“Got it, sweetheart.” Dev picked up the wooden crate with a spray-painted fifty-seven on its side. He moved it to the middle of the truck and held his hand out for the crowbar. With a quick movement, he had the top cracked open and held the light over the crate, allowing me to peer inside. I moved to the side and started to push through the packing materials. “If that car wasn’t coming, I would suggest we have a little fun. I’ve never had sex in a truck such as this. Come to think of it, we’ve never stopped in the middle of a job for a quickie.”
I laughed as I sifted because Dev never let the tension of a situation force his mind from his favorite subject. I felt something that was just about the right size. “There’s a pretty good reason we don’t have sex on the job. Sorry, baby. You won’t be checking anything off your list tonight.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Dev replied with a grin. “The night is still young.”
I pulled the object free and brushed off the popcorn-style material they had packed the crate with. I gently unwound the item and was rewarded with my first glimpse of the Strong Arm of Remus. I found myself staring at the carved marble figure. The wolf emerged from the marble as though it was a part of the stone, taking form to devour its prey. The wolf held a woman in its sharp teeth, her face a mask of agony. There was no doubt in my mind that this was a werewolf. Whoever had created this piece had used a werewolf as a model. The violence in the stone was barely contained. As I stared at it, I knew that if I gave it a chance, that violence would spill out of the confines of the small sculpture and into our reality.
“Zoey,” Dev said sharply, startling me out of my revelation. “We have to move, sweetheart.”
Our time was up. I forced myself to hold the object against my chest, cradling it close so I wouldn’t lose it, but I didn’t like the way it felt against me. My stomach turned a little queasy. I followed Dev out of the truck. Even as we ran around the side, I could hear the sound of tires squealing.
“Lee, get the car!” I yelled as we rounded the corner.
Lee was on his knees in the middle of the road, his gun at his side. He held his stomach, and I could see he’d been violently ill. He shook with the force of his sickness. The closer I got to him, the more he shook.
“I’ll get the car.” Dev took off to where we had parked the sedan we purchased with cash and under an assumed name.
“Are you all right?” I asked my bodyguard.
“God, get that thing away from me.” His eyes were tight as he pointed to the sculpture. “I can’t…I can hardly breathe.”
I took a couple of steps back and worried how I was going to get Lee home. I would lock the damn thing in the trunk and hope it helped. Surely Lee could handle it just until we got away. I hoped it didn’t have the same effect on Zack.
Dev was climbing the hill and disappearing over it when I realized that car had stopped seconds ago and yet no one had made a sound. There was no exclamation of surprise or the sound of a cell phone call being made. There was absolutely nothing from the other side of the truck.
“Zoey,” Lee rasped, turning to me. He looked behind me and his eyes shifted to hold some part of his wolf. “You need to get out of here now.”
“Dev will be here any minute.”
If the people in the car got out to gawk at the strange sight in the middle of the road, all they would see was a robbery. It might freak them out, but for the most part, people stopped when they saw the gun. I was more worried about the fact that Lee had taken his mask off.
“Keep your head down,” I ordered, holding the gun at my side again.
“I mean it, Zoey.” He tried to get to his feet but faltered. His knees hit the pavement, and he groaned as the sickness hit again. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“I don’t think she’s going anywhere, wolf,” a voice said from behind me. “What happened to your last wolf? Looks like this one can’t stand the heat.”
Now I felt sick. I forced myself to turn around even though I damn well knew who was behind me.
Lucas Halfer smiled in the moonlight. “Hello, Zoey. I believe I made you a promise the last time we talked. Time for me to make good on it.”
Chapter Eighteen
I raised my gun and had the former demon in my sights. I would have popped off a quick round, but he had me in his sights too, so I settled for a nice standoff. As Halfer looked at me, his self-satisfied smile told me everything I needed to know. I had walked into a trap. I could only hope I had a way out.
“So the aswang was a decoy,” I began, trying to give myself time for one of three things to happen. I needed Dev to get back with the car, Lee to get back to himself, or Zack to show up with teeth and claws.
Halfer laughed, his eyes on the statue in my hand. “I like to think of her more like a herding mechanism. She got you right where I needed you to go. I doubt you would have responded if I’d sent you an e-mail politely asking you to steal that thing for me.”
“Couldn’t steal the thing yourself? Is the whole mortality thing difficult for you?”
He shrugged. “I probably could have, but why do all that work myself when I could get you to do it for me? Stay down, wolf.”
I fought the urge to look at Lee. The minute my attention was drawn away, Halfer would make good on his threat to kill me. Where the hell was Dev?
Lee had crawled to my side. I heard him as he was trying to get up. His strength was being sapped by whatever magic was in the statue.
“Please just stay down, Lee.” I begged, knowing how hard this was for him. “He will kill you.”
“I really just want to kill Zoey, wolf,” Halfer affirmed. “As long as you stay out of my way, I couldn’t care less about some muscle her husband hired.”
A sudden thought occurred to me. Just how carefully thought out was this plan of Halfer’s?
“What did you do to Danny?” There was no way in hell my husband just forgot. He’d been worried about this night for days. He’d made me go over and over the plan with him until he knew it better than I did. He forced Dev to prove he could perform his job three times before he grudgingly gave his approval. He would have found a way to leave LA on time even if it meant pissing off the Council.
Lucas Halfer no longer had fangs, but he smiled like they were still there, ready to take a chunk out of me. “I think you’ll find I delayed your hubby with a little emergency. When I was cast out of Hell, I was informed that if I tried to interfere with Vampire affairs, I would face a trial. But they didn’t say anything about firebombing a house containing a bunch of vamps the Council doesn’t even know about.”
It took everything I had not to shoot that bastard then and there. “Why? Why go to all that trouble? You have to know Danny is going to kill you. He wasn’t in that house.”
“I know,” Halfer replied. “I just needed to make sure he was distracted. I gave him a heads up. I even sent him pictures. I love modern technology. He’s pulling bodies out even as we speak.”
I tried not to think about all the people I cared about who were in that house. I could only hope they’d been out. They were a nocturnal lot. Maybe they were out on dates or roaming the woods. They couldn’t be dead. I wasn’t even going to think about that possibility. Daniel would have gotten there, and he would have made sure everyone got out alive.
“I’ll take that artifact now, Zoey.” Halfer held out a hand.
“Why do you want it?” I asked, trying to come up with any way to keep him talking. “It just seems to make wolves sick.”
“I’ve been around a long time. I know exactly what the Strong Arm of Remus does. It’s been missing for millennia,” Halfer explained. “I never gave a damn about the wolves until I found out Donovan wanted them. I would really do just about anything to fuck with that husband of yours. I’ll make sure he gets caught by the Council even if I can’t go to them myself.”