(Especially if it's Kate and Curran!!)
Damn it all to hell. “Who snitched?”
“When you called Barabas, it became an issue and he had to give Jim a heads up in case our security had to storm the GBI offices and bust you out of there. I found out when I saw Jim walking down the hallway snickering to himself.”
I made a mental note to punch Jim in the arm next time I saw him. “Thought it was funny, did he?”
Curran’s face took on a steel-hard expression. “I didn’t think it was funny.”
Oh-oh. “People were about to die and I could save them.”
“You could’ve been killed. For what? For the necromancers?”
“There was a girl. The PAD opened fire and cut her leg almost completely off. She might have been twenty tops. She almost bled to death in my office.”
“It was her choice. If she wanted to stay safe, she could’ve joined the Girl Scouts. She isn’t out selling cookies, she’s piloting diseased corpses for a living.”
I twisted, trying to break the lock of his fingers on my wrists. “So you would’ve stood by and let the PAD kill four people?”
Curran moved my hands back and forth, looking into my ears of all places, as if the answer was hiding in there. “Four of the People. Not only that, but I can take a shot from M24. You can’t.”
I jerked my hands above my head. The move stretched him above me and suddenly we were face to face. A little thrill ran through me. Being in close proximity to Curran always made arguing difficult. I still managed.
“When you offered me this business, did you think I would stay in the office all day baking cookies?”
“Nobody ever died of being shot by a cookie.”
He had me there. I groped about my brain for a snappy come back. “There is always the first time.”
Oh now there was a brilliant response. No doubt he’d now collapse at my feet in awe at my intellectual magnificence.
“If anybody could manage being shot by a cookie, it would be you.” Curran shifted his weight on top of me. His hold relaxed.
I bumped his nose with my forehead, gently. “Boom. Now you’re dazed and bleeding all over. And then I free my hands and knock you over, like so.” I slipped my hand out of his hold and nudged his side with my fist. “And then I have my evil way with you, while lay there, helpless.”
“And bleeding?”
“No, you stopped bleeding, because you’re a shapeshifter.”
He jerked my hand aside and dipped his head. His lips brushed mine, at first tender, than teasing, then insistent and I melted right into it. His tongue parted my lips and slid inside of my mouth. His tongue teased mine and I teased back, asking for more, drinking him in.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” he told me.
“Me too.”
I nipped his lower lip. His eyes turned a darker grey. He dipped his head and kissed me again. The shock of his tongue against mine was electrifying. I smelled him, I tasted him, I felt his arms around me, and it left me dizzy and breathless, and craving more. I slid my arms around his neck, molding myself against him. The hard muscle bunched under my fingers, and I kissed him back, his lips, the corner of his mouth, the sensitive point under his jaw, tasting his sweat and the sharp touch of stubble on my lips. He made a quiet masculine noise, halfway between a deep growling rumble and a purr. My heart beat faster. I wanted out of my clothes. His hands slid under my sweatshirt. I arched my back…
He stopped.
“What?”
Curran pulled his hand out. His fingers were dark with congealed blood. “Human.”
Aaaaand the happy moment screeched to a halt.
Showing posts with label Kate 5. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kate 5. Show all posts
Monday, August 2, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Kate 5 Official Titile
Yep, Ilona Andrews has released the Kate 5 Official Title..MAGIC SLAYS!
Love it!
Love it!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Kate 5 Snippet
Yipee! A Kate % snippet! Thanks Ilona Andrews!
Enjoy!
My butt hurt, because some viking woman kicked me from behind while I was busy and the motion of my horse wasn’t doing me any favors. The red spot on my shoulder promised to bloom into a baseball-sized bruise but other than that I got away scot-free. Barabas sported a cut across his chest, Andrea had a black eye, and Ascanio, whose shirt somehow got mysteriously ripped to shreds in the heat of the battle, was black and blue from the neck down. It wouldn’t last more than a couple of hours and by the evening the lot of them would look like new, while I would be nursing a sore shoulder.
The wind brought a whiff of hops from Ghastek’s vamp loping next to me. The vikings had tried to drown it in the barrel of beer and most of the green sunblock had come off, so Ghastek ended up rolling the bloodsucker in some mud to keep the skin damage to a minimum. The mud had dried to an ugly crust, making the vampire look like some filthy mutated pig.
“And that’s why we don’t go to visit the Vikings,” I growled. “Nothing good ever comes from it.”
Enjoy!
My butt hurt, because some viking woman kicked me from behind while I was busy and the motion of my horse wasn’t doing me any favors. The red spot on my shoulder promised to bloom into a baseball-sized bruise but other than that I got away scot-free. Barabas sported a cut across his chest, Andrea had a black eye, and Ascanio, whose shirt somehow got mysteriously ripped to shreds in the heat of the battle, was black and blue from the neck down. It wouldn’t last more than a couple of hours and by the evening the lot of them would look like new, while I would be nursing a sore shoulder.
The wind brought a whiff of hops from Ghastek’s vamp loping next to me. The vikings had tried to drown it in the barrel of beer and most of the green sunblock had come off, so Ghastek ended up rolling the bloodsucker in some mud to keep the skin damage to a minimum. The mud had dried to an ugly crust, making the vampire look like some filthy mutated pig.
“And that’s why we don’t go to visit the Vikings,” I growled. “Nothing good ever comes from it.”
Saturday, April 17, 2010
A Snippet From Magic Bleeds
Sharing with you a Magic Bleeds snippet from Ilona Andrews website:
There are days when time slowed down. It dripped past me, painfully viscous, like cold molasses. Today was one of those days.
I glanced at the watch hooked into the loop of my jeans. I used to wear my watch on my wrist, like normal people, but a few months back I’d ran into a pyromanic armed with a salamander and discovered that watches, even plastic ones, had a tendency to get really hot and burn the hell out of you, especially when hit with a direct blast of salamander fire.
“Two hours till the end of my shift,” I told Marigold.
Marigold, being a mule, remained unimpressed with my stunning time-telling superpowers.
Around us the ruined city crawled by, a collection of crumbling wrecks and new sturdy buildings, stark in the darkness of early morning. Here and there pale blue lights of feylanterns illuminated steel bars guarding the windows. Magic flowed through the city, like an invisible river, smothering car engines, choking guns, feeding mages with power. In the next few hours it would vanish as abruptly as it appeared, and the technology would once again reassert itself. Electric lights would come on and every punk with a gun would think himself king. Magic came and went in waves. Nobody knew how strong the waves would be or how long they would last.
