What bullshit! She didn’t trouble herself to come up with the scathing remarks he had coming. Instead, she made it to the barn without interference (magical or otherwise), and pulled on the trap-door on the south side of the building. She leaned down, spun the combination on the safe, popped it open, reached inside, and pulled out two Berettas.
“Rhea, Rhea, with your guns,
Stop this madness before it…shit!”
He’s not a god, she thought with not a little relief. He can’t rhyme for shit. And thank goodness. Because otherwise, we’d all be cooked.
She cocked the guns (they were always loaded; no need to even check) and held them up, just in time to see him sprint in the other direction.
Yeah, you’d better run, de Mere.
She started to take the shot
(I’ve never shot anybody in the back.) and hesitated. Was it true? Was it cowardly and sneaking and bad-guy-like to take a witch from behind? All her teachings cried out in the negative. But de Mere had the weight of a bunch of Westerns on his side.
Because the bad guys always snuck up and shot you in the back.
These outrageous new thoughts crowded her brain and she hesitated. Not for long, but it gave de Mere time to dive through the driver’s side window. She put plenty of bullets through said window, but either he had perfected the art of driving while kneeling on the mat, or he had made a rhyme that made bullets bounce off, because the next thing she knew, the only thing left of Chris de Mere was a spume of dust in her driveway.
She lowered her now-empty guns and stared at the dust. She’d had the shot, and she bungled it. The Goodmans might be out of luck if they were counting on her to save them.
Chapter 6
AWEEK later, he returned. This time he had scribbled down several words on pink Post-Its, words that rhymed with arrow and Beretta and gun and Rhea. He had been careful to return the bullet-ridden rental and drive up in a different car (the Avis people had not been pleased, to say the least), hoping they wouldn’t nuke him the moment he pulled into their driveway.
He convinced himself he was here because it was worth another try, that people could overcome centuries of conditioning, these were modern times, and witch-hunting was just silly.
But the reality was, he couldn’t get the trigger-happy jerk out of his head. That’s why he’d come back. Her “oh, greats” and “shut ups” were actually kind of funny. And that hot little figure she had wasn’t bad, either. And he loved the pointy little chin. At six-four, he was taller, but he didn’t tower over Rhea the way he did with most women.
Worst of all: He couldn’t imagine killing her. He’d liked her right away (insanity!), even if she had shot him in the ass. Or maybe because she shot him in the ass. She had sure charged up the steps in defense of her mother without hesitation, and he liked that, too.
His parents were long dead. He tried not to blame the Good-mans…the one who had done the deed was, after all, also dead. For every Mere death, a Goodman had died, too. He tried to keep it in mind at all times. It helped when he was tempted to abandon the human race, let the demons swarm, and use his magic to win the lottery. Repeatedly.
Anyway, he liked—what was the word? He liked her moxie. And frankly, verbally sparring with a woman who could kill him (who was fated to kill him) was an unbelievable rush.
He carefully drove up to the house, eyes peeled for Goodmans. But the house and barn looked quiet, and he could see no cars in the drive.
He put the car in park, deliberately left the parking brake alone (it had almost been the death of him last time; he’d wasted valuable seconds releasing it before making his escape), and climbed out.
“Uh…hello? Anybody home? Goodmans? Rhea?”
He moved closer to the front porch, then heard a sound to his left and turned in the direction of the barn. “Mr. and Mrs. Goodman? Rhea? Anybody up for a rematch?”
The attack came without warning; he hadn’t heard a thing. But a sturdy weight smacked him in the middle of the back, and he went facedown onto the gravel driveway.
“Kill the witch!” a familiar voice shouted. “Pschow, pschow!”
“Kid,” he said into the driveway, “get off me. Seriously.”
“Die, evil fiend, die!”
“Kid.”
“Pschow!”
