Blood Trinity Read Online Free PDF Page B

guilt as far as VIPER was concerned, and she’d be doomed.
    She’d face a room full of demons to avoid that scenario. Besides, VIPER needed her out here working. She had the best informants in the city when it came to supernatural intelligence.
    That’s how she’d found this demon in so little time.
    The Cresyl stumbled, caught his balance, then stopped as though stuck in place. Dividing her attention between him and her path, she barely sidestepped a pile of putrid-smelling ick on the sidewalk that he’d left in his wake.
    Great … like walking behind a horse. Jeez. Didn’t they have any sense of cleanliness?
    He—the demon’s gender as determined by the size of his horns—glimmered in and out of shape, appearing more as shadow and mist than anything lifelike to unsuspecting humans at three in the morning. Even through her dark sunglasses, Evalle’s natural night vision picked up his bony spine, slinking tail and leathery skin as clear as a high-resolution image.
    Why was he moving at such a sluggish pace? Cresyls were generally quick and dangerous … and traveled in pairs.
    Where was this one’s mate?
    Which one had ripped into a human tonight …
    Or had they?
    Something
had, and they were the most likely candidates. The remains of the young woman had shown up in the Atlanta city morgue a few hours ago. The morgue where Evalle worked part-time as a maintenance tech from ten at night until five in themorning. All agents at VIPER were expected to integrate into the community, preferably somewhere that allowed them intel on supernatural activity.
    The morgue was a perfect place to be. Not just for VIPER but for her own personal reasons as well.
    The dead were not a threat.
    Most of the time.
    And what better place to hear about unusual killings or strange DNA evidence? Being on call for early Sunday morning usually meant processing run-of-the-mill Saturday night violence, not a demon mauling. The graveyard shift supervisor who’d received the woman’s body had filed a request that animal control come inspect the ravaged body and gouged chest.
    That visit wouldn’t happen until Monday during business hours. But Evalle couldn’t gamble on the possibility of VIPER finding out about the mutilation before Monday, since they had other spies with morgue access besides her.
    Even if a wild animal from the zoo
could
have ripped the heart out of the body so cleanly, any investigator would question why an earthly predator would leave the rest of the body uneaten.
    Animals tended to be sloppy killers. Demons not so much.
    Everything about this death was off, didn’t fit anything she’d ever seen or heard about with regardto Cresyl demons—or any other kind, for that matter. Her Spidey sense was tingling off the charts, and she couldn’t shake the feeling this was bad for her.
Real
bad. Having been alone right before work, she had no alibi for the time of death.
    Not paranoia. I’m being set up. I have to be.
Nothing else made sense.
    Quinn and Tzader would help with a minute’s notice, but they were in Charlotte, and she refused to call them like some helpless female.
I came into this world alone and I can handle anything it throws at me.
    And by the gods, she could handle the Cresyls.
    If she didn’t make a mistake.
    Or run out of time. With daylight coming in less than two hours, she’d be forced off the streets to hide from the August sun. That was why she’d faked a case of nausea at the morgue and clocked out early to go home. It wasn’t a total lie. She really was feeling sick to her stomach that someone wanted her butt in a sling.
    Or more to the point, a cage.
    Evalle flinched as unwanted memories tore through her with sharp talons at that thought. Nothing set off her panic attacks worse than imprisonment.
    Well, there was one other matter, but she wouldn’t think about that either.
    Focus.
But it was hard. No matter how much shetried to keep the past buried, things like this threat unearthed her worst