Ilona Andrews: Hex Appeal

The bodyguard raised a knife with a yellow blade that looked as if it were carved from an old bone.

Siroun looked at him. “You need to turn now.”

He leaped across the room. They clashed and danced across the chamber, preternaturally fast, slashing, parrying, kicking, and finding purchase on the sheer walls.

Pain clenched Adam’s thigh, ripping a deep, guttural moan from him. His body had finally overcome the poison. The cut was deep—the blade had grazed the bone.

Adam began dragging himself toward the spell shielding Sobanto. Fifty feet. He pulled, gripping the slick floor with his fingers, ignoring the jolts of acute pain rocking his thigh.

For the space of a breath, Siroun landed on the floor next to him, barely long enough for him to register a bloody gash across her forearm, and leaped away again, sailing across the chamber. He crawled by the drops of her blood, fixated on the blue beam of light.

Only fifteen feet.

Fourteen.

He saw the tattooed bodyguard loom before him. The man’s skin burst, and a monstrosity exploded out, huge, scaled, armed with enormous crocodilian jaws and a massive reptilian tail.

A werereptile. That was impossible. Reptiles were cold-blooded. No shapeshifter could overcome that.

The werecrocodile laughed at him, the feral grin of a predator displaying nightmarish fangs. And then Siroun crashed into the bodyguard. The yellow knife struck twice, biting deep into her side. They broke free and halted six feet apart.

The shapeshifter’s yellow eyes focused on crimson drenching Siroun’s side. “You’re finished,” he said, his voice a deep roar disfigured by his jaws.

Siroun smiled. A pale red flush crept on her cheeks and spread, flooding her neck, diving under her clothes, reaching all the way to her fingertips. Heat bathed Adam. “Not yet,” she whispered, and charged, sweeping the bodyguard from the floor like a gale.

Adam focused on the blue beam. His entire side was on fire, and he clenched his teeth, clutching on to consciousness. He could feel the soft welcoming darkness hovering on the edge of his senses, ready to swallow him whole.

His fingers touched the stone. A burning pain laced his skin, as if he’d stuck his hand into boiling water. Adam clenched the stone.

The room swayed. He was losing it.

He snarled and fed his magic into his hand. Ice sleeked his skin, welcoming, soothing. Adam strained, using every bit of his strength, and yanked the stone free.

The ward blinked and vanished.

A hoarse scream ripped through the chamber. Across the floor, a body fell from the ceiling, but Siroun was faster still, and she landed a fraction of a heartbeat before it hit the ground, in time to catch the falling man. The body in her arms boiled and collapsed back into its human form.

Gingerly, she carried the prone form, as if he were a child, and lowered the bodyguard by Adam’s feet. The shapeshifter’s face lost its feral edge. His tattoos bled colored ink in dark rivulets, the images draining slowly from his skin.

Siroun kissed her fingertips and touched the man’s forehead. Her eyes were luminescent and warm. Not a trace of bloodlust remained.

“You fought well,” she whispered.

In the chair, John Sobanto drew a long, shuddering breath. His eyelashes trembled. Sobanto’s eyes snapped open. “You turned off the field and broke the wards,” he said. “She is coming.”

The lawyer was looking at Adam. She looked, too. He was bleeding. His big hands trembled. Breaking the ward had taken too much magic. His body didn’t have enough strength to regenerate. She had to get him out of there.

“Who’s coming?” Adam said. “Your wife?”

“She isn’t my wife anymore,” Sobanto whispered.

A sharp shriek rolled through the silence. Siroun felt the knot of foul magic at the far end of the house rip apart. A presence spilled out, the force of its fury lashing her like a splash of boiling lead. Siroun recoiled, snarling.

The entity moved toward them, slicing through the walls and doors, churning with magic and malevolence so dark she had to fight to keep clear. There was nothing they could do to stop it.

She spun to Adam. “We don’t have much time. Kill him now.”

“We can’t. We don’t know if he is guilty.”

They had to follow the protocol. The case was no longer cut-and-dried. She had to buy them time. Siroun swallowed. “Hurry, Adam.”

He turned to Sobanto.

She thrust her mind into the path of the entity and struck. Her blow did little damage, but it was too enraged to ignore her. Siroun fled, zigzagging back and forth, and the presence followed, chasing the shadow of her mind.

“What did you see in the hallway?” Adam asked.

Sobanto swallowed. “Our son. I saw her hang our son.”

“Did you attack her?”

“Yes. I grabbed her by her throat. I tried … I meant to pull her off him. I didn’t know. She died. I killed her. I found a note. It said she sacrificed herself and her body would now belong to a god. It said I would pay for everything.”

The entity lashed at Siroun. She barely avoided it. “Why?” she snarled. “Why does she hate you?”

“I don’t know. We had a good marriage, considering the circumstances.”

“The circumstances?”

“Hurry, Adam.” She forced the words out. “I cannot elude her much longer.”

Sobanto hesitated.

“We have little time,” Adam told him.

The lawyer closed his eyes. “I bought her. From the Blessings of the Night coven.”

The wraith bit into Siroun’s defenses. Sharp needles of pain stabbed her lungs; for a moment, she could not breathe. She ripped herself free.

“You bought her?” Adam asked.

“They needed a lawyer. They were facing criminal charges, and they had no money. I needed somebody to analyze the behavioral patterns of the jury and my opponents. We made a deal.”

“Why did you marry her?”

“I wanted my children to have what she had. I’m deficient. I don’t relate to people, not the way she could. And she was beautiful.”

He had bought her, like a purebred dog.

“She chose the juries for you,” Adam said. “She monitored them through the trial, and you claimed the credit.”

“I didn’t abuse her!” Desperation rang in Sobanto’s voice. “I denied her nothing. Best clothes, best jewelry, the best of everything.”

“Why didn’t she just leave?” Adam asked.

“She was bound to me by the coven.”

The entity clamped her. Pain ripped through Siroun. Emotions twisted her into a knot, echoes of a woman lost. At once she was lonely, longing, caught between the need to please and revulsion, bitter, empty, watching life passing by, unable to escape, growing tired, growing old, growing stupid, knowing she was not loved, would never be loved, would never be free …

She cried out and tore herself free again. She could barely stand. “He’s telling the truth,” she said.

“Why does she hate him?”

“Because he did not love her. He is a sociopath, Adam. He’s incapable of giving her what she wanted. She thought when their son was born, he would feel something, but he doesn’t. End it. We must kill him, or the thing that has her body will rip him to pieces. It’s almost here.”

“Kill me,” Sobanto said suddenly. “I want to die. I just don’t want her to have me.”

Adam raised his chin, his face, blanched of all blood, strangely proud, almost regal. “We have no claim on this man. He served as an instrument in his wife’s suicide. On behalf of the POM Insurance, I, Adjuster Adam Talbot, resign all rights to retribution, as specified by Part 23, paragraph 7 of the POM policy manual.”

Sobanto’s face finally showed emotion: stark, all-consuming fear.