Chapter Thirty-Two – Hunter

 

Kris and I rode the elevator to the twentieth floor of the office building listed on the slip of paper Imogen Smith had handed us back at the FMS offices, our bodies pressed into opposite corners of the elevator, just watching the numbers climb in uncomfortable silence.

My arms ached with the memory of what it had been like to hold Kris less than an hour before. My fingers seemed afire with the reminiscences of her feel beneath them, even as her smell lingered in my nose. Even my lips tingled with the pent up potential of what might have been if Carter and the rest hadn’t stumbled outside.

A moment. Deflated.

That’s what this felt like. And I felt like a dragon with his wings clipped.

“We could really just go to Paris,” I said, my eyes fastened to the digits as they climbed to fifteen.

She just shook her head, almost as if to say playtime was over.

“Shanghai?”

“Been there.” She made a face. “Noodles were good, but it smelled funny.”

“New York, then?”

“Smelled funny, too.”

“Oh, come on. All cities smell funny. St. Louis smells funny. Especially during the summer. It’s positively putrid.”

She turned and looked at me, her face and voice equally deadpan. “But I’m used to it by now.”

I sighed, looking back to the elevator. We were still only halfway to the top. Damn these modern conveniences, and the way they made you impatient and forgetful of the hardships they’d replaced.

Kris sagged back into the elevator, her combat-booted toe tapping a dirge on the elevator floor.

“Sad to be leaving, aren’t you?” I asked after we passed another floor.

“Yeah. Aren’t you?”

To be honest, up until the last few days, the thought of staying had never crossed my mind. I’d been so focused on finally obtaining my file, I’d never really thought about the moment after I achieved my goal. Even with this beautiful woman standing by my side right now, I still wasn’t sure what the next step was.

But now, literally steps away from leaving my life behind, I realized I didn’t want to. I realized that, as much as I thought of the shifters of FMS as being a bunch of poorly bred troglodytes, they weren’t bad men in any shape, form, or fashion.

In fact, they represented some of the best I’d ever met.

Like I’d told Kris before, I’d had crews in the past. Men and women I’d partnered with for heists and jobs, people I came together with to accomplish a set goal. Quite frankly, though, they’d all been real pieces of refuse. Gutter trash, in some cases. The kind of people you wouldn’t allow in your home for longer than a trip to the restroom, and even then you’d still lock up the silverware before they crossed your threshold.

They were, after all, thieves and criminals. The lowest rung on society’s ladder. I could still remember some of the old “war stories” they had told when we’d been prepping for jobs, and how they’d chilled me to the core. Some of the depravities they’d witnessed and, in some cases, perpetrated. And as much as Kris’s laughing at my comment about honor among thieves had made me bristle, she was right. There wasn’t such a thing. Some of these men and women were far worse monsters than the creatures FMS hunted.

The bell on the elevator rang, causing me to shake my head and try to dispel some of the dark memories floating around the peripherals of my mind. I pushed off from the rail and followed Kris as she hitched up her backpack on one shoulder before leading the way out of the elevator and onto the twentieth floor.

Our destination was straight ahead, and a little engraved placard on the front door proclaimed it to be the office of SR Imports and Art LLC.

I stopped short. Something about the name of the place sounded familiar. “Art dealer?” I asked, wrinkling my brow.

“Import-exports,” Kris said as she began to pull the door open, her voice almost taking on a pedantic tone. “Utilized frequently for infiltration into foreign territories since they tend to have contacts and brick and mortar locations in varying areas. NOCs tend to be placed with them, too.”

I stayed where I was as she opened the door all the way, my eyes going wide as I looked at the white office beyond. She had an office here, too? I’d had no idea, and I’d been living here for nearly two years already.

Art on all the walls. Minimalist, modern furniture in the seating area, and a desk up front with an ash-blonde, human-looking receptionist in her middling years.

“Kris,” I said, reaching out for her, “this isn’t a good idea.”

“What isn’t?” she asked, turning back to me. “Hunter, come on, it’ll be fine.”

“I know this woman,” I said, my voice a hiss. “We can’t trust her.”

“Who? The receptionist?”

“No. Her boss.”

