Read Hunt the Moon : Cassandra Palmer #5 Online

Authors: Karen Chance

Tags: #Fantasy, #General, #Fiction

Hunt the Moon : Cassandra Palmer #5 (4 page)

BOOK: Hunt the Moon : Cassandra Palmer #5
5.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
I decided I wasn’t enjoying the experience.
By what?
Billy demanded.
Like I know! Just
do
something!
Yeah, only what I can do depends a lot on what exactly is—
Billy!
Okay, okay. Don’t worry, Cass. I got this,
he told me. Right before he was thrown out of me, across the bathroom and through the wall.
I watched him disappear, a look of almost comical surprise on his face, and belatedly realized who’d had control of my other hand. Because it immediately went numb and joined the choke party at my neck. But amazingly enough, that wasn’t my biggest problem.
There were a limited number of things that could possess a human. Ghosts were one of them, but unless they were welcomed inside like I did for Billy, they had to fight their way through the body’s defenses. And that meant a much-weakened spirit by the time it finally got in—if it did.
But that hadn’t been weak. Whatever it was had exorcized Billy while maintaining its grip on me, and no mere ghost could do that. Which narrowed things down to the Oh, Shit list.
A fact that was demonstrated when the towel rack tipped over and tried to bash my head in. My hand wasn’t on it anymore—no one’s was—but it was going nuts, anyway. It shattered the mirror over the sink, then ricocheted off and slammed into the tub, sweeping the jar of bath salts onto the floor and turning the soggy tile fluorescent pink.
The result was enough noise to wake the dead, one of whom started hammering on the bathroom door. “Miss Palmer. Are you all right?”
I didn’t know the voice, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t answer, anyway. All I could think about was getting to the source. The vamps might not know any more about this than I did, but they could at least pry my damn hands off my neck.
I tried to shift, but this time, nothing happened. Maybe because the room was starting to spin and my vision was graying out and I was slowly sinking to my knees. And then Billy was back, looking pissed.
He slipped inside my skin, and immediately I felt a very familiar energy drain.
You’re feeding
now
?
I asked incredulously.
I have to have energy to fight this thing, Cass! And I’m almost bottomed out.
And what do you think I am?
Billy didn’t answer, and the drain didn’t stop. But a moment later, my hands sprang away from my neck like they’d been burned. Suddenly, I could breathe again.
I stayed down because I didn’t have the energy to get up, coughing and wheezing as my lungs struggled to drag in air through a throat that felt maybe half the right size. It was burning and my head was swimming, and I really, really wanted to throw up. But I would have cried in relief if my eyes had been under my control.
Unfortunately, they’d rolled up into their sockets and wouldn’t come back down.
“Miss Palmer?” The vamp was sounding seriously unhappy now, but the door still didn’t open.
Why isn’t he coming in?
Billy demanded angrily.
He doesn’t want to upset me.
You and your damn personal space!
I didn’t answer because he had a point. And because I suddenly realized that I could feel my legs again. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Holding on to a body that isn’t yours and doesn’t want to be held is no easy task. And it looked like whatever had its claws in me couldn’t keep all my appendages in thrall at once while also fighting off Billy Joe.
It wasn’t much of an advantage, but it was the only one I had. I staggered to my feet, wincing when a piece of broken glass cut my heel, and almost tripping over the soggy, bunched-up rug. I was trying hard not to panic, but it felt a lot like drowning again—being naked and blind and at the mercy of an enemy I knew nothing about.
Except that it wanted me dead.
And it wasn’t too particular about how I got that way.
I hadn’t taken two hesitant steps when my legs suddenly went numb, my body turned and I ran—straight into the nearest wall. My head happened to be twisted slightly, which saved my nose, but my temple hit hard enough to leave me reeling. I staggered back, but only to get enough leverage to ram the wall again.
Eyes!
I screamed mentally as I jerked out a hand to break my fall and almost broke the bone instead.
Working on it.
Work harder!
I cried as the impact sent me stumbling into the side of the sink.
My hip hit the unforgiving marble hard enough to bruise, but a moment later, my eyesight returned. That would have been a relief, except that it freed up my attacker to grab back one of my hands. Luckily, it was the bad one, and it dropped the hair pick it had snatched up before it could stab me in the eye with it.
The pick went down and my other hand came up—along with a jagged piece of the mirror that it used to slash at my jugular. Billy caught it just in time, but the hand didn’t drop. It hovered menacingly in the air in front of my face, shaking from the effort, while three different spirits battled for control.
I couldn’t tell who was winning, but I didn’t think it was us. I stared at the wickedly sharp triangle as it slowly edged closer, reflecting back to me wildly matted blond hair, a bone white face and dazed blue eyes—and the door to the dining room over my left shoulder. It was nearer now, and I was still on my feet.
I ran for it.
Halfway there, my body went into spasms and I went down. But I managed to snag a potted fern on the way. The pretty piece of blue and white delftware was on a pretty little stand, which made a pretty little crash when it tipped over and exploded against the hard tile.
And, finally, that was enough for the guards. The door burst open and three vamps rushed in, stopping in confusion when they saw nothing but a skinny white girl ripping the bathroom apart. And then it felt like something was ripping me, too, a burning, tearing sensation that mercifully only lasted a second before something
shot
out of me.
A wordless scream knifed through the silence, and some
thing
shivered through the air of the bathroom. The presence was oily and slick and wrong, but the smell was worse: sickly sweet, thick at the back of my throat, cloying, instantly nauseating. It sparked a feeling of primal revulsion deep in my gut, and it didn’t look like I was the only one. The vamps ducked and pulled guns, despite the fact that there was nothing for them to shoot—except for me, and they managed not to do that even when I suddenly dove through the middle of them.
