Page 44 of Soul Redeemed

Trailing after him brought the two of them standing in front of a door. With two knocks, a brutish male answered from the other side, cracking a narrow view of the room within. The suit and tie, paired with sunglasses and an earbud wire sticking out from his head, made him look like the Secret Service.

“Here to see Ivan,” Xander said, crossing his arms.

“He’s busy right now. Come back later.”

Before the demon could slam the door in their faces, Xander wedged his boot in the opening and leaned forward. “Let me rephrase that.” From his hip, Xander tugged a long, gnarly-looking blade with a hook at the end of it. “Get Ivan now, or I’ll gut you open and play with your entrails.”

Without taking his eyes off Xander, the demon kicked his head to the side. “Boss, got someone here to see you.”

A disembodied voice from inside groaned with irritation. “Who is it?”

“Your fairy-fucking-godmother,” Xander responded.

A nervous chuckle lightened the tension, and the brute stepped aside, allowing both Xander and Zayne passage into the dimly lit office.

“Xander. Buddy. How are ya?” Across the room, a dwarfish-looking demon, whose species Zayne didn’t recognize off-hand, sat sprawled in an oversized chair with a three-breasted female draped over his lap.

At a sharp slap of her ass, the female squeaked and scrambled to her feet, giving every male in the room a view of her kitty tail plug that dangled from between her cheeks and swayed as she sauntered toward a door to the right of Ivan.

Zayne’s gaze followed after her, as she disappeared through the door. Though too narrow an entrance to see inside, Zayne guessed it a dungeon room attached to his office, like so many of the demons who owned the fetish clubs kept.

With his fingers fidgeting atop the desk, Ivan leaned in for a sip of his drink, and Zayne caught the tremble of his hands.

“Been a long time, my friend. You’re looking healthier these days.” By Xander’s chuckle, and the way the demon squirmed in his seat, Zayne took healthier to mean not in the thick of the torture Xander had been known to exact while working as a Sentinel, before Gavin had hired him. That was before he’d fallen, and his torment had only become more sadistic in the years that’d followed.

Zayne had been on enough missions with Xander to know the angel had something of a reputation in the underground scene.

They feared him. No doubt the brute who’d tried to shut them out had only come to his senses once he’d recognized Xander.

“Fuck you.” Ivan dared an upward glance, but quickly shifted his gaze back toward the desktop.

“Oh, c’mon now. What happened between us was years ago. I’ve forgiven you.”

With a furrowed brow, Ivan sat back, and the glare he shot Xander could’ve killed him, had it been loaded. “You’ve forgiven me? You cut off my dick, asshole!” The demon’s lisp made the word sound like ath-hole, and when he flinched, Zayne swallowed back the urge to laugh at the visual.

If there was one bastard Zayne would never want to be at the mercy of, it was Xander, who kept himself wickedly amused during his tortures.

“Did it not grow back? You had a teenage girl working for you. You’re lucky I didn’t take your fucking head, while I was at it.”

“I told you. I didn’t know she was a teenager. Humans … it’s hard to tell.”

“Had you been one of the Fallen, you’d have been dead.”

With a sneer, the demon lifted his glass, watching Xander out of the corner of his eye. “I see I’m not the only one who lost a piece of myself. When did you decide to trade your white wings for black, friend?”

Xander’s cheek flinched at that, his tongue gliding along his teeth. “I’m not here to talk about me. I’m looking for a female. Fallen. Has the Thurisaz tattooed on her neck.”

The Thurisaz was something like an ancient rune. Zayne didn’t know much about them in general, but from what little demon history he’d gleaned over the years, Thurisaz had always been associated with the blackest magic.

The sucking in of his bottom lip and the intensity of the demon’s fidgeting told Zayne the bastard had seen her.

“Don’t make me pull the blade, shithead.” Xander shook his head. “My friend can easily take on big boy over there, and you’d be nothing but a nugget of sadistic play to curb the craving I’ve had for plunging my blade into something. Hard.”

The demon’s eyes slammed shut at that, lips thinned, while his face turned a lighter shade of pale. “I’ve seen her. She needed a place to stay, so I obliged. Look, whatever she did, I had nothing—”

“Where is she now?”

Ivan stretched his neck and rubbed his nape. “See, I can’t. I promised that—”