Lost Girl: Hidden Book One (14 page)

We were quiet. “I didn’t know it then, and I’m not even sure now, but I think he was a demon. In a skin, but a demon just the same. He felt like one. I just didn’t know demons existed back then.”

We sat in silence for a couple of minutes, his thumb still stroking the back of my hand. “Ready to get out of here?”

I nodded. Brennan got up, pulled me with him, and we left the restaurant.

“Why aren’t you disgusted?” I asked him finally. We were strolling through the streets, back toward the parking lot, my hand still clasped in his.

Brennan looked over at me. “Because if you hadn’t done it, I’d be hunting his ass down right now. Am I supposed to hate you for avenging months of mental and emotional torture? Am I supposed to be disgusted because a confused teenage girl snapped and lashed out at the one being who deserved it? Human or demon, whatever he was was a monster. Monsters deserve to die.”

I swallowed. He was still looking at me, heat in his gaze.

“I know Nain preaches control at you so often that you see any loss of it as a failure on your part. But I’m a shifter. We have a different outlook on these things. Sometimes, death is necessary. Revenge is noble. Kill, be killed. That’s the only choice given to us, sometimes.”

He started walking again, pulled me along with him.

“Does Nain know you feel that way?” I asked.

He winked. “Why do you think we don’t get along all that well? He needs that control. It’s made his life possible. No one in the supernatural community would trust a demon to keep them safe, otherwise. He is control. It’s practically his religion.”

“It works for him,” I said, aware again of how much I craved the power coursing through Brennan’s body.

He glanced at me. “Yeah. But some things just can’t be controlled. And that’s when instinct takes over.”

Chapter Ten

I spent the weekend finding lost girls. Now that I had the imps at my disposal, I was finding more of them than ever before. The media circus that had become “the Angel” was only growing, and I was starting to realize I had to make a choice soon: embrace the attention, hoping it would make anyone thinking of hurting a girl in my city think again, or start forcing my will on those I rescued, so they couldn’t remember me.

Even thinking of doing that to girls and women who had already suffered made me hate myself a little more.

It was Sunday afternoon, and I was beat. I’d been out all night Friday (after my dinner with Brennan, which I was trying not to think about too much) finding lost girls, grabbed a couple of hours of sleep on Saturday and went out again. Later that night, I’d do it again.

I was mowing the lawn around my house with my little old-fashioned reel mower while the dogs patrolled the property and the imps watched from the roof of the house. They seemed intrigued by the mower. Must have been all those blades.

I tried not to think too much about the imps, either.

I had already ignored four calls from Nain. Brennan had been (thankfully) giving me space. I figured he knew I needed it after socializing on Friday. Socializing is more tiring than fighting demons and other supernaturals, hands down.

So I had an afternoon to myself before going out again that night. I had a lead on two more lost girls that I wanted to follow up on. But, for the moment, it was just me, my house, my dogs, and a couple dozen imps.

Of course, that was until I saw Veronica’s little blue Ford Focus come racing down the street toward my house. I sighed. What the hell was wrong with these people? My throat burned. I fed a little from the thugs I’d saved my lost girl from the previous night, but it was hardly enough.

They didn’t have real power. Not like Veronica.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and forced my hunger down. I’d have to do something about it soon.

Later.

I opened my eyes, and Veronica was getting out of her car.

“Hey!” she said, smiling. I could sense nervousness from her.

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

She laughed. “You don’t have to act so happy to see me,” she said, sitting down on the porch steps.

I stood there, crossed my arms, tried to ignore the burning in my throat.

“You look just like Nain when you do that,” she said, laughing again.

“And now she insults me,” I muttered, pushing the mower toward the side of the house. The imps jumped down and started inspecting it. I glanced at Veronica, who was watching the imps with an expression of fascinated horror on her face.

“So. Welcome to the loony bin. Why are you here?”

She rolled her eyes. “Reasons. First: message from Nain. And I quote: ‘Start answering your fucking phone or I’m coming over there no matter what Brennan says about giving you space.’” I rolled my eyes. “And second: I needed to get away for a while. George has been a real son of a bitch since I broke up with him, and it’s only gotten worse since the whole mindflaying thing,” she finished.

“He still wants to quit?” I sat down on the lawn, away from her.

She nodded. “Brennan talked him out of it twice already. Really, George has nowhere to go, but he hates pretty much everyone on the team right now.”

We were quiet for a few minutes. “Why did you break up with him?” I finally asked.

“He’s been pushy lately. He hit me, and that was the last straw.”

I looked at her. “He did?”

She must have heard the threat in  my voice. She smiled. “I handled it. One thing about having my specific set of powers: no one can physically hurt me without getting hurt much worse. He hit me, and he went to hit me again. When his hand landed on me the second time, he got a little taste of what I can do. He was paralyzed for about twenty minutes.”

I looked away. My chest tightened, and it took everything in me to ignore that voice in my head urging me to take her powers. Useful. Deadly. They’d be so good to have…

I shook my head. “So you came to hang out with me.”

“Well, you’re so much fun, you know.”

“Yeah.”

She laughed. “And I was hoping I could go with you if you’re finding your lost girls tonight.”

I stared at her. “No.”

“Oh, come on. It’ll be fun.”

“Yeah, right. As long as I don’t lose control somehow in the heat of the moment, and as long as everything goes just right, and as long as you have the sense to stay away from me.”

“See? What could go wrong?”

“You people with your ‘I believe in you’ shit are going to get yourselves killed,” I muttered.

Veronica didn’t answer, but I did sense a tremor of fear from her. And it was good.

“You need to work on your control. I’m your friend, or I’d like to be. I’m willing to be scared of you, to put myself in danger because I believe in you. You kind of owe it to me to at least try,” she said.

