Me and My Shadow - Katie MacAlister [3]
“Thank you for that reiteration of demon lord protocol.” Inside me, deep inside my chest, the shard of the dragon heart that I bore stirred, triggered as always by any threat or strong emotion. I clamped down hard on it, practicing the control I’d been working so hard to wield. I smiled at Gabriel’s bodyguard. “Thanks, Maata. I’ll take care of this.”
“Better you than me,” she answered with a wry smile as she left.
“You want me to rough him up a little?” Jim asked, rising and walking slowly toward Magoth.“I’d go straight for his noogies, but that curse gives me the willies. Ha! Willies! Get it?”
“Go ahead and try,” Magoth said, his eyes glittering with an unholy light.
Jim paused, shooting me a worried look. “You said he doesn’t have any powers here, right?”
“He’s without about ninety-five percent of his power, yes,” I answered.
Jim froze. “Oh, man! I thought you said all of his power was gone!”
“It is. Well, all but about five percent, as best as we can figure.”
“Five percent? Geez, May! We’ve got to have a little talk about the difference between a demon lord without any power, and one with enough to squash flat a sixth-class demon!”
Magoth smiled again. A little black tendril of power snapped at Jim.
The demon yelped and backed toward the door. “Fires of Abaddon, can’t you take a joke? I was just fun ning, Your Imperial Dark and Twisted Majesty. Er . . . I think Hart to Hart is on that retro-TV-show channel. You know how I love me some Stefanie Powers. Catch ya later, Your Eminence of Unholy Darkness.”
I gave Magoth my full consideration as the door shut behind Jim. It was true that over the last six weeks while Magoth had lived with us, Gabriel and I had determined that the demon lord had retained only a tiny fraction of his powers, but you don’t become a prince of Abaddon without picking up a few tricks.
“You know the basement and areas below are off-limits until the workmen are done, Magoth. We explained that to you when they started building the lair.”
His expression shifted from outrage to sullen discontent. “As the mortals say, you are not the boss of me.”
“Perhaps not, but you are here on sufferance, a fact I am obliged to point out yet again. Irritating Gabriel by attempting to force your way into his lair is going to do nothing but give him due cause to boot your butt out into the street.”
He oiled his way around the desk at which I sat, and trailed a finger up my arm as he moved behind me. I fought the urge to shiver, his touch so cold it leeched the heat from the air around me. “Ah, but you wouldn’t allow your scaly boyfriend to do that, would you, my sweet, sweet May?” He brushed a quick, frigid kiss on the back of my neck. Beneath the desk, my hands tightened into fists, pain pricking my palms. I knew without looking that my fingers had changed into long, scarlet talons. The dragon shard urged me to shift, enticing me with mental visions of Magoth lying dead on the floor at my feet.
I was sorely tempted to give in to the shard, but I reminded myself that once I gave myself up to it, there would be no going back. Much as I loved Gabriel, as happy as I was being the mate to a powerful—not to mention witty, urbane, and incredibly sexy—wyvern, I did not want to spend the rest of eternity as a dragon.
“You’ve been warned about touching me,” I managed to say in a neutral voice. The dragon shard fought hard to dominate me, but I hadn’t survived as Magoth’s slave for almost a hundred years without learning how to control my emotions.
His cold breath touched my neck for a moment longer before wisdom evidently got the better of him. He pushed aside my laptop and lay on top of the desk in a seductive pose, one hand languidly gesturing toward his body. “You want me.”
“I want Gabriel,” I said, struggling inwardly as the dragon shard once again threatened to overwhelm me.
He smiled again, but this was a smile of seduction, not promised retribution. “Your dragon may satisfy your doppelganger needs, but the animal within you wants me, sweet May. I can feel