“This is no joke, Duster. You aren’t the first of your kind who’s come against me. Your own grandmother tried and failed.”
Yikes.
He steepled his fingers and tapped his chin. “I see you’re beginning to understand. I should have killed you—along with your mother.”
My vision went wavery as shock slammed into me, along with a stabbing pain that seared my soul. “My mother?” I managed to say. “You…?”
“She wasn’t as reasonable as your grandmother was in her time. She actually had the effrontery to threaten me.”
Just like I was doing now.
He stood up behind the bench, and his black robes made him look like a damn vulture. Just what he was. “Your grandmother was wise enough to choose to leave me alone in order to protect her child.” He smiled again. “Ironic that her child then grew up and refused to back off herself. One wonders why she didn’t put you first, doesn’t one?”
I was quietly pissed. And sad. And depressed. And furious. Well, mostly furious.
“Your mother swore to kill me when she came into her powers.” He shrugged and watched my eyes as he smiled again. “So I made sure she didn’t. And I’m still here. Still ruling the underground with no one to challenge me.”
God. Too much information. Why had no one told me? Jasmine? Gram? Devlin? This monster had destroyed my family once, and now he wanted to do it again. Pain washed through me, over me, and I knew I would be mourning my mom all over again. But I couldn’t grieve now.
My mom was gone, and there was no bringing her back. Thea, though, was alive. I meant to keep her that way. I took a breath, settled myself and sneered at the judge.
“Nothing to say, Duster?” he asked, clearly amused. “No barbs? No quips?”
“No,” I said, keeping Too Tall Bailiff in my line of sight. “Just this: You stay the hell away from my daughter.”
“Or you’ll do what, exactly?”
I watched as the bailiff walked slowly, trying to come up on my left. Not easy to keep an eye on both the judge and his muscle, so I knew I had to either start dusting or get the hell outta Dodge. Fast. Still talking, I turned in a small halfcircle, following the path of the bailiff. He seemed to be getting even bigger. I didn’t think that was just my fear talking, either. He was actually swelling, like some huge demon toad—which, if such a thing existed, I sooooooo didn’t want to know about.
I tightened my grip on my little spritzer. Not that it would stop the guy cold, but I knew if he was a demon, it would at least hurt him like hell, which could buy me a couple extra seconds.
“Listen,” I said, glancing at the judge over my shoulder to make sure he was still standing behind the bench. He was. Apparently, I wasn’t a big enough threat to get him to leave his precious throne. “I didn’t come here for trouble. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you run the underground around here.” Mental apologies to my mom and all the other women in my family. “Until a couple weeks ago, I didn’t even know you guys existed. So I’ll leave you alone to do your business, whatever the hell it is.”
The judge snorted his disdain.
The bailiff peeled his lips back in what he probably thought was an evil smile, but it reminded me of a chimp asking for a banana.
“Why did you come here, then, Duster? Into my territory without invitation?”
“I told you,” I said. “To protect Thea.”
The bailiff stepped closer, and I was suddenly tired of the whole damn situation. I owed the judge a lot of grief. I’d been willing to talk this out. Press me too far, though, and I don’t bend. I snap. Most times, it ain’t pretty.
“Fool,” the judge spat.
Tall, Gray and Swollen made his move. He came at me, arms outstretched, eyes narrowed. I yelped, pumped the spritzer and hit him square in the eye.
Instantly, smoke rose up from his head, swirling around his eyes as he howled. The judge was still behind me, shouting now at his smoking minion to finish me off. To give Swollen Boy his due, he probably wanted to kill me more than he’d ever wanted anything else in his life. But he couldn’t see me.
His eyes were streaming, a gray haze of smoke poured from his eye sockets, and he kept pawing at them, trying to clear his vision. Even blind, he made a try for me. Thank God I’d worn pants. In a skirt, I might have been toast. As it was, I scrambled onto the prosecutor’s table and leaped off the other side. One of my boot heels snapped off, and I lurched heavily to one side, nearly toppling over.
