Mojo Queen (11 page)

“I know Seth hired you, to do exactly the same thing I want you to do. And I know you’re protecting him, which I also want. What’s the difference?”

“The difference is Seth is a kid who got in over his head. You knew better. Blake, you’re the bad guy here.” I dug my keys out of my pocket and tried, unsuccessfully, to push him away from the driver’s door.

“I can help you figure out how to banish Delipitore, and you can’t let her kill me because that’ll put her one step closer to permanent residence on this plane.”

I didn’t want to hear either one of those things, because they were both true. I walked around to the passenger side. I could open that door and crawl across the seat since he didn’t want to get out of my way.

“Oh, come on, Roxanne. You know you need the money.”

I snapped my head up to glare at him over the roof of my car. He’d been through my desk, my filing cabinet. Had he seen my checkbook, all the bills in their neat folder?

He put his hands on the car roof, that damn smirk back on his face. “There’s a difference between looking fashionably disheveled and looking broke-ass poor, Roxie, and you are standing in the broke-ass line.”

“This is how you try to convince me to help you,” I said, incredulous. “By making fun of my clothes?”

His smirk faded and he turned his head into the breeze, as if tasting it. “You feel that?”

I rolled my eyes. “What, your spider sense tingling?”

He looked at me, his expression serious. “Isn’t yours?”

This was not more teasing. Quickly I ground and centered myself, opening my senses for whatever the night could tell me.

“Do you feel it?” he said quietly. I shushed him, closed my eyes. “You have to relax and…”

“If you tell me to reach out with my feelings I’m going to smack you,” I said. More like intuition, psychic perception, I didn’t really know what to call it. Sixth sense worked as good as any label, like reading auras, only on a non-visible wavelength. Whatever was out there in the night had a whole lot of power, and it was heading right for us.

“I don’t think we have time for a little slap and tickle,” he murmured as he looked around. “We need to get out of here.”

I opened my eyes, half expecting Delia to leap out of the darkness at any moment. I walked back to the driver’s side, fast. “You want anything out of your car, get it now.” He moved aside to let me unlock the door and climb in. I reached across to unlock the passenger door as he jogged around the car.

“That’s why I keep my backpack on me,” he said as he got in.

I pulled out of the parking space, headed for the street. Something blurred in front of the car and I swerved then hit the brakes as more shapes materialized out of the dark. “What are those, dogs?” But the creatures were bigger than dogs, as tall as deer, muscular with shaggy black fur and glowing red eyes. I counted four of them, then another trotted up. And another. Even with the windows rolled up I could hear them snarling.

When a thing has glowing red eyes, it’s probably not a good sign.

Blake swore viciously.

“What are those things?”

He fastened his seatbelt, a simple mundane act that inexplicably scared me. Voice shaking with an undertone of hysterical laughter, he answered, “Hellhounds, Roxie. She sent hellhounds on my trail.”

I would have laughed, too, except the hellhounds chose that moment to attack.

Tires leaving rubber in the parking lot, I stomped on the gas hard and prayed my poor little car could handle such abuse. The hellhound on the roof went tumbling, but the one on the hood stood its ground. Ropes of stringy saliva spattered across the windshield as it barked and snapped its jaws.

“Nasty,” I muttered as I hit the wiper blades. Both were quickly ripped off by the hellhound, tossed onto the street like a dog toy. “Now, I just bought those not a month ago!”

“Does this thing go any faster?” Blake said, head craned to watch the road behind us.

Even at this time of night there was some traffic. If any of those other cars noticed we were being chased by big nasty critters that looked like something from an old werewolf movie, one of them riding on the hood, would they call nine-one-one or chalk it up to one beer too many? A snorty giggle slipped out. Blake looked at me, his smirk demanding to know what I found so amusing.

So I told him. Pointing my index finger at the beast howling and scratching at the windshield, destroying what was left of the car’s paint job, I said, “Hellhound hood ornament.”

He shook his head in disbelief, a booming laugh rolling out of him as I slung the car into an empty Kroger parking lot. Cut a few brodies, slammed on the brakes, and the thing finally went flying off the hood. The lot connected to a neighboring shopping center. I followed that route, driving past deserted stores, looking for a side street to take.

