Kiss at Your Own Risk (3 page)

“Dad!” She leapt to her feet, all too aware nothing short of death would drag her dad away from work. Was it her mom? Her stomach congealed and she gripped the edge of the table. “
What’s wrong?
”

Jarvis let the sword drop to his side as the schnoodle neared them. “Is she serious? A little tiny dog?” He held out his boot. “Come on, Cujo. I dare you to try to get those little teeth through my hide.”

“It’s not a dog.” Blaine had been one of the test subjects when the witch was perfecting this particular creation. The first time, it had ripped half the skin from his body.

The second time, he’d blown it up.

And then she’d sicced forty of those puppies on him at once. That day had seriously challenged his love for four-legged creatures of any kind.

“It only
looks
like a dog.” Blaine forced the fire to spread over his body. Burned like the acid the spiders had dripped on him last week. He hated arachnids.

The schnoodle launched itself into the air from a good thirty yards away, aiming straight for Jarvis.

Jarvis snorted with amusement. “Bring it on, killer.” He rested the tip of his sword on the floor and leaned on the handle. “Yeah, so scary.”

Blaine folded his arms and leaned against the wall. He raised his brows at Nigel. “Just watch. This’ll be good.”

“You’d think the karate kid would’ve learned not to underestimate her by now.” Nigel lifted his palms, and smoking black blades slid out of his fingertips. Fiery hot branding irons that cauterized as they cut. Handy for surgery. Not so fun to have one fishing around inside your belly. And Blaine knew that for a fact because the witch often forced them to torture each other. Her primary goal had been to test their offensive and defensive talents, but she’d also wanted them to hate each other. But there was nothing like stabbing your buddy in the heart to make guys bond. Women never got that.

Jarvis sheathed his sword. “It’s a freaking Chihuahua, guys. You’ve been watching too many horror movies—” The pooch’s head suddenly elongated, its tail exploded with spikes, and barbed wings burst out of its back. Its eyes turned rose red and acid dripped from the tips of its claws. Curly fur gave way to scales, and its little pearly whites were replaced with glistening jaws of salivating saber teeth. And then it exploded forward, like a bat out of hell, right at Jarvis’s throat. Jarvis dove out of the way, avoiding decapitation by about a millimeter. “What the hell’s that?”

“Nice reaction time. Didn’t realize you could move that fast.” Blaine tracked the assault weapon screeching through the air. “Designer monster. Cross-breed a schnoodle with a shapeshifting dragon and a demon runt, and you get the perfect weapon for invading receptions at megamansions and spying on the blueblood families who prefer their dogs to be one of a kind.” The schnoodemgon rose up high, hovering in midair above the men. It was too close for Blaine to use a blue ball. Even he wouldn’t survive its blast.

The beat of its wings was so loud it sounded like an oncoming locust invasion, and the wind made Nigel’s locks flutter. The damn things came halfway down his ass. Hauling those chick magnets around all day was half the reason the man was built like a linebacker.

“It’s part hummingbird too. Look at the sucker hover.” Jarvis was holding his sword in an offensive position, but not striking for first blood. Like the rest of them, Jarvis was too seasoned to launch a premature attack at an unfamiliar assailant before they knew what it was capable of. “What’s it doing?”

“Trying to decide who to eat first.” The mutt was getting larger, its wingspan almost up to ten feet already. Blaine’s lungs tightened, and he coughed to try to clear his chest. Then his flames began to flicker, and he realized what was happening. “It’s feeding off the oxygen in the air.” Last time he’d had the pleasure of meeting the creature, it hadn’t had that talent. Clearly, their warden had tweaked it with the goal of taking on Blaine.

For a psychotic bitch, she was impressive as hell.

Tweety Bird let out a sudden shriek and dove straight for Blaine.

He grinned. About time he could fight without having some overly controlling chick pulling his strings.

He waited. And waited. And waited. The instant his assailant entered his auric field, he triggered his flames. The explosion was instant, deafening. The creature shrieked, and the detonation catapulted it into the wall. It exploded into a pile of black dirt instantly upon impact.

“Well, I think it’s safe to say that wasn’t a schnoodle.” Jarvis’s sword was on fire from absorbing the energy from Blaine’s explosion, but Jarvis and Nigel were intact. Blaine’s team was well-versed in self-defense when around one of Blaine’s ignitions, and they’d been quick to position themselves behind Jarvis’s sword and its handy ability to absorb energy blasts. “Nice shot.”