That’s why I carried a sword. It always worked.
“I’m in a melancholy mood, Marigold. Would you like to know why?”
In all likelihood, the only thing Marigold wanted to know would be when I’d get out of the saddle and return her to the stables of the Order of Merciful Aid, where the Order’s grooms would wash the bonnacon blood off her back. The bonnacons looked just like regular bulls and cows with the exception of their inwardly turned horns. They seemed like perfectly reasonable animals, until a dog happened to bark three miles away or a stray cloud in the sky caught their attention, and then the perfectly reasonable animal would plant himself where he stood and proceed to unload a twelve foot long jet of corrosive feces, burning everything behind it. Bonnacon dung could literally peel the paint off a car. The one whose blood currently decorated Marigold’s back somehow found his way into a herd of cows on the southern edge of the city and scorched the hides off a dozen prized heifers before the owner of the ranch called the Order of Merciful Aid. The Order sent me to resolve the problem. Here I was, six hours later, riding back, covered in blood, my new boots burned with bonnacon shit, and I wanted to talk, whether Marigold liked it or not.
“Today will be an interesting day, Marigold. Today I turn twenty five.”
The mule sighed.
“My sentiments exactly. Here I am, twenty five years old. My mother quarter of the century dead. My stepfather ten years dead. Greg, my guardian, six months dead. Everybody is dead. No friends, no family. No birthday cake, unless I make it myself. Nobody to meet me at the door.”
No response. Mules made for excellent listeners but when it came to making sympathetic noises, they failed in an epic way.
“I’d done a lot of things in my twenty five years. Some nice, some not. Mostly not. But I always tried to do the right thing. I work for the Order, which is all about preservation of the law and peace. Sure, I’m not a knight, but I get to help people with their problems. I work hard and I pull long hours. You’d think I’d have something more to show for it than an empty house and an absent birthday cake. You have to admit, it does kind of suck.”
Voices. Coming from the left, off the street.
I turned Marigold and guided her down the alley. The street widened around a lone lamp post crowned with a feylantern. Three guys flanked an old man, pushing him toward the wall. A hold up.
The oldest of the punks held a crossbow, two others carried clubs studded with nails. The old man’s back pressed against the bricks. He wore a dark BDU jacket. His grey hair fell on his shoulders.
“Easy now, grandpa. Easy.”
“How long?” the guy on the left asked.
“He should be almost here.”
My hand strayed toward my saber in a sheath on my back. Normally I’d pull out Slayer and talk shit to scare them away, but tonight I didn’t feel like it. Tonight I felt like hurting someone.
“I don’t like this, man. I don’t like this.” The third punk glanced down the street. “It’s too bright here.”
The shooter glared at him. “Don’t be a fucking bitch. It’ll be over in a minute.”
No ordinary hold up. Oh well.
I pulled a throwing knife and hurled it. It sliced through the air and bit into the shooter’s back.
He screamed. The others stared at him.
“As I was saying, Marigold.” I slid off the saddle. “You’d think that I’d have something more to show for my effort. So I decided, instead of staying in the city tonight, I’m going back to Savannah, where my dad’s house is. That way I won’t be stuck celebrating my quarter of the century in my dead guardian’s apartment. ”
The punks stared at me. The moment of hesitation cost them – I had time to close the distance.
The shooter snapped out of it and whirled to me, squeezing the trigger. I hit him in the throat. The crossbow bolt went wide. He crumbled. The guy to the left swung his club. Too slow. I dodged, letting the club whistle past me, and hammered a punch to his kidney. He gasped. I hurled him aside and caught the third punk’s club, as it came down. I gripped the club and pulled him to me. “What’s next?”
He gulped. A young guy, twenty at most.
“What are you going to do, hotshot?”
He dropped the club and swung at me. I saw the punch from a mile away. He missed and hit his fist against the wall.
“Want a second shot? Let’s try one more time!”
He hit again and smashed his knuckles into the brick with a wail. I slipped out of the way, grasped his shirt and drove his head into the wall. Cartilage crunched. Blood drenched his upper lip. He screamed and dashed into the night. His buddy followed.
“That’s the problem with me, Marigold. I was raised for a purpose – to be the best killer I could be.” So I could kill my real father when he finally figured out I existed.
I strode to the gunman, curled on the pavement, put my foot against his back and pulled out the knife. He cried out. Red gushed from his back, drenching the shirt. I’d angled the knife, and the wound was shallow. It would be sore as hell and take a long time to heal, but he wouldn’t die from it. Too bad it was over so quickly. Barely took the edge off.
I crouched by him and yanked his head up by the hair so I could look in his face. “What’s the story?”
“Martinez,” he gasped. “Pays us. He’s got flesh-eaters.”
I let go of his hair. “Who’s Martinez?”
“He runs a freak kennel. He sells monsters.”
Freak kennels acquired supernatural creatures, “trained” them, turning them vicious if they weren’t there already, and sold them to the highest bidder. Having a couple of pit bulls on a chain was no longer fashionable among the thug elite. Now nothing less than a crocotta or a baby wyvern would do.
“What kind of flesh-eaters Martinez has?”
“Red,” he said. “With big teeth.”
Well that narrowed things down. “Aha. And you’ve been feeding people to them?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“How many?”
He shook his head.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll hurt you.”
He looked into my eyes and turned white. “Two,” he said hoarsely. “We brought him two.”
Two people dead, eaten by red flesh-eaters. Few things were worse than being eaten alive.
My ears caught the sound of the heavy footsteps behind me.
The thug spat blood. “It doesn’t matter. He’s here.”
I winked at him. “Don’t go anywhere. I’d hate to have to find you.”
The sound of the steps came closer, emanating from the dark street. I rose, unsheathing my sword.
The old man slumped against the wall. Odd, he should’ve cleared out by now. Probably in shock.
“Sir, stay behind me.”
I put myself between him and the sound.
A man emerged into the light. Tall and heavy, too heavy to maneuver fast, he wore a short coat, open in the front to reveal a thick gold chain wrapped with a smaller chain of silver. A miniature silver skull with a corona of spikes hung off the chain. The skull eyes radiated pale blue light. Hello, Martinez.
The man stared at me. Hispanic, about twenty five or so. Middle-aged in street thug years – they didn’t have a long life expectancy. Round face, mustache, scraggly goatee, more fuzz on the chin rather than a real beard.
His hand stroked the skull. The eyes flared brighter.
