AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Marco looked around, like he expected somebody to offer up a suggestion. But the vamps were clearly all suggestioned out. A couple of them were trying to talk Jules into going back down the hall, but hysteria feeds hysteria, and it didn’t look like they were having much luck. A lot more were over by the bar, clearly feeling that tonight went into the above-and-beyond category and they’d had enough. And the rest—Jonas, the witches and the girl—were staring at the hellmouth, which had started spinning fast enough to flip the pages of a magazine on the coffee table.
Marco didn’t find any help.
“Marco—”
“I don’t know, all right?” he told me, exasperated. “I don’t even know if he is.”
“Did he ask to talk to me?”
“No. I—”
“Did you tell him I was unconscious or something?”
“No, he—”
“That I was in the shower?”
“No! Damn it, he didn’t—” Marco stopped suddenly.
“He didn’t what? He didn’t ask?”
Marco just looked at me.
I stared back. “He called you up, informed you that I’d been seen battling demons on the drag, asked about the master vamp I just deprived him of, and then he hung up?”
“You need to ask him about this,” he pointed out.
“How can I when he won’t talk to me?”
Marco started to answer, but then Jules let out an especially shrill shriek. Maybe because the portal had started whirling around at something approaching warp speed. And unless I was mistaken, it was also getting smaller.
“Would somebody shut him the hell up?” Marco snarled.
But Jules didn’t seem to like that idea. Jules appeared to have had about enough of us and our ideas. He gave another shriek and dove through the middle of his buddies, careened into some others, spun out of their hold like a football player heading for the goal line, and then ran all out for the door.
Marco went after him, but changed course halfway and lunged at me instead. Because I’d taken what was likely to be my only shot and dove for the rapidly closing portal. But then a second impossible thing happened, when the huge-but-graceful Marco suddenly tripped and went sprawling on the carpet, hitting down hard enough to rattle the windows and shake all the glasses in the bar.
I had a second to see what’s-her-name, the initiate I’d spoken all of a few dozen words to, with her leg out. And judging by the angle, it hadn’t been an accident. I looked at her and she looked at me, big-eyed and faintly horrified. And then I was through the flames and gone.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Do you know who your mother was?” Pritkin demanded, scowling.
I scowled back, but not because of the attitude. I’d expected that. Actually, that was a lie. I’d expected worse.
He’d been bad enough when surprised and under fire at his father’s court, or fighting for his life against the council’s guards. But now he’d had time to think about it. And, apparently, to work up a massive attitude.
I seemed to have that effect on the men in my life, I thought darkly, and took another sip of something horrible.
We were in a bar in the hell known as the Shadowland, because the demon council didn’t have anything like a normal jail. They had distant worlds where they marooned what they called the “Ancient Horrors,” creatures I wasn’t interested in knowing more about, thank you. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, they had . . . nothing.
I guess most people who pissed off the council didn’t live long enough to need a holding cell.
But that meant, instead of visiting Pritkin in some dark, dank cell, I was visiting him in some dark, dank bar. On the whole, I’d have preferred the cell. I was sitting cross-legged in my chair to avoid the floor, which had passed nasty a year ago and was working on horrific.
Something squelched between my toes anyway, something I’d managed to step in on the way to the table.
I was trying not to think about what exactly it might be.
