I dropped Medusa back in my bag and spun to run, only to grab onto the railing to prevent a head-first fall into a sea of imps. The demon may have been the bigger evil, but there was no way I’d survive wading through that many imps.
The fluffy bits of evil and teeth jumped for my toes. I lunged back a step, whirling when a man’s hand settled against my spine.
He filled my vision, the darkness sucking at my very sight. I blinked, thinking that if I couldn’t see that dark, absorbing soul, I could concentrate.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. He was beautiful in the way the models for men’s underwear are beautiful: all wide shoulders, strong jaw, faint stubble, steady gaze. And I knew him. Tim gripped my arm and smiled into my eyes.
15
Guns Don’t Kill People; Bullets Do
I ran my hand up Tim’s chest. Oh, yeah. There was solid muscle under his expensive, white, button-up shirt. I licked my lips. Would it be too forward to kiss him, or would it be sexy? It’s not like he was a stranger. We’d practically had two dates.
My eyes dropped to his firm lips. He had the hint of a dimple and a slight cleft in his chin. How had I not noticed how attractive he was before?
“Are you lost?” Tim asked me. His voice was deep and smooth. I would have rolled naked in the texture of that voice if it were possible, wrapped myself up in it as a tempting treat for him.
“Not anymore, big boy,” I said.
Big boy? Who had taken over my mouth and why was I unbuttoning his shirt? Embarrassment cooled the flush of lust coasting through me. I took an unsteady step away from him to the side, because I didn’t want to step back.
There was an important reason not to go down a step. At least a more important reason than the fact that I wouldn’t be able to continue to rub Tim’s bicep.
Rub his bicep? I shook my head to clear it and hesitantly pulled my hands back to my own body. I didn’t want to touch him, right?
He stepped forward again, keeping a light grip on my upper arm. His smile cut through my confusion.
“What are you doing back here?”
“Looking for someone. But I’ve found you now.” My words made me shiver. What was wrong with me?
He laughed, and I wanted to rub up against him again. I noticed my hands were back on his arms. When had that happened?
“I had my suspicions, but I couldn’t believe that you’re really who they sent against me. You actually fooled me about the bumper sticker company. You’re a very convincing actress, but a terrible enforcer.”
I shook my head in confusion.
“Did you come here to harm me?” His question was leading, as if he wanted me to remember an answer.
I smiled up into his charming blue eyes with their crow’s-feet and dark-lash adornments. He was perfect. Even his flaws were perfect. I started to shake my head. I would never harm him. What was he talking about?
A cold sensation against my arm distracted me. It was a familiar feeling that I couldn’t place. I glanced at his hand against my bare flesh. He had big, strong hands. Perfect for holding me, caressing me . . . My gaze traveled boldly down his silk-clad torso to the front of his gray slacks. Yep, he had to be an underwear model.
He turned to lead me up the stairs, still chuckling. I trailed along, eyeing his ass. Again my gaze returned to his hand on my arm and the strange cold feeling. It was as if his fingers were ice. I closed my eyes to concentrate, and blinked when I opened my eyes.
Five sharp claws protruding from the demon’s hand were buried in my flesh, piercing my soul. A blizzard of fear crystallized my lust. Without it, I could feel each claw like a paper cut on my soul. How could I have been thinking such horribly intimate thoughts about this monster? What had just happened? How could Tim be the demon? He hadn’t had this bizarre effect on me either time at The Golden Goose.
I planted my feet. The imps were still behind us, a few steps away, like an adoring throng following their idol. The demon stopped, pulled short by my halt. Slowly he turned to look at me. I made myself look at his face. Gone was the strong jaw and attractive crow’s-feet. In their place was a narrow chin, a nose that was part beak, part flesh, and eyes with the glow of nuclear sludge. The knife points of his antlers loomed above me.
He smiled at me, this time with sharp teeth that should have been too long to fit in his mouth. It made my heart race in a completely different way than his previous smile.
“Do I no longer please you?” he taunted. His voice was still the same. Rationally, I knew it. But he was so physically repulsive that it made his voice nasty, too.
I tried to pull my arm free, feeling panic set in. He tightened his hold and yanked me up the stairs to the landing.
“Let’s go somewhere more comfortable.”
“How about not.” I gathered lux lucis and pulsed it through my upper arm. He jerked back with a hiss.
“Oh, you’ve got a little fight in you, do you?” He smiled again, and grabbed me with both hands, sinking his claws into my shoulders.
I fought him like a cornered lion, physically with my fists and fingernails and feet and also with lux lucis against his hands. I used moves I didn’t even know I had, twisting and turning, kicking his shins, stomping on his toes, pulsing lux lucis repeatedly into his hands as he adjusted his grip. Through it all, he held me at arm’s length and made a tsking noise like I was a misbehaving kitten.
My fight didn’t last long. I ran out of physical energy, and my soul dimmed at an alarming rate. Panting, I stilled. Nothing seemed to have had an effect on him. Shit. Conserve energy, Dice. We’ll attack again when he’s not expecting it. I wished I believed myself.
“Impressive,” he mocked.
