Immortal Seduction Read online

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  Torquere Press

  www.torquerepress.com

  Copyright ©2008 by ME Monte

  First published in www.torquerepress.com, 2008

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

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  Chapter One

  "The Chief just called for a collective meeting. Each unit's attendance is mandatory."

  Darren Cox tried to ignore the voice of his young, overexcited partner and focus on completing the paperwork from their last assignment, but it was a difficult task when the object of his irritation was leaning one slender hip on the only open space on his cluttered desk. He stubbornly tried to avoid eye contact in the hopes that the kid would be able to read his body language for once.

  "It must be something important if the Chief wants everyone there, don't ya think?"

  Darren sighed and rubbed his weary eyes. He had been focusing on his latest report for close to three hours without a break. Having been dead for over a decade now, he did have the advantage of not needing to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. The disadvantage was he couldn't use any of those bodily functions to escape the annoying, male teenage presence that was devoid of the knowledge of personal space.

  He had been partnered with Tanner Simms for a little over a month now, had gone on ten assignments with the kid, and had been unable to convey his full dislike to the cheerful nuisance. It usually only took a week for his partners to take the hint and quit trying to befriend him. In another week they usually requested a transfer out of his department into another in the Agency. For the life of him, ha-ha, he couldn't figure out what made Tanner such a slow learner. He wasn't treating the guy with any more warmth than his twelve previous partners, and yet the nuisance followed him around like a puppy, practically worshipping every foul word that left his mouth.

  "I have an idea, Brat. Why don't you shut up and wait for the Chief to explain what's going on when we get to the meeting?” Darren barked in his best pissed-off voice. It didn't take much, considering his voice was gravelly from not being used in hours.

  Usually his rudeness would end any conversation and result in the person getting angry and storming off or retreating into a hurt silence. Tanner did neither of these things. He smiled and continued to swing his legs and perch on his senior partner's desk.

  "Sure, he'll explain, but it's fun to try to figure out the mystery before he comes out and tells us. Maybe this time we'll need to retrieve the soul of a lounge lizard who died before confessing his love to a certain senorita. He might be standing below her balcony right now, serenading her with his ghostly ballads. Or it could be a drug dealer who died before delivering his last big shipment and fleeing to safety across the Mexican border. Maybe we'll even get caught in the crossfire—"

  Darren pushed away from his desk and stormed toward his supervisor's office without looking back to see if his young partner was following. He bet the kid was still rambling on, even though there was no longer an audience. Darren often heard Tanner talking to himself as he wandered around the office, performing whatever menial duties had been assigned to him. It was a good thing the kid was already dead, because he would rather talk than live.

  The plaque on the Chief's door read, “Malcolm Reed, Retriever Division Supervisor, Agency of Afterlife Activity.” Darren opened the heavy metal door to find the rest of his division operatives seated around the Chief's desk, apparently waiting for him and Tanner. His partner sauntered in right behind him and flounced into a chair with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

  "Told you I could get him in here in less than five minutes."

  Darren was about to verbally abuse that gloating look off his partner's face when his boss stepped in to save Tanner's hide.

  "Don't blow a gasket, Cox. I sent Simms to bring you in to the meeting, using whatever methods he deemed necessary. I know how hard it is for you to pull yourself away from a report that's almost complete."

  "Next time you can just shoot me to get my attention. It'll be less painful."

  Tanner tossed him an unaffected grin and ignored the insult. Damn him.

  Even though the members of the Retriever Division were no longer alive, acts of violence toward them still triggered residual feelings of pain that it took many years to overcome. It took more time to forget what it was like for your body to feel pain than it did to forget cravings for forms of sustenance. Those ghosts who had been dead a long time forgot how it felt to hurt, but no one in the room besides Darren qualified for such a status. There were things that could truly damage them, even in their undead form, but these forms of dark voodoo were not practiced by most of the ghosts they were sent to retrieve.

  "All right, settle down. I called you all here because I've gotten word of a dangerous assignment that I didn't feel right about just sticking a unit with. I'm going to lay it out for you and see if any group is willing to volunteer."

  That got Darren's undivided attention. The Chief was a fair man, but he wasn't a soft one. He didn't believe in coddling his subordinates, not even Tanner, who at nineteen was the baby of their division. If Reed thought this assignment was going to be tough, it meant there must be black magic involved. Darren glanced over at his partner to see if Tanner was picking up on the ominous undertones of the Chief's announcement, but read only open curiosity on the young face.

  The kid was too stupid and inexperienced to be afraid, while Darren was too weary and jaded not to expect it.

