Our last special Guest at DIK (no not her)

I apologize for the delay in your normal programs. In return for such patience (and not killing me), we have a very special guest today. Please sit quietly sipping the complementary drinks and be beri beri quiet.

~~~~~
The woman stepped from the raft onto the beach, and the island rocked beneath her feet.

***

In a hut, moonlight filtered through the shoddily thatched roof (it must be shoddy if the moon can shine through it -- and it was almost as if someone were too cheap to pay for better construction) onto the hot couple making out on the bed.

When the island trembled, the male pulled his fangs out of the female’s throat. His blond hair, artfully disheveled, wasn’t long enough to conceal the astonishment in his gray eyes.

“Good God,” he said. “Lilith has come. We are finally saved!”

“Oh my god, finally,” echoed the woman on the bed, rolling her eyes. “Lazing our days away -- or nights, actually -- on a tropical island is so terrible.”

He lightly flicked the tip of her nose. “I only think of you, sweet. There is not a computer to be found on the whole of this bloody island.”

“And I suppose it has nothing to do with knowing that, every time you go outside this hut, you’ll see someone wearing a flowered Hawaiian shirt.”

The male shuddered in horror, then stilled and listened as footsteps neared the hut.

And passed it.

“She does not come for us, then.” He fell back against the pillows again. “If she’s here after the cowboy, I’ll not tell her that he’s been abducted.”

“Maybe she’s here for Michael.”

“Lilith, here for the Doyen?” He shook his head. “That’s simply absurd, sweet. She has absolutely no use for a feather duster.”

***

In the original synopsis for Lilith’s book, the author had the stupid idea of ending it by sending them on a vacation to a tropical island. She’d written a line like, “But first they went spent a few days walking the beach, in the sun.”

What a fucking idiot the author was, Lilith thought. Hell was full of sand, and she hated it. Hated the feel of it under her boots, and the sensation between her toes would probably make her vomit.

She stalked past a hut, trying to ignore the male voice with its distinct British accent inside. It didn’t surprise her that fop Colin had ended up here. He’d been nothing but a romantic sap since he’d begun cozying up with Hugh’s little sister.

A palm tree stood near a second hut. Beneath the shelter of its branches, a huge bastard with shaved hair and a bitch of a scar down his face snarled at her.

Lilith stared back at him. Snarling was for amateurs. After a moment, the asshole blinked or traced or whatever it was they did away.

Cerberus’s balls, who could keep all of this straight? As if her own world wasn’t complicated enough with all of the bargains and the Rules and the different psychic abilities and realms and novices calling their caches a hammerspace and fucking prophecies and now living blood and spells, she had to remember what word other freaks used when they teleported?

And where the fuck was Hugh?

She blamed everything on Michael, of course. The goddamn pansy. He could have stopped all this shit, but no. He just let it go on and on and on. For fuck’s sake, there were even demon sheep now.

The hut didn’t have a door, and that pissed her off, too. She’d wanted to make an entrance. But instead of kicking it open, she had to walk through it.

Michael was waiting for her. He stood in the center of the main parlor -- what the hell kind of hut had a parlor? -- his black wings stretched out behind him. They waved gently against the seatback of a rattan chair.

Swish, swish, swish.

Lilith planted her feet and folded her arms over her chest. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Michael.”

His only answer was, swish swish swish. Sand and dust billowed gently in the wake of his feathers.

“All right,” Lilith said. So he wanted to play it that way. That was just fine. She hadn’t spent two thousand years as a demon for nothing, and she’d go straight for the guilt. “Do you know what’s going on? Do you have any idea how many lives are at stake in this next book?”

His wingtip lifted to a shelf, whisked into a crevice, and swept out the dust. Fucking ridiculous.

“First, you weenied out with Alice. You couldn’t even look her in the face or let her kill you.” Lilith’s lip curled. It wasn’t a snarl--just derision. “Some martyr you are. How can you call yourself a Guardian?”

The Doyen’s head dipped in agreement. “It is possible that was not well done of me.”

“Possible? Hugh’s a thousand times the martyr you are, and he’s human.” Not that she’d ever let Hugh sacrifice himself again. She’d kill him first. “So, what is this? Don’t tell me it’s that stupid prophecy. You said you don’t believe in that shit.”

Not just shit, but rhyming shit. In the Old Language, anyway. In English, it was just stupid. Dragons and voices and Caelum and blood and blah blah blah.

