I Married the Third Horseman (Paranormal Romance and Divorce) (14 page)

I tried to put some spine, some legitimate
annoyance into my voice.

“Not until I’m done, darn it! You keep
distracting me, and I won’t be able to put on my mascara!”

Another blow. This one dimpled the door’s
center, sent cracks scurrying to the edges. Raphael’s voice had
definitely slipped over to the pissed side of angry.

“To Hades with your ‘mascara!’ We leave,
now!”

I took a deep breath, like I was about to
dive into water of unknown depths. Cold water, at that. I turned
away from the door. Crouched on the floor. With shaking fingers, I
ripped away the compact’s rubber bands.

From behind me, an animal roar and a final
blow. A shower of wood chips. Hot breath on the back of my
neck.

The shadow of something huge looming over
me.

I felt a touch–

–and then I held up my arms…

I flipped the compact open, exposing the
mirror.

A horrible shriek. This time, I was pretty
sure that it didn’t come from me.

Pretty sure.

The shriek made me flinch.

And the damned compact tumbled out of my
hands. A clatter as it hit the bathroom floor. No sound of breaking
glass, though.

I stayed crouched where I was. Eyes held
tightly shut. I listened to my breath whistling out of my nostrils
and my heart whamming in my ears for a bit.

Worst soundtrack
ever
, let me tell
you.

I pictured the bright yellow Post-It that had
been on the compact. Kept repeating it to myself as I got to my
feet, moving at a pace that I think a glacier might have
envied.

“One use only,” I recited. “One use only.
Can’t hurt anyone anymore.”

I opened my eyes. The bathroom looked just
the same. The compact lay at my feet, mirror open, undamaged, and
completely ordinary looking.

Then I turned around. Let out a gasp.

Let’s just say that Rodin would’ve been
impressed with the quality of statues that we moderns were putting
out.

Raphael stood in the bathroom doorway, his
gray flesh and red armor turned to a fine grade of blue-veined
marble. He had one arm held high over his head, as if drawing back
in shock or surprise. And the dismayed expression on his face
simply underlined those emotions.

I had just stopped War in his tracks. Pretty
sweet, if you ask me.

Yeah, pardon the pun, therapy buddy, but I
just
rocked
his world.

I shouldn’t have jinxed myself right then and
there, but I did.

Just as I smiled a self-congratulatory grin,
a
POP!
echoed in the confined of the bathroom.

A hairline crack appeared over Raphael’s left
eyebrow. A horrifying wriggle of flesh. A
crackle
, not
unlike the unwrapping of the toaster pastry. A flake of white
marble the size of my pinkie nail tumbled to the floor.

Another
POP!
, and a second flake fell
from the man’s upraised arm.

A feeling close to despair washed over me. If
hitting a guy with Medusa’s last friggin’ glare didn’t stop him in
his tracks, then it wasn’t exactly wise to hang around and
gloat.

And from the looks of it, I didn’t have much
time.

I grabbed the last item that I’d gotten from
Circe, the silver tube, and squeezed past Raphael’s bulk. A quick
glance out the window confirmed that Raphael’s demonic henchmen
were still dutifully on guard. No easy way out there.

A louder, more sustained
crunch
came
from the bathroom door. Like something flexing its muscles, trying
to shed a thick layer of stone. My mouth went bone dry as I
listened. I had even less time than I originally thought.

I shoved the parchment holder into a jacket
pocket. Yes, it was metal, but it was only five inches long. Maybe
I could use it to deck one of the demons out there. You know, if I
could get him to bend down in front of me.

In a near-panic, I grabbed my suitcase,
tossed it on the bed, and threw it open. Clothes and toiletries
spilled out in a heap. I grabbed a small pair of scissors I had in
my nail kit, considered, and threw it aside. Just because it would
get me thrown off an airplane didn’t mean it was going to be useful
in this case.

I pulled out a small rectangular lump from a
side compartment. My old digital camera, suitable for still photos
but not much else. Mom had gotten it for me about year before she
died, and to humor her, I’d kept it.

I switched the camera on and checked the
power level. A single green bar out of four lit up on the screen. A
thought struck me. Still enough to work the flash.

But was it worth a try?

A heavy
grunt
from the statuesque form
behind me. Little
tics
now, of pebbles and chunks of marble
hitting the bathroom tile.

Looked like it was, whether I liked it or
not.

Camera in hand, I went to the room’s front
door. Grabbed the knob. The metal felt cold, slick under my palm.
It might have been the night air, but I knew better. Knew that it
was my sweat.

Freeze Frame.

Okay, I think everyone’s seen the part that’s
coming up in their favorite popcorn flick. The part where our hero
(or heroine, thank you very much) has the odds stacked so far
against them, that they have to do something.
Anything
. And,
preferably, it has to be big. And audience-pleasing.

I don’t think you’ll approve what I did next.
At all. You might think it was rash. Stupid. Suicidal.

But I can tell you this: when your back is up
against the wall, when your ship is sinking and the shark is coming
for you, or the bomb’s going to blow, or your brother-in-law is
going to go Biblical in his rage when he gets free…you’re open to
dumb ideas.

