“I need something to draw a hellgate with.” She looked around. “I don’t suppose you still have a piece of chalk, do you?” She started patting around his pants pockets.
It took all of three seconds for him to get hard. “Little…over to the right.”
She followed his instructions until she palmed the bulge in his pants, and then she gasped and jerked back. “That is not chalk, Raum!”
“It isn’t? Better reach in and find out for sure.”
“Now is not the time for jokes,” she hissed, but she was definitely blushing. She stepped back, grabbed his arm, and slung it over her shoulder. “Just come with me, and don’t pass out again. We’ll have to use blood.”
Whose blood?His head throbbed from the aftereffects of Murmur’s venom, and his arms still ached from being chained, making it hard to focus. He let her lead him out of the cell, into the long tunnel, but his brain still wasn’t entirely with the program.
Neither was his body, apparently. A wave of lightheadedness suddenly crashed over him, and his vision tunneled. He stumbled into Sunshine, who tripped, and they both hit the ground.
They ended up slumped against the wall in a tangle of limbs, which seemed hilarious, so he laughed.
Sunshine stared at him like he’d grown a second head. “I’ve never seen you— You are not okay!”
“I’m fine. It’s just funny.” He stopped laughing anyway and marveled again at how captivating her eyes were. No wonder he’d been obsessed with her from the moment he saw her. He hadn’t stood a chance when she’d come after him in the club.
“Nothing about this is funny!” Those eyes weren’t full of seduction now, sadly. “We have to hurry.” Scrambling to her feet, she tried to haul him up by the arm. “Whyare you so heavy!”
He sagged in her grip. “Use your angelic strength, baby.”
“Raum, you have to focus.”
“I am focused…on how incredibly fine you are.” He reached over to feel her up, but she swatted his hand away. He let her pull him to his feet and then steadied himself with a hand on the wall when the world started spinning again.
He felt like he needed to sleep for a week, and his eyes kept trying to close of their own accord. He still wasn’t even sure why Sunshine was here, how she’d found him, or where they were supposed to be going.
“Wait. Shit.” He forced his brain to work. “Did you get the book?” He assumed she wouldn’t have come down here to get him if she hadn’t.
“I found it, yes.”
“So that’s it? You’re done?” Why did he feel such a crushing sense of disappointment?
“Not until we get out of here.”
“Where is the book? Is it here?” He looked around. As if he’d even be able to see a book right now with his vision so blurry.
“I’ll explain everything once we get back to Earth. There isn’t time now.”
He shrugged mentally. She wouldn’t be willing to walk out of Murmur’s lair if she hadn’t found what she needed. Still, something about this whole thing struck him as too easy.
All he’d had to do was get his ass captured and drugged for Sunshine to get her book? He supposed the amulets would’ve done most of the work getting her past the wards, but still. Where was the book anyway, if she had it?
He tried to think, but it just made his head pound, and in the end, he trusted Sunshine to take care of herself. She said she found the book, so he believed her.
He let her lead him down the tunnel until they came upon a pile of bodies. He blinked at the sight. Two demons had their throats slit and knife wounds in their eyeballs, and the other two’s heads were facing the wrong way. All four had been stabbed in the chest repeatedly.
“Did you do this?”
“Yes, and now I need to use their blood to draw the hellgate. Just stay there, and don’t pass out again.” She pushed him against the wall to prop him up like he couldn’t stand on his own—a fair assumption—and then went over to the mangled demons.
“There aren’t exactly any paintbrushes around here,” she mumbled. “I’ll just have to use my hand, I suppose. How revolting.”
He watched in disbelief as she bent over one and thendippedher fingers into the blood seeping out of his grisly neck wound. Hand dripping, she quickly moved over to a clear spot on the floor and began finger painting the hellgate sigil.
Where was the Sunshine that had balked at killing the cannibal demon? And why was it so hot seeing her covered in blood, knowing she’d gone on a killing spree to get to him?
