Niko called Mr. Pitt the moment I finished. Without offering an explanation and without Mr. Pitt demanding one, Niko outlined a plan that included several local enforcers called to the hotel, hound nets, and a floor-by-floor patchwork cleanup—whatever that meant. Niko assured Mr. Pitt that I was accounted for and the demon was not on the premises.
“Thank you for not ratting me out,” I said when Niko hung up.
“There’s no time right now. Mr. Pitt needs to get the other enforcers in place before more damage is done. They’ll do what they can on the convention floor, but most of the people have already left. The demon won’t be back tonight. But I will give Brad a full report when there’s time.”
I cringed. “He’ll fire me.” It must be delirium that made me concerned about losing a job that had nearly gotten me killed.
“I doubt it. But there’ll be consequences.”
I didn’t want to think about it. “What should we do now?” I asked, gesturing toward the atrum-tainted room, then over my shoulder at the limp dog corpses.
“We need to take care of you. If you don’t get some food and lux lucis soon, you’ll relapse.”
I realized I’d been avoiding blinking, so I made myself. Primordium revealed Niko’s dim soul, which was hardly brighter than mine had been after taking on Max. Even next to his diminished light, my soul paled. I’d seen lit candelabras brighter than both of us combined. We were still the brightest spot in the hallway, though. Atrum pulsed in the doorway of Tim’s room and trailed down the hallway. Niko must have cleared it near us, because we sat in a neutral circle. Every plant in the hall was dead. When I forced myself to look at the dogs, they were charcoal, the color of nonlife.
I swiped at my face, scrubbed my hands on my tiny shorts, and took another swig of water.
“You ready?”
I nodded and stood without his help. I was silent as we walked past the dogs. They’d died because of me. If I hadn’t been in such a hurry to prove myself, and if I’d waited for Niko to take on the demon, I knew he would have saved them.
“Not all hounds can be rehabilitated,” Niko said softly, his eyes on the corpses, and I couldn’t tell which of us he was trying to reassure.
I wiped away fresh tears.
Niko didn’t say anything else until the elevator doors slid shut behind us.
“I want to make it clear that what we fought up there was a demon.”
“Yeah. I know.” I frowned at him.
“Not a vampire.”
It took me a moment to figure out what he was referencing, then I blushed. “You heard that?”
“It was hard not to. You were yelling.”
Huh. That wasn’t how I remembered it. I avoided his eyes and rearranged my scant clothing.
“If you knew it was a demon, what were you talking about?” Niko pressed.
I tried to think of a way not to answer. It was just too embarrassing. Nothing came to mind. I sighed. “Myself. Recharging. I feel like a vegetarian vampire,” I mumbled.
Niko grinned at me, then threw his head back and laughed. I watched him, sullenly admiring his perfect white teeth and attractive laugh. It was only attractive, too. There was nothing about the sound that made me want to slip off my clothes and slip into the laughter. There were plenty of things about the man that made me want to slip off my clothes, but they were normal horny urges, not the compulsion of a demon.
Niko was still chuckling when we exited the elevator.
The lobby was quiet. Most of the convention’s attendees had already exited, as Niko had said, but they’d left a trail visible to anyone who could see in Primordium. Dark smears of atrum oozed across the lobby in a wide arc from the elevators. Drearily, I contemplated the number of hosts who had left the hotel. Unaware of the evil they carried, they’d go to fast-food chains, comic stores, and Fry’s, then home. Some were probably already on the freeway, miles from the borders of my region. At the airport, even. The horror reel played out in my head, with the hosts scattering across the continent, then the world, a pandemic of evil.
Just thinking about the cleanup made me tired. Where did I even start?
“Go recharge. Try not to harm the trees.” Niko pointed to the greenbelt that backed up against the hotel’s parking lot. “I’ll meet you out there as soon as backup arrives.”
I nodded woodenly. The boost of energy he’d given me in the hall was depleted. Lying down in the lobby for a nap sounded divine, but I forced myself to keep walking.
