He laughed.
Fine, have it your way, you obnoxious man, you. I did it because I wanted to, not because I felt I had to. And I know you're not really a murderous bloodsucker. Happy now?
With regards to you? Beyond your imagining.
His words, and the emotions behind them, warmed me for the next hour as Pia and I waited for the two men to return.
"Well, if this doesn't just take the rat's ass and make it into a hat!" Eleanor snarled, stomping into the room with Pia's cell phone in hand. "I just called the lord in charge of the hour where I live, and he says I can't come back. He says liches are not allowed into the Underworld."
"Uh . . ." Pia blinked a couple of times at Eleanor.
"So now what am I supposed to do?" Eleanor demanded. "Alec would rather shack up with her than me, and I can't go back home, where at least I had a life and a friend with benefits, and roses who loved me, not to mention the class I was thinking about starting on how to spin yarn using a drop spindle and dog hair, and now I can't!"
"Er . . ." I said, at a loss. "What's an hour? And there really is an Underworld?"
Eleanor sighed and slumped into a chair. "The Underworld is pided into twelve hours, each ruled by a lord. I live in the seventh hour. It is very pleasant. The lord there is English, so the hour looks like a quaint little English village with thatched cottages and digital cable TV and high-speed Wi-Fi Internet access. I won't tell you how many of my favorite shows I'm missing on the Home and Garden TV channel, but you can rest assured that I am not happy about it!"
"Since Kristoff and I were responsible for bringing you here, we'll be responsible for getting you back," Pia said after a moment's thought. "I'm not sure how we'll do it, but there must be a way."
"No, Alec and I will do it," I said, turning back to Pia's laptop, where I had been trying to find a phone number for the Guardian Noelle. "Ultimately, she's our responsibility."
"I really dislike being spoken of as if I'm not here," Eleanor said with a surly look to both of us. "And I really don't care who fixes things, I just want them fixed."
"Want what fixed?" Alec asked as he and Kristoff entered the room.
I quickly explained the situation with Eleanor before she could unload yet another tirade.
"Ah. Yes, we'll find some way to get you home if that is what you desire," Alec reassured her.
She gave him an injured sniff, and kicked her heel idly against the chair.
"I won't ask you how it went because I can tell by the looks on your faces that you got rid of Brothers Ailwin and Godwin. You didn't do anything really bad to them, did you? " Pia asked, immediately moving over to her vampire, her hands all over him as if to check he was OK.
Kristoff looked cranky. "Alec only let me have a couple of shots at Ailwin, so no, I didn't."
"I owed him more than you," Alec replied, cracking his knuckles and looking very pleased with himself as he came over to see what I was doing, his fingers trailing across the back of my neck in a caress that had me shivering with arousal. "All we did was rough them up and hand them over to the watch with a complaint of assault, Pia. I don't expect them to be held for long, however, so we will have to be on our way soon."
"You'd have to leave anyway with Julian hanging around," Pia said.
I slanted a look up at Alec, warmed to my toenails by the passion in his eyes. You can't possibly want to - I almost killed you, Alec! How can you want to make love to me when I could be used to destroy you?
Pia is a Zorya, and wields the power to destroy Kristoff - and every other Dark One, for that matter - but it doesn't stop him from indulging himself every opportunity he gets. Why would you being a Tool of Bael mean I should do likewise?
I shivered again at the things he was thinking. "What's a Zorya?"
"Huh?" Pia, who had been gazing into Kristoff's eyes, blinked at me a few times. "Oh, Alec told you about me? I'm a reaper."
"You're a former reaper," Kristoff said.
"Zoryas are a group of women who have the power to call down the light of the moon. They're next in line to the Zenith. I'm also a Zenith."
"A former Zenith." Kristoff was back to looking cranky as he allowed Pia to lead him over to the love seat.
"It's all part of a wacky religion called the Brotherhood of the Blessed Light," she said, cuddling up to him. "Better known as the reapers. They booted me from the group a month ago, which I have to admit was a bit of a bummer, because I seriously enjoyed light binding people. But all in all, it's better that I not be the Dark Ones' most hated enemy."
"Merciful Mary," I said, wondering how on earth she had ended up that way.
It's a long story. I shall tell it to you sometime when you have exhausted me with your lustful demands.