So I flung the door open and charged out into
the parking lot. Legs pumping, heart following suit. And screaming
my head off. The dumb idea I had was: if I could get Rafael’s demon
bodyguard to look at me, I could hit them with the flashbulb, blind
them for a few seconds while I got into my car and peeled rubber
out the parking lot.

Look, I
said
it was a dumb idea.

So the action scene started as I blazed out
of the room. Starring Cassie the Blonde, in the last Charge of the
Light-Haired Brigade. The plan worked up to this point: all the
mazikkim in the front lot turned to look at the madwoman bearing
down on them.

I pressed the flash button.

And each of the vaunted ‘demons of harm’
dissolved into greasy black smoke.

I looked back down at the cheap digital
camera with renewed respect. A cry of alarm, like a crow’s call,
and another half-dozen of the demons appeared along the motel’s
roof. Two more appeared from out of the bushes by the manager’s
office and headed for me, loping across the parking lot.

That’s about when I lost it.

“Come on, then!” I shouted, as I ran for my
car. I used the camera like I was spraying bullets from a machine
gun. A flash forward, then to each side, one behind me as I reached
the driver’s side and flung the door open.

Thanks to some miracle, the ignition key
slipped into place just right, and I gunned the car’s motor. From
inside my motel room came the sound of an explosion. Not of
gunpowder or dynamite going off. More like ice as it calved off
from a glacier.

By now, all the noise had finally woken some
of the motel guests from their early-morning slumber. Faces
appeared in newly lit windows. Screams of horror as still more war
demons came swarming over and around the sides of the motel.

Camera still clutched in one palm, I clumsily
wrenched the steering wheel around to the right. The low-slung
Porsche went over the sidewalk curb with horrific jolt that slammed
my head against the cabin roof.

The Porsche’s roof declined to cushion the
blow to my skull.

My teeth rattled.

I saw stars, moons, and planets for a
moment.

Then I shook my head, straightened the car
out and accelerated down the town’s main street, looking
desperately for the closest freeway on-ramp.

Out of nowhere, one of Raphael’s demons
leaped from its perch and onto my car’s hood. Nightmarish claws on
his feet dug into the hood with a metallic squeal. He raised his
spiked club like a baseball bat, aimed for my head, and swung with
all his might.

I didn’t even have long enough to scream,
this time. The windshield spiderwebbed into a web of shattered
glass. I could just make out the demon’s preparation for a second
swing. This one would cave in the windshield and take my face out
in the process.

War’s boys played for keeps. Of course, by
now, so did I.

I stamped on my brakes. Porsches aren’t the
most comfortable things to drive cross-country in, but they do two
things well: accelerate and stop on a dime.

Even with his claws, the demon went flying.
He lost the grip on his club and landed in the road ahead of me. I
crushed the accelerator underfoot. The mazikkim barely had time to
get up before I mowed him down with a meaty
squelch
.

Okay, before we all celebrate Cassie the
Demon Killer, there’s something you ought to know.

Fact is, even though my automotive Princess
weighed close to one-and-a-half tons, it’s very light for a car.
The Boxster variant I drove even touts how the Germans made her the
sveltest Porsche ever built.

So as soon as I turned Raphael’s goon into
demonic street pizza, the car jounced to one side. She went into a
spin. I hung on to the steering wheel for dear life as the world
around me went into a blur.

A shattering
CRASH
as the passenger
side door crumpled in. The motor coughed and died. The camera had
gone flying, and I couldn’t find it. I got out of the car, shaking
and trembling, one ankle sending jolts of pain up my leg.

The Porsche had smacked into one of the
town’s kitschy period lamp posts. Said post was now dark, as the
car had practically wrenched the thing off its base. But the moon
was out, and the remaining lamps gave out plenty of ambient
light.

Not that I cared to see what was coming. I
looked back towards the motel, perhaps a half-mile distant. I
leaned against the broken frame of my car, heart sinking. Smell of
burnt plastic, rubber, hot asphalt.

A dozen yards down the road lay the body of
the demon I’d transmogrified into road kill. Tomorrow’s road crews
would have a fun time trying to explain this body to the cleanup
crew lead. But further out…

Raphael, his armor now blazing with a scarlet
glow, mounted a black horse and charged in my direction. The
not-too-distant hoofbeats of his horse were matched by the
tic-tic
sounds of his war demons’ nails against the
asphalt.

In the sky above and to the left of the
motel, a horrific swarm of sheydu made a black, furry cloud that
descended towards the town. I spotted Uri riding atop one of the
wolf-bat things.

Above and to the right, silhouetted against
the coin-bright moon, came my husband. He wore his death-cloak form
this time, and he rode astride his white stallion, Bane. A demonic
light shone from Bane’s equine head, and translucent, wasp-like
wings hummed as he conveyed his rider through the air.

Now
how much would you want to be in
this hopeless situation, therapy buddy? Ah, but
don’t answer
yet!
Because we’ve got three brothers here now. Why not throw
in the fourth, make it a matched set?

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end
as I felt the air around me grow charged. As if an electrical storm
had brewed up around me. The lamp at the end of the broken post
sputtered and glowed for a moment as power surged through the air,
making my skin tingle.