The Whorehouse Devil

"Cullen…" She gave him another long doubting look.

"I'll sweeten tha deal. I'll write a note ta Claw Redhand. If'n it gets me, he'll send his myn in an' get it. If I get tha critter, then ya give me a year's worth a ya."

"Old Claw must like you."

A shitty grin came on Cullen's face. "Nah. He's been threatening ta dismiss me for nigh on twenty years. He just gets a hair up his ass when his couriers get their hides tacked ta a wall."

Silkie groaned. "I don't know whether to hope it eats you or not."

That brought a chuckle from Cullen. He patted his crotch. "Ya don't want it ta eat me, 'cause I got a lot ta offer."

"I don't even know if it's still here. I started sending the girls away to safety after it killed the first three. It killed three more before I could get them all out. Now, I've been waiting four days for it and not a sign of it."

"Thas because it only eats whores." Cullen was just guessing, but it seemed plausible enough to him.

"I am a whore. I started at fourteen…"

Cullen flicked his hands at her in a dismissive gesture. "Nah. Ya ain't acted like one since ya opened the place."

"So, I act like a whore…."

"And I tack its hide to the walls."

"I don't know why I'm letting you talk me into this…"

"You got a better idea?"

They picked the bedroom with the most space to lay their trap. Cullen had never been in this room before and wondered whose it was. The huge four poster bed had azure velvet curtains, a claret silk comforter, and enormous pillows. An ornate dressing table stood against the far wall, sporting a tall mirror in a silver frame, and a well cushioned stool in front of it. Instead of the usual rugs, the room had expensive, and very plush, Creeyan carpets. Whoever had this room must be the best whore in the house, and Cullen wondered how he had managed not to get his bone into this one yet.

Cullen hunkered down next to a chifferobe close to the door and watched Silkie undress, licking his lips at her lush breasts, broad hips, and flat stomach. She let her hair down and it fell in a glossy, raven's wing wealth past her tight, yet ample, ass. His body reacted to her nudity.

"Damn, yer a fine looker."

"Shut up, Cullen." She shoved two knives under the pillows before climbing onto the bed and striking a pose that made Cullen's loins ache and his mouth water. "Now what?"

"Play with yourself and moan, like you're getting some."

"I am not going to play with myself."

Cullen's face screwed up in a mix of disappointment and frustration. "At least moan. Make it sound like you're getting hammered good."

Silkie moaned.

"Louder. Put some real fuck into it."

She rolled her eyes at him and, with his continued encouragement, soon began to mimic the sounds of a noisy orgasm.

Outside the brothel an autumn gale rose in the darkness and blew through the opened windows of the deserted building. It carried a scent to Cullen's hybrid nostrils that he had hoped never to smell again. He had not run into one of them this side of the Black Mountains in years. Old Claw Redhand's pet project sixty years ago had been to drive out or kill off all of the rakshashas that drifted down out of the mountains into Red Wolf territory. The shape-shifter had to have either slipped out of the Black Mountains and crossed Red Wolf unnoticed or come down from a northern spur of the Eiryskali Range near central Waejontor looking for easy meals – and nothing was an easier meal to those weretigers than humans. Between the Sharani to the West and southwest, Duncan MacLachlan's myn to the south, and Claw Redhand in the east, this section of Waejontor had reaped sixty years of easy living – except for when one side or the other got a hair up their ass about something.

The closer it came, the stronger he could smell it. When Cullen caught the scent of cat earlier he had not gotten a strong enough whiff of it to identify the creature. The thick golden hair rose on his arms and neck.

"Oh, my gods…. Silkie, get under the bed. Get under the bed fast!"

"What?"

"Get under the fucking bed!" Cullen shouted and then threw his head back with a long howl before he could stop himself. The hunting yowl of a large cat answered him, and Cullen shivered.

GODWAR CENTRAL

The Whorehouse Devil