Power Mage 3 Page 10

  He kissed her neck softly and watched goosebumps rise along her forearms and thighs.

  “Thank you, handsome,” she whispered. “Do you like my sweet, innocent side?”

  “I love all of you, darlin. All your sides. You.”

  “I love you, too,” Remi said, twisting halfway around his lap. She pulled his head down, pressing his face into her incredible cleavage and filling his nostrils afresh with the lovely aroma, which he realized was part perfume, part her. Then she leaned close and nipped his ear. “We are going to eat you alive tonight, handsome.”

  “I like the way you think,” Brawley said, hard as steel again. But then Remi was pulling free of his lap.

  He grabbed at her, but she twisted from his grip with Carnal speed that lifted the spinning sundress all the way to her armpits, giving him a quick flash of her bare breasts.

  “Get your fine ass back here,” Brawley said.

  “Nope,” Remi laughed, and as she retreated down the hallway, her tattoos bloomed to colorful life along the magnificent canvas of her firm flesh.

  These women had him riled up like a buck in rut.

  They were doing it on purpose, of course. Teasing him, having a little fun. Well, soon enough, he’d show them what came of that game.

  For a second, he thought the show was over, but then he heard the unmistakable clicking of high heels on hardwood floors approaching from down the hall. With a slip and skitter, Callie stumbled into the room, tapping along with choppy little steps as she tried to regain her balance. She turned bright red. “Sorry,” she said with a nervous smile. “I’ve never worn high heels before.”

  Brawley said nothing. He just took a pull off his beer and looked at the young girl standing there in the clothes he’d bought her.

  Yes, she was wearing heels. Red stilettos. He was aware of this. Technically.

  But his eyes were too busy to do more than glance at her feet.

  Above the shoes, red stockings clad Callie’s slender legs. Thin straps ran from the top of these sheer stockings to a lacy red garter belt, which complimented the remainder of her clothing: a lacy red bra and matching red panties that stretched alluringly over the puffy notch of her wide thigh gap.

  Her body was small and lean with flat abs and a tiny waist and prominent hip bones. Her breasts were small and looked very firm as she struggled to maintain her balance.

  “Um,” Callie said. “Do you like it?”

  She bit her lip and stared down at him with a red face and hopeful eyes. She was trembling, he realized, and once more didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands, which transformed once more into a pair of anxious butterflies fluttering before her lower abdomen.

  “I do,” he said, leaning forward with his hands on his thighs.

  “They said to show you everything,” Callie said, and turned.

  The Brazilian cut panties covered very little of her ass, which turned out to be a shocker. His impression of Callie had been straight skin and bones, but her cheeks were as tight and round as ripe cherries. There was something incredibly erotic in the contrast between her spindly frame and this sweet, sexy ass. Brawley’s erection started throbbing like a toothache.

  Callie turned back around, and suddenly, words tumbled from her in a rush, as if she feared she might otherwise lose her courage and leave them unspoken. “Thank you so much, Brawley. Thank you for saving me and for taking me with you and treating me so nicely and for buying me food and clothes and protecting me.”

  Callie hurried forward and knelt on the floor in front of him. Her movements were very graceful. Her tiny hands spread his legs, and she shimmied forward between his thighs. She blinked up at him, tears glistening in her huge, amber eyes.

  “I will never stop thanking you, Brawley. Not ever. I would do anything for you. You and the girls are all I have in the world, and they’re being so nice to me, and you are so nice and strong and just really, really awesome.” She laughed nervously and turned bright red again. “Please let me stay with you.”

  “I’m not kicking you out anytime soon, darlin,” he said, patting her bare shoulder. Her skin was smooth and warm, the lean muscle beneath catlike in its spare firmness.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Her long lashes glistened with tears of gratitude. She exhaled a shuddering breath, obviously relieved, and laid her head in his lap like it was a pillow. But when her cheek pressed in his hardness, Callie gasped and jerked with surprise, her huge eyes bulging.

  Brawley did nothing, letting her have free rein, and waited to see what she would do.

