The only light was the dim scarlet glow from Cowl's gate, and everything had become blood and shadows. The eyes of dozens of ghouls burned like nearly dead coals as they turned toward us, reflecting that lurid luminescence.
"Lara," I hissed. "This cavern goes up in seventeen seconds, and there are ghouls in the tunnel out."
"Empty night," Lara swore. Her voice was thready with pain and fear. "What can I do?"
Good question. There had to be… Wait. There might be a way to survive this. I was too tired to work any magic, but…
"You can trust me," I said. "That's what you can do."
She turned her pale, beautiful, gore-smattered face to me. "Done."
"Get us to the tunnel's mouth."
"But if there are ghouls there already—"
"Hey!" I said. "Tick, tick!"
Before I'd gotten to the end of the first tick, Lara had seized me again and hauled us across the floor to the mouth of the tunnel. Behind me, Cowl was shouting something, and so was Vittorio, and the ghouls set up a howl and were running after us. Only one of the ghouls was close enough to get in the way, but Lara's wicked little wavy-bladed sword ripped straight across its eyes and left the monster momentarily stunned with pain.
Lara dumped me at the mouth of the tunnel, and I took a couple of steps back in, checking the smooth tunnel walls as I shook out my shield bracelet. That demonic flying thing of Cowl's banked around for another pass.
"What now?" Lara demanded. The ghouls were coming. They were nowhere near as fast as Lara had been, but they weren't far away.
I took a deep breath. "Now," I said. "Kiss me. I know it seems weir—"
Lara let out a single, ravenous snarl and was abruptly pressed up against me, arms sliding around my waist with sinuous, serpentine power. Her mouth met mine and . . .
. . . ohmygod.
Lara had once boasted that she could do more to me in an hour than a mortal woman could in a week. But it ain't boasting if it's true. The first, searing second of that kiss was indescribably intense. It wasn't simply the texture of her lips. It was how she moved them, and the simple, naked hunger beneath every quiver of her mouth. I knew she was a monster, and I knew she would enslave and kill me if she could, but she wanted me with a passion so pure and focused that it was intoxicating. That succubus kiss was a lie, but it made me feel, within that single moment, strong and masculine and powerful. It made me feel that I was attractive enough, strong enough, worthy enough to deserve that kind of desire.
And it made me feel lust, a primal need for sex so raw, so scorching, that I felt sure that if I didn't find expression for that need—here and now —that I would surely go insane. The fires that surged up in me weren't limited to my loins. It was simply too hot, too intense for that, and my whole body felt suddenly aflame with need. Every inch of me was suddenly supernaturally aware of Lara, in all her blood-soaked sensuality, in all her wanton desirability, pressed against me, the mostly transparent white silk of her gown doing less to conceal her nudity than the black blood of her foes.
Now., my body screamed at me. Take her. Now. Fuck the stopwatch and the bombs and the monsters. Forget everything and feel her and nothing else.
It was a close thing, but I held back enough to keep from forgetting the danger. The lust nearly killed me—but lust is an emotion, too.
I embraced that lust, allowed it to enfold me, and returned the kiss with nearly total abandon. I slid my right hand around the succubus's waist, and down, pulling her hips hard against me, feeling the amazing strength and elasticity and rondure of her body on mine.
With my left hand, I extended the shield bracelet toward the cavern, the bombs, the onrushing ghouls—and I fed that tidal force of lust through it, building up the energy I would need, some part of me shaping and directing it even as the rest of me concentrated on the mind-consuming pleasure of that single kiss.
The clocks stopped ticking.
The explosives went off.
Cleverness, determination, treachery, ruthlessness, courage, and skill took a leave of absence, while physics took over the show.
Tremendous heat and force expanded from the explosives. It swept through the cavern in an almighty sword of fire, laying low anything unfortunate enough to have remained within. I saw, for one flash-second, the outline of the ghouls, still charging us, unaware of what was about to happen, against the white-hot fireball that expanded through the chamber.
And then that blast hit my shield.
I didn't try to withstand that incredible sledgehammer of expanding force and energy. It would have shattered my shield, melted my bracelet to my wrist, and crushed me like an egg. The shield wasn't meant to do that.
Instead, I filled the space at the mouth of the cave with flexible, resilient energy, and packed layer upon layer of it behind the shield, and more of it all around us. I wasn't trying to stop the energy of the explosion.
I was trying to catch it.
There was an instant of crushing compression, and I felt the pressure on my shield like a vast and liquid weight. It flung me from my feet, and I held hard to Lara, whose arms gripped me in return. I began to tumble, blinded by the flame, and fought to hold the shield, now hardening it all around us, into a sphere, constricting it around us until we were pressed body-to-body. We hurtled up the tunnel, flung out ahead of the explosion like a ship ahead of a hurricane—or, more accurately, like a ball being fired down the barrel of a long, stony musket. The shield banged against the smooth walls, dragging more effort out of me. A single outcropping might have stopped our progress for a disastrous instant, shattering stone, shield, succubus, and shamus into one big mess. Thank God the vanity of Lara's family had made sure the walls of the tunnel were polished smooth and gleaming.
I didn't see the ghouls guarding the upper reaches of the tunnel, so much as I felt them hit the shield and be smashed aside and splattered like bugs, only to be consumed by the flood of fire washing up the tunnel after us. I don't know how fast we were going, beyond "very." The explosion flung us up the long tunnel, and out into the night air and up through the branches of a couple of trees—which shattered under the force. Then we were arcing through the night, spinning, with stars above us whipping by and a long tongue of angry flame emerging from the entrance to the Deeps below.
And all the while, I was locked in the heated ecstasy of Lara's kiss.
I lost track of what was happening somewhere near the top of the arc, right about when Lara's legs twined with mine and she ripped aside my shirt and hers to press her naked chest against me. I had just begun wondering what it was I'd forgotten about how kissing Lara was not the best idea when there was a horrible crashing sound that went on for several seconds.
We weren't moving. The shield wasn't under pressure, and I was so dizzy and tired that I couldn't string two thoughts together. I lowered the shield with a groan of relief that was lost in an answering moan of need from the succubus in my arms.
"St-stopped," I said. "Lara… st-stop."
She pressed closer, parted my lips with her tongue, and I thought that I was going to explode, when she suddenly let out a hiss and recoiled from me, a hand flying to her mouth—but not before I saw the blisters rising from the burned flesh around her lips.
I fell slowly to my back and lay there gasping in the near-dark. There were several small fires nearby. We were in a building of some kind. There were a lot of broken things.
