Demon Hunting In Dixie

by Lexi George

  Brand grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her. The storm broke with fury over their heads. Rain drummed on the tin roof. By the time he ended the kiss, she was weak in the knees and panting like she’d finished a 5-k run. Another minute and she’d have done him right there on the floor, and if Shep wandered into the room in the middle of it, too bad, too sad, oh Dad.

  “Very well, I admit it,” he growled against her lips. “I am jealous. I am consumed with it. The very thought of another man touching you drives me mad. I will allow this Pootie person to escort you to the ball, but only if I accompany you. And if he lays so much as a finger on you, I will rip his head off and use it for a chamber pot.”

  Maybe it wasn’t a vow of eternal love or a promise of happily ever after, but it was darn sure something.

  “Does that make you happy?”

  “Damn skippy, ” Addy said.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The following night, Addy entered the Hannah Town Hall with Pootie and a second, unseen escort at her side—Brand. At her request, he made himself invisible.

  “Bruce is this year’s Grand Goober,” she explained. “It’s a big whoopee-do deal in Hannah, and I don’t want to spoil it for him. He’s a nice guy, Brand, and this means a lot to him. He won’t understand if you tag along, and I have no intention of trying to explain it to him. Why don’t you catch a ride to the ball with Muddy and Mr. C? They’ve got plenty of room in their car. I know you’re trying to keep me safe, but Bruce is harmless, I promise.”

  “No,” Brand said. “This I cannot allow. I will accompany you and this Pootie human, or you will not go.”

  “Wait a darn minute, bub, you can’t tell me—”

  He jerked her in his arms and kissed her. Instant lobotomy. Her brain dried up and fell out on the floor. She ought to be ashamed of herself. And she would, too, as soon as her hootie stopped running things.

  “Your safety and the safety of those you love may be at stake,” he said when he’d finished kissing her senseless. “I can and I will tell you what to do in this instance. The Pootie human will not see me. The Dalvahni have the ability to move among your kind undetected.”

  So she went to the Grand Goober Ball with Pootie Jones and the Invisible Man. Problem was Pootie might not be able to see Brand, but she sure as shoot knew he was there. She could feel him glowering at her from the backseat. It was like his eyeballs contained little laser beams, and they were burning a hole in the back of her head. Pootie seemed to feel it, too. He kept looking over his shoulder.

  “I keep thinking I see something in the rearview mirror,” he said with an edgy laugh. “Little green flames. Crazy, huh? Guess that dog spooked me.”

  Poor Pootie. He’d taken her arm as they approached the car, but was drawn up short by a low rumbling growl.

  He spun around. “What’s that? Sounded like some kind of animal.”

  “He is not to touch you,” Brand growled in her ear. The car door swung silently open, and she was lifted in strong, unseen arms and deposited in the seat. “This I cannot allow.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. He’s just being a gentleman.”

  Pootie blinked in surprise when he saw her sitting inside the car. “You say something, Addy?”

  “I said it was probably the neighbor’s dog. We’d better get going if we want to make the lead-out at the dance.”

  “Yeah, sure thing.”

  Pootie got behind the wheel. But he kept checking the rearview mirror, as if he sensed Brand’s presence.

  “Rabbit keeps running over my grave,” he confided. “Must be all the excitement.”

  They eased into a parking place with a sign that said RESERVED FOR THE GRAND GOOBER. Addy flung open her door and scrambled onto the sidewalk as Pootie rounded the car to help her out. He seemed a little taken aback by her lack of manners.

  Addy gave him a bright smile. “Sorry, guess I’m a little excited, too.”

  Thank goodness Bitsy didn’t see her. She’d have gotten lecture number fifty two on entering and exiting an automobile like a Southern lady. She’d flunked that one for sure. A lady waited for her escort to come around and open the car door for her. Once the gentleman opened the car door for her, a lady exited the vehicle with grace, taking care to keep her legs together and offering her date a grateful smile and a murmured thank-you. A lady didn’t eject herself out of a car like her drawers were on fire. Most Southern ladies, however, didn’t have an invisible ticked-off boyfriend with supernatural powers waiting to beat the snot out of their date if the poor guy laid so much as a finger on them. So, she chucked lesson number fifty-two in favor of saving poor Pootie’s life.