The scrabble of more feet filled the air, like thousands of fingernails on a blackboard.

Jarvis jerked his sword up. “That sounds like a lot. You think that’s a lot?”

“Nah.” Blaine’s fingers closed around his flaming balls. One sphere would take out a large chunk of their assailants, but he didn’t dare use it until he knew where Christian was. It grated at him to be rendered weaponless, and he was going to shove one of the damn balls down Christian’s throat when he finally showed up. “Maybe just a few million of them. Nothing we can’t handle.” As a unit, they began moving toward the exit.

“Christian.” It wasn’t a question by Nigel. It was a statement.

“I know.” Once they went through the doorway and sealed it, Christian would be left behind. He’d face the witch’s wrath on his own, and she’d be more than a little cranky after losing her three favorite toys. Christian was Blaine’s number one. They’d arrived the same night and bonded instantly against the brutality of the world they’d been thrust into. “Come on, Christian,” he whispered. “Get over here.”

“He ordered us to go without him if he didn’t show.” Jarvis moved toward the stone arch, Nigel on his heels.

“We wait.” Blaine faced the hallway, not bothering to see if his team obeyed him. If they bailed, they bailed. He was prepared to go it alone. He always was. Yeah, he trusted them, but when the stakes were high enough, promises meant nothing. The only one he’d really trust was Christian, and the softie was off chasing skirts. Because Christian would never leave anyone behind. And damn if Blaine would let him die for that.

The sound of toenails shifted into the beat of hundreds of wings. Shadows darkened the hallway, and Nigel swore under his breath. “It sounds like quite the celebration. You think we’re invited?”

“I’ve always wanted to party with schnoodles.” Blaine set himself on fire again, and this time he spread it to his whole body. He walked several yards into the hall.

Nigel was right behind him. “I’ve got your back.”

“I’m in,” Jarvis said.

Blaine couldn’t stop from shooting them a surprised look when they came up beside him. “No shit?”

Nigel rolled his eyes. “Clean it up, Trio. At some point you’ve got to ditch the ‘everyone abandons me’ shtick and accept that we’re not your mama.”

Blaine shot a fireball at Jarvis’s face. “I figured you’d be too scared to stand up to the bad guys.”

“Hah.” Jarvis snorted and flicked the sparkler away with his sword. “I just chugged a quadruple espresso. I gotta fight something. Might as well be the vicious hellion who’s tortured us for the last couple of centuries.”

Blaine grinned. “You need to ditch the addiction, buddy. Bad for your complexion.”

Jarvis rubbed his hand over his leathery jaw. “Like a baby’s bottom. The chicks dig it.”

“Well, then, let’s get out of here and find some to fondle you.” Blaine extended his flames up to the ceiling and out to the walls and down to the floor, creating an impenetrable wall of white-hot fire. “Sure hope you boys have been practicing your battle skills.”

Thousands of monsters exploded out of the darkness before anyone could reply. Blaine reinforced his shield as the first winged fangbanger crashed into it. It shrieked and disintegrated on impact. Another came right after it. Then two more.

“Well, damn.” Nigel shook the schnoodemgon ashes out of his hair as he let Blaine take the hits. “You’re like one of those mosquito zappers. You should rent yourself out for garden weddings.”

“I’ll think about it. There’s something really appealing about the idea of becoming a lawn ornament.” Blaine’s muscles began to tremble, and he knew the schnoodemgons were draining the air of oxygen. Since he was fifty percent fire, he’d be more sensitive to oxygen deprivation than the normal human-turned-mutant. He’d never felt weak before. Good to find out he didn’t particularly like it. “So, yeah, I’m thinking Angelica bred these creatures specially to attack us.”

“She figured we were going to make a break.” Using Blaine as a shield, Nigel tied a bandana around his hair to get it out of his way, as he always did when he was about to get serious. “You have been a little moody and distracted lately. Not your usual chipper self. Dead giveaway, if you ask me.”

Blaine grinned when he saw Nigel had painted an artistic rendition of the witch’s death on the bandana. “Nice accessory.”

Nigel flipped the ends out of his face. “It inspires me. Not sure why.”

“Might be the rosy tint to her blood? It’s kind of a cheerful color.”

Jarvis peered at it. “Maybe it’s the way the blood spatters look like smiley faces. Sets a friendly tone.”

