A Demon in Dallas Read Online Free Page B

recently gone missing, I’m afraid there isn’t a lot I can do about that.”
    My ears pricked. “How do you know about Matt?”
    Malaki lifted one perfectly shaped brow, his smug grin returning. “I have my sources.”
    “If you know that he’s missing, then you also know who took him and where he’s being held.”
    Malaki nodded and the self-satisfied grin that I was so used to seeing on his face became wider. “I do, as it happens. I also know why he was taken and I have it on very good authority that he is not being harmed. I’ll be more than happy to give you his location when you’ve helped me find the demon in Dallas.”
    I scowled. “Does the man upstairs know about your penchant for blackmail?”
    “Needs must,” he returned with a shrug.
    “Fine, give me the damn details.”
    I didn’t like my position one little bit, but Malaki had me boxed into a corner and he knew it. I could have just waited to see if Connor could come up with the goods, but it didn’t pay to get on the wrong side of angels. Besides, Malaki would owe me a favour. Even though I disliked him, he would be a good person to have fighting in my corner. Angels were conniving SOBs and would do almost anything to achieve their objectives, but if they owed you something, they always paid up.
    The demon, as it turned out, was no small fry. I hadn’t crossed paths with him personally, but I had heard of him. Barbatos was apparently working with a pack of were-shifters in Dallas. Together, they had stolen a sacred book from a witch in a local coven. Malaki didn’t know all the details or what the shifters had offered as compensation for helping them, but demons didn’t come cheap. Neither did they accept money as payment. Souls were of far greater use to them and a more common bargaining tool.
    When I’d learned everything Malaki intended to tell me about the demon, which wasn’t a lot, I left him at the bar. He’d been eyeing up a pair of blondes during our conversation and was already making his way over to their table before I was out of the door. Malaki told me to call him when I’d located the demon, or more specifically, the book that the demon had stolen. He seemed more eager to get his hands on that than the demon himself. During the cab ride back to the motel, I got a call from Connor. I checked my watch, surprised to be hearing from him so soon.
    “Meet me at Oakwood cemetery as soon as you can,” he said, then promptly hung up.
    With a roll of my eyes, I gave the cab driver my new destination and ten minutes later we were pulling up outside the front gates. It sure was turning out to be one shitty night.
    The cemetery was huge. Forty acres, to be precise. I knew because I’d spent countless hours pacing it while waiting for the newly undead to rise. Not one of my favourite pastimes, but when you’re a vampire hunter, cemeteries are undoubtedly the best places to catch your quarry.
    The cab driver had raised his eyebrows when I told him where to drop me off, but he knew better than to ask questions. He probably assumed I was a junkie looking to score my next fix. Why else would a woman be visiting a graveyard in the dead of night?
    When the tail lights of the cab had disappeared, I trudged on to my destination. Two years had passed since I’d last visited the cemetery, but I retraced my steps as though I’d made them only yesterday. I knew where Connor would be waiting. We’d hunted together a myriad of times before I’d left Texas and we’d always met in the same place—a large grey tombstone that towered above its neighbours and sat about five hundred yards in to the east.
    I snaked my way through countless graves, some of them large and overly ostentatious, others a breeding ground for weeds and not even a simple wooden cross to mark the occupants’ time on earth. Those graves always reminded me of how small and insignificant I was, and how quickly a person could be forgotten if they left no legacy behind or had