  Without a word, the cat girl settled her cheek once more onto his enormous erection. Her eyes glanced fleetingly into his. Then she closed her eyes and sighed, a small smile coming onto her pretty face.

  Brawley reached down and ran a hand through her many-colored locks. Her fine hair slid through his thick fingers, soft as cat’s fur.

  Callie nuzzled him like a cat, rubbing her cheek against his throbbing length, and purred with contentedness.

  The non-Carnal portion of Brawley’s mind hollered in the distance, trying to get his attention.

  She’s only eighteen, that part of him protested. And she’s led a strange and sheltered life.

  But Brawley, full of Carnal lust, barely registered these complaints or those that followed.

  She’s vulnerable. Wait and see how she feels about things down the road.

  But his Carnal side called bullshit on that. He wanted this girl. Now.

  You don’t even know her, the rational part of him argued. And bonding is forever.

  This last thought got through because bonding would impact not only Brawley and Callie but also the other girls. He had to be careful, had to be sure.

  Piss on that, his Carnal side growled. You’re a reckless soul, and you want this girl. The women can sort it all out. Besides, if they didn’t want this, why would they get you all horned up then send Callie out here in fuck-me heels and lingerie?

  And he had to admit his Carnal side had a point.

  He plunged his hand once more into Callie’s hair. This time, he gathered a fistful and held tight.

  Then Callie started to lick.

  Her eyes were still closed, and her cheek was still pressed into his aching manhood. Her tongue pulled across his swollen shaft, rasping across the denim in a slow, rhythmic, catlike licking. Her little face bobbed slightly with each swipe of her tongue, and the purring intensified in her bare throat. The action was pure feline affection.

  It was such a strange action, he had to wonder. Was she making a move? Or was her inner cat coming out, unconsciously showing warmth?

  After several seconds, her ministrations dampened a dark stripe across the lap of his jeans, and his whole length from balls to tip was swollen and aching.

  One of Callie’s eyelids parted slightly, and she stared up at him, her iris huge. “Brawley? Can I… unzip your pants? I’ve never even kissed a boy before, but I want you to put your thing in my mouth. Please?”

  A faint voice at the back of his head started harping but was instantly drowned out by his Carnal side, which roared, If a beautiful woman asks you to put your dick in her mouth, do it.

  Callie’s pretty face stared hopefully up at him. He pushed it gently aside and grabbed his zipper.

  But before he could unzip his jeans, his danger sense fired and the world outside exploded in a roar of approaching thunder.

  10

  Another day, another dime, Larry Donovan thought, glancing out at the bright, sunny day beyond the partially boarded-over windows of his shop.

  He had hung a big, bright sign on the plywood out front announcing, YES, WE ARE OPEN!

  But it hadn’t done much good. Because the damaged store front, the gorgeous weather, or just plain old shit luck was keeping customers away again today.

  No sooner had this thought occurred to him, however, than a vehicle pulled in. An old, yellow panel truck spotted with body putty, it reminded Larry of an overripe banana
on wheels.

  The driver’s side door opened. The driver, a short guy, maybe Mexican and maybe not, climbed out. The man moved slowly. He was built like a thumb and wore a baggy, black-and-white bowling shirt, Wayfarer shades, and a little fedora. His fat cheeks were beardless, but below his bulbous nose, he had a thick, black mustache and soul patch.

  Musician, Larry thought, and figured the guy used the panel truck to cart the band’s equipment from gig to gig.

  And lo and behold, before closing his door, the guy pulled out a black guitar case. Then he shut the door and disappeared behind Larry’s shot-out window, lugging his case with him.

  Go figure, Larry thought. He’d been excited, thinking he was finally getting his first customer of the day, but instead, some failing musician was going door to door, trying to book gigs in all the wrong places.

  Larry hitched his pants and prepared to tell this fella too bad, so sad, but gun buyers weren’t looking to be serenaded by a blues band.