“Do you see them?” I said, too loud in the quiet interior of the car. “They still out there?”

“I don’t see them, but I don’t think we’d lose them that easily.”

I found the side street I was looking for. It led to another side street that would lead me to the old highway rather than the interstate. Taking that highway, I could get to Daniel’s house or mine, depending which direction I chose. We moved farther away from the lights of town. A red light stopped me at the intersection where I needed to make a decision, my house or Daniel’s. I sat there, grateful for the respite from driving, my hands aching with the tension of gripping the steering wheel too hard.

I glanced at Blake. He had his eye on the rearview mirror, looking for Delia’s hell beasties. The guy was an arrogant jackass with dubious ethics and more personality issues than any therapist could fix, but I didn’t believe he was evil. I didn’t understand how this girl Delia could choose to be possessed by a demon, but that didn’t mean Blake was lying. I couldn’t leave him on his own, knowing it would get him killed.

“Hey,” I said.

He swiveled toward me, face glowing in the red light. We looked at each other for what felt like a long moment. “I’m charging you double.”

As the light turned green he gave me a lopsided smile, with just a hint of smirk.

I meandered along some back roads, like him unconvinced we’d lost the hellhounds. It was hard driving the curving roads while keeping an eye out with my auric vision at the same time, looking for flashes of anything in the dark. I took a corner a little faster than I meant to, the car fishtailing. The passenger side back quarter panel bumped against something, making me wonder if I’d hit a small animal or tree. Then the whole car lurched as a big heavy something slammed into us. Red eyes flashed in the rearview mirror.

“Miss Mathis,” Blake said, voice clipped.

“Yeah,” I answered.

Another hellhound hit us from the other side. I could hear and feel the back of my car crumpling. I pressed my foot harder on the accelerator. We weren’t far from my house but I didn’t want to lead Delia’s hell beasties, and Delia, right to my front door. I thought of all the supernatural means Delia could use to find me but an image of a more prosaic method popped in my head. “Probably just look in the damn phone book,” I grumbled.

“What?” Blake faced me and out of the corner of my eye I caught the look on his face. That was all the warning I had.

A hellhound crashed itself into my door, which caved in and sent hot pain spiking through my left thigh as the car spun off the road. Before we could even stop moving another hound attacked from the back, another mounting the hood again. The headlights picked out a fourth as it ripped my front bumper off. I couldn’t keep control of the car. Blake leaned over and put his hands on the wheel, trying to help. Hellhounds kept bouncing us around like bumper cars at a carnival. The car finally came to stop, slamming into a tree.

Breathing hard, fear and adrenaline rushing through me, I still gripped the steering wheel. We shook again. Hound on the roof, hound on the trunk, their claws ripping and tearing at metal and plastic.

Blake reached for my hands, unpeeling my fingers from the wheel. “Are you okay?”

Another lurch from the back end. I whipped around, saw red eyes and a shape darker than night, with what looked like a piece of tire hanging from its jaws. A sound escaped my throat. I was most definitely not okay.

I turned back around, in time to see the hellhound on the hood remove the other wiper blade. “I think I prefer ghosts.”

He opened his backpack and started searching through it. “Do you have anything we can use as weapons?”

The car rocked as another tire became hellhound snack. Absurdly, I wondered if my insurance would cover this.

I reached behind him to get my messenger bag from the floor of the back seat. “A flashlight, a taser, brass knuckles.”

He chuckled. “You want to get close enough to use brass knuckles on those things, you go right ahead.”

I pushed my glasses up. “Well, what have you got? Because unless you’re packing a flamethrower, we’re screwed.”

His hands came up out of the depths of his backpack, each one holding some small object. “No flamethrower, but I think if we do this right we can get out of here in one piece.”

He zipped up the backpack, put it on his back. I took the flashlight from my bag, stashed the taser in a back pocket, slinging the strap over my head. “Whaddya got?”