The blast of cold night air jarred me alert the moment I stepped through the sliding glass doors. It had rained while I’d been inside, just enough to make everything smell delicious. The clouds were already clearing away, revealing a few stars bright enough to compete with the city lights. I’d left my coat in my car when I’d arrived, and though I shivered in my tiny outfit, I didn’t have the energy to walk two blocks uphill to my car. This morning, that far lot had been the nearest parking available, though now the hotel’s closer lots had plenty of room.
So many hosts loosed on my region.
I stumbled to the edge of the blacktop near the greenbelt and half heaved, half fell over the three foot metal fence that roped pedestrians and cars into the parking lot. My acrobatics earned a few stares. It wasn’t every day that scantily dressed army-type women vaulted fences in these parts. As an added bonus, my exhaustion made me look drunk. I staggered to the nearest oak and planted a palm against its rough bark.
My skin felt saturated, like I’d spent too long in water, and the lux lucis seeped sluggishly into me. I wanted to pull it faster from the tree, but I held Niko’s reminder not to damage the tree at the forefront of my fuzzy brain. I moved to the next tree after a few minutes, grateful that most of the trees close enough to touch were at least fifteen years old. I was afraid I’d kill a sapling.
I don’t know how long I moved among the line of trees before Niko collected me. My hands, knees, and face were numb with cold, but my chest was plenty warm, insulated behind the enormous foam bra.
I climbed back over the fence, this time clumsy from cold rather than a lack of energy. The trees had done a pretty good job of resupplying me, but I still wasn’t completely charged.
“Why am I not absorbing lux lucis faster?” I asked Niko as we walked toward the hotel again. His BMW was waiting by the front door with the valet hovering next to the driver’s door. “It’s never taken this long before. And one of those trees should have been able to handle filling me up with no problem.”
“It’s different when you’ve been drained like the—like Tim did,” Niko said, choosing his words carefully now that we were back in hearing range of normal humans. It was weird to hear the demon’s name come from Niko. Fresh embarrassment tried to flush my face, but I was too cold. What type of enforcer doesn’t recognize a demon when he’s right in front of her?
Niko tipped the valet, who then raced around to the passenger door and opened it for me before I could reach for the handle. I gave the teenage lad a wan smile, which was wasted on him, since his gaze was fixated on my chest.
I collapsed into the warm interior of the car, delighted when I found the seat’s built-in warmer already turned on. The valet shut the door behind me. I pulled on my seat belt and resisted the temptation to recline the chair. Niko slid behind the wheel, took one look at me, and turned the heater off.
“No sleep yet. You’d be a hazard to everyone around you in your state.”
He didn’t add anything more, and he didn’t need to. I’d already had my scare with Mr. Bond. I didn’t want to be rushing anyone to the emergency room because I’d been selfish enough to fall asleep without fully recharging.
“You’ll be better after you get some food. Your lux lucis levels got so low that recharging alone isn’t enough to sustain you. Your body needs raw, physical nutrients. You should start keeping yogurt in your car. It’s got live bacteria in it, and that can be an additional boost.”
Su
ddenly the six-pack ice chest in the BMW’s trunk made sense. “Do you have any on you?” I asked.
“Sure, but you’re beyond the help of a yogurt or two. We’re going to Mel’s.”
It wasn’t until we reached the diner that I considered the ramifications of being dressed like a booth babe. “I can’t go in like this,” I protested when Niko started to get out of the car.
He let his gaze roam over me from top to bottom, then grinned. “I don’t think it’d go over well if we switched clothes, and I’ve got nothing else with me.”
I giggled at the imagine of Niko suctioned into these tiny shorts and suffocating under the balloon-size breasts. The laughter buoyed me.
“Come on. No one will notice,” Niko said.
Neither of us believed him.