But I caught myself just as the still-smoking demon toad charged me again. I picked up the glass pitcher of water and tossed it at him, but all that did was wipe away some of the demon liquid. The smoke was thinner now, and I could see fury glittering in his eyes. He gave me that chimp smile again, and I knew I was in trouble.
From his bench, the judge was watching the show like he was at the circus. All he needed to complete the picture was a bag of popcorn and a cone of cotton candy.
The demon charged a third time, and as he flew at me, I ducked low, crawled under the table and kept going as fast as my hands and knees would take me, straight across the room and under the defense’s table. He was right behind me, and I felt claws grab at my bare ankle. I kicked out of my broken shoe and hit him square in the nose. Small consolation. When I got out from under the table, Toad Boy was waiting for me.
He snarled something in a language that sounded more foreign than anything I’d ever heard, but what do I know about languages? Most times I have trouble with English. He reached for me, the judge shouted “Kill her!”, and I ducked under the demon toad’s arm, popped up like a jack-in-the-box and smacked my hand to his chest.
He knew what was coming. I saw it on his face. And in that split second between life and poof, he made one last try, scraping his clawed hands across my chest.
Pain slapped at me, but now I was pissed. My Coach bag was ruined, my shoes were broken and one of my favorite blouses was hanging in tatters, announcing the fact that I’d worn my oldest bra.
Was nothing sacred?
“That’s it, brother,” I said and yanked out his heart.
He dissolved right in front of me, and while I was brushing my palms together to get rid of the last of him, I turned and looked up at the judge.
“Another mistake, Duster,” he said, voice tight and scratchy, eyes laced with fury that seemed to bubble and froth.
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time,” I told him, picked up the hanging pieces of fabric that had once been my blouse and held them clutched to me with one hand. “You’re the one who started that. I didn’t come here to dust anybody. I wanted to talk.”
Even knowing he had had my mother killed, I would have dealt with him to save Thea. Now I realized that the only way my daughter would be safe was if the judge was dead.
Worked for me.
“I don’t talk to your kind,” he said.
“My kind?” I asked. “You mean Dusters?”
“I mean women.”
Oh, he really was a prick. For the good of women everywhere, this guy was going to have to go.
Behind me, the courtroom door was pushed open with such force, it slammed into the wall behind it. I whirled around, expecting a demon cavalry to come charging to the judge’s rescue.
Devlin stood in the open doorway, features tight, hands fisted at his sides.
Well, it was a demon.
The question was, whose cavalry was he?
Mine?
Or the judge’s?
“Devlin,” Jenks said, pleased to see him. “Get rid of her.”
Devlin’s gaze burned into mine. “Right away.”
Well, I had my answer.
An hour later, I was at Devlin’s place, wearing one of his black silk shirts (and a couple of bandages on the scrapes the demon gave me—hopefully he wasn’t carrying some hideous disfiguring demon disease), curling my bare toes into the rug beneath my feet as he paced like a wild man.
“Are you completely insane?” he shouted.
“What the hell were you thinking going up against the judge alone?”
“It felt like the right thing to do,” I said, my gaze following him on his crazed stalking path. “Besides,” I pointed out in my own defense, “I was holding my own. I took down the demon toad, and I could have gotten the judge, too, if you hadn’t interrupted.”
I hadn’t been sure whose side he was on until we left the courthouse. He’d had a grip on my upper arm, and he’d pretty much dragged me to my car in the parking lot. I’d been prepared, still holding on to my demon spray, waiting for my shot to kill him if it came to that.
But as soon as we were out of sight of the courthouse, he’d pulled me in close to him, wrapped his arms around me and kissed me so hard and so long, my head was still sort of spinning. In a good way. He’d brought me here, to the private apartment over the club, and for the last half hour, he hadn’t stopped yelling at me long enough to kiss me again.
