Read Online Satan's Sword (Imp Book 2) by Debra Dunbar - Free Book Online

future, so I headed over to the National Crime and Punishment museum to kill some time.
    I’m not normally a museum person. Crime and punishment did sound interesting, although humans think of punishment in terms of being sent to your room without pudding, so I didn’t have high hopes. It was awesome. I was tempted to blow off the vampire appointment and spend the whole day at the place. Yes, there was some boring shit about legislation, and I didn’t see the fuss about whether death row inmates got a last meal or not, but wow, what a testimony to the sick, twisted, and creative minds these little humans had. Once again I realized how easy it was to underestimate them and how much we truly had in common.
    I fell in love with Ted Bundy. Here was guy who totally flew under the radar, appearing harmless and even injured to his potential victims. He’d whack them repeatedly over the head with a crowbar when they tried to help him load stuff into his car. Then he would rape them, sometimes adding their lopped off heads to his collection. Occasionally, he’d continue to sleep with their decomposing body. That was dedication to your art. Too bad the humans had killed Ted Bundy. I would have been honored to Own this guy in a terrible and painful way that he surely would have appreciated.
    Reluctantly, I made my way back to the Verizon Center and hit up the closest booths for spicy crab balls and beer before winding my way through the crowd to the Jolly Molly Crab Shack. Jolly Molly must indeed be jolly if she eats her own food, because it was incredible. The crab cakes had barely enough breading to hold them together. They fell apart in my mouth with a bite of Old Bay seasoning and hot mustard.
    I’d forgotten my original errand when an attractive man in jeans and a t-shirt walked up to me and handed me an envelope. It looked like an embossed wedding invitation and I wondered what kind of artifact this was. I could see the humans going crazy over an ancient Roman party invite, but demons wouldn’t really care about that sort of thing. I opened it up and saw that the card inside had a date, time, and meeting place. Fuck. This whole thing was supposed to be easy and now I was going to be running around on a stupid hunt. According to the lovely embossed card, I was to go to the Inner Harbor in Baltimore on Monday at noon and meet someone by the aquarium. I swore under my breath, thinking that meeting would probably leave me with a treasure map and instructions to dig at an X on Assateague Island.
    I bought a box of crab cakes to take back to Wyatt, figuring he probably hadn’t eaten much beyond chips and salsa during his tournament, and headed home. No surprise, there were three messages on my mirror from Dar with increasingly insulting demands that I call him and let him know where to meet me to pick up the artifact.
    “The vampires are leading me on a merry chase,” I told him. “All the guy gave me were directions to meet someone Monday afternoon in Baltimore. That’s two days from now, Dar,” I told him, trying to impress on him a sense of time.
    Dar swore up a blue streak, threatening the entire vampire race with a bloody and short future. “They don’t want the damned thing. They’ve been trying to get rid of it forever. What did the guy say to you? Why didn’t he just hand it over?”
    “I don’t know, Dar. I’m just a fucking courier here. The guy didn’t say one word to me, just handed me the envelope and vanished into the crowd like a ghost. I’ll go to this meeting on Monday just because I like hanging out at the Inner Harbor, but you and Haagenti better get your fucking ducks in a row on this deal. I’m not haring all over the country playing cloak and dagger for some piece-of-crap antique.”
    “I’ll get with Haagenti,” he assured me. “I’ll make sure the vampires give it to you on Monday. And Haagenti will be very grateful, Mal; he’ll be very grateful.”
    My skin crawled at the idea of