“I was sent to search for the wendigo. If you know where Gaire is, I suggest you enlighten me—immediately.” His eyes flash red and his nostrils flair. “I do not wish to … exsanguinate information from you.”
While my mouth, the one under Jane’s skin, hangs open, Jane takes over. “’Ey, wha’s-a-matta with you? You got wax build up in your ears or somethin’? Like we just spent the last … what...?” she stares at our reflection in the mirror behind the bottles lined against the back of the bar and waits. Eventually, not getting the answer she’s fishing for, she continues. “Uh, thirty minutes, give or take an hour, askin’ questions as to the whereabouts of this guy, Gaire, with like, what? Half the people in this slime-encrusted place? And after you ’can’t help but hear’ all that shit,” she says, making quotes with her fingers, “you get what? That we’re hiding something? Jeeze, man, find a Q-Tip!”
Vuur sucks in lungsful of air through his teeth.
“So sorry,” I sing. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
I really do not want to see, up close and personal, just how he plans on sucking us dry or frying our asses.
Jane busts out with, “The hell?” I ignore her. “We do not know where the wendigo is, but I have unfinished—” I clear my throat and pick up a second of clarity, “—business with him, and—”
“Are you mentally infirmed?” Vuur asks politely.
“The fuck you say?” Jane reaches for the gun.
I pull our right hand back with our left as Greta, the troll, followed by the berserker I’d been speaking with earlier, and two shifters close in on Vuur.
“What are you?” Vuur steps toward us, eyes all Satan-lizard-like.
He leans in to run his nose up my collarbone to my ear. I can see his spine ripple in the mirror at his back.
Greta and the bouncer move swiftly, but Vuur’s head rears back and he shoots a spray of fire straight up that ignites a suspended bulb encased in a cream colored, plastic hood. All of that melts and spits sparks from the remaining wire until it cauterizes itself and swings loose above us.
Vuur turns his lizard eyes on me. “Unless you want to be properly introduced to my other half, a very large, very impressive dragon, and witness the complete destruction of this establishment, I suggest we walk out of here peacefully and continue this discussion in the sewers.”
I get up and head for the door, and the rest of the room takes a collective breath.
As we step out of Purgatory, a shadow darts by and disappears into darkness.
Chapter 11
Jane
The undisturbed movement of sewage water passes by, and a soft scuffling of shoes echo from somewhere on the other side of the darkness. My eyes follow the sound, but I see no one.
“I’ve come to a conclusion,” Vuur says. His eyes roam Jane’s body.
My host is partially clad in street clothes from last night, the ones she’d worn when I doubled up on her in the hotel room: black leather skirt and boots, leather jacket gripped in one hand, and the other hand jerking toward Smith & Wesson. The skirt is too short, the boots have three inch heels and ride the back of Jane’s knees. We’re still wearing the camo shirt I bought, but it rests just under a black lace bra because she ripped the shirt in two after we arrived in the sewer, fifty yards from Purgatory. Then she tossed our new tennis shoes and jeans on a pile of trash behind the bar.
One side of Vuur’s mouth rolls with disdain. “It seems from the information I have gleaned, and the upheaval at Purgatory two nights ago, I believe the subsequent death of the berserker, Vicen DeLego, was entirely inspired by the wendigo’s need to protect you?”
I’m brazenly still under my host’s skin. I quietly watch while he pauses, one hand cupping his elbow, the other rubbing his jaw with thick fingers, eyes searching Jane’s. “And after listening to your account of the incident at the bar, I have ascertained a very personal connection between you and the wendigo half-breed.”
My mind freezes as Vuur slides a hand from his chin and points an index finger at me. “So … much to my dismay, and sorely uncomfortable dilemma, I’m afraid you will be joining me in my search for the shifter. I believe using you as bait an excellent option. However, getting rid of you, should you prove unworthy, would not cause me a great loss of sleep.”
We’re standing under a storm drain fifty feet from the entrance of Purgatory. I’m leaning against a ladder that could lead me out of Down Under and into the human world. As Vuur talks, I hang Jane’s leather jacket over one of the rungs on the ladder, and chew on the pros and cons of what might be a lucrative partnership. He can’t kill me. He doesn’t know that, but still, I don’t want to lose Jane either. He can destroy her, and since this handsome, albeit majorly controlling dragon, squeezes all that is street out of Jane, this is a likely outcome.
Don’t matter, my host whispers into my mind, He ain’t givin’ us a choice.