“Uh-huh.” She drunkenly chopped off another arm, struggling to remain upright.
“I curse you !” Dortez shrieked in fury. “I curse you to die forgotten and alone, an outcast condemned to be the eternal plaything of immortal hellspawn as everything you love burns around you !”
Sunny just laughed. “Do I know you?”
“You laugh?!” Dortez shrieked. “I have the power! Release me!”
“Fuck your curse,” Sunny said, flicking a chunk of meat off her machete. “Someone beat you to it.”
Then the Náakw seemed to realize she was totally serious, because his cries devolved into an animal shrieks as she waded in to finish the job.
Chapter 17: Free Burgers
A couple hours later, Sunny shoved the limbless head of a massive interdimensional octopus off an open floater in front of the BPI headquarters. Stapled to its motionless corpse was a two-by-four-foot poster she had appropriated from one of the GIVE US THE TRUTH protesters, writing on the reverse,
GIVE ME MY $100,000
-Sunny Day
For her part, Sunny fell asleep in the passenger side of Sheng’s floater as he shuttled her to the nearest hotel, where she spent the last of her rent reserve on a single night at the luxury Katmai Hotel. Sunny fell asleep the moment her head hit the starched, embroidered pillow.
The next morning, she woke with her shotgun laid out on the bed an inch from her nose, with a note in Khaz’s flourished handwriting,
Darren cleaned it for you.
Next time, try not to lose it.
Bemused, Sunny wadded up the note and threw it in the trash. She was surprised he had returned it, considering it wasn’t actually part of their bargain. On second glance, the gun looked like it had been spit-shined. She could see her own reflection.
Probably has something to do with me saving his ass, Sunny thought. Jarheads were weird that way…
Groaning and sporting a full-body bruise, Sunny took a long, hot shower, and watched the rock dust and squid blood slough off her body and down the drain. By the time she finally felt human enough to go downstairs and find something to eat, it was almost time for checkout. More than anything, she wanted to stay just one more night, but at almost four hundred dollars a night, her bank account couldn’t afford more than one. Groaning, she stumbled down to the glitzy front desk at the very last minute, planning to head straight to South Dome and crash on her sister’s burned-out couch for the next two millennia, or at least until she could move without hurting.
The poshly-dressed African desk clerk gave her an odd look as she stumbled up to the polished black marble countertop and clunked her shotgun down across it. “I’m checking out,” she said, when he just stared at her. She dug into her wallet and shoved her card across the marble at him.
The clerk gave her a really long look and, with a single pink-padded finger, shoved the card back across the counter to her in mute, mournful silence. His nametag read ALAN JONES.
Sunny’s heart pounded and she checked the clock, wondering if this was some Nazi attempt to bilk her out of another day’s payment because she was a minute and a half late. “I had a rough night and I woke up late. It’s just a couple minutes.”
The clerk, wide-eyed and solemn, just nodded his head at her.
Sunny squinted at him, then at the card. “I had enough money in there to cover it.” Then she cocked her head, trying to remember. Did she? That last week had been expensive …
“That’s not an issue,” the man said, his eyes sliding to the gun.
The poor guy thinks I’m robbing him! Sunny realized, embarrassed. She hastily shoved the gun aside, “This is not a stickup. I’m trying to pay my bill.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s on us.”
Sunny frowned, wondering if this was some sort of joke on the poor, stupid blockker. “Excuse me?”
“The manager said you would not be paying for anything during your stay here, Ms. Day. Everything is complimentary, and you are welcome to stay as long as you want. The concierge has your driver out front, care of the house.”
Now she knew it had to be a trick. “Okay, so what, I need to go downstairs and do dishes or something?” At almost four hundred bucks for a single night, that was a lot of dishes.
The desk clerk looked baffled. “Are you in need of silverware, Miss Day?”
Sunny gave him a long look, trying to figure out his game, then waved her card in front of him. “You’re telling me you don’t want me to pay for this room.”
“No, Ms. Day,” the clerk insisted. “It’s on the house.”
