Cassandra Palmer 1(47)

Jimmy got his head together, shook off my hold and bolted down the hall. A silver cloud descended from the ceiling and started after him just as the employees only door behind us was kicked in from the outside. So much for not alarming the humans. I didn't even turn around, but ran down the corridor after my fleeing captive. No way was I letting him slip away while I tried to reason with the Senate's stooges.




I heard Pritkin swear, but by then I had reached the door to the locker room and I slammed it shut after me. Since the door would hold them for all of about a second, I needed to find Jimmy fast. I ignored a question from a half-dressed man in a demon suit and dodged past benches and open lockers to the exit. A gust of warm desert air ruffled my hair as I emerged, and I looked up to see that I'd exited the building. I was along one side, in a spot where the elaborate decoration of the front gave way to a plain asphalt lot bounded by a chain-link fence. It was probably where the employees parked. I cursed, thinking it would be hard to find Jimmy among the rows and rows of vehicles, but then I saw him darting towards the back of the lot. Billy's sparkling cloud was trailing after him like a misplaced halo.



I drew my gun and continued my pursuit. I was a still shaky on whether I could actually kill anyone, even someone who deserved it as much as Jimmy, but I could definitely wound him. And that would give Billy Joe time to try out his possession skills. I took off through a row of cars at a dead run after checking that my safety was still on. It wouldn't be funny if I saved everyone the trouble and shot myself.




I hadn't gotten halfway down the row before I heard the door behind me burst open with enough force to wrench it off its hinges. Strangely enough, instead of picking up speed, Jimmy skidded to a stop at the same moment, only a few yards ahead of me. I thought he'd reached his car and was trying to figure out how to use his keys with mangled hands, but a minute later I realized that what he'd actually found was backup. A couple dozen ugly guys rose out of the lot like scarecrows popping out of a wheat field. I didn't take time to count, but at least five or six were vamps. How the hell had Jimmy managed to fix up an ambush?



I skidded to a stop at the same time that a familiar iron grip caught me around the waist. It was sort of ironic, really. I'd spent more time than I wanted to admit fantasizing about being in Tomas' arms, but now that I'd spent much of a night there, it was getting old. Pritkin moved into view as Tomas dragged me backwards. He had his shotgun out and was glaring at me with something close to hatred in those clear eyes.




It rattled me until I realized that he was actually looking over my shoulder. A loud creaking and popping sound came from where Jimmy was standing, as if a forest of trees had all decided to fall at once, and I glanced up. «You have got to be kidding,» was as much as I got out before Tomas threw himself on top of me and we went down in a pile. I scraped my hands against the asphalt, losing a bit more skin, but keeping hold of the gun through some miracle. Yep, definitely getting old.



I managed to get a partial glimpse of the sight in front of us through a curtain of Tomas' hair. Most of the mob at Tony's had nicknames. I think it's some kind of unwritten gangster rule, because virtually everyone had one tied to either their favorite weapon or most prominent physical feature. Alphonse was «Baseball» because of what he could do with a bat, and they weren't talking about on a diamond. I'd always assumed that Jimmy's nickname came from his looks, which were rather ratlike, or his personality. I'd been wrong. It seemed that Jimmy the half satyr was also Jimmy the wererat. Or something. Weres weren't my specialty, but I'd never seen anything quite like that. I squinted. I'd never even heard of anything like that. Probably for good reason, since anybody who saw one was going to want to forget it as soon as possible.

Whatever it was had a giant, furry body that looked like it was molting in patches. Its narrow head had goat horns growing out of it, its big, chipped teeth were the color of a rusty sink and its pink tail was as thick around as my calf. It had goat hooves on its hind legs and stunk to high heaven. And, whatever Jimmy had morphed into, some serious nepotism had been going on at Dante's, because a tribe of his relations surrounded him.




My brain kept telling my eyes that they were seeing things. Number one, satyrs are already magical creatures, and as such are supposed to be immune from were bites, so what I was seeing was technically impossible. Number two, why would a whole group of were-anythings be working for Tony? That sort of cooperation just didn't happen; everyone knew that. But then, it was hard to argue with the evidence twitching wiry black whiskers a few feet away.