He put something small and circular in my hand. My thumb ran over it, finding an opening. “Dude, this is a compact mirror.” One of the little double-sided makeup mirrors to keep in your purse, one side more magnified than the other. My estimation of our survival fell off a cliff. I looked at him. I didn’t know if he could see my expression well enough in the dark, but I really, really hoped he could. “So. Will there be eyeliner? Perhaps a little magical lip gloss?”

He snatched the mirror from my hand, holding it in front of my face with two fingers. “It’s a transference shield. Whatever they throw at you--” He pointed out the windshield at the hellhound shredding the hood of my car. “--this can throw right back.”

“How does it work?” I tried not to sound too skeptical.

“Open it up, with the mirrors facing them.” It sounded simple enough. He added, “And you have to believe in it, Roxie.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “I should have some salt in here, too.” I rummaged through the messenger bag again, finding a pair of small plastic jars filled with sea salt. I shoved them down my jeans pockets, hoping they wouldn’t fall out. Should have worn cargo pants. My thigh hurt, fingers finding torn denim and a warm wetness. “I don’t think my door will open.”

“Get in my lap.”

“Oh hell no.”

“It’s better if we leave the car together, anyway. And if your door won’t work.”

“Okay, okay,” I said as another piece of my car was ripped off. I unlatched my seatbelt and climbed over to his lap, perched on his knees with my arms using the dashboard and door as leverage so I’d have the minimum of contact with him. Blake wasn’t having it. One arm snaked around my waist and he pulled me against his chest. He set the other talisman on the dash and ran a hand through my hair, pulling it to one side. I felt his lips against my ear.

“Roxanne,” he whispered.

His arm kept me trapped against the hard wall of his chest. I leaned back, my head resting on his shoulder. I swallowed, and the metallic taste of fear left my mouth. My breathing slowed, calmed. I relaxed in his arms, his fingers lightly trailing the side of my neck.

“What are you doing to me?” I could feel something spreading through me, slow and heavy and dulling my senses. Something else followed it, something that felt bright and prickly. It made every nerve ending stand on end, my whole being alert and ready.

His lips brushed my ear again. “Calming you down. We can’t panic right now, Roxie. If we panic we’re dead.” He kept his voice soft, silky.

Whatever he was doing, however it worked, it was effective, maybe a little too effective. I felt warm and safe with him and I had to work to make my brain realize it was because of this magic he was working on me. It had nothing to do with him, really, or me. It was just some kind of spell he weaved.

I shook my head slightly. I needed to think straight or I’d relax my way right into a hellhound’s jaws. I pointed at the talisman he’d placed on the dash. “What’s that do?”

He picked it up, held it close so I could see it. It was a figure of what appeared to be a woman with the head of a lioness.

“Sekhmet,” I said. “She’s an Egyptian goddess.”

“A goddess of war. Do you know this area? We need to cross running water if we can.”

We weren’t far from my house and I was pretty sure I could find us a stream. Ghosts and spirits can’t cross running water, but I didn’t know about something like these hellhounds. “The hounds are corporeal.” I twisted in his lap to face him. “Will that work with these guys?”

“They’re corporeal for now but they’re still from the spirit world. I’ve been chased by stuff like this before and crossing running water always works.”

That sparked all kinds of curiosity but I kept a lid on my questions. “So we just run for it?”

“Pretty much.” He pulled me closer to him, our faces not an inch apart. “Listen to me. For that shield to work, you have to believe it will work. You have to believe it, Roxie.”

“I understand.” And I did, truly. Which was why even with his calming magic I was terrified. Right at that moment I couldn’t think of anything I’d ever believed in before seeing proof of it first, even ghosts and vampires and the efficacy of my folk magic. I had to convince myself it was no different that my mojo hands, while wishing I had about a dozen of them on me instead of none. Note to self: never again leave home without a fully charged protective mojo hand.

“Open the mirror. When I open the door I want you to take off. Head for water.”

“What if we get separated?”

“Don’t drop the shield and I’ll be able to find you.”

It occurred to me if Delia had tasked the hellhounds with finding Blake and either killing him or bringing him to her so she could kill him herself, they might not chase me. I didn’t know how to feel about that.

“This won’t be that bad,” he said, and I wondered which one of us he was trying to convince. “Fangs and claws are no big deal.” He laughed.