Page 50 of Rifted Hearts
The bottle missed the monster, shattering against the door frame and sending expensive Italian wine everywhere. The guardweed vines that had been twining around the ceiling dropped down and attacked the beast, encircling its limbs and neck and yanking it upright.
And Kat Nakamura ran into the room, arms outstretched.
“Stop it! Stop hurting him.” Kat yanked at the vines, and they retracted, dropping their victim on the floor.
Lyall transformed back into his human form, dressed inhis own black living leathers and splattered in wine. “What the fuck was that, Remi?”
Kat let out a distressed squeak. Remi, who now held a broken bottle with jagged glass fragments like a barroom brawler, lowered it with some reluctance. It took all of his self-control not to stab the hellhound.
Lyall had scared the hell out of him.
“Don’t freak out.” Kat grabbed a pillow from the couch and began blotting wine off the hellhound. “Lyall’s not here to hurt you, even though he told me all about you and I think you’re an awful person.”
Remi glanced from Lyall to Kat, furious. The hellhound had shown Kat his true form, told him Remi was ratkind, and related a whole sob story about his indenture.
There had to have been an easier way to get Kat into bed.
“I know you’re working with those giant rats who wanted to kidnap me.” Kat put his hands on his hips and did his best to give Remi a hard glare. He was even more attractive when furious. “And Lyall is such a good dog”—Kat paused then recovered— “I mean, such a wonderful rift person, that he still came here to help you.”
“And almost got my head bashed in as thanks.” Lyall rose to his feet and licked some wine off his arm. “It’s a good thing you didn’t try that trick with my bottle of whiskey.”
Remi was a lot better at manipulation and lying than braining monsters in the head with a bottle, so he reached out toward Kat with his powers and went for helpless and pathetic, rather than handsome and sexy.
“I can’t believe my adorable puppy is an alien mon.” Remi dropped the shattered bottle for emphasis and swayed on his feet as if he might swoon.
Kat only rolled his eyes.
Damn it. Kat wasn’t a drakone or a hellhound with incredible mental shields. Why wasn’t this working?
Lyall, who had walked across the room for the sole purpose of grabbing one of Remi’s favorite T-shirts, used it to dry the rest of the wine off. Kat dropped his gaze to Lyall’s tight-fitting leather pants and blushed. Remi expected Lyall to smirk at that, but the hellhound gave the veterinary assistant a goofy smile back.
Great. Lyall complained nonstop about humans, and now he had a crush on one. One that was obviously reciprocated, since Remi’s ability to manipulate sexual thoughts didn’t work well on anyone already smitten with someone else.
“Okay, fine. I’m a terrible ratkind person, and I lied to you.” Remi hated when he had to tell a mark the truth. “But at least I didn’t steal some magic dildo and let killer jellyfish loose to run amok.”
Remi gave Lyall his best you’re-guilty-as-hell look.
“Neither did I,” Lyall shot back. “I went into that military-industrial camp of horrors to find out why the rift has gone wild and the phantoms got loose. We’re in the midst of a superstorm, the monster jellies are out, and without the control object, the rift could expand far enough to make all of Tucson a feeding ground for them. You’re the master thief, Remi, you tell us where it is.”
“I saw an image of it when one of the phantoms tried to eat me, and that’s all I know.” Remi threw up his hands. “And don’t blame Zale or the Pouch Twins because they came close to being eaten by the jellies before Kaveh tried to fry them with summ.”
Lyall raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“Yes, Kaveh is the Azdaha.” Remi found a towel to mop the wine off himself. The world might be ending, but he stillhad standards. “Feel free to gloat about being right about that.”
“Is he okay?” Kat looked stricken. “I feel bad about yelling at him, but Kaveh should have told me he was an alien dragon a long time ago. Anyway, I need to talk to him about this Matchmaker thing. I’mnotokay with it.”
Kat and Lyall exchanged glances.
Ugh. This was not the type of love triangle Remi enjoyed being in the middle of. Lyall hadn’t kidnapped Kat, but he had managed to infatuate the vet assistant—all while running around with four legs and a bad attitude.
“Kaveh thought Zale and the twins were trying to hurt me—which was true, at least for Mabel and Fable—and then he sent me back here so I could be safe.” Fuck, it sounded even more awful when Remi said it out loud. “He went back into the base to see if the control object was still in there.”
“Kaveh doesn’t know the truth, or he wouldn’t have tried to help you.” Kat’s words weren’t helping Remi’s crushing feelings of guilt any.
Damn, over twenty years without a conscience, and this was the second job in six months Remi’s fledgling sense of morality had messed him up.
“Kaveh always thinks about everyone else and not himself.” Kat’s voice broke with those words. “He trusted you, Remi, and you lied to him.”
