Chapter 183 182: The Kidnapped Woman

Soren pushed open the door of the Gates of Hell. Fine rain had started without him noticing.

Cool air and wet vapor hit his face and cut through the stale heat of the bar. He stood on the threshold and let the breath out.

At first he had figured the Armitage family for a front. A money machine some witch circle had planted in ordinary society and left to run.

Rodin's refusal to touch them said otherwise. The background went deeper than he had guessed.

They might be the circle.

He tugged the collar of his coat higher. That possibility stayed on the table.

He followed the dark alley toward the street, the slip of paper between his fingers.

That part had surprised him more.

A fallen angel who hopped the line between Heaven and Hell and did not give a damn about God had pointed him at an official outfit and left a number. Rodin had not explained why.

The old Soren would have walked the other way. Men in suits and ties came with piles of mess, lectures about the bigger picture, and moral blackmail.

Things were different now. Rodin had made the offer and written the contact down. The outfit might actually be useful.

Get the information and leave. No entanglement.

He looked up. The sky had already gone dark.

"Too late tonight."

He would check it in the morning.

He was not going back to the hotel to sleep. He had come all the way to Washington. He might as well walk the city and see what it looked like after dark.

A blurred black shape cut across the air above his head.

He knew the scent.

Same one from the station that morning. The figure the plainclothes officer had been chasing.

Soren stared at empty sky, curiosity waking.

A body that carried human and demon at the same time. He had never met one.

He jumped to the rooftop and looked out.

The shadow moved wrong. It crawled flat to the surfaces, every joint bent the opposite way, like a doll someone had broken on purpose and forced to walk anyway.

The posture should have crippled it. It only made the thing faster.

It was carrying an unconscious woman over one shoulder.

"Late-night patrol," Soren muttered. "Doubt it's Spider-Man."

He flickered after it without a sound.

Follow the shadow far enough and something else might shake loose. Strange things never arrived alone. Find one and the next ones lined up behind it.

A little over ten minutes later the trail ended in a high-end suburb not far from the center of the city.

The shadow climbed a standalone house like it had done the route a hundred times. Soren stopped in a tree outside the wall.

He shut his eyes and opened his senses.

No one else. No other demons.

Only the shadow and the woman it had carried inside.

Her heartbeat ran fast but steady. She was not dying. The shadow had already taken her up to the third floor.

Both of them stayed in the attic. Then the shadow came back down, settled somewhere on the second floor, and went still.

That was when the faint demon scent vanished.

Human scent rose in its place.

Two souls in one body. The demon drops into sleep and hands the flesh back to the human.

Soren leaned against the trunk and rubbed his chin. First time for that, too.

He waited a little longer.

The breathing on the second floor evened out. The heart rate dropped.

Asleep.

If the owner was down for the night, the guest could take a look around.

He circled the house, picked a window, and climbed through.

Hard to believe a country this sloppy about street crime still left its windows bare. No bars. Almost insulting to burglars.

He left the sleeper on the second floor alone. He did not know Washington well enough to start kicking doors. Better not wake anything he was not ready to finish.

He took the stairs to the third floor.

The attic was not small. It was packed with junk.

A workbench sat by the window, grinding tools and molds for weapons laid out on top. A black leather coat still beaded with rain hung on the rack beside it.

In the center of the room, a young woman was bound to the load-bearing post with coarse hemp rope. Her hair hung in her face.

She jerked her head up at the sound of his steps. Terror first. Then the terror cracked when she saw it was not the twisted thing that had taken her—just a stranger in a dark-red coat.

Hope hit her hard.

"Mmph—!"

A rag filled her mouth. She strained against the rope, making raw, muffled noise.

Soren stopped in front of her and lifted one finger. Quiet.

He pulled the cloth out.

"Please! Get me down! Take me out of here! Call the police!"

The second the rag left her teeth she started shouting.

"Shut up."

A small knife was already in his hand, the edge laid against her throat.

The cold shut her down. She went rigid. Tears stood in her eyes.

"I ask. You answer."

His voice stayed even. He watched her face.

She nodded hard, terrified.

"Who took you?"

"I—I don't know!"

She shook her head until her hair whipped. Tears ran.

Soren's eyes cooled. The blade eased forward half an inch.

Magic along the edge broke the skin. A thin line of blood followed the steel.

"Don't kill me! I swear I don't know!"

The sting on her neck stripped whatever was left of her voice. The words tumbled out.

"I work the haunted house at the park! I clocked out and that thing grabbed me! I swear that's all of it!"

"Name."

He kept watching her eyes. No lie in them.

"Serena May."

He frowned. Meant nothing to him.

"Please. Just get me out of here."

She looked at him like he was the last door left. "I'll pay whatever you want—"

Then her gaze snapped past his shoulder. Her pupils shrank.

The dim yellow lamp over the attic flickered.