Chapter 9
Waylon Steiner
The club’s earnings for the week loaded on my laptop, columns of green digits stacked like casino chips.
I could have watched them pulse all night, each line a tiny confirmation that I’d won, again, while the world’s suckers slouched toward their cubicles with nothing to show but pay stubs and a half-hard-on for retirement.
Even with the bonus Maltraz had scraped off the top for “consulting,” the take was obscene.
My share alone would cover five years’ tuition at the kind of prep school that built Supreme Court justices.
I lit a cigar, not because I needed it, but because the smoke curled in the air and clung to the skin like a velvet glove.
The night had been slow, but there was a residual hum in my veins—maybe the aftershock of watching Maltraz, or maybe just the satisfaction of seeing a job done right.
I’d always been a sucker for good craftsmanship, even when it was evil.
Maltraz had come early. Rage delivered him through the back corridor, where the sensors were dead and the girls didn’t go.
The demon was dressed in Tom Ford, black on black, hair slicked to his scalp and tied off with a braid that looked like it would cut your palm if you grabbed it.
He filled the room with the heavy iron stink of his kind, even as he smiled and shook my hand like we were closing a real estate deal instead of planning a felonious future.
He didn’t bother with pleasantries. He wanted his girl.
Harper was brought in, docile and glass-eyed, still under the aftertaste of whatever shit Darlene had slipped her.
She walked like a wind-up doll with a dead battery.
I made her dance and then kneel at his feet.
Maltraz didn’t hesitate. He wanted her to swallow that monster-sized pierced and twisted cock down her throat.
And my slave slurped it until his demon moans filled the room.
When he couldn’t stand another minute, he jerked her up onto his lap, impaling her on the iron rod.
I’ll admit I winced to myself with a tiny bit of worry that she’d incur an injury, but her cries only made me harder.
The demon king used her the way a wolf uses a kill—brutal, fast, purposeful.
She made no sound after the first whimper, and the only proof it mattered at all was the way her hands curled into the velvet cushion.
Maltraz grunted, finished, and licked the blood from his own hand where his claws had dug into her hips, like it was caviar.
Then he wandered into the bathroom to clean up.
We wound up back here in my office to discuss business.
He wanted the next shipment accelerated.
Asia this time, not Europe. He’d sweeten the pot by covering customs and providing a witch for logistics.
In return, he wanted “dividends” up front: first pick of the talent, plus a fifty percent cut of the net until the channel stabilized.
It was extortion, but I nodded. The truth was, without his shadow, none of this worked.
I was the face and the spreadsheet, but he was the engine.
My hands were clean—he kept them that way, so long as I paid.
As he left, Maltraz paused at the door. He said, “The girl is wasted here. You know that, right?” And then he was gone.
I poured myself a double, let the cigar burn down to a cold inch, and replayed the scene over and over in my head.
Harper’s body—pale, perfect, marked with old scars and new bruises—made me think of nothing except the opportunity cost. I could’ve sold her to any high roller in the South for ten times what she made onstage, but I kept her because she was rare.
Because she made the other girls work harder, and the clients spend more.
Because, somewhere deep down, I hated my father for breeding a pack that valued only brawn and violence, and I wanted to show him that you could dominate the world with nothing but leverage and a knife’s edge.
I thought of the other girls, the ones I had broken and remade, and how none of them ever lasted as long as Harper. I wondered if she even remembered her old life anymore, or if the club had become her entire existence. I wondered if she hated me, or if she had learned to love the leash.
I told myself it didn’t matter. Not anymore. The money, the power, the connections—those were the only things that counted.
I was about to shut down the computer when the door banged open so hard the hinges groaned. Rage stumbled in, red-faced and panting, like he’d run the length of the building with a wolf on his heels.
He didn’t even bother with a preamble. “She’s gone,” he blurted, voice trembling.
I let the words hang in the air, like the smoke. “Explain.”
He swallowed, looked down at the floor. “Harper. She didn’t make it inside the truck.”
My hand tightened on the bourbon glass until I thought it would shatter. “You’re supposed to walk her out you dumb fuck.”
Rage flinched. “I did, boss. I walked her to the Escalade myself. She was behind me the whole time. I checked the rear lot before I got in. I unlocked the doors and got in. She never got in the backseat.”
He looked up, desperate for forgiveness, but all I saw was a liability.
“Part of the protocol is that you personally open her door and strap her the fuck in!”
He looked at the floor. “I understand, boss.”
I stood and set the glass down with surgical precision. “Show me,” I said.
He didn’t hesitate. He hustled out, and I followed, my body moving with a cold efficiency I hadn’t felt in years.
We moved through the private corridor, past the guest suites, past the dead-eyed bouncers who watched us with the same numb indifference as always.
Rage led the way to the loading dock, where the Escalade sat in the alley by the back door.
The spot was empty. The gravel showed no marks except the usual tire tracks and boot prints.
I scanned the ground, then the fence line, then the roof. “Pull the tapes,” I said. “Now.”
The security room was a frigid little box, all cinderblock and the humming blue heat of a hundred screens.
The staffer on duty—a bland, balding drone with a face like a collapsed soufflé—looked up and nearly fell off his chair when Rage and I stormed in.
The air stank of burnt circuits and energy drinks, a kind of electrical desperation that never left the place, no matter how many times I made them swap out the carpets.
I let Rage take the lead. His hands hovered over the keyboard like he were trying to defuse a bomb, sweat dripping down his wrists onto the cheap plastic. The room filled with the click-clack of keys and the static of skipped time as he scrubbed backward through the night’s footage.
“There,” he said, jabbing a finger at the screen. “Twenty-three fifteen. That’s when she leaves.”
