by Lexi George
Addy pressed her hand to the throbbing mark and shook her head. “Sorry, Ghouly, no can do.”
For a moment, the ghoul looked puzzled by her resistance. Then it sprang at her with a snarl, knocking her to the floor. She hit her head on the counter edge on the way down. Dazed, Addy looked up at the nightmare crouching on her chest. The mark on her breast ached, and her head hurt. The smell of burned powdered butter pummeled her senses, making her gag. Man, this guy stank.
The ghoul wrapped its fingers around her throat and squeezed. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. Breathe. She had to breathe. She grabbed the ghoul’s wrists and pulled. To her surprise, the demon’s steely hold broke.
The ghoul seemed surprised, too. “You are very strong.” Addy flinched as the ghoul touched her cheek with the tip of one clammy, ossified thumb. “And yet so very soft. I am going to enjoy feasting upon your tender flesh, Addy Corwin.”
Eww. A dead guy was touching her, getting his own special brand of dead guy germs all over her. It should have been her worst nightmare. Addy hardly noticed. She was too busy dragging in a lungful of air through her bruised windpipe, an act she regretted an instant later when another puff of the thing’s moldering breath hit her in the face.
“Dude, have a mint, why don’t you?” she gasped. “You could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon with that breath.”
The ghoul chuckled. “You have spirit. That is good. The stronger you are, the stronger I become.” He grabbed Addy’s breast, the one with the mark, and squeezed. She screamed as blinding pain shot through her. “No, no, don’t pass out,” the ghoul said. “I want you awake when I begin to feed.”
The ghoul opened its horrible, gaping mouth and lunged for her throat. Addy got a flashing impression of crooked, yellow teeth and pus-filled gums, and then the ghoul was gone. A deafening roar shook the room followed by a loud crash. Somehow a wounded lion had gotten inside her shop. Huh. Which was worse? she wondered. Being eaten alive by an enraged lion or a creepy dead guy with halitosis and serious gum issues? It was an old game, one she and Shep used to play. Which would you rather have happen to you—and you have to choose one!—be eaten alive by a Great White shark or chewed up in the blades of a tractor combine? Before she had time to decide, Ghouly Farris flew past. Dead Dude hit the wall across the room with a satisfying splat and slid to the floor. The ghoul jumped up, a look of terror on its frozen features.
The lion roared again. The roaring coalesced into a word: her name. More craziness. How could a lion know her name?
Addy blinked and sat up. There was no lion. A glowing figure limned in fire stalked the ghoul around the room. The fire creature roared and reached for the ghoul with blazing arms. The ghoul shrieked and scuttled away. The fire creature followed, pulsing with a horrible rage. Addy could feel the thing’s anger and hate. It wanted the ghoul, wanted to destroy it, to burn it to ash leaving nothing. She smelled burning linoleum. With each menacing step, the fire creature left a melted footprint in the floor. At this rate the whole place would go up in flames. Addy got to her feet. She had to get out of here. Her breast ached and her head hurt. There was blood on her silk blouse and blood on the floor, but whose? She touched the throbbing knot on the back of her head. Her fingers came away wet. The blood was hers.
Other than feeling a little woozy, she seemed to be all right. Head wounds always bled a lot, didn’t they? Time to leave, before the fire demon finished off the ghoul and came after her. That fire critter was not something she wanted to deal with. She almost felt sorry for poor old Ghouly.
Almost, but not quite. If not for the timely intervention of the other fiend, the ghoul would have eaten her alive.
Holding on to the edge of the counter, she eased away from the battle. Not that it was much of a battle. Mostly, it consisted of Ghouly Farris shrieking like a girl and running around the room as he tried to avoid the other demon. Ghouly was fast, but the fire demon was faster. And relentless, driven by that allconsuming rage that was a palpable presence in the room. She could feel the fire demon’s rage and . . . and grief? No, that didn’t make any sense.
