Page 9 of Love Her Ruin
"I know what he is," she says, and her voice drops to that cold, flat register that means the queen's speaking. "I've always known what he is."
"Aye, but knowing and hunting are different things. Ye've never hunted a man before, Prayer. Not like this. Not with the intent to end him."
Eddie nods slowly. "He's right. We can’t take any chances that fuck this up. If he gets away, if Azhrael can’t find him, we'll spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders waiting for him to come back."
Sera's jaw sets. "Then we don't fuck it up."
"Nae.” I let go of her arm, step back, and look at both of them. "Which is why ye need to let me go find him."
Eddie tilts his head. “Why you?”
“I know some people who owe me favors. These people have cameras in the sky that shouldnae exist but do and can help us spot the bloody wanker.”
Prayer's shadow-filled eyes narrow. "What people? What are you talking about, James?"
This is the part I don't talk about unless I fancy a nice waterboarding. The part that lives in the cupboard under the stairs with my mum's shoes and my da's fists and all the other dark things I’ve done and witnessed.
But if we're doing this—if we're hunting a sheriff with the intent to end him and walk away clean—they need to know what kind of Fist I really am.
"I’m a contractor," I say. "Not the kind that builds houses. The kind that gets a phone call at three in the morning and a dossier with no return address and a large number at the bottom that goes into my bank account. The kind that works for agencies with three letters and budgets that don't exist on paper."
Eddie goes very still. "Black ops."
"Something like that. Off-books. The jobs nobody wants their fingerprints on." I meet his eyes. "High-value targets. The kind of thing that keeps lawyers and politicians and world leaders up at night and hardly ever makes the news."
"You’re a professional killer." Prayer’s voice is quiet, curious, not horrified.
That doesnae surprise me. She's a woman who sold her soul to a demon and fucked the three of us in a pile on her living room floor. My life’s quaint by comparison.
"Aye, and I’m good at it," I say. "I wake up thinking about the next job, the next target, the next time I get to put a man down and watch the light go out. I’m known as The Beast, and The Beast doesnae care who it hurts."
Sera steps forward and kisses me, hard and brief and claiming. "You're my beast now."
I grin. "Aye. I am."
Eddie clears his throat. “How did you get into the business of killing people for a living?”
“A pub in Belfast,” I tell him. “Always some such place, aye? A bloke in a suit came up to me, and I could tell straight away he didnae want to fuck me. He asked me if I wanted to do some good. I told him I’d settle for useful. Mi5 liked the way I read a room. CIA liked the way I disappeared. FBI liked my efficiency. I liked the numbers on the transfers and the way my hands stopped shaking when I put men in the ground who’d earned it thrice over.”
"So you think you can find him?" Eddie asks.
"Aye."
"Good." He looks at me, and there's a respect in his eyes that wasn't there before. "Then let’s get going."
I nod. I’ve got a handful of saints in my contacts, none of them holy. I dial the first and start planning a murder.
* * *
The answer comes back in less than two hours while Sera sleeps on the couch and Daddy watches over her.
I pull up Vincent’s current location on my phone, and I grin, not because I was right that he’s hiding out in a church, but because this is going to be fucking child’s play.
Our Lady of Sorrows is a Gothic Revival cathedral that's been slowly dying for fifty years, the congregation bleeding out one funeral at a time until there's nothing left but stone and stained glass and the god-shaped hole where faith used to live. The building sits on a corner lot, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence that's more rust than iron, with a small cemetery in the back.
I also pull up a shockingly clear photo of Vincent entering the church earlier tonight, Bible under his arm, his face arranged in an expression of such perfect piety it makes my teeth ache.
Eddie moves to look over my shoulder. He nods, and there's no judgment in it, just assessment. The old Eddie might've had opinions about the legalities of my intel. This Eddie just wants to know if the intel's good.
