Page 2 of Prince of Ruin
The breeze caught the hem of her white silk dress. It fluttered barely three inches below the curve of her ass. Gorgeous feathered wings were strapped to her shoulders, and white fishnet stockings climbed her legs. Hardly the sort of thing she usually wore, but every thief needed her camouflage and tonight, the only way to get in and assess whether the rumors spoke the truth was to meld with the general clientele.
Neon lights picked out the club’s name across the street: The Ninth Circle.
Target acquired.
She could hear the bass from here, thrumming beneath her skin like a heartbeat. Hundreds of party-goers waited outside and the bouncers hauled someone away from the door, ignoring his desperate screams of, “Please! Please! I need the kiss! I need the deal. I’ll give him everything!Anything!”
“Damn, you look good,” whispered a voice in her ear.
Tayla.
No doubt sitting in the surveillance van and eating candy-coated popcorn as she slipped inside The Ninth Circle’s security feeds like a ghost and started doctoring information. “You’d better be careful. Our Prince of Ruin gets one look at you in that dress and he’s going to eat you all up.”
Sera would never get used to the sensation of the technowitch in her head. One part psychic—enough to communicate on a mental level—and one part superhacker, Tayla was probably halfway through her second Slurpee. She needed to be on song tonight and sugar was her drug of choice.
“Thanks, Tay. That’s exactly what I want. Just call me a sacrifice on his altar.”
A little shiver ran through her.
Shewasplanning to waltz right in beneath his nose, and then out again, with—if the rumors were true—the shard of Michael’s sword in her possession. Maybe sacrifice was the right word.
But she knew the risks.
One wrong move, one slip, and then she’d be facing Azazel himself.
“A girl could play is all I’m saying. Man’s got a certain rep.”
He sure does. Sera’s painted mouth twisted. “He’s not a man. And if he realizes who I really am, he won’t be playing.”
“Chill, my littlethief.Anyway, you’re all in.” Sera had the sudden mental impression of the young woman cracking her knuckles. “One Seraphine Murdoch, uploaded into facial recognition. If they run the data, they’ll get a few hits. You’re a society girl, straight out of Nine Moons. You stumble from party to party looking for a new sugar daddy, but I’ve got your age listed as thirty-five. You’re starting to feel the weight of your mortal years. The daddies have been few and far between of late, and the facials aren’t cutting it. You woke up with wrinkles the other day—”
“Thirty-five isn’tthatold.”
Not when you counted time in the centuries.
“It is to Ms. Murdoch,” Tayla chided. “And you broke my monologue. I was just getting to the good part. Anyway, as Isaidyou woke up with wrinkles and you know time is coming at you faster than a bullet. You want to stop that bitch in her tracks. You’d even sell your soul to be young and pretty forever. And so you stole an invitation to one of the reaping nights and even though you know you’re not the usual kind of offering, you’re desperate.”
Grudgingly, she had to admit it covered the one problem they’d had with this set up. “So I’m not even going to pretend the invitation isn’t stolen?”
“Girl, I’m good, but I’m notthatgood.That fucking thing is written in blood. Demon blood.They’ll know it wasn’t meant for you the second they see it. This is the best I’ve got. And when they want to know how you got it, flash some tits and desperation.”
Usually she could sync with Tay, but it was too dangerous here. She needed to be psychically inert. This was the Prince of Ruin’s territory and if he didn’t have crawlers in the basement, monitoring psychic transmissions from any of the “humans” who entered his domain, then she was a purple elephant.
Tay had created a wormhole in her head for these situations.
It took nothing for the psychic to slip inside and comment, but Sera was forced to rely on vocals. She could receive incoming, and since the heat of the transmission would be echoing in a little van three streets over, nobody would notice.
She just couldn’t activate outgoing.
Which meant being deliberately vague in case there were listeners out there.
Sera made her way up the sidewalk, striding straight past the long line of girls dressed in skimpy outfits. Red and black seemed to be the order of the day. Digging her mask out of her purse as music pulsed from the club, her fingers quivered nervously on the satin.
She didn’t want to fit in.
She wanted to stand out.
Had to catch Azazel’s attention somehow.