The fire demon caught the ghoul by the neck. A horrible stench rose up, the smell of burning flesh and embalming chemicals. Mr. Farris’s clothes burst into flames. With a roar, the fire demon tore off the ghoul’s head and tossed it aside. The body hit the floor with a sickening thud. Something dark flew out of the ragged neck of the smoldering corpse and streaked toward Addy. She shrieked and ran behind the counter, flattening herself against the wall. The dark shape flew past her and into the storage room. She heard a loud crash and a lot of thumping and bumping as the terrified demon wraith thrashed about the supply room like a sparrow in a chimney, trying to find its way out. The security alarm on the back door beeped and the metal door slammed shut, leaving her alone with the fire demon.
The fiery head turned in her direction. The fiend saw her. No way could she outrun the thing. It was much too fast. The trick was not to panic. Move slowly and maybe it wouldn’t notice.
Forget it. She was getting the hell out of here.
She lunged for the door.
“Adara? You are alive?”
Something in the hoarse cry stopped her. Addy turned. The blazing halo around the fire demon wavered and went out. A man stood in the wreckage of her flower shop, his back to the sunlit display window. She knew him. She’d seen him like this before, his broad shoulders outlined by the light-filled portal behind him, his handsome features in shadow.
Brand.
The fire demon was Brand.
Chapter Seventeen
Addy wavered, torn between her desire to run screaming out the door and the desperate urge to fling her arms around Brand and comfort him. He looked so shaken, so . . . so desolate. But, a minute ago he’d been ablaze, a demon of fiery retribution, a flaming Nemesis. Why couldn’t she fall for a normal guy, a nice Southern boy who loved God and country, football and hunting, his mama and her, not necessarily in that order? Oh, no, not her. She had to go for Mr. Complicated. An alpha male bounty hunter from another dimension who carried a big sword and burst into flames when he got provoked.
“Adara?” Brand fell to his knees.
“Brand!” Addy dropped to the floor and threw her arms around him. “I’m all right. I’m all right.”
“I saw blood. I thought you were dead.” He wrapped her in a crushing embrace. “I thought I was too late.” He ran his hands over her body as if to reassure himself that she was real. “I don’t remember anything else, only darkness and a terrible rage. I think I went mad.”
“Berserk,” Ansgar said, materializing beside them. He looked a little pale, and his eyes were bloodshot, but he otherwise seemed clearheaded. Chalk one up for the Dalvahni constitution. Dead-drunk and then sober again in a matter of minutes. He surveyed the damage to the shop, his cool, dispassionate expression back in place. “It happens sometimes in the heat of battle or when emotions run too high. Your emotions have been in extremis since we arrived here, brother. I warned you, did I not? You need a thrall.”
Addy scowled at him. Boy, he rubbed her the wrong way. So supercilious . . . so annoying. “What’s this junk about thralls, Blondy?”
“The Dalvahni’s sole purpose is to hunt the djegrali and return them to their proper plane of existence lest they wreak havoc on unsuspecting mortals,” Ansgar said.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the ‘we are the Dalvahni’ speech before. You’re super dudes sent to kick demon butt. Navy SEALS on acid. If the Terminator and Predator had a baby, it would be a Dalvahni warrior. I get it, so spare me. What’s that got to do with thralls?”
“The thralls serve the Dalvahni.” Ansgar spoke with that air of exaggerated patience that made her want to scream. “They rid us of excess emotion so we may better serve our purpose.”
“You mean they suck all the feelings out of you, like some kind of emotional vacuum cleaner? That’s horrible. What kind of way to live is that?”
“It is our way.
Until you came along, Brand was very good at what he did. The best, a legend among legends. The Dalvahni are not mere warriors. We are the undying, the immortalis, created to maintain order and the delicate balance between good and evil. You have diverted Brand from his divine purpose.”
Brand stirred. “That is enough, Ansgar. This was not her doing.”
Ansgar raised his brows. “You seek to protect her, but she needs to know what we are, brother.” He looked at Addy with his usual arrogance and a hint of something else—fear? uncertainty? Blondy?—in his eyes. “The thralls do more than rid us of excess spleen. They serve as a receptacle for our lust. You have noticed our enormous appetite for food. Our appetite for other pleasures—carnal pleasures—is equally voracious, particularly in the wake of battle.”
An image of her and Brand making love, their damp bodies entwined, flashed through her mind. The thought made her heartbeat speed up and her skin tingle.
