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Purple fireworks exploded to my right, scorching my vision. I winced, turning away, and the chef yanked his arm from my hold.
“Fear not, the Fucking God has arrived!” Zee was bathed in purple fire, and javelins of lightning shot from his wings, crackling against the kitchen’s metal surfaces. He really did look like something godly.
The chef gawked, slack-jawed.
“I know, soak it all in. Aren’t I the most brilliant thing your eyeballs have ever seen?” Zee toned down his neon purple display. “Drink me in, baby. Get a good look, because I’m the last thing you’re ever gonna see.” He strutted forward, hips and tail swaying, then finger-gunned the chef. “Kapow.”
The big man melted to his knees and collapsed in a convulsing heap, then lay still.
Zee blew imaginary smoke from his fingertip. “Death by orgasm. What a fucking way to go.”
He was right, the chef wasn’t moving. “Did you really just kill him with uh . . .”
“Yes, yes I did.” Zee flashed a wide grin. “I’ve been dying to see if it would work and it fuckin’ did. Total sex god. I gotta work on the name, though. Fucking God? God of Fucking? I dunno, I’m not feeling it. It needs something more.”
I grinned. Zee having godlike powers over pleasure was probably not a great idea if I really thought about it. So I wasn’t going to think about it. I shoved from the table, flew at Zee, and wrapped my arms around him. He crushed me close, all warm and strong and Zee. “You know, I had it under control.”
“Yeah, but you can’t have all the fun without me, Kitten,” he mumbled into my hair, then grabbed my head and smooshed a kiss onto my forehead. “Technically, if anyone asks, the chef had a heart attack. Total fuckin’ accident.”
“Oh, for sure.” I beamed, stepping back, out of his arms. “How’d you find me?”
“Heard the crash. It had to be you. I tried to get to you in the cellar, but it’s warded. Where’s Vic?”
“Still down there. We can’t get in. He’ll be alright but there are people with him. They’ll die if it gets any colder.”
“We gotta stop evil Elsa.”
“Can you uh . . . you know . . . unalive her with sex too?”
“If we can find her while my juice lasts.”
“Maybe don’t say it like that?”
We headed out of the kitchen, but things didn’t look much better outside the cellar either. Ice spiderwebs crowded the hallway corners, and vapor seeped along the floor, just like it did in the cellar. The whole hotel would soon be an icebox.
We passed through the foyer, where what was left of Larimer had been scattered around the front desk. “Uh . . . where’s Tom?”
“In our room. We’ll meet up with him and figure out how to lure the ice bitch from her hole. Hey, did you know he’s been watching us this whole time?” Zee nodded at a camera. “Ever since he last visited, he’s been keeping an eye on us.”
“Huh.”
“I’m beginning to think he cares, that he hopes we don’t die, even though it seems like sometimes he’d prefer if we did.”
I laughed. “Yeah. He hides his love for us so far down it’s barely there at all.”
After reaching our suite, and after Zee finally muffled his purple glow, we found Wesley and some of the other guests were helping the thawed people come to terms with having missed chunks of their lives. The two guys who had tried to taunt Victor were here, looking sheepish.
“Oh, hey there, I’m so glad you’re back.” Wesley’s big grin suggested what he was about to say. “Eddie is awake! It’s . . . He’s doin’ fine. He wants to talk to you, Adam.”
“Me? Sure.”
We all filed into the bathroom, where Tom was glowering, arms crossed, his face somehow simultaneously expressing both boredom and disdain. “The prophesied one returns.”
“Uh, hi . . .”
The muscular man shivering on the edge of the bathtub, wrapped in a towel, was Eddie.
“Hey, you look pretty good for a dead guy,” Zee said, bringing a smile to Eddie’s pale face.
