Hell's Gates (Urban Fantasy) by Celia Kyle & Lauren Creed

Author:Celia Kyle & Lauren Creed [Kyle, Celia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

12

Meadow lived in a tiny, rundown apartment complex on the other side of town. Small and rundown didn’t mean bad. There were plenty of decent, lower-middle class neighborhoods where good, hardworking folks lived.

This was not one of them.

I drove past some suburban homes, kids playing outside and dogs barking in the yards. Everything seemed sunny and cheerful and then… I turned the corner. A veritable shithole was crammed dead center in the pretty suburban landscape. The buildings were covered in graffiti, parking lot cracked and broken, and the entire place looked like it should have been condemned long ago. I caught sight of a couple of rough-looking figures lurking in a stairwell, probably up to no good.

The lawn was overgrown, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have said the place was abandoned and taken over by the homeless. But the people who lived there weren’t squatters. They were simply so poor, and quite possibly stoned, that they didn’t care about their environment as long as rent was cheap. Not that poor equated stoners, but if a dem was looking for an easy place to find a foothold, the desperate and poor was a good place to start.

I parked and left my car unlocked. There wasn’t anything worth stealing, but if they wanted to look, I didn’t want them busting in my window to do it.

I headed up the external stairs and knocked on Meadow’s door while trying to ignore the pervasive stench. Down the hallway, a stained, old, dirty mattress was propped against the corner and I didn’t want to even think about what caused those stains.

It seemed the high-class mayor had taken to “slumming it” when it came to finding a mistress.

The door slowly swung open, a large, brown eye peering out at me. Not concerning, I’d be wary in this neighborhood too. The large, burnished brown ear that flopped into place amid her copper curls though… Yeah, apparently Boyd had developed a taste for the exotic.

Meadow eased the panel open farther, confirming my suspicion. Her upper body, complete with large breasts hardly hidden behind a skimpy halter top, was all human. Well, minus the pointed ears. The rest of her was all golden red fur and cloven hooves.

Boyd liked him some faun.

Staring at her knees, the way they bent like a goat’s, I wondered how she got on her knees for the mayor without falling over. Which brought up other interesting mental images and I internally shook my head.

“You Meadow?” Because of course a faun would have a name like Meadow.

“Who’s asking?” Now that I could see both eyes, I noticed their glassy, unfocused appearance. Drugged. It certainly explained the “erratic and emotional” behavior the mayor described.

“Your lover boy sent me.”

She looked up at me, or rather, over my shoulder. “Is it tea time? I do rather enjoy a spot of tea.”

All right then. I wondered if she was chatting with a white rabbit and a crazed guy wearing a weird hat. “Yes, it’s tea time.” I’d learned to humor the crazies.

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