“Christian.” It wasn’t a question by Nigel. It was a statement.
“I know.” Once they went through the doorway and sealed it, Christian would be left behind. He’d face the witch’s wrath on his own, and she’d be more than a little cranky after losing her three favorite toys. Christian was Blaine’s number one. They’d arrived the same night and bonded instantly against the brutality of the world they’d been thrust into. “Come on, Christian,” he whispered. “Get over here.”
“He ordered us to go without him if he didn’t show.” Jarvis moved toward the stone arch, Nigel on his heels.
“We wait.” Blaine faced the hallway, not bothering to see if his team obeyed him. If they bailed, they bailed. He was prepared to go it alone. He always was. Yeah, he trusted them, but when the stakes were high enough, promises meant nothing. The only one he’d really trust was Christian, and the softie was off chasing skirts. Because Christian would never leave anyone behind. And damn if Blaine would let him die for that.
The sound of toenails shifted into the beat of hundreds of wings. Shadows darkened the hallway, and Nigel swore under his breath. “It sounds like quite the celebration. You think we’re invited?”
“I’ve always wanted to party with schnoodles.” Blaine set himself on fire again, and this time he spread it to his whole body. He walked several yards into the hall.
Nigel was right behind him. “I’ve got your back.”
“I’m in,” Jarvis said.
Blaine couldn’t stop from shooting them a surprised look when they came up beside him. “No shit?”
Nigel rolled his eyes. “Clean it up, Trio. At some point you’ve got to ditch the ‘everyone abandons me’ shtick and accept that we’re not your mama.”
Blaine shot a fireball at Jarvis’s face. “I figured you’d be too scared to stand up to the bad guys.”
“Hah.” Jarvis snorted and flicked the sparkler away with his sword. “I just chugged a quadruple espresso. I gotta fight something. Might as well be the vicious hellion who’s tortured us for the last couple of centuries.”
Blaine grinned. “You need to ditch the addiction, buddy. Bad for your complexion.”
Jarvis rubbed his hand over his leathery jaw. “Like a baby’s bottom. The chicks dig it.”
“Well, then, let’s get out of here and find some to fondle you.” Blaine extended his flames up to the ceiling and out to the walls and down to the floor, creating an impenetrable wall of white-hot fire. “Sure hope you boys have been practicing your battle skills.”
Thousands of monsters exploded out of the darkness before anyone could reply. Blaine reinforced his shield as the first winged fangbanger crashed into it. It shrieked and disintegrated on impact. Another came right after it. Then two more.
“Well, damn.” Nigel shook the schnoodemgon ashes out of his hair as he let Blaine take the hits. “You’re like one of those mosquito zappers. You should rent yourself out for garden weddings.”
“I’ll think about it. There’s something really appealing about the idea of becoming a lawn ornament.” Blaine’s muscles began to tremble, and he knew the schnoodemgons were draining the air of oxygen. Since he was fifty percent fire, he’d be more sensitive to oxygen deprivation than the normal human-turned-mutant. He’d never felt weak before. Good to find out he didn’t particularly like it. “So, yeah, I’m thinking Angelica bred these creatures specially to attack us.”
“She figured we were going to make a break.” Using Blaine as a shield, Nigel tied a bandana around his hair to get it out of his way, as he always did when he was about to get serious. “You have been a little moody and distracted lately. Not your usual chipper self. Dead giveaway, if you ask me.”
Blaine grinned when he saw Nigel had painted an artistic rendition of the witch’s death on the bandana. “Nice accessory.”
Nigel flipped the ends out of his face. “It inspires me. Not sure why.”
“Might be the rosy tint to her blood? It’s kind of a cheerful color.”
Jarvis peered at it. “Maybe it’s the way the blood spatters look like smiley faces. Sets a friendly tone.”
Nigel brushed his smoking palm over the headband, leaving behind glowing embers. “I think it’s the fabric. I’ve always been partial to the feel of silk against my skin.”
