My jaw hung open.Hell doesn’t have a word for kindness either?!“I’m not making up words! I’m saying I was nice to him!”
Blank stares.
“Considerate?”
Blank stares.
“Empathetic?”
Nothing.
“Ugh!” I burst out. “I took a second to try tounderstandthis creature instead of hauling off and attacking him. Did it ever occur to you that the reason he didn’t seriously hurt any of you is because he didn’t want to in the first place? Not even when you were attacking and trying to kill him? What do you think that means?”
If possible, they looked even more dip-damn-dumbfounded.
“It means,” I said slowly, “that imps—or at least this one—is not a threat. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, he just wants to play. So I offered to play with him, and he let me pass... Do you see?” I prompted. “No cheating required.”
A thick, penetrating silence fell over the field. The guys stared at the imp as if for the first time since they came into this horrible world, they met someone who wasn’t an enemy.
“Nah,” Iarla dropped. “He’s lying through his rotting teeth. The only explanation is he’s fucking that nasty little thing, and No-Name’s been climbing in and getting some action from the back. Last I checked, cheating is punishable by expulsion in this shitpit, and there’s only one way to be expelled.” Iarla fixed on the patch stuck to my metallic skintight jacket. “Hold him down.”
He said that, but Iarla charged me himself—his magnificent wings sprouting from his back and readying to cut off all escape.
A shadow fell over me. I jumped to find a large, scarred, muscled back suddenly between me and Ravenscar.
“Rethink this move, son of a bird-fucker.” I’d never heard such menace in Tristan’s voice. Not even when he was beating Kazuya and his cronies to death. “Because you won’t survive putting a hand on him.”
“Hmm,” Sabrina hummed, speaking for the first time since this whole ordeal kicked off. “Protective of you, isn’t he? I wonder why.”
She loaded enough suggestion in her tone that I knew she was implying something negative, but I blushed like it was the opposite just the same. It had been a long time since a guy was protective of me. The last guy I was sorta seeing didn’t even lift his head from his phone when a customer smacked me on the ass and offered me a bigger tip if Imet him outside in the alley.
“Guys, please,” I cried, shooting out from behind Tristan. “There’s no need to fight! This is all a misunderstanding— And are you really just going to sit there?!” I screeched at Erlik, who at this point had conjured a lounge and was really going to town on the object stuck in his hoof. “Get up and do something!”
“Argh!” Iarla leaped off the ground, his powerful wings buffeting a gust of wind that nearly blew me off my feet. Ravenscar ripped a feather from his wings and before my very eyes, it grew, and grew, and grew—transforming from ashimmering, delicate thing into a lethal longsword with an ivory hilt, and a blade so honed, it looked like it could slit my throat just from being in the same room with me.
Murderous rage lit those icy cold eyes aflame as he flew across the distance, racing to slice through Tristan, and get to me.
The imp pointed at him.
A shadow fell over Ravenscar. My eyes didn’t get a chance to send the information to my brain before it all dumped on him—weighing down his wings and body, and slamming him to the ground under a pile of mud.
A horrible stench hit my nose and almost ejected my lunch from my stomach. Clapping my hand over my face, I gagged.Not mud! Definitely not mud!
Everything stopped.
Even Erlik stopped fussing with his hoof to wide-eyed, brows-raised gape at the lofty fae prince... buried under a mountain of manure.
“Haha!” someone guffawed, and the silence broke.
Loud, raucous, unhinged laughter echoed over the field. The demons fell on their knees clutching their chests. The werewolves howled. The vampires lost their cold, stoic masks as soft, hissing chuckles escaped their breathless lungs, and laughing loudest of all, was Erlik.
“Winner,” Erlik wheezed, pawing and stomping the ground. “Winner! The kiss-ass wins!”
The only ones not laughing were the slack-jawed fae and—
“Erugh!” Ravenscar bellowed—his head popping free and hitting the burning air. The shit-covered man took one look at his predicament, and snapped to me. “You.”
“That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” Tristan told me out of the corner of his mouth. “But you’re going to want to run now.”
