Fiends and Familiars - Debra Dunbar Page 0,54
Ty wheeled around and grabbed me, pulling me up by my arm and dragging me down a path.
“No! There. The exit.” I pointed toward the light only to have Ty haul me off in the opposite direction.
“That’s not the exit, it’s just a big spotlight at the edge of the field.”
“Then where’s the exit?” I snapped as I spun around, yanking away from Ty.
“I’m taking you there.” Mumbling a curse, he grabbed me, slung me over his shoulder and took off at a dead run. Demons could really haul ass, evidently. We were out of the corn maze in no time, with me breathless and dizzy, my face pressed up against Ty’s back.
“Addy! You’ve still got your flag…oh.”
Ty slid me off his shoulder and sat me on my feet, his arm around my shoulder to hold me steady. I blinked a few times at Babylon, not sure what to say.
“That’s not Derrick,” she accused, as if she’d discovered me cheating on the guy I’d just met an hour ago, and was most definitely not interested in dating.
“No. This is Ty.” I patted the demon’s shoulder.
“Ty?” Her eyes narrowed. “The one who used you to get to your squirrel? Who had sex with you as a pretense to get into your house and steal your squirrel? The one who doesn’t care about anything but that damned squirrel?”
“That’s not true.” Ty glared at my sister. “None of it. Well, maybe at first it was true, but once your sister seduced me in her dream, I’ve been completely under her spell.”
“I didn’t seduce you or enchant you,” I snapped back, irritated that we were having the same argument over and over again.
Babylon suddenly grinned. “How about you both agree that you seduced each other? That’s one argument out of the way.”
“Which leaves the squirrel.” I took a step away from Ty. “If I sleep with you again, don’t think that means I’m going to hand him over.”
“As far as I’m concerned, the fate of Faust’s soul rests in the hands of the lawyers, and they’ve said—wait…” He caught his breath and looked at me wide-eyed. “You’re going to sleep with me again? Does that involve sex, or just sleeping, because I’ve learned that the language of the agreement needs to be absolutely clear.”
“I’ll sleep with you again if I feel like it.” I sniffed. “And it might include sex if I feel like it.”
He took a step toward me. “So…tonight…are you feeling like it.”
I bit back a grin of my own. “Maybe.”
“Awesome.” Babylon clapped her hands together. “Now that Addy has a boyfriend—but only when she feels like it—let’s all go over and see who else came through the maze with their flags still attached.”
Maze. Shit.
“Wait!” I reached out and grabbed Lonnie’s arm. “There was another demon in the corn maze who was trying to grab me and…I don’t know, abduct me and hold me ransom for my squirrel or something.”
“He’d have done worse than that.” Ty’s scowled.
“He might still be in there.” I glanced back at the maze. Suddenly the screams and shrieks coming from the rustling corn took on a note of actual terror. A zombie ran from the exit, shouting “monster,” and I instantly knew it wasn’t an act.
The corn started to topple, and not one, but three demons crashed out of the maze. They were over seven feet tall, red skin stretched over muscles a professional weightlifter would envy, huge ebony horns curling up from their foreheads.
Ty planted his feet. “Stay back,” he commanded.
I wasn’t sure if he was including me in that edict, but it didn’t matter because I’d never been a witch to avoid a fight—or obey orders. Once more I reached out my awareness, calling all the field mice, the fox, a raccoon who was raiding a nearby garbage can, and about a thousand beetles.
The beetles got there first, swarming up the legs of the demons, biting and pinching. The demons ignored the attack, grabbing at the humans. One picked up a picnic table and tossed it into the bonfire, scattering burning logs and embers all over the ground.
The whole place was going to catch on fire. I hesitated, unsure whether I should continue to concentrate on my animal attacks that seemed to be ineffectual, or should find a fire extinguisher.
The ground rumbled beneath my feet and I fell to my knees, suddenly afraid that more demons were going to erupt from the bowels of the earth. What emerged from the dirt wasn’t demons, though, it