by Hugh Hefner’s imagination. She wasn’t as provocatively dressed as the patrons of her establishment, but even a potato sack would have looked seductive on her. She broadcast sexy on all channels, and everyone in her vicinity picked up the signal.
Both Riona and Marc were a little dumbfounded when Dee rounded the clock tower of hulking body with the affectionate name of Chipper and took up the bodacious blonde in his arms, swinging her clear off her feet.
“Steph?” he asked in an unbelieving tone when he put her down, cupping her face in his hands as though he was on verge of kissing her.
Steph smiled in high-fidelity Technicolor. “Well, well, well… If it isn’t my little brother.”
“Brother?” both Riona and Marc exclaimed as they too rushed passed Chipper, unchipped.
“Are these your other two stooges, Dionysus?” the blonde asked, but in a tone that clearly marked the comment as a joke.
“Hell ya, and best team I’ve ever worked with!” Dee exclaimed, maneuvering the woman under his arm. “Marcello Angeletti, Riona Dade, this is my sister, Persephone.”
“Well, half-sister, actually.” Persephone presented a hand bearing five highly polished fingernails to the other Pure Souls in turn. “But you know what Dad always says, ‘If you have to have a sister—’”
“ —‘might as well be a half-sister,’” Dee finished off with a chuckle.
Riona’s mice apparently were running the wheel in fine fashion. “Wait, a minute,” she said, examining the blonde with newfound curiosity. “Dee’s half-sister, Persephone? Are you the Persephone? Like,” Riona leaned in closely, Marc following suit, “Persephone, Queen of the Underworld?”
“Oh, yeah, only…” Persephone pointed back over her shoulders at the pulsating club behind them. “I’m retired from the whole royalty thing now. Our holdings were bought out in an aggressive merger-and-acquisition a few thousand years ago, as you might have heard.”
“Why didn’t you let me know you were in town?” Dee continued.
“I didn’t know you were here. Last I heard, you were living in the bottom of a bottle outside of Rio. But that must have been, what, twenty years ago?” Persephone’s eyes tracked to Riona. “But I see you’ve recovered finally.”
“Oh, no, it’s not like that.” Dee actually blushed. “Riona’s not with me.”
“Really?” Persephone’s gaze grew hungry as she sized up the witch for consumption. “So she’s open game, then.”
Most of all to his own surprise, Marc’s arm lashed out protectively in front of Riona like a shield. “Actually, she already has a girlfriend.”
Persephone’s face fell, while Riona’s masked surprise.
“Your grace, we’re here on assignment,” the priest continued in a dead-on impression of stoic Joe Friday. “Intelligence says you have a demon presence here.”
Likewise, Persephone grew serious, her smile fading. “Yes, I tipped off the network to get some help. Gods and angels, as you know, can’t fight any human-based entity, like a demon, directly. Luckily, my little brother here had his human mother, so he’s exempt from that restriction. But I didn’t know the current pod of Pure Souls was in the area. Makes a lot more sense now, all the chatter going on in the underground these days.”
Dee made a mental note to ask more on that later.
Persephone continued, “I don’t know who it is — a regular, a member of my staff, one of the dealers who sweeps in and out of here a few times each night?”
“Maybe we’ll have a better idea if you tell us what’s going on,” Marc suggested.
“Wild, crazy sex,” Persephone answered. Dee grinned, but Marc broke down coughing. Riona had no reaction. “Look, anytime you get a whole bunch of under-thirties, booze them up, have them all dress like dancers in a Kanye West video, and give them a dark room where anything goes, there’s going to be some nookie. But lately, I don’t know what’s changed. It almost turns into an orgy. Even people I know from experience who only come here to let off steam and dance get pulled in. At the end of the day, if everyone seems willing, I don’t get involved. But the other night, Chipper had to pull guys off a girl three separate times when they couldn’t accept that the girl wasn’t with the program.”
“So you still cut the line at rape,” Riona spat out with a hostility that Marc thought was a little too harsh, even given the sin.
“I have experiences being forced into a situation against my will,” the club owner spat back. “If two people or, hell, more than two people are doing what they’re doing willingly, I don’t give a fuck.