Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel by Faith Hunter Read Free Book Online Page A

I’ll watch.”
    He ended the call and I turned to Wrassler. “So can I see the storage basement again?”
    Wrassler shrugged his massive shoulders, ushered Derek and me into the elevator, placed his palm on the openmouthed display, and punched a button. We started down. And kept on going.
    After a too-long descent, that odd smell of panic came again from Wrassler and he pulled his big-ass weapon. Derek pulled a gun too, a snub-nosed .32. I had an image of Mini Me from some old movie. Smothering a totally inappropriate titter-giggle, and only an instant behind them, I pulled my stake and the tiny knife. Micro Mini Me.
    The lights flickered in the enclosed space. My breath caught, laughter mutating into something darker.
    The elevator car came to a stop. The doors opened. And everything went black. Derek whispered a curse, soft, fierce, and emphatic.
    The space around us and before us was blacker than the mouth to hell. Wrassler clicked on a small penlight, holding it to the side of the laser sight, which did nothing to penetrate the darkness of the room/hallway/cellar/dungeon/whatever-the-heck-it-was in front of us. The narrow bands of light were swallowed.
    The stench that hit my nose nearly buckled my knees. It was a combination of old blood, rotten herbs, vinegar, sour urine, and sickly sweat. And then I heard breathing, a slow inhale. Slower exhale. Above us, the lights came back on, blinding after the dark. The space beyond remained black even as the elevator closed with a soft
whoosh
of sound.
    “Palm,” Derek murmured to Wrassler. “Fast.”
    Wrassler transferred the heavy gun to a one-handed stance, slapped his hand on the laser-reader box, and hit the button for the main floor.
Yes. That. Do not attempt to stop on the storage floor. Just take me outta here.
The elevator began to rise, and I realized I had spoken aloud, not just in my head. I hissed softly, inhaling through my teeth.
    Derek had started to curse, a single word, over and over, under his breath. In the moments we had faced the blackness, he had sweated through his shirt. So had Wrassler. So had I.“Someone want to tell me what the hell that was?” Derek demanded, when he could say something more coherent.
    Wrassler, a faint tremor in his hands, holstered his weapon and said, “Don’t know. Tall tales. Stuff to scare children. Stories the regulars used to tell the newbies, about a dark room, where things are kept, things that used to be human. Maybe. Or maybe never were.”
    “Boo stuff,” I quoted, hiding my weapons again.
    “Boo stuff,” Wrassler agreed. “Tall tales. Till now. And we gotta get you better weapons,” he said to us.
    “Yeah,” we both said.
    The doors opened and we stepped off onto the main floor, full of lights and milling people, and the bloody smell of vamp digs—herbs, funeral flowers, blood, humans, sex, alcohol, food cooking. Somewhere someone laughed. So normal. Only now did a shiver tremble along my spine, as my adrenal system did a quiver and shake. My mouth suddenly tasted bitter.
    I pulled my keys and headed for the door, dodging Bethany, one of the outclan priestesses. She was dressed in a vibrant crimson skirt and shawl, with a purple shirt and bell-shaped earrings that tinkled. As always, she was barefoot, and her toenails were painted the same shade of red as her skirt. Either that or she had been dancing in blood. I turned around in midstride and got another look. Yeah. Polish. With Bethany, one never knew.
    On her heels was Sabina, the other priestess, dressed in her starched, nun-habit-like whites. It was good to see them in the same room, though I wasn’t sure what that might mean. They didn’t always get along. Sabina’s whites weren’t splashed with blood, so at least they weren’t killing anyone together. Today. Yet. I grabbed my weapons from the security guy at the front door checkpoint, without speaking, without glad-handing, without good-byes, and blew out of HQ into the night.
    It had