More poor bastards hit his shield in a three-pronged attack, and Blaine gritted his teeth as his defenses faltered for a fraction of a second. “You boys better suit up. Not sure how much longer I can—”
And then he sensed Christian’s presence. A faint metallic taste in his mouth told him Christian was in trouble. “Christian!” He shielded his eyes against the incoming assault, searching the crowds for the one man he couldn’t leave behind.
And then he saw Christian. He was down on the ground, hunched over like he’d just been disemboweled.
“Damn.” Jarvis moved up beside him. “That’s not good.”
“Christian!” Blaine yelled. “Come on!”
“You’re still here? Thought you guys would have been on the beach by now.” Christian’s voice was strained as he lurched to his feet. “You guys sure take your time getting the hell out of Dodge,” he shouted over the roar of the wings and bug zapping.
Relief made Blaine’s fire surge. “About damn time!” he yelled back. “Get your ass over here!”
To protect himself from the assault, Christian had already shifted his human skin into millions of metal scales, so his body was encased in chain-link armor, like the dive suits that shark wrestlers liked to wear. The only nonmetallic parts of him were the glowing blue orbs of his eyes. Christian’s body armor was poison to anything that brushed against it. Nylon was the only protection against him, which made Blaine damned curious what other unholy attributes nylon might have. He was already planning an assortment of experiments when he got out.
The schnoodemgons were attacking Christian, and each time they touched his armor, they’d shriek and turn into a noxious red gas. The air was thick and crimson above Christian’s head. He squatted and scooped a mound off the ground, and Blaine realized it was a large bundle wrapped in a nylon blanket to protect it against his scales.
Nice. “He got his girlfriend.” Damn, he respected that.
A team of schnoodemgons body-slammed Christian into the ground, taking advantage of the one weakness of Christian’s armor: its inability to protect him against sheer, crushing force. The buggers disintegrated upon impact, but on their heels was another crew, descending with enough speed to finish the job.
“No fair picking on pretty boy.” Nigel flicked his wrist, and a dozen burning blades cut through the air, taking out the crowd milliseconds before they turned Christian into roadkill. “Step it up,” he shouted. “We don’t have time to save your ass.”
Christian flipped him off and lowered his shoulder to shove his way through the masses of beating wings. The wind was fierce, and Blaine had to brace himself to keep from being blown over. Like lemmings, they kept at him, hundreds of them crashing and burning as they hit his field. Hello? What kind of suicidal strategy was that? Almost made him feel bad for the scaly meatheads.
Well, almost. The fact they were on the fast track to killing his team sort of balanced out the love. They were relentless and the supply endless, and he knew they’d come until they broke him. Nigel maintained his assault against the ones trying to crush Christian, and Jarvis was using his sword to absorb Blaine’s energy so he didn’t incinerate either Jarvis or Nigel, but this happy moment wasn’t going to last forever. “How about a little hustle, lover boy?”
Christian was less than thirty yards away and moving fast when the first of the red gas from the dead schnoodemgons hit Blaine. His lungs burned, then searing pain assaulted his muscles.
“What the hell?” Nigel went down behind him, his muscles contorting visibly beneath his skin. “Yeah, I was just thinking this was getting boring, but—” His word cut off as another convulsion twisted his body.
Jarvis was stil
l standing. “Talk to me, Trio.” They all had different vulnerabilities and talents, and they discovered new ones every day. None of them knew exactly what they were capable of anymore, or what their weaknesses were. Jarvis was apparently getting away unscathed with this one. Point for him.
“Poison gas attacking muscle tissue.” Blaine redirected his fire and sent it racing through his cells. He ground his jaw as the heat blistered his body, but the flames burned up the toxin… only to have it replaced immediately with his next breath. He sent another wave of cleansing through his body. “Get Nigel out of here.”
“On it.” Jarvis swung the twitching warrior over his shoulder and sprinted toward the door.
Christian was less than twenty feet away, and he was staggering now that Nigel wasn’t there to protect against the body slams. Bright purple blood seeped out from his scales. “I think I’m going to be a cat person after this.”
