His Purrfect Mate (15 page)

“Prisons?
Plural?” Her mother looked confused.

“That’s what he said.”

She heard wheels rolling down the hallway from the front door.    Sophronia’s men wheeled in what appeared to be two large statues, wrapped in blankets.

The
se were the two statues that had been stolen from Kenneth’s homes in Italy and France, Chloe suspected. Sophronia had been behind it all along. All she’d needed then was to find the rest of the statues – and now, she clearly had.

Karesh’s
eyes lit up when the statues were wheeled in.  His family struggled with their bonds and cursed in English and Arabic. “Betrayer!” his father shouted.  The shifters glared at Karesh, with murder in their eyes. 

He spo
ke again in the ancient dialect, and Sophronia replied.

“He’s saying that at last
, with the statues reunited, their glorious master will rise again. Sophronia is saying she always stayed faithful, and soon they will all be bathing in rivers of blood,” Chloe translated for her mother.

“That sounds horribly unsanitary. And sticky,” her mother said.  “When
, exactly, is your boyfriend Kenneth going to show up and save us? Because now would be a good time.”

“Good question,” Chloe muttered.
Should she just tell her mother that it was hopeless, and every last one of them was about to be sacrificed to the demon?

“Fetch the statues,”
Karesh said to the soldiers.

The family
at the table struggled madly, screaming and swearing and shouting threats.

“Don’t do it! Don’t do it! You don’t know what you’re unleashing!”
the older man who looked like Karesh’s father screamed in protest.  He turned to the soldiers who held the AK-47s. “Do you not understand? The demon kills everything, human and shifter! The demon has no loyalty or gratitude! You will die! The demon will boil your blood inside your body!”

The demon-
Sophronia smiled cruelly.

“All these years enslaving
my master, for nothing,” she cooed at the man. “You kept my glorious master trapped, and you will pay the price.   Your screams will echo from these halls.  He will be freed from his prison, and the first blood that he will drink will most assuredly be yours.” Her face lit on the children at the table. “I am sure he will start with the young ones first. We will make you watch.”

Chloe shuddered
, and bile rose in her throat. There was no bargaining with these creatures, no pleading for mercy.

The soldiers reappeared, with three large crates, which they wheeled over to stand next to the two statues that
Sophronia had brought with her.

“Which one is the master?” Chloe wondered. Despite the horror of the situation, her academic
curiousity still survived.

Sophronia
tossed her a scornful glance. “My glorious master is too powerful to be contained in any one statue.  His essence was divided up and then imprisoned in those five statues.  Only when they are all together at the place of their entrapment, and anointed with the blood of the betrayers, can he be freed.”

“Oh my God,” Chloe said.
“This compound – we’re right on top of the ancient city of Kar, aren’t we?”

“We are indeed, where we were once summoned from the demon realm, and then betrayed and trapped in a hideous prison,”
Sophronia snarled, eyes glowing like red coals.

“The two smaller statues –
those were the statues of his servants,” Chloe said. “I guess one little statue was enough to contain a puny being like you.”

The soldiers were opening the boxes.

“Puny?” Sophronia sneered. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

“Yes, we will, won’t we?”
Karesh said. One of the soldiers quickly wheeled one of the crates next to her.

“Open it!” she cried eagerly.  When
the soldier pried the top of the crate off, however, her eagerness turned to confusion and dismay.

“What – this is-”

Before she could say a word, Karesh spun towards her and slashed her arm violently with a small knife, and then splattered her blood on the statue.  She gasped in shock.

It was one of the
smaller statues, Chloe realized. A statue meant to contain the demon’s servants.

Karesh
began chanting in the ancient Semitic language of Sumer, and the demon-possessed Sophronia fell to the ground, screaming and thrashing. 

Her security guards
reached for their guns – and suddenly, the room exploded into chaos.

All of the people who’d been tied up at the table leaped to their feet.
The soldiers with their AK-47s began firing at Sophronia’s bodyguards.  The shifters shifted. Animals were flying through the air. 

Bullets flew, silver bullets landing in the flesh of Demon-
Sophronia’s bodyguards, and they fell on the ground, screaming in agony and then convulsing in their death throes.

The bear shifter
who’d been sitting at the table rushed over to Chloe and Hilary, protecting them with his broad body.  The human woman from the table ran over to them, kneeling behind them. “One minute!” she called out, fumbling with Chloe’s copper handcuffs. “Okay…got it!” And the handcuffs fell to the floor, followed by Hillary’s handcuffs.

More people were pouring in from t
he other room, shifters, humans…one of them was a panther…

K
enneth. Kenneth was there.

There were more shots, and roars of rage as the demon-
Sophronia’s bear shifters fought with wolves and coyotes, and, bizarrely, a crocodile shifter. The crocodile lunged at one of Sophroni’as bear shifters and ripped its intestines open. Then one of the soldiers shot the bearwith silver-colored bullets and it fell to the ground with a mighty thud, screaming in agony.

Sophronia
lay curled on her side, motionless, her arm drenched in blood. Chloe couldn’t tell if the empty shell of her body was even breathing any more.

A little cheetah shifter ran into the room, and shifted into a human boy. “I missed all of the fun!” he complained.

The crocodile shifted back into human form, and grabbed a folded tablecloth from the top of a wooden bureau, neatly tucking it around herself like a sari. She grabbed another one and handed it to the young boy. “That is quite enough, Reggie,” she said severely. “You are not to be in a room where there is gunfire.”

“Yes,
Gopika,” he sighed.