Again, he nodded. “Nothing is inevitable. Free will determines every course.”

As he spoke, his black feathers dipped beneath a sofa and brushed out a line of sand. Lilith eyed his neck and thought about stabbing it. Unfortunately, her sword was with Sir Pup, who’d been roped into watching the author’s cabana boys.

Hell, she barely saw Sir Pup anymore, either. Someone was always needing him. First the puppy and the Black Widow, then Colin’s nephew.

And then there was this island. Lilith wanted Hugh back, her dog back, and her secondary characters back. Who cared that they’d already gotten their own books and their happily-ever-afters and weren’t secondary anymore? They still had a series to finish.

Which was probably why Michael was wussing out.

“So, let me guess,” Lilith said. “Your little friend also told you about your future.”

Michael was silent.

“So you’re worried? I thought you didn’t believe in that crap.” A thought struck her. “Unless...is she always right?”

“No. There have been a few times when the outcome was not what she’d predicted.”

Lilith waved her hand. “There you go then.”

“A few times out of hundreds of thousands of predictions.”

“Ah.” But really, who cared? This was his job. “Then I guess it sucks to be you.”

“Your compassion overwhelms me, Lilith.”

She thought that was a joke, but with Michael, she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t see how there was room in him for a sense of humor when he also had that giant stick up his ass.

“Yeah, well, whatever. Just get your ass back to San Francisco.” Or Caelum. Or wherever the fuck. She began to turn toward the door, and paused. “What did she say, anyway?”

“‘Beware the redhead.’”

“Then you’ve already screwed that up. Isn’t your -- ” Lilith gesture included the hut, the island ... all of the furniture he was dusting. “ -- mistress or whatthefuck a redhead?”

“Yes.” Michael sighed. “But she is not the one I must be wary of.”

Lilith rolled her eyes. “Jesus Christ. You wimp. Just suck it up. It’s a romance series. She’s not going to kill you.”

“Just as Hugh did not kill you?”

Good point. Not that she’d admit it. “Whatever. Just get your ass back.”

“In a while, perhaps.”

She’d give him a little while. She wasn’t completely heartless. Speaking of...

Lilith left the hut. There was something still to do.

Her man.

Her puppy.

And if they didn’t give them back, her sword.

***

A few minutes later, Colin looked up to see a man in his bedroom. Startled, he flipped the sheet up over Savi, who protested and wiggled beneath it. “Bloody hell, Michael! You cannot just teleport into a man’s bedchamber!”

“I only deliver a message.”

Savi stopped wriggling. And no wonder -- the clever girl could hear through the cotton sheet.

Cotton. Sensible for a tropical isle, but still... Colin only suppressed his shudder because it was a very high thread count.

“What is it?” Savi asked.

“That not only will it suck to be me. It sucks to be Colin, too.”

The Doyen vanished. Savi peeked out from beneath the sheet. “What did that mean?”

“Some nonsense about Chaos, obviously.” From somewhere on the island, he heard a bark. Ah, Lilith. One could always depend on her for a bit of excitement. “No matter. Our story is done, and so we will escape whatever dire fate has been predicted.”

Savi sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest. “Actually, after everything that happened with Jake and Alice, I calculated the statistical probability of ‘dire fates’ happening...and it doesn’t look good.”

“But I do, sweet.” He waited for her smile, and continued, “As long as we have that, we will get by.”

Her psychic scent betrayed her doubt, but she conceded, “And I suppose that since she already passed us once, Lilith isn’t likely to come back and drag us home, too.”

***

Halfway to Hugh’s hut, Lilith swore. She’d forgotten to head back to the vampire’s hut after talking with Michael.

It didn’t matter. She’d kick his ass out of bed in a minute. Savi’s, too.

And then get the hell off this sandy, godforsaken island.


THE END


And this is the end of my stay on the island! Thank you so much to Alice, my hostess, and to everyone -- it’s been a blast.

To cap off my visit, I’ll draw one name from the comments (of any of the three days, comments made before Sunday Nov. 9th at midnight Pacific time) to win a $20 Amazon gift certificate. Good luck!

Thank you Ms. Meljean, for coming to our little island of orgies love. It's been wonderful and we hope you'll come back soon. Or...maybe you should just stay and never leave.

Please also give a thank you to Amy/Aymless for helping with format edits. :)

Go out and buy Demon Bound. That, or bow down. Xoxo~~~