Vengeance of the Demon (Kara Gillian 7)

Too many questions and unknowns. The few answers I had left me all the more unsettled. Fortunately for my state of mind, maintenance of the nexus was overdue and required full concentration. I settled on the concrete and threw myself into the work, eager to immerse for a few hours and bury the overwhelming sense that I was no more than a pawn in someone else’s game.

Chapter 16

I didn’t intend to be one of those people who freaked out over the gory realities revealed in childbirth classes. But damn, the class with Jill was way more educational than I wanted.

It didn’t help that I’d missed the previous sessions. From what I gathered, the first sessions eased people into the bizarre concept of squirting a living being out of one’s nethers. But Jill had only a few more weeks to go before her due date, which meant I got thrown into the deep end—breathing and pushing and relaxing and blood and fluid and poop and holy shit was it ever a good thing I loved Jill.

Jill listened and took notes with the determination of a lawyer preparing to go before the Supreme Court. Steeev leaned forward in his chair, so fixated on the instructor’s every word that more than once she grew flustered by his intense regard and lost track of what she was saying. Though I couldn’t match his zeal I did my best to pay close attention. All the while I hoped and prayed to whoever might be listening that Zack would miraculously recover in time for the birth and let me off the hook.

At long last the class finished, freeing me from videos of devoted husbands counting breaths for panting wives. Jill and I headed out while Steeev hung back to collect one of every single guide and pamphlet the instructor had available.

“You want me to be in your face counting like the guys in the videos?” I asked her with a grin as we started across the parking lot.

“You’d get to ‘one’ before I punched you,” she said with a sweet smile.

I laughed. “Note to self: Stay out of punching range.”

“And whose idea was it to park in the last row because walking would be good for me?” she said in a tone perilously close to a whine.

“Steeev’s, along with everyone who parked in all the closer spaces,” I replied. “Though, if I was a meaner person, I’d say it was great payback for those times you forced me to go running with you.”

“At least I don’t complain as much as you did,” she said, passing between two cars.

I fell back to walk behind her in the narrow space which meant she couldn’t see me roll my eyes. “Suuuure you don’t.”

“Are you rolling your eyes?” Jill asked, passing between another line of cars. “I can hear you rolling your eyes.”

“Hey, you’re not a mom yet,” I pointed out. “I’m pretty sure you don’t get ‘hear rolling eyes’ superpowers until the kid can walk and talk.”

Jill stopped to let a van pass and glanced back at me with a smirk. “I have ‘I know Kara Gillian’ superpowers,” she said then frowned and opened her purse. “Crap. What did I do with the breast pump coupon they gave me?” She asked. “Do you have it?”

The van took its sweet time making its way down the row of cars. “Yeah, I stuck it in my bag,” I said as the van slowed more. Maybe they were stopping to ask us directions?

The side door slid open, and in the next instant Steeev shoved me hard against the car to my right as he bounded past with demon speed. Pamphlets rained down around me as his next leap took him onto the trunk of the car with Jill in his arms. A man in a ski mask reached from the van’s door to grab the empty air where she’d been a split second before.

“Fuck!” The man jerked back. “Get out of here!” he snapped to the driver.

The man behind the wheel slammed on the gas, leaving the stench of burning rubber in the air as the van tore off. I scrambled to recover my balance and staggered out from between the cars in time to get the license plate number. Not that it mattered since I had a feeling it would come back as stolen. The man at the door of the van had only said five words, but I recognized that harsh edge. Jerry Steiner. One of the vilest of Farouche’s henchmen. And the driver had been a big, stocky, broad-shouldered man. Angus McDunn, Boudreaux’s stepdad. I knew it in my bones.

Pulse still racing, I pivoted back toward Jill where she sat sprawled on the trunk of the sedan, one hand on her belly. Steeev stood over her on high alert like the protective badass demon he was.

“Are you all right?” I demanded.

“No!” she snapped back, eyes wide in shock. “What the fuck was that?”

I didn’t see any injuries on Jill—not even a scraped knee—which upped Steeev’s awesome factor by several notches. He continued to scan the parking lot, but I knew that if Jill or the baby were hurt in the slightest he’d have whisked them to the ER.

“I’m pretty sure those two men used to work for Farouche.” I helped her down from the trunk. “They’ve likely hooked up with Katashi,” I added, grim. “With Farouche out of the picture, they have little reason to be operating solo.”

“And I got in the way of them trying to grab you,” she said with a scowl. “You can thank me later. With ice cream.”

I hesitated before replying and looked up at Steeev. He leaped from the trunk to land with light grace beside us. I pretended not to notice the dent he left behind and instead picked up his scattered pamphlets.

“Kara Gillian was not the intended target,” Steeev told Jill, confirming my blossoming suspicion. “You were.”

She gaped in astonishment. “The hell?”