by Tara West
Well, shit. Nobody was getting inside that way now, were they? My only other option of escape had been reduced to one narrow window, draped in a heavy curtain.
The hooved creature cracked the whip again, sealing the window with the same sludge.
Looked like I was up shit creek, and my only method of defense against three ugly-looking monsters was going to be my wind, a power I’d only recently acquired and still didn’t fully understand. This was going to be fun. I sure hoped Hell didn’t have any blow-dryers.
I angled my head at the girl, who was looking at me with arms crossed and brows furrowed, as if I was a pretend ghoster who had no idea what the hell I was doing. She was a pretty smart kid.
“Don’t you know how to fight them?” she asked.
I looked at the demons. Dragon Demon flashed a devious grin before blowing out several rings of smoke. I gagged as I swatted the fumes away. The gas was so noxious, it made my head swim.
“I never got past yellow belt in Tae Kwan Do,” I said, struggling to breathe.
She turned up her pert little nose while fanning her face. “No, I mean with magic. You’re a spirit, right?”
I shrugged an apology. “Actually, I’m new at this whole dead thing.” No sense in pretending I was a seasoned ghoster. I was sure the demons could have seen through my ruse, anyway. The question was, how did this kid know I was a spirit? “How do you know about ghosts?” I nodded toward Piranha Head Guy, who’d created an impressive puddle of gooey saliva at his feet. “And demons?” Thinking back to when I was her age, my weekend hobbies had included dressing up My Little Ponies and taking my Barbies for a ride on Jack’s back. Drooling demons and black magic witches were the furthest things from my mind.
Rolling her eyes, she pulled back her shoulders. “I’m clairvoyant.”
I remembered Basil telling me clairvoyants could see the dead. Weird this little kid had such a power.
She waved toward her stepmom, whose head was now lolling side to side. “Can’t you knock them back like you did Lucia?” Not much longer, and the bitch would wake and break the circle. Then what? I should have knocked her out harder with that door. Then a thought crossed my mind. I could have tried to knock back the demons, but I was too terrified to point my hand in their direction. What if they knew some kind of magic that could reverse mine? As long as Lucia was out, the child and I were safe inside the salt circle. Hopefully, Sarge or Alpha Squad would break down the door and come save us soon.
I lifted my hand and knocked the sorceress’s head back with my wind, causing her to lose consciousness again, but I also sprayed the salt circle all across the floor.
Oops.
When Hoof Creature raised his whip, I blasted him before he could strike, sending him crashing to the ground as the whip flew out of his hand. Piranha Head Guy charged next, his razor-sharp teeth chomping up and down like a runaway paper shredder. My gust of wind hit him straight in his open maw, causing his wide, flapping lips to practically engulf his head as he fell against the wall.
Dragon Demon didn’t seem to be fazed by my powers. His eyes glowed redder than the fiery pit of Hell as smoke poured out of his snout. He eyed me like a snake preparing to strike, ripping up wood planks as he scraped his clawed feet across the floorboards. When he rushed me, I summoned a wind so powerful, it nearly blinded me as a bright light shot out of my fingers. Dragon Demon flew backward, kicking and snarling as he smashed through a wall and landed in a rusty bathtub.
I rubbed my hands down my jeans. My fingertips felt raw and sore, burning as if they were frostbitten, but hot damn, I’d just smoked three demons. I’d earned myself a deluxe manicure. Just as my head and chest started to swell with confidence, the kid screamed and pointed toward the gaping hole in the wall.
Dragon Demon was climbing through it, and the only thing on that ugly hide of his that seemed to be hurt was his pride. If I thought he looked ready to eat me before, that gleam in his ghoulish eyes told me he was going to skewer and roast me with extra spicy barbeque sauce first.
I took a steadying breath as I backed up and prepared to unleash another wind.
The child cried “Look out!” just before a violent crackle rent the smoky air.
I screamed as pain lanced up my hand, and I was yanked to the floor with a thud, my head hitting the ground so hard, I saw stars. Four red, glowing stars to be exact. It took me a moment to realize those stars were two sets of eyes; one was Hoof Creature, who had one of my hands strung up in his whip while he dug his hoof into my other hand. Dragon Demon stood next to him, laughing maniacally as I choked on the rancid smoke that poured from his snout.
