Free Demon's Kiss by V. J. Devereaux

the company’s stock up, he would wait
until the first report of a crash, driving the price down, before offering to
buy at rock-bottom prices. A simple fix, the error found, and the company could
assure everyone its product was safe. The stock would rebound and Templeton
would be covered in glory for having saved the company.
    This man was willing to slaughter thousands to line his
pockets with gold, but he would call Asmodeus debauched, a villain, evil,
simply for being what he was.
    What greater monster was there than one who would sacrifice
the lives of others for his own gain?
    For money?

Chapter Five
     
    Templeton’s men brought Gabriel the food she’d asked for. It
didn’t appear to have been tampered with. Despite her hunger though, Gabriel
ate it slowly, taking a few bites and then waiting to see if perhaps Templeton
had drugged it. Apparently he hadn’t. The food helped restore some of the
strength she had lost to Asmodeus’ feeding.
    Just the memory of that sent a rush of heat through her. Not
that she let those who watched see.
    She had already tried to get past the apparently nonexistent
barriers surreptitiously, on the pretext of testing to find the limits of them.
They definitely existed. They looked like soap bubbles—faint iridescent
barriers—except she was on the inside.
    Venturing even a cautious fraction of an inch too close, she
sensed something whip out of the shadows of half-seen jungle-like trees. She
glimpsed movement from the corner of her eye and quickly stepped back.
    Something flashed by only inches from her face. Something
tangible enough to eddy the air as it passed.
    In the outer darkness of the room someone laughed.
    There was a sense of being watched not just from those outside
the rings but from something within them, as if her startling trip over them
had awakened something within each…and they waited. Hungrily.
    She hid an atavistic shudder. Her skin crawled.
    Knowing Templeton’s people watched, she stretched, bent,
paced, and considered Templeton’s words.
    Everything was a weapon, even her body. She would use
whatever she had to free herself and Asmodeus.
    Weapons. She felt naked without hers, exposed and helpless.
Chewing on her lip, she looked at the firepots. If Asmodeus could conjure
those, could he conjure her gun and badge?
    Suppose he could, where would she hide them?
    She couldn’t carry them, the thin silk didn’t hide much. The
circle was open on almost every side and there were the watchers.
    The bed was an iron frame, the mattress thin and there were
no bedclothes.
    It was something to think about. She’d have to remember to
ask him.
    For the moment she’d use what she had—her wits.
    She looked into the darkness.
    “Templeton said I could use the bathroom and the shower,”
she said, keeping her voice reserved, distant.
    One of Templeton’s men, clearly the leader of the guards—a
tallish man with sharp eyes, his head shaved bald and, by his manner and the
way he held his weapon, either ex-military or police and probably a mercenary—stepped
up to the edge of the circle.
    She didn’t look at him directly, giving all the appearance
of discomfort she didn’t feel.
    “Not so tough now, huh, Agent Nicholas,” he sneered,
“without your gun?”
    Actually, for all her lack of height she was pretty tough
with or without it, she was a self-defense instructor now and again for the
Bureau but she wouldn’t let him know that. It wasn’t time yet. Let him think
her weak, broken.
    She didn’t know their numbers, didn’t know their training.
Making a move without good information was stupid.
    The man’s nametag identified him as Kyle Baker. She
recognized his name from her investigation. Baker was six miles of bad road, a
mercenary who hadn’t made it through SEAL training but had been picked up by a
security company that was nothing more than a thinly veiled supplier of
mercenaries. He’d been with Templeton’s security arm for a year. He’d