just as his companions charged Suzie. She ducked beneath their blades, front kicked one of her attackers in the gut, and elbowed the other one in the face. Bone crunched. The man cried out and fell on his ass, blood gushing from his shattered nose.

A hand closed around Suzie’s throat. Cold steel pressed against her heart.

Zach straightened where he still stood near the entrance, his expression darkening. Lassoes of water now bound the guy who’d slid down to the floor next to him.

“It’s alright.” Suzie’s cool gaze never left the man holding her captive. “I’m almost done.”

Magic crackled around her. Her attacker yelped and released her, the sparks stinging him. His knife fell from his hand when her hair lifted around her head in a halo. His mouth rounded in horror.

Suzie scowled. “You picked the wrong bar to rob, fucker.”

She flicked her fingers.

The man screamed as an invisible power picked him up and drove him to the tall, vaulted ceiling.

Zach winced when he smashed into a metal beam. “Easy, tiger.”

The man’s horrified shout was cut off when Suzie shoved him straight back down into the hardwood floor. Boards splintered under the impact. She cursed.

The guy groaned and grew still.

Zach sighed. “I told you to go easy on him.” He stiffened in the next instant.

His figure blurred.

Suzie jumped when gunfire shattered the fraught stillness. Acid churned her stomach as the awful echo died down around her.

The man whose nose she’d broken had lunged for the weapon on the ground and fired a shot at her. Except it wasn’t her the bullet had struck.

“Ouch.” Zach brushed away the flattened disc that was all that was left of the slug that had slammed into his shoulder when he’d moved at lightning speed to cover her. It clinked onto the floor, the metal still steaming from its impact against the demon’s hardened flesh.

Suzie sagged, the relief shuddering through her making her legs weak. The only things on this Earth that could hurt an otherworldly were Stark Steel, the divine metal making up the Fallen’s armor and weapons, or devastatingly powerful magic.

Relief turned to anger.

She stormed out from behind Zach, her magic powering up a blazing sphere.

“Maybe you should dial that down a bit,” the demon suggested in a placatory tone. “You only just fixed up the place.”

Suzie gritted her teeth and ignored him.

The guy with the smashed up nose screeched when magic enveloped the gun he still held. Metal crumpled. So did two of his fingers. His scream became an incoherent gurgle.

“Oh wow,” Zach observed leadenly. “You are pissed .”

“He shot you!” Suzie snarled where she stood above the man writhing on the ground in agony.

She kicked him in the crotch for good measure. The guy’s eyes rolled back in his head.

“I’m fine. See, it didn’t even scratch me.” Zach indicated the hole in his shirt and the unbroken skin beneath it.

Suzie’s nails dug into her palms when she clocked the slight red mark the bullet had made. “That’s gonna bruise.”

“It’ll heal in no time,” Zach protested.

Irritation had Suzie rounding on the demon. “Why are you defending these assholes?!”

Zach stared at her for a moment. Suzie blinked when shackles of water secured the hands and feet of her two remaining, senseless attackers, the cuffs forming so swiftly she almost missed them.

“I’m not defending them per se.”

She wrinkled her brow at his hesitant tone.

The demon scratched the back of his head, his expression growing sheepish. “How am I supposed to have my wicked way with you if you end up in jail for aggravated assault?”

Suzie’s stomach flip-flopped. She opened and closed her mouth soundlessly, too stunned to speak for a moment.

The guy she’d slammed into the ceiling groaned and looked at them like they’d lost their freaking minds. “Dumb fucks,” he mumbled.

Her eyes shrank to slits. She took a threatening step toward him.

Zach closed a hand on her arm and took his cell out of the rear pocket of his jeans. “How about you go make yourself a drink while I call the cops?”

He cast a cold glance at the man who’d insulted them. The guy squealed as the shackles holding him prisoner tightened, drawing thin cuts into his flesh.

It was past midnight by the time Suzie was finally able to lock up the bar.