hide—and they have hidden them well. You will deal with the women. We will gather as many as we can before we must return to the Home Place.”
He laughed.
“Make it fast,” she told him coldly. “Don’t waste time prolonging your own pleasure. The men are mine.” She smiled at that.
“This has become a competition,” he stated flatly.
“Not for you,” she reminded him. “But I will win. I will accomplish everything our friend was supposed to do for the Council, only so much better, and return to Embran before he even realizes he has failed. They will recall him in shame.”
“He thinks he is here alone. You were not supposed to come…One.”
“I got permission to watch him and make sure the mistakes of his predecessor are not repeated. It isn’t my fault if he thinks he can take his time, enjoy himself among the humans. When he gets back to the Home Place with one of the Millets—if he manages to catch one—we will be well on our way to curing the sickness these creatures caused us. And I will have proved that our plague could have started with the introduction of any human elements, not exclusively a Millet.
“True, the woman who married Jude Millet and then returned to Home Place got there at the same time as the first cases of the Torturous Death. It is likely she introduced the disease through her resumed contacts with her own kind, and they began to die. But I believe that if each Embran were what these creatures call
“You are brilliant,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “My way is so much more efficient. We must move quickly.”
“I’m ready,” he said.
“You are indeed. Have you heard about the
He laughed. “Amazing how many they have seen—and how many people are demanding rabies shots.”
“Without seeing these bats, let alone being bitten by them.” One snorted.
“Do it.” His voice changed at once, sounding not just eager, but demanding.
For her the change was simple. She could accomplish her transmutation at will and smoothly—that was her greatest accomplishment and, added to her enhanced intellect, it made her formidable. Too bad the Council continued to prize man-Embrans above the females of their species.
Lacing her hands across her breasts, she angled her elbows upward, bowed her head and sank into a crouch, grew smaller while thin membranes formed over the bones of her arms, turning them into vibrating black wings. She drew them rapidly through the air, reveling in the beating sound. The folding and reshaping of her transmutation happened rapidly. She had been told how graceful her change appeared. Graceful and potentially deadly.
A moment of discomfort came with the sprouting of short, tight fur all over her newly forming body. Sharp, quill-like hairs dug at her enlarging eyes until they protruded enough to be free. She felt her mouth stretch wide and heard the popping that came with erupting teeth, and fangs she could extend or retract. The slime that dripped from her lips would burn like acid if she willed it. Her size could change, depending upon her needs. At the moment she needed no more than a few inches of girth and less of height. She tucked the fangs away but let her softer teeth remain extended—they were so useful in these moments.
Servant panted with anticipation.
She hovered above the floor, rose to just the right height and set herself spinning. Closer and closer she drew to him until she fastened onto his groin, slid those softer teeth along until they pressed into his tensed body.
Her Servant screamed, shuddered and clutched air. He gave himself to her.
One was nothing but clear mind, and exquisite release.
This was the prize she won for superiority. She could kill, or she could become the giver and receiver of cataclysmic orgasm.
Chapter 18
“Why are you ignoring me?” Ben asked Willow. He sat in the passenger seat of her van.
“Because I’m pretending you’re not here.”
He looked at her and put a hand on her thigh.
She batted him away.
“Why would you want to pretend I’m not here?” he said. “It feels so good to be with you.”
All he heard from her was a long sigh.
“Doesn’t it feel good to you, Willow?”
Another sigh.
“Willow?”
“Too bad you had to spoil the best day I ever had,” she said.
She came to a stop at a light. Ben leaned his head back and watched the side of her face. The red light turned her hair the color of smoldering embers and caught the brilliance of her eyes. “You’re perfect,” he said, and grinned to himself.
“And you’re a rat. You’re deliberately goading me, Benedict Fortune.”
“But we kiss so well. You’ve got to admit that. We do everything so well together. And if I’m twisted to enjoy the way I feel with you in my arms, then you’re twisted, too. You like it just as much as I do.”
Ben didn’t miss her little smile.
The light turned green, and she drove on in the gathering gray of an early evening turned dramatic by mounds of silver-edged cumulus clouds.
Sirens hollered behind them, and for an instant Ben expected them to be pulled over.
Willow did pull the van over, but only to let a fire truck pass.
She didn’t immediately drive on. “You haven’t pulled any stunts, have you?” she said. “I wouldn’t be amused.”
“Stunts?” He tapped her bare shoulder.
“Ministorms aren’t likely to hit twice in the same backyard—”
“C’mon—”
“But if I get there and the fire hoses are out, I’ll know who wants to stop me from seeing my clients.”
He sniffed in deeply. Her hair always smelled like jasmine—his favorite scent. In Kauai he grew jasmine just to remind him of her when he sat on the lanai at night.
Her shoulder felt like silk—all the way to her elbow and back.
“I’m driving, Ben.”
“I’d never accuse
“Not if I did it several blocks from the crime scene. We both know I couldn’t change anything, anywhere, no matter how hard I tried.”
He tilted his face up. Willow didn’t know how well he understood, not only her self-doubts, but her paranormal potential. “Listen, love. Why not give this one a pass and go back to the Court of Angels?” He needed something strong to sell that idea. “We’ve got to find your angel—the one from the Mentor’s book.”
“You know it’s not there. If it was, we’d have found it—and one of us would remember seeing it, too.”
“Not if it’s deliberately hidden. Things might look different in this light, too.”
“Nice try,” she told him, making a left turn. “The way things are going I may have lost half of my clients by tomorrow. The Brandts’ business would fill in for a lot of smaller jobs.”
“Mario didn’t like it when you left him behind.”
“He loves being with Winnie. You’d think they’d been together all their lives. Now concentrate and stop trying to get your own way.”
