My Angels Have Demons (Users #1) by Stacy, Jennifer Buck Page B

his fingers into the holes on the sewer cover and heaved the heavy lid off from its place. There was a ladder leading down into the sewer, and he climbed down into the hole, pulling the cover back in place behind him. At the bottom of the ladder, he splashed down in ankle deep water. The air was dank and smelled of shit. Something scurried past his foot and he thanked his lucky stars it was too dark for him to see what it was.
    He felt his way along the damp slimy wall until he reached an intersection that spider webbed into eight different directions.
    "Damn." He didn't bring a flashlight, but then again he didn't need one. He lifted his pointer finger in the air before his face and let the fires within him ignite a solitary flame from the tip of his finger. It offered just enough light, like a flickering candle, to see the pipes running overhead and the creepy crawlies hiding in their shadows. There were pipes zigzagging in and out of the tunnels, but one pipe was much larger than the rest, and being that the Vampire had taken up residence in the largest building in the area, he figured he'd follow that to its source.
    The shaft following the pipe was wide enough for Carter's shoulders, but he had to duck down as the ceiling crept in on him from above. He exited the shaft and entered into a wide square chamber. The single large pipe branched out into multiple smaller pipes, feeding the building like roots to a tree made of concrete and steel. This had to be it. Carter let the single flame on his finger turn into a fire around his hand. He grunted past the pain that shot into his other hand as a second fire ignited. Using both hands, he placed them against the concrete and pressed.
    The fires rose up his arms as more of his body was required to heat the stone. Carter forced the heat forward into a tunnel of spiraling flame, and the concrete was blackened with soot. His heart pumped faster and faster as more heat was needed to reach the point where the concrete would lose its cohesion. He growled like a rabid dog as the inferno rose in a single column up and into the concrete. Slowly, the stone began to chip, flake, and fall away in small chunks at first, then larger and larger pieces came loose. He had to turn his face away to keep from getting a sizzling hot mouthful of stone and an eyeful of gritty dust. The concrete fell all around him, leaving a gaping hole.
    Carter burst through the floor right into the elevator shaft just as plann-
    "What the hell are you doing!" Bobby shouted as Carter burst through the lobby floor a good twenty feet from the elevator shaft.
    "Oh, shit." Carter's gaze darted from the elevator, to Bobby, to the elevator, and back to Bobby, who was frantically pressing the button beneath the desk.
    "Well fuck it." Carter flopped out onto the floor. He flailed and rolled about, trying to get to his feet, and before he stood up, the guards busted into the room with guns drawn.
    "Get on your knees!" The same guard from earlier yelled.
    "Okay, just don't shoot," Carter said holding his hands out defensively and slowly dropping to his knees, but before they hit the floor, Carter fired first. Fire shot from his palms like a pair of flamethrowers, engulfing all four men in flames. Their screams were a chorus of pure terror. The glass door at the front of the building slammed shut as Bobby ran for his life. He had probably never seen a scorcher before in the flesh, and obviously Bobby wanted nothing to do with one.
    Carter marched to the elevator door, feeling a bit bad about burning the four men alive, but if they worked for the Vampire, they were probably no good anyway. He pressed the arrow pointing up and the doors opened immediately. As he stepped inside, Carter pulled the piece of paper Fox had given him from his pocket and checked the address again as if he hadn't memorized it a dozen times by now.
    He hit the button that would take him to the top floor, all the way to the penthouse. The buttons for each