Little excerpt from Sacrificed in Shadow. :) ~~~ “This is a bad idea,” Anthony Morales said. He sat on the end of Elise’s bed. She hadn’t slept in it once during her stay at the motel, but evidently he had; the imprint of a pillow still marked his left cheek. He was shirtless, shamelessly revealing the sculpted planes of his chest, and his muscular thighs were bared by snug gray boxer-briefs. He already had the coffee brewing for her. Good man. Fading daylight touched the edges of the motel curtains. A single sunbeam splashed on the wall behind her. Elise avoided it as she went to the coffee maker, tugging her underwear out of the cleft of her ass. Black lace—why was she wearing black lace? Must have been laundry day. “Someone’s obviously trying to lure you to Grove County,” Anthony said. “Don’t go.” “Can we talk traps after caffeine?” His lips pressed into a disapproving line. “Okay. Caffeine first.” The coffee tasted like burned paper, but she decided to be grateful that this motel actually had in-room coffee. The last two hadn’t, and those had been two very long weeks. Elise tossed back the first eight ounces and poured the next. “All right,” she said, wiggling back to sit on the counter. “It’s a trap. That’s obvious. Why do I care?” Anthony pulled on a pair of oil-stained jeans. “Why *do* you care?” “Don’t just repeat my questions.” “Lucas told me everything. He wanted to know why Lucinde Ramirez’s name got you interested in the case.” He tugged a shirt over his head, letting the hem fall over his abs. “You know as well as I do that there’s no way Lucinde Ramirez has gone missing in Grove County.” There were a lot of people that Elise had failed to save in her career as a demon hunter. And her memory was excellent. She remembered every single failure with crystal clarity. Lucinde Ramirez was one of those failures: a five year old girl whose stepmother, Marisa, had offered her soul to a demon. Lucinde had been dying of a heart defect, and Marisa had hoped that possession would save her life. When Elise had killed the master demon, the girl hadn’t survived. Five years old. She’d had glossy black ringlets and a stuffed rabbit. “She would have been nine this year,” Elise said, tracing her finger around the rim of the coffee cup. Her nails were black today. She hadn’t painted them. “But she’s dead,” Anthony said. Elise suppressed her annoyance. “Yes. I know.” “I feel like I’m going in circles here.” He shoved a hand in her face, ticking off one finger at a time. “She’s dead. Someone’s using her name to get you to Grove County. It’s a trap.” He spoke slowly, patronizingly, as if she were a five year old herself. “The question is, who?” Elise asked, pushing his hand away. “Who’s placing the trap? Who’s got the balls to summon me now?”
Posted on: Thu, 11 Jul 2013 04:39:19 +0000
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