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“Yup. You must have me confused with someone else. I’m just a cook, lady.”
“You are just nothing!” The verdant forest of her eyes darkened to onyx pools. A whoosh of robes was all the warning Molly got before the woman’s bony hand was wrapped around Molly’s throat. “You are a rejected orphan bastard who doesn’t know the power she wields.” A long, thin tongue traced a line under Molly’s trembling chin. The woman sighed and smiled, tightening her grip even more. “Little orphan girl has been keeping secrets, hasn’t she? Does our sentinel know from whence you hail?” Then she leaned closer, bringing with her the smell of decaying forest and death.
“Do you know what I’ll do to him when his humanity is but a distant memory? Animals, after all, do make for some wild lovers, especially the mindless beasts. All they want to do is fuck and fight and fuck some more. They never truly learn who their master is until every last ounce of understanding has left them. What’s left for me, then, is the exquisite fury to fuck out of them until their cocks are bruised and their wills are broken. And you, Molly Resnick, have interfered for far too?—”
The alley door exploded off its hinges, shattering the brick facade into mortar and stone shards. Brass erupted from the shadows of the dark hallway, two silencer-clad guns primed and pointed at the woman’s face. Twin ochre flames raged in eyes that promised death.
“Look away, Molly.”
She barely had time to process his words before two electric blue streams of fire arced in front of her, finding their home in the woman’s eyes.
The hissing cry that left Molly’s captor was enough to deafen the dead. The woman threw her head back and screamed through a mouth that widened to unnatural proportions.
Molly stood there, frozen, half expecting the woman’s head to spin around on her spinal column, when Brass’s boot met the bitch’s face and Molly’s neck was finally free.
A split second later, angelic backup joined the party. Steel, Bronze, and Iron all had fire dancing in their eyes and the most unique assortment of weapons trained on one very immortal and pissed-off goddess.
“The dog. It was her. Ragana,” Molly confirmed into Brass’s heated shoulder blade from behind him.
One moment, the witch was on the ground. The next, she levitated above the dumpsters, blood streaming from misshapen eye sockets, while she pointed a knobby finger at Molly’s soul bond. Brass’s bullets, which still glowed with the angel fire he’d fused into them, slowly squeezed out of the torn hollows where Ragana’s eyes had been until the shells clattered onto the pavement with a taunting tinkle.
“That is not enough to stop me, sentinel. There is nothing you can do to slow the course of time.” Then she floated in a clouded mist that blurred the edges of her gown and hair. The lascivious smile that stretched her face wide, and the blood from her eye sockets leaking over her lips, cast a sickening queasiness in Molly’s stomach. “Enjoy your final evening. Tomorrow at sundown, before the first day of your two thousandth winter comes to an end, you will be mine.” Those crimson lips spread into a grim smile, revealing the suggestion of delicate fangs where blunt incisors had previously been. “There will be time enough yet for you to thank me, sentinel. What is an extra day to say goodbye when I’ll have you for eternity?”
Ragana winked out of sight before the rest of Brass’s bullets found their mark in her skull.
A permeating feminine cackle drifted through the wind tunnel created by the buildings on either side of the alley. It chilled Molly so thoroughly, she wondered whether she’d ever be warm again.
Chapter 28
The first day of the season ushered in a barrage of Aurora’s deepest pockets to the town’s recreation complex-turned-winter wonderland. Frosted sports fields had been gridded with rows upon rows of happy little pop-up tents. Anchored at the end of each aisle was a carefully curated food vendor, hawking their wares in the form of eats and sweets.
Molly was certain Suerte and Honeysuckles had secured one of those coveted locales only because of someone else’s borrowed luck. Her little booth sat situated across from the aromatherapy candlemakers Transcendent Times and the guy who print-screened absolutely anything on a sweatshirt and sold it at two and a half times the market value.
Her booth was little due to the ever-rotating sets of broad-ass, though thankfully wingless, shoulders widening her tent flaps like murderous Winkie Guards from The Wizard of Oz.
To say Brass and his brothers were kind of on high alert for Ragana would be like saying a defensive nose tackle only kind of wanted to ram the center offensive lineman into the quarterback until the dude choked on his own teeth.
At least football players wore face masks.
“That’s it. We’re officially out of the bread pudding and taffy. I’ve got about”—Benny peered into the pot of molasses baked beans, his face contorted with focused assessment—“a dozen or so servings of beans and twice as many brats, if that. Could cut those puppies even smaller to stretch ‘em out if you’d like.”
Could you also cut up the remaining minutes until sundown and stretch those out for, I don’t know, forever?
Thankfully, how busy she’d been was the only thing keeping Molly from not handcuffing Brass to her side and smashing the shit out of every mahogany-haired woman with her ladle.
Amazing what having her highest-ever earning day did for taking her mind off losing the one man she’d trade it all away for.
Molly took the last of the bourbon bread pudding over to a frazzled mother and father of four under four. “Here you go,” Molly offered, pelting them with a generous look of sympathy she felt compelled to offer regardless because, damn, that was a lot of kids. “And some road snacks for the kiddos.” Molly shoved the final popsicle sticks topped with maple-leaf-molded amber taffy she’d been saving into four tiny fists. “Enjoy! Hope it makes for a quieter ride home.”
With an exhausted nod of thanks, the family herded their hoard behind the rest of the attendees who were all shuttling out to the parking area. Another few minutes and she could officially shut down her booth and lose her damn mind like a normal person.
Molly glanced at her phone. Three forty-five. Sundown was at four fifteen.
Thirty minutes.
Belatedly, she remembered what Benny had asked her. “Nah, the festival’s almost over. Just sell what we’ve got.”
“Yes, chef.”