Two beasts trotted out of the darkness. Blood-red, with ragged, blotchy fur, they were the size of a large leopard. Their forelimbs bulged with thick muscle, shaped more like the oversized arms than cat limbs. The equally thick hindquarters were definitely feline. Wide, reptilian paws tipped with black claws gripped the ground. Their heads sat low on thick necks. Each carried a dozen short chains tipped with metal skulls. The chains were hooked straight through the pelt and the skull eyes glowed with blue.
The beasts’ muzzles were awful. They stared at me with unblinking black eyes. Wide hyena mouths gaped open, showing rows of conical fangs embedded in ruby gums. The eyes and teeth were bad enough, but their noses were shockingly human, forcing a comparison with a face, and the impact made nausea squirm through me.
The wind brought a noxious stench of old urine. I looked closer. Yep, dark yellow stains covering the pelts on the underside on both beasts. Someone kept them confined in small cages. They spent their life laying in their own excrement.
I took a step back. The creatures followed. That’s right, come with me into the light, show me your tails…
A long flexible tail curved up from their hindquarters, terminating in a wide flat cone. Rings of muscle layered the tail, making it look segmented. Manticores. Not full grown, adolescents, mangy and battered. There should’ve been poisonous barbs on the tails. Someone pulled them out, causing the beasts excruciating pain, and I had a feeling I knew who that someone was.
“You sonovabitch.”
I flicked my sword, warming up my wrist, and started toward Martinez.
He clutched at the skull. His voice intoned dully without inflection, “Kill. Kill. Kill.”
Blue light splayed from the skulls in manticores’ hides. The creatures screamed in unison, like two hoarse trumpets. The left manticore dropped to the ground, crying. The right lunged at me, its eyes mad with pain.
It came at me, flinging spit. I raised my sword.
The manticore lunged. I sidestepped and slashed across the thick neck. Blood drenched me. I’d severed the jugular. The manticore twisted. Huge teeth grazed my arm. I dodged, once, twice. The manticore snapped again, slower this time. Blood drenched its neck and side, spurting in thick gushes with every heart beat.
I turned my back on it and marched to its handler.
Martinez backed away from me, his hand clutching the skull. “Kill, kill, kill…” He scuttled over to the remaining mantiocre and kicked it. It cried out, still caught in the web of skulls.
Scumbag. I flicked the blood off my sword.
He grabbed the skull on his neck and jerked it up, clutching it between the palms of his hands. The blue glow blazed, two dots of white sparking inside the skeletal orbits. Pain skewered me in a hot rush of heat. It carved its way down my legs and exploded into the soles of my feet. Walking turned into an agony, as if each step sliced me with a dozen jagged razorblades. I grit my teeth and kept coming.
Martinez pulled out a bowie knife and stabbed at me. I dodged and sliced across his gut. He screeched and crumpled down. I’d put a lot of power into the thrust. He wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.
I leaned down. He stared at me with bulging eyes. I grasped the chain and jerked it off him, ripping the skull out of his fingers. The blue glow vanished. The pain slowly drained out of my legs. Behind me the remaining manticore whined softly.
I turned to it. The beast hugged the ground. The skulls on the chains stuck through its skin were dull, little more than painful trinkets now, but it refused to rise. I approached it, moving slowly.
I had to kill it.
The manticore whimpered.
“It’s alright,” I lied to her. “It’s okay. Stay there. Now’s that’s a good girl.”
The manticore shuddered on the ground. I couldn’t let her loose. Not in a city full of people. Manticores were carnivorous. Their name translated from Persian as man-eater. It wasn’t her fault, but I couldn’t let her go.
I stopped over her and raised my sword, looking for the quickest target. Something that wouldn’t hurt. God, you could see every bone the sad thing owned. The tops of her hips stuck out through the red hide.
The manticore raised her head, glanced at me, and licked my boot.
“Damn it!”
The manticore shrunk from me and slinked away. I growled and twisted a loop out of Martinez’s chain, working it into a makeshift choke collar. “Come here, sweetheart.”
The manticore backed away from me.
“Come on, who is a good… beastie?”
The manticore hesitated.
I took another step. She shied to the left. That’s the last thing I needed, to chase the stupid creature across the city.
The manticore froze with one paw in the air, staring past me, mesmerized. I turned. The old man had stepped away from the wall. His eyes glowed with pale red, like two pink tormalines. Within the glow, his pupils tracked me like narrow slits of onyx. He opened his mouth and I saw a forest of sharp needle teeth.
Not good.
The red shine beckoned, luring me closer. It felt old, so old, and cold somehow… I’d never seen anything like it. I raised my foot to take a step toward her and caught myself.
“Good now,” he said. His voice was deep and throaty. “You put chain on her now.”
His voice splashed me like a bucket of iced water. I slipped the chain on the manticore’s neck and wrapped the other end around my hand. The old man bowed to me. I bowed back, because I couldn’t think of anything better to do. He turned, drawing his old army jacket tighter about himself, and melted into the darkness.
“That was creepy,” the thug on the ground volunteered.
“No shit.”
The manticore tugged on the chain, realized she was caught, and licked my hand.
Great. Just great. I growled and went to collect the thug. I had to call PAD and let them know I had two dead bodies and a slightly damaged murderer for them to play with.
*** A Kate snippet always makes my troubles go away. I sometime wish I could kick-ass like Kate!
There are days when time slowed down. It dripped past me, painfully viscous, like cold molasses. Today was one of those days.
I glanced at the watch hooked into the loop of my jeans. I used to wear my watch on my wrist, like normal people, but a few months back I’d ran into a pyromanic armed with a salamander and discovered that watches, even plastic ones, had a tendency to get really hot and burn the hell out of you, especially when hit with a direct blast of salamander fire.
“Two hours till the end of my shift,” I told Marigold.
Marigold, being a mule, remained unimpressed with my stunning time-telling superpowers.
Around us the ruined city crawled by, a collection of crumbling wrecks and new sturdy buildings, stark in the darkness of early morning. Here and there pale blue lights of feylanterns illuminated steel bars guarding the windows. Magic flowed through the city, like an invisible river, smothering car engines, choking guns, feeding mages with power. In the next few hours it would vanish as abruptly as it appeared, and the technology would once again reassert itself. Electric lights would come on and every punk with a gun would think himself king. Magic came and went in waves. Nobody knew how strong the waves would be or how long they would last.
That’s why I carried a sword. It always worked.
“I’m in a melancholy mood, Marigold. Would you like to know why?”
