Sin Undone

“I’ll go out through the side door. I can slip around the front and take Zeph by surprise if you can throw open the back door—”

“I have a better idea.” Con stood. “Which one is the most dangerous? The strongest?” “Trag,” she replied, and disappointment sliced through him. Con had fought Ramreels before, but a Nightlash assassin would be something new. “Why?” “I’ll take him.” He glanced up at the roof hatch that Shade had installed precisely for situations like this. The demon thought of everything. Though Con was going to suggest an installation of external ambulance weapons when this was over. “You get the other one.”

“Wait—” Too late. He slid the hatch open and quietly lifted himself through it. Slowly, he eased onto his stomach and inched toward the rear of the rig. Behind him, silent as a whisper, Sin came up, all grace and flexible muscle. Below, Trag banged on the door.

“Time’s up.” Con went over the edge, landing on the Ramreel and taking him down hard. The demon’s horns made a satisfying crack on the pavement. Nice. Distantly, he heard Zeph’s pained grunt, but then Con took a fist to the face, and pain brought his attention fully back to his opponent.

“You can’t defeat me, paramedic,” Trag spat. “I’m a trained assassin.” “Wrong.” Con jammed his knee into Trag’s gut. “As a paramedic, I know exactly how to kill you.” A lifetime of fighting had taught him a lot, but learning how the body worked had made him that much more lethal.

On that energizing thought, Con thrust his fist into the Ramreel’s thick neck, crushing his larynx. Trag made an agonized bleating sound, which Con cut off with a double-tap to his broad snout. The demon rocked backward, but he recovered in a flash, doubling over and using his massive, curled horns to ram Con into the rig’s back door.

Fuck, that hurt. Con ducked, barely avoiding being impaled by Trag’s dagger. With a deft spin, he wrenched the demon’s arm behind his back and flipped him. Trag went down, and Con delivered another devastating blow to his throat, one that blew right through the male’s carotid artery, killing him instantly. The body would disintegrate, as did most demons when they died outside of Sheoul or a demonbuilt structure in the human realm, and Con didn’t wait around to watch.

He sprinted to the front of the rig, where Sin was mashed against the driver’s-side door by the Nightlash. He held a knife to her throat, but she had her hand on the demon’s shoulder, her dermoire glowing fiercely, and before Con could dispatch the bastard, he fell to the ground, his skin ashen and rashed, eyes sunken in.

Whatever disease Sin had pumped into the demon had brought him down hard. And grotesquely.

The reminder of what she was and what she had done slapped him in the face, bringing his brain back to the place it needed to be while dealing with her: professional distance. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She kicked the dead demon in the ribs and winced, clutching her thigh.

Con swore. “Let me check your leg—”

“It’s fine.” She wheeled away and stalked to the rear of the rig, where the Ramreel’s body was already nothing but a greasy stain on the asphalt. “Son of a bitch,” she breathed, and Con swore he heard a trace of regret. “He was a damned good assassin.”

“Not so good with the hand-to-hand.”

“It was his main weakness.” The morning breeze blew her hair into her face, and Con barely resisted the urge to brush it back. “He relied on his aim and didn’t focus enough on physical combat.” “And what’s your weakness?”

She shoved her dagger into her boot. “I don’t have one.”

“If you believe that, then delusion is your weakness.”

“Aren’t you a smarty-pants,” she said crisply. “Fine. My weakness is that I’m a succubus. But it is very rarely an issue when I’m working.” He doubted that, and now he wanted to kick himself for not considering that he might want her blood so badly because she was a succubus. It might not be her blood at all—it could be her pheromones that were driving his hunger, not an impending addiction.

Unless…

“What is your succubi requirement?” he snapped.

Her raven eyebrows popped up. “Uh… sex?”

“No, I mean, what is it you steal or cause?”

She jammed her hands on her hips. “Well, I don’t steal souls, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t do anything.”

Oh, she did something, whether or not she knew it.