Nigel brushed his smoking palm over the headband, leaving behind glowing embers. “I think it’s the fabric. I’ve always been partial to the feel of silk against my skin.”

More poor bastards hit his shield in a three-pronged attack, and Blaine gritted his teeth as his defenses faltered for a fraction of a second. “You boys better suit up. Not sure how much longer I can—”

And then he sensed Christian’s presence. A faint metallic taste in his mouth told him Christian was in trouble. “Christian!” He shielded his eyes against the incoming assault, searching the crowds for the one man he couldn’t leave behind.

And then he saw Christian. He was down on the ground, hunched over like he’d just been disemboweled.

“Damn.” Jarvis moved up beside him. “That’s not good.”

“Christian!” Blaine yelled. “Come on!”

“You’re still here? Thought you guys would have been on the beach by now.” Christian’s voice was strained as he lurched to his feet. “You guys sure take your time getting the hell out of Dodge,” he shouted over the roar of the wings and bug zapping.

Relief made Blaine’s fire surge. “About damn time!” he yelled back. “Get your ass over here!”

To protect himself from the assault, Christian had already shifted his human skin into millions of metal scales, so his body was encased in chain-link armor, like the dive suits that shark wrestlers liked to wear. The only nonmetallic parts of him were the glowing blue orbs of his eyes. Christian’s body armor was poison to anything that brushed against it. Nylon was the only protection against him, which made Blaine damned curious what other unholy attributes nylon might have. He was already planning an assortment of experiments when he got out.

The schnoodemgons were attacking Christian, and each time they touched his armor, they’d shriek and turn into a noxious red gas. The air was thick and crimson above Christian’s head. He squatted and scooped a mound off the ground, and Blaine realized it was a large bundle wrapped in a nylon blanket to protect it against his scales.

Nice. “He got his girlfriend.” Damn, he respected that.

A team of schnoodemgons body-slammed Christian into the ground, taking advantage of the one weakness of Christian’s armor: its inability to protect him against sheer, crushing force. The buggers disintegrated upon impact, but on their heels was another crew, descending with enough speed to finish the job.

“No fair picking on pretty boy.” Nigel flicked his wrist, and a dozen burning blades cut through the air, taking out the crowd milliseconds before they turned Christian into roadkill. “Step it up,” he shouted. “We don’t have time to save your ass.”

Christian flipped him off and lowered his shoulder to shove his way through the masses of beating wings. The wind was fierce, and Blaine had to brace himself to keep from being blown over. Like lemmings, they kept at him, hundreds of them crashing and burning as they hit his field. Hello? What kind of suicidal strategy was that? Almost made him feel bad for the scaly meatheads.

Well, almost. The fact they were on the fast track to killing his team sort of balanced out the love. They were relentless and the supply endless, and he knew they’d come until they broke him. Nigel maintained his assault against the ones trying to crush Christian, and Jarvis was using his sword to absorb Blaine’s energy so he didn’t incinerate either Jarvis or Nigel, but this happy moment wasn’t going to last forever. “How about a little hustle, lover boy?”

Christian was less than thirty yards away and moving fast when the first of the red gas from the dead schnoodemgons hit Blaine. His lungs burned, then searing pain assaulted his muscles.

“What the hell?” Nigel went down behind him, his muscles contorting visibly beneath his skin. “Yeah, I was just thinking this was getting boring, but—” His word cut off as another convulsion twisted his body.

Jarvis was still standing. “Talk to me, Trio.” They all had different vulnerabilities and talents, and they discovered new ones every day. None of them knew exactly what they were capable of anymore, or what their weaknesses were. Jarvis was apparently getting away unscathed with this one. Point for him.

“Poison gas attacking muscle tissue.” Blaine redirected his fire and sent it racing through his cells. He ground his jaw as the heat blistered his body, but the flames burned up the toxin… only to have it replaced immediately with his next breath. He sent another wave of cleansing through his body. “Get Nigel out of here.”

“On it.” Jarvis swung the twitching warrior over his shoulder and sprinted toward the door.

Christian was less than twenty feet away, and he was staggering now that Nigel wasn’t there to protect against the body slams. Bright purple blood seeped out from his scales. “I think I’m going to be a cat person after this.”

“Cats aren’t manly.” Blaine’s body was shaking now with the effort of holding up the shield while using half his fire for soap duty to keep the toxins out.