A piercing scream echoed through the room, and a streak of copper and white overwhelmed the heavy demon as he scrambled up the stairs. Blood splashed through the air as his throat was torn out.
As Natalia’s body began to crush down on his torso, a wicked, clawed paw cuffed at her shoulder, leaving a gaping wound in her throat. Long, vicious teeth wrapped around her skull, crushing it almost effortlessly.
Natalia didn’t even have time to react. Her coils tightened on him like a vice, cutting off his cry of pain. Jedidiah thought the bones of his hips must have given way; his spine was surely shattered and broken. Yet when she suddenly went limp in death, the pain receded and blessed sensation flowed to his limbs.
He found himself sprawled on his back as the carcass was pulled away from his body. A pair of angry, bloody tigers hovered over him, sniffing at his injured leg. He coughed, struggling to sit up. A huge paw on his chest held him in place.
“They won’t stay dead, you know. You need to take their heads from their bodies.”
The black tiger rumbled deeply in his throat, and the golden female snarled. They were pissed.
Unblinking, he watched as David decapitated the bodies with frightening ease. He supposed that normally they’d be a bit squeamish with such bloodshed, but at the moment they were tigers, and more than willing to do the dirty deed.
Mya shook her head and a fine spray of blood misted the walls. He sighed in resignation. How would he explain that to the staff? Ah well, when he sent them back to where they came from, a bit of extra effort would send their blood as well.
He pulled one final ounce of strength from his will, teleporting the two corpses as well as their scattered parts back to the world of demonkind. He had no clue where they’d end up, but clearly, they couldn’t remain on his first floor landing.
“That injury will need stitching, Jedidiah.” David was kneeling next to him now, blood-streaked and disheveled. Naked too. And happy.
Typical that even as he sprawled here on the floor, blood leaking from his body, he was leering at the naked man. When David effortlessly lifted him from the floor, he didn’t protest, he simply looped an arm around the shifter’s neck.
“My heroes.” He planted a noisy kiss on the shifter’s cheek. David gave him a look. “How did you find me? I don’t recall sharing my location.”
“Susan said that you lived in Chelsea. Once we came out of the subway, it wasn’t hard to find the demon going up in flames on the street in front of your house.” Mya was next to them, keeping pace with her husband as he climbed the stairs to the wing of bedrooms.
“Oh dear. I do hope he managed to vanish before the fire department was summoned.”
“He did. But it smells like a toxic spill out there.” David paused at the landing.
“First door on the right.”
Mya opened the door, and Jedidiah focused, bringing up the lights. “Damn, I really should have hit the breaker box before getting tangled with Natalia.” Even as he spoke, the dawn broke through the windows, bathing the room in warm, pinkish-gold light. With a sigh of relief, he let the lights go dim.
He heard the water running and winced. It wouldn’t heat properly till the electricity was turned on. Mya darted past him.
“The breakers are in the kitchen, near the back door!”
In record time, the lights came up in the room, and the house hummed to life. He was grateful that he’d thought to modernize the place back in the nineties.
David set him down on a bench and turned to the shower, getting that started. Wearily, Jedidiah pulled off his tie and began to unbutton his ruined shirt. That was as far as he made it.
Mya was back, first aid kit and a bundle of fabric in her hand. It was the shredded remnants of her quaint Laura Ashley dress.
“I’m sorry, tigress.” He fingered the tattered fabric. “I promise I’ll buy you a closet full of frocks. Anything you want.”
“You might regret that.” David’s easy smile was back; he opened the kit and used a pair of scissors to cut up the leg of Jedidiah’s trousers. His smile wobbled a bit when he looked at the wound. The demon had probably opened him to the bone. Jedidiah didn’t bother to look.
“Well, then. Let’s get you cleaned up so I can close this. It’s been a while since medical school, but I was always pretty good with stitches.”
“Lovely.” Jedidiah sighed in resignation.
