Blood Trinity (Belador #1)(63)

Quinn was on the board of Belador financial barons, who invested funds accumulated over generations. They took care of their own.

“What happened to the lights in this hallway?” Quinn groused.

“Saving on your power bill.” As she approached the steel door that had no handles or locks evident, she channeled energy to open it.

Quinn growled something low. “I’m not a bloody slumlord. All my properties are green efficient and you know it. Not like your eyes can’t take a little lighting.”

“You got better places to spend money.”

He could be overbearing some days, especially when it came to what he considered her well-being, but he respected her need for independence.

She stepped into her abode, where wall sconces and tiny overhead puck lights strung along a wire brightened the simple room. Quinn maintained she needed enough light for guests to move around safely.

She didn’t have guests as a rule, but even a blind person could navigate around the few pieces of furniture she’d accumulated.

This was home and hers. She came and went at will. Her one indulgence was plants, especially flowering ones that she had to trick into blooming with artificial lighting.

Tzader dropped down on her lumpy sofa, let out a groan born of deep exhaustion then kicked off his boots. He leaned back, stretching out his jean-covered legs and crossing his arms over the sleeveless black T-shirt, so completely different from Quinn’s pewter gray collared shirt with a golf logo on the chest and creased slacks.

“I see you’ve decorated since I was last here.” Quinn sent a reproachful frown at the oversize orange beanbag in the middle of the room. “Having a time deciding on the most advantageous location for that?”

“Too bad there’s no snob police, Quinn. They’d make a fortune writing you up.”

He sighed with strained patience.

She loved tweaking his aristocratic nose.

A noise from the back of the apartment snapped her into action. She hurried over to stand by the offensive beanbag.

Growling rumbled from down the hallway that led to her bedroom.

Footsteps slapped the hard concrete floor, heading toward the living room, picking up speed, running full bore until the pounding echoed like bomb blasts.

“Evalle?” Tzader issued the sharp warning and came to his feet. The knives hanging at his hips snapped and hissed. He took a step toward her.

“Oh, good Goddess,” Quinn muttered.

She ordered both of them, “Stand back. I got this.” Keeping her attention on the hallway, she prepared for the attack that flew out of the darkness at her.

The two-foot-tall gargoyle went airborne, wings flapping, like a cannonball with mouth open to expose sharp teeth. All that heading for her chest.

“Dammit, Evalle!” Tzader reached for her arm and missed when she jumped aside at the last second.

The gargoyle landed on the beanbag, his momentum sliding him with the bag all the way across the room until he smacked the solid wall.

She laughed out loud, enjoying the best sound that had traveled up her throat all day. “Nice one, Feenix. Come here, baby.”

Feenix made a noise that sounded part growl and part snort when he was happy. His mouth spread wide, showing off sharp incisors that were as deadly as they looked. He clutched his little potbelly and tucked his batlike wings close when he rolled off the bag, still chortling over his NASCAR-worthy slide. They were both fans of American car racing.

“That thing doesn’t know his strength,” Tzader growled, but his knives had settled down. A sign he was at ease. “He’s going to hurt you one day.”

“No, he won’t.” She squatted down as Feenix waddled to her, wings flapping happily. His huge eyes were two orange orbs that glowed bright as a Halloween pumpkin against his dark-green-and-brown scale-covered body.

“I could have acquired you a dog—something adequately trained that wouldn’t kill you.” Quinn stepped aside, moving his expensive pants out of snag range from the sharp points on Feenix’s wings.

“A dog or a cat would want to go outside in the daylight and need more care than I could give it. Feenix likes the dark and he’s self-sufficient and he loves me. He’s perfect.” She opened her arms and he walked into her embrace, tucking his wings so she could hug him. It was like holding a soft alligator that was as cold as a dark cave and smelled like freshly tanned leather. The skin covering his wings was the smoothest part of him. “I finally settled on the perfect name. Feenix.”

“Because Lucifer was taken?”

“Careful, Quinn,” she said with mock threat. “Or I’ll tell Feenix you want a hug.”

Tzader chuckled and shook his head.

Quinn shuddered on his way to the recliner she’d picked up last week from a late-night going-out-of-business sale.

Hard to hit yard sales when most of them ended by nightfall.

“He’s no bird rising from the ashes of destruction,” Quinn muttered.

She argued, “Yes, he is, but his name is different.” She spelled it for him. “I picked Feenix because this little critter survived that demented sorcerer and crawled out of a burning building when all the other things the sorcerer had created died even though they were bigger and stronger.”

She released Feenix, who waddled across the room making grunting noises. He picked up a stuffed alligator and tucked the soft toy into the crease of his bent arm, holding it like a baby doll. “And phoenix, the bird name, means ‘the most beautiful one of its kind.’ Just like my Feenix.”