Dark Around the Edges Chapter One

T he first thing Devon noticed about the underground lair that he was entering—though “lair” might have been coming on a bit too strong, given that the place was well lit and decorated like a cross between a cathedral and a seraglio—was the smell. It was too delicate to be called a smell, really; a scent, wafting up the stairs and past the two burly men who were waiting to escort Devon into the belly of the beast. The delicate curls of incense were flavored with spikenard, a derivative of the valerian family and supposedly the stuff that drove Judas to rebel after Mary Magdalene used the costly ointment to anoint Jesus’s feet, and...

Devon could feel his overactive memory trying to dive down irrelevant avenues of information in his head, and he firmly refocused himself on the men walking toward him.

“Arms up,” one of the men said, his English barely scratched by an Italian edge. He wore a cheap, shapeless polyester suit and a bolo tie, with some sort of rough-cut brown stone for a pendant. Not exactly contemporary fashion choices, but it looked like the standard uniform for henchmen, if the other guy was anything to judge by.

Devon just smiled and raised his arms, letting the man frisk him and taking note of the Taser at his hip as well as the piece he was trying to hide, a small-caliber pistol in the small of his back. The way he walked suggested there was something strapped down at ankle height, too, but Devon didn’t plan on getting up close and personal enough to make sure.

The man’s hands ran briskly down his legs, and Devon gave a tiny, experimental shimmy of his hips. The man finished his check and stepped a foot back, as square-jawed and implacable as ever. No reaction. In teresting. “This way,” he grunted. The other man never spoke, but he followed behind them, sandwiching Devon between them as they headed deeper underground into the place called the Pearly Gates.

This place, hidden under ten feet of rock and sand in the middle of the Mojave Desert a hundred miles from Las Vegas, seemed like an odd place to set up a lofty den of iniquity. It was hard to get to this ghost town in the center of nowhere. The only visible things that marked the entryway were a crumbling adobe motel and a shuttered gas station. Few people knew about the Pearly Gates, and even fewer were allowed entrance.

No matter how exclusive the entertainment on offer, the inconvenience should have been enough to put people off when the glitz and glamour of Vegas was so readily available. In this case, though, it looked like the first rule of fight club was working in the Pearly Gates’s favor, because this serpent’s belly was filled to the brim with people.

Devon was led into a large central room that looked like it had been plated with marble: floors, ceiling, walls, all of them were white shot through with a soft, pale gold that soothed the eye as much as it captivated. There were silk carpets here and there on the floor, recessed enclosures behind carved wooden dividers for the fortunate few who’d found a place to sit, and beautiful, silent women and men weaving between the guests bearing trays of everything from drinks to drugs. Most of the clientele seemed to be male, men of many different nationalities, if the cut of their suits was anything to judge by, all drinking and smoking and trying to restrain their glances towards the center of the room, where a tall crimson candle in a gold candelabrum was slowly burning down. No one touched it, no one even bumped into it, despite the crowd.

Ah-ha. A timepiece, then. Symbolizing that something everyone was waiting for was going to happen when it burned down to a nub.

“Mr. Klein.” A young woman in a form-fitting silver and blue dress approached with a welcoming smile on her face. “Welcome to the Pearly Gates.”

“Thank you, miss.” Devon smiled charmingly; he couldn’t smile any other way. “Its reputation has preceded it.”

“I trust you’ll be well pleased with what our establishment has on offer. May I bring you anything as you wait for tonight’s entertainment? A bottle of our finest champagne, perhaps, or something stronger, to calm the nerves?” She fluttered her eyelashes enticingly, and it was all Devon could do not to laugh. “Or perhaps even the company of myself, to help occupy your time until the show begins?”

He shouldn’t do it. He knew he shouldn’t, but Devon couldn’t help himself. Being on the receiving end of a seduction was pure challenge for him. He had to prove he could outdo her, even though he was supposed to be keeping a low profile. But then, no one had ever said Devon was good at denying himself.

Devon captured her gaze with his and extended his hand. She gave hers over, almost unconsciously, and he bent over it slowly, in a gesture that appeared courtly from a distance but was smoldering up close. As he bowed, Devon pressed lightly against her body with his power.

Her scent changed instantly, growing stronger as her temperature rose, sweat and musk sliding more freely from her pores and between her legs. She gasped, then clutched her free hand to her neck. Too late, Devon realized that she was wearing the same brown stone as the guards, this time as a choker. It must have acted as some sort of warning, because an instant later she drew back, and the guards immediately reached for their Tasers.

Shit. This was not how the op was supposed to go. “Maria,” Devon muttered around his clenched teeth, “they can tell what I am.”

“Can you get out of there?” Maria asked through the com, her voice so faint that if his hearing hadn’t been naturally augmented, Devon wouldn’t have been able to hear her.

“Not sure yet.” He straightened up and smiled again. “Actually, I just remembered that I left something rather important in my car. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Nameless Guard Number One grunted, reaching for Devon’s arm.

Devon reacted instantly, grabbing the man’s wrist and jerking it aside as he spun toward him and neatly kicked him just above his ear. Guard Number One staggered back, giving Devon time to deal with Number Two, who had gotten his Taser free and aimed all of its fifty thousand volts at Devon.

Devon ducked the first deployment and smirked as he heard one of the guests fall and begin to convulse, his glass of expensive scotch shattering against the marble floor. He closed the distance and threw a front kick into Number Two’s gut, bending him just enough for Devon’s knee to connect solidly with his face. That freed up a path back down the hall, toward the door that Devon knew he needed a keycard to get out of. He grabbed Number’s Two’s off of his slumped body and got a running start back down the hallway before he felt the strike of a Taser’s barbs low in his back. The electric shock arched his body so hard he could hear his vertebrae creak, and Devon collapsed rigidly to the floor.

“Harper? Do you copy, Harper?” Yeah, he copied, but his tongue felt swollen in his mouth, too thick to speak. Devon just stared up at white-winged angel painted on the ceiling, its wide grey eyes seeming to glare down at him. After a moment that glare was replaced by a view of the young woman, who still held onto the Taser she must have grabbed from Number One. She snapped something in Italian, and Devon swore to himself that when he got out of here he was learning that goddamn language, because nothing was more obnoxious that being talked about when you couldn’t understand.

Numbers One and Two, rather the worse for wear, came and hoisted him to his feet none too gently. “Saint Peter,” the young woman said firmly, and spun around, her skirt swirling out like a peacock’s tail. The men followed behind her, and Devon came along by default.

“Harper? Harper? Shit.”

Devon didn’t often agree with his handler, but in this instance, Maria was totally right. Shit .