His cock stirred, and he groaned at the inconvenient timing of his imagination.
“Where are we?” he asked Alex, trying desperately to get his mind back onto business and away from the vulnerable-looking woman lying on the sofa.
“My place,” Alex answered easily. “I figured that, considering what found us, it was best to get as far away as possible.”
Ronan glanced at Kali’s sleeping form and lowered his voice a little more. “What found us?”
“A pixie,” Alex said with an exaggerated shudder. “Nasty little bitches.”
“Seriously?” Ronan asked, half expecting Alex to laugh and tell him what they were really running from. When Alex just nodded, Ronan couldn’t help himself. He had to know. “What happened?”
Alex shrugged. “Basically, I recognized her. She recognized me. I incinerated the bitch’s ass before she could incinerate mine.”
“You did what?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Alex—he was a handy ally in a fight—but it seemed a rather extreme reaction when what they really could have used was someone to interrogate.
“Don’t worry,” Alex said with a wink. “Pixies recover from incineration. Haven’t you ever heard of pixie dust? But I needed her to be out of action long enough to get us here. If she’d been conscious, she would have been able to follow.” Ronan was sure his head was spinning from all of this new information. Yeah, he’d been friends with Alex for a long time, but he’d always tried to ignore the fact that the guy wasn’t human.
But then Alex glanced over at Kali and suddenly became very serious. “You wanted to know what could burn a human from the inside out—our little visitor was more than capable. I’m afraid your cop friend’s instincts were right on the money. Whatever is going on, the attacks definitely aren’t random, and they sure as hell aren’t the work of a human serial killer.”
“So what do we do now?” Ronan asked. He really had hoped that Dave’s reaction had just been a big brother overreacting to a possible threat to his sister, but the fact that Alex had exposed his nonhuman nature to Kali was a pretty good indicator that they were in deep shit.
“Unfortunately, now we need to get PUP Squad Alpha involved. They’re all on leave at the moment, but that might be a good thing in this instance.” He glanced over at Kali, a frown marring his features. “The pixies are good assassins, but they usually work for a price. I doubt they’re the ones actually ordering the attacks. My biggest worry is figuring out who we can trust outside of my squad. The Ruling Body was set up to protect paranormals from humans. Not the other way around. It’s likely they’ll only get involved if the assassinations threaten to expose the paranormal community.”
“What about the date? Kali’s birthday…it seems to be a significant part of what’s happening.”
“Not sure about that one,” Alex said as he headed over to a panel in the wall, “but I have a few people I can ask.” He fiddled with some strange-looking dials and then closed the cover. “I’ve set the protection wards so that no one—not even me—can slip travel into or out of the house. Anyone wanting to visit will have to slip outside and find their way in.”
“Wait, back up a minute.” Ronan rubbed a hand over his eyes and silently gave himself the “you can handle anything” speech. “Protection wards? Aren’t they supposed to be magical? That looked more like a high-tech security system.”
Alex’s lips curved into that annoying grin that made Ronan want to hit something.
“That’s the thing about magic,” Alex said with another wink, “eventually some scientist comes along and explains it.” He nodded at the panel on the wall. “Far easier these days to create a field to stop slip travelers. As long as that’s active you won’t come face-to-face with any paranormals inside the house.” He glanced at Ronan’s semiautomatic handgun and grinned once more. “That thing’ll hurt most, but in case you find yourself with something a little harder to maim, I’ll leave you some demon shots.”
“Some what?”
“Demon shots,” Alex said as he handed over a handful of rather ordinary-looking bullets. “Basically, these will incinerate an intruder much the same way I incinerated that pixie. It won’t work on fire demons and will only give you a few moments of escape time with a pixie, but pretty much everyone else is toast.”
“Uh, okay,” Ronan said, trying not to sound like he had no clue what was going on. “Want to tell me what a pixie looks like? You know, so I know the difference between dead and dust.”