And just when I thought my night couldn’t get any shittier, I heard the rustling of robes as the sorceress came to her feet beside them. Lifting her hands, she started chanting in some unknown language. I had no idea what she was saying, but her words lanced through me like a thousand tiny spears, causing me to writhe in pain.
My eyelids felt weighted with a thousand stones, and it took all my effort to keep them open, though I knew it was a losing battle. The smoke that filled my lungs was so thick, I could no longer breathe. I knew exactly what was happening. I was dying a second time, only I knew where I was headed would make level two look like paradise.
My last thought before my world dimmed was how sorry I was that I hadn’t listened to Grim. I’d let him walk away before I had time to come to terms with my true feelings. I cared for him, deeply, and now none of that mattered because I’d never see him again.
A violent crash, followed by a thunderous roar sounded behind me.
“Get your filthy claws off my woman!” A familiar deep voice bellowed.
I heard a high-pitched squeal, followed by a woman’s screams. I jerked up, realizing I was no longer bound by Hoof Creature. I scooted back against the wall when I saw the gleaming metal arc of Grim’s blade lop off Hoof Creature’s head.
I screamed as it rolled next to my feet. The glowing eyes were still open, blinking up at me. His long tongue came out and darted at my leg. I kicked the head to the other side of the room as another head landed at my feet.
What is with the dismembered heads?
Piranha Head Guy’s mouth nearly chomped off my foot before I sent it flying through the air with my wind. His teeth bit a gaping hole in one side of the sorceress’s skull, and then his head smacked the ground.
The woman stumbled and fell backward, her brains oozing onto the floor in a puddle of blood.
Freaking gross. I knew she was a bitch, but that was a hell of a way to die.
The little girl ducked beneath a stream of fire, swatting embers out of her hair as she raced to my side. We pressed ourselves against the wall, and I watched my man kick some major demon ass. He was butting the demon in the stomach with the blunt end of his scythe, and I wondered why he didn’t just chop off the monster’s head and finish him for good.
Then the wooden planks beneath my hands started to shake with violent tremors, knocking Grim and the demon to the floor in a tangle of fire and limbs.
The floorboards ripped open, revealing a giant red vortex. A deafening clap rent the air, and then an elevator the size of a phone booth jutted up from the hole.
Flames licked Grim’s hands, and he choked on smoke as he shoved the demon into the elevator. My heart froze when fiery arms reached out and gripped Grim by the collar, pulling him into the elevator, too. The elevator shut with a clap and vanished down the gaping maw.
“Noooo!” I screamed as I pushed myself to my knees and frantically crawled to the hole. What I saw took my breath away. The opening resembled a giant throat, a living, fleshy organ with an endless spiral of circular red rings that disappeared into oblivion, and it had swallowed the man I loved.
I was lying in a fetal position on the floor, sobbing profusely into my hands, when a strange shadow fell over the room. I looked up through a crack in my fingers to see two familiar eyes blinking down at me through the darkness.
“Shadow?�
�� I asked.
“What happened here?”
“There were demons. Three of them.” I nearly choked on a sob as I pointed a shaky finger toward the fiery throat in the center of the room. “One of them took my Grim!”
I watched with a mixture of fascination and horror as the heads of the two decapitated demons rolled into the hole. Their bodies crawled like crabs while dragging Lucia’s corpse, before tumbling into the abyss.
The floorboards started rattling again, followed by the distant sound of rumbling thunder, as I struggled to my knees.
I closed my eyes and turned up my hands in a prayer pose, hoping the Prayer Call Center marked my pleas as urgent. “Please let it be my Grim coming back to me. Please, God, please.”
When the sound of thunder filled my eardrums with a deafening roar, and that phone booth elevator dinged open, I swear the wait to see who would step out from the smoky shadows felt like it stretched out for an eternity. I saw the gleaming scythe first, followed by a familiar pair of impossibly blue eyes.
