Web of Death - (Elemental Assassin, #1.5) Page 0,2

that covered her face and bare arms. It looked like Tommy and Billy had brought her out here, turned her loose, and then chased after her, like a sick sort of hide and seek.

Unlike the two men, the woman was not dressed for the rugged terrain. Instead of jeans, she wore a slinky, satin, plum-colored dress that barely stretched up to cover her breasts and just skimmed down to the tops of her toned thighs. The silver sequins on the dress caught the dwindling light and flashed it back, like hundreds of fireflies winking on and off. The woman was also wearing a pair of fuck-me stilettos, although I could see that the heels had broken off during her run through the forest.

"I never thought you were all that smart, Jasmine," Tommy, the vampire, said. "But you got real stupid, thinking you could leave me. Thinking you could just quit being one of my whores because you got a better offer from Roslyn Phillips."

My brows arched up in the darkness. Oh yes, things got more interesting by the second. Because Roslyn Phillips was the vampire madam that ran Northern Aggression, Ashland's most decadent nightclub. Roslyn provided everything that a body could want at her club, including men and women to see to her paying customers' more pressing, lusty needs.

Tommy's conversation with Jasmine told me that he was most likely a pimp and that Jasmine was one of his working girls. Not unusual. The vamps pretty much owned the sex trade in Ashland. All vamps needed blood to live, of course, just like humans needed food and vitamins. But lots of vamps also got the same kind of healthy high from sex, which is why so many of them worked in the world's oldest profession. For the vamps, it was win-win. Money and a power boost, all at the same time.

"Stupid bitch," Tommy muttered.

The vampire pimp suddenly stopped his pacing and lashed out, kicking Jasmine in the back with his hiking boot. She let out another moan of pain and would have pitched forward face-first into the dirt if Billy hadn't still been holding her by her hair. The two men laughed, but Jasmine didn't hear them. That final kick had pushed her over the edge. I could tell by the way her limp body dangled from the giant's hand that she was finally unconscious. Probably better that way for her.

"Hold her still," Tommy said. "While I get things set up."

Tommy dropped to his knees in the leaves and started rooting around in his backpack, coming up with a hammer and four metal spikes with leather loops on the ends of them. A minute later, he was pounding the stakes into the soft soil with his hammer. All four of them, in the shape of a woman-sized rectangle.

I stared at the loops and the dried, rusty stains that had soaked into the leather. It didn't take a genius to figure out that those were bloodstains and that Tommy and Billy had done this sort of thing before. And I knew exactly what they were going to do to the woman, Jasmine. Bringing her out here in the woods and chasing and beating her weren't enough. No, now they were going to tie her down and rape her before they finally killed her. Sick bastards.

Of course, some folks would have thought that I was sick, for killing so many people for money over the years. But I had a code that I followed, rules that I lived by. No killing kids or pets. No framing someone for my murders. And most especially, no torture. I might have killed people as the Spider, but I did it quickly, efficiently, with my silverstone knives. I'd certainly never tied anyone down spread-eagle with the dark, twisted intentions that Tommy and Billy had in mind for Jasmine.

But now, I had a decision to make. Because Tommy and Billy hadn't seen me hiding in the shadows. Nobody ever did, until it was too fucking late. So I could easily slip away, leave Jasmine to her gruesome fate, and walk back to Fletcher Lane's house without anyone being the wiser-except me.

I'd recently learned that Fletcher had had a bit of an altruistic streak in him. That sometimes, back when he was the assassin Tin Man, that Fletcher had actually helped people from time to time. Pro fucking bono, as it were. And Jasmine certainly needed my help right now.

Maybe it was the soft sentiment that I felt for