At nearly ten at night, the diner was doing brisk business. The startled hostess who sat us didn’t seem to know where to look, between my atrocious attire and Niko’s stunning good looks. The rest of the patrons in the small establishment gawked like country folk in a big city. Honestly, hadn’t they seen a video game action heroine come to life before?
If I’d been thinking straight, I would have left the guns behind. They clanked against the table when I sat, causing the hostess to jump and scurry away. For the first time, I wondered if Niko was as okay as he appeared. His soul was the weakest I’d ever seen it, and I was pretty sure that if he’d been thinking clearly, he would have put the guns in the trunk.
My fake breasts rested on the surface of the table once I got myself situated in the booth. It was hard not to sag against them, the sensation not unlike having a pillow to lean against. However the chilly plastic seat pressed against the back of my thighs was enough to remind me not to nod off.
The waitress, a plump lady in her late forties who clearly thought I was a tramp and Niko not much better by mere association, took our orders. Niko selected Cobb salads for both of us—without bacon!—plus four large sides of grilled vegetables.
Screw that. I’d almost died tonight. I deserved something better than rabbit food.
“With some fries and a chocolate milkshake,” I added before the waitress could flounce away.
“Those aren’t going to help you,” Niko said.
“French fries are natural restoratives,” I told him.
“Says who?”
I pointed to my stomach, but with the positioning of the Dolly Parton bra, it looked like I was pointing at my breasts.
“I didn’t know they had their own opinions,” Niko said, straight-faced.
I let it drop. As long as I got my fries, I wasn’t going to press the issue.
“Are you ready to admit what you did today was stupid?” he asked.
“I thought I already did.”
He shook his head and waited.
“You’re really going to make me say it?” My temper, which had melted away beneath my exhaustion, burned back to life. “Fine. It was stupid. Happy now?”
“Why was it stupid?”
I stared into his blank face and ground my teeth. Hadn’t I been through enough today? Why was he heckling me on this issue? I attempted to cross my arms over my chest and ended up punching the padded bra by mistake—making the biker at the bar who’d been leering me nearly fall off his stool. Frustrated, I clasped my hands in front of me on the table, which meant I was basically hugging the fake breasts. I leaned forward a little and said in a snidely sweet voice, “It was stupid because I nearly died.”
“And?”
“Why are you doing this?” I gestured between us and ended up hitting my breasts again. I gave them an aggravated hoist to get the bra back in place and growled under my breath. How I’d ever let Mr. Pitt talk me into this ridiculous outfit in the first place was beyond me, but to have dressed myself in it for a second day in a row clearly indicated a lapse in mental clarity.
Niko ignored my brassiere troubles. “I need to hear you explain it.”
The waitress returned with my milkshake and a water each. I snatched up the cold drink and, with some finagling of the straw and cup, managed to get a large gulp without spilling any on myself. The chocolate milk and ice cream slid down my throat, triggering a starvation button along the way. Suddenly all I could think about was food—the smell of it, the taste of it, how long it was taking for our salads and my French fries to arrive. With ravenous glee, I sucked down the entire shake before my cold headache registered.
I set down the empty glass and clutched my forehead, pinching my eyes shut until the pain abated. When I could think again, all I could focus on was the hallow pit that had replaced my stomach.
“I’m starved,” I said.
Niko looked like he was trying to hold back a smile and keep his stern face on. I replayed the last few minutes in my head to remember what we’d been talking about. I waited for my anger to resurface, but there was no room for it and the hunger, and the hunger definitely won.
“You want to know why everything I did today was stupid? No”—I shook my head before he could say anything—“you want to know if I realize the mistakes I made, right?” At Niko’s nod, I sat back, hugging my hollow stomach under the table, and evaluated the day. I didn’t think I’d made that many bad decisions—aside, possibly, from taking the job in the first place—and I wasn’t going to confess to any just to get him off my back. “Okay, I disobeyed Mr. Pitt. That was stupid because he’s going to be mad.”
“An enforcer should always listen to her warden.”
