Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

curt nod. The vampire stared at me a second before she turned on her boot heel and stalked back the way she’d come.
    “C’mon,” I said in a low voice. “Let’s see what our friend Chuckie C. is up to.”
    Donovan counted the doors, and we stopped in front of the appropriate slit. The detective looked at me. I nodded, and he grabbed the knob and slowly, quietly, slid the panel to one side. The opening stretched out horizontally about two feet, but it was barely taller than an eye. There was enough room for both of us to stare inside.
    Donovan Caine and I put our eyes close to the opening. The slit revealed a small room with a plush couch off to one side, along with a round table and a few chairs. The tops of several liquor bottles sat on a shelf just below us. A bar set against this wall hid the peephole. A mirror ball spun around overhead, splashing silver light everywhere.
    Charles Carlyle hadn’t wasted any time. One of the girls already had her head buried in the vampire’s crotch. He had his hand up the other one’s skirt, and his tongue down her throat. Smacking and sucking noises drifted out to us, along with a few moans from the ladies. The girls were pros. If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought they were really enjoying themselves.
    Donovan Caine shifted beside me, no doubt thinking about what had happened between us at the bar. A shame, really, that we’d been interrupted.
    The scene went on for maybe three more minutes before Carlyle got his rocks off. The hooker who’d been on her knees wiped off her mouth, crawled up, and joined the other one on the couch beside Chuckie C. Both of them murmured nonsense about what a big, big man he was and how they only pretended with other guys, but with him, their pleasure was real. My lips twitched. Funniest damn thing I’d heard all night.
    Carlyle fondled the two girls for a moment longer, then spanked them both on the ass—hard—and zipped his pants up. “Scram, girls,” he said. “I’ve got company coming.”
    Company? That sounded promising.
    Carlyle threw a couple of C-notes at the girls, which they tucked into their push-up bras, before blowing him kisses and leaving the room. Chuckie C. let out the sigh of a satisfied man, then got to his feet and hitched his pants back up into their proper position. I hoped the bastard had enjoyed that blow job. It was going to be the last one he ever got.
    The vampire headed toward the wall where Donovan Caine and I stood peering at him. For a moment, I thought perhaps the stocky vampire had spied us spying on him. But he reached for a bottle and splashed some whiskey into a square glass. Getting himself a drink. He was so close to us I could have stuck one of my knives through the peephole and given him a shave. That moment would come soon enough.
    Carlyle had just knocked back his first slug of whiskey, when the door on the far side of the room opened, and a man stepped inside. Carlyle blocked my view, but I could still see the other guy was a giant, with salt-and-pepper hair and a bulky frame that was slowly going to fat.
    “About time you got here,” Carlyle said.
    “Sorry,” the giant replied. “Some of us have been busy.”
    Donovan Caine stiffened beside me. Because the deep baritone of the second man belonged to his boss—police captain Wayne Stephenson.
    “Whaddya want to drink?” Carlyle asked.
    “Whiskey, and a lot of it.”
    Carlyle made a couple more drinks. Stephenson took a seat at the table, and Carlyle handed him one of the glasses and set the bottle on the table. Stephenson knocked back the amber liquid like it was water and poured himself another. Took a lot to get a giant drunk. Dwarves too. Humans and vamps were the only ones who couldn’t hold their liquor.
    “I told you on the phone, meeting was a bad idea,” Stephenson muttered and downed his second drink. “Everybody’s crawling all over my ass about the Giles murder. Did you know the bastard was a personal friend of the mayor? His college roommate or some such shit. Pompous moron’s called me twice today.”
    Carlyle took a seat opposite the giant “And I told you she wanted an update. In person.”
    Stephenson’s pale eyes flicked toward the door. “She’s not coming here, is she? Bad enough I risk being seen with you. If she walks in the door—”
    “Don’t worry,” Carlyle said. “This place is totally anonymous. Nobody cares what you do or who you do it with, as long as you don’t skip out on