Just like that. No good-bye. No see yah later, chicka, and thanks for the lay.
Gone.
She’d told her parents she didn’t feel well and got Coop to drive her home. She stayed up all night waiting for him. He didn’t come back. She was an idiot to keep hoping.
She washed and dried her hands and went back into the library. The Fall Art Show was a smashing success. There was a line outside on the sidewalk when she unlocked the doors early that morning. It was mid-afternoon and the crowd was finally dwindling.
Mid-afternoon without a word from Rafe. Pfft, he was gone and it was over.
She was thankful to have the bustle of the art show to keep her busy. Local artist Amasa Collier sold several of his coat hanger sculptures, including a startlingly realistic likeness of country great Hank Williams. There were dozens of canvases on display and for sale and some wonderful photographs done by the photography class at Hannah High, as well as pottery, hand woven wisteria baskets, blown glass and handmade quilts. Bunny had her eye on a magnificent oil of the Devil River. The river came alive under the artist’s brush. He or she—the painting was unsigned except for a small ‘S’ in one corner—had captured the mystery and allure of the water. When she looked at that painting, she felt as though she could walk right in the river and into another world.
Unfortunately, the mystery artist wanted way more for the painting than she could afford on her meager salary, especially with a baby on the way.
Swallowing a lump of sadness at the thought of raising the baby without Rafe, Bunny surveyed the library from behind the reception desk. Twenty or so people still lingered at the tables and easels that lined the library windows, and a few more wandered around in the stacks. In a few minutes, she would shoo everybody out and close the doors. And then she would go home and begin the rest of her life without Rafe.
Oh, God, how would she bear it?
The door opened and Audrey came in. She gave Bunny a little wave and hurried up to the front counter.
“Your mama told me and Cooper the good news about the baby,” she said, smiling. Audrey always called Coop by his full name. It was Cooper this and Cooper that. Usually, Bunny thought it was endearing. But for some reason today it got on her nerves. “You left in such a hurry last night. I was worried about you.” Audrey’s eyes widened. Leaning forward, she whispered, “Your mama said Rafe went AWOL when he found out about the baby. Is everything okay?”
No, everything was not okay. Everything was about as not okay as it could get. For one thing, Bunny had a heck of a time last night explaining Rafe’s little vanishing act to her mother. She’d finally convinced Mama she might be getting a migraine. Mama saw visual auras right before the onset of a headache. The lie had worked, but it had been a close one. Mama was no dummy.
For another, her husband of less than a week had left her. She’d gotten a big fat “F” in Marriage 101, and there would be no making it up in another term. School was over. Her marriage had been canceled because her husband had the commitment and intimacy issues of a typical male. Times a squillion.
But she wasn’t about to tell Audrey that. Audrey would be devastated for her and she would try and sympathize. And Bunny couldn’t take it. Not right now. Not when the pain was so raw.
So, she smiled and lied. Again. “Everything’s fine. I want to thank you for letting us borrow the Caddy. Rafe would never have fit into my Mini Cooper.”
Audrey giggled. “No, he wouldn’t.” She looked around. “So, where is Rafe? Is he here?”
Bunny was saved from another lie by the unexpected arrival of Mullet Woman. Nicole came through the front door dressed in black shorts, a white see-through bathing suit cover, and an oh-so-visible black bra. She carried a large, covered canvas in her hands.
“Read about the art show in the Herald.” She plunked the canvas on the counter. “Just got off my shift. Am I too late?”
“I’m sorry, Nicole, but the art show is over,” Bunny said.
“I was just about to close the library. But if you give me your name and address, I’ll put you on the mailing list for next year. I’m sure your artwork is lovely.”
“Huh.” Nicole looked crestfallen. “Since I brung it all this way, you wanna see it? I’d kinda like your opinion.”
Bunny cut her eyes at Audrey. Her sister-in-law was staring at Nicole’s train wreck of a hair-do with thinly veiled horror.
“Uh, sure,” Bunny said.
