Beauty's Beasts (25 page)

The nursing aide stood a discreet twenty paces away, in the far corner of the private office, where the big bookcases towered.

“You asked for this meeting, Ms. Connors,” William Blakeson said. “You have five minutes.” Despite his frailty, the man’s voice was still strong. He had run a county-wide business empire for fifty years and the authority still showed.

“You know who I am.” Riley didn’t make it a question.

“Of course I do.” He smiled, showing even white teeth. “Anyone with the name Connors asking for my time gets a background check.” He jerked his chin toward Damian and Nick, who stood behind her. “I don’t know who they are, though.”

“I have to ask your nurse to leave,” Riley said, with a glance at the aide. “Or I can’t continue.”

“He stays,” Blakeson growled. “Or your friends go, too.”

Riley looked him in the eye. “Do you want to find out what happened to your daughter, Debbie, thirty-eight years ago, Blakeson?”

His gaze shifted to the aide and back to Riley. Then he swiveled his head to the aide. “Get out.”

The aide inclined his head and moved to the big double doors, and stepped out. He shut the door with a quiet click.

Blakeson studied Riley. “You even look like him around the eyes,” he said with a snarl. “My daughter was obsessed about the bastard.” He sighed. “Is he still alive?”

Riley swallowed. “He died in 1983.”

Blakeson’s eyes narrowed. “How’d it happen?”

“A gargoyle killed him.”

Blakeson slapped the desktop. “We’re back to that stupid crap?
Again
?” He reached for the control on his wheelchair, but Nick moved then. He was around the desk, and his hand covering the controls before Blakeson got his fingers over them.

Nick smiled at Blakeson, his fangs on display. “You don’t want to leave just yet,” he told him. “We’ve got something to show you.”

Blakeson stared at Nick—at his fangs—and gasped.

Riley look at Damian. “You’re up.”

Damian hoisted the heavy duffel bag he had slung over his shoulder and dumped it onto the desk in front of Blakeson. “We went hunting,” he told Blakeson. “I use the term loosely, because Nicholas is the old pro, and Riley actually turns out to be the better of the two of them at sniffing out an incubus, which Nick actually finds hilarious. Which was a relief, because I thought that he’d get pissed about it after a couple of centuries of being the big hunting expert.”

Riley hid her smile. Damian’s running commentary was designed to bewilder and frighten Blakeson and it was working. Blakeson was picking up on the odd references to centuries of time and demonic creatures and was hunching in on himself.

“I came along to supply the muscle, so to speak.” Damian pulled out an iron knife with a long blade, and ran the blade along the thin rope that tied together all the D-rings that ran the length of the pack. The bag unraveled and fell open, revealing a man curled up in a tight ball.

Nick and Damian both pounced, grabbing his arms and legs and holding him down before he could do much more than uncurl himself. He was a twenty-something young boy, gorgeous in an olive-skinned, innocent, wide-eyed way. He had the sort of good looks that model agencies drool over.

“Oh, dear god,” Blakeson muttered.

Riley picked up the knife Damian had dropped and walked around to stand beside Blakeson. “Meet your daughter’s killer, Blakeson.”

He swallowed. “It can’t be. Debbie died over thirty years ago. This boy…he can’t be more than twenty…”

Riley turned Blakeson’s chair so that he was looking at her properly. “Hear me, Blakeson. Hear me as you never heard my father. There
are
demons and beasties and things that go bump in the night. When your daughter died, you sent him off into the world to find what killed her and he
found
it.” She lifted her hand toward the incubus lying on the table between Nick and Damian. “And you didn’t believe him.”

There were beads of sweat on Blakeson’s upper lip. “Your father just wanted the money,” he breathed. “My money.”

Riley nodded. “Yeah, that’s why he kept coming back to suck off you over and over again after Debbie died.”

Blakeson licked his lips. Both of them knew that her father had done no such thing. Once Blakeson had kicked him out, thirty-eight years ago, Carson Connors had never set foot in Minnesota again. Blakeson glanced at Riley before returning his gaze to the incubus. “Prove it,” he said, his voice firmer. “Prove your father right.”

“Salt,” Nick said softly.

Riley dug in her jeans pocket for the sachets she had put there earlier. She pulled out one and ripped the top off. The incubus started to struggle when it saw what she had. She sprinkled the salt over its chest, and it thrashed and bucked, Nick and Damian just barely holding it down. Smoke began to rise from its chest and it howled and screamed, the sounds it made more animalistic than human. Its eyes turned all black, and flickered red.

“Mary, mother of God,” Blakeson muttered. “This thing killed my daughter?”

“Yes,” Riley told him.

Abruptly, the creature heaved Nick and Damian aside in a wild, convulsive contortion of its body that would have broken the spine of a normal human. It leapt from the desk, its hands reaching for Riley’s neck, blind to everything except the pain caused by the salt she had sprinkled over it.

“Riley!” Nick yelled, leaping back to his feet.

She brought the knife up in an automatic reflex and the point speared the chest of the incubus as it landed on top of her. The demon impaled himself on her knife by his own weight.

The scream turned into a banshee howl as it writhed. Riley shut her eyes as the demon burst into flames over the top of her and opened them again as Nick and Damian started slapping at her clothes, beating the smaller flames out.

