Ilona Andrews - Hex Appeal

“You’re right,” I said. “You’re always right. You’re worth living for, inasmuch as I can. But … I can’t go on, I can’t just walk out of here and let her get away with what she did to me.”

“You don’t have to,” said Sil.

She raised one hand and morphed it into a glowing energy weapon. She shot Mother Macabre in the face and blew her head apart. I let go of the headless body, and it crumpled to the floor, still twitching. I swept blood and brains from my face and shoulder with one hand, then nodded briefly to Sil. She’s always been able to do the things I can’t do. She swept forward, discarding her human shape, melting into a wave of metallic silver that swept right over me. She wrapped herself around me like a suit of armour, covering me from head to foot. Embracing me, and protecting me, all at once. And, together, we walked out of the burning building.

Outside, Walker was waiting for us, watching the building burn. He barely twitched an eyebrow as Sil peeled herself off me, and resumed her human shape. She stood beside me as Silicon Lily, while I nodded politely to Walker. He tipped his bowler hat to both of us.

“Mother Macabre was getting a little too big for her boots,” Walker said easily. “But I couldn’t go after her, because of her … connections. So I pointed you at her. Well done, Dead Boy. Excellent work.”

“How long have you known?” I said. “How long have you known the truth about me, and Krauss, and Mother Macabre?”

“I know everything,” said Walker. “Remember?”

He smiled again, very politely, and walked off. Sil and I turned away, to watch the Voodoo Lounge burn.

“What am I going to do now, for my special pills and potions?” I said.

“There’s always someone,” said Sil. “This is the Nightside.”

“True,” I said. “If you’re going to be damned, this is a pretty good place for it.” I looked at her for a long moment. “Even with my pills, it takes more than an everyday woman to light the fires in my dead flesh.”

“Good thing I’m not an everyday woman, then,” said Silicon Lily. “I am a pleasure droid; and I do love my work! And it’s good to know I can even raise the dead…”

“How can I love you?” I said. “When I don’t have a heart any more?”

“I don’t have a heart either,” said Sil. “Doesn’t matter. Love comes from the soul.”

“Do we have souls?” I said.

She put her arms around me. “What do you think?”

It’s not easy, having a sex life when you’re dead. But it is possible.

“How do you feel?” said Sil.

“I feel … good,” I said.

Author’s Bio:

Simon was born in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England where he still resides. He obtained an M.A. in Modern English and American Literature from Leicester University, studied history and has a combined Humanities degree. His writing career started in 1973, when he was a student in London. He’s the author of the bestselling SF/Space Opera series: The Deathstalker Saga, a series of eight books, of which he himself admits that it kind of got out of hand, since it was supposed to be three 500-page books … His website may be found at http://simonrgreen.co.uk.

I’d been out all night shooting trolls with salt—straight through the heart; it’s the only thing that kills them. So when the knock came on my motel-room door before I’d even had a chance to wash their ashes out of my hair, I should have ignored it.

Except no one knew I was in Minnesota, which made me nervous. Though why, I have no idea. Demons rarely knock.

However, when I peered through the peephole and saw a wide expanse of nothing, I whirled to the right expecting, the imminent arrival of a shotgun-sized hole through the door. Not that a shotgun filled with anything but rowan or iced steel would kill me, but getting shot hurt.

Every single damn time.

The knock came again—louder, more insistent. Housekeeping or management would announce themselves. They also wouldn’t stand out of sight of the peephole. Only someone who didn’t want me to see them would. Unless it was someone I couldn’t see.

I didn’t like that scenario any better that the first one. But since I couldn’t stay where I was, listening, hiding, practically cringing—it wasn’t my style—I flung open the door and spewed fairy dust from my fingertips, even as my mind formed the words reveal and freeze.

No demon materialized in front of me. That was good. Then someone coughed, and I jerked my head to the left.

“This is bad.”

His face was covered in silvery particles that stuck to his long, dark lashes like goo. His ebony hair appeared to have been dusted with snow. His face sparkled as if he’d been doused in glitter.

He should be frozen like a gargoyle. Instead, he lifted one hand and wiped at the mess, staring first at his palm, then lifting his dark eyes to mine.

A shudder ran through me. I’d seen those eyes before.

Every night in my dreams for the last few thousand years.

“What are you?” he asked.

“What are you ?” I returned.

My hands shook. I stuck them behind my back so I wouldn’t have to explain why. I wasn’t sure I could. I’d been dreaming of him for so long, I’d begun to think he wasn’t real, that maybe what I’d seen wouldn’t happen, that what I’d done wouldn’t matter. I should have known better.

“Name’s Sanducci,” he said. “Jimmy.”

I noticed he hadn’t really answered my question, but then I hadn’t answered his either.

I might have dreamed of him until I knew his face, and his body, even better than I knew my own, but I’d never learned his name or figured out what, exactly, he was.

Despite being tall, at least six feet of rangy muscle, and owning eyes that were haunted with things he would much, much rather forget, he seemed young.

Of course, to someone like me, Methuselah was a toddler. Or at least he had been when I’d met him. By the time the old guy expired, right before the flood, he’d been wrinkled, white, and bent like a question mark, while I’d still looked exactly as I did now—blond, petite, annoyingly perky, and forever twenty-one.

“How old are you?” I asked.

Jimmy’s chin came up. “Old enough.”

“For what?”

“I was sent to meet another DK.”

“Another?” I got that shiver again. “You’re a DK?”

DK. Short for demon killer.

I’m not sure why I was surprised. In my dreams of Jimmy Sanducci, he’d fought demons of many kinds, and they’d killed him in many, many ways. Subsequent dreams revealed that his death tipped the scales in that eternal war between good and evil. Without this man fighting on the side of good, evil began to win. I’d have promised anything to avoid that. Even before I’d started having the dreams of him and me together, the ones where I loved him.

“Are you?” he asked, and at my blank expression, continued. “A DK?”

I nodded. “Summer Bartholomew.”

“She said I’d find you here, and that we should—”

“She?” I murmured, and then I understood. Who else would be able to track where I was but—“Ruthie.”

“She’s my seer.”

Mine too. And she knew that I worked alone. I especially could not work with him. That, however, she didn’t know.

“We’re supposed to—” I held up my hand, and Jimmy flinched. I guess he didn’t want to get socked in the face with fairy dust again.

When the dust hadn’t worked on him, I should have known right away what he was. My magic doesn’t apply to those on an errand of mercy. Since saving humanity from the demon horde was the life of a DK, twenty-four/seven, my enchanted dust was useless on them.