“Hello, and welcome to SR Imports,” the receptionist, Jenny or something as I recalled, said as she halfway rose from her chair. “You must be Kris Cole and, of course, Mr. Jackson. Ms. Soot will be with you shortly.”

Kris turned away from me and back to the receptionist, smiling. “Thank you.”

“Please,” the receptionist said, partially coming out from behind her desk, “have a seat. Would you care for any refreshments? Coffee? Tea? Soda?”

Kris turned back to me, eyes big, round, questioning, as if she wanted to know why I had such an issue with our being there.

“Blood?” the receptionist asked, no emphasis on the words.

“Excuse me?” Kris asked, her head whipping back around, her eyes narrowed.

Jeanie already had her hands up defensively, a little disarming smile on her lips. “Clearly, you’re not the typical clientele that Ms. Soot deals with. My apologies.”

“No,” I said, crossing over to one of the couches, a piece of simplistic furniture that was little more than a single, uniform cushion at sitting height. “We’re not.”

“Apology accepted,” Kris said as she walked over and took a seat next to me.

The office wasn’t all that different from the last one of Roxanne’s I’d been in. Plain in the front, tasteful furniture, expensive art on the walls. I’d never really thought much about how her offices all managed to look the same. What kind of weirdness compelled some demons?

Kris nudged into me from her seat. “Who are these people? Talk.”

I glanced left, reading the nameplate on the receptionist’s desk. “Jeanie,” I whispered sotto voce, “is a revenant who fell on hard times.”

“A revenant? What’s a vengeance corpse doing working in a place like this?”

“You’d have to ask her. Frankly, she frightens me a little bit. Revenants are like terminators on living dead steroids.”

“Her boss?”

“Roxanne Soot. A succubus.”

Kris sucked in a sharp breath. “Shit. Col. Harrington’s definitely not following protocol on this one. Isn’t he even trying to keep this in-house?”

“Well, Imogen did say they weren’t up to operational capacity yet,” I replied, my voice faltering a little as I thought back to the steps Harrington had taken when his previous agency didn’t possess the operational capacity for a job. That was how he’d gotten me.

Idly, I wondered what kind of dirt, or threat, Roxy currently had hanging over her head.

“What’s your history with her?”

“Might say we’ve had a working relationship in the past. See that painting over there?” I asked, nodding to a piece on one of the walls. “That’s one of the ones I unloaded on her a few decades back. Guess she liked it enough to keep it.”

Kris nodded. She looked as if she were about to ask something else, but thought better of it and just shook her head.

“What?” I asked, nudging her a little.

“Nothing,” she said, giving me a look. “Trust me.”

“You sure?”

Before Kris could answer my question, though, Jeanie was answering her phone. “Yes?” A long pause. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll send them right back.”

Kris and I were already on our feet as the revenant receptionist was placing the phone back into its cradle and turning to us as she rose from her desk. “Ms. Soot will see you now,” she said, smoothing down the front of her outfit, a look of minor irritation on her face.

“Right,” I breathed.

We followed the revenant receptionist back down through a hallway and came to a stop in front of a heavy wooden door. A string of what sounded like Swedish came from within the office as Jeanine grabbed the door and pulled it open. The voice seemed to grow louder as we stepped within the white, modernistic room, which may well have been a perfect replica of all the others I’d met her in.

Roxanne hadn’t seen fit to change over the years, apparently. The same Rothko hung on the rightward wall, and the same large teak desk dominated the center of the office like a captain on the deck. Though I could tell she was in a different host from the last I’d seen, I knew it was her seated behind the desk with her back turned to us just as surely as I knew the sun set in the west.

No one had ever been allowed to sit at her desk. Ever.

Did she just pack everything up and move with it? Even my horde would be running short with those moving costs.

In a sitting area right in front of us, couches similar in style to the ones in the lobby flanked a central coffee table constructed from a single slab of cement. And, dominating the left couch just as surely as Roxanne’s desk dominated the room, was Mike, reading a copy of the magazine Vanity Fair.

No matter what city I met Roxy in, Mike was always there. Without fail.

Squat, thick-armed, barrel-chested, powerful Mike. He was a shifter by nature, a badger, I thought, and you could see the animalistic features shine through in his own.

