by Debra Dunbar
“Can’t you pick locks? Sam can pick locks. I thought all demons could pick locks.”
Dar resisted the urge to punch Wyatt in the face. A bloody nose and a fat lip. A little facial rearrangement would be so satisfying. Wyatt had no idea how lucky he was. I promised my sister I wouldn’t harm you, but I really want to. “Yes, I can pick locks. Phelps has more than just the hotel locks on the door, though. He’s got some kind of thumbprint device. Who knows what else he’s got going on in there. Demon wishes aside, the guy seems to be pretty bright, and he does own a security company.”
“All that for a hotel room? Sheesh, paranoid much?” Wyatt looked up toward the penthouse suite windows. “I assume it’s linked into his cell phone so he’s alerted to a break in. If you’d have given me more than five minutes’ notice, I could have hacked in and blocked the alarm.”
Dar dug through his suit pocket and tossed a business card at the human. “Here. It’s his personal cell, not the business one. Make it ten minutes and I’m in.”
“That gives us five after I block the alarm to grab the bottle and run for it. Phelps is going to know something is up with his security, and, worst-case scenario, that’s how long it will take him to get here from the convention center. Plus the lobby and elevator cameras will still record you. Phelps and the police will be looking for you, Asta, and me.”
“No, they’ll be looking for a rat.” Dar ducked back safely into the alley, exploded all of his physical being outward in a flash of light and rush of molecules, then condensed back as his rat form. It sucked to destroy the nice suit he’d been wearing, but sometimes sacrifice was necessary to make a dramatic statement.
“Don’t let anyone see you or there will be a whole lot of screaming and running for the exits.”
Dar grinned, flashing pointy teeth. He had no intention of being seen. Scaring humans was good fun, but this was a stealthy mission.
With a twitch of whiskers, the demon was off, vanishing under the sewer grate and through the maze of pipes and tunnels beneath the building. A thousand years of navigating underground had given the demon some unusual skills. Even though this hotel’s layout was unfamiliar, he’d noted various air-return vents when he’d visited Phelps’s room two nights ago. Hopping from the sewers into the boiler-room drain then across the floor and up the garbage chute, Dar looked carefully before making a mad dash across the service-area floor to the laundry room. With a quick twist of screws, he was in the ductwork and heading up.
This hotel seriously needed to clean out their HVAC system. The ducts were coated in dust, with faint lines of rust around the joints, and the occasional spot of mold. Dar wrinkled his long nose and sneezed, his eyes watering as he climbed steadily upward.
Fuck, this was going to take forever. He’d told Wyatt ten minutes in a moment of bravado, but now the demon wondered if he’d make it. The ductwork was a maze, slowly winding up around the building. Dar took as many short cuts as he could, but that didn’t discount the miles he’d need to cover before reaching the penthouse.
Miles. Upward. So much for that rounded figure he longed for. Looked like Asta’s predictions regarding the horrible muscles were going to come true. By the time he reached the top floor, his lungs were heaving for air, his legs burning.
There. The huge air-return duct terminated in a ceiling-high grate that overlooked the hallway in front of the bank of elevators. Pausing to catch his breath, Dar rose on two legs and hooked sharp claws into the vent edges. He could see no one from his admittedly limited vantage point. The elevator indicators held steady at the lower floors. Twitching his nose, he breathed deep, recognizing the smells of room service food, newspaper, cleaning solution, and plug-in air freshener. This was the risky part, where he exposed himself in a mad dash to the penthouse door. Every whisker clamored for him to be patient and make sure no one was about, but there was no time to be cautious.
Fuck it. With a burst of energy, he broke the bolts holding the grate to the wall, propelling it outward. With a quick glance to either side, he sprang to the ground. There were only two rooms on this floor. Phelps was at the convention, and the chances of the other guest or a random maid seeing him were remote.
Galloping across the patterned carpet, Dar reached the door and eyed the levered knob. Snaking his energy up through the door and into the circuit, the demon watched the red light turn green, and then he leapt. Dexterous paws grabbed the handle, and the weight from his body pulled it down. The door opened with a click, and Dar jumped to the floor inside Carter Phelps’s room.