In all likelihood, the only thing Marigold wanted to know would be when I’d get out of the saddle and return her to the stables of the Order of Merciful Aid, where the Order’s grooms would wash the bonnacon blood off her back. The bonnacons looked just like regular bulls and cows with the exception of their inwardly turned horns. They seemed like perfectly reasonable animals, until a dog happened to bark three miles away or a stray cloud in the sky caught their attention, and then the perfectly reasonable animal would plant himself where he stood and proceed to unload a twelve foot long jet of corrosive feces, burning everything behind it. Bonnacon dung could literally peel the paint off a car. The one whose blood currently decorated Marigold’s back somehow found his way into a herd of cows on the southern edge of the city and scorched the hides off a dozen prized heifers before the owner of the ranch called the Order of Merciful Aid. The Order sent me to resolve the problem. Here I was, six hours later, riding back, covered in blood, my new boots burned with bonnacon shit, and I wanted to talk, whether Marigold liked it or not.
“Today will be an interesting day, Marigold. Today I turn twenty five.”
The mule sighed.
“My sentiments exactly. Here I am, twenty five years old. My mother quarter of the century dead. My stepfather ten years dead. Greg, my guardian, six months dead. Everybody is dead. No friends, no family. No birthday cake, unless I make it myself. Nobody to meet me at the door.”
No response. Mules made for excellent listeners but when it came to making sympathetic noises, they failed in an epic way.
“I’d done a lot of things in my twenty five years. Some nice, some not. Mostly not. But I always tried to do the right thing. I work for the Order, which is all about preservation of the law and peace. Sure, I’m not a knight, but I get to help people with their problems. I work hard and I pull long hours. You’d think I’d have something more to show for it than an empty house and an absent birthday cake. You have to admit, it does kind of suck.”
Voices. Coming from the left, off the street.
I turned Marigold and guided her down the alley. The street widened around a lone lamp post crowned with a feylantern. Three guys flanked an old man, pushing him toward the wall. A hold up.
The oldest of the punks held a crossbow, two others carried clubs studded with nails. The old man’s back pressed against the bricks. He wore a dark BDU jacket. His grey hair fell on his shoulders.
“Easy now, grandpa. Easy.”
“How long?” the guy on the left asked.
“He should be almost here.”
My hand strayed toward my saber in a sheath on my back. Normally I’d pull out Slayer and talk shit to scare them away, but tonight I didn’t feel like it. Tonight I felt like hurting someone.
“I don’t like this, man. I don’t like this.” The third punk glanced down the street. “It’s too bright here.”
The shooter glared at him. “Don’t be a fucking bitch. It’ll be over in a minute.”
No ordinary hold up. Oh well.
I pulled a throwing knife and hurled it. It sliced through the air and bit into the shooter’s back.
He screamed. The others stared at him.
“As I was saying, Marigold.” I slid off the saddle. “You’d think that I’d have something more to show for my effort. So I decided, instead of staying in the city tonight, I’m going back to Savannah, where my dad’s house is. That way I won’t be stuck celebrating my quarter of the century in my dead guardian’s apartment. ”
The punks stared at me. The moment of hesitation cost them – I had time to close the distance.
The shooter snapped out of it and whirled to me, squeezing the trigger. I hit him in the throat. The crossbow bolt went wide. He crumbled. The guy to the left swung his club. Too slow. I dodged, letting the club whistle past me, and hammered a punch to his kidney. He gasped. I hurled him aside and caught the third punk’s club, as it came down. I gripped the club and pulled him to me. “What’s next?”
He gulped. A young guy, twenty at most.
“What are you going to do, hotshot?”
He dropped the club and swung at me. I saw the punch from a mile away. He missed and hit his fist against the wall.
“Want a second shot? Let’s try one more time!”
He hit again and smashed his knuckles into the brick with a wail. I slipped out of the way, grasped his shirt and drove his head into the wall. Cartilage crunched. Blood drenched his upper lip. He screamed and dashed into the night. His buddy followed.
“That’s the problem with me, Marigold. I was raised for a purpose – to be the best killer I could be.” So I could kill my real father when he finally figured out I existed.
I strode to the gunman, curled on the pavement, put my foot against his back and pulled out the knife. He cried out. Red gushed from his back, drenching the shirt. I’d angled the knife, and the wound was shallow. It would be sore as hell and take a long time to heal, but he wouldn’t die from it. Too bad it was over so quickly. Barely took the edge off.
I crouched by him and yanked his head up by the hair so I could look in his face. “What’s the story?”
“Martinez,” he gasped. “Pays us. He’s got flesh-eaters.”
I let go of his hair. “Who’s Martinez?”
“He runs a freak kennel. He sells monsters.”
Freak kennels acquired supernatural creatures, “trained” them, turning them vicious if they weren’t there already, and sold them to the highest bidder. Having a couple of pit bulls on a chain was no longer fashionable among the thug elite. Now nothing less than a crocotta or a baby wyvern would do.
“What kind of flesh-eaters Martinez has?”
“Red,” he said. “With big teeth.”
Well that narrowed things down. “Aha. And you’ve been feeding people to them?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“How many?”
He shook his head.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll hurt you.”
He looked into my eyes and turned white. “Two,” he said hoarsely. “We brought him two.”
Two people dead, eaten by red flesh-eaters. Few things were worse than being eaten alive.
My ears caught the sound of the heavy footsteps behind me.
The thug spat blood. “It doesn’t matter. He’s here.”
I winked at him. “Don’t go anywhere. I’d hate to have to find you.”
The sound of the steps came closer, emanating from the dark street. I rose, unsheathing my sword.
The old man slumped against the wall. Odd, he should’ve cleared out by now. Probably in shock.
“Sir, stay behind me.”
I put myself between him and the sound.
A man emerged into the light. Tall and heavy, too heavy to maneuver fast, he wore a short coat, open in the front to reveal a thick gold chain wrapped with a smaller chain of silver. A miniature silver skull with a corona of spikes hung off the chain. The skull eyes radiated pale blue light. Hello, Martinez.
The man stared at me. Hispanic, about twenty five or so. Middle-aged in street thug years – they didn’t have a long life expectancy. Round face, mustache, scraggly goatee, more fuzz on the chin rather than a real beard.
His hand stroked the skull. The eyes flared brighter.
Two beasts trotted out of the darkness. Blood-red, with ragged, blotchy fur, they were the size of a large leopard. Their forelimbs bulged with thick muscle, shaped more like the oversized arms than cat limbs. The equally thick hindquarters were definitely feline. Wide, reptilian paws tipped with black claws gripped the ground. Their heads sat low on thick necks. Each carried a dozen short chains tipped with metal skulls. The chains were hooked straight through the pelt and the skull eyes glowed with blue.