“What kind of moron puts themselves in danger like that?” I scoffed.

Her eyes met mine. “The same kind of moron who goes out alone rescuing lost girls from god knows what.”

I shook my head. These people. “Fine. You can back out at any time, otherwise don’t cry to me if you end up having to kiss your powers goodbye. We’re looking for one lost girl tonight: Dorothea Hopkins. I know where her boyfriend is going to be later. I’m pretty sure he’s the one that has her. If I can pick up a location from him, we’ll be doing a rescue tonight.”

Veronica grinned. “Excellent.”

Veronica and I had cereal for dinner, because it was all I had in the house and it seemed rude not to offer her something. I tried, several times, to tell her not to come with me, that it was a stupid idea. I came this close to forcing my will on her. I could have. I probably should have. She would hate me, Nain would lecture me until I was ninety, but at least I knew she’d be safe from me. She laughed me off.

I ate two huge bowls of Cookie Crisp, trying to abate some of my hunger. It was a distraction for as long as it took me to finish the cereal.

I ended up leaving Veronica in the kitchen while I went upstairs to get ready. “This is so stupid,” I muttered to myself as I pulled on a black t-shirt. Two of the imps, the ones I’d started to think of as the leader and his/her (I couldn’t tell the difference yet between male and female imps, or if there even was a gender difference) second in command, were sitting on the rocking chair in my room. I’d gotten used to them being around, for the most part. I glanced at them. I’d given them orders, but other than nods and chest-thumping, they’d never responded to me.

“You can talk, right?” I asked as I started filling my pockets.

“Yes, mistress,” the leader said in a gravelly voice. I nodded.

“You know what’s going on with me. The mindflaying thing.”

They both nodded.

“How do I stop it?”

The leader looked at me, consternation on his homely little face. “You don’t. You take. You kill. Is the only way to satisfy the need.”

“Anger fills me. I can feed from anger, right?”

He/she nodded. “It will not be as satisfying. Mistress would do better to take what she needs. Make her strong.”

I glanced at him once more, and he nodded, ears twitching. “I can’t.”

“Then mistress will grow weak. And mistress’s enemies will win.”

“Who? The street thugs?”

He/she gave me a withering glare. “Worse. Puppeteer. And he who pulls Puppeteer’s strings.”

“I haven’t heard from her since that night,” I said. “She’s scared of me.”

“Scared of Mistress, yes. But she craves Mistress’s powers. Mistress is a powerful weapon.”

“I’m nobody’s weapon.”

“No?” The imp scratched his bony knee. “What about demon skin?”

“Nain?”

He nodded, once.

I was silent. Turned to the mirror and pulled my hair into a low knot. “I’m not his weapon, either.” The statement was met with silence. “So who pulls the Puppeteer’s strings, then?”

Silence.

I turned back to the imp leader. His mouth was clamped shut.

“Tell me.”

He didn’t answer, shook his head.

I was starting to get angry (easy, since I was always on edge lately). “I command you to tell me,” I said.

The imp only shook his/her head more furiously. I recalled something Nain had told me.

“You can’t, can you?”

The imp nodded.

“Former master, huh?”

The imp nodded again.

“Nothing? Not a name? A clue? A hint?”

The imp opened its mouth, tried to say something, and its voice died in its throat. It shook its head apologetically.

I bit back my frustration. “It’s okay. Not your fault.” I sat on the bed to put my shoes on. “Do something for me,” I said quietly. The imp leader and its helper leaned in toward me. “I’m going to slip out the window. Hopefully, by the time she realizes I’m not here, it’ll be too late. Do not, under any circumstances, tell her what you know about where I’m going tonight.” I could hardly contain my hunger anymore. It filled me, felt like being pricked with rusty needles from the inside out. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t risk it. But I could put all of this energy to use saving a lost girl.

“Promise me,” I whispered.

“Promise, Mistress,” the leader said, and he thumped his fist once on his chest. His assistant mimicked his gesture. I nodded once. I was done with this. I was cutting myself off from the group. I couldn’t do it anymore, and they refused to listen to me.

Getting out of the house was easy. I slipped out my bedroom window, down the roof, and climbed down the trellis next to the front porch.

The car was the bigger issue. My Barracuda was loud. It was a muscle car, after all.

So, public transportation would have to do. I jogged for the nearest bus stop. This was such a pain in the ass.

After finally catching a bus (freaking DDoT, man) and two bus transfers, I made it to the location the imps had given me. The house was there, and so was the boyfriend’s car, just as the imps had described it. I crept around the house, keeping close to the foundation, trying to hear anything happening inside. A back window was open, and, the closer I got, the better I could distinguish several deep voices.

Most of the conversation was focused on the card game going on and the music on the radio. But the thoughts I picked up gave me a good idea of what I was looking for.

An apartment, a quad. Not too far from here. I fixed the imagery in my mind. She was there, chained to a rod in the closet, bound, gagged, starving. But alive.

So much anger, fear, hopelessness. What could make one person hurt another so badly? I listened more, got a better read on where the woman was being held, and got ready to leave.

“How’s Thea doing?” one of the men asked. I stayed put, after all.

I could sense irritation from the room. Boyfriend. “She threatened to leave me again. She’s having a time out until she comes to her senses.”

There were a few seconds of silence. No one was surprised, I realized. One of the men thought,
again with this shit?
I shook my head.

“You better hope that bitch that finds the lost girls doesn’t end up on your ass,” one of the guys at the table said.

He was met with a grunt.

“That bitch is spooky. Creeps up on dudes, pow! They don’t know what hit them, end up shitting their shorts and shit.”