Why this hadn’t been done before now was beyond him. Kenneth understood why the Indians were left alone, particularly given the muscle that their casino revenues could buy. A couple of the pagan circles in the suburbs might be more trouble than they were worth, too. But these two bitches were all on their own. No back up, no coven. Not enough to defend against the Brotherhood of Apollo. Just like the old Russian witch they’d buried in Tukwila last month.
The only real question was whether the Brotherhood would make them obedient servants or just break them and dump them in Elliott Bay. Probably the former, ultimately. One simply couldn’t waste magical talent, no matter how misplaced.
The rain picked up. Kenneth tapped on the window of the van. “Manny,” he said, “keep alert. They’ll be coming.” Between the rain and the endless line of parked cars along the side of the street, the pair would probably feel they had enough cover to make an unseen getaway.
Manny nodded. The driver soon looked to Kenneth with a twirl of his fingers. Showtime.
The two walked quickly down Broadway. He wasn’t surprised that they might suspect pursuit. What could they do about it? Two hedge witches who talked tough. Hereditary herpes, my ass, he thought.
Manny started the van. Kenneth walked after them. Soon after that, a man looming in a doorway joined Kenneth in his pursuit. Two others positioned further ahead would cut off their escape route. The van could block them in if they got into one of the parked cars.
Unsure as he was of which way the bitches would take, Kenneth had placed men down both directions of Broadway. The pair waiting down the opposite way would follow up to ensure no telling evidence was left behind if a struggle occurred. There would be few witnesses on a rainy, empty Sunday morning street.
Kenneth strode on, mouthing the words to a sorcerous curse. His fingers twitched and swirled in malevolent patterns at his side. He focused his wrath on the Goth princess, keeping his gaze fixed on her right up until the bird shit landed on his face.
It happened just as his two minions up beyond the girls had stepped into the open. Kenneth jerked back reflexively, wiping the nasty mess off his face. He looked up to see the edges of the buildings and the telephone lines above him swarming with crows, all staring down at him.
A heartbeat later the murder of crows dove straight for Kenneth.
The plan unraveled. Kenneth’s partner on the sidewalk yelled out and tried in vain to slap the birds away. There were just too many of them, though, all tearing away with beaks and talons and shocking ferocity. Kenneth tumbled to the ground screaming.
Up ahead, one of Kenneth’s thugs lunged right for Onyx only to inexplicably fall flat on his face with an ugly crunch. The other man fared worse; he held a stun gun, but he had nothing that would help him against the alley cat that came from out of nowhere to leap at his crotch with a frightening yowl. Distracting as that was, he never saw Molly’s brass knuckles before they landed on his cheek. She laid him out with a single punch.
Manny rolled up near the two girls in his van as the thugs both went down. He saw the first, who had slipped in the rain, catch a brutal kick to the groin from Molly. Onyx simply looked up at Manny and pointed.
Panicked, Manny threw the van into reverse and slammed the accelerator to the floor. He got away from the girls and backed up past his boss and all the angry crows. He came to a stop, though, when his van hit the patrol car coming up the street behind him.
In his rear view mirror, he saw two cops stare at him. They were both men, both in their thirties. The driver was a white guy with short blond hair. His partner was black, slightly bigger and clearly unhappy.
“I swear to fuckin’ God,” Manny heard the black cop say loudly as he got out of the car, “this is the third patrol car this year you’ve totaled.”
“How do you figure!?” the white cop snapped back, also stepping out. “He backed into us! You saw it! The whole world saw it!”
“Yeah, whatever. Tell it to your cat when you get home.”
They approached the front of the van. Then the white one stopped, looking around curiously. “Hey, Tyrone, is it just me or do you hear someone groaning in agony?”
* * *
Taylor only believed their whole crazy story once she was allowed to briefly see the full devil look. All the ruthless sex and cuddling may have affected her judgment, of course. She had no other explanation for why she felt so comfortable knowing Lorelei was some fire-breathing monster from Hell. But she was a fire-breathing monster who knew how to make her feel safe-and so did Alex, for that matter. And Lorelei was also a fire-breathing monster who knew her way around Taylor’s surprisingly needful body.
How the talk about Alex’s crazy supernatural relations led to even more sex was something else she couldn’t compute. She figured if she wasn’t going to run out of the suite screaming, though, she might as well have a good time.
“I don’t know if I can take anymore apology from you two,” Taylor sighed, “but I don’t know if I can move, either.” Lorelei slid and crawled up over her, separated from her now only by a thin sheet from the bed. Taylor lay partially nestled against Alex on her other side, still enjoying his embrace.
“You don’t have to,” Lorelei said, pulling away from her to sit up on her knees. She looked the younger woman over with obvious appreciation. “You’ll find, though, that your body will handle far more pleasure now than it could before. Consider it another bit of apology.”
“So is this all you do now?” she asked Alex. “Sex all day and night?”
“Not exactly,” he replied. “We’re still working out a happy medium. This is awesome, yeah, but I still want to have a life, too. I don’t want to turn into lose my mind over this.”
“Better not,” Taylor smirked. “I couldn’t sleep with you then.”
“Is that something you want?” Lorelei asked her.
“Maybe once in awhile,” Taylor admitted. “I don’t know what to say. This is wonderful. You’re both wonderful. But what that actually means, I don’t know. I’m not in a rational state right now.” She turned her head thoughtfully toward Lorelei. “What do you want?”
“What I have now. Things that I have longed for all these centuries, all of which I could never have admitted to myself without pain. I have love. I have friends. People who care about me for myself, and not for what power or pleasure I can offer. I need never again lay with someone who deserves only pain and death. For the first time in millennia, I feel like I am something more than sex and manipulation and murder.”
Taylor caught the eye contact between Lorelei and Alex as she spoke, and felt somewhat guilty about being between the two of them. Lorelei leaned over Taylor again. “I should also admit that I have more than a little desire for you.” With that, she planted a deep, aggressive kiss upon the younger woman. Then she rose from the bed. “For all my desires, what matters most here this morning is the two of you. I should let you have some time together alone.”
Taylor lifted her head, looking from one of them to the other with a concern that she couldn’t articulate. “I don’t have anything to say to one of you but not the other.”
“You do. So does Alex. It’s natural, Taylor. I am not worried. You came to the party last night looking for him, not me. He wanted to see you, too.”
As she moved off to slip into the bathroom for a shower, Taylor turned toward Alex. “She’s really…? I feel dumb for asking this after everything she just said, but is she really okay with this?”
Alex laughed before he kissed her. “You’re starting to sound like me.”