The Road to Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Thriller (Preternatural Affairs Book 9) Read online

  For years, Cèsar and Suzy had worked together as partners at the OPA. She had semi-secretly lusted for him most of that time.

  The problem was that a lot of people had been lusting for Suzy, too. Being an attractive woman in law enforcement sucked. She’d hated it from the minute the OPA had recruited her and she realized that HR didn’t care how many men complimented her ass, patronized her, and made sexist jokes around her. Unfortunately, quitting had never been on the table. Then-Director Friederling had made it clear she’d go to prison if she did.

  She’d had to survive in the OPA, and that had meant presenting herself as a sexless coworker oblivious to all the raging misogyny. She was crude and crass. Just One of the Guys.

  Cèsar was different. He was the nicest sexist dork she’d ever met. A lovable dumbass. He wasn’t Just One of the Guys most of the time, and he didn’t seem to know it.

  He was basically catnip for Suzy, and she’d had to keep her hands off of him for years.

  Then she’d quit, joined a cult, etcetera. And Cèsar had joined the cult too. He’d joined specifically for Suzy.

  Turned out she wasn’t the only one of the two who had been lusting.

  Things had been pretty sweet since then.

  Their shared bedroom was filled with Suzy’s belongings, since Cèsar spent most nights on Earth. He was undercover as a non-cultist, after all. But there were touches of Cèsar around, too. He’d designed the headboard so there was enough room for his books and insisted on the Betamax with the CRT in the corner. Suzy had even hidden Cat’s litter box inside a cabinet at his request, even though it made her fatty-fat cat whine. That was how serious Suzy was about keeping Cèsar at her disposal.

  And oh boy, was he at her disposal.

  When he wasn’t sick.

  She shucked her jacket, kicked the door shut behind her. “Sit on the couch.”

  Cèsar didn’t seem to hear the command. He was standing in the middle of the room, shoulders drooping, hands pressed to his face. “I tried a strength poultice but I think I fucked it up. I need you to check the recipe.”

  “No you don’t. You’re better at poultices than me.”

  “I’m not much good at anything right now,” he said. “My brain feels like cotton candy.”

  “Your brain is cotton candy,” Suzy said. “I told you to sit down.” This time, Cèsar sat. She banged around in the pantry before sitting on the coffee table in front of him, whisking powdered crystals together in a bowl. “It’ll take two minutes to get this together. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

  “I think it’s the separation sickness.” Cèsar sagged against the back of the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes as though the dim lanterns were somehow too bright.

  “I bet it’s a cold.” Suzy was making him tea that would address either condition. Well, more like herbal sludge than tea. He wasn’t going to like it, but he didn’t have to. The taste was still better than whatever ailment he was battling.

  She thought it was a cold. Her mom, May Takeuchi, had always attributed the onset of colds to mismanaged stress, and Cèsar was under a hell of a lot of stress.

  But Cèsar had another explanation for his sickness.

  “I keep dreaming about him,” he said with a low sigh.

  “Me too,” she said.

  Cèsar lifted his arm to look at her, eyebrow lifted. “Really?”

  “No,” Suzy said. “I’ve never had a dream about Fritz Friederling before, thank God. He’s your special obsession.”

  As kopis and aspis, Fritz and Cèsar were meant to be physically close most of the time. They were stronger together. Fought better, did better magic, answered questions on Jeopardy faster.

  They’d been spending a lot of time apart in the last couple years. Fritz had become the Secretary of the OPA, with all the traveling that entailed, and Cèsar’s responsibilities kept him rooted. Where Fritz wandered, Cèsar could not follow.

  This most recent separation was over six weeks now.

  “It’s gotta be the separation sickness, Suze,” Cèsar said.

  She used a twist of magic to heat the tea then handed it to Cèsar. “Drink while it’s steaming.”

  He winced on every. “I can’t keep doing this.” Cèsar stood without needing to hold on to anything, so he must have been feeling better.

  “I agree,” Suzy said. “I can only make so much tea.” At some point, Cèsar was going to have to treat the source of the problem rather than the symptoms, whether that meant a trip to an OPA doctor or a trip to Fritz’s side.

