“What are we going to do?” asked Tally.
I shrugged. “Let them take Austin to the bottom of the marsh?” Tally gave me a disappointed look. “I’m kidding. I have to get my powers back before he dies.”
Tally shook his head, and I stood up and made my way to the dock.
Tally flew past me. “I’ll go check to see what the werewolves are doing.”
I gave a brief nod as I walked to stand directly in front of Austin. I placed both hands on either side of his face, but he could not break eye contact, causing the sirens to giggle. I held up my middle finger to the skanks.
“Baby, I don’t need help, my ash,” I grumbled, right before I brought his head down to mine and kissed him like our lives depended on it. In reality, it kind of did. After several seconds, he wrapped his arms around my waist and yanked me to him with a growl. His hips grinded against mine, as his teeth caught my bottom lip. One of the sirens hollered and cheered, breaking us out of an entirely different trance. From an outsider’s point of view, I was sure that kiss looked like we were hot for each other. We stared at each other in shock. I was the first one to come to my senses. I lightly pushed away from him.
“The big, bad, cocky Power Eliminator had to be saved by a girl without powers. I mean seriously, three hoochies almost took you down. Now, the werewolves are more than aware that we're coming. Give me back my powers.” I gave him the stank eye. “Or are you hoping I’ll get killed, and then you won’t have to honor the vow?”
He gritted his teeth before he once again wrapped me in his arms. I felt a surge of power flow through my body and everything tingled. Because I had my power, not because he had his hands on me again, and he looked like he wanted an encore of our last performance.
A siren sing-songed, “I can love you better than she can.”
I gave Austin a wink. “She definitely could because I have no love in the club for you, but if you look at her again, I’ll push you into the water myself.” I grabbed his hand and dragged him along behind me. “Eyes down, lover boy.”
I heard him chuckling as I pulled him across the wooden dock. The sirens swam alongside us while they talked mad trash. They made him several promises; some of them I weren’t too sure were anatomically possible, considering the flexibility it would take to achieve such tasks.
Between the Demon Queen and a Power Eliminator, the rogue wolves of Charleston didn’t stand a chance. Austin kicked the front door down, and a big, burly guy with coarse hair sprung at him. Austin caught the man by the forearms, and they both fell to the ground, with the wolf on top right before Austin’s feet pushed the werewolf in the gut and sent him flying over his head. The werewolf had a momentary look of shock. I understood that expression. Poor wolf had lost his power.
I stood off to the side while Austin fought the wolves. I really should help, but the truth was I didn’t feel like it. Besides, there were only fifteen of them. We weren’t teammates. We weren’t even friends, but that didn’t stop me from noticing how hot Austin was while he outmaneuvered the wolves. I was studying my nails when a werewolf stalked up to me, and by the looks of him, he had the intent to do bodily harm.
I wagged a finger at him. “Wolfy, you don’t want none of this.”
Obviously, he had a hearing problem. One meaty fist reared back to take a swing at my face. Smoke curled from me like tentacles and wrapped around his hand, jerking it behind his back, and within a second I had him wrapped up tighter than a cocoon leaving only his eyes visible. I pointed a finger at a chair, and he went careening into it. He thrashed against my wisps, but it was no use.
I gave him a wink. “Don’t fight it. Just sit there and be a good doggie for mommy.”
I returned to taking intervals of studying my nails and Austin’s fine form. His back muscles bunched as he parried with his opponent. Why did the sexiest man alive have to be my number one enemy? Four werewolves jumped on him at once. It was like a giant haystack before he started knocking them off of him, taking their powers as he went.
Without cutting me a glance, he said, “Thanks for the help.”
“Oh, cuddle bear! Don’t you remember clearly stating that you didn’t need any help?”
Another wolf gunned for me. I held up a hand. “Stop right there.” He hesitated for a brief moment. “If you want to end up like your mummified friend over there, then be my guest.”