The beasts’ muzzles were awful. They stared at me with unblinking black eyes. Wide hyena mouths gaped open, showing rows of conical fangs embedded in ruby gums. The eyes and teeth were bad enough, but their noses were shockingly human, forcing a comparison with a face, and the impact made nausea squirm through me.
The wind brought a noxious stench of old urine. I looked closer. Yep, dark yellow stains covering the pelts on the underside on both beasts. Someone kept them confined in small cages. They spent their life laying in their own excrement.
I took a step back. The creatures followed. That’s right, come with me into the light, show me your tails…
A long flexible tail curved up from their hindquarters, terminating in a wide flat cone. Rings of muscle layered the tail, making it look segmented. Manticores. Not full grown, adolescents, mangy and battered. There should’ve been poisonous barbs on the tails. Someone pulled them out, causing the beasts excruciating pain, and I had a feeling I knew who that someone was.
“You sonovabitch.”
I flicked my sword, warming up my wrist, and started toward Martinez.
He clutched at the skull. His voice intoned dully without inflection, “Kill. Kill. Kill.”
Blue light splayed from the skulls in manticores’ hides. The creatures screamed in unison, like two hoarse trumpets. The left manticore dropped to the ground, crying. The right lunged at me, its eyes mad with pain.
It came at me, flinging spit. I raised my sword.
The manticore lunged. I sidestepped and slashed across the thick neck. Blood drenched me. I’d severed the jugular. The manticore twisted. Huge teeth grazed my arm. I dodged, once, twice. The manticore snapped again, slower this time. Blood drenched its neck and side, spurting in thick gushes with every heart beat.
I turned my back on it and marched to its handler.
Martinez backed away from me, his hand clutching the skull. “Kill, kill, kill…” He scuttled over to the remaining mantiocre and kicked it. It cried out, still caught in the web of skulls.
Scumbag. I flicked the blood off my sword.
He grabbed the skull on his neck and jerked it up, clutching it between the palms of his hands. The blue glow blazed, two dots of white sparking inside the skeletal orbits. Pain skewered me in a hot rush of heat. It carved its way down my legs and exploded into the soles of my feet. Walking turned into an agony, as if each step sliced me with a dozen jagged razorblades. I grit my teeth and kept coming.
Martinez pulled out a bowie knife and stabbed at me. I dodged and sliced across his gut. He screeched and crumpled down. I’d put a lot of power into the thrust. He wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.
I leaned down. He stared at me with bulging eyes. I grasped the chain and jerked it off him, ripping the skull out of his fingers. The blue glow vanished. The pain slowly drained out of my legs. Behind me the remaining manticore whined softly.
I turned to it. The beast hugged the ground. The skulls on the chains stuck through its skin were dull, little more than painful trinkets now, but it refused to rise. I approached it, moving slowly.
I had to kill it.
The manticore whimpered.
“It’s alright,” I lied to her. “It’s okay. Stay there. Now’s that’s a good girl.”
The manticore shuddered on the ground. I couldn’t let her loose. Not in a city full of people. Manticores were carnivorous. Their name translated from Persian as man-eater. It wasn’t her fault, but I couldn’t let her go.
I stopped over her and raised my sword, looking for the quickest target. Something that wouldn’t hurt. God, you could see every bone the sad thing owned. The tops of her hips stuck out through the red hide.
The manticore raised her head, glanced at me, and licked my boot.
“Damn it!”
The manticore shrunk from me and slinked away. I growled and twisted a loop out of Martinez’s chain, working it into a makeshift choke collar. “Come here, sweetheart.”
The manticore backed away from me.
“Come on, who is a good… beastie?”
The manticore hesitated.
I took another step. She shied to the left. That’s the last thing I needed, to chase the stupid creature across the city.
The manticore froze with one paw in the air, staring past me, mesmerized. I turned. The old man had stepped away from the wall. His eyes glowed with pale red, like two pink tormalines. Within the glow, his pupils tracked me like narrow slits of onyx. He opened his mouth and I saw a forest of sharp needle teeth.
Not good.
The red shine beckoned, luring me closer. It felt old, so old, and cold somehow… I’d never seen anything like it. I raised my foot to take a step toward her and caught myself.
“Good now,” he said. His voice was deep and throaty. “You put chain on her now.”
His voice splashed me like a bucket of iced water. I slipped the chain on the manticore’s neck and wrapped the other end around my hand. The old man bowed to me. I bowed back, because I couldn’t think of anything better to do. He turned, drawing his old army jacket tighter about himself, and melted into the darkness.
“That was creepy,” the thug on the ground volunteered.
“No shit.”
The manticore tugged on the chain, realized she was caught, and licked my hand.
Great. Just great. I growled and went to collect the thug. I had to call PAD and let them know I had two dead bodies and a slightly damaged murderer for them to play with.
*** A Kate snippet always makes my troubles go away. I sometime wish I could kick-ass like Kate!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Magic Bleeds ARC Giveaway
Because I'm such a nerd and a hopeless fan, I joined Ilona Andrews' blog contest where she gives away her ARC copies of Magic Bleeds. (Yes, I join fan groups and check-out my fave books or authors' online pages). I was so positive that I would get one of the 5 books she's given away but alas! I was not so lucky! :'( . I bet those 5 are already bursting by the seams since they're not allowed to breathe a word about the book!
Anyway, The couple, from there website, gave to us who did not win (1201 entries who joined!) some consolation prize. And second best to not reading the actual book is no other than a snippet! It's a re-post but what the heck! I'll take what I can get!
Here it is:
Chapter 11, in which Andrea and Raphael go to jail
The phone rang. It was probably Christy. I picked it up. “Kate Daniels.”
“I’m in lockup in Milton County Jail,” Andrea said. “Come get me.”
Chapter 11
A couple of hours later I walked into Beau Clayton’s office, carrying a long parcel wrapped in rags.
Beau grinned at me from behind his desk. In 1066, ancient Saxons met ancient Norwegians in a bloody battle over Stamford Bridge. The legend said that the Saxons surprised their enemy, and as the Norwegians tried to rally, one of their warriors, a giant of a man, stepped onto the bridge and held it by himself, killing more than forty Saxons, until someone got smart and stabbed him with a long spear from below, through the planks of the bridge. Looking at Beau, I could totally picture him on that bridge swinging a giant axe around. Hulking, six feet six, with shoulders that had trouble fitting through the door, the Milton sheriff had the face of a bone breaker. He sat behind a scarred desk that was organized to within an inch of its life. The only item out of place was a large can. The label on the can said, CANNED BOILED GREEN PEANUTS.