Blakeson was clutching the arms of his chair, breathing in through his air hose, trying to get enough oxygen. He looked grey all over now.

The two helped Riley to her feet. She looked at Blakeson. “Proof enough for you, Blakeson?”

He nodded, and closed his eyes. She was astonished to see a tear squeeze out. “All these years… I thought… Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?” He opened his eyes. “Guilt is a bitter pill.” His mouth turned down.

“It is indeed,” Nick said softly. “I used to think badly of Carson Connors, too.”

* * * * *

As the elevator rose to Nick’s penthouse studio, Riley yawned. “Did we really have to
drive
from Mankato? They have planes now, you know.”

“And how would you go about explaining the boy in the duffel bag, hmm?” Damian asked, his hand stroking the back of her neck.

“There’s that,” she agreed.

“Or the sword in your coat, the broadsword in mine, or the iron knife in your pocket?” Nick added.

“Besides, there’s compensations,” Damian crooned, his fingers gentling, growing languid.

The reminder sent a hot wash of longing through her. She caught his eye, and heard Nick’s quick indrawn breath beside her as he remembered. They had reached Ohio when she had woken to darkness, alone on the backseat and reached through to the front where Nick and Damian sat, and unzipped both their trousers…

Only a few minutes of stroking had caused Damian to veer off the Interstate onto the first rest stop he saw, and find a protected, dark corner of the parking area. In the shadowed dark they’d pulled her from the car and bent her over the trunk. Damian had taken her from behind, driving into her with hard strokes, while Nick had taken
him
, sliding his cock into Damian’s ass as Damian had fucked her. Riley had watched it in the reflections on the glass of the back window, her climax slamming through her at the erotic hints she could only just glimpse.

She licked her lips now as she recalled the moment. “Nice compensations,” she agreed, her voice heavy with lust.

“There’s someone in the apartment foyer, waiting,” Nick said, his voice low. Urgent.

Damian’s smile faded and he pushed Riley toward the back of the car, behind him.

She elbowed him and stepped in front of him again. “I have the sword,” she reminded him and gripped the hilt under her coat.

Both of them were listening now. Damian was frowning. “They’re upset,” he murmured.

“It’s a woman,” Nick added. “And I can smell stale food.”

Damian’s frown cleared. “It’s your friend from Pittsburgh,” he told Riley. “Sabrina.”

“Sabrina? Here?” The elevator opened and Riley hurried into the lobby.

Sabrina sat on the floor next to the apartment door. There were fast food sacks next to her, proving she had been waiting for some time. Her face was blotchy and smeared with make-up that had run down her cheeks, showing she had been crying. When she saw Riley, she began to cry again, her face screwing up as she tried to hold it in. She held up her arms and Riley fell on her knees next to her.

“What are you
doing
here?” Riley said. “Never mind that, never mind.” And she hugged her.

Sabrina wept into her shoulder and tried to talk at the same time. “The super let me in. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know where else to go.”

Nick and Damian were picking up the sacks. Nick unlocked the apartment door.

Riley sat back and looked at Sabrina. “What happened?”

Sabrina pulled a crumpled letter out of her jacket pocket. “I never did believe all that crap you used to say about how we c-could be anything we wanted to be, but you dragged us both to c-college anyway, and look! I got it. The job of a lifetime. I graduated and I got it.”

Riley glanced at the letter. She didn’t understand. Something was missing. A piece of the puzzle. The size of Sabrina’s disaster didn’t match this good news.

Sabrina bit her lip and fresh tears began to flow down her cheeks. “Oh, Riley…I’m pregnant!” she whispered.

Both Nick and Damian looked over their shoulders at her, from inside the apartment. Both of them became instantly still and alert.

Riley began to smile. She picked up Sabrina’s backpack, got to her feet and held out her hand. “Come on. Come inside. Don’t worry about it for now. We’ll figure it out.”

Carson Connor’s final story.
The Stonebrood Clan is back
: Savage, bloodthirsty gargoyles brought back to life by the demon Azazel before he was destroyed by demon hunter Natalia Grey and her now-husband, Carson Connors.
The gargoyles that killed her father…The gargoyles she swore to destroy.
When the Clan lures the other hunters away and Tally is nearly killed in an assault the could only have been meant for her, she must face the possibility that the hunters have been betrayed by one of their own.
With each passing holiday, the Clan grows bolder. The noose grows tighter. And the hunters become the hunted.
Warning
:
This book contains a sex scene that uses frank language and imagery.
This is a novella length story (about 80 pages long), and is best read after the first two books in the series, to avoid spoilers.
This is Book 2.1 in The Stonebrood Saga:
Book 1.0:
Carson’s Night
Book 2.0:
Beauty’s Beasts
Book 2.1:
Harvest of Holidays*
Book 3.0:
Sabrina’s Clan
[*
A Stony Stories tale: Short stories featuring the characters and situations from the Stonebrood Saga
]
Click here to buy
Harvest of Holidays
now:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/509013

Tracy Cooper-Posey is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author. She writes romantic suspense, paranormal, urban fantasy, futuristic and science fiction romances. She has published over 55 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.
She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year and
Byzantine Heartbreak
was a 2012 winner.
Faring Soul
won a SFR Galaxy Award in 2016 for “Most Intriguing Philosophical/Social Science Questions in Galaxybuilding” She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.
She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.

* = Free!

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