  He glanced around the room at the other four operatives who made up their department, scanning their expressions for signs of their thoughts. There were only three units in the Retriever Division, and each unit was composed of a pair of operatives. He and Tanner made up unit one, the Hawk Unit, while a second unit, codename Borreal, contained a blonde ditz called Chandra Daley and a chemistry nerd named Bennet Hollinger. The last unit, codename Elf, consisted of a former playboy who had partied himself to death, Steven Carlisle, and a meek Asian flower, Sakura Mihato. Each unit was named after a type of owl, the nocturnal birds of prey.

  "Will the unit that volunteers be awarded an extended vacation leave once the assignment is completed?” Steven asked in his whiny, white, rich voice.

  "Maybe you should wait to hear the assignment before you start asking for perks."

  Darren loved hearing the Chief shut down the vapid playboy with his authoritative, no-nonsense voice. Standing at over six feet tall, and nearly as broad as he was high, their supervisor was an intimidating African-American male. Before he was killed in the line of duty, he had served as precinct lieutenant police department in one of the slum neighborhoods of New York. He was used to keeping misfits a lot more challenging than Carlisle in line.

  "Well, don't drag out the suspense, Chief. What's the assignment?” Chandra rasped in her phone sex voice. Dying in a freak liposuction accident had not changed the way she used her former supermodel body and call gir
l voice to wrap men around her bony fingers. The only feelings she evoked in Darren were disgust. If only he could say the same for Tanner.

  He had only recently begun to notice a change in his attitude toward Tanner. The kid still pissed him off, and he still treated Tanner like crap, but the reason for his aggression was evolving. In the beginning the kid's chattering and infallible cheer had been more than enough reason for verbal abuse, but as their days together marched on, Darren began to notice new things that pissed him off. Tanner's eyes, which were far too large, blue, and long-lashed for a guy, made him angry. His partner's full lips, which were rosy and bowed on the top, practically begged for fists to crash into them. Then there was Tanner's compact little body, which was a huge distraction and could send him into a fit of temper without warning.

  Half the time he wanted to physically assault the brat, and the other half of the time Darren wanted to throw Tanner down on the nearest available surface and fuck his brains out.

  Darren did the same thing he always did with these disturbing thoughts that were popping up in his mind more and more often. He buried them beneath a mountain of anger and a bad attitude. He had not been a homosexual while he was alive, and he sure as hell was not going to be one after death.

  "There's a very dangerous ghost on the loose. No surprise there, since it is your job to retrieve ghosts with unfinished business and send them back across the Veil. This ghost, however, is more harmful than most. When he was alive, he was a bank teller by day and a serial killer by night. He killed his victims in satanic rituals that required the draining of their blood, but he did it on church altars. His killings were an unprecedented combination of the religious and the arcane, and the FBI was never able to come up with a set profile to catch the guy when he was alive. He died before abducting his last intended victim for sacrifice, and so his soul has been sighted wandering around her property, still waiting for its moment to strike. It wasn't until after his untimely death that the FBI was finally able to connect this serial killer with his crimes, due to paraphernalia from the murders being found in his house during the investigation. Fortunately from their end, his death meant the end of a gruesome crime spree. For us, it means the work is just beginning."

  "How'd he die?” Tanner interrupted, a look of awed excitement on his face. Darren could just imagine the kid's young, warped mind filling in all the unknown, gory details.

  "He was killed by a carbon monoxide leak in his home. A pretty anti-climactic end for such a violent man."

  The disappointed look on Tanner's face said that he agreed.

  "Let me guess. Those satanic rituals you mentioned, they were the kind that evoked the power of demon spirits,” Darren interjected with bitter certainty.

  Reed nodded, a serious expression on his angled face. Some of the operatives in their division claimed that Reed was clairvoyant, that he could see moments of the future before they happened. Darren didn't know if it was a result of this unusual ability, or from working together for so long, but his supervisor didn't seem surprised that this question came from him.

  "That's right. He called on the type of hungry demons who devour souls, either from the living or the dead, in return for powers that he is still relying on from beyond the grave. Whoever takes this case will be facing some dark magic of the fiercest kind. What do you think now, Carlisle?"

  The Chief's face broke into an evil smile as he pinned the vocal pretty boy with an obviously rhetorical question. There was no way Carlisle was ready for this kind of assignment. He had never been up against a demon before, and would probably piss all over his designer jeans if he had to. Darren was the only operative in the room who had faced off against demonic powers and won.

  Demons were a tricky lot. They were the upper-class servants of the Devil, those given the power to cross over into the land of the living and interfere with humanity. The only way to get rid of them was to revoke their permission to cross over, which could only be done through knowledge of the ancient revoking rituals. It was also possible to bypass trapping a demon back in hell by killing them, but that was a near impossible task since you would need to know the demon's name, a secret each monster carefully guarded when they came above.

  It looked like there was not much choice in whether Darren took the case or not. Unless he wanted a serial killer to continue getting his jollies off of butchering innocent women, he was going to take the case. To his surprise, before he could voice his acceptance, he heard Tanner's excited words.

