Ilona Andrews

“Hey, dickhead!" one of the other drivers yelled. "Get off the road!""This here is a Falcon Seven," the rider told him. "I can put a bolt through your windshield and pin you to your seat like a bug."A direct threat, huh? Okay. I pulled down my sunglasses a bit so the rider would see my eyes. "That's a nice crossbow."He glanced in my direction. He saw a friendly blond girl with a big smile and a light Texas accent and didn't get alarmed. "You've got what, a seventy-five-pound draw on it? Takes you about four seconds to reload?""Three," he said.I gave him my Order smile: sweet grin, hard eyes, reached over to my passenger seat, and pulled out my submachine gun. About twenty-seven inches long, the HK was my favorite toy for close-quarters combat. The rider's eyes went wide."This is an HK UMP submachine gun. Renowned for its stopping power and reliability. Cyclic rate of fire: eight hundred rounds per minute. That means I can empty this thirty-round clip into you in less than three seconds. At this range, I'll cut you in half." It wasn't strictly true but it sounded good. "You see what it says on the barrel?"On the barrel, pretty white letters spelled out PARTY STARTER. "You open your mouth again, and I'll get the party started."The rider clamped his jaws shut.”

“You don't cause problems. An unpiloted vampire causes problems. You cause catastrophes.”

“So how was it?" she asked. "Kissing Curran?""I can't let him kiss me again, because if he does, I'll sleep with him."Andrea blinked. "Well," she said finally, "At least you know where you stand.”

“Sophie raised her head. Light filtering through the trees dappled her face. “Hawk.”Charlotte looked up as well. A bird of prey soared above the treetops, circling around them.“It’s dead,” Sophie said. “George is guiding it. He is very powerful.”The realization washed over Charlotte in a cold gush of embarrassment. “Is George spying on Richard and me?”“Always,” Sophie said. “All those perfect manners are a sham. He spies on everyone and everything. Declan hasn’t been able to conduct a single business meeting in the past year without George’s knowing all the details. He does let go when you make love. He is a prude.”“‘Prude’ is a coarse word. He has a sense of tact,” Charlotte corrected before she caught herself.“A sense of tact,” Sophie repeated, tasting the words. “Thank you. The other one is somewhere around here, too.”“The other one?”Sophie surveyed the woods. “I can smell you, Jack!”“No, you can’t,” a distant voice answered”

“Curran scrutinized Mart’s face. “I can’t figure out if he wants to kill you or screw you.”“I’ll be glad to make the choice for him.”Curran looked back at me. “Why is it you always attract creeps?”“You tell me.” Ha! Walked right into that one, yes, he did.”

“You replaced me with a shaved poodle?”“He’s got mad skills.”Derek’s eyebrows crept up.“He can vomit and urinate at the same time and he doesn’t make fun of my car.”

“I will kill him.”“Erra’s eyebrows rose. “You’d have to go through me first.”I shrugged. “I have to do something for a warm-up.”She laughed softly. “That’s the spirit. I do think you might be my favorite niece.”

“Some people had attack dogs. Ghastek had attack lawyers.”

“As I walked back to civilization, I realized that for the first time in the six months I had known Curran, we had managed to have a conversation and part ways without wanting to kill each other. I found that fact deeply troubling.”

“I stopped the blade two inches before it touched Andrea’s neck. Because she was my best friend, and sticking knives into your best friend’s windpipe was generally considered to be a social faux pas.”

“We Draytons are many things: pirates, witches, rogues...but nobody ever accused us of being ungrateful. A family has to have standards. Even in the Edge.”

“Beautiful I would never be. Striking, that I could manage.”

“If you can't make it go away, wait it out.”

“Somewhere in that database my name sat in its own little niche, the name of a reject, undisciplined and worthless. Just the way I liked it.”

“I kept my hands firmly on the iron rail before me. Grabbing the weight bar and walloping the Beast Lord upside the head wouldn’t be the best diplomatic move.“I’m sorry, Your Majesty.” There. I was civil. It almost killed me.“Apology accepted.”“Will there be anything else?”Your Arrogance.”

“Something clicked in my brain. “I remember where I’ve seen you before. You’re Curran’s...”—lover, mistress, honey-bunny—“significant other.” Dear God, what could the Beast Lord’s concubine possibly want from me?”

“Dali blinked at me. "Would you mind making coffee while you're dancing? I smell it on the bottom shelf, either first or second jar on the left." I opened the first jar and looked inside. Coffee. The label said BORAX. "What's up with the labels?" Dali shrugged. "You're in the house of a cat whose job is to spy. He thinks he's clever. I'd be careful with the silverware drawer. There might be a bomb in it.”

