Lethal Blow: (Succubus Hitwoman Book 2) by Eliza Hendrix (love books to read TXT) 📕

A vivid image flashes in my mind—her lying naked on her back with her legs around my waist, and me, wearing a seven-inch silicone strap-on. A throbbing heat radiates between my legs and I bite the inside of my cheek to prevent grabbing her by the hair and dragging her into the nearest closet.

She reaches for one of her drinks, winks at me, and chugs it back.

I grin. “Why don’t you show me where your room—”

“E-e-excuse me.”

My eyes go huge. Who the fuck is interrupting this intense, heated moment?

Begrudgingly, I turn toward the voice to find a scrawny man with a major slouch in his posture. He wears Coke-bottle glasses that make his black eyes look five times their regular size. His skin, a light—almost white—beige, matches his short, unkempt hair, which looks like it’s been combed forward, causing long, uneven points to hover above his brows. His head twitches from side to side as he stands there, and I can’t tell if he’s nervous or if he has a tic.

I say nothing—I think the look on my face says it all: What the fuck do you want?

“I-I-I heard you’re looking for… for a spider.”

Goddamn it. What kind of freak did I attract?

“I’ll give you two a moment,” the woman says, giving the strange little man a full up-and-down look.

“No,” I blurt, but she turns away, having clearly lost all interest.

No shit. This guy threw me off my game and fucked up my Lure.

Clenching my fists, I breathe out hard, his body almost disappearing as I narrow my eyes.

“Or a black… widow?” he says eerily, his big bug eyes darting from left to right.

Is this guy for real? How could someone like him know anything about an underground rebellion? He looks like someone who used to be a mouse in his past life.

And wow. When did I become so judgmental?

I guess being a thousand years old does that to a person.

“You know about black widows?” I ask.

He scrunches his nose and pulls his upper teeth back to reveal two long yellow front teeth, then nods so fast it looks like another one of his twitches.

A Ratiken demon—of course. And yes, the name is derived from the rodent. These demons are known to look terrified all the time. You sneeze and they squeal. But Ratikens have proven themselves useful for transmitting messages to people across the globe. They’re rats, after all. They travel underground, in the sewers, in ventilation systems… anywhere they can to collect information. Why? Because information pays.

“Tell me what you know,” I say.

He searches the room behind me again and sways his head from side to side, his oversized ears moving in all directions as he takes in the noise around us.

I’ve been so busy analyzing his giant eyes that I didn’t even notice those satellites for ears, which are always a clear indication of this demon’s race. Those, and—

With hands hanging in front of his chest like raptor arms, he swings around, and a giant hairless tail sweeps the floor.

Yeah, that.

“Come on,” he says in a sharp whisper. “I’ll show you.”

Chapter 9

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“I-I-I’m Peter, by the way,” says the Ratiken.

He takes me across the Red Lounge and toward the bathroom corridor. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit reluctant to follow a Ratiken into a bathroom. I’m told they have some magical abilities, and for all I know, he’s capable of flushing me down a toilet and sending me to his sewer friends.

We walk down the corridor, passing a male witch and a short hairy demon, and Peter stops in front of a solid steel door that reads, Staff Only.

He makes a weird ticking sound with his mouth, like he’s clicking his teeth together, and reaches into his shirt. Out comes an access card hanging on a lanyard, and with it, he swipes the small electronic box next to the door’s handle.

A soft beep comes from the machine, followed by the clicking sound of something unlocking.

Pushing the door open, he jerks his head sideways, signaling me to follow.

I can’t help but glance down both ends of the corridor before going in. While I don’t often give a shit about rules or the law, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of getting banned from this place or getting sent to Hellfire City.

But I need to find Devania, so I suck in a sharp breath and follow Peter the Ratiken inside the staff room.

To my surprise, no one else is inside. Overhead, the lights are dim, almost like the power’s gone out and the hotel’s being run off a backup generator. One light keeps flickering, making me want to expand one of my wings and smash it with my claw.

It’s creepy as fuck.

Biting my tongue, I do my best to ignore it. Peter leads me through what appears to be a staff kitchen—again, completely empty—and I follow him through another door. There’s something off about this one. It looks like something taken off a castle centuries ago with its orange, wet-looking wood. Running horizontally across the panels are two slabs of black iron, and next to one of them is a long handle made of the same material.

What the hell is something like that doing in a modern kitchen like this?

Turning sideways, he aims one of his black beady eyes at me. “Can you see it?”

I crinkle my nose. “See what? The door?”

He pulls his lips over his big front teeth and nods. “Good.”

Who the fuck would miss something like that? I squint at it when I realize there’s moss on the damn thing. And it’s not like this door is limited to magical eyes only—it’s sitting in the goddamn Dark Hall. Most people here have some sort of