“...half Jinn I’ve transported, but the experience is different for each person. Some people,” he said, giving Myra a smoldering look that could melt iron, “find it rather pleasurable.”
Xtelle made a very juvenile “ooooh,” sound, and loudly whispered: “He means sex. Kinky, dirty, you-bet-your-moss-agate-they-did-it-in-a-rock sex.”
“Thanks for that,” Myra said.
Bathin gave her a wink. “Everyone take a deep breath,” he said. “One, two, three.”
The world slipped, turned inside out. Then the world went blurry, trapped behind yellow windows with panes of green.
“Moss agate,” Xtelle said, like she’d just stepped in a pile of slugs. “So pedestrian.”
“And beautiful,” Jean said. “This is gorgeous.”
“Of course you’d like it,” Xtelle said. “It suits your…uncultured style.”
“I watched you eat weeds the other day,” Jean said.
Xtelle scoffed. “That was an act. For the mystery. Of which I was the star. I had to pretend I was an innocent pony, about to have her first love affair.”
“Wow,” Myra said. “That was not at all your part in the play.”
“Well, I had to improvise, didn’t I? Create a back story? Become the character? And after Pan, the darling, visited to give me his notes—if you know what I mean—I realized it was the juicy, really sink-your-teeth-into-it-and-leave-a-mark role I was born to play.”
“Not sure what that had to do with you licking the dirt and muttering, ‘nibble nibble,’ when you didn’t think the tourists were looking,” Hogan said.
Jean laughed and gave him a high five. “I knew you’d be good for this quest.”
“It’s not a quest,” I said. “We areliterallywalking into hell. Do you think this is a joke?”
“Walking?” Bathin said. “We’re transporting. Hopping rocks to hell.”
“Would you all focus?” I said. “This isn’t a game.” My fear of being too late to save Ryder mortared together with anger and a thin slurry of panic. I couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t any air.
“Look at me, Delaney,” Old Rossi said, as he pressed one finger under my chin.
I was sucking thin air through my clenched teeth, drowning in a sudden spike of fear.
“Ah,” he said.
Then his arms were around me, and the light of the moss agate, the sounds of voices, the echo of laughter were gone.
“Listen to me, Delaney Reed,” Rossi said, his voice flowing like lightning-stitched moonlight. “You are not fighting this war alone. You are not fighting for Ryder alone. We are here. Your family. Your friends. The gods are watching.
“The lands we will enter are filled with deception. Know our hearts. Know Ryder’s heart, and your own. We are connected in love, and that cannot be broken.
“We will all walk out of the demon realm together. With Ryder at our side.”
The panic settled and cooled. It was still there, but didn’t feel like a wild thing burning all the oxygen out of my lungs. I didn’t know what Rossi had done, but it helped.
“Okay,” I said, meeting his dark gaze. “Yes. All of us together.”
“Excellent. Now,” he said, “let’s go find your man.”
Light returned, sound, sensation. No one seemed to have noticed our exchange. It was as if we’d spent several minutes inside a split second.
Vampires had lots of abilities, and an old vamp like Rossi could apparently bend time if he needed to.
“…it isn’t a game,” Myra said. “Wearefocused on getting Ryder. That’s why we’re here. This is just jitters.”