“Kid. I’m serious.” He tried to move, to gently shift her off his back, but she clung like a lamprey. “I know it’s not cool to smack children, especially not your own, but if you don’t get off me—”
“Kill the witch!”
“What are they feeding you guys? You’re, what? Seven? And you’re already obsessed with witch-hunting? Jesus wept.”
“I’m eight, not seven, stupidhead.”
“Thank God. I can’t for the life of me think of what rhymes with seven.
“Great, great,
Hate, hate,
Off my back
Child of eight.”
It was one of his worst rhymes ever (he felt like jumping rope to it), but it had the desired effect; he felt the weight disappear from his back and climbed to his feet. He dusted off his clothes and looked around for the kid.
She was scowling at him from on the other side of the rental car. “No fair. You cheater.”
“You’re one to talk—er, what’s your name?”
“Violet Goodman.”
“Of course. Anyway, who ambushed who? You Goodmans. Bloodthirsty savages.”
“You wait ’til Rhea finds out what you—”
“DID YOU JUST USE MAGIC ON MY BABY SISTER?”
“Uh-oh,” Violet said, looking, to her credit, worried for him. Then she added in a much lower voice, “I wasn’t really going to tell. You’re a good witch, I know.”
“Thanks for that.” He turned in time to see Rhea come storming down the front steps, headed for him like a flame toward kindling. “Listen, Rhea, Violet jumped me. All I did was pull into your driveway.”
“You used magic on my sister.”
“I didn’t hurt her. And before you go running into the arsenal-slash-barn, I warn you that I’m armed with tons of gun-and-arrow rhymes.” He patted his pockets, fairly bulging with Post-Its, for emphasis.
She wasn’t heading for the barn. She was steaming straight for him, pale face flushed to the eyebrows with rage. He wasn’t sure if he was aroused or scared. Or both.
“So don’t do anything crazy,” he added, standing his ground. “I come in peace, like a benevolent alien. I mean you no harm—ow!”
She’d dropped into a crouch at the last second and swept his legs out from under him with a lunge. Then she was on him, her small hands grasping his neck, squeezing.
“I don’t know—if you know—but I can’t breathe—when you do that,” he gurgled.
“If you can talk,” she said grimly, tightening her grip, “you can breathe. How dare you? How dare you come back to my home, threaten my baby sister?” She started to slam his head up and down. Gravel bounced and flew around his ears.
“He didn’t threaten me,” Violet quickly spoke up. “We were playing.”
“Violet. Go in the house.”
“But Mom and Dad said you had to play with me when you were watching me, and all you’ve done is work out in the—”
“Violet. House.”
“I don’t think you need to choke him,” the girl retorted, then reluctantly left.
“I agree,” he gasped. The only thing that was saving him was his upper body strength; he had two hands clamped around her wrists, barely holding her off. She might work out like a fiend, but her hands were small, and she couldn’t get them all the way around his neck. And it wouldn’t be long before she figured that out and starting beating the living shit out of him in earnest. “You should listen to Violet, a kindhearted but slightly disturbed third-grader.”
“Don’t talk about my sister,” she said through gritted teeth, her face going even redder from her strangulation efforts.
Throttle? Bottle? Strangle? What rh
ymed with strangle? Maybe he could turn her hands into flippers. Flipper, slipper?
Oh, to hell with it. He tightened his grip on her wrists and abruptly rolled over. Thank you, Mother Nature, for making me a guy.
Now he was on top, still encircling her wrists with his fingers, and she glared up at him with such malevolence that he almost let go of her. Which would have been a disaster.
“Okay,” he said, and coughed, politely turning his face away. He hated to think how his throat would feel if she’d had bigger hands. “Okay. Listen. I just came here to—”
“Get the hell off me!”
“—talk and try to convince you that this is a dance we don’t have to do—”
“I am going to kill you a lot.”
“—because after all, this is the twenty-first century, and don’t you think witch-hunting should have been left behind with slavery?”