I glared, my mind empty of witty repertoire.
“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way . . .” He jerked me close to him with a vise grip on my left arm. It hurt, and not just from the cold claws digging into my soul. It was going to bruise. If I lived long enough.
I struggled feebly as he dragged me up to the door on the third floor. We exited into a bland hotel hallway filled with the usual floral carpet, two-tone walls, and evenly spaced cookie-cutter art. It was surreal. The world should not look normal when you’re being dragged by a demon.
The demon stopped at a bank of elevators. The doors sprang open to our left and two women stepped out. One had an imp attached to her heel, happily leeching light from her soul. The other wore a vervet like a deformed stole. They were both booth babes dressed in plastic armor bikini tops and leather bikini bottoms with capes sewn on the back that drooped to their knees. Were their butts the superheroes?
The demon turned to smile at them. Both women leaned forward, like the demon had a stronger pull of gravity than the earth beneath their feet. I received a single glance from the pair that should have incinerated me. In the space of two breaths, the women transformed from normal to slutty, tossing hair, pressing their breasts forward, licking their lips, and running their hands slowly down their own bodies. It was partially reassuring that I wasn’t the only woman who behaved like an ass at the sight of this man-thing. It also explained the hateful look.
“Excuse me, ladies,” the demon said in his too-smooth voice.
The women twittered and stepped out of his way. As we passed them to step into the elevator, the demon reached out and ran his hand across the shorter one’s cheek. A smear of atrum followed the trail of his claws. I shuddered. Neither of them noticed how hard I dug my heels in or how I clung to the edges of the elevator frame. The demon peeled my fingers away from the metal with sharp, quick snaps that left me cradling my hand to my chest, blinking away the sting of tears.
My mind raced in circles around thoughts of escape but found no answers. I glanced around the tiny coffin of death that was the elevator. No other evil creatures had boarded with us. I couldn’t muster the energy to care what they were doing to other people now. I was selfishly thankful that I had only the demon to deal with.
Oh, uh-uh. The thought of being soul-smeared by this hideous abomination rallied my fighting spirit. Prudently, I didn’t attack the demon again. That had gotten me nowhere. Instead, I concentrated on the flecks of darkness. With greater and greater accuracy as I whittled away at my life force, I snuffed them out.
The bong of the elevator light announcing our floor made me jump. The demon chuckled.
“Cute,” he said, after peering at my once again pristine arm. “How long can you keep it up?”
“As long as I have to.” It wasn’t witty, but at least I’d gotten my tongue unstuck from the roof of my mouth.
He pulled me off the elevator onto the eighth floor, which was also the top floor. Roseville’s more about width than height. Eight floors was a tall building for this city, one of the tallest, in fact. The hallway that we stepped into was not the bland hallway of the third floor. This one had real plants, a cluster of plush leather chairs near the elevator, and doors that must have hidden more than a set of twin beds and a bathroom given how widely apart they were spaced along the hall.
It also had hounds, which I was pretty sure were not part of the hotel’s normal decor.
Five hounds, to be exact, paced the length of the hallway. They were tall, scrawny hounds, like English hunting dogs. In weight, I could probably win a wrestling competition with one of them, but once the teeth, claws, and pure evil souls were thrown into the mix, I knew I was outstripped by one hound, let alone all five.
They bounded toward us, wagging happy tails at the demon, barking and growling at me.
This is it, Dice. This is where your throat gets ripped out. Wait: wrong thought. What would Cesar Milan say? I threw my shoulders back, lifted my head slightly, and tried to project confidence.
I doubt it was my actions, but the hounds came to a stop a few feet from us. The demon gave them an order in a language that was not a derivative of the Romance dialects. Something told me that it wasn’t Russian, either. What made you think his native tongue was something nice, normal, and human, anyway? The hounds whined and circled us, then resumed pacing the hall.
Realizing I’d been given a minor reprieve, I focused on the next important step: surviving. I needed lux lucis.
I touched the first plant we passed, pulling from it as much life as I could in the two seconds my hand rested on it. It might have been my imagination, but it felt like the plant fed me lux lucis faster than any plant had before. I did the same at the next plant, and at the next, until the demon noticed. He stopped, which meant I stopped, and turned, which meant I turned. Together, we looked back down the hallway. I was shocked to see that all three plants I’d touched were completely dead.
“You’re being a naughty girl.” He waggled a claw-tipped finger at me like I was a misbehaving four-year-old.
He pinned an arm around me from behind and held both my arms against my sides. We marched the last few yards with my entire left side pressed against his right. The sensation was nauseating. His darkness sucked at my soul, tugging it sideways while I tried to pull in the opposite direction, until I felt drunk and lopsided within myself.
When we reached the door, he used his key card and thrust me inside. I tried to decide if a demon having to use a key card was comical or not, and it took me a moment to focus on the room. No. Definitely not, I decided.
It was a suite, as I’d guessed, with a full front room, an opening to the bedroom on the left, and a large bathroom tucked farther around to the left. Atrum coated every surface, turning the normally charcoal surroundings to a black well of despair.
Not helping, I told my inner narrator.
