0.5 Deadly Hearts Read Online Free

widened and face paled, so obviously something worked.
    “You got six couples and failed on the seventh,” Elise said, swinging her sword like a cane as she rounded his chair. “Sloppy work. You should have done them all at once if you wanted to avoid getting caught. What are you building energy for? You’re not big enough to manage an ascension, but it’s got to be pretty good, if you need seven pairs of hearts.”
    “ I will copulate with you and tear through your organs with my phallus, ” he said.
    James took a step forward, but Elise stopped him with a hard look. She leaned on the chair and got close to Rich’s ear.
    “I think you’re trying to work up the energy to breed,” she said in a low voice.
    He jerked and tried to bite her. His teeth snapped harmlessly at the air.
    “Piggyback?” James asked, moving to Elise’s side.
    “No,” she said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
    James frowned. “What? Why?” Because this demon feeds on broken hearts . She bit the inside of her cheek and just shook her head. “Well, do you have some idea what this thing is?”
    Oh, Elise had ideas, all right. She’d had ideas about which demon it had to be when she first heard that he was targeting divorcing couples.
    She cast a sideways glance at Rich and sighed.
    Of all the things she didn’t want to have to talk about with her aspis…
    “I know exactly what it is,” she finally said. She reached under the chair to press the button on her tape recorder. The gears started moving with a gentle hiss. “This is Elise Kavanagh. It’s February fourteenth, two thousand and three, and I’m exorcising Rich Harris.”
    The demon hissed, spitting saliva that looked and smelled like magma.
    “Elise?” James asked in a low voice, quiet enough that the recorder wouldn’t pick it up.
    She started looping the chains around Rich’s neck, and he thrashed, throwing his head from side to side. “Courevore,” she said, addressing the demon directly. “You’re breaking about a thousand laws by walking this Earth.”
    Rich Harris’s lips widened in a painful grin. A black tongue snaked between his teeth. “ I go where I please .”
    James mouthed the name silently. Courevore . Recognition illuminated his features.
    “Sure, you can go wherever you want,” Elise said. “As long as you don’t mind volunteering yourself for a death sentence. I saw a bounty for your life not even a month ago. You’ve moved fast.”
    “ Release me, or this man dies .”
    Did he mean Rich Harris, or James? Elise couldn’t take that risk.
    She took James aside. “Why don’t you give me some space?” she whispered.
    “But you need the help.”
    “Having you around can only make me vulnerable to this thing,” Elise said.
    “He can’t have any effect on us,” James said, but he didn’t sound very convincing. He raked a hand through his hair and blew a breath out. He wouldn’t look at Elise. “It’s not like we’re…”
    “Yeah, right,” she said. “You better wait outside.”
    “I don’t think…”
    Elise put a hand on his arm. “Please,” she said.
    James’s shoulders slumped. “All right.” Another sigh, and then he added, “I’m sorry.”
    He made a hand gesture like parting a curtain and stepped out of the circle of power.
    As soon as he was gone, Elise faced Rich again. Now the tips of his hair were smoking. She wasn’t exactly hung up on saving this guy—nobody would be heartbroken over a lost grifter scamming money from broken hearts. But James was watching. She couldn’t just kill Rich and save herself the effort, either.
    “I’ll give you one chance to be honest with me and return safely to Hell. Where are your offspring?” Elise asked, drawing her other sword.
    “ You will never find them. Not if you lived a thousand lifetimes. ”
    Elise had been wearing a pink shirt and oven mitts all day. She had no patience for this bullshit.
    “Courevore, devourer of broken hearts, lover of the