  “You can’t keep doing this either,” Cèsar said.

  “Yeah, I just said that. I’m running out of herbs for the tea. Some of this stuff is hard to get.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Torturing people? With Zettel?”

  “I thought we agreed that Hodgins deserves it,” Suzy said.

  “Torture is wrong.”

  “Torture’s such a mean word,” she said. “Torture. Ugh. Let’s not use that one.”

  He took her hands, running his thumbs along her palms as he inspected her fingernails. “You’ve got blood in the cracks of your skin.”

  “Okay, I can see why that might look bad. But the Apple’s got no choice. We’ve got so much less strength than all the other players on the field, so we’ve got to be willing to fight dirty.”

  “But Hodgins was one of ours,” Cèsar said.

  Suzy wasn’t getting through to him. She switched tactics. “Look at it this way. If something’s gone bad in Vegas, you’re gonna get sucked into it anyway, so you might as well know what’s coming. Whatever intel Zettel gets from Hodgins, you’ll get too.”

  “If the end of the world’s coming, I’d rather not know in advance, thanks,” Cèsar said.

  “That’s because you’re an oaf,” she said.

  “Some people who aren’t me might argue you’re a cold, heartless bitch.”

  “As long as it’s other people and not you.” She ran her hands up his chest. “If it is the end of the world, how’d you wanna spend the last night?”

  “Dark, Suzy,” he said as he bent over her. “That’s a dark line of thinking.”

  “Really? Because I’m trying to come on to you,” Suzy said.

  Cèsar reached back to lock the door. “I was kinda hoping.”

  He was a big stupid oaf.

  And he was hers.

  Suzy yanked Cèsar’s shirt off over his head. Cèsar Hawke was a man built like a tank dressed as a teddy bear. Tough, dangerous, cuddly. A strange mix that fit perfectly within the hulking frame of this clueless, beautiful, sharp-eyed witch.

  He’d been waxing his body hair as a point of pride long before he learned that Suzy liked waxed men. When she ran her hands over his chest, she encountered nothing but smooth flesh the color of the soil baked in sunlight. He was as warm as the sun, too. Warm and glittering. Pyrite on the beach.

  Suzy pulled him down to her level, as she always did, and she let her tongue do what it wanted to him. He opened to let her in, without any of the attempts to seize control usually performed by men as huge and strong and…well…male as Cèsar Hawke looked.

  Suzy loved that she felt like a titan, wrestling him down to her. She loved how easily he fell back on the bed at her shove.

  “Just because I’m having sex with you doesn’t mean I’m cool with torture,” Cèsar said.

  Suzy ripped his pants open and engulfed his dick in her mouth. He made a strangled dying noise when Suzy’s lips met the soft skin under his pubic hair. The one place she didn’t let him wax anymore. She was an adult, he was an adult, genitals were supposed to be furry. It wasn’t a good blowie if you weren’t picking hair out of your teeth.

  His fingers curled over the back of her head, flexing in her hair.

  “You can’t blow me to get me to forget about the torture,” he groaned.

  Suzy withdrew with a shameless slurping sound. She let her breath breeze over his wet head. “I’m just doing my job, Hawke.” She dropped
her voice to something throatier, hoping he’d think that sounded like a purr.

  She plunged over him again. She circled him with her tongue, drew in suction. She was rewarded by the incoherent noises he made.

  Suzy would never have told Cèsar this, but she’d been thinking about how much she wanted to suck him off for years. Long before they’d had a sexual relationship. Basically from the first moment that Suzy had laid eyes upon Cèsar in his OPA-approved suit, carrying around one of those steno pads, giving dopey worried looks at the suspects in his vicinity.

  She’d wanted to know what a man like that would taste like. Suzy wasn’t disappointed by the taste of him. She never was.

  She kept moving her mouth over him until he came undone with as much earnestness as he did everything else, back arching and fists clenching and this crazy animal sound ripping out of his chest with a roar.

  Suzy lifted her head to grin smugly at him. She didn’t bother swallowing the load he’d shot into her mouth. It drove him crazy to see it drip from one corner of her lips, and her dignity was not as important as watching Cèsar’s reaction when the straw broke the camel’s back.

