Page 122 of The Deer and the Dragon
“Call him!” Caliban shouted across the lobby while he pummeled an entity. His brilliant eyes lifted to me again in a demand before another parasite scrambled toward him.
I struggled to understand the shapes that rallied to defend Anath. Parasitic entities. Cheshire cats. Evil. So many. Too many. She cried to them to continue her battles against Caliban and Azrames as she turned her attention to me once more.
My panicked gaze went between Caliban and Azrames to Jessabelle’s still, bloodied form. The creatures continued to flood the lobby with incomprehensible speed. Blood filled the space in different colors—red coursed out of both the clerk and from the corporeal Jessabelle. Blue pulp oozed fromthe creatures as they fell. Oil-slick black seeped from Anath’s brow as she rallied again for me.
Azrames lunged for her, tackling her to the ground as Caliban shouted to me again.
“Call him! Call Silas!”
I blinked at him in confusion. A child-like parasite began to crawl toward me with the forward motion of a crab. It cocked its too-human head as it eyed me. I tried to scramble backward as its smile widened. I recognized the scabs at the corner of its eerily wide smile, its brilliant, sapphire eyes too blue to be anything other than terrible. Its mouth split into tiny, blooded edges as its sharpened teeth continued to grin at me.
I crawled backward farther until my back hit the far wall of the elevator banks.
Once again, Caliban begged above the overwhelming noise of Anath and her parasitic army. “Call Silas!”
The angel? But that meant…
Caliban knew something I didn’t. I trusted him. I should listen to him, right?
Fuck, I needed to be sober. I didn’t know how to blink free from the haze stronger than drugs, than drink, than everything that suffocated me. I barely had the wherewithal to slip my hand into my pocket and grab the golden poppet. I wrapped my fingers around the shape and brought it to my mouth. I squinted against the approaching Cheshire cat as its head exploded in a blue spray the moment Azrames’s meteor hammer made contact with its skull. Its goo rained around me like the thick, horrid memory I’d buried from Richard’s basement. I would have died had it not been for…
Azrames turned for Anath as she advanced on him again. She lofted a weapon in the time it took me to bring the gilded poppet to my mouth and speak his name.
I didn’t know how much time had passed.
I heard the unreal cries of parasites and the feminine scream of Anath. I heard the metallic clang of the meteor hammerand the high, shrill ring of the dagger as Caliban slashed. It could have been one second or ten minutes. I had no concept of war or battle or fights. I could only perceive the enormous crystal chandelier, the blur of colors, the high-pitched noises, and the continuous throb between my thighs.
The glitter had barely appeared in a flash of white light before I heard three sentences in Caliban’s powerful, authoritative voice over the sounds of battle.
“We’ve got this! She’s still mortal! Save her!”
I barely had time to gasp at Silas’s presence. The gold-dust shimmer of wings dissipated as I struggled to see him. I was loosely aware that my robe had fallen to pieces, breasts, bellybutton, and everything in between exposed in my scramble. Perhaps spa robes were not the most qualified garb for war, but despite knowing I should care, I didn’t. I looked up into his golden eyes, seeing those tiny halos burning around his pupils.
I extended a hand toward him.
Silas spun away from me. He locked eyes with Caliban as he said, “You want me to—”
“Take her!” Caliban shouted back.
My hand found his chest, then glided over his shoulder. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be held. I wanted to be close. I wanted…
The high-pitched scream of a Cheshire-cat smile advanced on us as another parasite rushed the bank of elevators. Silas scooped a hand around me. “Do you have your broach?”
One hand already gripped his golden poppet. My free hand slipped into the opposite pocket as I blearily procured the dangly, silver sølje. I nodded through glazed eyes. I was loosely aware of the flare of his nostrils as he flinched against my naked body, as if struggling for decency. He pressed me against him as the paint globes of cream and blue pulp and the diamond white of Caliban’s skin ran down the canvas of my inner eyes until I saw only black.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
My hands and knees hit familiar glittering, black marble, the brunt only half-absorbed by a male body. I gasped for air as if resurfacing from a deep lake. I barely had time to take in my surroundings before a high, angry feminine voice filled the air. I fought against it for a fraction of a second, terrified it was Astarte or Anath or Jessabelle.
I scarcely registered the constellation of white and ginger freckles that dotted her arms and the free space above her soft breasts before I buried my face in her hair. I recognized the smell. The salt and conifers and sea spray of trust, of love, of friendship, of beauty. My hand ran over her neck and into her long, beautiful curls.
“What’s wrong with her?” Fauna’s voice demanded in high, startled horror.
I felt the words more than I heard them. Each word vibrated against my lips as I kissed her throat.
“I have no idea,” Silas insisted. “I think I have to go back. She was with the Prince and Azrames—”
“Az was there?” She tried—and failed—to get me to stop kissing her neck.