I wasn’t driving, but I didn’t think the entity was, either, because I could feel every inch of hide getting burnt off as I hit the carpet in the dining area face-first.
Not helping!
I told Billy, just as the remnants of the mirror shot by overhead and embedded themselves in the remaining guards.
I didn’t have time to apologize, because the apartment was going nuts. A decanter set flew up from a nearby cart and slammed into the wall behind me in a wash of booze and expensive glass. The cutlery on the room service cart followed and would have skewered me if a vamp hadn’t thrown himself in the way. And then the light fixture over the dining table ripped out of the ceiling, whirling for me like a crystal tornado.
Billy flung us into the living room and behind the sofa, which didn’t help, and then rolled us under the coffee table, which did. At least for the moment. All I could see through the glass top were a few hundred crystals beating against it like an expensive hailstorm, but the view through the side was less obstructed.
I stared around, as much in disbelief as panic, because I’d never seen anything like it. Ghosts find it very difficult to move even tiny things, like a paperclip or a piece of paper. They don’t rip curtain rods off the walls or toss heavy paintings at people’s heads or throw chairs through plateglass windows.
Except for bleeding walls, it looked like something out of
The Amityville Horror
.
I blinked, finally making the connection. And then I squeezed Billy so hard he yelped.
Cut it out!
We have to get to Pritkin,
I told him quickly.
What? Why? What can he—
This isn’t a ghost.
No shit!
So it’s probably some kind of demon.
So?
So he’ll know how to drive it out!
Billy didn’t say anything, maybe because Pritkin was our resident demon expert. Or maybe because the coffee table had just splintered down the middle. He flipped us onto all fours and we scrambled out the other side, just as the chandelier burst like a crystal grenade all over the living room.
It might not have been made for this type of activity, but the dozen or so thick columns of wood flying around looked sturdier. They also looked familiar. I finally recognized one when it slammed through the piano while trying to get at me. I stared at one of the legs off the dining set and wondered why the entity would bother trashing that. We were on the other side of the apartment now, so it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
Until I saw one of the guards run past, being pursued by the equivalent of a flying stake. He dodged it—mostly—and it hit his leg instead of his heart. That was lucky, because it punched through flesh and bone as easily as the other pieces did the walls, the furniture and the flimsy sides of the piano.
The vampires who formed my bodyguard were all senior-level masters and, presumably, they’d seen a lot of crazy stuff through the years. But it didn’t look like they’d seen this. Vamps who prided themselves on strength and impassivity were running around wild-eyed, attacking the misbehaving furniture as if they thought it was the problem, or just trying to avoid being vamp shish kebab.
But other than for the sound of the suite imploding, it was weirdly quiet. I couldn’t talk and the vamps didn’t need to—at least not aloud. They could communicate mentally with each other as easily as I talked to Billy, something that usually gave them a hell of an advantage in a fight. Except, apparently, for right now.
But at least one guy had decided that they needed outside help, because he’d whipped out a cell phone. He was on the other side of the room from where I was hunkered down behind the baby grand, and I didn’t have control of my vocal chords, anyway. So I poked the guy who did.
Tell him to call Pritkin!
And Billy tried. But between my burning throat and the mortal peril and the deafening noise, nobody paid any attention.
These guys are new—I don’t even think they know who he is!
Billy said frantically.
Then you’ll have to go get him.
How? We’ll never make it to the door through all that!
I won’t, but you will
.
It isn’t after you.
Yeah, except if I leave, that thing’ll have its claws back in you!
And if you don’t, it’ll beat me to death!
I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of difference, really.
Okay, okay.
Billy sounded like he was trying to calm down and wasn’t doing so great.
Say I find the mage. Then what? He can’t see me.
Shit. Billy was so solid to me that I had a problem remembering that that wasn’t true for everyone. But Pritkin wouldn’t even know he was there.
It was hard to concentrate over the sound of the piano’s death throes, but I tried. Only the three A’s weren’t doing me a lot of good right now. I knew what the problem was: I needed to get to Pritkin. But I didn’t have any abilities to help me do that.
If I could have shifted, it would have been easy. But his room was five stories down and on the other side of the hotel. And I knew without trying that I couldn’t make it that far. It was hard to shift after Billy had fed, even when I wasn’t already exhausted. As it was, I’d be lucky to get five yards, and that wouldn’t—
I stopped, my thoughts reversing.
Get to Pritkin,
I told Billy over the sound of the blood pounding in my temples.
I just told you, that won’t—
Listen to me! He has Jonas’s necklace. He used it to pull me back to him today when I tried to shift. You’ve got to get it!
And then what? It works on you only when you use your power, and you can’t—
I only need to shift—it doesn’t matter how far! A couple of inches should be enough to activate it. Now go!
For once, he didn’t argue, maybe because he didn’t know what else to do. I felt him leave, and braced myself for another onslaught. But the entity was having too much fun to notice Billy slipping away, and I didn’t give it time to figure things out. I grabbed the top of the piano bench for a shield and started crawling.
A guard was on top of a tipped-over chair, batting at the flying shards of wood with a bloody table leg like a slugger at a baseball game. He saw me and his eyes went round, as if he assumed I must have been skewered ages ago. “Not dead yet,” I croaked encouragingly, and crawled on.
BOOK: Hunt the Moon : Cassandra Palmer #5
5.28Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Wild for the Girl by Ambrose, Starr
The Templar Inheritance by Mario Reading
Nice Girl and 5 Husbands by Fritz Leiber
Dance and Skylark by John Moore
Riding Hot by Kay Perry
Only Alien on the Planet by Kristen D. Randle
SEAL of Honor by Gary Williams
The Pull Of Freedom by Barrett, Brenda