“Not as long as any de Mere descendants are running around on the planet now let go!”
“Oh, shut up,” he said, and bent down and kissed her.
She went rigid with astonishment, which was a relief, because he didn’t care to be bitten at the moment. He’d just meant to give her a peck, but the taste of her soft, sweet mouth worked on him like a hormone shot, and he slid his tongue between her lips, tasting her, relishing her the way he relished a ripe piece of fruit in the summertime.
She didn’t make a sound. Just laid there like a board. An amazed, totally shocked board. So he let go of her wrists and cupped her face and deepened the kiss, and he thought he felt her respond, and then—
—and then her face shot out of his line of sight, and he realized she’d slapped him so hard he’d flown off her.
“Ow,” he groaned, once again face down in the dust.
“What did you think you were doing?” He rolled over in time to see her spring to her feet. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Well, at the moment, I’ve got dust all over me and a piece of gravel up my nose and maybe a nosebleed, too.”
She stood over him, jabbing her finger in the air for emphasis. He tried not to flinch. “We are supposed to be killing each other, not kissing. So cool your gonads and get your head in the game.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said patiently, staring up at her. “I’m not in the game. I’m not going to play. I think our families have been killing each other long enough, don’t you?”
“As long as a de Mere is around, a Goodman has to kill him.”
“Who says?”
Her mouth popped open, and she appeared to be struggling for words, then burst out with, “Everybody! My parents and tradition and—everybody. All the way back to the first Goodman and the first de Mere.”
“Yawn,” he said.
“It’s my duty to kill you and be killed doing it. Just like it’s your family duty to try to kill me and be killed doing it.”
“Don’t you think that’s just about the dumbest fucking thing in the world?”
“Well. Yes,” she admitted. “But who are we to break from tradition?”
“And that’s the second dumbest thing. Oooof!” She had dropped to her knees—right on his chest. “Gkkk! Air!”
“You listen to me, de Mere. You—”
“Chris,” he groaned. “Christopher Mere, do I have to carve it into my forehead?”
“Shut up. You go away and do whatever you have to do until your thirtieth birthday, and I’ll do what I have to do, and then the next generation can worry about it.”
“Forget it,” he gurgled.
“And no more of this showing up at my house being all chatty and shit. Stay away from my family and stay away from me. For the next couple of years at least.”
“Sorry. Can’t do it.”
“You’d better do it. And keep your Mere lips to yourself.”
“What’s wrong with my lips?” He put his hands around her small waist and tossed her off him. She hit the dirt (literally), planted her arms, and spun right back over him.
He shoved. She shoved. Soon they were rolling around in the driveway like a couple of kids having a playground spat.
“Go away!”
“No.”
“Buzz off!”
“No.”
“I hate you!”
“Well, I hate you, too, sunshine. But you taste pretty good, I must—ow!”
“And don’t even think about using your rhymes on me. You’re a lousy poet and an evil magic-doer.”
“Yeah? Well, you come from a long line of cold-blooded murderers.”
“I do not!”
“Do too.”
“Not!”
“You totally, completely do.”
“Shut up!”
“Make me, sunshine.”
“I’ll make you, all right.” She had temporarily gained the upper hand and was again on top. “I’ll make you wish you were never born.”
“Don’t you think we’re a little too old for this kind of thing?” He brought his legs up, hooked them around her neck, and rode her all the way down. “Now will you stop trying to beat the hell out of me—ow—and listen? Ouch!” He wondered dizzily if that last punch had given him a concussion.
Beneath him, she wriggled and squirmed in the dirt like an outraged snake. That was actually a big, big problem, because the fight (and the kiss) had seriously turned him on. He prayed she couldn’t feel his erection. She’d cut if off. He pressed down harder, careful not to hurt her, inwardly groaning as he tried to hide the biggest boner of his life.
A boner for the witch-hunter! Jesus wept.
“Will you stop wiggling and listen?”