He chose to head towards Austin, where he lost his power within the first twenty seconds of fighting the boy wonder. Talk about a ‘danged if you do, danged if you don’t’ kind of situation.
There was an all-out brawl going on in the middle of the living room, but Austin was pretty close to finishing up. I just needed to come to a decision whether to kill him right away or wait the six months when I was positive he would come for me and then kill him. It would be self-defense. Ugh. Why would a Demon Queen care if the kill was in self-defense? Bad, bad, Carmen. Austin threw a wolf in the air, and he rolled to a stop right in front of me. With the bottom of my flip flop, I pushed him in the face to get him to roll away from me.
To say I was bored would have been putting it lightly until I heard Tally shout. I looked across the room, and there stood a bulky werewolf holding the small fairy in his large hand. I pushed off the wall with intent. No one messed with my bug.
The wolf’s eyes swiveled to me. “Stop, or I’ll squeeze him until his eyes bulge out of his head.”
With one last punch, Austin had disabled the last standing werewolf. They all lay on the floor, writhing in pain, and probably from the loss of their powers.
Austin glared at the werewolf holding Tally. “We just want the key.”
“Sorry.” The werewolf snickered. “I have plans for the key.” He nodded to his friend who was still tied up by smoke before he glanced in my direction. “I’ve never seen a demon be able to do that before. Release him.”
Austin gave me a warning look but I ignored him. The wolf had my bug. With a flick of my wrist, I let the wisps drop. The werewolf gave me a scared look before he almost fell out of his chair, trying to scamper away from me.
“Release the fairy,” I commanded.
The werewolf gave a humorless laugh. “Then me and my brother here will be dead. I’m not stupid, girl. We will be leaving with the fairy to make sure you don’t follow either of us.”
Austin started striding towards the werewolves. “Not with the key, you won’t.”
Anger flared through me. How could he risk Tally? With barely a thought, I tried to throw him against a wall, but right before he hit, he somehow managed to stop himself an inch away from brick and mortar. He floated quietly back to the ground. The trick must’ve come from a fairy whose powers he’d stolen. I waited to see what he would do. When he didn’t come towards me, I gave my attention back to the brothers.
“You won’t leave here alive unless you make a vow to let him go unharmed within the hour.”
The werewolf holding Tally asked, “What are you?”
“The Demon Queen.”
The brothers glanced at each other momentarily before the one I had previously wrapped in my wisps spoke up. “Agreed. We will vow it now. Give us time to get away, and then we will release the fairy.”
As soon as they said their vows, I stepped to the side and let them pass. After they ran through the front door, I knew what was coming, but I couldn’t help but sigh when he opened his mouth to scold me.
“What were you thinking?” Austin said quietly.
That was interesting. I assumed he would be screeching by now. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I was thinking they had my friend, and I wasn’t going to let him die because of my actions.”
“You made a vow to me to get that key.”
“I’ll get you your stupid key.”
He shook his head before he put his hands on his narrow hips. “No, what I’m saying is that a demon was willing to break a vow that could actually cause them death in order to save a friend. Which brings me to demons can have friends?�
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“Why are you butt hurt? I said I would get you your stupid key and I will.”
He gave me a smile as he took several strides towards me. “I’m not butt hurt, Carmen. I’m impressed. Maybe I have misjudged you. I would have saved my friend, too.” He stepped over a moaning werewolf then stopped right in front of me. “Do me a favor? Remember this moment. That you were willing to do anything to rescue your friend.”
I couldn’t even nod because he made me nervous with the way he gazed at me. He studied my face for several seconds like he was trying to decipher if I was real or not. Why was he leaning into me? I couldn’t make myself move, even though his lips were inches away from mine. Was he going to kiss me? Excitement and wariness crept through me as I waited in anticipation.
Austin jumped back from me, a curse word shouting from the same lips I’d just been watching. He leaned down and punched a werewolf in the face, knocking the man out.