“Hunter,” he growled without even glancing up, his voice cutting through the Swedish bjorg-ing of Roxanne back at the desk. “Smell the same as always, except for the beer.”

“You look the same as always, Mike,” I allowed. “A bit older, I suppose.”

“Well,” he said, turning the page in his glossy magazine as if he met dragons every day of his life, “some of us age. Have a seat, and she’ll be right with you.”

Kris and I exchanged glances before going to sit on the opposite, unoccupied couch.

“Not going to search us?” I asked.

“Every time I search you, you get all uppity and bitchy,” Mike growled. “Now you’re practically asking me to. Can’t you make up your goddamn mind?”

I shrugged. “Well, it’s the thought that counts, that’s all.”

“As I recall, you said the same thing back then when you got upset that I actually thought you’d try to rip off a woman you called a prosperous business client.”

“Just thought you were losing your touch, that’s all.”

Mike’s eyes flickered up to meet mine, before darting over to Kris. “No reason I’d search you anyway. Cole’s the one I’d be worried about.” He paused, a flash of teeth splitting his lips. “If I was worried, that is.”

“Scared of her, but not of me?” I asked, crossing my arms as I leaned back on the couch. “We’re both dragons, you know.”

Kris and Mike both chuckled. “Said Cole, not Coal,” Mike replied. “I’m scared of her because of her human form.”

“How’re you doing, Mike?” Kris asked, leaning forward. “Been a long time.”

He shrugged his burly shoulders, seemed to weigh the past three decades of service to the succubus with an uncertain nod of his head from one side to the other. “Can’t complain. She pays better, mosquitoes don’t get in here much, and I don’t get shot at nearly as often. How about you?”

“About the same, right now. Not for much longer, though.”

“Kinda what I hear,” Mike said.

As they spoke, I leaned forward and looked back and forth between the two of them. “Wait. You two know each other?”

“Served in Nicaragua during my mercenary days,” Mike said, closing up the magazine and laying it on his lap. “Long time ago, right before I met Roxanne. Part of the reason I came to work for her. Seemed like a good working retirement after I left.”

“Mike was attached as a private consultant to a few units I was running out of a station office for the CIA,” Kris replied, nodding to Mike. “He and I were feeding information to nonprofits on the death squads down there, trying to get the press to talk more about what was going on.”

“You’re the one who got the info out,” Mike said.

“Yeah? You’re the one who took all those pictures, though.”

“Not that it did any good,” the badger shifter growled. “Didn’t do a damn thing to stop the money or guns flowing in.”

Both sighed as I slumped back on the couch, hands in my lap as I continued to look back and forth between them.

And what had I done during, what, the 80s? Drugs, new wave, and given money to orphanages.

Of course, honestly, it sounded like I’d had more fun.

The Swedish from the other side of the room abruptly came to a stop, and the phone landed back in its cradle. Office chair wheels rumbled over stone flooring, and Ms. Soot rose to her high-heeled feet, her back still to us.

Kris and I exchanged looks before going to stand. I straightened out my button-up shirt as, behind me, Kris cleared her throat, and Roxanne turned around, presenting her new Japanese body to us.

“It’s been so long, Hunter,” she said, coming around the desk, her southern accent coming out just as thick as it had in her last form. The last time I’d seen her, she’d at least been a bubbly-looking blonde from Atlanta. Now, the whole effect was almost surreal, and mildly disconcerting. “Heard you left the business for a while there, sugar.”

“Still out,” I said with a little nod as she closed the gap between us.

She pouted, actually pouted. “Well, that is a shame. You were the best in the biz when you were on a roll.”

“New host?”

“You know how it is,” she said, putting one hand on her hip as she grinned broadly. “Humans start to fray after a while under the pressures of the job, no matter how much fun I give their bodies.” She turned her attention to my partner. “And you must be Kris Cole. I’ve heard so much about you, sweetie.”

“Uh-huh,” Kris grunted. “Strange. I haven’t heard much about you, Roxanne, even though you’re just a stone’s throw from my offices.”