  “Fuck, Suzy,” he growled.

  And before she could react, he’d flipped her over. He’d gotten between her knees. And Cèsar dedicated himself as earnestly to worshipping the space between her thighs as he did everything else.

  His relationship with Suzy, his work with the Apple, his partnership with Fritz. Whatever Cèsar Hawke did, he was all-in.

  And right now, in this moment, he was all-in for Suzy.

  She’d been jamming thumbtacks into a guy’s fingertips earlier and Cèsar was still sucking on her clit like he was trying to figure out how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

  And that was why Suzy would follow that asshole literally anywhere he went for the rest of her goddamn life.

  They took a post-orgasm nap before Cèsar brought up the subject of torture again. “It’s gotta bother you.” His finger was circling between her shoulder blades, tugging a lock of hair with it. “Hurting people like that.”

  Suzy snuggled against his pecs. Cèsar’s heartbeat was a bass drum bouncing against her cheek. “I don’t worry about the well-being of assholes.”

  “Must be nice,” Cèsar said.

  Suzy lifted her head to look at Cèsar, who was staring at the cavernous ceiling of the pocket dimension. Their bed was topped with a glass dome that let them watch the waterfall. “Hey,” Suzy said, climbing him to press a kiss against his frowning lips. “Look at me.”

  He did. Cèsar had pretty eyes, which he’d never admit to.

  She wished she could’ve told him that torture was a bad thing, rather than an ugly necessity of war.

  And they were at war. Everything good left in this stupid fucking universe was at war with the overwhelming bad. If the Apple had to shove a few pins into a few fingernails…

  That was the cost of having the time, freedom, and existence to blow one’s boyfriend every day for days on end.

  “We didn’t talk enough about the Apple before you joined,” Suzy said. “About why we have to do what we do.”

  “It’s all about the civil war that angels got into back in the day,” Cèsar said. “The rebels locked God in prison, and the loyalists formed the Apple to save Him.”

  “Yeah, that’s true. But it’s hard to get excited about a cause when you put it that impersonally,” Suzy said. “Try this on for size. The bad guys won. It’s like we’re trapped in The Empire Strikes Back, except our Luke Skywalker is dead and gone. We’re trying to keep the Empire from winning forever, and Hodgins in there is basically a Stormtrooper.”

  “You’re fucking sexy when you talk nerd,” Cèsar said. “I’m gonna put my dick in you again.”

  Tempting. “Okay, so we’re the good guys here. Got it? Well, we think that the bad angels are behind Las Vegas. They’re moving toward an end game where they get to destroy God’s creation.”

  “Which one?”

  “All of them,” Suzy said. “The whole world, if our suspicions are right.”

  Cèsar’s hand went still on her bare back, a few locks of her hair trapped between his fingers. “So you’re saying this is Hodgins’s fingernails or the entire world.”

  Suzy lowered her voice to mimic Mr. Spock’s voice. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…”

  “Or the one,” Cèsar said. He pulled her down for a kiss—that hard, biting, almost worshipful kiss that was better than any words of affection.

  They didn’t have time for more activities involving Cèsar’s dick at the moment. “We’ve got a dinner with the other guys tonight,” Suzy said gently. “We should get ready to meet with the Apple.”

  He sat up with a sigh, letting the sheets fall around them. “Then we better get dressed.”

  The Apple had dinner every night on the northernmost end of the main chamber, right below the frothy waterfall feeding into the moat. Suzy had transformed an old thrift-store chair into a table long enough for everyone. For the most part, it had been a successful enchantment, and there was no distinguishing the table from something made out of actual mahogany. But if you looked too close at the left-hand side, you’d see the paisley-shaped wood grain, and you’d never stop seeing it again.

  Suzy firmly placed her plate over the nearest patch of paisley so she wouldn’t have to stare at the flaw in her magic all night.

  “What’d you get from David Hodgins?” Suzy asked, fixing her gaze on Zettel.