“He bit me on the ankle!”
I couldn’t help the laughter bubbling out of me.
He turned back to me with a sexy grin. “You think that’s funny?”
“Hilarious.”
“Yeah, probably wouldn’t have been so funny if it would have been your ankles.”
“But it wasn’t.”
He brushed my hair behind my shoulder. Back came the wariness. “What do you want to do for the next hour?” he asked.
I looked around at all the powerless werewolves who still hadn’t made it to their feet. It sucked being human. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure how I feel leaving those sirens in the marsh and who knows how many are out there.” At his shocked look, I asked, “What? You want to leave them there to take down any fisherman that comes this way?”
A slow smile spread across his handsome features. “No, of course not. I just didn’t think we would be on the same page.”
I stomped to the front door, kicking powerless wolves out of my way. Was wanting to save unforeseen humans from the sirens’ grasp a weakness? Yes, it was. As I crossed the dock, I just hoped the Power Eliminator on my heels didn’t take advantage of it. When I got back to ruling, I was going to have a hard time with my underlings if boy wonder ran his mouth about me building sandcastles and saving future fisherman. I took off my sundress with little finesse and a lot of aggravation and kicked off my flip flops.
“I’ll hunt the sirens down and then throw them up on the dock. Try not to make eye contact with them when you strip them of their powers.” I stood there while his gaze raked over my bikini-clad body. My hands were on my hips when a thought came to me. “Austin, when you take their powers, you won’t use their seduction powers on, um, you know …”
He took a step towards me. “On you? No, Carmen, when I seduce you, you will willingly fall into my arms, not because I tricked you, but because that’s where you will crave to be.”
My heart thumped in my chest. For the first time in my life, I took the cowardly way out. I pretended like I didn’t hear him, as I dove into the murky water. It wasn’t until I had wrangled the seventh siren when I realized he had said “when I seduce you” not “if.” My heart raced with unexpected emotions. Was I hoping he would seduce me? No, those thoughts could be suicidal. Besides if I was nothing but a lowly demon, why would anyone want to seduce me? There was no denying he had looked at me like he wanted me, and he thought it was just a matter of time before he had me. I couldn’t allow lust to get involved, or I could lose the one thing that mattered the most to me: my powers. I never wanted to feel helpless again.
Chapter Eighteen
We were back in a bar. If we weren’t careful, we would get a reputation and be forced to attend meetings. At least this time, my sundress fit the atmosphere. When an hour had passed, we decided to head back to downtown Charleston to see if we could find the wolves who had disappeared. I knew Tally would find me, but after the third hour of looking for the wolves and Tally not showing up, I was a bundle of nerves. They took a vow to release him after an hour, so where was he?
Austin reached over and placed a hand on my leg. Butterflies flew in my stomach, and I tried to act like he had no effect on me when he said, “He’s fine. He’ll probably track you down any second.”
“Yeah.” But where was he? “Sure.”
Tingles zipped up and down my spine as his thumb rubbed the inside of my knee. He was trying to be comforting, but his touch was nothing but distracting. The shrill sound of a telephone rang behind the bar, breaking me out of the lust zone I was readily leaning into. I crossed my legs to avoid further contact. It was definitely safer that way. A couple of rowdy college kids made some loud jokes as I began to rub my temples. I needed to get out of this bar to somewhere quiet where I could think.
The bartender shouted, “Is there an Austin here?”
Austin gave me a confused look, standing up to take the call. What was that about? I studied his profile as he talked on the phone. His brow was furrowed, and his jaw was clenched. I heard a couple of “Why’s” and a “You’ve got to be kidding me” but for the most part, he was just listening intently to whatever the caller said. A couple of young girls leaned in their seats to get closer to him. They were annoyingly distracting as they giggled, and one even dared to make squeezing motions with her hands as she ogled his butt. He completely ignored them as he focused on the caller, and his hand continued to clench the phone. He obviously wasn’t a fan of whatever was being said to him. Without a goodbye, he hung up and made his way back to me. Both girls sighed, and I almost stuck my tongue out at them. Geez, what was wrong with me? He placed a warm hand under my elbow, guiding me to the door. Oh no, please don’t let it be bad news. If something had happened to Tally, I didn’t know what I would do.
