Page 28 of Bond of Passion

Chapter 9

Sin’s combat boots squeaked as she walked down the dark hallway, lit only by a handful of caged lights, to Underworld General’s morgue.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

Man, she wasn’t sneaking up on anyone today.

Squeaksqueaksqueak.

The sound made the stark hall even creepier than it already was with its gray walls scrawled with Sheolic script and symbols meant to prevent violence. Steam flushed in from under the door to a room that powered the aquatic demon tanks a couple of floors above, and she picked up the pace. She was used to creepy shit, but she’d also seen a lot of horror movies, and way too many of them started in basements like this.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

Doing her best to ignore her super-not-stealthy boots, she rubbed her bare arms as she approached the door to the morgue, where it would be even colder.

I picked the wrong day to wear a tank top.

At least her jeans weren’t the ones with the holes in them. Seminus demons were largely unaffected by heat and cold, but Sin always got a chill in basements. It was probably psychological, maybe going all the way back to her days of captivity. But in her head or not, she hated being cold.

She shoved the door open and shivered at the icy blast of air from inside. “Hey, bro. You got a minute?”

Lore looked up from where he was elbows-deep inside the torso of a dead croucher demon. “Sure. This guy isn’t going anywhere.”

She grimaced. “Why’s he dead?”

“If I knew, would I be rooting around inside his body?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what you like to do for fun.”

Max, Lore’s assistant, snickered but didn’t look up from his microscope.

“Anyway,” Lore continued, “this croucher came into the hospital on his own two hooves and then barfed up about a gallon of blood before keeling over.”

“We should all aspire to your level of respect for the dead,” Max droned, still eye-fucking the microscope.

Lore snorted as his hands pulled free of the corpse with a gurgling, sucking sound. “There’s a reason I work with dead people instead of living ones.” He stripped off his autopsy gloves and trashed them as he spoke. “Besides the fact that my touch kills people.”

“Lore’s never been known for having empathy,” Sin told Max.

“And you have?”

“Moi?” She put on her most innocent face and then waved in dismissal. “Anyway, I wanted to ask you about something.”

Max looked over, eyeing them both through his long, dark bangs. He always looked like he was six months overdue for a haircut. “Want me to go take a hike? I could use some coffee anyway.”

Lore nodded. “Thanks, Max.”

Max came to his feet and slipped on his ID lanyard. “You guys want anything?”

Both Lore and Sin shook their heads, and Max took off, his Nikes squeaking all the way down the hallway almost as loudly as her boots had.

“Okay, sis, what’s up?” Lore brushed by her on his way to the wash station.

After he passed, she propped her hip against his desk and got comfy. “I was thinking about the dude who blew up. Have you determined the materials used?”

“I’m waiting on a lab report,” he said as he scrubbed his hands and arms over the sink, “but only to confirm what we already know.”

“It was a bone bomb, right?”