Phoenix Contract: Part Three (Fallen Angel Watchers) Read Online Free PDF Page A

enough,” Katsue muttered. “Jerk.”
    She scowled and returned her attention to Troy and their quarry. From her vantage point, she watched the pair make their way to a table. It looked like they were hitting it off, talking and laughing. The girl had the look of a real Rhodes Scholar. Oh yeah, Katsue could see the intelligence gage straining toward the triple digits with this one.
    Katsue wore tight red leather pants and a matching leather corset laced in the back. Her black knee-high boots, tucked beneath her pants, had a three-inch heel. Her tight fitting outfit left little to the imagination, and the few weapons she carried had been concealed with difficulty.
    Her favored weapons were knives—slender, balanced throwing blades which she wore concealed about her body. She practiced Jujitsu and the Niten’ichi-ryu style of katana fighting. She routinely only carried a couple weapons on her person. At the moment, she had a pair of matched throwing knives tucked into her boots and a compact pistol nestled against the small of her back. A trade off in safety versus utility, but like she always told Troy: “When killing’s done right, it doesn’t take more than one weapon.”
    Settling in to wait, Katsue drummed her fingers in boredom and annoyance. Troy always operated much slower and more carefully than necessary in her opinion. He had a cautious nature, but also he disliked propositioning women. Ironically, his laid back “nice guy” approach seemed to make him all that much more attractive to the females of the species. Women ate it up, even if they were members of the living-challenged.
    Katsue preferred a hard, fast come-on and rarely found a vampire resistant to her wiles. The undead simply lacked inhibitions. Demons possessed absolutely no concept of mortality or empathy. Most of them welcomed an over-eager, easy victim without question and didn’t realize anything was amiss until she had her weapon pointed at their head or heart.
    The better part of an hour meandered past while Troy indulged in an intense heart-to-heart talk with the vampire he was supposed to be setting up for some good old fashioned slaying. If Katsue hadn’t known so well that Troy liked boys, she’d have been worried.
    Finally, finally , Troy and the blonde vampire vacated their table and left the coffee house. They were still deeply engaged in conversation, each no doubt plotting the death of the other. Katsue gave them a thirty-second head start and then followed.

    “This seems like a pretty dangerous area. Are you sure it’s this way?” Troy asked, just barely managing to keep the dark irony out of his voice as Cheryl led him down a dark alley to where her car was supposedly parked.
    “It’s right up ahead,” the blonde assured him, perhaps sensing his suspicion.
    “Kay,” he mumbled, striving for a suitably neutral tone.
    The vampire had her back to him with absolutely no one around, so he had a perfect opportunity to take a shot. A clean kill, exactly the kind the Alastors were trained to make when the opportunity arose.
    He already had his hand buried in his jacket pocket, fingers wrapped around his gun. The compact Kahr MK40 felt small in his massive hands, but the gun itself, which held five .40 S&W rounds plus one in the chamber, packed a potent punch for such a small, easily concealed weapon.
    Heart or head? The destruction of either organ destroyed a vampire. Alastors drilled in the catch phrase until it became a mantra— heart or head. The explosive capacity of bullets could obliterate both and the more traditional methods of a stake to the heart or decapitation worked just as well.
    Troy knew he was violating his training and procedure, but his hesitation dragged on minute after minute, and the decision got harder the longer he waited. His palms were clammy, and his gut churned, a morass of acid reflux. He couldn’t help it. Cheryl seemed too human.
    He and Katsue spent a week trailing Cheryl before they’d