Sunny cocked her head at him, then up at the closed circuit camera system carefully hidden in an arrangement of flowers. “This is on camera,” she said, pointing. “You’re telling me, on camera , I don’t need to pay for this room?”
“Yes, Ms. Day,” he agreed.
“…aaaand I can stay here as long as I want?”
He nodded. “Yes, Ms. Day.”
“Without paying?”
“Of course. Our treat.”
She squinted. “Did BPI give you my hundred grand?”
“No, that was deposited in your private account,” the hotel clerk said.
Sunny frowned. She wanted to lunge across the counter and grab him by his shirt and ask him why he was giving her free stuff, but she didn’t want to look a gift horse too closely in the mouth. “You think I’m Daphne, don’t you?”
“Who is that?
“Wife of Gary Gables?” At the clerk’s blank look, she prodded, “Wife of the guy who saved everyone on the Megarail from the tentacle monster?”
The desk clerk gave her a confused look. “I thought that was you, Ms. Day.”
Sunny opened her mouth, then frowned and closed it again. “Wait. You know I was there?”
The clerk had gotten wide-eyed again. He nodded.
She got even more suspicious. “How?” Had her curse somehow been lifted in the last twenty-four hours?
The desk clerk spun his monitor around, which was showing Sunny, mid-battle, mouth open in a scream, staring down a tentacle monster with a two-foot-wide arc of purple lightning blasting from her shotgun. It looked magnificent. It was his current wallpaper.
Sunny’s jaw fell ajar.
“So like I said,” the clerk said, with a sheepish grin, “the manager says you can stay as long as you want.”
Sunny took a long look at the desktop wallpaper, then at the clerk’s genuine smile.
“I want a burger,” she said tentatively. “Bacon on top, regular fries on the side.”
The clerk nodded and picked up a phone and placed the order to room service. “Anything else, miss?”
“A shitload of ibuprofen,” she said.
He relayed the message as, “A bottle of ibuprofen for our esteemed guest.” He cocked his head, phone still in hand. “Anything else, Miss Day?”
Sunny continued to wait for the other shoe to drop. When it didn’t, and he just waited politely for her response, she managed, “I think that’ll work.”
The clerk finished the order and then smiled at her. “You’re free to use the spa at any time. I suggest the hot tub and steam soak. Would you like me to schedule a massage by one of our therapists?”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. “Yes,” she said reluctantly.
He grinned as if that thrilled him. “Excellent. I’ll make the arrangements. Does two o’clock sound good?”
“Yes.” She still couldn’t believe this wasn’t a trick.
“The spa is on the third floor, just follow the signs.”
Sunny gave him another very long, suspicious look, then glared at the tall Chinese man standing beside him—a bellhop—who grinned and waved furiously when she spotted him before quickly returning to attention, doing a horrible job of hiding his smile.
Still scowling at them, Sunny grabbed her shotgun. “As long as I want?” she demanded again.
“Yes, Ms. Day.”
Mutter
ing, Sunny gave the grinning bellhop one last look, glanced at the spinning, gilded front doors and the rainy street beyond, then spun around and went back to her room and its Egyptian cotton.
Maybe she’d go crash on her sister’s burned-out couch some other time…
Author’s Note: This concludes Book 1 of the Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass series. Please keep an eye out for more books in this series as they are released on Amazon, or click here to sign up for the Sunny Day mailing list, to be notified of all her upcoming adventures! New subscribers will get a FREE novel by Sara King as our way of saying thanks for supporting our work.
-END-
Afterword
We hoped you enjoyed our experiment!
Thanks for reading, and if you’re looking for more books by the authors, please check out Sara King’s The Legend of ZERO or Outer Bounds or Guardians of the First Realm series, and Shaye Marlow’s Alaskan Romance series, beginning with Two Cabins, One Lake .
Have feedback or want to get social?
Sara can be reached at [email protected] & is very active on Facebook . Chancey (one half of Fred Garnet) is also on Facebook and will entertain questions at [email protected] . And Shaye (the less offensive half) would love to hear from you at [email protected] and is on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , and Pinterest .
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Sunny with a Chance of Monsters: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (Sunny Day, Paranormal Badass) Page 31