Ilona Andrews - Hex Appeal

The creature that used to be Linda Sobanto burst through the doorway, a boiling cloud of black, streaked with violent scarlet. The cloud churned, and a woman’s face congealed from its depth. She opened her mouth. Sobanto took a step back, his hands raised before him. The cloud lunged …

And howled in fury.

Siroun twisted her knife, turning it all the way around Sobanto’s neck. The resistance against her blade was so slight, she barely felt it.

A thick stream of blood slid across the blade to drip on the floor. Sobanto opened his mouth. Blood gushed. Siroun withdrew the blade. He stayed upright for another moment and crumpled to the floor.

The entity screamed. The crimson within her flared and streaked apart, ripping the darkness into pieces. The darkness folded on itself, sucked into a tiny point, and vanished. Quiet reigned.

Adam crashed to the floor.

She crouched by him and brushed the blue hair from his face.

“We had no claim,” he murmured.

“I know,” she said, and wiped a smudge of blood from his lips. “Rest now. Let your body heal. Once the wound closes, I will get you out of here.”

“Why did you kill him?”

“Linda made a bargain: her body for the life of her husband. The transfer would not be complete until the creature that took her form killed Sobanto. If it took his life, it would no longer be a cloud, Adam. It would be an old god made flesh. It wouldn’t harm me because of what I am. But it would kill you.”

She leaned over him and kissed him gently on the forehead. “I couldn’t let it kill you.” After all, you’re all I have.

Author’s Bio:

Ilona Andrews is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing team of Andrew and Ilona Gordon. They reside in Oregon with their two children, three dogs, and a cat. They’ve coauthored two series, the bestselling urban fantasy of Kate Daniels and the romantic urban fantasy of The Edge. Enjoy reading more about them at www.ilona-andrews.com.

The campus police officer folded his hands and stared at me from across the table. “Coffee?”

“What flavor is it?” I asked.

He was in his forties, a big, solid man with bags under his calm, wary eyes, and his name tag read DEAN. “It’s coffee-flavored coffee.”

“No mocha?”

“Fuck mocha.”

“Thank God,” I said. “Black.”

Officer Dean gave me hot black coffee in a paper cup, and I sipped at it gratefully. I was almost done shivering. It just came in intermittent bursts now. The old wool blanket Dean had given me was more gesture than cure.

“Am I under arrest?” I asked him.

Officer Dean moved his shoulders in what could have been a shrug. “That’s what we’re going to talk about.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“Maybe,” he said in a slow, rural drawl, “you could explain to me why I found you in the middle of an orgy.”

“Well,” I said, “if you’re going to be in an orgy, the middle is the best spot, isn’t it.”

He made a thoughtful sound. “Maybe you could explain why there was a car on the fourth floor of the dorm.”

“Classic college prank,” I said.

He grunted. “Usually when that happens, it hasn’t made big holes in the exterior wall.”

“Someone was avoiding the cliché?” I asked.

He looked at me for a moment, and said, “What about all the blood?”

“There were no injuries, were there?”

“No,” he said.

“Then who cares? Some film student probably watched Carrie too many times.”

Officer Dean tapped his pencil’s eraser on the tabletop. It was the most agitated thing I’d seen him do. “Six separate calls in the past three hours with a Bigfoot sighting on campus. Bigfoot. What do you know about that?”

“Well, kids these days, with their Internets and their video games and their iPods. Who knows what they thought they saw.”

Officer Dean put down his pencil. He looked at me, and said, calmly, “My job is to protect a bunch of kids with access to every means of self-destruction known to man from not only the criminal element but themselves. I got chemistry students who can make their own meth, Ecstasy, and LSD. I got ROTC kids with access to automatic weapons and explosives. I got enough alcohol going through here on a weekly basis to float a battleship. I got a thriving trade in recreational drugs. I got lives to protect.”

“Sounds tiring.”

“About to get tired of you,” he said. “Start giving it to me straight.”

“Or you’ll arrest me?” I asked.

“No,” Dean said. “I bounce your face off my knuckles for a while. Then I ask again.”

“Isn’t that unprofessional conduct?”

“Fuck conduct,” Dean said. “I got kids to look after.”

I sipped the coffee some more. Now that the shivers had begun to subside, I finally felt the knotted muscles in my belly begin to relax. I slowly settled back into my chair. Dean hadn’t blustered or tried to intimidate me in any way. He wasn’t trying to scare me into talking. He was just telling me how it was going to be. And he drank his coffee old-school.

I kinda liked the guy.

“You aren’t going to believe me,” I said.

“I don’t much,” he said. “Try me.”

“Okay,” I said. “My name is Harry Dresden. I’m a professional wizard.”

Officer Dean pursed his lips. Then he leaned forward slightly and listened.

The client wanted me to meet him at a site in the Ouachita Mountains in eastern Oklahoma. Looking at them, you might not realize they were mountains, they’re so old. They’ve had millions of years of wear and tear on them, and they’ve been ground down to nubs. The site used to be on an Indian reservation, but they don’t call them reservations anymore. They’re Tribal Statistical Areas now.

I showed my letter and my ID to a guy in a pickup, who just happened to pull up next to me for a friendly chat at a lonely stop sign on a winding back road. I don’t know what the tribe called his office, but I recognized a guardian when I saw one. He read the letter and waved me through in an even friendlier manner than he had used when he approached me. It’s nice to be welcomed somewhere, once in a while.

I parked at the spot indicated on the map and hiked a good mile and a half into the hills, taking a heavy backpack with me. I found a pleasant spot to set up camp. The mid-October weather was crisp, but I had a good sleeping bag and would be comfortable as long as it didn’t start raining. I dug a fire pit and ringed it in stones, built a modest fire out of fallen limbs, and laid out my sleeping bag on a foam camp pad. By the time it got dark, I was well into preparing the dinner I’d brought with me. The scent of foil-wrapped potatoes baking in coals blended with that of the steaks I had spitted and roasting over the fire.

Can I cook a camp meal or what?

Bigfoot showed up half an hour after sunset.

One minute, I was alone. The next, he simply stepped out into view. He was huge. Not huge like a big person, but huge like a horse, with that same sense of raw animal power and mass. He was nine feet tall at least and probably tipped the scales at well over six hundred pounds. His powerful, wide-shouldered body was covered in long, dark brown hair. Even though he stood in plain sight in my firelight, I could barely see the buckskin bag he had slung over one shoulder and across his chest, the hair was so long.

“Strength of a River in His Shoulders,” I said. “You’re welcome at my fire.”

“Wizard Dresden,” River Shoulders rumbled. “It is good to see you.” He took a couple of long steps and hunkered down opposite the fire from me. “Man. That smells good.”