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“Or mouth.”
Rhun snorted.
With a flourish, Ava let the corpse drop to the ground and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her kohl-lined eyes scanned the crowd. “Anyone else feel like starting shit in my bar?”
Collectively, everybody took a step back from her.
“I trust y’all will clean up this mess,” she said with a tilt of her head toward the upturned tables and chairs.
Tallak had never before seen a group of demons and shifters jump so eagerly to straighten a room.
“Thank you, my darlings.” Smirking, Ava nodded at someone at the far end of the bar, and the music started again.
She stepped over the husk of the faunus and held out her hand to help Bahram up. “You cuckolded him, I gather?”
Bahram grimaced and got to his feet. “Not intentionally.”
“Honestly, I thought at your age, you should have learned to pick your bedmates more carefully. You’re my last living brother, darling. I don’t want to lose you to an irate male avenging his honor, too.”
“She’s his sister?” Tallak muttered.
Rhun grinned. “You didn’t know?”
Sure hadn’t. But now that he knew, the similarities in their appearance jumped at him—from the golden hue of their eyes to the warm brown of their skin to the shape of their noses, they shared quite a few features.
“Come,” Ava said and hooked her arm through Bahram’s. “Let’s have a talk, little brother.”
Bahram went with a pained expression and a help-seeking look over his shoulder, to which Rhun responded with a shrug and a mouthed, Sorry—I want to live.
“That’s one scary female,” Tallak murmured.
“Speaking of which”—Rhun pivoted to face him—“we need to work on your Hazel strategy.”
“I don’t have a Hazel strategy.”
Rhun gave him a consternated look. “My point exactly.” He motioned him toward the bar. “Let’s change that.”
Tallak frowned. “What’s your stake in this, anyway?”
“I’m a meddlesome busybody who loves to be annoyingly helpful.”
Shrugging, Tallak followed him. Seems about right.
CHAPTER 13
“Over there.” Hazel nodded at a parking lot behind a convenience store, half-hidden by the shop and the surrounding buildings. At this time of night, the offices in those buildings were deserted, the windows dark. Occasionally, some late-night revelers would pass along these streets, either on the way to or coming from a bar or club; otherwise, this area of downtown was quiet.
Perfect for a demon to feed in peace.
“Yeah, I see them.” Thea Callahan’s face was set in grim lines.
She and her daughter, Beth—somewhere in her thirties—had joined Hazel on patrol tonight, one of the first times the former Draconians were allowed out again after their house arrest. For now, no ex-Draconian would be on patrol without an Aequitas witch, a precaution that Merle and the others felt necessary and which they had pushed through against much grumbling from the former Draconians.
Neither Thea nor Beth had been happy to have Hazel accompany them as their “babysitter,” but beyond some wrinkled noses and offended sniffs, they’d been agreeable company while they canvassed this side of downtown Portland tonight. Just a few minutes ago, they came upon the tracks of a colarpo, and from the looks of it, the kidney-slurping demon had already caught and seized someone as prey and dragged them to a quiet corner to feed.
If Hazel and the others didn’t intervene, the colarpo would soon insert its needle-like beak into the human’s belly button, pierce through skin and flesh, and then dig through the belly with its specialized tongue that had tiny, razor-sharp teeth at the tip, until it reached one of the kidneys. There, it would liquefy the organ and slurp it up through its tongue. All while keeping the human in a state of paralysis with the help of a biochemical agent that would also mean the poor person wouldn’t remember what happened when they woke up. And since the colarpo sealed the wound with its saliva afterward, the human would survive—just sans one kidney.
Authorities would chalk it up to black market organ trade…if they ever found out. Oftentimes, the affected human would walk around for quite a while not knowing they had one less kidney to work with.