  The Town Hall was a three-story turn-of-the-century brick warehouse on the west bank of the Devil River, part of the Hannah Riverfront Project, an ambitious plan to revitalize the waterfront over the next two decades. Future plans for the project included provisions for a park, bike and running trails, and an open-air amphitheater. There was even talk of having a riverboat one day, but the first phase of the plan was the Town Hall. The ground floor of the building would one day house the mayor’s office and the police department. Right now, though, it was one big open space, just right for a ball. Much better than the high school gym, where the ball had been held for the past four years. Floor-length arched windows overlooked the river, and French doors opened onto a brick veranda with wrought-iron railings. The raw Sheetrock walls had been draped in yards of filmy cloth that gave the room an Arabian Nights feel. Twinkle lights sparkled over the windows and in the greenery. Hired for the evening, an orchestra all the way from Mobile played soft music. Tickets sold for $50.00 each, or $90.00 a couple. Everybody who was anybody in Hannah attended the Grand Goober. It was the social event of the season.

  Mayor Tunstall spotted them as they entered and made his way through the crowd. The mayor was short and round, and reminded Addy of an egg with hair and legs.

  “There he is, the Grand Goober himself!” The mayor did a double-take when he saw Addy. “My, my, Addy, you look good enough to eat. I almost didn’t recognize you with all that glamorous blond hair.”

  His gaze drifted downward and locked on her chest. Good grief, the mayor was a boob man. He was salivating over her girls. Eww. Politicians were almost as creepy as dead people.

  He gave her an oily smile. “You’ve been hiding your light under a bushel basket, young lady. You’ll have to save me a dance.”

  “No,” Brand said. The single word, deep and full of menace, echoed around the cavernous room, all the more startling because it seemed to come out of nowhere.

  The mayor looked at Pootie in surprise. “Pootie, my boy, you mustn’t keep this lovely thing all to yourself.”

  “It wasn’t me, I swear,” Pootie protested. He looked around in alarm. “Must have been somebody else. Maybe they’re testing the sound system or something.”

  Addy shoved her elbow in the general direction of Brand’s voice. She connected with solid flesh and heard a muffled grunt. “Behave,” she hissed.

  “I can read his foul thoughts.” Brand spoke in her ear. “If you dance with him, he goes in the river.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

  The mayor raised his brows. “What’s that, my dear?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Addy gave him a dazzling smile. “Thrilled to be here, that’s all.”

  The mayor beamed back at her. “That’s right, as Pootie’s date, you get to dance the lead-out. It’s a big honor.” The orchestra launched into “Stars Fell on Alabama.” “There’s the signal.” He grabbed Bruce by the arm. “Excuse us, Addy. Got to get the Grand Goober ready for his big entrance. We’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  Mayor Tunstall pulled Pootie across the room and through a door.

  “What is this lead-out?” Brand asked.

  “It’s the first dance of the ball. As the Grand Goober, Bruce gets to open the festivities. As his date, I dance the first dance with him.”

  She shivered as she felt Brand come up be
hind her. Heat radiated off his big body, and his masculine scent, a heady, spicy combination of sandalwood, cedar, and rock rose with a hint of cardamom and pepper, swirled around her until she felt drunk.

  He kissed her on the neck. “Have I told you how beautiful you are tonight?”

  “No, I don’t believe you have.”

  She swallowed a squeak as he slid his hands around her and cupped her breasts. It took her straight back to that first night, when she thought she was being made love to by a ghost. Had it only been four nights ago? So much had changed. She had changed. For one thing, she was about to have a screaming orgasm in a room full of people.

  “You are ravishing, a vision, the most beautiful creature I have ever seen,” he murmured. “I’ve been rock hard and aching for you all night. I want to slide this indecent scrap of nothing you call a dress over your delectable ass and have hot monkey sex with you. I do not want to share you with anyone, not even this Pootie Jones.”