Gasping from her efforts, Rhea wheezed, “There’s nothing to listen to.”
“Oh, that’s the spirit.”
“We don’t talk, we fight. And kill. You’d better reread your archives.”
“Rhea, I can see how it is with you, but you don’t know how it is with me. I won’t kill you.”
She blinked up at him. Her eyes were watering from all the dust in the air. “You’d better,” she said. “Because I’m going to do my damnedest to kill you.”
“I won’t fight back, Rhea. It’ll be murder. Cold-blooded murder.”
“It isn’t murder.”
“It really, really is.”
“De Mere, you’d better fight!”
“No.”
Before she could screech at him some more, he heard a car pull into the drive, then skid to a halt with the left front tire no more than six inches from the top of Rhea’s face.
Car doors were flung open, and quite a few Goodmans piled out and swarmed (how many were there, anyway?) around him. He realized he was pinning their eldest into the dirt and the two of them were filthy and sweaty. And their clothes were ripped.
He craned his neck to look up at Rhea’s father, who looked about ready to start breathing fire. “Hi, Goodmans. Uh. This isn’t what it looks like.”
Then somebody came up behind him and turned off all the lights inside his skull.
Chapter 7
RHEA’S lips were still burning from the kiss.
She thought of a line from King of the Hill: “That boy’s not right.” It perfectly explained Chris Mere, the big grabby rhyming kissing dolt.
And the bastard was strong. Well, he was big, so she should have expected it, but she’d had no idea how much physical power was lurking within those ropy muscles. She’d tried her very best to beat the hell out of him, and he’d come away from it with only scratches.
But he’d be sore tomorrow, by God.
Her parents had been utterly at a loss. It was inconceivable that a Mere showed up years early, that a Mere was talking peace. Neither of them knew what to do, and both of them thought it might be a trick or a trap of some kind. The de Meres had a centuries-old rep for treachery.
Interestingly, Violet spoke up for him. And Rhea had been forced to admit to Power and Flower that not only had he not hurt the little girl, he’d taken several
blows to avoid hurting her. That made her folks reel all over again.
After some discussion, they decided it would be disrespectful (not to mention leaving them open to embarrassing questions if someone stopped by) to leave an unconscious Mere in their driveway, so they dragged him inside, all the way to the guest room.
Her mother had hesitantly brought a warm, wet washcloth, tiptoed to the bed, then handed the washcloth to Rhea and hurriedly left, clearly not interested in hanging around the unconscious witch.
Rhea considered gagging him with the washcloth, then gave it up and gently wiped the gravel and small trickles of dried blood off the left side of his face. Once she had that clean enough, she moved to the right side—
—and quick as thought, he was awake and grabbing her wrist, yanking it back from his face. That startled her even more than the kiss, the way he went from flat-out cold unconsciousness to being wide awake, if a little disoriented.
“Oh. It’s you. Hey, sunshi—oh, God, my head. My aching, breaking head. How long have I been out?”
“An hour,” she said, handing him the washcloth. He folded it into a small square and rested it on his forehead. “Give or take a few minutes.”
“Who hit me from behind?” he asked groggily. “Fucking Goodmans; do you ever try a frontal assault?”
“Me,” she replied, ignoring the very uncomfortable feeling his comment planted. “I brought my leg up and kicked you in the back of the skull.”
“So that’s why the room is spinning. I thought we were on a merry-go-round with a bed.”
“Not hardly.”
“I am totally astonished—yet grateful—to find myself not dead. I don’t know how you were all able to restrain yourselves.”
“Even we cold-blooded murderers wouldn’t slit the vocal cords on an unconscious witch.”
“Slit the—”
“Sure. That’s how I’ll have to kill you. You won’t be able to rhyme—make magic—and you’ll bleed out in about a minute and a half.”
He touched various cuts and scrapes, wincing as he did so. “If anybody can do it, you can.”
Demon's Delight Page 3
