Taken By Storm by Emmie Mears Page A

We found the guy. Now we just need to follow him to Nik "Dead Meat" Edison's once and future kindred.  
    He seems to be inside for a long time, long enough that I start to nurse some concern that Bonnie the Butcher took my money and then turned around to warn this guy. But when the woman herself emerges from the side door behind my car's rear bumper, she starts at the sight of me and then points inside with one hand, untying her white apron with the other.
    "I'm off shift now," she says. "But your man's in there. He's buying more than the usual today, but he was just paying."
    "Thank you," I tell her. When she shrugs it off, I look her directly in the eye. "You've saved lives. Really."
    A blush peeks through the genuinely tanned skin of her cheeks, and she gives me a slow nod. "Well, I sure hope you're right." Looking at me a bit closer, she hesitates before speaking again. "Ain't your eyes the wrong color for a Mediator?"
    "Contacts," I lie. "Trying a new look. If I meet one of those hells-worshippers, I don't want them to know what I am."
    Bonnie nods seriously. "Be careful."
    Bless her heart.
    She makes her way to an old Volvo parked at the side of the building and drives off. No sooner has she turned onto the main road than our mark emerges from the butcher shop, triceps defined and ropey from the weight of the two enormous bags of meat he's carrying in each hand.
    I wonder if he's stocking up. I duck out of sight and hop in the front seat of the car. A moment later, the back doors open and shut as Jax and Evis join us.  
    Let the low speed car chase begin.  

CHAPTER TEN

    Either this guy is only outwardly twitchy, or he really doesn't care if anyone's following him. He makes no sudden turns, uses his signals properly, and doesn't speed. We follow him easily through town past the northern edge of the city limits and up a road called Billy Goat Hill.  
    The name of the road makes Jax mutter something unflattering about goats from the back seat.
    I get a feeling he'd be happy to eat mutton the rest of his life.
    At the end of the road, his van stops at a modular home. Carrick parks my car on a dead end road that forks off to the northeast, and we get out to go the rest of the way on foot. It's broad daylight, so there should be no hellkin activity around this place, but even so, the nervous sloshing in my stomach makes me feel like I took a hypo of caffeine straight to the heart.
    I realize why on the way up the road to the house.  
    We're going into this place to kill a person.  
    Granted, this person is already dead, but we're going to be the ones to take his life.  
    Not we. Me. I have to be the one to do it.
    The road is gravel, newly graded. The hells-zealot's van is parked askew in the driveway. For as careful a driver as he was on the roads, apparently his field of fucks ends at his own property. If this is even his.  
    It's an old model double wide, a skylight in the roof grimy and half-covered in mold. The roof needs replacing, and the siding — a droll gray — probably wouldn't improve even with a power washing. Judging from the foundation of the place, there's a basement. If the shades are right, that's where we're headed. One look at Jax and he trots out ahead of us, making a quick and surreptitious circuit of the place.
    "They're in the basement," he confirms. "No way in except through the front door or back door, unless you want to squeeze through a window about this high."  
    He holds out his hands about a foot apart.  
    "I think I'd like to avoid giving them the chance to slice at my feet." I look at Carrick and Evis. "Front door, guns blazing?"
    "We don't have any guns," says Evis.
    "Figure of speech," Carrick says, but his tone is fond rather than snarky.  
    The man's going soft on me.
    For a super secret demon-worshipper hideout, they're pretty lax with security. The front door's unlocked, the screen detached and leaning in a corner of the porch. The whole place looks like it should be on