Kim Harrison - Dates From Hell

The guard’s hand closed around the scroll. Even as my lips were parting to shout a warning to Marsten, the paper burst into flame. The guard swung the fiery torch at Marsten, who was already in mid-leap, coming straight at him.

The scroll caught Marsten in the side of the face, and he fell back. The guard dropped the paper, now nearly ash, and dove for Marsten, his good hand going to Marsten’s throat. Marsten drilled his fist into the guard’s stomach. As the guard fell, he grabbed Marsten’s arm, and Marsten yanked away, but I could see the guard’s scorched handprint on his white sleeve.

It was then, as the two men launched into a full supernatural strength versus fire brawl, that I snapped out of my chaos intoxication and realized that I, too, had a weapon—a loaded gun lying, forgotten, less than twenty feet away.

So I left my hiding place. Instead of dashing across the open room to the guard’s gun, I crept along the shadows, moving from exhibit to exhibit. While I’ll admit I was worried about the guard seeing me and deciding I made an easier target, I was even more worried about Marsten seeing me out of my hidey-hole and being, if not concerned, at least distracted.

Whether Marsten could be distracted was another question. He fought with a single-minded purpose of someone who’s done a lot of it. Not what I would have expected. But was I surprised? No. I’d seen that look in his eyes as the civilized skin sloughed away, and I hoped never to be on the receiving end of it again.

As the two men fought, I circled around the outside. The gun had slid under a scale model of Pompeii. I managed to get behind the low table, then stretched out on my stomach. I reached into the narrow opening until my shoulder jammed against it, then swept my hand back and forth, feeling nothing but gum wrappers and dust.

I peered under the display table. In the dim emergency lighting, I could see the gun, its barrel pointed toward me, still inches from my fingertips. I wriggled and stretched and twisted and finally brushed the gun’s barrel. Another wiggle, and I got my index finger into the lip of the barrel. Not the safest thing to do with a loaded gun, I’m sure, but I managed to tug it forward an inch or two, enough to grab it from a safer angle and pull it out.

As my hand slid around the grip, I envisioned myself leaping from behind the table, gun trained on the guard, giving Marsten the kind of distraction he could use to get the upper hand.

I crouched, steadied the gun, then jumped up—

Marsten was sitting beside the guard’s prone body, surveying the burn damage to his own shirt. He looked over at me. I was poised Dirty Harry style, gun drawn, hair wild, still drowning in the oversized tux jacket. His lips twitched.

“I, uh, have the gun.”

“So I see.”

“And I see you have the situation, uh, under control. So I’ll just…”

I let the sentence trail off as I lowered the gun and moved from behind the table, ignoring his barely stifled laughter.

“If you can stand guard, I’ll hide this one,” he said as I approached.

I looked down at the dead guard, and pushed back the initial stab of “did we really need to kill him?” regret and doubt. This had long passed the point of “just knock him out” solutions. We already had knocked this guard out, and handcuffed him, and he’d still come after us, ready to kill. A solid justification, but still, if I had leaped up from behind that table, what if I’d needed to do more than distract him? Could I have pulled the trigger?

You’ve been carrying a gun for a year, and you don’t know whether you could have fired it? What did you think it was? A fashion accessory?

“Hope?”

Still crouched beside the body, Marsten touched my leg, gently prodding me back to reality.

“If you are not up to it—” he began.

“Guard duty. Got it.”

The burning scroll hadn’t triggered any firealarms, nor had the grunts and punches of combat been loud enough to bring partygoers running. As Marsten stowed the dead guard, I concentrated on both exits, looking, sensing, and listening. I caught a supernatural vibe just as Marsten looked over.

“Footsteps,” he said. “Supernatural?”

I nodded. “Are they coming—?”

“This way,” he said. “From the direction we did.”

I glanced toward the far exit but knew without asking that Marsten had no intention of fleeing. Only Tristan was left, and when he realized he’d lost both his guards, he wouldn’t walk away. He’d call in reinforcements.

“Hide back where you were. Keep the gun ready but—”

His eyes narrowed as he turned to track the approaching footsteps.

“More than one set,” he murmured. “Probably partygoers. Can you tell?”

I concentrated, but my heart was pounding, reminding me with each rib-jangling beat that those footsteps were getting closer, and I didn’t have time to dawdle. My powers caved under the pressure, and I couldn’t even pick up one vibe anymore.

“It doesn’t matter,” Marsten whispered when I told him. “We’ll see them soon enough.”

The last word was leaving his lips as Tristan came into view, flanked by what could only be two additional guards. Marsten let out an oath, biting it off mid-syllable. He propelled me back to our original hiding spot between the stelae. This time, when we heard footsteps into the room, Marsten didn’t move. One opponent was fine, two maybe, but three at once? Not if we didn’t have to.

As they passed, Tristan took his cell phone from his ear and scowled.

“Russell still not answering?” one of the guards said.

Tristan shook his head. “I’ll try Mike. See if he can go look for Russell.”

Marsten and I looked at one another, then at the spot where Marsten had hidden Mike’s body—less than three feet from us. As Tristan finished dialing, Marsten tensed and I fumbled to get the gun from my pocket, then leaned out to see Tristan as he kept walking, phone to his ear. Seconds ticked past. He stabbed the disconnect button.

“Vibrate,” Marsten whispered.

That made sense—that they’d have their phones set to vibrate. Nothing blows your cover faster than The Ride of the Valkyrie resounding through a supposedly off-limits hall.

When the three were gone, we headed back the other way, across the main hall and into the “biodiversity” wing, a.k.a. the stuffed animal gallery. On the other side was the ceramics exhibit. Halfway across the biodiversity room, we caught strains of a lively monologue coming from the ceramics gallery. The midnight behind-the-scenes tour.

Marsten frowned at the direction of the voices, as if debating joining them and taking refuge in numbers. That depended on how likely he thought Tristan was to avoid public confrontation. After a moment, he shook his head and prodded me toward the narrow opening between a pillar and the African savanna diorama.

When I stepped into the gap, he tugged me out, then backed in and crouched, sitting on a fan box. He motioned for me to turn around and back onto his lap. As I did, I knew why he’d picked the lower position—we’d be hidden from casual viewers by a nearby meerkat display.

As I shifted onto his lap, his arms went around me, holding me steady…or that’s the excuse I let him have. We settled in for what could be a long wait. As things went quiet, I struggled to hold back all the thoughts I didn’t want to think, all the regrets and self-recriminations I’d deal with later. My heart raced, filling the void by indulging in replays of the running, the fighting, those delicious spurts of chaos that only sent my heart tripping faster still.

As I luxuriated in the memories, other visions crept in: a vulture circling overhead, an ocean of long, dry grass whispering, a breeze bringing the heavenly scent of musk, my stomach growling, tail twitching in anticipation—