Blazing Glory by Angelique Voisen Page A

Blaze was the real deal.
    Levi ducked his head at the very
last second. The flames hurtled past him and hit the door he was being paid a
thousand dollars an hour to guard.
    Yelping, Levi threw himself away
from the spreading flames. Anger prickled across his skin, and a roar of challenge
emerged from his throat. He and his bear had shaken off whatever dulling
effects the honey champagne had caused.
    “Fucking pyromancer ,”
Levi growled. “I’m not going to warn you again.”
    Hesitation flickered across Blaze’s
handsome face. Levi was beginning to enjoy the taste of the other man’s fear
when he, too, heard the savage series of shrieks from the room he was guarding.
    “Fire! The buildings on fire!” The rest of the room was in an
uproar. People shouted and elbowed each other to leave the Purple Room, but he
couldn’t care less about them.  
    “What the hell have you been
guarding?” Blaze demanded, sounding much more sober now.
    “Some sort of biological weapon or
some shit. How the hell should I know? I’m paid to guard, not think,” Levi
hissed, cursing when Blaze hurtled more flames at the open door. “Watch where you’re throwing those things, asshole!”
    “Get away from the door, then, damn
bear!” The lines of Blaze’s face were tight with anger, doing little to soothe
Levi’s enraged bear. “Can’t you smell it? It smells like the dead in there.”
    Frowning, Levi inhaled. He coughed
at the smoke beginning to fan out the room. The smell of rotting corpses made
his stomach queasy. While the undead weren’t his specialty, he’d come across
them now and then. They were hard sons of bitches to kill, and he’d rather
avoid them all together.
    “Something doesn’t smell right,”
Levi pointed out. He flexed his hands, ready to shift.
    Blaze snorted. “Oh, you think?”
    A loud, rumbling, inhuman howl tore
from the opening, followed by the heavy thump of footsteps. Levi’s bear let out
a nervous snarl and all the hairs on his back stood. He’d never heard anything
like that. No shifter could make a sound like that. What the hell had he been
paid to guard?
    What he told Blaze was true. He and
his clan needed to eat, and they didn’t question where the money came from or
who his employers were. Now he wasn’t certain that was such a wise policy.
    “What the hell could sound like
that?” Blaze asked, the arrogance in his voice giving way to caution.
    “Beats the hell
out of me. You’re asking the wrong person.” Levi’s entire skin twitched
nervously despite his offhand reply.
    He and Blaze were backing away from
the door and slowly edging their way to the elevators. Spidery line cracks
appeared across the walls, and then plaster began to fall in chucks. The wall
shuddered once and then stopped.
    Blaze nervously clicked his tongue.
“I think the door had a magical seal on it to keep the creature in its prison.
You were just an extra precaution.”
    “What creature?” Levi’s voice faded
when pieces of the wall crumbled, giving them a glimpse of the nightmare they’d
just unleashed. He jabbed his finger into the elevator button repeatedly,
praying silently to the gods that the machine would come up soon.
    Flecks of plaster flew and dust
from the fallen wall obscured most of Levi’s vision. He saw the enormous
hulking outline of a vaguely humanoid shape over fourteen feet tall. The smell
of a dozen corpses wafted under his nostrils, making him nearly gag. Dirty-yellow
reptilian eyes devoid of humanity stared back at him.
    Then the elevator
pinged behind them. Levi grabbed at Blaze’s sleeve. “Come on. We’ll come back
for it with reinforcements.”
    To his
astonishment, Blaze flung his hand away. “No. I let it out. I’ll deal with it
myself.”
    Levi scrambled
into the lift and shouted, “Don’t be fucking stupid, and come on. We’ll get
more people and deal with this monster properly.”
    Damn it all! It
served the wizard right if Levi just left him there, but his natural