He played it in real time. Harper moved through the corridor, head down, body language deadened. She didn’t look left or right, just kept to the wall. Rage appeared a minute later, carrying the go-bag and a set of keys. He never looked at her.
They hit the alley. Harper hung back, just out of the reach of the lights. Rage circled to the driver’s side, did a perfunctory scan, and unlocked the Escalade. Harper reached for the passenger door.
Next frame, she was gone. No blur, no struggle, not even a shadow. Just empty space.
I watched the loop five times, each repetition grinding another layer of patience from my nerves. By the sixth, I wanted to put my fist through the monitor and into Rage’s face.
“You didn’t even watch her get in the car,” I said, voice flat as a morgue slab.
Rage tried to stand straighter, but even his size couldn’t cover how small he felt. “I—I always do, boss. She’s never run before. Three years, not one problem. I thought—”
“You thought wrong,” I snapped, eyes never leaving the freeze-frame. “She’s not a girl, she’s a product. You don’t leave a product on the dock and hope it loads itself.”
He said nothing. The security tech pretended to be absorbed in the next screen over, but I could smell the terror sweat from across the room.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the club’s main number. “Get Darlene to the security office. Now.” I hung up before they could answer.
The wait was measured in heartbeats. Darlene arrived in two minutes, heels stabbing the tile, the slit of her dress running thigh-high and her face a mask of perfume and contempt. She gave Rage a look that could have killed a weaker man, then focused on me.
“What’s the emergency?” she said. Her voice was sugar, laced with arsenic.
I pointed at the screen. “Watch.”
She did, and her mouth curled at the edge, not in surprise, but in recognition.
“You said the cameras are top of the line, right?” She asked the tech.
He nodded, nervous. “Redundant system, multiple angles. Nothing gets missed.”
Darlene smiled, with a smear of lipstick on her teeth. “Except this.”
She leaned closer, peering at the frozen frame, and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The air shimmered, just a little, like a drop of oil on water. She put her palm on the monitor, held it there for five seconds, then let go.
“It’s a spell,” she said. “Very expensive, very clean. Probably a charm of disappearance or misdirection, layered with a time-warp. Whoever did this was either a professional or an older witch with access to ancient magic.”
My jaw tightened. “You told me the covens wouldn’t work in Houston anymore.”
“They won’t,” Darlene said. “Not for you. But there’s always someone willing to do business if the money’s right.”
I didn’t bother asking how much. If it was enough to get a girl out from under my nose, it was enough to make a dent in a mid-sized nation’s GDP.
Rage hovered by the console, desperate for absolution. “You want me to hit up our sources? See if any witches came into town the last week?”
I nodded. “Do it. Check the hotels, the airports. Pull the guest lists for every room in the building since Friday.”
He was already on his phone, dialing with a trembling finger.
Darlene turned to me, one eyebrow raised. “You want me to track her?”
“Yes.”
She grinned. “I’ll need a sample. Blood, hair, saliva. The usual.”
I didn’t have to ask where to get it. The demon king had left plenty of Harper’s DNA on the velvet couch upstairs. I sent the tech to fetch it.
Darlene watched him go, then lowered her voice. “You know this was a pro job, right? Harper didn’t do this on her own. Someone wanted her out.”
“I know,” I said. “But who?”
Darlene tilted her head. “We had that client a couple weeks ago. The one who paid so much money for her. Remember? The cameras were wonky the entire time. She blew him; they talked but we couldn’t get the conversation because of bad audio. I know you remember.”
She was right. I remembered that fucker. I asked Harper about him, but she acted nonplussed about him, so I blew it off. Should have trusted my instincts.
Darlene continued. “The VIP suite log showed it was a Mr. Rodgers who’d left a huge tip and bugged out without so much as a fingerprint on a glass. At the time, I’d written it off as a rich pervert’s night out.”
I turned to Rage. “Pull his receipt. Get his card info. Pull the camera footage for the club for the entire night. Then I want club footage gone over for the days before that night. Find out if he was watching her, or if he had a witch helping him.”
Rage nodded, chin-to-chest. “On it.”
The security tech returned with a ziplock of stained velvet. Darlene took it, inhaled, and closed her eyes. She murmured something in that strange witch language, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.
“She’s alive,” Darlene said. “And she’s moving fast. Someone’s got a vehicle, maybe even a plane.”
“Can you trace?”
She grinned. “Always.”
I watched her work, thinking about Harper out there, running. Wondered if she was scared, or if she believed in whatever fairy tale had been promised her.
Mostly, I thought about the guy who’d had the nerve to cross me. I imagined his face, the shape of his skull, how easy it would be to break every tooth in his mouth.
Darlene finished the spell, tucked the velvet into her purse, and turned to leave. “You’ll have your answer by morning,” she said. “If she leaves the country, I’ll know.”
Black smoke started pouring from her purse as she walked away. She let out a startled yelp as she tossed it off her shoulder.
“Dammit!” She opened her bag. Everything in it was covered with a green glowing goo.
She raised her eyes to me. “Sorry boss. It seems I won’t have an answer on Harper’s location in the morning or any other time.
Whoever this witch is, she has put a powerful protection spell on her that prevents scrying or tracking.
If you want to find Harper, you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. ”
“FUCK!” I wanted to break bones.
I turned back to Rage, who was sweating bullets onto the keyboard. He looked up, face pale as death.
“If I don’t get her back,” he whispered, “what happens?”
I leaned in, let him smell the bourbon and the old blood on my breath.
“If you don’t,” I said, “I’ll feed you to Maltraz in pieces. Starting with your tongue.”
He nodded, throat bobbing, and turned back to the screens.
I stood there, watching the monitors, waiting for Harper to appear again, even as a part of me knew she never would.
But that was fine.
Because the next time I saw her, it would be on my terms.
And there would be no one left to save her.