Embracing the Shadows Read Free

only
company, ya know?"
    "I understand," Viggo said with a nod. "No
offense is taken. However, I expect a better attempt at civility if
you and my favored minion cross paths again." Hell fucking yes! I
was the favored minion!
    Roach acknowledged the statement with a nod
and left it at that. Viggo and I turned to move on, and that's when
I noticed a hallway cut into the stone. It was between the desk
full of monitors and an aquarium table, leading back into darkness.
Roach saw me looking down that narrow corridor and said with a
smirk, "Go ahead. I dare ya." Viggo reached back and pulled me next
to him.
    We moved a few steps over to the couch across
the room from Barnabus and Clara, where a small guy slouched with a
laptop on his beer belly. By the size of his high-top running shoes
propped up on a table, his feet were bigger than mine. He wore a
baggy jogging suit and a pageboy cap over his short hair. It was
tough to tell what color any of it was in the blue light. He had
normal features and a wide smile. The only thing odd about the guy
was the two-headed snake that slithered around on him. He ignored
it.
    "Here you are, my cunning friend," Viggo said
to him, handing over the last box. "And I believe you had something
for me as well?"
    "You betcha; I'm emailing it to you now." He
took the small box from Viggo without looking at it, tapped a
couple times on his keyboard, and then looked up at me. Still
grinning, he said, "Hangin' in there, kid?" He spoke with an
accent. It was different from Fletcher's, but not by much. I
guessed Irish.
    "I'm doing alright, uh, sir." I called him
sir because I hadn't been instructed on how to address any of
Viggo's Deviant buddies that I hadn't met yet. If calling him by
that respectful title didn't work, I figured I'd be waking up on a
couch again and needing to heal.
    The short hemo's grin widened with a chuckle.
He leaned to one side, looked past me, and said across the room to
Barnabus, "Check that out, he called me sir."
    "If he only knew . . ." Barnabus replied
without looking up from his book.
    "Leo," Viggo said, gesturing with an open
hand to the smiling hemo still reclined on the couch, "this is Mr.
Scanlon O'Shaughnessy. For various reasons, he uses the simple
moniker, 'Skin'."
    What a weird nickname. I guess my opinion
showed on my face because Skin said, "Yeah, you heard right, kid.
You'll figure it out sooner or later." He slapped the cushion next
to him. "Have a seat and let me show ya my latest little piece of
work."
    I looked to Viggo, who nodded. When I settled
in next to Skin, both heads of his snake hissed at me. Gently
brushing the mutant snake away, Skin turned the laptop my way. It
showed stills of a large and well-decorated bedroom, lit by a few
small lamps. On the king-sized bed was a fat, older guy wearing
only a t-shirt and socks. On top of him was a short-haired blonde
woman barely out of her teens; the only things she was wearing were
a garter belt and a smile.
    "What we have here," Skin said, leaning
closer to me and clicking to another shot, "is a certain city
zoning administrator trying not to have a heart attack while his
wife is in Atlanta. He had no idea how the girl got in, but it
didn't take much persuading to let her stay a while. This fella has
been a bit of a stickler allowing permits for one or two industrial
sites up for reconstruction. Sites we might find useful, ya see.
Catching our old boy in flagrante should make him change his
mind."
    "It was pretty stupid of him to have cameras
on in his bedroom," I commented. "And if he didn't bring that
prostitute home with him, then his security sucks."
    "Yeah, well," Skin said, laughing, "she had a
little help getting in, and told a few finely crafted lies to, ah,
put him at ease. Oh, and those aren't his cameras. Nudge, nudge,
wink, wink, eh, kid?" As blackmail went, it looked airtight. That
fat old man screwed himself more than he did the whore. "Now look
at this," Skin went on, opening a different folder