Michael let out a low groan. A hangover throbbed behind his eyes as he squinted at the communal guard quarters, where the security team’s party had been held. With Zia and Harlan away visiting her family overseas for the holiday, most of the security team had been left to their own devices.
It was a mistake.
Praying his pain pill would kick in soon, Michael kicked aside alcoholic synth bottles strewn across the floor. Despite the fact that demons had impeccable night vision, he squinted at the shapes scattered around the room. He was pretty sure they were men, but in the state they were all in, one couldn’t be sure.
The blackout blinds had come down automatically, shielding the vampires from the blinding sunlight bouncing off the snow outside. That was good, because not a single one of them hadbeen sober enough to remember to pull them down before they passed out.
If Atticus had been there, he would’ve remembered. He was the responsible one. But he and his little sister had gone with Harlan and Zia, which meant he’d deputized Michael as The One In Charge.
And that was why he was up while the rest of them were slobbering on couch pillows or laying face down beneath the pool table. He would’ve loved to join them — after emptying both his stomach and his bladder — but he could not,would notlet Atticus come back to find vomit on the floor, Damien’s knife collection embedded in various walls, and Archie’s bare gargoyle ass stuck in the air.
WhyArchie was nude, Michael couldn’t rightly recall. He’d lost track of things sometime around his third bottle of tequila and fifth catastrophic loss in poker. If he had to guess, it had something to do with demonstrating traditional highland gargoyle combat techniques, but he had no intention of asking.
Shuffling stiffly toward where he vaguely recalled the light switch to be, Michael closed his eyes and braced himself.
Don’t throw up,he silently coached himself.You’ll have to clean it. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up…
Girding himself, he skimmed his hand along the smooth plaster wall until he found the switch. After a moment of hesitation, he flipped on the light.
“Turn off the fuckinglight!”Damien yowled.
Shoving his face into the couch cushions, the normally collected vampire curled into himself like a sad little shrimp. When he put on silk pajamas and why, Michael really couldn’t say. He was pretty sure they didn’t actually belong to Damien, though.
Eyes watering with the glare, Michael rasped, “We’ve got an hour until sunset. Two hours until the boss is back. We have to get our shit right or Atticus is gonna beat our asses.”
“You just wanna impress Adriana,” Archie muttered, Scottish accent thicker than normal, from his sprawled pose on the bean bag chair. His nearly indestructible wings came up to cover his head, shielding him from the light. “Look at this demon. He’ssoclean. Soresponsible.Michael and Adriana sitting in a?—”
The back of his neck heated with a vengeance. It was a deeply unfortunate truth that at one point early on in his employment, he’d had a very small, very brief crush on Atticus’s beautiful little sister. It died a quick death when he realized that Adriana had no interest in him and that Atticus would, with zero hesitation, cut off both his hands if he ever tried to make a move.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t exactly skilled at being subtle, and his fumbling attempts to flirt had been witnessed by the other men. Despite the fact that it’d been a decade since he had feelings for her, they liked to bring it up at every opportunity.
The only way to get them to shut up, he discovered, was violence.
Michael picked up the nearest empty tequila bottle from the floor and chucked it at the gargoyle’s bare ass. It exploded into a shower of glass with a tremendous noise that made every hung over man in the room cry out.
Stomping over to the pool table, he grabbed Tarrance by the ankle and yanked him out from beneath it. “Up,” he grunted, releasing the whining shifter with a light kick to his side.
A chorus of complaints arose from around the room, but they cut off abruptly when he growled, “If you don’t care about Atticus seeing your vomit on the carpet, then think about Zia. You wantherto see your ass, Archie?”
The gargoyle’s wings tensed. In a smaller voice, he replied, “No.”
“No’s right, because the boss would skin you alive.”
“She said she was bringing gifts,” Damien mumbled into the cushions. “She said that, right?”
Several muttered affirmatives went around the room. Michael eyed the vampire hanging over the loft’s bannister when he ordered, “Come on, boys. We can’t let our girl see us like this.”
“All right, all right,” Tarrance wheezed as he climbed onto his hands and knees. Swiping a half-full bottle of vodka from the floor, he raised it into the air and proclaimed, “For our girl! And Burden, I guess.”
Snatching the bottle out of his hand just before it touched his lips, Michael sighed, “I think we did enough celebrating.”
Tarrance raised his head and squinted red-rimmed eyes at the disaster that was their communal space. Gagging a little, he replied, “You’re probably right.”
Princess Astrid Lights the Flame
They were fighting again.As usual, it was her fault.
Astrid knew she shouldn’t listen, but that was one rule she was no good at following.