The box on the table flashed. He’d no idea how long until it decided the required fingerprint wasn’t coming and alerted Phelps to the break-in. Even if Wyatt had managed to hack in and block the system, Dar only had a few minutes. Of course, a few minutes were more than enough time to grab a bottle and disappear into the ventilation system.
He raced toward the bedroom, scrambling up the dresser drawer pulls to the top. The bottle stood just as it had the night before. Dar’s tail twitched as he felt the weight of ancient demon energy. Who was this guy?
Something to his left flashed, and Dar realized he had no time left for contemplation. Grabbing the bottle with his front paws, he knocked it on its side and rolled it off the dresser onto the carpet. The ancient glass hit with a disturbing crack.
Ah well. It’s not like the thing was going to break, and the genie was pissed off already. A fall, then a roll along the carpet wasn’t going to put him in a better mood, but the mode of transportation couldn’t be helped. Dar couldn’t take the time to carry the bottle while staggering through the hotel room on two legs. He had to get a move on.
Cylindrical objects rolled well. Bottle-shaped objects didn’t. The stupid thing kept veering to the left, forcing Dar to waste precious time getting it down the penthouse hallway and out the open door. Once there, he didn’t close the door. It wasn’t like he needed to cover his tracks. Phelps would soon know there was a break-in, even if Wyatt had managed to work his magic.
Navigating the hallway wasn’t any easier, and when Dar reached the air duct, he realized he’d been a bit shortsighted in planning this whole caper. The air duct was eight feet up, next to the ceiling. Not an easy jump for a rat, even a demon rat, but an impossible jump for a demon rat holding a bottle.
Fuck. Dar glanced around, noting the three cameras pointed his way. Well, there was nothing else to be done. He could hardly sit here and wait to be caught, or roll the bottle down the elevator and through the lobby as a rat. With a flash, he transformed into his human form—his very naked human form—and tossed the bottle up into the air duct.
That didn’t sound good. The thing made a horrible racket, slamming its way down the metal passageway until it stopped at a turn. Dar winced, then jumped, hooking his hands on the lip of the open grate before changing back into his rat form. The HVAC system had been steep going up, and it was equally steep going down. Dar found himself sliding face-first at an alarming pace, grabbing at the bottle as he rocketed by. The weight of it jerked him around, smashing him into the side of the duct where a poorly placed screw tore a chunk of flesh from his side.
Fuck, that hurt. He was still on his belly, but now sliding backwards, his blood painting a stripe along the dusty edge of the metal duct. Dar gripped the neck of the bottle with his front paws as he scrambled to slow his descent with his back legs. Ass first, he had no idea where he was going or which turn he’d taken. All he knew was, he was heading down. Hopefully to the laundry room. Hopefully not to the furnace, although it shouldn’t be ignited on this warm day.
His rear hit something hard, smashing him between it and the bottle. He’d stopped but was at a backward angle with the weight of the bottle on top of him. He could throw it off and risk it hurtling downward into the furnace. Not a good choice. Heat wouldn’t damage the bottle, but he didn’t like the idea of singeing fur and risking third degree burns retrieving it. He could repair the resultant injuries, but suffering them wasn’t his idea of a
good day.
Dar edged sideways and twisted his neck to look down. Fuck. It was nearly a straight drop—not one he’d like to go down with the weight of this damned bottle on top of him. That left only one other choice. He rolled, feeling his stomach rise into his throat as he rode the bottle like a rocket down the vertical descent. The sense of direction that never failed him? Well, it failed him this time. Dar had no idea where in the hotel he was. He knew nothing except he was bound to come to a stop eventually. It’s not the fall that kills, it’s when you stop falling. Neither would kill a demon, but it sure as fuck wouldn’t be pleasant.
It wasn’t. Dar saw the grate rush toward him. He hit with enough impact to rip it from the ceiling. That last eight feet to the cement floor seemed to take forever as he scrambled around on the bottle, trying to ensure it landed first and took the brunt of the impact. At least he didn’t have to worry about glass shards in his ass and belly.