Epilogue
One Year Later
Jedidiah slipped on his sunglasses, smiling up at the warm California sun. He loved California, and the Golden State loved him back. The smog always seemed to lift when Jedidiah Worth came to town.
He slid into the back of the limousine, smiling as David and Mya followed.
“Not guilty. Such lovely words.” He sighed happily.
“Those words are particularly nice to hear when the defendant really is innocent.” Mya smiled, her watchful attitude relaxed once the doors were closed. “I imagine our client should be getting her children back very soon.”
“Plus a nice check from the state for charging her using falsified evidence in the first place.” David lifted his Ray Bans to reveal smiling eyes. “You two rocked.”
“Your wife rocked. If I’d known from the start that she’d already passed the bar in California and was becoming qualified in the UK, I’d have never tried to slip out of your clutches!”
In fact, Jedidiah was wildly, immensely grateful that they’d managed to track him to his lair. Not only because they’d saved his life, and continued to do so on nearly a daily basis, but because he’d fallen wildly, deeply in love with his tigers. More amazing, they’d taken him into their hearts. Who’d ever heard of such a thing?
And Mya never failed to amaze him. Her control over the hellhound had grown until the beast was fully integrated into her personality. She was their early warning system whenever a predatory demon happened to be in their vicinity. She and David functioned flawlessly as his protectors. For the first time in his very long existence, Jedidiah was not alone. He could breathe.
Mya acted as his associate and protégée, and David had left the clinic and now ran a private practice from the office next to the law practice. As the practice had begun to take on more social issues, David’s medical and psychological expertise was becoming more and more vital to Jedidiah’s cases.
In all, they not only functioned beautifully as an international law firm, they’d settled in as a blissfully happy family.
In the evenings, Jedidiah relaxed in his library while David and Mya roamed the house, sometimes playing the mysterious games that tigers played. Often they basked in front of the fire, rolling and wrestling flirtatiously.
How many men could lay claim to possessing a pair of house tigers?
Instead of rowdy bacchanals at which he would harvest the souls of the evil, Jedidiah Worth held exclusive and intimate parties with the sole purpose of raising funds for women’s shelters and medical research. He still fleeced the wealthy, but for a much better cause. Soul gathering could wait for another century or two. If he wasn’t careful, he’d emerge from his exile on the side of the angels.
Jed didn’t really care, as long as the tigers were at his side.
He continued to monitor the growth and well-being of the omni-were in Tibet but seriously doubted that Mya would choose to surrender the hellhound. The occasional red flash in her eyes now served as a warning that they could act on rather than as a signal to restrain her. And the nights… they played every game the cats could devise and performed every debauched act that his demonic imagination could bring forth.
He was the most fortunate demon of his acquaintance.
The intercom buzzed, and the chauffer’s voice carried over a speaker built into a hidden panel in the limo.
“Sir, it looks like we’re heading into traffic. We’ll be tied up for quite a while.”
“Thank you, Timothy. We’ll be fine.”
He leaned back against the plush leather of the seat, la
nguidly surveying the beautiful faces of the shifters on the seat across from him. With a thought, he engaged the privacy screen behind the driver and reached up to loosen his tie.
“So, just how quickly can you two get naked?”
It didn’t take long at all.
Belinda McBride
Belinda lives in the wilderness of the Siskiyou Mountains, and at night she runs naked with a pack of wolves…
Uhh…
Belinda lives near the Siskiyou Mountains and shares her home with a pack of Siberian Huskies who like to pretend they’re wolves. And she usually keeps her clothing on when she goes outside.
Belinda loves to travel, collect rare gemstones, make soap and spend precious time with her daughters. Her degree is in history with a cultural anthropology minor. On weekends, you will often find Belinda ringside at a dog show, comb and spray bottle in hand.
She invites you to visit her website at www.belindamcbride.com, or email her directly at [email protected].
Last Call Europe Devil’s Advocate Page 7