Which was a damn shame from my perspective. I could really have used a good kiss. I’m a firm believer in the reward system. Survive the judge; get a kiss.
“Why were you there, anyway?” I asked, suddenly suspicious, despite that first great kiss, the hope for more and the fact that he’d loaned me a shirt.
He stopped short, glared at me and stabbed his fingers through his hair. “One of the bailiffs called me.”
“Tree Stump,” I said, nodding, “must have called when he took the prisoner out.”
“He said the judge was in danger from the Duster.”
“So you went trotting right over to protect the boss?” I asked, and didn’t bother to hide the disgust in my voice.
“I went over there because you were in danger.” He crossed the room to me, grabbed my shoulders and gave me a shake that sent my eyeballs rattling in my skull. “I couldn’t believe it when he said you were there, in the courtroom. Damn it, Cass, the judge is an ancient demon. He has strength you wouldn’t believe. And minions ready to die—or kill for him. You’re lucky you got out of there in one piece. You can’t just walk onto his turf and start giving orders.”
I grabbed hold of his shirt front and tried to do a little shaking of my own, but it was like trying to rattle Mount Everest. “I didn’t give him orders,” I argued. “I offered him a deal. I told him I’d back off and leave him to do whatever the hell he wants to do if he leaves Thea alone.”
“He doesn’t think he needs your permission, Cass,” Devlin muttered, his voice thick with repressed anger. Well, join the club. “Going there was like waving a red flag at him. Don’t you get that?”
I let go of his shirt and narrowed my eyes. “I don’t care. Don’t you get that? I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect my kid.”
“You’re dangerous.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” I stepped back, looked into his eyes so I could see his reaction and asked, “I found out something else while I was there. Something I didn’t know before the judge told me.”
He waited.
“Did you know the judge had my mother killed?”
A heartbeat passed, then two. He shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”
I believed him. He looked as surprised by the knowledge as I had felt when I first heard it. That was something, anyway. “Well, he did. Apparently, my grandmother backed off to keep Mom safe, but my mom wasn’t willing to play the game.”
“Does that tell you something?” he asked, his voice soft and low and filled with shadowy emotions that felt as raw as what I was feeling myself.
“Yeah,” I said. “It tells me as long as he’s alive, Thea’s at risk.”
“True.”
Hmm. I had thought he’d argue with me. Try to convince me to play the judge’s game the way my grandmother had. I wasn’t trying to make a call on how Gram had handled things in her time, either. I figured as mothers, we all made the choices we had to. She’d chosen to pull back. My mom had chosen to stand and fight, though she’d never gotten the chance.
I guess I was more like my mother than I had ever thought.
“I told you I’d help.” His grip loosened a little. “You should have told me you were going in there.”
I shook my head. “Couldn’t. You would have tried to stop me.”
“Damn straight.” One of his hands slid down my back and cupped my butt.
“I had to face him, Devlin. Had to look that old bastard in the eye and tell him he couldn’t have Thea. I appreciate the offer of help, but she’s my kid.”
“I know,” he said and squeezed my behind.
“Not fair distracting me,” I told him, but moved against his hand like a cat wanting to be stroked.
“You need distracting,” he said. “I don’t want you dead.”
“Me, neither,” I said, stifling a moan as he undid the hook and zipper of my slacks and slipped one hand down across my abdomen and lower still, until he was cupping me, rubbing his palm across skin that felt suddenly as sensitized as raw nerves. “Big no to dying.”
“You’re making me crazy, Cassidy,” he said, his gaze moving over my face while his hand did some amazing things to my body.
“It’s a gift,” I said, then hissed in a breath. How the heck did I go from pissed off and defensive to all gooey and needy in a couple of lousy seconds?
How could I feel the same way about two different guys? Logan could make me feel just like this. All twisted up with wants and needs I shouldn’t have had. And now was so not the time to try to figure it all out.
“I need to touch you.”
“So touch,” I said, despite the groan rippling up my throat.
