desk, he shoved the dead officer from the rickety seat and plopped down. Fortunately, the crazy bitch’s siren blare hadn’t blown out the monitor. He tapped the keyboard, inputting the girl’s name into the database. In less time than it took him to type the two words, her information popped onto the computer screen. Jotting her address onto the adjacent pad of paper, he grumbled to himself.
“What was that?” crazy bitch demanded.
“I said why didn’t we just do this in the beginning?” He pointed to the dead seagull shifter on the ground. “It would have saved the trouble of torturing that dumb bastard for information he didn’t have.”
The duchess’s scarlet lips took a decidedly evil upward slant. “But then that would have spoiled my fun.”
Harrison and Reva decided it would be best to leave the six leviathan henchmen in the minivan while they ransacked the Jameson girl’s apartment. In all honesty, it killed Harrison just a little bit inside to be chauffeuring his hand-picked death squad around in a fucking minivan. The future leader of the world did not cruise in the same vehicle that shuttled soccer kids to and fro, for fuck’s sake. It was an abomination. First chance he got, he was stealing a goddamn tank.
They broke into the apartment with nary any trouble. In fact, the ease of it was almost a disappointment. Working together, they systematically went through every scrap of paper, every tossed-away receipt, anything that offered a possible avenue they might use against the girl in order to earn her compliance. Just as he became convinced they were wasting precious time, they entered the bedroom and the duchess’s attention fell upon a framed photograph of the girl with an older woman. An angry hiss erupted from Reva. Eyes flashing fire, she turned on him, hurtling the frame at his head. He ducked in the nick of time. What was it with her and the fucking hissy fits?
Far as partner selections went, she was turning out to be a bigger pain in the ass than she was worth. Too bad he didn’t know all this shit before he sprang her out of prison.
“Why did you not tell me she’s alive too?”
“Who?”
“Aurele Telluride.”
The former advisor to the King of Atlantis? Bending, he picked up the frame. “I didn’t know about her. Only the girl.”
“You better be telling me the truth, leviathan.” Reva stared him down, the hard, black glint of her pupils issuing a silent challenge to defy her. Her motions angry, she ripped the picture from his grasp and glared at the smiling pair. “Look at how smug she is, thinking she’s bested me. Sentencing me to rot all those years in squalor in that prison while she no doubt lived the high life.”
Recalling the opulence he’d recently rescued the duchess from, he smothered a snort.
A calculating smile stretched Reva’s mouth. “You know, it’s just occurred to me that we no longer have need of the girl.”
“What do you mean?” There was no way he’d forget about the Jameson girl. Not when that fucking shark had payback coming to him.
“Don’t get me wrong. That half-breed atrocity is going to die, as will the rest of the humans. But Aurele Telluride knows full well where the trident is. I’d stake my life on it.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
Reva didn’t appear pleased at having such a possibility brought to her attention. “Then we will use Aurele as collateral, you imbecile. Bring her to me.”
He glared at the duchess. Forget ruling at her side. First chance he got, he was offing the crazy bitch. “That will require an address. Something we obviously don’t have.”
“Don’t give me that nonsense. You’re a leviathan. You can teleport with a visual link.” She thrust the picture at him. “That should be more than adequate.”
Yes, for those of his species who were more skilled than him. He had no problem popping from one dimension to another, but teleporting to various land coordinates? Not his strong suit. It was just one of the many reasons he hated being earthbound. It leached him of power, made him feel weak.
He despised feeling weak.
“What’s troubling you, leviathan? Can you not do this one simple task?” The taunting quality of her tone made him consider ripping her eyeballs out.
Adding that future pleasure to his to-do list, he focused on the picture, mentally imprinting each minute detail of the landscape into the cells of his transport cortex. The corresponding tingle shivered along his limbs, but he didn’t budge from the