Nicole turned the canvas over and slid her fingernail under the masking tape. What was hidden beneath that butcher paper? A black velvet Elvis? The Last Supper done in elbow macaroni?
Nicole unwrapped the canvas and turned it over. Bunny and Audrey gasped. It was a portrait of Jesus, the most tender, moving likeness of Christ that Bunny had ever seen.
Also the most odiferous.
“Whew!” Audrey waved her hands in the air. “What is that awful smell?”
“Cigarettes,” Nicole said. “I made it out of butts I picked up around the gas station. You wouldn’t believe how many morons pump gas while smoking a cig.” She lifted her thick shoulders. “It seemed like the Earth-friendly thing to do.”
“A stinky Jesus.” Audrey was frowning. “You made a stinky Jesus. You can’t make our Lord and Savior out of cigarette butts. It’s not respectful.”
“I like it,” Bunny announced. “In fact, I love it. I want to buy it.” She looked at Nicole. “That is, if I can afford it and if it’s for sale.”
Nicole flushed. “It’s yours.” She handed the canvas over the counter to Bunny. “Consider it a wedding present.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t.” Bunny tried to give the picture back. “It’s too beautiful. You must let me pay you for it. Better yet, take it to an art gallery in Mobile.”
“Nope, I want you to have it. Besides, there’s plenty more butts where them came from.” Nicole leveled her piggy eyes at Audrey. “That your pink Cadillac out front?”
Audrey gave Nicole a wall-eyed stare. Bunny could tell Mullet Woman made Audrey nervous. “Yes,” Audrey said. “Why do you ask?”
“Thought it might be. You sell Mary Kay?”
At once, Audrey morphed into the consummate professional. She straightened her shoulders and pasted a bright smile on her face. “I do.”
“Huh,” Nicole said. “You got yourself a problem then. My aunt used to sell Mary Kay and that there car of yours ain’t the right color pink.”
Audrey looked like somebody had sucked all of the air out of the room. “What are you talking about?
“Your car is carnation,” Nicole told her. “Whereas your Mary Kay is more of a porcelain pink.”
“My, would you look at the time?” Bunny said loudly. “I think I’ll close up now.”
She bustled around the room rounding up people and ushering them out of the library. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nicole and Audrey walk out together. They were still talking.
Bunny said good-bye to her library aide, Betsy, and escorted an effusively flirtatious Horace Clement out the door. Good grief, the man was eighty years old if he was a day, and he was coming on to her like crazy. What good was all this sex appeal when the only man she wanted was Rafe?
She checked the library one more time and locked up and dimmed the lights. As she came out of the stacks, she glanced out the bank of windows and saw Nicole and Audrey standing on the curb.
She walked to the front door and looked out. Nicole was pointing to the Mary Kay car. Audrey looked upset. Bunny felt guilty. Audrey loved that stupid car. It was important to her, a symbol of all her hard work. And now it was ruined.
Okay, maybe ruined was a little bit of an exaggeration, but it was definitely the wrong color. And in the world of Mary Kay, the right pink was everything.
Bunny felt responsible. But what could she do, tell Audrey the truth?
Uh, sorry, babe, I got in a throw down with this demon and tore up your car. But my husband—remember him, the supernatural hottie who hung around until a
fter the honeymoon? —made it all better. Unfortunately, he only has one pink in his color palette, and it ain’t Mary Kay.
Oh, yeah, that would fix everything. As if.
Shaking her head, Bunny walked over to the reception desk and got her purse out of the drawer. The monitor caught her eye. Here there be dragons her screensaver said. Her computer was still on.
That’s right, she thought. I asked Betsy to delete those old books from the inventory this morning.
She reached over to turn off the computer.
That’s when the demon attacked.
Chapter Seventeen
The djegrali came out of the drinking fountain near the main entrance. It seeped out of the bubbler, overflowed the basin and oozed onto the floor. Clawed hands reached for Bunny out of the deadly mist.
“Bun-n-ny,” the demon wraith moaned.
Bunny dropped her purse and ran. She hit the front door and threw her weight against it. It was locked.
Damn. And the keys were in her purse behind the reception desk.