  “Hmm.” Zettel wiped a cloth napkin over his mouth, set it down on top of his empty plate. His glare was even more mutant-gorilla looking than usual. “Yes. You’re right. We better discuss this now.”

  A few words from him were enough to bring the table to silence.

  Not just Suzy and Cèsar, seated at Zettel’s left side, but also Suzy’s parents. May and Sentaro Takeuchi had dangerously intelligent eyes and short tempers, totally unlike the daughter they’d spawned unto this unholy plane.

  Further down were other prominent members of the Apple, mostly from the Half Moon Bay Coven—people they could trust to provide support.

  “This sounds serious,” said Stephanie Whyte, the coven’s current high priestess. She set down her fork to give Zettel her full attention. “Go on.”

  “Hodgins has reason to believe that the OPA is convening the Genesis Convention,” Zettel said.

  Suzy couldn’t help it. She gasped.

  Everyone gasped.

  Everyone except Cèsar, who looked around in adorable confusion. “What’s that?”

  May Takeuchi responded with patience she reserved specifically for her daughter’s boyfriend. “It’s the final solution for the rebels against Adam. Our understanding is that it’s a meeting of the leaders of the angels who betrayed him, and humans of their bloodlines, to prepare a final blow against Adam’s people.”

  “Meaning the Apple?” Cèsar asked.

  “Meaning humanity,” May said.

  “We’re still not sure what has happened in Las Vegas,” Zettel said. “We don’t even know if the Union is winning in their fight against the creep of the ichor. Whatever the OPA has discovered in that region, it has changed things for Makael.”

  “An angel who led the rebellion,” Suzy whispered to Cèsar, in case he’d forgotten who Makael was.

  “If he’s calling the Genesis Convention, he must think we’re on the brink of apocalypse,” Zettel said.

  “I was once on the list to be invited, before my cover was blown,” Sentaro said. “I don’t know who replaced me. I know that the participants will be powerful and broad reaching. It’s an opportunity for them to formulate an end game, but it’s also an opportunity for us to eliminate all key members simultaneously.”

  “Exactly. Makael founded the Union originally in Italy. Subsequently, the secretaries of the OPA and the Union are included as well,” Zettel said. “So we know that Makael will be there, and so will Fritz Friederling.�
�� He stood and planted his hands on the table, glaring at each member of the Apple in turn. “We’ve got a high-ranking OPA member right here who can get into the Genesis Convention.” Zettel was looking at Cèsar. Meanwhile, Cèsar was blissfully oblivious, looking at his drinking glass as though worried Suzy’s enchanted dishwasher had left smudges on its rim. “Agent Hawke?”

  Cèsar’s attention snapped back to Zettel. “Yes, sir?”

  “The Genesis Convention is our chance to get vengeance against the traitors of Adam,” Zettel said. “You’re the only one of us who can enter the meeting, Hawke. I’m going to have you plant a bomb so we can assassinate all of them in one fell swoop.”

  Cèsar swallowed hard. “All of them?”

  And it was Suzy who faintly replied, “All of them.”

  Including Fritz Friederling.

  Chapter 4

  While Suzy and Cèsar were discussing ideal ways to wreak Adam’s revenge against the OPA, the agency’s secretary was returning to his home in Beverly Hills.

  Fritz Friederling arrived near midnight. The grounds were bathed in the golden glow from garden lights embedded in the soil. Mist clung to the trellises. The fountains were running, even at night, and their rippling water reflected starlight. It was a beautiful sight he never got an opportunity to enjoy.

  Tonight was no different. He was approached by his wife between armored limousine and front door, which led to a lengthy argument in the gardens.

  The argument was painful on multiple levels. First of all, because Fritz was simply not much a fan of arguing with Isobel Stonecrow. He liked when she got worked up. He liked the flush that rose on her cheeks, the way her sleek hair went wild. He did not like seeing her distressed—which he had definitely inflicted upon her on that particular evening—and he didn’t like it when she flung accusations at him.

  Cèsar found them shortly thereafter. The aspis appeared under a lattice archway like a ghost materializing from ether. He must have been approaching for some time, since the guesthouse was set behind the orchard, but Isobel had kept Fritz too distracted to notice.