Forget About Midnight (Alexa O'Brien, Huntress #9)

I found a wad of cash stuffed in a box under the couch, not the brightest hiding place. I stuffed the money into the pocket of my long jacket. Even though it was dirty money, I hoped Brinley could use it somehow to go toward taking care of the girl who was forced to earn it.

“Ok, now things are going to get interesting,” I said, rejoining Jez and our disgusting friend in the kitchen. “We’re not going to kill you today. However, you are going to promise us that you will never sell an underage kid again. Do you understand?”

Having been easily overpowered and slammed on the floor, the guy was sweating fear. He nodded vigorously.

“Hold one of his hands out, Jez. Flat on the floor.” I stood over him with my dagger in hand, and the scent of fear grew so thick it was suffocating. It was also tantalizing in its own way. Nothing like fear to spark the interest of the beast within.

Jez responded to it too. Her nostrils flared, and her eyes widened. She grabbed one of his hands and pinned it down on the floor. His wrist shook with the effort he exerted to resist, but he was no match for Jez.

She climbed right on top of him, holding the guy down with both knees digging into his spine. One hand held his on the floor and the other was on the back of his head. “Ready when you are,” she said with a smirk.

I knelt down and spread his fingers apart. “Tell you what. I won’t take them all. I’ll leave you a couple.”

The veins on his forehead protruded as he strained. He grunted and squirmed. It sounded like he was trying to beg for mercy. Too bad for him, I had none.

Even as a scream gurgled in his throat, muffled by the cloth, I lined up the dagger. Then I raised it just high enough and brought it down hard. The blade sliced clean through three of his fingers. I’d left him the thumb and index.

His muffled cries grew frantic. While waiting for him to calm down, I dug through his cupboards until I found a plastic bag. I used it to scoop up the severed fingers. They would find their way into a dumpster. Leaving them behind gave him the chance to get them reattached. He didn’t deserve that. No mercy.

When he’d calmed somewhat, I knelt down beside him again. “The fingers, that’s just the beginning. I’m watching you now. You stick to consenting adults. The second I find out you’re selling kids again, I come back, and I cut off something bigger, something you probably don’t want to live without. Understand?”

He nodded again, slower this time. Tears streamed from his eyes. Pathetic.

I nodded to Jez, and we left the apartment. The dirtbag didn’t try to be a tough guy. He stayed where he was. I didn’t expect any further trouble from him, but I would enjoy a chance to come back and finish what I started.

We walked out of the building into the cold night. I could smell the snow on the air. It hadn’t fallen yet, but it would soon, before Halloween for sure. Evidence of the coming ghoulish holiday was everywhere now. It made me think back to last Halloween. So much had happened in a year.

“Well, that was fun,” Jez observed as we headed down the street, back to where we’d parked. “Not a bad way to kick off the night.”

The last few nights had been hard for us both. Being together had helped. I’d pried the phone out of Jez’s hand when she tried to call Arrow, and she had kept me from killing Hayden when I found him at The Wicked Kiss and decided he’d do for a fix. But just barely. Falon had not made another appearance. He would. We had a demon to trap. Jez had vowed to cock block him at all costs. Her words, not mine.

Once Shya was dealt with, I intended to track down the wolf he’d forced me to turn for him as well as any others she might have turned. I needed to know where she’d ended up. All in good time.

The hardest part about helping each other resist the bad things that plagued us was that neither of us really wanted to give them up. As long as we still wanted what we resisted, it would haunt us always.

This was an exercise in futility if there ever was one. It meant more to me that Jez got clean. I meant to speak to Willow about her demon half. If it was feeding her addiction, we needed to know. Likewise, if it was going to burst out in a horrifying display of demonic evil, she had to be prepared.

For me, there was no going sober. There was only trying to keep my kill count down and my fits of insanity to a minimum. I needed Arys for that. He and I had been spending more time together, but we weren’t ready to hunt as a team yet. Or maybe that was just me.

“So,” Jez broke into my thoughts. “What do you want to do now?”

She pulled out a cigarette, and I snatched it before she could light it. A grinning jack o’lantern on the front porch of a house we passed mocked me with its toothy smile. I briefly considered hacking it up with my dagger.

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “It’s hard to stay entertained in this city without sex and violence.”

“And drugs.”