Brave the Tempest (Cassie Palme) - Karen Chance Page 0,96

convulsed when he finally whispered: “Now.”

I came screaming and crying and laughing and cursing. I came so hard I almost passed out. I came with his name on my lips and his body spilling into mine, his own cry of mingled pain and bliss and strange catharsis echoing my own.

Totally . . . wasted . . . in the Corps, I thought, clinging to him when he finally collapsed on top of me, panting and sweaty and tired and limp.

And asleep, I realized, a moment later, hearing a gentle snore against my neck. I wore him out, I thought proudly, clutching him against me. I completely wore him out.

I was totally going to buy a hat, I decided, and slipped back into sleep.

Chapter Twenty-two

Wub, wub, wub.

I frowned, and stirred in my sleep.

Wub, wub, wub.

Damn it, I hated having an apartment right over top of a Laundromat. The machines could shake the walls and wake the dead. Especially on Saturday morning, when everybody and their dog decided to—

Wub, wub, wub.

That wasn’t a washing machine, I thought blearily, and then someone was yelling: “Cassie! Shift!”

I came awake instantly, because that was Pritkin’s oh-shit voice, and he didn’t use it lightly. I opened my eyes to the red and black swirl of a hellmouth at the foot of the bed, and a crowd of huge metallic creatures flooding into the room. Allû, I thought, recognizing the demon high council’s hideous guards.

Pritkin was fighting them, and doing a damned good job, considering that he was naked and his potion belt was nowhere to be seen. But one of the Allû went flying anyway, virtue of a roundhouse kick, back into the portal behind him. And backup was already pound, pound, pounding on the door.

Not the door to the hallway, as might have been expected, but the closet door. Because Pritkin’s weapons didn’t need a hand on the trigger to be deadly. But they did need a hand on the door, or at least the doorknob, in order to get out, and they didn’t have one. So they shot their way out, in a hail of bullets that were absorbed by Pritkin’s shields but that blew various-sized holes in two more of the creatures.

Not that it mattered. The Allû were spirits in armor-like suits, to give their attacks more oomph, I supposed, or maybe just to be more intimidating. Which worked really well, since they looked like a cross between Cylons and Iron Man, with huge, burnished bronze bodies that didn’t feel pain because they were basically tanks that the spirits inside drove around in—and drove over people who pissed off the demon council.

Not to mention that even the Cylons had eyes, but the Allû didn’t.

Just blank bronze faceplates that lacked even the outlines of features the Allû didn’t need, since they used demon senses to get around. Like they couldn’t be harmed by the bullets tearing through them, although they could be inconvenienced by having their metallic skins destroyed. Which was happening everywhere now, because Pritkin’s arsenal was speeding into the room, but also because—

“Pritkin!” I yelled. “They’re not fighting back!”

He looked up from literally ripping the head off an Allû, but I don’t think he heard me. He just knew that I’d called out, and he launched himself at me—and was almost taken out by his own weapons. Because, instead of helping him, the majority had sped through the line of creatures to create a floating barrier in front of the bed. One I didn’t need, because the only person going ham right now was my defender.

The Allû were just standing there, or what remained of them, since Pritkin had managed to dispose of three, and his weapons had taken out three more. But that still left a good half dozen just hanging around, looking so out of place in a Vegas hotel room that it hurt my brain.

Like the idea that this was starting all over again.

“You’re not taking him,” I told them flatly.

The metallic mountains didn’t move.

“What do you want?” Pritkin snarled, finally understanding that the ones he hadn’t attacked weren’t fighting him.

And, finally, that got a response. A bunch of spears raised, not to attack, but to point. And I suddenly realized that maybe they weren’t there for Pritkin after all.

Because they were pointing at me.

And that . . . didn’t go down well. Not with me so much, since I was still trying to figure out what I’d done to piss off the demon council. But with Pritkin,