Scorched

musk beneath her perfume. He itched to get to her, to claim her the way her hungry lips had said she wanted to be claimed.

And the vampire hickey? This body could take it. Bring it on, sweetheart. Bite me if you dare. He swam in that thought for a moment, remembering how eager she had been to seduce him. Oh, yeah.

Oh. Hmm.

Dragging his thoughts from the mental home theater, Mac set down the coffee cup, careful of the fragile ceramic handle. Maybe the first thing this new body needs is a cold shower. It had all the rampant enthusiasm of a seventeen-year-old. Great. I’m never going to ask anyone to supersize me again.

Already his stomach was cramping with hunger once more, his enormous breakfast forgotten. This is ridiculous.

The phone rang. Thankful to connect with the normal world, he picked it up, holding the receiver gingerly. He had visions of squishing it by accident.

“Macmillan.” He nearly dropped the phone. His voice resonated differently, bouncing around in a larger rib cage. It was also shaking with stress.

“Hello? Mac?” It was Holly.

“Hey,” he said, clearing his throat, trying to shrink his voice back to normal.

“Sorry to call so early. Have you got a cold?”

He rumbled again, feeling like a sports coupe that woke up as a monster truck. “What do you know about the Castle making superwarriors?”

“Guardsmen? Mac, are you all right? You sound strange.”

Guardsmen. Was that what he’d become? But they were originally human, not demon. They were bound by oaths and spells and trapped against their will, sent to the prison by some whacked- out secret society in charge of supplying Castle guards. Nothing to do with him.

“Mac? What’s going on?”

How much did he want to say this minute? He was too hungry to think, too impatient to explain himself. Too scared. Too embarrassed. “I’m okay,” he said.

“I found something on the demon boxes. I figured you’d want the information as soon as possible.”

His cop side jumped to attention. Good to know it still worked. “Hit me.”

“They’re not exactly common, but they’re not rare, either. I popped into my grandma’s place and had a look through some of her books. Sure enough, I found some thing. I made up a charm that should stop you from being sucked inside.”

“Great!”

“Lore was over here about something else. I’m sending him to you with the charm. He should be there in about fifteen minutes.”

“Great,” he said again, inwardly cursing. He wasn’t ready for visitors, but after the effort Holly had gone to, there was no way he was going to complain about timing. “I owe you big time.”

“No problem, Mac. Take care.” She hung up.

He hung up, grappling with the jumble of problems he had to solve, starting with the most basic. Crap, what am I going to wear? Nothing was going to fit.

Mac paused, remembering his raincoat. He’d noticed the sleeves felt short a couple of days ago, when he had been talking to Holly. Had the first signs of this change already started then?

What if it wasn’t over?

His stomach growled. He ached. He got up to head to the shower and knocked over the hallway lamp. Everything was too close, too cramped.

I hate this. He was an alien in his own landscape. Just call me Ogg, cousin of Tarzan.

After the shower, he grabbed his largest pair of sweat pants and a muscle shirt. The shirt, straining across his chest, made him look like something from a cheesecake boy-toy calendar.

Great. Just great.

The door buzzer rang. Mac walked to the hall and pressed the button for the outside door, not bothering with a greeting. As he moved, he could feel muscle shirt pulling tight across his back. Prowling back to the kitchen, he rummaged in the cupboard until he found some soda crackers. He tore the package open as Lore walked in.

The hellhound reached the kitchen, stopped in his tracks, and looked Mac up and down, the only change in his expression a slight lift of his dark brows. “You’ve been working out.”

Mac chewed a cracker. “I had a makeover.”

Lore narrowed his eyes, considering. Hounds seldom showed emotion to outsiders. The merest flicker was like anyone else having a spazz attack. “Did you mean to do this?”

“No.”

“Then it’s not an illusion.”

“Nope.”

“Huh.” Lore was silent for a moment, and then held out a brown paper bag. His hands were large, the type that would deliver a bruising blow in a fight. Mac could have crushed them in his.

“Holly asked me to give you this,” Lore said.

Mac stuffed another two crackers in his mouth and took the bag, unrolling the top. It held a small cloth pouch pulled shut by a drawstring long enough to hang around his neck. Mac pulled it out of the bag slowly, cautious just in case it didn’t mix well with whatever transforming spell he was packing. When it seemed safe, he slipped the string over his head and tossed the bag on the counter. The pouch looked primitive, filled with who- knew-what witchy herbs and rocks, but it was small enough to stuff under his shirt and out of the way.

Lore watched him silently, dark eyes following Mac’s every movement. “Holly said that charm protects against demon boxes. You’re going after Sylvius.”

Mac looked at Lore sharply. The hellhound’s expression was guarded. It was like looking into the gaze of a street-tough stray. Which, in a way, he was.

“How do you know about Sylvius?” Mac asked.

“He’s a friend.” Lore folded his arms and leaned his shoulder against the refrigerator. “I would have said it was sure death to attempt to rescue any prisoner of the guardsmen, but you can do it. The gods have obviously prepared you.”

For a moment, Mac forgot about refueling. He had no idea what hellhounds believed in, but he didn’t like the idea of being prepared by some entity. That smacked of being the anointed one, or inflated one, or whatever. More crap he’d never signed off on.

“How do you know what I can do?” he asked. “How do you know what goes on in the Castle? You haven’t been there for a year.”

For the briefest instant, Lore looked smug. “Hounds are good with locks.”

“What does that mean?”

“We’re half demons. We have power over doorways and thresholds. Things between one realm and the next. Prophecy. Now that I’m free, the Castle door is no problem for me.”

Mac choked on a cracker crumb. He poured a glass of water and drank it down. Then he started back in on the crackers.

Lore watched him with steady eyes. “We’ve been watching you.”

“That’s creepy.” The hellhounds in general were pretty weird—not harmful, but too silent, too watchful for comfort.

As if reading Mac’s mind, Lore lowered his gaze, studying the kitchen floor. “When you returned to Fairview, some thought it was a miracle. You had fallen into the dark, but came back in defiance of your curse. Our elders thought the gods had called you here for a purpose.”

Mac made a dismissive noise. If the gods were calling, they could leave a voice mail.

Thoughts chased across the hound’s strong-boned features, whole arguments Mac would never hear because he didn’t belong to their closed, silent community. Finally, Lore said, “You don’t believe me. Hounds don’t