Page 55 of Honorable Sins

I'm capable of hunting without letting my prey feel my presence, much less see it.

But it's always good to challenge yourself and enhance your skills through advanced training.

I could move into a doorway, make him wonder if his mind is playing tricks on him, but I'm ready to take him in for interrogation.

The training exercise is over.

He turns to face me, his hand already moving toward his jacket. His eyes widen infinitesimally when he realizes how close I am.

His hand clears the weapon.

I am inside his reach before he can pull the trigger. I drive two fingers hard into the nerve bundle below his ear. His body stutters. He twists with it instead of freezing, using the shock to lower his center of gravity and reach for my knee.

He really is good, but his shot goes wild, the round slamming into brick somewhere behind me.

Lars pivots immediately, using the movement to create space.

Smart. Distance creates options.

I don't allow him any.

I catch his wrist and drive him into the wall hard enough to crack mortar. He recovers faster than most men could. A knee drives toward my ribs. I turn into it, absorb the impact and answer with an elbow that snaps his head sideways.

The gun falls from his hand.

His other hand flashes toward his ankle. Knife.

I smile. Because of course there is a knife. My hand closes around his wrist before the blade clears leather. I twist. The joint pops.

Lars's expression barely changes.

Time to finish this.

I tase him. His body jolts with neuromuscular disruption and I take advantage of his temporary loss of voluntary control of his muscles to get the zip ties on his wrists and a strip of gagging tape over his mouth.

Interrogation Room 1 is exactly as I left it the last time I had to have an illuminating conversation with someone.

Brightly lit with full-spectrum LEDs, the extra banks off for now, its steel-lined walls are cleaner than the inside of an operating room.

"My men call this room hell," I say conversationally as I strap him into the steel chair bolted to the floor for this very purpose.

Wrists first, then his ankles and finally the chest harness. I won't use the head brace unless I resort to the extra bank of lights. For now, the goggles to protect my eyes from what amounts to looking into the sun reside on the bench beside a tray of implements of persuasion.

Lars tugs at the leather-lined, steel-core restraints, his miniscule inhalation letting me know he discovered the way they bite down like the sharp, angled teeth of a pipe wrench when he shifts. With much the same purpose. To prevent movement.

I nod in acknowledgement of what he just learned. Every movement he makes that I don't want him to will cost him in pain. "That's how I got the name, an diabhal. Because I am its king."

Refusing to reply, he tries to avoid the oxygen mask I strap over his nose and mouth still covered by the tape gag. But there's nowhere for him to go.

His pupils flare as the mix of oxygen and the Triad's benzo compound begin to release through the mask, but his breathing stays controlled. Disciplined under pressure.

The Triad formula makes most men pliable. The Greek compound in the hypodermic Wraith prepped for me earlier does something meaner. Wraith found the ratio that sharpens paranoia while making pain receptors more responsive.

I use a tourniquet to bring up a vein on Lars' arm and plunge the needle into it, depressing the plunger steadily until the hypodermic is empty.

After another sixty seconds, I remove the mask and then rip the tape gag from his mouth, leaving red abraded skin around his lips behind.

Pulling up a chair, I sit across from him, leaving less than a foot between his knees and my own. "Do you know who I am?"