“Is he a scumbag in training?” Richard glanced at the gunman. “At least have the decency to hold the gun properly, you fool. If you don’t know how, pass it to someone who does. I’m not going to suffer being shot at by anything less than a full- fledged lowlife. (Richard)”

“I have a serious question.""I will give a serious answer.""Can a god be killed?"The humor drained from Roman's face. "Well, that depends on if you're a pantheist or a Marxist.""What's the difference?""The first believes that divinity is the universe. The two are synonymous and nonexistent without each other. The second believes in anthropocentrism, seeing man in the center of the universe, and god as just an invention of human conscience. Of course, if you follow Nietzsche, you can kill God just by thinking about him.”

“We took a right at the fork, heading farther north. The charred houses continued. To the right, a large sign nailed to an old telephone post shouted DANGER in huge red letters. Underneath in crisp black letters was written:IM-1: Infectious Magic AreaDo Not EnterAuthorized Personnel OnlyA second smaller sign under the first one, written on a piece of plastic with permanent marker, read:Keep out, stupid.“We aren’t going to keep out, are we?” Ascanio asked.“No.”“Awesome.”

“I batted my eyelashes and did my best to appear dumb as a board”

“How is it that I could run into a gunfight against overwhelming odds and put myself between bullets and civilians, but I couldn't scrape together enough courage to speak to the one person who mattered the most to me?”

“I snapped the crossbow into the top of the mount, took a canvas bundle from the cart, and unrolled it. Crossbow bolts, tipped with the Galahad warheads.“This is my baby.” I petted the stock.“You have a strange relationship with your weapons,” Roman said.“You have no idea,” Raphael told him.“This from a man with a living staff and a man who once drove four hours both ways for a sword he then put on his wall,” I murmured.“It was an Angus Trim,” Raphael said.“It’s a sharpened strip of metal.”“You have an Angus Trim sword?” Kate’s eyes lit up.“Bought it at an estate auction,” Raphael said. “If we get out of this alive, you are invited to come to my house and play with it.”It was good that Curran wasn’t here and I was secure in our relationship, because that totally could be taken the wrong way.”

“Your favorite volhv showed up half an hour ago, complaining about his lack of sleep and stupid gods. He says he brought his Batman belt.”

“It’s never a good thing when the black volhv says “Uh-oh” and then runs for his life.”

“A rolled-up newspaper landed on my head and then on Jim’s. “None of that in my house!”Oh my gods. The alpha of Clan Cat just got smacked with a rolled-up newspaper. “Mom!”She pointed at me with the newspaper. “Do not shame me.”I clamped my mouth shut. When she pulled out the shame card, it was all over.”

“You want me to go back into that house protected by a magic sticky note?”“Don’t even start,” I told him. “It’s working. If it weren’t working, you couldn’t drag me into that place.”“What did you write on here? ‘Don’t die’?”“No, I wrote, ‘Don’t be an a-hole!’” I headed for the house.“On yours or mine?”“On yours.”“Well, in that case, your magic isn’t working. I’m still an asshole.”

“Look, he isn’t even concerned.”I poured the tea. “He’s concerned, Mother. He just doesn’t panic, because he’s in charge and if he panics, everybody else will panic.”“I can jog around the room pretending to scream if you would like,” Jim offered.”

“The way she sat now, leaning forward frowning, biting her pink bottom lip, her shirt dipping to reveal a hint of her cleavage... He wondered idly if he could get her to bend over a little farther..."Just what are you staring at, exactly?"Kadar snapped back to reality. "You. You've been thinking hard for the last five minutes. It's not good for you to strain your pretty little head like that. I'm waiting for the steam to shoot out of your ears to relieve the pressure on your brain.""Aha." Audrey glanced at Jack and George. "What you have here is a man who was caught gaping at my breasts, and now he's trying to cover it up with rudeness.”

“Audrey kept moving with practiced quickness, stepping over roots protruding over the trail and pushing ferns and branches out of her way. She kept a brisk pace, but Kaldar didn't mind. From his vantage point, he had an excellent view of her shapely butt. It was a butt that deserved some scrutiny."If you're waiting for my behind to do a trick, you're out of luck," Audrey called over her shoulder."How the hell did you even know?" Did she have eyes on the back of her head?"Woman's intuition," she told him."Aha, so it wouldn't be the fact that I stumbled twice in the last minute?""Not at all.”

“Sure, I didn't weigh a hundred and ten pounds, but my narrow waist let me bend and I could break a man's neck with my kick.”