“Cats aren’t manly.” Blaine’s body was shaking now with the effort of holding up the shield while using half his fire for soap duty to keep the toxins out.
“Neither is flower arranging, but I find it soothing.” Christian reached Blaine. “What’s the magic word?”
Blaine grinned. “Freedom.” They were inches from it. Once they made it through that door, they were home free.
Christian’s eyes flashed with hope. “Freedom,” he repeated, his voice almost reverent.
“Let’s do it.” Blaine raised his arm and allowed a small window to form in the flames.
Christian dove through it, and then Blaine filled it in.
Taking advantage of Blaine’s distraction and his weakening shield, another schnoodemgon hit hard, and his claws raked across Blaine’s chest before it turned to toast. The gashes burned with cold, and Blaine looked down. The slashes had turned ice blue, and water was dripping from the wound. How about that, huh? It hadn’t been acid oozing from their claws. It had been water.
Fire didn’t play well with Poland Spring’s finest, and neither did Blaine. An enema of ice water in his veins was freaking brilliant. Damn the bitch for being such a visionary killer.
His fire shield flickered, and then it was out.
Chapter 3
“Get down!” Elijah reached the table, grabbed Trinity by the back of the neck, and flung her under the table so hard she crashed into the center table leg and split it with a loud crack. She rolled onto her side, biting her lip against the pain shooting through her shoulder. Oy. Shouldn’t at least some of her dad’s strength be dissipating now that he was almost three hundred years old?
Reina’s head popped down beneath the table. Her eyes danced with delight. “I smell death! Someone’s going to die!”
“Really?” Oh, man. Trinity scrambled to her knees. Possible shoulder dislocation was so trumped by dead people.
“We need to get her out of here,” Elijah said. “Reina! Get up here!”
“Oh…” Reina’s smile faded. “I really hope it’s not you that’s going to kill someone.” She disappeared from view, leaving only knobby knees and a short hemline behind.
“Thanks for that support.” Trinity threw the linen tablecloth out of her way and crawled out.
Her six foot six father was standing on her chair, spinning in circles as he scanned the restaurant.
Trinity rubbed her shoulder and tested her range of motion. Definite Ow! factor, but full mobility was a good thing. “What are you looking for?”
“Martin Lockfeed.”
Trinity froze mid-rotation. “What?”
Reina grabbed Trinity’s uninjured arm and pulled her to her feet. “Who’s Martin Lockfeed?”
“My first kiss.” Her first love. Only the fact that he’d moved away right after the smooch, before she’d realized she’d loved him, had kept him alive. At age fifteen, it took a bit to discern the difference between thinking a boy had cooties and being in love. But once he’d left… she’d sure figured out her feelings for him. She’d spent more than a few hours on the Internet trying to find him, and she’d never forgotten him.
Elijah wiped a clump of gray clay on his jeans. “Martin’s here.”
“What?” Trinity’s mouth went dry. “How do you know?”
Her dad shot her an impatient glance. “I drank his blood so I could track him. What do you think?”
Trinity blinked. “But drinking human blood is illegal.”
“So is murder.” Her dad went back to surveying the room. “Your mom and I spent a lot of money to get his family relocated so quickly, but I didn’t trust the boy, so I tapped a vein before he left. Just in case.”
“Excuse me, sir.” A tuxedo-clad maitre d’ lightly brushed Elijah’s arm. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”
“There!” Her dad pointed across the room, and Trinity whirled around.
She saw Martin right away. Nearly bald, he was wearing a black suit and a red bow tie. No wedding ring, but he was dining with an attractive woman in a dress that matched his crimson pocket handkerchief.
Pressure began to build in Trinity’s heart instantly. She closed her eyes and imagined a purifying glow filling her chest cavity.
“What are you doing?” Reina’s voice was right next to Trinity’s ear.
