Page 28 of The Rogue's Curse

“I care,” Misha said. “Tell me.”

David’s expression faltered. “Just one.” His eyes cut away, and Misha yanked hard enough on the thread to make the other man retch. “Six or seven, I lost track,” he bellowed. “There’s a crematorium where we can take bodies.”

Paris’s head snapped up. “Is the location in your phone?”

“Goodwin’s. It’s in Alpharetta,” David said, bloody tears streaming down his face. “Please, don’t kill me. I’ll do better. I’ll leave and never look back.”

Misha glanced at Paris, who held up one finger in a wait gesture and asked, “David, did Georgina tell you about the crematorium? Or did you find it yourself?”

David trembled, looking first at Misha, then back to Paris, as if he was trying to decide the correct answer. “I found it myself. But we told Georgina. We thought it might earn us some credibility.”

“Did they ever use it?” Paris asked.

“I don’t know. We never saw them there, but we don’t go there that often,” David said.

Paris nodded, eyes distant. Then he knelt in front of David, arms braced on his knees. “Is there any reason I should let you live? Anything else you can give me about Shea?”

David’s expression crumpled. Suddenly, the ruthless killer was a teary mess, lip quivering as he swore to leave, to do better, to never hurt anyone again. Misha had heard the same empty promises countless times.

“Let him go,” Paris said.

“Oh, thank you,” David wept.

Staring at Paris quizzically, Misha released the thread of magic. Blood dripped from his fingers, steaming slightly as it hit the dull hardwood floor. David went flat, then slowly got his hands under him.

Was Paris really going to let him go?

But there was grim resolve on Paris’s face as he grabbed David by the hair, a sharp blade at his throat. “I’m giving you the mercy you didn’t give your victims. You have time to pray to whatever god would stoop low enough to hear you, and then I’ll make it quick.”

“No!” David squealed. “You fucking asshole! You—”

“That doesn’t sound like prayers for forgiveness,” Paris said. “If you’re not going to use it, I’ll quit wasting my time.”

“You can’t do this, you’re just—”

Paris sliced into David’s throat, spraying blood across the floor. The man pitched forward, and Misha watched with grim horror as Paris made quick work of him. A vicious kick snapped his neck, and two powerful swings severed his spinal column.

Then Paris rose and said, “Shall we?”

And with that, he joined Paris in the grim work of cleaning up the mess Shea’s squatters had made. Paris went down to the armory beneath the club and returned with a fire axe. His toothy grin was unsettling as he hefted the red weapon and said, “Much more efficient.”

One at a time, they decapitated the fallen vampires. They worked quickly, ignoring the pleas for mercy. He had thought that Paris might seek revenge by drawing things out, but he killed quick and clean.

When they were done, both of them were covered in blood up to their elbows. Paris led him silently to a private restroom, where they washed up in silence.Misha cleaned up his sliced forearm, then dabbed one of his salves over the thin cuts to numb the sting. Power always brings pain, Rafi had told him.

One by one, they turned off all the electronics they’d retrieved, then loaded them into a backpack. They walked in silence back to the car. Tension hung thick between them, and Misha didn’t know what to say. It was the first time he’d seen Paris in action; the man operated with a brutal efficiency, but he couldn’t shake the memory of the way he’d gone pale. His shirt was dark and wet in the center of his chest—an old wound reopened, perhaps.

Paris didn’t speak again until they were several miles down the interstate. “It didn’t bother you to kill all those vampires?” he asked.

“You know what I do, right?” Misha quipped.

“Not entirely,” Paris said. “You say investigator, but I can’t tell if you’re a detective, Zehra Demirci’s errand boy, or an executioner.”

“Sometimes, all of the above,” Misha said. “My skill set makes me good at a lot of things.”

“Your skill set…” Paris murmured. “Could you do to me what you did to him with that knife?”

“I could, though you’d probably be a lot harder to control,” Misha said. “I wouldn’t do it without very good reason, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

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