Page 119 of Death is My Ride or Die

“Guess we’re going on a field trip.”

I looped my hand through the leash, and Cruentas lunged forward. Air rushed out of my lungs as my surroundings transformed. “Oof!” I stumbled forward, bracing my hands against a cold brick wall. I took in my surroundings.

Great.Cruentas had taken me to the warehouse where I’d fought that demonic creature.

Cruentas’s butt and tail started to shake in delight. He tried to yank me forward to the center of the warehouse, but I held him firm by his leash. “I asked you to take me to Death?”

“Nrrrffghh,”Cruentas said and licked my face. He whined and tapped his front hooves hard on the ground in front of him.

“Shh.Shh. . . ” Tiny goosebumps of fear and uncertainty prickled my forearm.

Shadowy creatures slunk in the dark around us, weaving between crates and whispering. With my heart slamming against my ribs and Cruentas dragging me, I bit the bullet and moved forward.

My ears perked at the rhythmic clank of metal in the distance.

Cruentas nickered and jumped up onto a stack of crates. He shook his head and made a sneezing sound again, shooting flames into the air like firecrackers.

“Get down from there,” I whispered with an assertive point at the ground. “Get down right now or you are in big trouble, mister. I asked you to take me toDeath, not this creepy warehouse. Cruentas. Get. Down. If you think I’m sneaking you another slice of cheese from his fridge tonight, you aresadly—”

Cruentas leapt off the crate, ripping his leash right out of my hand, and raced across the large space, disappearing into the endless void ahead.

“Mistaken,” I said, swallowing a lump in my throat. With seemingly no way out of this warehouse besides finding Cruentas, I stormed after him. “Effmy life, I swear.”

I followed Cruentas’s damp hoofprints on the concrete floor through a barricade of bricks and stopped at a door with the same type of lock as the touchscreen ones in Death’s apartment.

The clanking of metal was coming from inside.

Raising my knuckles, I thought about knocking. What if I barged in on Death and some woman having freaky supernatural sex inside? But I was in too deep to turn back now.

I stared at the touchscreen beside the handle and gnawed on my lip. I was hovering over the screen to try to make an educated guess when blue electricity sparked unexpectedly from my skin into the device. The screen shattered, malfunctioning with a series of distorted beeps and a mini explosion.

“Dang,” I muttered out loud. “That little trick could have come in handy with Death’s penthouse security system.”

I gingerly opened the heavy door and discovered a dimly lit staircase. Hard-rock music crashed through expensive speakers around me, growing louder the further I traveled into the underground area. It dawned on me that this was totally Death’s evil lair.

Cruentas appeared at the end of the stairs to greet me, bouncing his front hooves on the bottom step in anticipation. My body relaxed somewhat. The stairs were carpeted, and what I’d expected to be a disgusting basement was a refurbished man cave. I plucked up the courage to stop tiptoeing and reached the bottom of the stairs. Layered over the pounding music was that constant clank of metal shifting around, along with male grunting. I stopped in my tracks at the bottom step.

My heart leapt.

Death faced away from me, lying back on a chest press bench loaded with so many plates on either side that the bar was bending as he thrust the weight up. He had horns, black and menacing, curling up and over the sides of his skull and his clean-cut faux-hawk, as if they were meant for the hairstyle. Obsidian had replaced every inch of Death’s usual golden-bronze skin, hiding all his intricate tattoos. Dark-gray joggers hung low on his hips, and he was shirtless.

I watched the monstrous version of Death lift the barbell from his well-built chest and set it down on the rack. He sat up, and my fingers climbed to my mouth. In the mirror in front of him, I saw the panels of his face were sharper, alien, and his mismatched eyes were luminous against the midnight of his complexion.

Oh. Oh, boy. Holding my breath, I anxiously glanced back up the staircase at my way out.

Rising to his immense height, Death attached a belt with weighted plates to his waist and leapt up, gripping a pipe in the ceiling above him. He drew himself up with a low rumble. The muscles in his broad shoulders and back shifted deliciously with each effortless pull-up.

In the midst of drooling, I might have forgotten about my purpose here.

“You must be out of your damn mind,” Death said.

My heart leapt to my throat.

I reeled back against the wall like an idiot, knocking into a water cooler. I hugged the big water bottle to save myself from falling, and it bubbled angrily in my arms, leaking all over the carpeted floor.

Growling out a foreign word, Death dropped down mid pull-up and pivoted with a wrathful expression. “What did you do?”

His voice was guttural but still drenched in that usual velvety undertone.

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