  Sigh. The man sure knew how to sweet-talk a girl. If they were any place else, she’d shuck her panties right then and there, and take him up on his offer.

  She reined in her raging hormones and pushed his hands away. “No. You have got to behave, and so do I. It’s one dance.” An excited buzz from across the room drew her attention. “And in case you think I’m looking forward to it, look what’s coming through the door.”

  Clapping and cheering, the crowd lined up on either side of the massive double doors as a tall, bizarre figure entered the ballroom. It was Pootie, the Grand Goober himself, wearing his official costume.

  Brand grunted in surprise. “By the sword, what is it?”

  Addy sighed. “That’s my date. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to dance with the big nut.”

  Brand prowled the edge of the ballroom, his eyes fastened on Adara as she moved around the dance floor in another man’s arms. Or at least he thought the creature holding Adara was human. He could not be sure. From the shoulders down, the creature looked like a man dressed in the black garb called a tuxedo. But, the thing’s head was monstrous, a wrinkled three-foot-high curved pod with large round eyes and a vacuous red-lipped smile. Hideous, as alarming as any demon he’d ever seen. And Adara was twirling around the room with it. He wanted to sweep her off the dance floor and carry her into the night. He longed to cleave the giant pod head in two and leave the smoking halves on the floor as a no-trespassing sign to all other males.

  Adara spun closer. She seemed to sense his hot gaze upon her and glanced nervously about, her large brown eyes wide with apprehension. She should be afraid. He was near crazed with jealousy and desire and possessiveness. This was insanity. The Dalvahni did not feel such things.

  Yet, he did. That and more.

  His hungry gaze fastened upon her as she moved about the room. He had been in a near frenzy of lust since she came out of the bedroom earlier that evening dressed for the ball. The slinky blue gown she wore showed her white skin and pale hair to advantage and clung to her lovely body. The damn garment was so tight, it was a wonder she could breathe, hugging her deliciously rounded bottom and full breasts like a second skin. If not for the high slit on one side that exposed her long legs, she would not be able to move at all. Each step she took offered a tantalizing glimpse of those smooth, elegant limbs, legs she had wrapped around his waist the night before as he moved within her. All the men in the room watched her, panting with desire. He suppressed a snarl as he read their lustful thoughts. He wanted to kill them all.

  In the darkness outside the long windows that overlooked the river, lightning flashed in jagged blue-white streaks, illuminating in ghostly gray relief the trees on the opposite shore. The orchestra ended the first song and launched into another. Thunder rumbled over the strains of music. A waltz, his internal guide told him, a voluptuous intertwining of the male and female bodies that was considered obscene and vulgar in the not-so-distant past. And rightly so. The creature with the elongated head dancing about the room with Adara held her much too close. He had one hand at her waist. Brand watched that hand with narrowed eyes. If it moved so much as a finger’s breadth closer to Adara’s breasts or inched lower by the space of a hair toward her luscious bottom, he would tear the man limb from limb. He would—

  “You might as well show yourself, brother,” Ansgar said. “All the growling and rumbling gives you away.”

  Brand shed his cloak of invisibility. Evie took a startled step back at his sudden appearance.

  Ignoring Ansgar, Brand made Evie a deep bow. “Mistress Evangeline, you are a vision tonight.”

  Indeed, she was lovely. Hard to believe this creature with the glorious red hair and lush, hourglass curves was the shy, dowdy woman from the flower shop.

  Evie’s delicate skin flushed. “Thank you.” She smoothed her hands down her green gown in a self-conscious gesture and slid Ansgar a quick, adoring glance. “This is my first Grand Goober Ball. Ansgar got me this gown and insisted on bringing me along.”

  “I told her I would not come without her.” Ansgar surveyed Brand’s formal attire with cool indifference. “I see the tailor met your needs as well.”

  “Yes, Master Gibbs has been most accommodating.”

  “You both look very handsome,” Evangeline said. “All the women are drooling over you.”

  Ansgar raised her hand to his lips. “Are there other women here? I had not noticed.”