  "Darren and I will take the case. He has the most experience, and I want a chance to take down a demon. I know we can do it."

  The Chief looked as surprised as Darren felt to have such an eager volunteer. Darren was going to accept the assignment out of obligation, but he damned sure was not going to be so happy about it.

  Tanner seemed to remember his partner in time to make eye contact with a blush and a sheepish expression. “If that's okay with Darren, of course."

  Being the senior member of their unit meant Darren had the final say in whether they accepted the mission or not. He remained silent for a minute, and pretended to consider the mission while Tanner squirmed in his seat with agitated impatience. That was his one weapon that always worked against his young, energetic partner. All he had to do was draw a situation out. Tanner was a true child of the digital age, a multi-tasker at heart, and could not stand to wait.

  "We accept."

  Tanner flashed the Chief a huge smile that had “I told you so” written all over it. Darren tried not to groan as he anticipated the never-ending questions his partner would bombard him with about demons as soon as they left this office.

  "Excellent. I'll have the file on your desk tomorrow morning. Until then, enjoy some free time, Unit Hawk. Units Borreal and Elf, return to your previous duties.” The Chief's knowing smile communicated that he was not surprised at the outcome of this meeting. The bastard probably did have a sixth sense; like he needed another advantage.

  "How about some free time for us, too, Chief?” Steven asked with a hopeful grin. His perfectly-tanned skin was oozing charm in an attempt to get out of work, his favorite pastime.

  "How about I add a few more cases to your work load?” Reed threatened in a good-natured voice. He was used to Steven's futile attempts at laziness, and was obviously not surprised by this most recent one.

  Steven's partner Sakura rolled her eyes and shuffled out of the office with the other division members. Darren was surprised that she hadn't put in for a transfer yet. She was as serious as he was, and he found Carlisle to be an unbearable pest.

  "On second thought, I could not possibly abandon the important cases clamoring for my attention at the moment. I hear them calling right now.” The scrawny freeloader made his escape before his supervisor could make good on those threats.

  Darren waited behind his fellow employees, lingering in Reed's office for the private meeting he knew would take place after the public one. Tanner was waiting by the door for him, but he waved his arm in a manner that communicated his partner should go on and he would catch up later. He closed the door behind him, commanding himself to not glance at the firm ass of his partner as Tanner sauntered away.

  "How do you think the kid will handle this assignment?” Reed asked when it was just Darren and his libido left in the room.

  "He'll probably fall apart, but not until after the first encounter with a demon. Until then there'll be no dissuading him. The kid's an obstinate brat."

  Reed smiled another of his all-knowing smiles and rubbed his chin in a considering way. Darren saw no rhyme or reason to the staff that his boss had gathered together under the wing of his division. Each agent had a different personality type and brought diverse skills to the table, but none of them had previous lives that prepared them to do the kind of tracking and detective work they engaged in now. Except for Darren himself. He had been a sniper assassin with the CIA before being shot by a rival agent. It still pissed him off that someone had been bette
r than him at the job, but the longer he was dead, the less it irked him.

  Pairing him with Tanner had been out of the blue and still made no sense. He had chewed up and spit out every other partner that had been sent his way. He was an unapologetic loner who had developed the knack for flying solo on his loner missions while alive, and dying had certainly not improved his people skills. For a long while he'd simply been without a partner, and rejoiced that the Chief had finally given up on finding him one. Like some socks, he was destined to be without a double.

  Then one day he had been introduced to an energetic youth who was a walking wet dream and a solitude-minded man's worst nightmare. Since then he hadn't enjoyed a moment of calm. Apparently Hurricane Tanner had no eye and refused to dissolve.

  "Would you recommend switching him out with a member from another unit for this case? I'm sure Mihato would be willing to step in and spare Simms a confrontation with a demon."

  No doubt Sakura would perform the favor to protect Tanner. She had a soft spot for the kid. She was the only member of their agency who had been married with children before dying of breast cancer. Their youngest member rekindled her maternal instincts in a way reminiscent of a mama grizzly protecting her cubs.

  Darren honestly examined the Chief's proposal while the comfortable silence stretched out between them. After working together for numerous years, Reed understood how Darren's mind worked as it dissected a problem and generated solutions. He would not speak again until after Darren did.

  If Darren swapped Tanner for Sakura, he could finally get a break from the brat's incessant chatter. And considering the complicated nature of the case, his break could last for several weeks. However, if he wanted a way to push the kid into quitting, there was no better opportunity than a soul-threatening case like this one. It would take Tanner to the edge of his worst nightmares, and leave him dangling before finally shoving him over. Darren could not pass up this ripe chance to lance the boil that had been attaching itself to his side slowly but surely.