“So you get a little het up after a fight.” She shrugged, trying to act blasé when she was anything but. Then the import of Ansgar’s words sank in. “Wait a minute. Are you saying these ‘thralls’ are sex slaves? That’s disgusting.”
“Not slaves, Adara,” Brand said. He sounded weary, drained. “Thralls require emotion to survive. They give us the emptiness we seek so we may be better suited to our task. Emotion in combat is a dangerous thing. It is a fair exchange.”
He described a symbiotic relationship between the studly demon-chasing Dalvahni and a cosmic race of hoochie mamas. Two dissimilar organisms locked in an intimate association for survival. Allow some over-sexed female leech to get her suckers into Brand? No. Way. The very thought made Addy see red.
“Over my dead body,” she said.
Ansgar’s gaze sharpened. “What?”
She stood and pulled Brand to his feet. “Come on, big guy. I’m taking you home.” She felt a moment’s anxiety when Brand swayed. “Do you think you can make it?”
“Yes.”
“He needs to eat,” Ansgar said. “The berserker rage has depleted his strength.”
“Of course he needs to eat. It’s been thirty minutes since he ate a hog and a whole flock of chickens. Don’t worry. I’ll fix him something at my place. I’m no Miss Vi, but I make a heck of a grilled cheese.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Ansgar asked. “You could get hurt.”
“Making a grilled cheese sandwich? If it makes you feel any better, I promise not to use a sharp knife.”
“You are a most annoying female, Adara. You know that is not what I meant.”
Yeah, she knew what he meant. He wasn’t talking about physical injury. If she gave herself to Brand, she’d be stepping off a cliff and into the great unknown. Hadn’t she been wrestling with that very dilemma all day, telling herself to run the other way? She was going to get her heart broken before this was over. She knew it, and Ansgar knew it. With a sudden flash of insight, she realized the source of the odd disquiet she sensed in him. She’d seen the way he looked at Evie, like he wanted to whisk her away to some desert island and keep her all to himself. Sweet little Evie rocked his world. Calm, cool, collected, ain’t-no-flies-on-me Ansgar was afraid of getting his heart broken, too.
“What choice do we have, Blondy? Are you going to cut and run because things might get a little rough?”
For a moment, he blinked at her, and then he gave her a slow, dazzling smile. “That is not the Dalvahni way.”
“It’s not the Corwin way, either.” She gave him a warning look. “By the way, Slick, that’s my best friend you’re messing with. Hurt her, and you’ll have me to deal with.”
“I would cut off my own arm before I hurt Evangeline.”
“It’s not your arm you should be worrying about.”
Taking Brand by the arm, Addy started toward the back door. He pulled away from her and staggered back.
“The corpse, your shop,” he said, panting with the effort. “We cannot leave things as they are. There will be questions.”
Questions? That was the understatement of the year. Good God, she’d been so concerned about Brand that she’d forgotten all about the dead guy in her shop. The flambéed decapitated dead guy. The dead guy with a wacky wife, a floozy girlfriend, and a whole passel of mullet-wearing relatives waiting to stick him in the ground, mumble a few words over him, and get pounded. And then there was her mother’s new boyfriend, the chief of police. She tried to picture herself explaining this to Carl E. Davis, and gave up.
“Shep can fix Mr. Farris. He’s a genius at that sort of thing,” she said, thinking quickly. “If we can keep the widow and the girlfriend from getting too cozy with the stiff once he’s back in the casket . . .” She glanced at the hunk of meat that had been Mr. Farris, and shuddered. “No one will know.”
“Who is this Shep?” Ansgar said.
“My brother. He runs the local funeral home.” At Ansgar’s look of confusion, she added, “Prepares the dead for burial.”
Ansgar’s expression became distant. “Ah, yes, I see him. He is in some sort of building, pacing the floor. He seems . . . agitated.”
“He’s normally a pretty cool guy. Not in permanent deep freeze like you, but it usually takes a lot to rattle him. But he’s had a bad day. First time he ever lost a body. It’s kind of a big deal in the mortuary business to misplace a client.”