Double damn.
Snick, she heard the deadbolt turn, just like that night at the beach house. Bunny Dalvahni, supernatural locksmith. Maybe not the most impressive of talents, but pretty handy when you were locked inside a building with a spectral psychopath.
A foul wind raised the hair on the nape of her neck. The thing was upon her. She pushed the door open and stopped. Audrey and Nicole were still talking on the sidewalk, oblivious to the danger. If she ran outside the demon would follow her and hurt them. She couldn’t let that happen.
She whirled back around. The djegrali loomed over her, a misty, swirling thing out of a nightmare, with twisted limbs and a gaping beak of a mouth. Behind it, three smaller, murky shapes rose out of the drinking fountain.
Great. Papa demon had brought his baby demons to show them how to hunt. And she was Lesson Number One.
“I am angry with you, little rabbit.” The horrible, grating voice that Bunny remembered came out of the thing’s pointed mouth. The grotesque head lowered. “You have been keeping secrets from me. You are one of them now, and you did not tell me.”
Bunny gazed up into the hideous face and nearly fainted from fright. The noxious waves of concentrated evil that emanated from the djegrali were overpowering, not to mention just plain stinky. The demon smelled to high heaven, like old garbage or spoiled meat. Her will and her resistance started to slip away under the combined effects of terror and revulsion. In a flash, her memories of the night of the attack returned. The crack of bone and joint as Mr. Pringle’s head distorted into something unrecognizable and his elongated jaws sprouted row upon row of sharp teeth. The mind-numbing fear that robbed her limbs of strength and the terrible, searing pain as the beast ravaged her throat. And then Rafe was there and the pain was gone.
But that was then and this was now. Where was a demon hunter when you needed one?
Her rescue came from an unexpected source.
Hellooo, Smart Bunny said. Stop mooning about Rafe. You’re fixing to die. Move your ass, Cottontail. NOW.
Smart Bunny was right, of course. Rafe wasn’t here. She might not be able to outrun the djegrali. It was smoke and spirit, after all. But she had to try.
Bunny darted into the stacks. To her surprise, she really darted. Dalvahni woo woo again. Maybe she had a chance against this thing after all. She streaked like a rocket through adult fiction, large print, and zipped around and around the waist-high display of children’s books. Pfft, she blurred past nonfiction and the shelves of audiobooks. Newspapers and magazines fluttered like leaves in a windstorm in her wake.
She was fast, but so was the demon. She felt him behind her. His breath was like black frost on her skin.
Too close, too close, Bunny thought, picking up speed.
“Run, little rabbit, as fast as you can,” the demon said with a horrible chuckle. The sound of that voice was petrifying, a satanic Tim Curry in Legend or Darth Vader on crack. “I will still catch you.”
Books flew off the shelves, pelting her like hailstones. Bunny shrieked and covered her head. Artwork and pottery whizzed past. She ducked the missiles and kept running, dodging the bookshelves that crashed around her like dominoes. Her lungs burned and her legs ached. She couldn’t keep going at this pace much longer. A rasping cry startled her. The demon’s three evil henchmen circled the stacks above her like vultures, watching and waiting, savoring her terror and exhaustion and the kill that was to come.
She heard the harsh rumble of the demon’s laughter closing in behind her. The monster was playing with her and enjoying the chase.
“Don’t you want to hear my plans for you, little rabbit? I’m going to use your body as my vessel. Humans are so weak and easily broken. But you are Dalvahni and strong. With your powers and mine, I will be invincible. I am going to kill your lover and the other warrior and then this world will belong to the djegrali.”
Hear that? Garbage Breath is going to take over the world, Smart Bunny said. Stop shrieking and running around like a little girl and kick this bastard’s ass.
“And how do you propose I do that?” Bunny said, gasping for breath. “In case you haven’t noticed, I am a girl and I don’t have any weapons.”
What am I, your mother? Do I have to do everything for you? Think of something and make it fast. You’re out of time. Garbage Breath is right behind you.