I sat in a chair before his desk and put the parcel on my lap. “Canned boiled peanuts. That’s pushing it.”
“With a name like Beau, a man has to be careful,” he said. “Someone might mistake me for one of them Northern boys. The peanuts help to avoid misunderstandings.”
He passed me the can. I glanced into it. Spent shell casings.
“Every time I get shot at, I drop the shells in the can,” Beau said.
The can was about halfway full. I handed it back to him.
“The last time we met, I did say you would one day need a favor from me.” He spread his huge arms. “And here we are.”
We’d worked the same case before, I from the Order’s side and he from the sheriff’s side. He’d asked me to do him a favor, arguing that one day I would need one from him, and I had agreed. You never know on whose door you might have to knock next.
“What did Andrea do?”
He opened a manila folder and glanced at it. “Ever heard of Paradise Mission?”
“No.”
“It’s a high-class hotel. Built like a Spanish mission, with the courtyard screened in. The roof is glass and they keep the temperature nice and steady.”
“Like a hothouse.”
“Basically. The courtyard is a beautiful place. Flowers everywhere, a pool, hot tubs. Favorite getaway for rich couples from the city. I took Erica there once. Costs an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it. Had to be on the waiting list for four months before we got in.”
Beau wasn’t in a hurry. Screaming at him would just make him slow down more, so I nodded.
“From what I understand, your girl was staying at the place with her significant other. I’ve got him in the cell next to hers. Now, I’m completely straight, mind you, but he was likely the prettiest man I ever seen.”
Raphael. It must’ve been their big romantic night. He had probably reserved the hotel room weeks in advance.
“Apparently, they were both in the hot tub.”
“Hot tubs are nothing but trouble,” I told him.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Beau shrugged. “With a beer and good company, they aren’t bad. Relaxing. Soothing, even. In this case, however, they failed to bring about the desired relaxation. Miss Nash got up to go to the bathroom and get some drinks. When Miss Nash came back, she found a young female talking to her significant other.” His eyes sparkled a little. He pretended to check his report. “Apparently, the interloping female was scantily clad.”
He must’ve waited years to use that in a report. “Go on.”
“According to the hotel staff, the poor man did try to discourage the femme fatale the best he could, but she was either dense or really hoped to take him for a ride. Having met her, I’d say both.”
I sighed. I knew where this was going.
“When Miss Nash approached, her fellah informed the scantily clad female that Miss Nash and he were together. He says the female appraised Miss Nash as ‘cute.’”
I put my head down and bumped it on the table a couple of times.
The two furry caterpillars Beau used as his eyebrows crept up. “Do you need a minute?”
“No, I’ll be alright. Sorry.”
“It seems that the young woman made some indelicate suggestion of a threesome. Nobody is quite sure what happened next, but everybody agrees it was damn fast. When I got there, Miss Nash was standing by the hot tub in a small bikini, pointing the business end of a SIG-Sauer P-226 at her fellah and concerned members of hotel staff, while dunking the scantily clad female’s head under the water and asking, ‘Who’s diving for clams now, bitch?’”
My pain must’ve reflected on my face, because Beau reached into his desk drawer and handed me a small bottle of aspirin. I popped two tablets into my mouth and swallowed, grimacing against the bitterness. “Then what?”
“Well, Miss Nash and I had a conversation. I bet that she wouldn’t shoot a badge and I won that bet. She had no ID on her—it was a very small bikini—so we invited her, her fellah, and the aggrieved party to be our guests here in this lovely jailhouse. Spending the night with us calmed her down.”
Oh, boy. “She had no ID, but she had a gun?”
“Brought it in a towel, from what I understand.”
Why wasn’t I surprised? “She’s a knight.”
“I figured that when she called the Order.”
I took the parcel off my lap, placed it on his desk, and carefully unwrapped the rags. Beau sucked in a lungful of air in a sharp breath.
A beautiful rapier lay in the rags.
“The schiavona,” I said. “The preferred weapon of Dalmatian Slavs, who served in the Venetian Doge Guard in the sixteenth century. Deep basket hilt.” I traced the gleaming spider web of deceptively narrow metal strips forming the sword’s guard. “Thirty-six-point-seven-inch blade, efficient for both cut and thrust. A genuine Ragnas Dream sword.”
I turned the schiavona to the side, letting the light of the feylantern catch the stylized RD on the ornate pommel. Ragnas Dream didn’t make swords, he created masterpieces. The schiavona alone would pay the mortgages on both my apartment and my father’s house in Savannah for a year. Greg, my deceased guardian, had purchased it years ago and hung it on a wall in his library, the way one would display a treasured work of art. It was the kind of sword that would make a lifelong pacifist look for tall boots and a hat with feathers.
Beau’s face acquired a greenish tint.
“Breathe, Beau.”
He exhaled in a rush. “May I?”
Every person had a weakness. Beau loved rapiers. I smiled. Once he touched it, I had him. “Feel free.”
He got up, took the rapier gently, as if it were made of glass, and slid his big hand around the leather hilt. He raised the sword point up, admiring the elegant steel blade. A deep serenity claimed his face. Beau thrust, a textbook perfect, liquid movement, elegant and precise and so completely at odds with his huge body. “Christ,” he murmured. “It’s perfect.”
“She was never here,” I told him. “Her ‘fellah’ was never here. You don’t know their names and you’ve never seen them before.”
Beau was a very good cop, because he made himself put the rapier down. “Are you trying to bribe a law enforcement official, Kate?”
“I’m trying to present a law enforcement official with a token of appreciation for his delicate handling of the Order’s personnel issues. Knights of the Order are under a lot of pressure. Andrea Nash is one of the best knights I’ve ever met.”
Beau looked at the schiavona. A minute stretched into eternity.
I gave him a wide smile. “Oh, and one more thing.” I reached over and touched the pale opal in the base of the hilt.
Three. Two.
One.
The sword hummed a single perfect chime, like a silver bell. A thin line of red grew from the hilt down the blade, branching in curling shoots like an ornate vine until it finally reached the point. Beau turned pale.
“Enchanted blade. Never needs sharpening or oiling. I forgot to mention that part,” I said.
Beau tore his haze from the schiavona. “Take them and make sure they don’t come back.”