  The bell tinkled as the door opened, and the guy came in. He looked at Larry with no expression on his face, set his guitar case on the floor, and turned around.

  For a second, Larry thought the guy was leaving. “Can I help you, sir?” he called, because you never knew. This guy might be here to buy something after all. Maybe he was looking to pawn the guitar in trade. Besides, it didn’t cost Larry a dime to be nice to people.

  If the guy heard Larry, he didn’t show it. Instead, he fiddled with the door.

  When he turned back around and bent to grab the case, Larry’s blood ran cold.

  The man had flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED.

  Larry’s heart hiccupped. The son of a bitch was looking to rob him.

  But Larry was ready. He’d been on point ever since that weird-ass event the other night. He remembered only vague details, and his security cams had been wiped, but whatever happened had left him edgy.

  So as the man crouched down and started unsnapping the guitar case, Larry grabbed the stubby Mossberg from beneath the counter, put it to his shoulder and said, “Hold it right there, mister. Put your hands in the air.”

  The little guy stopped fiddling with the case and put his pudgy hands into the air.

  Good, Larry thought. He had no urge to shoot somebody and didn’t feel like adding further damage and one hell of a big blood stain to his already banged-up store.

  “That’s it,” Larry said. “Stand up now. Nice and easy. That’s it, buddy.”

  The little guy complied, muttering as he rose. He turned to face Larry, hands in the air, muttering in a language Larry had never heard.

  Meanwhile, the stubby little weirdo stared at him, his face as blank as a high-stakes poker player.

  That’s when Larry understood what was going on.

  Drugs.

  And not just the hobbit leaf. This guy was lost on the hard stuff.

  Hence the slack face and muttered nonsense. Hell, there might even be an honest-to-goodness guitar in the case, this joker so high, he was planning to rob Larry with an acoustic.

  The guy coughed and started making weird hissing sounds.

  Yup, drugs.

  And then the man’s fingers started twitching over his head. Not just twitching randomly, though. His fingers twisted with a purpose, forming odd little symbols as if the guy was delivering an alibi in sign language.

  Larry knew what the symbols were, too.

  Gang signs.

  This guy was a gangbanger, tweaking hard.

  In other words, a major headache. No telling what this guy might do.

  Larry’s intuition surprised him then, shrieking, Shoot him! Shoot him now before it’s too late!

  Which was an absurd notion, a suggestion that, if followed, would ruin Larry’s life and land him in prison for a long, long time.

  So he ignored his intuition.

  It was time to call the damn cops. Which sucked. Because after the last couple of days, he was sick to death of cops with their endless questions and suspicious eyes, grilling him for hours about something he really couldn’t remember.

  Sidestepping his way down the counter toward his phone, Larry lowered the shotgun to his hip, keeping it trained on the weirdo. No chance of missing at this range with a short-barreled 12 gauge.

  But then the lights started flickering, and just like that it was cold. Not just cold. Freezing.

  Larry stopped in his tracks, badly confused.

  To his right, there was a sound like a rusty zipper dragging open. A blast of icy air howled into him, filling his nostrils with a strange, sharp, and extremely unsettling odor that was acidic and animalistic all at once.

  Larry whipped in that direction. A squawk of terror leapt unbidden from his lungs.

  Ten feet away stood a monster.

  The thing was seven or eight feet tall. Two pairs of short, stubby arms jutted from its thick, blue-scaled, serpentine body. The lower set of arms terminated in four-fingered hands tipped with chitinous black talons. The upper arms ended in massive, black lobster claws.

  The thing’s head was a gigantic eyeball, a luminous blue sphere with a pure white iris the size of a dinner plate. At the base of the eye, a pair of enormous black mandibles clacked menacingly.

  Beneath these black scimitars, at the union of the snakelike body and the eyeball head, what looked like an asshole packed with bristly hairs cycled open and shut, dilating and contracting, dilating and contracting.

  What the thing was and where it had come from, Larry didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

  Behind the beast, reality had… torn. That was the only word for what Larry was seeing.