The bottle hit, bouncing and flipping as it slammed Dar back-first onto the floor. He grunted, losing his grip on it. As he struggled to stop the room from spinning, he heard a piercing scream, an accompaniment to the noise of the bottle rolling away.
“Rat!”
The scream became a chorus of screams. Dar blinked, shaking his head to clear his vision. Huge glass circles lined up before him like portholes on a ship, only these were filled with linens spinning round and round. The laundry. He’d smelled this room coming in and realized he must be fairly close to his original route. There was a clear way out through the floor drains to the sewer, but he’d need to drag the bottle past a hoard of women shouting in some foreign language and swatting at him with towels. Fuck it. Dar bared his teeth, snarling at his attackers. The screaming reached a fevered pitch, but they backed up enough for him to grab the bottle and work his way across the floor.
It was an agonizingly long process. Every few feet he needed to turn around and again threaten the women who seemed determined to whip him to death with hotel linen. Finally he made it to the drain, nudging the cover aside before shoving the bottle down the hole and jumping in after it.
Going up through the sewer was more strenuous than his slide down the ventilation system, but the swim through fetid water was far less painful than his hard landing on the cement floor. Dar surfaced to get his bearings and catch a breath, spitting the foul taste from his mouth as he pushed the bobbing bottle along. The genie inside had suffered a rough ride, but it had to have been better than the ride Dar had been through on the outside of the bottle.
Finally Dar dragged himself out through the sewer access, hauling the bottle, which felt like it weighed a million pounds, behind him. Wyatt was waiting, looking nervously at his cell phone.
“About time you got here. For Pete’s sake, Dar, what took you so long? And you stink.”
It’s not like he could respond in his rat form—Dar’s telepathic abilities were restricted to beings of spirit—so the demon transformed into his human form.
“Yeah, well sewers usually stink. And I had a bit of trouble with the bottle. It wasn’t as easy to haul it out as a rat as I thought it would be.”
“I got that.” Wyatt turned his phone to face Dar and played a grainy video of his transformation into a human in the top-floor hallway of the hotel. Fuck, this was going to be a problem. Not that he hadn’t realized it after seeing the video cameras in the hallway, but it still smarted that all his efforts to mask the theft were for naught.
“I know, I know. It’s not like I had any choice. I couldn’t get the bottle up into the HVAC system as a rat. We’re hosed, but at least we’ve got the bottle. If Asta does her part, they’ll be no more wishes for Carter Phelps.”
“We’re not hosed.” Wyatt grinned and pushed a button on his cell phone, slipping the device into his pocket. “That feed is now wiped. Phelps will suspect a cyber-terrorist—one who has superior skills, one who blocked his security alerts and interfered with the hotel surveillance. We’re home free.”
Yeah, except for all those housekeepers and laundry maids who saw a rat scooting a bottle across the floor. That sort of thing wouldn’t go unreported, and Phelps might be savvy enough to connect the dots. Either way, with the theft targeted to the bottle, he’d realize it had to be one of the two individuals who’d been in his hotel the last few days—Asta or Dar. No proof, but that didn’t mean Phelps wouldn’t be a pain in the ass about it. Once again, Dar lamented that he couldn’t just kill the human and be done with it.
“Here.” Wyatt handed him a bag. “Put some clothes on before you get arrested.”
Dar pulled a White Sox t-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants out. “Thanks, but I think I’ll go naked.”
“Go ahead. Phelps is going to be mighty interested that you got arrested for indecent exposure in a service alley beside his hotel. Especially since his room was just robbed.”
“Okay, okay,” Dar grumbled and held up the shirt. Baseball sucked. Again he wished he hadn’t blown up his nice suit.
***
“Please tell me you didn’t waltz through the hotel and steal the bottle while as naked as a jaybird.”
Asta had traced them into an alleyway as soon as she’d returned to the city. Why were they still here? The plan was for them to steal the bottle then meet her back at Dar’s hotel room, not stand around right next to the crime scene arguing. And not stand around naked either.