He did. For several long, completely fabulous seconds. He really had amazingly talented fingers.
“I knew you were going to be trouble the first time I saw you.” He nibbled on my throat. His tongue drew a line of heat up to my earlobe.
“Hah! And you think I was prepared for Demon Sexcapades?”
He smiled against me. I felt it. “I think we need to stop talking,” he said and took my mouth with his.
Good point.
His mouth covered mine, and his tongue tangled with mine in a frenzied dance of anticipation. My nerves were taut, my body humming, and when I parted my legs for him, he pushed one finger into me, sliding it in and out of my slick heat, making me move into him, fighting for balance, fighting for control, and losing. I rode the crest of sensation, always seeking more, always finding it.
He stroked me deeply, intimately, and I groaned into his mouth, silently demanding more. Yet even as I eagerly raced toward the climax hanging just out of reach, a part of me wondered if the face I was currently lip-locked with was Devlin’s real face. I mean, I’d seen that guy on patrol who had dropped his human-looking appearance and become the demon within in a blink of the eye.
What if Devlin could do the same thing? What if he was hideously horned or fanged or bright blue or something?
Then his fingers drove higher, and I forgot about thinking. As long as he kept taking me on this ride, I didn’t want to wonder what image he might be hiding.
So exactly what kind of Duster did that make me? One touch from my mysterious demon lover and I was ready to throw the job to the wind in the hopes of another orgasm?
Oh yeah.
“Next time you take on the judge,” he muttered, tearing his mouth from mine and lifting his head to look me square in the eye, “we do it together.”
“Right,” I said, wondering what the hell we were talking about. “Together.”
Then his tongue tangled with mine again, and his fingers pushed me over the edge of need and down that slippery slope to oblivion.
Chapter Nineteen
I wasn’t going to think about what happened with me and Devlin two days ago. Okay, fine. I was thinking about it a lot. Though a part of me still worried that maybe he was playing both sides of the demon/human fence, another part of me was delighted to let that worry go and shout woo-hoo! I’ve accepted that I have slut-puppy issues, an
d I’ve moved on. So should you.
All I’m going to say about that afternoon is, a double layer of condoms didn’t slow Devlin down any. I only hoped his sperm weren’t as energetic as he was.
Anyway, I’d made my challenge to the judge, and despite the fact that the demon had practically laughed me out of his courtroom, I felt I’d made my point. After all, he was down one bailiff, wasn’t he?
Score one for the Duster. Right about now, I figured Judge Jenks was feeling pretty pissy. No more than me. The more I thought about what the bastard had already taken from me, the more determined I was to stand up to him and make him pay.
He’d had my mother killed. Growing up without a mom was hard. My dad had done his best, but he couldn’t do the first-bra thing, or the period talk—Rachel’s mom had stepped in and included me when she’d taken Rachel for her first training bra and box of tampons. God help us both, Dad had skipped the sex talk altogether. (Thinking back, maybe that’s why he’d been so understanding when I told him about being pregnant with Thea. He’d probably half blamed himself.)
Of course, the real person to blame was Judge Jenks. Killing my mother had cheated us both out of the very relationship Thea and I shared now. I wasn’t going to let that miserable demon get close to my baby girl. He’d taken all he was going to take from me.
On that cheerful thought, I had another glass of cold white wine and let my gaze sweep the crowded street. The party was in full swing. The multicolored strands of tiny Christmas lights were twinkling in the trees and hanging across the street like high-tech banners. Four tables were set up in the middle of the street, literally groaning under the mountain of food provided by all of the neighbors.
Needless to say, I was in Heaven.
U2 pounded from the stereo, and the kids made fun of any parents brave enough to try dancing in front of an audience. Between the wine and the brownies, though, I was content to hang on the fringes and watch everyone else.
Especially Thea and Jett.
I picked up a brownie, took a big bite and chewed while I watched the neighborhood party from the sidelines. With chocolate in hand and a wine chaser, the world was looking pretty good.
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