No Place Like Hell Read Online Free PDF Page A

straying toward guns holstered under jackets. Kasker strode past without acknowledging their presence.
    Cool and dim, the interior was welcome refuge from the heat outside. Salsa music played from the doorway to the bar on his left. Kasker glimpsed a busboy polishing glasses.
    In the dining room, vacant tables had upturned chairs stacked on their red checkered tablecloths. Orange walls were decorated with sombreros, fans, and painted gourds.
    The clanging of pots and pans came from the kitchen at the back of the room. Kasker threaded between tables, making his way toward a booth by the kitchen door. The place smelled of fried food, and his stomach growled, reminding him that he needed to feed the flesh soon or suffer its distraction.
    A tall, muscular Negro and an equally impressive Latino flanked Seve Calderon, a diminutive Latino who sat in the vinyl-padded booth and sipped cinnamon-laced coffee. The bodyguards scrambled up, and the Negro put himself in Kasker's path.
    Kasker stopped, toe-to-toe with the man, a slow smile forming. Silent, he stared into the bodyguard's eyes, waiting, one ruthless hunter challenging another. The bodyguard flinched and stepped back.
    Seve pursed his lips and waved a hand at the bodyguards. "You two, help with the deliveries out back."
    Kasker waited while the hired thugs obeyed their master. When they'd gone, he slid into the booth and turned his attention to the demon clothed in the flesh of a rich, middle-aged crime lord. The muscles of the demon-inhabited flesh were stiff and the eyes hooded.
    Kasker's flesh tensed in response. While he didn't fear the demon, a certain wariness was called for, and diplomacy was not his strong suit.
    "I expected you sooner."
    "Decker escaped."
    Thin black brows pulled down, and the fine wrinkles at the corners of Seve's frigid brown eyes deepened. "No soul escapes the sabueso del infierno—unless the sabueso permits it. Or have you become weak and incompetent now that you walk among flesh-clothed souls?"
    A flash of heat blossomed in Kasker. For a moment, his grip on the flesh loosened. Huge jaws fitted with long, sharp fangs thrust forward from his face. Heavy lips wrinkled in a snarl. Massive leg bones that ended in enormous paws lifted from his arms. His skin, his true skin, burned black with the flames of Hell.
    Seve's face darkened, overcast by the emergence of a black skull with long spiral horns and empty eye sockets. A forked tongue slithered over the demon's pointed teeth—teeth that gnashed in angry response to Kasker's loss of control.
    "We are not for the eyes of mortals, sabueso," the demon said.
    The demon faded, and Kasker struggled to submerge his own true nature, envious of how quickly Seve looked fully human again. But the demon had worn the flesh for many years, whereas Kasker had only a few months' experience.
    Seve's lips turned up in a smug smile. He'd shown his superiority over Kasker just as Kasker had dominated the overeager guard. Kasker vowed he wouldn't let the demon humiliate him again.
    "The pact was broken, the soul untethered," Kasker said.
    The demon rubbed his thumb and finger over a mustache no thicker than a pencil. "You're sure?"
    "I tasted the blood."
    "This is not good news, mi amigo. Could you follow?"
    Kasker squeezed his hands into fists on the tabletop. "I was nabbed by the pigs and held until this morning."
    "Few untethered souls survive long. By now, he will have escaped his fate." The demon scowled. "You owe me a debt. How will you repay it?"
    "His escape wasn't my fault. Find another to take his place," Kasker shot back.
    The demon straightened, a challenge in his eyes. "You think it's easy? Then you do it. Find another, bind his blood."
    They glared at one another. Kasker needed the demon's support to continue his hunt. There would be consequences for them both if he failed. He looked away.
    Seve must have had similar thoughts. The steel in his voice was gone when he spoke.
    "How did the police catch