Ten minutes later Andrea, Raphael, and I stepped out of the jailhouse into a frigid overcast day. Both Raphael and Andrea wore the orange potato sacks that passed for Milton Jail uniforms.
“Assault.” I counted off on my fingers. “Assault with a deadly weapon. Conduct unbecoming a knight. Endangerment of civilians. Reckless use of a firearm in a public place. Resisting arrest. Drunk and disorderly.”
“I was neither drunk nor disorderly.” Andrea clenched her teeth.
“No, I’m sure you were drowning her in a completely calm and professional manner. Beau Clayton is a crack shot. You’re lucky he didn’t empty his clip into your head. You brought a gun to the hot tub. Who does that?”
Andrea folded her hands on her chest. “Don’t hassle me about my guns. You drag that sword everywhere. The whole thing was his idea. I wanted to go on a weekend.”
I looked at Raphael. He hit me with a dazzling smile. If I had any capacity for swooning, I would’ve hit the floor like a log. Some men were handsome. Some were sexy. Raphael was scorching hot. Not traditionally handsome, he had dark blue eyes, intense and heated from within by a fire that instantly made you think of sheets and skin. Coupled with his long black hair and the toned, supple body of a shapeshifter, the effect was shocking to all things female. Since he was my best friend’s honey bunny, I was pretty much immune to his evil powers, but once in a while he caught me off-guard.
“It was the only night that was available in the next six months,” he said, “and I had to call in a favor to get it.”
Andrea waved her hands around. “And we spent it in a jailhouse. Do you have any idea how hard it is to go out in public with him? We can’t go anywhere, we can’t do anything, because he gets hit on all the time. Sometimes women come up to him like I’m not even there!”
“I sympathize, but you can’t drown them, Andrea. You’re trained to kill and they aren’t. It’s not exactly a fair fight.”
“Fuck fair! Fuck you and fuck him, and whatever.”
She strode off.
Raphael was grinning ear to ear.
“Well, you’re taking it well.”
His eyes shone with faint ruby sheen. “Mating frenzy.”
“What?”
“When two shapeshifters become mated, we go crazy for a few weeks. It’s all about unreasonable aggression and irrational snarling at anyone who looks at your mate a second too long.”
“And you’re loving every moment of it.”
He bobbed his head up and down. “I’ve earned it.”
Andrea reversed her course and came up to us. “I’m sorry I was an ass. Thank you. I owe you one.”
“No big,” I told her.
She looked at Raphael. “I’d like to go home.”
He bowed with an exaggerated flourish. “Your wish is my command, my lady. We need to go back to the hotel, scale the wall, and steal our car back.”
“That sounds good.”
They walked off.
Mating frenzy. The world had gone completely insane on me. I sighed and went to get Marigold. I had an appointment with a sexual deviant and I didn’t want to be late.
Anyway, The couple, from there website, gave to us who did not win (1201 entries who joined!) some consolation prize. And second best to not reading the actual book is no other than a snippet! It's a re-post but what the heck! I'll take what I can get!
Here it is:
Chapter 11, in which Andrea and Raphael go to jail
The phone rang. It was probably Christy. I picked it up. “Kate Daniels.”
“I’m in lockup in Milton County Jail,” Andrea said. “Come get me.”
Chapter 11
A couple of hours later I walked into Beau Clayton’s office, carrying a long parcel wrapped in rags.
Beau grinned at me from behind his desk. In 1066, ancient Saxons met ancient Norwegians in a bloody battle over Stamford Bridge. The legend said that the Saxons surprised their enemy, and as the Norwegians tried to rally, one of their warriors, a giant of a man, stepped onto the bridge and held it by himself, killing more than forty Saxons, until someone got smart and stabbed him with a long spear from below, through the planks of the bridge. Looking at Beau, I could totally picture him on that bridge swinging a giant axe around. Hulking, six feet six, with shoulders that had trouble fitting through the door, the Milton sheriff had the face of a bone breaker. He sat behind a scarred desk that was organized to within an inch of its life. The only item out of place was a large can. The label on the can said, CANNED BOILED GREEN PEANUTS.
I sat in a chair before his desk and put the parcel on my lap. “Canned boiled peanuts. That’s pushing it.”
“With a name like Beau, a man has to be careful,” he said. “Someone might mistake me for one of them Northern boys. The peanuts help to avoid misunderstandings.”
He passed me the can. I glanced into it. Spent shell casings.
“Every time I get shot at, I drop the shells in the can,” Beau said.
The can was about halfway full. I handed it back to him.
“The last time we met, I did say you would one day need a favor from me.” He spread his huge arms. “And here we are.”
We’d worked the same case before, I from the Order’s side and he from the sheriff’s side. He’d asked me to do him a favor, arguing that one day I would need one from him, and I had agreed. You never know on whose door you might have to knock next.
“What did Andrea do?”
He opened a manila folder and glanced at it. “Ever heard of Paradise Mission?”
“No.”
“It’s a high-class hotel. Built like a Spanish mission, with the courtyard screened in. The roof is glass and they keep the temperature nice and steady.”
“Like a hothouse.”
“Basically. The courtyard is a beautiful place. Flowers everywhere, a pool, hot tubs. Favorite getaway for rich couples from the city. I took Erica there once. Costs an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it. Had to be on the waiting list for four months before we got in.”
Beau wasn’t in a hurry. Screaming at him would just make him slow down more, so I nodded.
“From what I understand, your girl was staying at the place with her significant other. I’ve got him in the cell next to hers. Now, I’m completely straight, mind you, but he was likely the prettiest man I ever seen.”
Raphael. It must’ve been their big romantic night. He had probably reserved the hotel room weeks in advance.
“Apparently, they were both in the hot tub.”
“Hot tubs are nothing but trouble,” I told him.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Beau shrugged. “With a beer and good company, they aren’t bad. Relaxing. Soothing, even. In this case, however, they failed to bring about the desired relaxation. Miss Nash got up to go to the bathroom and get some drinks. When Miss Nash came back, she found a young female talking to her significant other.” His eyes sparkled a little. He pretended to check his report. “Apparently, the interloping female was scantily clad.”
He must’ve waited years to use that in a report. “Go on.”
“According to the hotel staff, the poor man did try to discourage the femme fatale the best he could, but she was either dense or really hoped to take him for a ride. Having met her, I’d say both.”
I sighed. I knew where this was going.
“When Miss Nash approached, her fellah informed the scantily clad female that Miss Nash and he were together. He says the female appraised Miss Nash as ‘cute.’”
I put my head down and bumped it on the table a couple of times.