The door clicked shut, and the absolute silence told me we were alone. Had every fiber of my being not already been screaming that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, it would have then. I was alone in a hotel room with a strange man—worse, a strange demon. This was a bad horror movie.
I turned to look at the demon. He was warding the door with a blanket of atrum that sparkled with a red current. It figured that the first color I saw in Primordium would be evil. “What’s that?” I asked stupidly.
“That, my sweet, is death to you.” He grabbed my hand, lightning-fast. With a sharp tug, he yanked me to him and shoved my hand into the red and black barrier. A thousand insects chewed through my fingers. I screamed and fought against his hold. An eternity later, the demon released me. I stared at my blackened fingertips in horror. When I flexed my fingers, I could feel that the flesh and bones of me was still whole, but the fingers of my soul looked like they’d been dipped in ink. “If you try to get through there, it will eat you alive.”
He sauntered past me. I kept him in my sights, but mainly I examined my fingers. I gathered lux lucis and pushed at the darkness staining them. Unlike the flecks that had been on my arm, the darkness on my fingertips didn’t wink out of existence with minimal resistance. This atrum peeled back like a glove of sap, slowly, and feeling like it was removing a layer of flesh with it. I was sweating and weak by the time my hand was clean. The demon had fixed himself a drink and settled on one of the two couches in the front room to watch me.
“You’ve got a little something here,” the demon said, gesturing to his left side.
I examined the rest of my soul. Besides looking weaker than a sputtering candle flame, my entire side was coated with patches of atrum from being pressed up against the demon. I looked at those splotches and felt utter despair. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t have it in me to continue to fight. I was going to be overwhelmed with evil slowly or quickly. Either way, it was out of my hands. The demon was clearly the one in charge. Some enforcer I made. I couldn’t even save myself.
The thought spread a chill across my skin. It was inevitable. I should give up and let him kill me. I was practically dead already. The flecks of atrum were eating away at my soul. I would be evil soon. Or would I be lifeless? I’d never gotten the chance to ask what happened to good people whose souls were turned completely to darkness.
Mom would be so disappointed. I could hear her voice in my head, warning against negative thoughts. “The universe brings about what you think about. Thoughts create things, dear. Thoughts create your reality.” I needed a better reality fast. Death would be awful enough. Being turned evil would be truly horrifying.
Latching on to the one last shred of what I hoped was sanity, I forced myself to think of something happy. This universe thing better work quickly, I warned my inner mom voice. Something happy. Something happy. Bring about a solution. Think, Dice.
I snuffed out the larger dark spots on my leg and arm. No happy thoughts were coming. Not a single one. I was going to die. Then Mr. Bond would be homeless again. He’d been a nearly white fluff ball of a kitten when I’d found him abandoned at my apartment complex. I’d nursed him back to health and watched him grow from a tiny kitten that fit in my palm to a gigantic dark Siamese cat that took up most of my recliner when we shared it. I loved him immensely, and I wanted more than anything to go home and bury my face in his fur and forget all about the demon in front of me.
I can do the next best thing: I can take out this demon, then go home to Mr. Bond.
Huh. Look at that. I’d found a happy thought after all. Impossible, but happy.
No, not impossible. Challenging.
There was that hysterical laughter again.
I straightened my spine and strode across the carpet. I imagined Rose with me, telling me that Kyle would have formulated a real plan of attack. Tough. I’m not Kyle. I had my own enforcer style, if you could call “winging it” a style. It was be
tter than listening to my inner voice wail in despair.
The demon watched me with amusement.
“Nice tits.”
“They’re definitely crowd pleasers.” It was stupid, but talking was better than nothing. I could sound a stupid if it meant prolonging my life.
“I can’t say I remember you being so well rounded yesterday.”
“I don’t remember you having antlers yesterday, either, so I guess we’re even.” I cursed myself for having not checked Tim out in Primordium yesterday when Niko had been right there.
I strode to the window and pulled back the drapes. I’d never looked at the world in Primordium from eight stories up. It was a beautiful thing to behold. All the trees that dotted the greenbelt gully that ran beside the hotel shone with pure light. Tiny light dots sped along in cars on roads that were black smears of deadened ground between light patches of sidewalk landscaping. Buildings were grids of darkness, but the people in them near the windows and moving through the parking lot were fascinating bits of light.
My eyes slid back to the huge trees in the gully. They were so close, yet impossibly out of reach. It would have been more practical to have the ability to fly. If I could fly, I could break the window and leap through to safety. Of course, if I could fly rather than fight evil, I wouldn’t have been in this situation to begin with. That made two strikes against whoever was in charge of doling out secret abilities.
I forced my hands from the window and turned to face the demon again.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked me. “Is this where you pounce on me and kill me?”
“Could be. What’s your plan?”
“First, I’m going to find out what’s real and what’s show under those clothes. Depending on how that goes, you might be a meal or a mate. I’ve never sampled a brand-new enforcer. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
I should have kept my mouth shut. Time to change the subject.
“Where are all the imps and vervet?”
A Fistful of Evil: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 1) Page 21