The room fell silent, as the last of
Sophronia’s servants writhed in his death throes on the floor. Kenneth shifted back to his human form, and threw his arms around Chloe.  He had what looked like a bullet wound on his arm, she noticed. It was mostly healed;  shifters healed faster than humans.

“
You got my message!” she cried. 

“Of course I did. The day that you misspell a word – well, there
will never be such a day. Are you all right? I’ve been worried sick!” He hugged her so tightly she could barely breathe.

“Hey,” she gasped.
“Oxygen. My ribs. Okay, that’s better.” She sagged against him.  He always felt so warm and comforting. 

“Did they hurt you?”

“No, they were saving that for later.  I am fine. I’m also thoroughly confused. I am so, so confused. How did you get here?”

“
Private jet, of course.”

“You’ve been shot.”

“The plane had to land outside of the city.  There were bandits between here and the city,” Kenneth shrugged. “We outran them.”

“And you…bought a crocodile with you?
And a child? This hardly seems like the place to bring a child.”

“That is a very long story. 
The child got here first; he managed to outsmart several of my employees-” Kenneth shot a severe look at the coyote shifter, who hung her head and looked ashamed – “and stow away on their plane when they came here.   The crocodile is his nanny; she insisted on coming here with me to make sure that he was safe. She flew out to Italy right as I was headed over here.”

“Oh,
for God’s sake, it could have happened to anyone,” the coyote shifter muttered.  “I’d love to see you outwit the little monster.  It can’t be done.”

Reggie beamed with pride. His nanny shook her head with exasperation. “These shenanigans are nothing to be proud of,” she scolded. “You could have been killed, my dear. I will be keeping a much closer eye on you in the future.”

The female human shook her head in exasperation.  “Good luck with that,” she muttered.

“Please,” Kenneth said scornfully. “You were outwitted by someone who plays with Transformer toys.”

“Hey, the Transformers are cool.  Put your clothes on, will you?” The female coyote shifter had already pulled on a long, flowing robe, and she tossed Kenneth a pair of pants that she’d pulled out of a black duffel bag. Clearly she’d come prepared.

“Is that man Kenneth Chamberlin?” Hilary asked.

“The one and only,” Chloe said.

“Why is he here? Why did they stage this elaborate charade? I don’t understand,” Hilary said, looking baffled.

“I think I do,” Chloe said. “They had to lure the demon-servant here, and get her to bring the statues here.
   The only way for them to do that was to pretend that one of the guardians of the statues had become possessed by the other demon-servant, and was going to betray his family.  They had to stage this whole scene so she’d be willing to bring the statues in the house.”

A look of horror flashed across Hilary’s face.  

“Chloe! It’s getting up!” Hilary shrieked, pointing at Sophronia. “The demon! It’s not dead!”

Sophronia
was, indeed, sitting up, with a dazed look on her face. She looked around the room in bewilderment, clutching at her bleeding arm.

“
It’s all right,” Karesh said. “The demon is gone, trapped inside the statue. The human inside her has re-awakened now that the demon no longer controls her body.”

“Wait. The statue – that’s the statue of the servant. 
Isn’t there already one demon-servant trapped in there? The one that you were pretending to be?” Chloe  asked.

“Yes. Now it contains two.  No telling how they’re getting along
in there.” He allowed himself a wicked smile.

“Where am I?”
Sophronia was looking around the room in a daze.

Her confusion was quite understandable. 

There were dozens of humans and shifters milling about.  Abdul’s family was picking up furniture and putting it back in place, smoothing down rugs, replacing pictures on walls.  There were dead bear shifters lying on the floor. There were soldiers pushing big crates out of the room.  The coyote shifter was now hugging the wolf shifter and they were kissing very passionately.

The female human who’d freed Chloe from her handcuffs smacked the coyote shifter. “Bobbi!  Tone it down!
There’s kids in here! Jeez, get a room, you freaks,” she scolded them.

Sophronia
slowly climbed to her feet.  A woman from the El-Debar family walked over to her with a bowl of water, and a towel.  “Let me help you,” she said, and began washing off the wound.  When she’d washed off all the blood, she made a bandage from napkins on the table.

Chloe and Hilary stood by, watching warily. 
It was hard to get used to Sophronia as an actual human being, not a hell-thing that wanted to drain their blood for food.

“Barrett,” Sophronia said suddenly, looking around in bewilderment. “Where is Barrett?”

“
Uhhh…” Chloe glanced at her mother.

Sophronia’s
gaze lighted on Kenneth. “You…you look like Barrett…You look so much like him you could be his brother.  But he doesn’t have a brother. Who are you?”

Chloe and
Hilary glanced at each other, and winced. “I…I have to tell you something, and it’s not going to be easy for you to understand,” Hilary said.

Sophronia
stared at both of them, her eyes growing huge. “Who are you people? You look just like me.  I feel as if I’ve lost my mind.  How did I get in this house? I was in the storage room…”

“I’m your daughter
Hilary,” Hilary said hesitantly. “And this is your granddaughter, Chloe.” Her face brightened. “She’s very successful, you know. She’s a world-famous professor, and now she’s going to marry a handsome panther billionaire. That one. Right there.” She pointed at Kenneth.

“Mother!”
Chloe’s cheeks flamed red with embarrassment.  Of all the times to brag! And who’d said anything about marriage? Could her mother maybe let Chloe date the man first, for heaven’s sake?

“She’s right,” Kenneth said.

“I don’t have a daughter, and that wouldn’t even make sense,”
Sophronia said, clutching at her wounded arm and looking at them suspiciously. “You’re older than me.” Hilary looked hurt. “Although you look very good for your age. Whatever that is,” Sophronia added.