I kept forgetting that was the term for Mr. Pitt’s position. I made a face at Niko, then nodded. “It seems like it could save a little trouble.”
He snorted. “Anything else.”
“Sure. I should have had a bundle of hound nets on me. That would have saved me some hassle. Of course, getting captured is never intelligent, though it wasn’t an intentional mistake, and you’ll agree that the circumstances leading up to that moment didn’t offer me a way to avoid it.”
Niko sighed. “Do you like your job?”
“Not if I’m going to nearly die every day.”
“Aside from that.”
“Right. Aside from that little issue. Is this about what Tim said?”
Niko didn’t respond. He was very good at having his silence speak for him. It had a pressure all of its own.
The waitress came by with our salads, vegetable sides, and my fries. My mouth watered, but Niko’s silence held me still. The waitress left, and I forced my eyes from the food back to Niko’s face. I felt I deserved a medal for the effort.
“I like preventing animals from being hurt,” I said. I’d already come to that conclusion, but I could see from Niko’s face that it wasn’t answer enough. He wanted a definite answer to whether or not I was on board with being an enforcer . . . an answer I had been avoiding thinking about.
I’d taken the job to rid myself of my ability to see in Primordium, thinking that if evil creatures thought I was a normal person and I couldn’t see people’s souls, I’d be able to live a normal life. I tried to picture myself back in an office job, working nine to five, dating whoever I wanted without necessarily knowing the moral contents of his past, living for the weekend, and saving for a mortgage I didn’t yet have. I’d tried to maintain a normal life ever since I was a teenager and learned of Primordium. I sucked at normal.
I didn’t exactly excel as an enforcer. But I’d never experienced the rushes of adrenaline I’d had in the last few days at any other job. I’d never experienced a satisfaction equivalent to what I’d felt the night before when I’d saved Max. Whatever else Niko or Mr. Pitt wanted to say, I had a knack for tracking evil—though maybe they’d word it as attracting evil. Plus, I was really good at killing imps, and I liked doing that. Add in good pay and no hint of monotony anywhere in sight, and there wasn’t much to complain about.
Ignoring the obvious terror and near-death experience an hour ago, of course, I reminded myself. But sitting in Mel’s diner
, food before me, the region’s sexy optivus aegis across from me, death seemed very far away.
“Yeah, I like being an enforcer,” I said. Niko studied me a moment longer before nodding his satisfaction. “Plus, it pays well,” I added with a wink.
Finally he smiled, and I dug into my meal.
The fries, of course, went first. They were hot and salty and easy to eat around the enormous breasts. They did nothing to quell my hunger. The enormous salad tasted like it’d come straight from the farm, crisp and fresh and far more delicious than it deserved to be. I chewed through it with single-minded determination. It wasn’t until I’d polished off the two-portion salad and started on the side of vegetables that I felt like something was actually reaching my stomach. I considered Niko’s earlier words about the milkshake and fries not helping me while I crunched through the last of the zucchini. I’d assumed he meant my figure, which was none of his business. Now I wondered if he’d been referring to something else.
It wasn’t until I ran out of food that I realized I’d seen eating contestants who were better dining companions than I’d been. Fortunately, Niko didn’t appear to care. Sliding his fork around the edges of his salad plate, he scooped up the last shreds of lettuce and blue cheese, then pushed his empty plate aside.
“Why didn’t the fries help?” I asked. Greasy hot potatoes and sugar-laden ketchup were my end-all cure for pretty much everything.
“There’s no lux lucis left in them. They were dead before they got to the table. Same with the milkshake. Unless you’re drinking the milk straight from the cow, you’re not getting anything useful from it, at least not as far as your lux lucis levels are concerned. Did you check out your salad before you inhaled it?”
I shook my head.
“You need to pay more attention to what you eat. Your body needs more than the energy you get from touching plants. Especially if you want to become a stronger enforcer.”
A Fistful of Evil: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Madison Fox, Illuminant Enforcer Book 1) Page 23