  Her blush deepened. “What a sweet thing to say, even though I know you’re only being nice.”

  Ansgar gave her a smoldering look. “I assure you, Evangeline, I am neither sweet nor nice.”

  Ansgar’s chilly hauteur was noticeably absent in his dealings with Evie, Brand noted. Perhaps he was not the only warrior affected by these damnable feelings. The knowledge cheered him.

  He sought and found Adara once more on the dance floor. Her partner’s grinning pod head bent closer to her shining head as though whispering something in her ear. Brand’s hearing was unusually keen, but he could not hear the creature for the music.

  “ ’T would be much simpler, brother, if you claimed the next dance,” Ansgar said, sounding bored once more. “Or you could skulk in the shadows like a lovesick boy and allow one of these other drooling jackals to claim her instead.” He shrugged. “I daresay it would be better if you did. It is not the nature of the Dalvahni to love.”

  Love?

  Once during a battle centuries before in the Kingdom of Alba, a demon-possessed soldier attacked him from behind, striking him in the head with a mace. The blow had stunned him. He felt the same way now. He loved Adara? No wonder he had not been able to put a name to this baffling condition. What did he or any other Dalvahni warrior know of love? But, since he’d met Adara . . .

  He thought of his life before her. The long years blurred behind him, empty and meaningless—a dreadful, unchanging drudgery of grim purpose and duty. He imagined the future without her. Endless, lonely years . . . unbearable. How pitiable a creature was he that one female could shake him loose from his moorings and send him drifting rudderless into an unknown sea? He was a warrior, focused, dedicated, determined in the eternal fight against the enemy. These feelings the woman stirred in him left him as weak and helpless as a newborn babe blinking in the light of a bewildering new world. He had no defenses against such an opponent, no previous experience to fall back upon, no one to counsel him. Ansgar and their brother warriors, the closest thing to family he knew, could not extricate him from this coil. The Dalvahni were unburdened by sentiment, had no concept of it. He sailed alone on uncharted waters, tossed about on a treacherous ocean by an everchanging current of emotion, something his brothers would find incomprehensible, even contemptible.

  Love? Unthinkable.

  He loved her.

  The knowledge blazed through him, certain, cleansing. Right.

  He should be holding Adara in his arms and whispering in her ear, not the grotesque human with the unnaturally large head. Enough was enough.

  He strod
e out onto the dance floor to claim his woman.

  Chapter Thirty

  There are some social situations that no amount of mothering or all the lectures in the world can prepare a girl for. Dancing with a demonically possessed giant peanut is surely one of them.

  “D-i-i-e,” her partner said in a rattling hiss that shivered along her nerve endings.

  Classic horror movie stuff, though the big peanut head kind of ruined it for him. Hard to take a supernatural malefic being seriously when he was dressed like a gi-normous goober pea, even if he was the Legume from Hell.

  Addy blinked at him. “I’m sorry, could you say that again?”

  “Tomorrow you die.”

  “What is that smell?” She wrinkled her nose. “Like rancid butter. Yuck. Is somebody burning popcorn at a ball?”

  She winced as his hand tightened painfully over hers.

  “Heed me, Addy. I have marked you. You are mine, and tomorrow I will come for you.”

  Addy was terrified. Not that she was about to let him know it. Clowns and mimes and that creepy Burger King guy gave her the willies. And now she could add vengeful, possessed peanuts to the list. She stiffened her spine and donned her favorite armor, smarminess, to disguise her fear.

  “Yeah, I heard you. Tomorrow’s the big day,” she said. “But, why wait? Is the big, bad demon scared of a woman? And what have you done with Pootie? This is his big night. Did you ask him if he wanted to be possessed by a soul-sucking fiend from hell? Because if you didn’t that’s just rude. And speaking of rude, when are you going to get that statue off my aunt’s lawn? It’s killing the grass.”

  Violet light flashed behind the round, dark eyeholes of the Grand Goober mask. She’d pissed him off. Her alter ego, Miss Smarty Pants, had that effect on others. Nice to know her abilities extended to the vegetable world.