There was a series of crunching footsteps. The sound of one car door shutting. Then another. And finally, a pair of vehicles crackling over some debris and taking off down the street.
Silence. Well, not exactly. There was dripping everywhere, water falling from places all around, like it was raining. And then, from the other houses that were close by, distant sounds of people taking showers. TVs with early-morning news reports. Parents yelling up the stairs to children to hurry, it’s getting late, the bus is coming.
Predawn had come to this stupid, fucking middle-class neighborhood, and the only good thing about any of it was that shit was still mostly dark.
The demon Devina sat up out of the pile of ashes. Looking down at herself, she had to shake her head. She was nothing but flesh and bones. Literally—
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped. “I know I need a shower, and anyway, this is all your fault.”
She glared at the pile of burned shit next to her. “You know, you can play hard to get all you want, but you need me. Without me, you’re nothing.”
A wad of wet soot hit her in the boob as the front cover of the Book whipped open. And when pages shuffled in anger, like she cared?
“Fuck that,” she said as she got to her feet. “I should leave you here, you know that. They’re going to bulldoze this whole site. You’ll end up in a landfill, which is better than you deserve.”
As a section of pages stood erect out of the spine, she gasped. “Are you flipping me off? Seriously? How rude!”
Trying to make her way through the debris, she slipped and caught herself on a still-steaming beam. But eventually, she got past all the ashy crap and stepped onto the singed lawn. Shaking herself, she gave the raw meat of her corporeal body a sad eye.
It was going to take a while to get her strength back. Her looks, too.
“Whatever.” She started to walk off, and then realized how badly she was shivering. “Goddamn it.”
She needed to be back in her lair.
On that note, she opened up a tear in the fabric of reality, her comfy little home appearing in front of her so that all she needed to do was step through to be in it. And she did put one foot into the other side.
A plaintive whimper turned her bald, open wound of a head back to the fire site. The whimper was repeated.
“I don’t know why I should bother. You treat me with no respect. You’re always leaving.”
Whimper.
Rolling her eyes, she was about to leave the Book behind when she had a memory of that female vampire bent over and weeping across the chest of her dead male.
With a curse, Devina minced her way back into the fire damage.
“You better apologize.” She leaned down and glared at the fucking piece of shit Book. “And courtesy of me taking you right now? You’re going to do me a favor. You now owe me.”
Grabbing the thing out of the mess, she marched back to the tear in reality.
She was due her true love.
And this ungrateful bunch of parchment was going to give it to her. Or else.
I don’t . . . I don’t know how this is possible.”
As Sahvage spoke the words, he had a thought that he’d been saying them over and over again. Like since he had hung up his phone at the cottage and stared across the kitchen table at his Mae.
“I don’t know . . .”
Good thing his female was driving his crappy junker of a car.
Trying to get a grip on himself, he took her free hand across the worn seat of his beater, and reviewed the fact pattern with himself again: Phone rings. It’s Murhder. He says he has something he needs to talk about.
Annnnnd it was right about then that things went totally off the fucking rails. Which considering what the last twenty-four hours had been like was really saying something.
“. . . how this is possible.” He looked over at Mae. “Thank God you’re here. I couldn’t possibly do this without you. Do you know where you’re going?”
Mae glanced across the interior with a smile. “I do. And it’s not far now.”
“Okay. Good.”
Sahvage swallowed through a tight throat and tried to distract himself. And hey, at least the latter got him grinning. He and Mae had made love all through the daylight hours in their big, creaky bed, the two of them learning each other’s bodies, loving each other, being close and finally falling asleep together. It was the single best day of his life.
So in a way, having that phone call come through about thirty minutes ago? Kind of felt like overkill.
Then again, he’d been overdue for some dumb luck, he supposed.
“Here we are,” she said as she got off onto a county road.