The two furry caterpillars Beau used as his eyebrows crept up. “Do you need a minute?”
“No, I’ll be alright. Sorry.”
“It seems that the young woman made some indelicate suggestion of a threesome. Nobody is quite sure what happened next, but everybody agrees it was damn fast. When I got there, Miss Nash was standing by the hot tub in a small bikini, pointing the business end of a SIG-Sauer P-226 at her fellah and concerned members of hotel staff, while dunking the scantily clad female’s head under the water and asking, ‘Who’s diving for clams now, bitch?’”
My pain must’ve reflected on my face, because Beau reached into his desk drawer and handed me a small bottle of aspirin. I popped two tablets into my mouth and swallowed, grimacing against the bitterness. “Then what?”
“Well, Miss Nash and I had a conversation. I bet that she wouldn’t shoot a badge and I won that bet. She had no ID on her—it was a very small bikini—so we invited her, her fellah, and the aggrieved party to be our guests here in this lovely jailhouse. Spending the night with us calmed her down.”
Oh, boy. “She had no ID, but she had a gun?”
“Brought it in a towel, from what I understand.”
Why wasn’t I surprised? “She’s a knight.”
“I figured that when she called the Order.”
I took the parcel off my lap, placed it on his desk, and carefully unwrapped the rags. Beau sucked in a lungful of air in a sharp breath.
A beautiful rapier lay in the rags.
“The schiavona,” I said. “The preferred weapon of Dalmatian Slavs, who served in the Venetian Doge Guard in the sixteenth century. Deep basket hilt.” I traced the gleaming spider web of deceptively narrow metal strips forming the sword’s guard. “Thirty-six-point-seven-inch blade, efficient for both cut and thrust. A genuine Ragnas Dream sword.”
I turned the schiavona to the side, letting the light of the feylantern catch the stylized RD on the ornate pommel. Ragnas Dream didn’t make swords, he created masterpieces. The schiavona alone would pay the mortgages on both my apartment and my father’s house in Savannah for a year. Greg, my deceased guardian, had purchased it years ago and hung it on a wall in his library, the way one would display a treasured work of art. It was the kind of sword that would make a lifelong pacifist look for tall boots and a hat with feathers.
Beau’s face acquired a greenish tint.
“Breathe, Beau.”
He exhaled in a rush. “May I?”
Every person had a weakness. Beau loved rapiers. I smiled. Once he touched it, I had him. “Feel free.”
He got up, took the rapier gently, as if it were made of glass, and slid his big hand around the leather hilt. He raised the sword point up, admiring the elegant steel blade. A deep serenity claimed his face. Beau thrust, a textbook perfect, liquid movement, elegant and precise and so completely at odds with his huge body. “Christ,” he murmured. “It’s perfect.”
“She was never here,” I told him. “Her ‘fellah’ was never here. You don’t know their names and you’ve never seen them before.”
Beau was a very good cop, because he made himself put the rapier down. “Are you trying to bribe a law enforcement official, Kate?”
“I’m trying to present a law enforcement official with a token of appreciation for his delicate handling of the Order’s personnel issues. Knights of the Order are under a lot of pressure. Andrea Nash is one of the best knights I’ve ever met.”
Beau looked at the schiavona. A minute stretched into eternity.
I gave him a wide smile. “Oh, and one more thing.” I reached over and touched the pale opal in the base of the hilt.
Three. Two.
One.
The sword hummed a single perfect chime, like a silver bell. A thin line of red grew from the hilt down the blade, branching in curling shoots like an ornate vine until it finally reached the point. Beau turned pale.
“Enchanted blade. Never needs sharpening or oiling. I forgot to mention that part,” I said.
Beau tore his haze from the schiavona. “Take them and make sure they don’t come back.”
Ten minutes later Andrea, Raphael, and I stepped out of the jailhouse into a frigid overcast day. Both Raphael and Andrea wore the orange potato sacks that passed for Milton Jail uniforms.
“Assault.” I counted off on my fingers. “Assault with a deadly weapon. Conduct unbecoming a knight. Endangerment of civilians. Reckless use of a firearm in a public place. Resisting arrest. Drunk and disorderly.”
“I was neither drunk nor disorderly.” Andrea clenched her teeth.
“No, I’m sure you were drowning her in a completely calm and professional manner. Beau Clayton is a crack shot. You’re lucky he didn’t empty his clip into your head. You brought a gun to the hot tub. Who does that?”
Andrea folded her hands on her chest. “Don’t hassle me about my guns. You drag that sword everywhere. The whole thing was his idea. I wanted to go on a weekend.”
I looked at Raphael. He hit me with a dazzling smile. If I had any capacity for swooning, I would’ve hit the floor like a log. Some men were handsome. Some were sexy. Raphael was scorching hot. Not traditionally handsome, he had dark blue eyes, intense and heated from within by a fire that instantly made you think of sheets and skin. Coupled with his long black hair and the toned, supple body of a shapeshifter, the effect was shocking to all things female. Since he was my best friend’s honey bunny, I was pretty much immune to his evil powers, but once in a while he caught me off-guard.
“It was the only night that was available in the next six months,” he said, “and I had to call in a favor to get it.”
Andrea waved her hands around. “And we spent it in a jailhouse. Do you have any idea how hard it is to go out in public with him? We can’t go anywhere, we can’t do anything, because he gets hit on all the time. Sometimes women come up to him like I’m not even there!”
“I sympathize, but you can’t drown them, Andrea. You’re trained to kill and they aren’t. It’s not exactly a fair fight.”
“Fuck fair! Fuck you and fuck him, and whatever.”
She strode off.
Raphael was grinning ear to ear.
“Well, you’re taking it well.”
His eyes shone with faint ruby sheen. “Mating frenzy.”
“What?”
“When two shapeshifters become mated, we go crazy for a few weeks. It’s all about unreasonable aggression and irrational snarling at anyone who looks at your mate a second too long.”
“And you’re loving every moment of it.”
He bobbed his head up and down. “I’ve earned it.”
Andrea reversed her course and came up to us. “I’m sorry I was an ass. Thank you. I owe you one.”
“No big,” I told her.
She looked at Raphael. “I’d like to go home.”
He bowed with an exaggerated flourish. “Your wish is my command, my lady. We need to go back to the hotel, scale the wall, and steal our car back.”
“That sounds good.”
They walked off.
Mating frenzy. The world had gone completely insane on me. I sighed and went to get Marigold. I had an appointment with a sexual deviant and I didn’t want to be late.
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