Eternal Flame (Night Watch 3)

He snatched out his phone. Dialed Pak. One ring and his boss picked up. “We’re gonna need a cleanup crew on Rangeline.” Dammit. Played. “And you were right.” He paused a moment, watching the smoke drift in the air. “The woman’s not a victim.” An Ignitor’s back in town.

The demon was strapped to the table, his legs and arms secured, and the blood had dried on his face.

“I thought I told you that Jude would be taking over the Jacobson case.”

Zane shrugged at Pak’s words. “The bastard came after me. What did you want me to do? Let him walk away?”

“Not you, ass**le!” Jacobson tried to lunge up, but the straps held tight. “I was after her!”

Zane pulled over a chair and got real close to the demon. Close enough to touch, to hurt. “Who is she?”

Jacobson would be transferred out soon enough. Pak had plans for the guy, but first…

“Where did you meet the woman?” he pressed. Jana. Was that even her real name? Jude was running a search on her. Maybe the shifter would turn up some intel on the name, but in the meantime-

Zane was in the mood to get answers from the demon, and he would have those answers, one way or another.

“Fuck you!” Jacobson spat at him.

Zane blinked. “Wrong. Answer.” He drove his fist into Jacobson’s face. Payback could be a bitch.

“Ah … Zane?” Pak’s voice was completely flat.

Jacobson spit out a tooth. “You think … you’re so much f**king better than the rest … of us….”

Zane’s shoulders tensed.

Jacobson laughed. A ragged, rough sound. “But you’re worse…. Under the skin … you’re worse!”

Zane smiled at him. “You really don’t want to see just how much worse I can be.”

Pak’s arm came down on his shoulder. “Zane …” A slight warning there.

Zane didn’t glance back at him. “This demon knows about your Ignitor, Pak.” A woman he’d literally had right in his hands-twice-and he’d let her slip away.

Because he was looking straight at Jacobson, he caught the demon’s flinch. Ah … “Where did you meet her, Jacobson?”

Jacobson’s lips firmed.

“Where?” Pak demanded.

“Some damn bar! Bitch came up to me.” His lips twisted, showing his bloodstained teeth. “She was all over me.”

Every muscle in Zane’s body locked.

“She wanted to leave, so I took her to my place. Then she tried to burn me!”

Tried? Succeeded. Those blisters would take a long time to heal, even with a demon’s enhanced recovery system.

“In the last two weeks, you’ve picked up three women from bars in the area,” Pak said, the words so calm he could have been talking about the weather. His hand lifted from Zane’s shoulder, and Pak came to stand at his side. “We found the body of your first victim. You took her to the vamps, didn’t you? You let them drain her dry.”

Jacobson stared up at him, his eyes burning with black rage.

Pak crossed his arms over his chest. “We haven’t found the second woman yet.”

The bastard laughed again. Laughed. “You won’t. There was nothing left of her. Not when the vamps finished.”

Put him down. Zane knew Jacobson wasn’t one of the demons that would be turned loose one day. You didn’t let a rabid dog back out to hunt.

“Then you came upon a new lady….” Pak’s voice pitched lower. “One who was ‘all over you.'”

“She was, she—”

“Did this woman ask you anything?” Pak cut across his roaring words. “Did she say—” “The whore just burned me!”

“But you got to live,” Zane snapped. “Her last victim wasn’t so lucky.” He grabbed the knife from the sheath on his leg and put the blade right at Jacobson’s throat. “You’re not gonna be lucky much longer.”

“Zane …” Pak’s whisper.

Jacobson started to smile.

“Don’t slice too fast,” Pak continued. “You want him to feel the pain.”

Jacobson’s black eyes widened. “No!”

So Jacobson was another one who loved to torture prey, but couldn’t stand pain himself. “Who’d she kill in the alley?” The others will get her. Jacobson knew the guy who’d burned, no doubt.

Zane let the blade cut through skin.

“Vincent!” Yelled. “Shit! I-it was Vincent Gunner! He was with me. There were two humans there, but he-he told ‘em to stay back, that we could handle her.”

“But you couldn’t, could you?” Vincent Gunner. He knew the name. A powerful vampire on Night Watch’s kill list. Gunner had been a cruel ass**le who enjoyed slowly bleeding humans dry-women. Only women.

Had he picked the wrong prey? Or was something more going on here?

“Hey, Wynter!”

Zane’s head lifted at Jude Donovan’s call. The shifter stood just inside the doorway of their holding area. Jude clutched some papers in his hand and lifted them toward Zane. “I found your girl.”

Zane glanced back at the demon. The knife still bit into Jacobson’s flesh.

“I’ll finish him,” Pak said.

And Zane knew he would. Knew Pak would get every drop of information, and then he’d eliminate the demon’s threat.

Zane stepped back.

“I need some help!” Jacobson told the charmer. “Get me a doctor, get me—”

“You’re a demon,” Pak said. “You’ll heal from just about anything.”

“I want out, man. I need—”

“Some folks are waiting on you, Henry.”

The demon jerked on the table, straining against the straps. “A jail’s not gonna hold me! Nothing can, nothin—”

“I didn’t say you’d be going to jail.” Still no emotion in Pak’s voice. “I just said that folks were waiting on you.”

Jacobson’s case had been a government deal. Because, yeah, the government knew about the supernaturals out there. They liked to pretend they didn’t, better for the public image that way. But they knew, and they had their own “extermination” list.

Jacobson was at the top. Some men and women in black would be coming for him soon and, after they picked him up, Jacobson wouldn’t be returning to Baton Rouge again.

Zane caught Jacobson’s whimper just as he reached Jude’s side. The demon seemed to finally understand. This is the end for you, Jacobson.