Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails by John Hartness (best color ebook reader .txt) 📗

working. I gave a fleeting thought to taking the door guy back to the bus when I was finished with the demon, or just jumping into the middle of whatever antics Lily was up to. That girl could get downright gymnastic when she had a mind to. I pinched myself on the arm, traced a warding sigil on my forehead with my left hand, closest to the heart and all that, then opened the door.

Holy. Crap. She was butt-naked, lounging on a small red leather sofa, smiling up at me with one of those languorous, half-lidded smiles that says, “Tie me up and do really pleasant things to me.” You know the one. You don’t? Oh. Then find somebody that smiles at you like that. It’s a recipe for a good night.

She was one of the rare people that looked better naked than half-dressed. Usually, with the right lift and tuck and separate and squeeze provided by sexy underwear, people look their best when kinda naked. There was no kinda about this naked. She leaned back against one arm of the sofa, her breasts sagging just enough to say, “I’m real,” but not so much as to say, “I’m a zip-loc bag of mashed potatoes running for the door.” I’ve literally never seen a leg that long and smooth, it was like there was an underlying strength to her limbs that came from nowhere, because there was no hint of muscle definition about her, just endless smooth curves that seemed somehow soft and iron-strong all at the same time.

Magic, Kels. Remember, it’s all demon magic.

“I suppose you’re the big bad Hunter the Church sent to banish me?” she asked, her lips forming a perfect kewpie-doll pout. Okay, so she wasn’t completely naked. She wore lipstick the color of my favorite sin. But other than that, completely naked.

I closed the door behind me. “The Church didn’t send me. I’m a freelancer.” That wasn’t quite true. I worked for Dawn. I just didn’t know who the hell Dawn worked for. It sure wasn’t the Church, though. I’ve never met anyone who hates organized religion more than my…case agent, I guess?

“Oh, good. I do so hate corrupting nuns. They don’t know what to do with their hands. Do you know what to do with your hands, dear?” She was in front of me. I never saw her move. One second she was lying on the couch like a Penthouse Pet, then before I could blink, she was inches away from me, so close I could feel her breath cascading down on my cheek.

“Yeah,” I said, twirling my fingers through the air. “I’ve got a pretty good idea what to do with my hands.” I called up a shield, spinning the melody from “Pour Some Sugar on Me” into a disk of blue force that radiated out from my wrist. I slammed my magical version of Captain America’s shield into the succubus’s face, knocking her back and getting myself some breathing room.

Breathing. That’s what I’d been forgetting. Succubi don’t just work through magic; they secrete pheromones like crazy. That’s why I wasn’t able to think straight, the whole place smelled like her. She sprawled on her butt in the tiny dressing room, and I turned to the dressing table, really just a makeup mirror sitting on a board stretched across some cinderblocks. Something about trailers and cinderblock furniture, goes together like peanut butter and bananas. I spied what I needed and snatched up a glass bottle. I flung the perfume to the ground, but all it did was thud onto the carpeted floors.

Dammit. I knelt down just as the succubus sprang for me, her hands morphing into long clawed fingers. Her illusion was slipping now that I wasn’t completely entranced by her anymore, so she was having a hard time holding on to her perfection. I made it harder when I stood up and sprayed her in the face with three quick blasts off Tocca perfume. The tiny room filled with the scent of wild orchids, and even with the cloying smell of flowers, I could think again.

“That shit’s expensive, you bitch,” she growled, flipping open a jewelry box and withdrawing a small dagger. “I’m going to cut it out of your hide.”

“This crap?” I asked, tossing the bottle at her. “It’s not even a hundred bucks at Sephora. Your taste is as pedestrian as your magic. Why don’t you just toddle off back to Hell and save us both the trouble?”

She screeched at me and slashed wildly with the dagger. I’m no black belt, not by a long shot, but she was obviously accustomed to her magic making all her targets really complacent. I took one step back, then stepped in as the dagger went past me. I grabbed her wrist in my right hand and pulled, spinning her farther around and wrapping my left hand into that luxurious curly dark hair. She pressed her back up against me, trying to get her seduction on, but I was in the zone now, feeling the DJ jam to AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and using the music to focus.

With both hands full of sex demon, I couldn’t cast a spell, but I didn’t need to. She was taller than me, but not used to doing any real work, so when I pressed a shin behind her knee and shoved her shoulders, she went down face first. I slammed her head into the carpeted floor and dragged it left and right, washing her face in the carpet. She shrieked like a banshee and thrashed under me, but I kept slamming her face into the floor until she finally let go of the dagger. I snatched it up, then realized that I had never asked Dawn what I was supposed to do with the succubus. I couldn’t just cut her throat in the middle of her dressing room and leave the body lying in a pool of blood, and I honestly wasn’t sure if