I jumped to my feet and raced into his arms, sobbing against his chest as he held me tight. “When that demon took you, I thought I’d lost you forever.”
“It’s okay, Ash,” he breathed against my ear before kissing my temple. “I’m the Grim Reaper, remember? I deliver souls to the basement, too.”
Oh, duh. I’d forgotten. He’d probably taken that elevator on a daily basis, but still, I thought that fire demon would never relinquish his hold on him, or at the very least, burn out his eye sockets. I pulled back, examining my boyfriend. He was covered in burn marks and had a few cuts and bruises, but he was otherwise whole.
“Sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner.” He wrapped his arm around my waist as we walked away from the elevator. “This place was infested with demons.”
“You mean there were more?”
He nodded. “At least a dozen downstairs, and only two other Grims to help me. You knocked out that Sarge of yours pretty good. When I found him unconscious, I raced inside the house as fast as I could.”
My hands flew to my mouth. “Oh, no. Sarge! Is he okay?”
“He’s fine.” Shadow interjected, his smoky apparition barely distinguishable except for his luminescent, almond eyes. “Just a nasty bump. He’ll heal soon enough.”
I was fairly certain it would take a lot longer for the bruises on his ego to heal. I did not even want to know what kind of back-breaking PT he’d have in store for me tomorrow.
“And the rest of my squad? Are they okay?”
“They’re fine. They did the smart thing and stayed in the barn like they were told.” Shadow laughed. “I warned the Deltas you were too strong for them.”
Some part of me was relieved to find my friends were okay. Another part was pissed they hadn’t at least tried to help me.
I felt a tug on my shirt and looked down at the little girl. She had dirt streaks on her face, and her red, curly hair was a tangled mess, but, otherwise, she looked okay.
“Thanks for saving me.” The smile in her eyes made it all worthwhile.
“You’re welcome, kid.” I squeezed her shoulder. “You going to be all right?” I hoped what she’d witnessed tonight hadn’t caused any deep, emotional scarring. I knew if this had happened to me when I was a kid, I would have needed therapy every day for the rest of my life.
“Yeah, my dad will be home later. He works the graveyard shift.” She laughed. “Wait until he finds out about Lucia. She only married him to get to me. I knew it all along.”
“I’m sorry, kid,” Shadow interjected, “but we’re going to have to burn down this house.”
“That’s okay.” She shrugged. “It was Lucia’s, anyway.”
Grim tightened his protective grip around my waist, reminding me I had one very sexy, demon-ass kicking stud who required my attention.
He brushed my lips with a feather soft kiss. His deep blue eyes held such tenderness, my heart wept with joy. But then I winced and pulled back when he rolled my hands over and examined an open sore.
A heavy frown marred his brow. “We need to treat this before infection sets in. Are you ready to go home?”
Despite the pain in my sore limbs and throbbing fingers, I couldn’t help but smile. “More than ready to be alone with you.”
By the time the elevator dropped us off at Delta House, Grim was carrying me in his arms. I felt kind of silly that he didn’t think I could walk on my own, but after the reality of what had happened struck me, my legs had pretty much felt like two wet noodles.
Jack raced up to Grim, frantically barking and clawing up his leg to get to me.
“Easy, boy,” I laughed. “Mommy’s safe.”
Grim set me down on the sofa, and Jack didn’t wait for an invitation, jumping into my lap and nearly crushing me with his weight as he lavished me with sloppy wet kisses. Or maybe the wet part came from the tears that fell down my face. Had I been cast down to Hell, I would have never seen my best friend again. How stupid I’d been to think I could have handled such a dangerous situation by myself.
“Hey, you okay?” Boner asked as he sat in the chair across from us, a box of cookies in his lap.
“Yeah,” I wiped my eyes as I smiled up at Grim, who stood behind me with a protective hand on my shoulder. “I am now.”
When Boner ripped open the box, Jack suddenly forgot how much he missed me and jumped off my lap, tail wagging as he ran over to him.
“He was scratching on your door.” Boner flashed an apologetic grin. “So I’ve been feeding him cookies.”