Dar shimmied, spreading his arms wide so Asta got the full frontal view. “Through the lobby, up thirty-six floors in the elevator and down past an entire room full of housekeeping staff.”
“He was in his rat form,” Wyatt told her. “And now he’s reluctant to put on the clothing I had the foresight to grab from the tourist shop next door.”
“No self-respecting demon would be caught dead wearing this shit. There’s a drycleaner just a block away. You could have stolen something nice from there; that way I don’t have to walk around looking like a homeless orphan with questionable taste in sports teams.”
“I’m not stealing clothing from a drycleaner. You’re lucky I spent my own money on this stuff. I should have just let you run around as a rat the rest of the day.”
“Stop bickering.” Asta felt ready to explode. They needed to get out of here before the police, or Phelps, showed up. “Dar, put on the clothes. And hand me the bottle.”
The demon raised his eyebrows. “Magic word? Are angels so devoid of polite behavior that they don’t know how to say please?”
That did it. She’d spent all morning a ball of anxiety over the meeting with the head of the Grigori before being turned down. And now she had to deal with two of the Three Stooges in a back alley. Politeness was pretty far down her priority list right now.
“Give me the bottle and put on some clothes.”
Dar dropped the clothes and tucked the bottle behind him. “No and no. You want it? Well, come and get it.”
The angel launched at him, intending to punch the demon in the gut and grab the bottle. Instead, Dar threw his arms around her waist and dropped to the ground. Now the bottle was digging into her back, and she was off balance, heading face-first toward the asphalt. Dar shifted, and they crashed on their sides, the demon taking the brunt of the impact on his shoulder.
“Give me... I want it... .” Asta gasped, the breath partially knocked out of her.
The demon moved the hand with the bottle between them and flipped himself on top of her. “I’ve been waiting to hear those words from the moment I met you. Darling Asta, I want it too. I really, really want it.”
The angel puffed, recognizing the sexual innuendo. It was even harder to speak with his weight on top of her, and that stupid bottle pressing against—. That isn’t the bottle. No, something else, similar in shape and equally hard was pressed against her lower region.
“Get. Off. Me.”
With great dexterity, the demon held her close and rolled. Now she was on top of him, his arms tight around her and the bottle pressed against the small of her back. O
ther things were still disturbingly pressed against her too. She struggled to sit up, and Dar relented, moving his hands downward to secure her thighs on either side of his hips.
“Angel on top. I like this position.”
This was even worse. Sitting on him, straddling his hips like this, put that part of his anatomy right where it was supposed to be.
“Should I leave and come back in ten minutes? Although, knowing Dar, ten seconds is probably the most he can last.”
Wyatt’s voice behind them was both exasperated and amused. Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Asta lurched to the right and grabbed the bottle. Unfortunately, distracted didn’t mean inattentive. Dar kept a firm grip and yanked her forward, seizing the bottle with both hands. A brief tug of war ensued that caused the lower parts of their bodies to rub together with interesting friction.
He felt good against her—really, really good. Asta was beginning to think less about the bottle and more about the amazing sensations sending little sparks through her body. Her eyes met Dar’s, and she saw her desire mirrored there—and saw he knew how turned on she was.
“Guys? Any moment now Phelps is going to arrive, and the police with him. I suggest you save the porno for later and we all get out of here.”
How embarrassing.
“Fine. Keep the bottle.” Asta jumped off the demon and smoothed down her pants, trying desperately to return her breathing and heart rate back to normal. Glancing out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Dar, still sprawled on the ground propped up by his elbows. The bottle was firmly in one hand, and he was quite noticeably aroused.
“Dude.” Wyatt shook his head in disgust. “Drop the main mast, and get your clothes on, pronto. I can hear sirens.”
Dar struggled to his feet, making it clear that his raging erection was causing some ambulatory problems. This was ridiculous. They were going to get caught all because she couldn’t control her temper, and Dar couldn’t stop teasing her. Two stooges—she was just as bad. Three Stooges was more like it.
