Sharon Ashwood - Unchained

It was oozing off the side of the dome, flowing toward her like malevolent syrup.

“What’s going on?” Reynard asked, coming up behind her.

“I’m not sure, but I think it’s a demon.” She pulled one of the bombs out of her pocket. Like the charms, they were bundles of herbs and minerals wrapped in cheesecloth, but these carried different magic. She pressed it to her lips, then lobbed it at the flowing darkness.

It disappeared as if the dark had swallowed it.

With a new baby, Holly’s magic wasn’t reliable. They’d thought the bombs would be okay. Apparently not.

Crap.

“Down the stairs,” Ashe said. “Now.”

The stair light went out, leaving them in total darkness but for the spell candle.

Reynard grabbed her hand. “The dark won’t slow me down. Stay close.”

Ashe followed, letting him lead while she fumbled for her flashlight. “Where’s Tony?”

“Who?”

“The owner.”

Their feet clattered on the stairs, Ashe stumbling blindly behind Reynard. Finally, she managed to thumb her flashlight to life.

“Didn’t see him. Door to the stairs was open.”

“Then where is he?”

She felt something cold touch her arm. Wild despair filled her. She felt pain seize her heart, squeezing it under her ribs.

Reynard pulled them through the door and into the forest of novels. He slammed the doorway shut. Ashe grabbed a shelf for support and wiped her face with her sleeve.

“Goddess, what do we do now?”

Reynard grabbed her elbow. “Run.”

Blackness seeped under the door.

“Dammit!” Ashe backed out of the room, fishing in her pocket for a second bomb. She threw it, watching to see what happened. This time the bomb flared, but wavelets of darkness arched over it, pulling it under like a wrecked ship.

Maybe the charms were fine, but the demon was just that much stronger.

We’re screwed.

Ashe turned and ran. The floor bucked under their feet, sending Reynard to his knees. He scrambled up, but the tall shelves weren’t anchored to the walls. He shielded his face as a cascade of paperbacks tumbled out of a lurching bookcase.

Ashe looked behind them to see the darkness slithering along the floor. Before them was an alley of nineteenth-century fiction, each volume a weighty tome. Brain damage if one of those suckers beans us.

Inspiration struck. She grabbed Reynard’s hand. “Fire escape.”

But when she looked out the window at the metal stairs where she’d read Nancy’s detective adventures, it was now dripping with demon slime.

She’d seen that particular shade of goo, with those particular flecks, once before. And how many demons could there be in Fairview at one time? She remembered where she’d seen the store’s name before: printed on a white file label on her lawyer’s desk.

Bannerman, I’m going to kill you.

Demon slime was toxic, no two ways about it. Ashe thought about bringing a bucketful and dumping it over the lawyer’s head.

They’d had to crawl onto the slime-coated metal stairs and slither down as best they could without breaking their necks. The second- floor exit was too high to jump, and it wasn’t like they had time to pry open one of the other windows. They were all painted shut.

Which meant plenty of exposure to the toxic goo. They’d run straight to the corner gas station to get hosed off. That probably saved their lives, but not their clothes. Even sprayed clean, they smelled like rotten hamburger.

To add insult to injury, clouds had rolled in and it had started to pour by the time they’d gotten back to the SUV. The seats got soaked.

There was no time to change before making her appointment with Bannerman and her in-laws’ lawyer. Stinking like a pig carcass and high on adrenaline, Ashe wasn’t in the mood for high heels and pearls anyway. She was channeling Bruce Willis from Die Hard, and wanted someone to pound.

She made two phone calls en route. One was to Holly, telling her the bookstore was possessed. Without magical backup, Ashe was useless against a demon. Holly said she’d take care of getting an extermination team together right away. In the meantime, she’d send the hounds down to keep the public away from the store.

The other call was long-distance to a hacker Ashe employed from time to time, a guy somewhere in the South operating out of a mobile home. Getting into the land titles database and figuring out who had sold what to whom was a matter of minutes. He confirmed what she’d already guessed: Bannerman had handled the sale of the bookstore when old Mr. Cowan’s estate had been settled. If good old Tony and the demon were one and the same, Bannerman must have known. Sure, demons could pass for human for a while, but sooner or later their real nature came out. Why had he sent Ashe on a mission to search out the demon sliming his walls when he already knew who it was? Why not just ask her to kill it? None of this made sense.

When they parked in front of the lawyer’s office, they were, amazingly enough, only five minutes late. She slammed the Saturn’s door and stalked toward the front door of the skyscraper.

Reynard caught up to her in a few long strides. His face was grim, mouth a thin line of tension. “I know your times are different from mine, but I cannot see that they have changed so much.”

“Which means what?”

“Threats of violence won’t work.” His gray eyes held worry. “Lawyers have courts and judges they can use to fight back.”

Ashe tightened her jaw. “Who says I’m threatening? Threats are just warm-up exercises.” She burst through the door to the foyer, leaving a trail of water behind her. “I can’t believe I hired that goof.”

He grabbed her arm. “You made this appointment because you are fighting to keep your daughter.”

Ashe shrugged herself free. “Yeah, and there’s no way that jerk is going to represent my case for one second more. A lawyer is a weapon. I only use clean weapons.”

She saw the flash of understanding cross his face. “I’m not an idiot, Reynard.”

“You’re angry.”

“Anger is just another tool.”

She jabbed the elevator button. There was a sign on the door saying that Bannerman, Wishart, and Yee had moved offices to the sixth floor during renovations. Maybe Bannerman had actually listened to her advice about evacuating because of the demon slime.

Reynard did stop her from bursting through the office door with all the subtlety of a drug raid. The droid behind the reception desk managed a shocked, “Ms. Carver!” as they barged in, but by then Ashe had a long stake in one hand. The woman’s mouth snapped shut with a gulp.

There wasn’t anyone else in the waiting room, just dim lights and the soft, hypnotic rush of air-conditioning. She had no idea if there were people in the other offices in the suite. The place had that clinical, empty feel of a bad sci-fi movie set.

The receptionist dove for the phone. Ashe grabbed the cord and ripped it out of the wall.

“Cover her,” she ordered Reynard. “If she tries to push any buttons, tie her up.”

Reynard nodded. He was no cleaner than Ashe, his hair fallen loose in a wild mass of wet tendrils. His shirt was plastered to his skin, showing off the muscles beneath. He frowned down at the secretary. Her eyes went wide, but a little speculative. Maybe bondage was her thing. Underneath the scowl, Reynard looked like he was having way too much fun.

Good someone is.

Ashe slammed open Bannerman’s door. He was sitting at the little round conference table that filled one corner of the office. It had four chairs. The second was occupied by a man she assumed was her in- laws’ lawyer.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said brightly.