“Meditating.” But she couldn’t concentrate. All she could think about was Martin, less than a room away. Of his kiss. Of the way he’d come to her cheerleading tryouts and taken her out for ice cream after she’d crashed into the captain and been banned from ever setting foot on the field again. He’d been so sweet that day.
Okay. That was not the smartest memory to be having right now.
She tried to clear her mind. Empty it of anything but a white light. This was her opportunity to prove she could withstand the curse. To show herself she wasn’t the monster she was so afraid she was.
“Trinity!” Her dad yanked her so hard she had to grab a chair to keep from falling over. “Let’s go. We’ll head out the back entrance.”
“Yes, sir, that would be a good idea.” The maitre d’ was hovering, and Trinity felt the heat from his presence.
Uh, oh. She shouldn’t be sensing him when he was still several feet away. Warily, Trinity opened her eyes. The room seemed so bright. The lights were glaring. Hypersensitivity to heat and light meant one thing: the curse was coming to the party.
Her body was tingling like there were thousands of beetles racing across her skin. She clenched her jaw. “I can do it—”
“Trin!” Reina was in front of her now, her face pinched with concern. “You have seven days! Don’t blow it now!”
“Losing the curse means nothing if I can’t prove I’m stronger than it.” Trinity twisted out of her father’s grasp and faced Martin. She allowed the fullness of his being to flow over her. Embraced her feelings of affection for him. Let his worth settle deep in her heart. “He’s a good man. He deserves to live. He’s a good man—”
A rainbow prism appeared over his heart. It was sparkling as if the sun was shining on it.
“Oh, man.” That was a really bad sign.
She stepped back, unable to rip her gaze away from the glittery diamond that was her guide. Her unerring map on how to kill him.
As she watched, a holographic image formed in front of Martin. The semi-transparent glittering prism took human form but it was amorphous, with neither a gender nor an identity. The 3-D figure slammed its palm onto Martin’s heart. A holographic Martin clutched his chest and fell to the ground. Dead.
Again and again it killed him, repeating the move like an endless loop of murder.
It was showing her exactly how to kill him. Martin had a weak heart. If she hit his chest with enough force, it would stop his heart. Instant death.
Her muscles began to contract, little convulsions as they flexed, preparing themselves for the assault. Thirty more seconds and it would be over for her. The black widow would be in residence.
She’d failed to contain it.
Tears filled her eyes and she lunged for her purse. S
he tore it open and yanked out her new present that she’d bought for herself yesterday. Her heart sank when she saw the black gun sitting beside her wallet. How had she fallen this low? But she had. There was no way to deny it.
The curse was building fast and strong, faster than she’d ever felt before. Another few seconds and she’d be gone. She gritted her teeth and pulled her last resort out of her handbag.
“A stun gun? Are you kidding?” Reina gaped at the small black weapon.
Trinity’s body was shaking now, and her ears were humming. She hit the power button and—
“No!” Reina ripped it out of her hand. “Do you have any idea what that will do to your childbearing capacity?”
“I can’t stop myself from killing him.” Trinity grabbed it back and aimed it at her leg. Then she hesitated, her finger frozen over the trigger. It felt so wrong to make this choice. To admit this kind of failure. To give up. But she could feel her blood burning in her veins, and she knew she was lost. She had no choice, not if she wanted Martin to live. She forced her fingers to close over the trigger—
“No!” Reina grabbed it and threw it across the room. “You’re not some crazed beast that has to be brought down by electric shock!”
“That was such a bad idea.” Trinity stared with horror as the gun skidded across the floor and slipped under a table at the far end of the room. On the other side of Martin. She’d have to walk right past him to get it. Her gaze flicked to Martin, and her heart began to thud. Like it was getting bigger and bigger. Oozing out between her ribs. “Martin,” she whispered. She took a step toward him. Then another. And ano—
“Trinity!” Elijah grabbed her shoulders. “Your eyes are sparkling. You’re seeing how to kill him, aren’t you?” He moved in front of her, cutting off her view of Martin and breaking the curse’s hold on her enough for her to realize what she was doing.
Kiss at Your Own Risk Page 3
