CHAPTER ONE
Justice Kane scowled as he took in the entrance to Darkest Pleasures, one of the more expensive whorehouses found near Las Vegas. It didn’t look like much during the daylight hours, but at night a light show and video feed came on to help tempt those with a more exotic sexual appetite. Those with kinks who struggled to find what they craved elsewhere.
Darkest Pleasures wasn’t an especially large business, not like the House of Pain found in Philantha. There were only four levels. The ground floor was set in a horseshoe design with the center courtyard kept open to the night sky. Elaborate live shows were put on in this area throughout the night, shows meant to wet the tastebuds of their many guests. The upper two levels were guest rooms with balconies opening toward the entertainment area. Patrons could watch from above, stroll freely through the courtyard, or even participate in the shows for an extra price. The lower levels were known as the dungeons. This was where they broke in and trained the new sex slaves, some of them only sixteen years old. The laws were fucked up as far as Justice was concerned. A sixteen-year-old could not legally be sold for sex, but they could begin training, as long as they were a willing participant. Considering their options if they said no, most were more than willing.
Justice should know. He’d been one of the trainees when he first came to work for Olemjessa. That lying bitch. Lucky for him, Michael Santos, his current boss, had learned about his impressive tracking skills and got him released from the dungeons before too much damage had been inflicted. He’d purchased Justice’s contract from Olemjessa, then set him free before offering him a position as an apprentice. After five years working directly under Mike, Justice had moved onto a small farm outside of town, only riding into town when called for a job. He’d been working with Mike for about ten years now, a job he enjoyed, mostly.
Mike had sent word late last night that he’d be needed on a difficult tracking assignment today. Justice hoped it wouldn’t involve the House of Pain this time. Their last job had very nearly got them all killed. He didn’t mind dealing with humans, even the most perverted of the lot, but he detested demons, tricky bastards, every last one of them. Any human who thought to outsmart one was an idiot. And there were a lot of idiots in the world who thought they could make a deal with one.
He sat on his sorrel mountain pony a few minutes longer, wondering if he’d ever be able to break completely away from this evil place. Frankly, Justice couldn’t figure out why Mike stuck around, his mentor as sickened by what went on here as he was.
Shaking his head, he nudged his pony into a walk. He’d meet Mike inside after he fed and watered his exhausted horse. Olemjessa would provide fresh ponies if they needed to leave right away.
* * *
“Hey, Mike,” Justice said when Michael opened the door to his personal apartment. “Came as fast as I could. What’s up?” Usually it’d be some runaway slave, one Olemjessa had recently purchased who hadn’t accepted their lot in life. Those who willingly signed a contract with her didn’t usually bother to try to escape. Most were desperate when they arrived. They had nowhere else to go. Or sometimes stressed-out parents rented out their kids, like what had happened to him. Rent, he thought. What a joke. Once you got trapped inside those doors, you rarely got free again, not until you were old, or all used up.
“Take a seat, Kane,” Mike said, motioning toward the living area of his small apartment. He waited until Justice had made himself comfortable on the couch, stretching his long legs out in front of him, to continue. “Got a job last night. Probably gonna be dangerous, so if you decide to say no, I won’t hold it against you.”
Okay, that got his attention. Most jobs were simple matters of tracking down a clueless slave. Hardly dangerous, or difficult. Except for the last one. It’d only been a year or so since they lost Magdalena, Olemjessa’s halfbreed succubus. A wonder they hadn’t all lost some hide over that mess. Justice took off his stained baseball cap and set it on the couch beside him. “All right, I consider myself warned. What’s goin’ on?”
“We gotta track down another one of those halfbreed bitches and bring her back to Darkest Pleasures.”
Justice took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “Shit, Mike. I take it Maggie’s dad musta finally showed up, huh?”
“Yep, and he’s pissed off, naturally.”
“Yeah, he’d probably be really pissed off if he learned Maggie—”
Mike held up his hand, shaking his head. “The demon wants Olemjessa to provide him with an alternate, another halfbreed who’s about the same age as Maggie. We gotta find her and bring her back or the incubus is gonna suck Olemjessa dry.”
Justice pressed his lips together, not sure that would be a bad thing. “Where’s she at, this girl?”
“That’s gonna be the tricky part. The best we can pin down her location, she’s somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, near the ocean.”
“That’s quite a stretch of beach there, Mike.”
Mike rubbed at his jaw as he took a seat across from Justice, looking a little tired. Outwardly, his mentor was an average man in every way, about forty-five years old, five-foot-ten, a hundred and sixty or seventy pounds. He had clear blue eyes and short, light brown hair, pleasant features, though nothing you’d remember five minutes after you met him. But that’s why he could slip through unnoticed where others failed. Michael might look like a weak nobody on the outside, but few men were considered deadlier. Justice tried to blend in, but at six-foot-three and two hundred twenty pounds of solid muscle, he tended to stand out. He wore his dark brown hair cut military short, but his intense brown eyes made a lasting impression.
“Finding the bitch is only half the problem,” Mike finally said. “I’m sure her sire has set up safeguards to confuse the Witches. It’s why we’ve never heard of this one. She’ll also be guarded well, better than Olemjessa did with Maggie.”
“Another whorehouse?”
“I don’t think so, not this time.” Mike rubbed thoughtfully above his top lip with a finger. “We woulda heard about another succubus before now. My guess is this one’ll be with a private family, most likely one with money and power. There aren’t too many like that. Might make finding her a little easier.”
“How would she feed?” Justice had always kept his distance from the halfbreed demon, not planning to be food for any demon, even a beautiful succubus.
“Not my problem. All we gotta do is find her and bring her back.”
“You really want to do that, Mike? Maybe we sh—”
Again, Mike shook his head in warning. “Had my way, I’d kill ’em all, son. They’re evil sombitches, even the halfbreeds. But that’s not our job. The incubus controls Olemjessa, and he wants the hybrid for a bride. Olemjessa pays our wage, so we go get her for them. At least the sick bastard isn’t gonna fuck his own daughter.”
Yeah, that’s what Justice had heard too, that Maggie’s father had wanted her to bear him a child. Guess they didn’t care too much about incest issues. “So what’s your plan?”
Mike’s cold blue eyes stared hard into his own. “We have to go in light. Take too many men and they’ll know trouble is headed their way. I contacted a Witch who’ll be meeting us at the border to Oregon. She should be able to help us lock on the hybrid’s position. It’ll just be the three of us on this hunt. You in?”
Justice nodded. “When do we leave?”
“About an hour before sundown. We’ll travel at night until we get farther north, try to stay out of the sun. It won’t be quite so bad once we get over the pass. You might want to get a couple hours of sleep. Go ahead and crash in my spare bedroom. I’ll get our ponies and supplies lined up.”