“We need a bigger gun.”“We need a shower,” Raphael said.“Gun first. Shower later.”Ten minutes later I walked into the Order’s office. A group of knights standing in the hallway turned at my approach: Mauro, the huge Samoan knight; Tobias, as usual dapper; and Gene, the seasoned former Georgia Bureau of Investigations detective. They looked at me. The conversation died.My clothes were torn and bloody. Soot stained my skin. My hair stuck out in clumps caked with dirt and blood. The reek of a dead cat emanated from me in a foul cloud.I walked past them into the armory, opened the glass case, took Boom Baby out, grabbed a box of Silver Hawk cartridges, and walked out.Nobody said a thing.”

“I closed my eyes.“Are you okay?”“I’m tired. My knee is hurting again and I’m trying to teleport myself upstairs.”“Um, Kate, you can’t do that.”“I know. But I’m trying very hard. Let me know if I start fading?”

“Well, shit," Dobe said. "I guess you're familiar with the law. You hit it over the head, set its house on fire, and got its sister pregnant.”

“Bad days, good days, ‘I’ll cut you if you look at me the wrong way’ days. I’ll take them all.”

“Are you implying that our relationship is like a Spanish soap opera?” “I’m not implying. I’m saying it.”

“It’s my job to run after her.”“Without backup?”“I am the backup.”

“It wasn't real. I deluded myself. I had this aching need to be loved and it was screwing with my head. Sometimes, when you crave certain feelings, you’ll trick yourself into thinking the other person is something other than what he appears.”

“Someone pounded on the office door. Barabas moved to the door, slid aside the metal shutter covering the narrow spy window, and looked through it.“It’s your lover man.”“Barabas, open the damn door,” Raphael snarled.Barabas slid the shutter closed. “Do you want me to let him in?”“I’m thinking about it.”Barabas slid the shutter open. “She’s thinking about it.”

“You think this is some sort of comedy going on here?” Collins gave him his tough stare.A little red spark flared in Barabas’s eyes. “Excuse me.” He struck with preternatural quickness and yanked a five-foot snake from the counter, an inch away from Tsoi’s elbow. Tsoi jumped, clearing half the room in a single bound. The snake body flailed in my lawyer’s fist. Barabas jerked the snake to his mouth and bit its neck.“Jesus Christ!” Collins took a step back. Tsoi clamped her hand over her mouth.Barabas spat the head onto the counter. “Pit viper—my favorite. Where were we? Ah, yes. You were trying to intimidate me. I apologize for the interruption. Please, resume your staring.”

“The stairs ended. I wished I knew the jackass who’d made the staircase so short. I’d throw him down the damn steps so he could count them with his head.”

“Mahon's wife stared down at us. Her hands went to her hips. "Which one of you idiots wants to explain to me what the hell is going on?"With great effort I raised my arm and pointed in Mahon's general direction. "Him.”

“If I lost him here, to this idiotic fight, after I fought and guarded him for two weeks, after I cried and thought he was dying, I would find him in the afterlife and I would murder him again.”

“We need a barn or one of those storage areas for the Broken vehicles.""A garage?"He gave her a short nod. "A private, relatively remote location, with thick walls to dampen the sound and preferably a sturdy door I could bolt from the inside, keeping your grandmother, your brothers, and all other painfully annoying spectators out..."Rose began to laugh. A make-out bunker..."I'm glad you find our dilemma hilarious,”

“I mean to have you, Rose, you and all of your thorns. I'm a disagreeable and stubborn bastard, but I'm not a fool. You didn't really expect me to pass you up, did you?”

“And what causes orgasm in a man?” Kate Daniels, the sex-ed specialist. Kill me, somebody.”

“I don't trust tragedies much. It's easy to make a person sad by showing him something tragic. We all recognize when sad things happen: someone dies, someone loses a loved one, young love is crushed. It's much harder to make a man laugh-what's funny to one person isn't funny to another.”

“Did those nice church ladies come by again?" He nodded. "I asked them if a man died and then the woman remarried, and then the three of them met in heaven, would it be a sin for them to have a threesome, since they were all married in God's eye. And they decided they were late to be somewhere else.”

“At first glance you looked at Kate and thought “fighter,” maybe merc. Five inches taller than me, she was all muscle—well, and some boobs—but mostly muscle. She moved like a predator and when she got pissed off, she exhaled aggression, like hot breath on a winter evening. Still, men looked, until they saw her eyes. Kate’s eyes were crazy. It was that hidden-deep crazy that told you that you had no idea what the hell she would do next but whatever it was, the bad guys wouldn’t like it.”

“Kate stood by the door with her arms crossed.That was an anti-Curran pose. What the hell was the Beast Lord doing here?I padded to the door.“First, you didn’t come home.” Curran’s voice held zero humor. “Second, I’m told that my mate is lingering in Raphael’s house. There can’t be any good reason for you to be here.”“Are you spying on me, Your Furriness?” Kate asked.”