“Then no doubt he will be delighted when I return the Farris man to his care. I will take the body to him and explain what happened. When I have arranged matters there, I will come back here and return your shop to its former state.”
“That’s nice, Blondy, but I don’t think—”
He was gone, and so was Dwight.
“Oh, dear, poor Shep,” Addy said. “He is so earthbound. He’s going to have a hard time with this.”
She stumbled as Brand lurched against her. “I regret the distress the djegrali have caused you and your family.”
His speech was slurred. Poor guy; he was going to crash and burn any minute. Addy slid her arm around his waist and started for the door. “Forget it. Let’s get you to my house and get some food down you. My car is right out back.”
“No time. Must rest.” He grabbed her, and they reeled into a stand of shelves. A carton split open, showering them with floral foam. His arms tightened around her. “Hold on.”
Panic gripped her. He was going to try and teleport them, and in his condition. What if it didn’t work? What if they ended up a pile of unrecognizable goo or got splinched?
“Brand, wait, I don’t think that’s such a good—”
Her ears popped, and she felt a strange stretching sensation. They landed—with all their parts intact and in the proper order, thank God—in the middle of her living room. Brand released her and toppled like a downed pine tree face first onto the couch.
“Brand?”
He did not move.
She shook her head. “Down for the count. Probably won’t last long. Guess I’d better make that sandwich before he wakes up.”
“Addy, Addy, Addy!”
Startled, Addy spun around. Dooley had her nose pressed to the French doors that opened onto the back lawn. She wagged her tail when Addy looked at her.
“Dooley in. Dooley in NOW!”
“Shh.” Addy hurried to open the door. “Do you want the neighbors to hear? How am I supposed to explain Dooley the Remarkable Talking Dog?”
A talking dog was strange, but no stranger than anything else that had happened since last night. She figured she had two choices. Accept the reality of what was happening or end up in a rubber room.
Dooley rushed inside, tail wagging. “Addy home! Dooley love A—”
The Lab spied Brand’s supine form on the couch and sprang across the room to investigate. Her tail thumped against the coffee table.
“Brand man! Dooley like Brand man.” She gave Brand a curious sniff. “Asleep? Brand man asleep?” She nudged the back of his neck with her nose. “Wake up. Dooley play, Brand man.”
Brand moaned and turned over on his back. Tongue out, Dooley went for his face.
“No, Dooley, leave him alone.” Addy grabbed the dog by the collar and dragged her away from the couch. “Brand man doesn’t feel well.”
She kicked off her ruined sandals and threw them in the trash. Looking down at her blood-splattered blouse, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. She remembered the bump on the head and gingerly felt her scalp. The bump was gone, but her hair was matted with blood. Gross. She tiptoed back into the living room to check on Brand. Out like a light. Good. Maybe she had time for a quick shower and a change of clothes.
She shook her finger at the dog. “You leave him alone, young lady. I mean it. Be a good dog and I will give you cheese when I get out of the shower.”
“Cheese? Dooley get dog cheese?”
“Only if you’re good.”
“Dooley be good. Watch Brand man. No lick.”
Addy showered in record time and threw on a pair of loose shorts and a T-shirt. After towel-drying her hair, she padded barefoot back into the kitchen. Dooley’s eyes lit up when she saw her.
“Cheese? Dooley get dog cheese?”
“Oh, good grief. Yes, Dooley can have dog cheese.”
Dooley danced around Addy’s feet. “Dooley like cheese! Cheese. Cheese. Cheese!”
“All right, all right, calm down.”
Muddy’s house had an airy, open floor plan. All that separated the kitchen from the living room were a couple of decorative columns and a big island that served as a combination work space and table, with chairs along one side. Addy kept one eye on Brand as she retrieved the block of cheddar cheese from the refrigerator door. She sliced off a hunk and broke it into pieces in the dog’s bowl. “There, desist already.”
Dooley slurped up the cheese and rolled her brown eyes at Addy. “More?”
“No, ma’am. You’ll ruin your supper.” She dumped two cups of dry dog food in Dooley’s bowl. “Here, eat.”
Dooley gave the bowl a disinterested sniff and sauntered out of the kitchen to flump on the floor next to the couch.