Grim squeezed my shoulder before leaning down, his whisper a warm breath on my cheek. “Let’s go to your room.”
Those spaghetti-noodle legs of mine suddenly felt a whole lot stronger at the proposition of makeup sex. I slowly stood up, and Grim came around the sofa and swept me off my feet. “Could you watch Jack for me tonight?” I asked Boner, cupping Grim’s cheek and looking deep into his eyes.
“Sure,” Boner answered.
Grim carried me out of the room with heavy, urgent strides.
Blasting demons and evil witches had sure made me horny.
Grim refused to make love to me until after he’d treated every one of my cuts and burns. First, he undressed me and placed me in the bathtub, scrubbing me down with foamy soap. I even let him lather up and clean that juncture between my thighs, though I was fairly certain I didn’t have any bruises down there. Next, he dried me off and pulled a tube of antiseptic out of the medicine cabinet. I guess it was a good thing I shared a bathroom with Sarge. His toiletries sure came in handy.
I looked down at Grim’s fingers with a sense of awe as he tenderly rubbed the laceration on my hand with the medicine. Demon whips stung like hell.
All pain was forgotten when he stripped naked and scrubbed that big, beautiful body. I licked my lips while eyeing his his solid cock with appreciation. It jerked in his hands when he lathered it with soap. I never thought I’d be jealous of bubbles.
After he dried off, he cleaned and treated minor burns on his hands and arms, but I insisted he let me take care of the sores on his back. He’d actually came out of this ordeal with less wounds than me. I still couldn’t believe he’d survived an embrace with the fiery demon and had only a few marks to show for it.
He had a faint, jagged scar down the side of his back which looked like it had been formed ages ago. I wondered if a demon had given it to him, but he grumbled and jerked away when I touched it. Though I was too afraid to ask him how he’d gotten it, the scar was a sobering reminder of the dangers on level one.
The thought of what that Dragon Demon could have done to him made my throat tighten with emotion.
“You were right about the dangers of this job.” I frowned, fighting to hold back the tears that threatened to spill. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”
He cupped my face in his hands, searching my gaze. “I should never have left you.” He stroked my lower lip with the pad of his thumb. “I’m sorry, Ash.”
A slow and devious grin stretched across my face. I leaned up and lapped a drop of water off his neck. “I guess you’re going to have to make it up to me.”
Considering the ordeal we’d been through that night, I thought Grim’s plan would be to throw me on the bed and make love to me with urgency. I had no idea he’d planned a night of slow, tender foreplay, drawing out my release by teasing me with his tongue and fingers. And here I’d thought torture was only reserved for Hell.
He propped my hips on a pillow, spreading my legs wide as he lapped up my center with long, languid strokes of his tongue. Every so often, he’d answer my pleas and insert a finger, fucking me with just a few short thrusts before pulling out and suckling that raw bundle of nerves.
He licked, teased, and tormented until I screamed his name, begging him to make me come.
Thin walls be damned.
By the time he climbed up my body, my sweet spot was painfully swollen and weeping with need. I tasted my essence on his tongue as he captured my lips in a kiss. I wrapped my legs around his waist, moaning as I rubbed my swollen sex across his erection, begging him to fill me.
I expected more tender lovemaking, slow gentle strokes and feather soft kisses. I gasped when he buried that huge cock inside me, seating himself to the hilt and thrusting into my sweet, achy spot as if he was a battering ram trying to tear me apart, inch by glorious inch.
It hurt so damn much. Fuck, I never wanted him to stop.
He kissed me deeply, spearing my mouth with his tongue while fucking me with relentless, hard strokes. I sucked in a breath right before the first wave hit me, and then I screamed his name as pleasure like I’d never known rippled through me.
All the orgasms in Heaven couldn’t even come close to the climax that gripped me, holding me in its clutches for the span of several glorious, pulsating heartbeats.
He cried my name as his hips flexed and then stilled, his throbbing head spilling warmth into my channel. After he rolled us over and held me in his arms, we kissed, nipped, and stroked, working ourselves into a frenzy before making love well into the early morning.
