Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [25]
“Bringing a demon lord out to a dragon’s lair—it’s not the brightest idea you’ve ever had, Mayling.”
I caught the branch she released that time, mentally uttering retorts to her comments as I plodded after her, my gaze alternating between watching for more face-slapping branches and examining the terrain in an attempt to figure out where we were in relationship to the nearest town.
“Kostya is not at all happy that he’s here,” Cyrene added, turning to give me a stern look before hopping over a fallen tree. She slid down an embankment, her head disappearing from sight, but her voice still able to reach me. “Not happy at all.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Kostya is never happy,” I muttered as I made my way over the log, slipping on the soft earth. Tendrils of damp hair clung to my cheeks.
Ahead of us, Gabriel, Kostya, and Savian were deep in conversation. Magoth followed them, the four men plowing a path through a murky, forested area that would have been a perfect setting for an atmospheric gothic movie, vines snaking off the densely packed trees, and moist, springy moss clinging to every surface.
It was oddly quiet, as well, no sounds of civilization managing to penetrate the thick cotton-wool fog that wrapped around us. Only the occasional whine of a mosquito broke the pat-pat-pat of dripping water.
One of the little bugs landed on the back of Cyrene’s exposed neck. I shuffled forward through earthy-smelling leaf residue, and slapped the back of her neck.
She spun around, her mouth opened in surprise.
“Mosquito,” I explained.
Her eyes narrowed. “Oh, you’d like me to think that, wouldn’t you? But I know the truth—you’re just peeved because Kostya is angry with you because you insist on bringing Magoth, and you’re taking it out on me.”
I gave her a little shove forward when Magoth, clad in expensive hiking garb that I suspected owed its orgins to my credit card, disappeared behind a clump of scrubby fir trees. “I don’t give a hoot if Kostya is angry. And if you don’t want to end up lost in the wilds of rustic Latvia, I’d advise you to get moving.”
Cyrene hrmphed and started forward. “I just wanted to point out that if Kostya is in a grumpy mood, you have no one but yourself to blame. He’s very unhappy about having you and Gabriel out here, but when you said Magoth had to come, too, I thought he’d never calm down.”
“Magoth being here wasn’t my choice,” I pointed out, smacking at a mosquito that landed on my arm. “He invited himself, as you know, and since I have no way of making him do what I want him to do, we figured it would be easier to just bring him along where we could keep an eye on him, rather than have him follow us and get up to who knew what sort of trouble.”
“Hrmph. Kostya doesn’t like Magoth.”
I took a deep breath and held it for a moment, then said only, “I’d be surprised if Kostya liked anything.”
“He does, too, like things! He likes lots of things,” Cyrene said, deliberately releasing a tree frond early.
I glared at her again before saying, “Such as?”
She marched on for a moment in silence while she tried to find something that would satisfy me. “Well, I can’t think of anything at the moment, but there are any number of things. Oh . . . oral sex! He likes oral sex a lot!”
Jim, who had been off sniffing what it said was an imp trail, shambled up behind me, catching the last bit of the conversation. “There’s not a male alive who doesn’t,” it said, spitting out a tiny little boot. “If I couldn’t lick my own package—”
“Enough!” I said hastily, not wanting to hear more.
Jim cast me a hurt look. “I was just going to say I would have picked a human form if I couldn’t. Sheesh. Some people have dirty, dirty minds.”
“A dirty mind is the sign of a healthy libido, say I,” Magoth said, popping up from behind a large cluster of rocks. “What are you ladies doing back here? Are you engaging in wild lesbian urges? We could have a quick threesome if you like.”
He waggled his eyebrows at Cyrene, who just rolled her eyes and pushed past him.
“You could have a Magoth sandwich! One of you could start at the