Bunny took a flying leap over a heap of fallen bookcases and landed on the other side. She looked over her shoulder. The demon was right on top of her. It roared in triumph and reached for her with scaly hands. She yelped and did a forward roll. Something hot and razor sharp raked across her back. She rolled behind the front desk and scrambled to her feet beside her desktop computer. The demon stalked to the end of the reception desk on huge, taloned feet. He loomed over her, a roiling nightmare of beak and claw. A flutter of white caught Bunny’s eye and drew her gaze downward. Garbage Breath had a tiny piece of paper stuck on his big old demon butt, acquired, no doubt, when he chased her through the stacks.
Suddenly, Bunny knew what to do.
“Stay back.” She brandished her Honeywell bar code scanner at the demon with her right hand. With the fingers of her left hand she hit the keyboard. The screen saver disappeared and the open cataloging program popped into view.
The djegrali threw back its hideous, misshapen head and laughed. The three smaller demons fluttered around Garbage Breath like tattered black flags. They were laughing too.
“Foolish rabbit, I am morkyn, one of the elders of my kind. Surely you do not think to defeat me with so pitiful a weapon?”
“Surely you realize you’ve got a bar code sticker on your ass and that this—” she waved the gun-shaped object in her hand—“is a bar code scanner?” She pressed the head of the scanner to the strip of white paper that dangled from the demon’s filmy carcass.
Are you sure you want to delete this item? the computer asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Bunny said.
She pulled the trigger. The scanner beeped and the demon disappeared.
“Ha!” Bunny crowed, jumping up and down. A feeling of power surged through her veins. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
With an inhuman howl of fury, the three smaller demons swooped down upon her like avenging black crows.
Bunny heard a hoarse shout and then a high-pitched, metallic whine. To her astonishment, a large double-headed axe spun through the air and chopped the demons to bits. With a high keening cry of agony, the djegrali disintegrated into a thousand peppery particles and vanished.
Rafe materialized in front of her. He lifted his arm and the whirling axe returned to his hand. He looked very pale and there was a stark, haunted expression on his beautiful face. She’d never seen him look like that . . . so open . . . so vulnerable.
He was dressed in some kind of weird, medieval outfit she’d never seen. No . . . wait. She’d seen it once, the night of the attack. She’d opened her eyes and remembered thinking he was
an angel, a warrior angel, with his flaming hair, stern features and blazing eyes.
Her gaze traveled from the vest covering his hard chest to the leather breeches that clung to his muscular legs. It was an outlandish getup, something from another age. He should have looked ridiculous, but he didn’t. He looked comfortable and at ease in the strange clothes.
And dangerous. Very, very dangerous.
He also looked pissed.
His face went from white to a deep mottled angry red. “Are you insane?” he shouted. “What were you thinking, woman? You could have been killed!”
“Don’t you yell at me, Rafe Dalvahni.” Bunny’s chin quivered. “I’ve had just about all I can take for one day.”
“Bunny, by the gods, Bunny!” He dropped his axe and grabbed her in a crushing embrace. He ran his hands over her body as if he wanted to reassure himself she was all right. “Never do that to me again. I thought you were dead. How could you have been so foolish?”
Suddenly, she was furious. She gave him a hard shove and he released her. She stepped back, her chest heaving.
“Let’s see, what were my choices?” She looked around the library. “Nope, nobody here but me. You weren’t here, were you?” Hot tears spilled down her cheeks. “You left. I didn’t think you were coming back. Ever. You left.”
“I know.” He stepped closer. “Look at me, Bunny.”
She shook her head. “If I look at you I’ll give in and you’ll break my heart again. I won’t let you do that to me, Rafe. I won’t.”
He towered over her. She could feel the heat pouring off his big body and smell his warm, spicy scent. God help her, she could talk big all she wanted, but she was a complete and total idiot when it came to this man. She closed her eyes so she couldn’t see him, for all the good it did. She didn’t have to see him to feel him, to know he was there. She tingled all over when he was near. He filled her senses and made her dizzy with longing.
So I Married A Demon Slayer Page 27