  The far end of his store had disappeared, replaced by a shimmering gash through which Larry could see another world. A nightmare world of midnight hues. A sheer cliff of black stone scabbed with ice and obscured by swirling snow. A stand of stunted and skeletal trees, black as obsidian, writhed alongside a crevasse exhaling blue steam and what sounded to Larry like the lamentation of penitents in hell.

  Larry was so stunned that by the time he registered the monster’s movement, the thing had covered half the distance between them, lurching toward Larry with a weird, unearthly hitching, its mandibles and claws clacking loudly.

  Larry fired the shotgun, racked the pump, and fired again. The first shot smashed a hole in the thing’s scaly chest, raining luminescent white goo onto the carpet. The second shot burst the eye, most of which leapt away in a spray of white pulp.

  The monster dropped without so much as a click.

  Larry racked the pump, expelling the spent casing, and stared for a second at the strange rift and shimmering world beyond. Seeing no immediate threats, he turned to face the weird little guy who’d started all this.

  As he turned, however, he realized with an explosion of panic that the stubby man had used this opportunity to get close. As in right fucking beside him.

  Larry brought the Mossberg around, but the guy was too close. The barrel thumped into the man’s arm. The guy stared up at Larry through those dark Wayfarers, his expression blank as a corpse, and hissed another tangle of weird nonsense as he poked a finger into Larry’s chest.

  Wild with panic, Larry tried to jerk away but couldn’t. His mind raged, but he was paralyzed. From the neck down, his body was as rigid as a stone statue.

  Only statues didn’t feel temperatures, and Larry’s entire body ached with the sudden cold.

  “Who were they?” the short man asked.

  “Who do you mean?” Larry asked, his voice a terrified warble.

  “The ones who killed the FPI agents,” the short man said, his voice calm and heavily accented.

  “I don’t know,” Larry said. “I can’t remember.”

  The man stared at him for a second. “It’s okay. You will.”

  “All right,” Larry said, latching desperately onto the man’s confidence. “I will remember, and I will tell you.”

  Saying nothing, the man turned and walked slowly back around the
counter. He had an odd, bouncing gate. He walked on the balls of his feet, like the world’s shortest, roundest sprinter. His upper torso was oddly erect, and his arms swung lifelessly at his sides like slabs of dead meat.

  “I don’t have much in the register,” Larry called, “but it’s all yours. I don’t care. I don’t even care.”

  The man said nothing, crouching down to pull items from within the battered black case.

  Whimpering, Larry rolled his eyes in that direction, watching in confused terror as the man withdrew an odd assortment of items from the battered case.

  A sack of sugar. A bloated wine skin. A pack of bright sidewalk chalk. A Ziploc bag of pale sticks. Several short, thick, black cylinders. A bundle of thin, multicolored filaments bound by a twist of leather.

  Larry tried to think, but terror had reduced him to little more than a raving commentator with an audience of one: himself.

  And so, as the stubby man removed a long, slender blade from within the baggy confines of his bowling shirt, slit open the paper sack, and started tossing handfuls of white crystals upon the floor, Larry’s mind could only deliver the play-by-play.

  He’s spreading sugar on the floor.

  Then the man unbundled the filaments and spread them atop the sugar.

  Looks like hair, Larry thought. Human hair.

  The man carried the plastic bag into the center of the mess and stood there for several seconds, muttering in his strange language. Then he unzipped the bag and turned in a slow circle, shaking loose the pale sticks seemingly at random.

  Not sticks, Larry thought. Bones. Dried bones stripped of flesh.

  He hoped to hell those were chicken bones.

  The man studied the position of the bones, then squatted down and swept a finger across the sugar, etching a line between two bones.

  The man crab-walked from crouch to crouch, tracing elaborate symbols in the spilled sugar then retrieved the bloated wine skin.

  Muttering and hissing indecipherable words that made Larry’s head hurt, the man uncapped the skin, held its nozzle close to the ground, and squeezed out a thin stream of dark liquid, slowly tracing the lines he had furrowed between the bones.