“Well, that’s what compartmentalizing intelligence operatives does for you. Believe me, I’m plenty familiar with Tabitha from y’all’s time together at the PRB, and now at FMS. You folks did real good work together, and I’m glad I’ve been able to start offering some more services now that y’all are at the PDB.”

“Right,” Kris said, flatly. Clearly, she wasn’t amused. “You’ve worked with her recently, then?”

“Well,” Roxanne said, turning and heading away from the little sitting area, her hips swaying seductively with every strutting step, “not directly. But I did help your little lion, Luke something or other, kill a couple predators out in Tucson just a few weeks past, actually.” She probably wasn’t sashaying like that intentionally. As a sex demon, this was just the way she was built.

“So now you’re branching out from just art dealing?” I asked her back, as Kris and I both followed after her.

“Oh, this ain’t exactly a one-time thing,” she replied without even bothering to turn around as she led us back to the ornamental wall, reached into a hip pocket of her suit pants, and pulled out a little pouch, which bulged from its contents, “but it ain’t exactly what you’d call a primary business concern, neither. Don’t you worry, this little demon ain’t filed off her horns just yet. Just so happens my goals align with those of your boss.”

“Oh,” I said, glancing back at Kris, whose face was still an unreadable stone mask. “Good to know?”

We rounded the corner of the false wall after her, coming to a vault made of nearly featureless solid steel. Four indentations marked the front, a perfect match to the contents of the little pouch in her hand. She came to a stop in front of the door, opened the pouch, and shook the contents into her palm.

“What’s that?” Kris asked, her voice hushed.

“The key,” I replied, nodding to the stones as they began to glow in the succubus’s palm, a seemingly organic blue pulse of light that matched some unheard and unfelt rhythm. “She had her safes constructed after I did a security pen test for her when we were haggling over the price of a piece. I spotted the weaknesses, and she bumped up my cut of the deal.” I paused, licking my lips as I watched the stones rise from her palm and begin to spin, Roxanne’s face eerily blue-lit.

Slowly, the stones flew out from her hand, coming to rest in the sockets ahead of her.

“Wow,” Kris breathed.

“Yeah,” I said.

“When you hop bodies,” Roxanne said, “it takes a minute to get everything adjusted. These bypass all those requirements. They’re almost like my soul mates.” She put a hand to her chest, her red-nailed fingers splayed over her blouse. “They can just see to the heart of me. Had a couple updates done to the vault while you were out of the biz, too.”

“Oh?” I asked as, silently, the door ahead began to open.

Beyond, a soft light emanated from within.

“Increased its capacity. Now I have access to multiple pocket dimensions, not just the one main vault.”

“What all are we here for anyways?” I asked Kris back over my shoulder.

“They don’t tell y’all nothing, do they?” Roxanne asked as she strode inside.

“Compartmentalization,” Kris replied, loudly enough for both of us to hear. “Hallmark of a secure intelligence structure.”

“Sounds like a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense, to me.”

“You’d be right, in some cases,” Kris replied. “Wrong in others. Believe me, it works. Not everyone needs to have every detail of the plan, especially not when they’re going into danger.”

Like now, I silently mused as we both strode into the vault after Roxy.

We both immediately stopped as we looked around.

“Oh,” I said, looking around at the granite walls, and the racks and racks of firearms, boxes of ammunition. “You did redecorate.”

“Yeah,” Kris breathed, her breath coming a little faster. I couldn’t tell if it was from fear, or excitement. Something told me it was the second, though, with the way she dropped her backpack on the ground and strode forward to the nearest rack.

“Kris, wait!” I said, stepping forward. My eyes shot to Roxanne as Kris came to a grinding halt in the middle of the room. “Security system?”

Roxy shook her head, smiling sweetly as she turned to the other dragon. “Don’t worry. Countermeasures are off in this chamber. Go ahead, sugar, treat yourself.”

Kris nodded before, timidly at first, continuing on her path.

“This chamber?” I asked Roxanne as Kris came to a stop in front of the wall of guns on the other side of the room. “So, you still have the other vault, too? What? In some other city?”

“Come on, sugar,” Roxy purred as she did a little curtsy in the middle of the room. “Didn’t I say I increased capacity?”