Demon's Vengeance The Complete - Jocelynn Drake Page 0,99

the kinds of illegal activities that they were involved in, but goblins didn’t care for anyone within the law-enforcement field.

“And you are working with a warlock?” she inquired after a moment of silence.

Serah sighed, shoving the badge back into her pocket. “It’s complicated.”

No shit.

“We’re just trying to track down the person who has been killing pregnant women.” Bronx broke in, once again sounding like the voice of reason. “Do you know anything? Have you seen her?”

I wanted to smile at my old friend. His questions, at least briefly, distracted them from the guy performing magic who was clearly not a part of the Towers regime. I’d already been blackmailed by one bastard who knew my secret. I had no intention of going down that road again.

At this point in our investigation, I’d take a good description of the woman. With all my spells and Gideon’s, we hadn’t even managed to get a good look at this bitch. Our big breakthrough was that the killer was a woman and likely human. Fantastic. That only narrowed it down to a few thousand occupants of Low Town.

“We’ve not seen her that we know of,” the female said, lifting her angular chin a bit. “The killings have scared the women we have working for us. Two have left Low Town, threatening to break their contract with us.”

“Wait! You hire women to have babies for you?” Serah demanded. She struggled to twist around so that she could look at the pair of goblins beside her, but the male was still holding her slightly off the ground by the back of her coat.

I groaned and rubbed my temple with my left hand. We didn’t need to get into this now. The ex-cop was well-informed when it came to many things about the occupants of Low Town, but apparently there were holes in her education.

“Where did you think they got the babies?” I murmured.

The look she gave me made it clear that she thought they had been stolen from their cribs. While that was their old way of doing things, the result was that they had the cops hunting them down, which was really bad for business. Now the goblins just hired poor women with few options when it came to making any kind of good income. When it came to the actual conception of the babies, that’s where my own knowledge fell short. I didn’t see these guys paying women to go to a sperm bank for artificial insemination.

“We have heard that the werewolves are planning to go hunting for her tonight,” the male said, ending the awkward silence.

“Whispers are that she hunts on the south side because that is where she lives,” the female goblin added.

I dropped my hand back to my side and nodded. It was what I had been expecting. “Can you confirm her race?”

“Human,” she said firmly only to have the word whispered in an eerie echo through the building. The other goblins that surrounded us shifted, their nails scratching along the concrete as if they were circling me. The tension that had slipped from me started to return, funneling into the lights that still hovered above us. I hoped they weren’t getting into position to have another go at me. They knew I was a warlock, which meant that I could kill most of them in the blink of an eye. The only problem was that those I couldn’t kill in that breath were likely to kill me in the next breath.

“I’m confused,” Serah announced suddenly, snapping everyone’s attention back to her. “If I wasn’t grabbed by the killer, why did you grab me?”

She had a good point. I hadn’t been expecting to encounter the goblins tonight. With the police making the hunting of this killer such a priority, the goblins had taken a big risk in drawing attention to themselves by getting involved.

“We’re protecting you,” the female said. She grinned at Serah, intending for it to be reassuring, but her wide mouth of sharp, jagged teeth made her look almost like a piranha swooping in for a bite. “We can keep you safe. She won’t find you with us.”

“Fuck!” I shouted, jerking everyone’s eyes back to me. “They’re behind the disappearances!” I waved my good arm at the goblins surrounding us, disgust filling me.

I should have been relieved that the other bastard that Gideon and I had been chasing hadn’t gotten them, but this whole escapade had turned out to be a giant dead end. We went out searching for