Pale Demon (The Hollows #9)(77)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Not nearly enough, dove," he said, smiling as he bent toward me again. My teeth were clenched, and I tasted his blood as he forced his mouth on mine again.

"You son of a bitch!" I screamed, muffled from his lips, and I reached for a ley line.

Al felt it, and I got in a clean breath as he pulled back long enough to laugh at me.

"That’s it," he said, breathing heavily, his expression alight. "I think you’re pissed enough now. Give me what you’ve got. I’ll slip it back into you so slowly you’ll scream in pleasure and beg for more."

It was then that the fear took hold. The ley line he was tracing through me felt good. Really good. I knew what a witch could do to another, and pain wasn’t far from ecstasy. This may have started out as an object lesson, but Al could take my abuse and make me writhe for it. I was halfway to climaxing already. This was not what I wanted.

Al saw the realization in me and smiled, shifting his weight suggestively, his eyes half closing in anticipation. "You think you can handle me, Algaliarept?" I snarled, and his eyes opened as I used his true name, but his grip on my wrists was painfully tight.

"God, Rachel, you are such a tease," he said, and then he leaned in. His mouth was demanding, rough as he let go of my wrists and grasped the back of my head, crushing himself to me. The line he held sang in me, lighting my synapses in a cascading flash that spilled from my lips down to my groin, and I relished it, even as I despised what he was doing.

I’d f**king had it with men making inappropriate passes at me.

My hands pushed against the books, and we shifted forward, our kiss never breaking as he found the back of the tall chair and stopped. I never could have done it if he hadn’t let me, but I wasn’t gouging his eyes out, and since what he was doing to me felt really good, he probably figured I was his.

He was still holding my head, and his tongue was making inroads, causing my pulse to pound. A small sound of desire slipped from me, and Al let go of my face, lifting me up so I could wrap my legs around his body, feeling him against me. My hands were in his hair as I drank him in, taking the line through him, learning the paths that the energy took from him to me. God, it felt good, this careful exploration, and I shivered. I knew he was doing the same, and it only made me angrier.

Al broke from me, and we both gasped. "Itchy witch," he said, looking me up and down as he held me to him. "My God. You are…Damn. You have no idea how long it’s been."

I smiled, my arms around his neck and my fingers running through the hair on the nape of his neck. "I don’t think so, Algaliarept," I murmured, leaning in and playing with the corner of his mouth with my own. "I’m not a tease. I needed to know to…hurt you."

He sucked in his breath, but it was too late. My legs tightened around him, and I pressed his face to mine. My thoughts dove into his, finding the path among his synapses that he’d first burned eons ago to safely bring a ley line into him. Punching through his thin film of surprise, I grasped the ley line…and I pulled.

"No!" he shrieked, realizing his mistake.

My back arched as the power flooded in, painful and delicious. I could hear Al cry out, but it was as if I swam in glory itself, and I pulled him to me, closer, wanting more, arcing it through me back to the line, burning clean and bright, lighting the smut in me with pure fire from the gods.

The soft pop of displaced air almost went unnoticed as my soul chimed, tuned to the ley line I was drowning Al in, but a faint whisper of self-preservation caused me to open my eyes. Everything was bathed in a silvery white light. Everything, that is, but the flat foot in the purple slipper headed for me.

I tried to disentangle myself from Al, and the foot hit me, flinging me across the room like I was a rag doll. I hit a bookcase, numb. My fingers splayed over my chest, and I couldn’t breathe. Shit, I think my ribs are broken, I thought, and I slid sideways to the floor, my cheek burning on the carpet.

"You lied to me!" Newt screamed, and I tried to cry out in pain as she lifted me up and slammed me against the shelf again. "I killed my sisters for you!"

My mouth was working, but nothing was coming out. My head lolled, and my focus was blurry. The line I’d been connected to was gone, and my gore rose.

And then I was screaming as the line I had yanked through Al was arcing through me.

Tulpa! I thought, trying to spindle it, and I feebly pushed at Newt to get her hands off me.

"Newt! Stop! That’s Rachel!" I heard Al croak hoarsely, and the sharp sound of flesh smacking flesh. The world lurched, and I hit the carpet again.

I lay on the floor in a crumpled heap, my fingers rubbing the soft bumps of the carpet. My breath went in and out, and it felt good. It felt good not to be on fire. My head pounded, and I pushed most of the spindled energy out, sagging in relief.

"Newt, it’s not Ku’Sox!" Al shouted again, and I heard a bang and smelled ozone and the acrid scent of burnt books.

"I killed my sisters for him!" Newt raged. "Get out of my way, Gally!"

Al’s soft hand touched my shoulder, and I jerked, managing to sit up. Al was standing beside me in his robe, the hem trembling. Newt was in front of us, wearing her purple martial-arts robe, her funny, tall-sided hat almost in the fire. She had hair again, the straight black strands cut short in a pageboy style, and her long, ugly feet were bare. It was hard to tell what she was looking at since her eyes were black, but I was pretty sure she was looking at me, hatred pouring from her.

"This isn’t Ku’Sox," Al said, his voice shaking, and I wondered why he had stopped her. "It’s Rachel. She smells like Ku’Sox because she fought him. It’s not Ku’Sox!"

Newt looked at me. Then her black eyes went to Al’s. "She survived him? Are you sure? Maybe Ku’Sox is wearing her skin. He does that."

Al took a breath, exhaling long and low. His hand touching my shoulder left me, and I sat where I was, slumped over my knees, my hair in my face. I had tried to hurt Al to get him to leave me alone, and I think I might have gone too far. Drew a line through him like a familiar and almost fried his little kitty soul.

"It’s her," Al said ruefully, and I looked up to see him shuffle to the arrangement of furniture before the fire and fall into the chair farthest from me.

Newt’s expression became one of familiar confusion. "Have I forgotten something again?" she asked suspiciously. "It appeared as if she was killing you. Or were you two…?" She hesitated, then put a hand to her mouth and laughed. "Gally! You dog! You tried to seduce her?"

"She’s been living in my kitchen for almost a year," he said sullenly. "Forgive a man for testing the waters. She wasn’t screaming. And my name is Al now. Remember?"