A low rumble ran across the silence, making the small hairs on my neck stand on end. I reached for the knife, but my fingers had barely closed around the hilt when the shadows found shape.
And what a shape.
It was big and black, with yellow eyes that gleamed with unnatural fire in the pale candlelight and teeth as long as my forearm.
It wasn't a demon.
It was a hellhound. wasn't going to let me walk out on Jin for very long, that much was obvious. Not when the club he worked at had finally provided a link between all the murdered women. Jin was a source of information not yet fully explored.
None of which changed my determination to walk out now. I glanced around to ensure no one was paying us any particular attention, then got the woman to download onto a disk all the membership files and employee details possible. The gold pass membership files were restricted, and I wasn't about to push my luck by getting her to try and load those. Jack could order one of his tech plebs to do that. Although I'm sure the caramel cow would just wet herself at the thought of showing off her technical skills. She certainly had them. I'd caught her hacking into my files once.
I slipped the disk into my pocket, then erased my tracks in the woman's mind and headed out the door. Once I'd returned my pass to the guard and was safely ensconced in my car, I grabbed my phone and dialed jack.
"She reports twice in a twenty-four-hour period," he said, by way of hello. "This is indeed a time for miracles."
"You've been hanging around the cow too much. You've picked up her smart mouth."
"The only woman in my employ who has the sass to backchat her boss is the one I'm talking to. And it's not nice to call someone a cow."
"It is when they have tits the size of hers. And don't tell me you haven't noticed."
"Are you ringing for a reason? Or do you just want to piss me off?"
Both, usually, but I didn't think it would be wise to admit that. "I think I've found the link between all our victims."
"What? How?"
"All five were members of the gold pass section of the Hunter's Club, the upmarket health and fitness club Jin part-times at. From what I've seen, the gold-pass club is a word-only membership for people with special requirements."
"What sort of special requirements?"
"They need extreme pain to get their rocks off."
"All of our victims had healed scars on their backs and arms."
"They should have massive scars if what I've just seen is any indication of what they go through." I hesitated.
"It's quite possible I've met the woman lined up to be the next victim. Her name is Jan Tait."
"You got all her details?"
"I grabbed everything off their computer that I could. The gold-pass membership files will require hacking skills to get into."
"We'll handle that end. You stay on Jin."
Yeah, right. "Um... there's been bit of a development in that area. I'm afraid I just walked out on him."
His sigh was a sound of frustration. "Can you do nothing the easy way?"
"Trust me, I had no option. But I'll follow him for the rest of the night, see where he goes and who he talks to."
"Good. In the meantime, I'll get Salliane to dig up the dirt on the Hunter's Club and its owner."
"According to Jan, the owner of the Hunter's Club just happens to be the brother of the woman Quinn is following."
"Interesting."
"Why?"