He pulled me in between two buildings, and my eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness. My back was against the brick, as Austin leaned into me, almost crowding my space. He waited for two tourists to walk past the darkened alleyway before he began to talk.
“That was the soothsayer, Ariana. I know where Tally is and—”
“Where?” I demanded.
He lightly gripped my elbow he’d never taken his hand off of. “The werewolves kept their word, and they did let Tally go, but your friend decided to spy on them to see where they were headed. You know the saying, ‘fool me once shame on you?’ Well, Tally didn’t fool them twice. They have him at the portal, and this time it’s going to be a little harder to get him back.”
I gazed up into his face, trying to understand what he wasn’t saying. “They took him into the portal?” I didn’t give him a chance to confirm. “Why would they do that?”
“The werewolves know the Queen of Demons is after the key. They also know you’ll be coming after your friend, so they need to go in the portal to retrieve the one being they think will vow to bring you down, if they allow him out.”
“Oh, puh-lease. Who might this creature be?”
“Being born of fire, your weakness is naturally water, even though you’ve taken a liking to it, so they seek the bastard son of the King of the Sea, who can control water. They obviously don’t know how much you actually like water.”
I had heard of this king before, but never his son. It didn’t matter. Tally was counting on me to come rescue him. I gnawed on my bottom lip, as I thought up a plan. If they were already in the portal and had the key, how would we enter?
Austin put a finger under my chin. “We will get the key back, along with your friend. You don’t need to worry.”
I patted his chest, rolling my eyes. “I’m not worried about defeating this so-called king’s son. I’m worried about how we're going to get in the portal.”
“Easy. We teleport there ahead of the wolves and then use the key they have in their possession.” I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, did I forget to mention they are headed to portal thirty-two in Ohio? By the time they get there, we will be waiting for them.”
What in the fifty shades of crazy was he talking about? Perhaps he had a
lready swooped up too much power, and had tilted over into crazy land, because he sure as hades wasn’t making sense.
“You’re giving me a migraine. Why did you tell me all about this son of the king if we will be at the portal before the werewolves even go into the portal? We can snatch the key and Tally and never set foot in the portal.” Duh.
“Sorry, I also forgot to mention the part where Ariana said we had to go in the portal.” Forget? He didn’t forget. He chose not to lead with that. I could tell by the effortless way he apologized. “She wants us to actually be the ones to release the king’s bastard son, Malakian.”
I straightened the bunched fabric under my fingers, and that’s when I realized my hand was still on his chest—his remarkably wide, muscular chest. I removed it quickly. “And is this the part where you tell me why we would agree to that?”
“I’d prefer not to.”
I pushed him away from me. “The longer I’m gone from the underworld, the harder it will be for me when I return. Do you understand? And yet you will not tell me the reasoning behind this adventure that doesn’t need to take place?”
He briefly looked like he was at war with himself. Decision made, he said, “No, I won’t tell you.”
Jutting my chin out, I said, “Then count me out.”
He invaded my space. “Sorry, that’s not part of the deal, but I will tell you what part of the deal was. You. Getting. Me. The. Key. I hate to be such a stickler, but you did let it out of our grasp and technically did break a vow. What’s to stop me from taking your power now?”
I glared at him. “You dare to threaten me with that again?”
“Yeah, I dare. I’ve got a lot laying on the line.”
“More than just the key? Tell me Austin, what or who did you see back in the enchanted maze because I don’t think it was the key and I know that I’m no Nancy Drew but why do I have the feeling that you are in a tangled mess?”
He leaned into me again. “None of that is your business.”
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