Page 4 of Anarchy
Balthazar
This wasn’t the first time I’d been involved in one of Kaine’s investigations. It wasn’t even the first time I brought a case to him if I found something particularly nasty on a job. But this was the first time it involved the people I cared about and me.
It was pretty much shit. Kaine always wanted me in the background doing shady shit online instead of being present at stings. But he wouldn’t get super pissed and light my ass on fire if I roped everyone at the library into taking care of Dorian, right?
Even if I found definitive proof he was behind all this, could Kaine even do anything about it since he was human? It wasn’t like he could bring that to the human cops. And why hadn’t the supernatural community come together to murder that dick cheese when it became apparent he was aware of us?
“We should let Kaine arrest Silvaria and just kill Dorian,” I announced.
“No,” Reyson said. “I agree, we should grab him, but if Bram isn’t answering because something is wrong in Hell, we could go a long way in repairing that relationship by turning Dorian Gray over to Talvath. We all saw Talvath in that warehouse. He’s owed Dorian’s death, not us. I can also sweeten the pot. If Lilith allows us into her realm, I can get my siblings together who created the universe. Then, all of us together with Lilith can heal their sun, so they don’t need to make deals anymore.”
“If they even want that,” Gabriel said. “It must be a huge power trip to come here and give people whatever they want and take it away when the contract is up.”
“I’m sure there are good demons and wicked demons, just like people here on Earth,” Ripley said. “I get we are trying to avoid a war with Hell, and we could go a long way by giving them Dorian so he can tell them which demon betrayed them. But, I don’t think you should break out the god powers and fix their sun unless they fix some of their problems. Namely how they treat their Hellhounds.”
That too. Bram liked to justify things by talking about how well Talvath treated him, and I was sure that was true, but he’d also let slip it wasn’t the same for other Hellhounds. I didn’t care how well Talvath treated Bram or how much freedom he was given.
Bram wasn’t allowed to fall in love or date in Hell, and I wasn’t okay with that. I loved most people unless they posted stupid shit on social media, chewed with their mouths open, or I got paid to look into them and saw their secrets. Everyone should get a chance to fall in love, get their heart stomped on, and go out and do it again.
That was all I needed to hear. We were totally going to kidnap Dorian Gray, make peace with Hell, free the Hellhounds, and then Bram could stay with us where he belonged. Reyson was just curious, but I wassuperfond of shifter cock and their knot.
“So, how do we do this? His plane arrives in two days,” I said.
“Carefully,” Felix said. “He’s made friends, and if he was prepared for a demon, then he’ll be prepared for us, too. Just because Kaine isn’t immediately arresting him doesn’t mean he won’t have people following Dorian. I liked Kaine. He’s a grumpy fuck in a way I can appreciate. He’s a hero. If we mess this up, this could be career ending for him. Even if we pull it off, I don’t think he was joking about throwing Balthazar in jail. We’d all be joining him.”
“Oh, please. He’s always threatening to arrest my ass. He had me in handcuffs once and still didn’t bust me.”
Ripley jumped in my lap and wrapped her arms around me. I nuzzled her neck with my nose. I kind of wanted to bite her, but this wasn’t the time or place.
“Felix is right. Kaine likes you, Balthazar. It’s more than the fact that you help him sometimes. I think you like him too. If we do this, we have to do it so that there is no blowback on Kaine. Everyone knows Dorian made a deal. We all know his payment is due. We’re going to help Talvath collect it. We need to make sure the narrative that gets out is that Dorian’s payment came due before Kaine could bust him.”
“That’s the thing. Even if Kaine finds proof and arrests him, he’d walk. A lawyer would have a field day with him being tried in supernatural court. They can’t exactly bring this to a jury of his peer.”
Felix ran his hand over his dreds.
“Someone should have killed that knob as soon as they found out he knew about us.”
“They probably tried,” Gabriel said. “His deal was for immortality. Sowecan’t kill him, even if we want to.”
Reyson just shrugged. He waved his hand, and a pack of weirdly colored Oreos appeared and a bubble tea. He must be branching out with his snacks.
“I could kill him. Quite easily. The rest of the people here can’t. These Japanese inspired Oreos are quite lovely. They pair well with the bubble tea Balthazar is obsessed with.”
“I still think you should just kill him,” I said. “He took down a whole demon, and we could have died in that shipping container.”
“No,” Reyson said. “Eat some Oreos and drink this tea. Dorian needs to die, but none of us are owed that death. He had a contract with Hell, and he’s wronged a demon. I can handle an immortal human and his henchmen.”
I liked Reyson. I enjoyed having threesomes with Reyson. I enjoyed the fact that he could wave his hand and get me bubble tea.
I disliked this plan. There were too many things that could go wrong.
4
Ripley
We all barely slept after the guys crashed my post orgasmic bliss to tell me we lost the only thing preventing a war with demons and the Hellhound I cared about. My weekend was over, and this job didn’t come with personal days. If I got sick, I took a healing potion to treat it. If one of the sentient books attacked me, I made a poultice and worked through the pain. Mental health days? I didn’t get them, and I hadn’t needed one until now.
I was mostly patient with the regulars, even if they knew exactly where to find what they needed, but asked me to locate it, anyway. People coming in for new cards used to be a source of amusement for Felix and me because we never knew how the library would react. Now, I knew some of the spirits powering the library had been compromised, and I didn’t trust some of the people who were getting approved for library cards.
