Hunt the Moon : Cassandra Palmer #5 Read Online Free PDF Page A

making the connection. And then I squeezed Billy so hard he yelped. Cut it out!
    We have to get to Pritkin, I told him quickly.
    What? Why? What can he—
    This isn’t a ghost.
    No shit!
    So it’s probably some kind of demon.
    So?
    So he’ll know how to drive it out!
    Billy didn’t say anything, maybe because Pritkin was our resident demon expert. Or maybe because the coffee table had just splintered down the middle. He flipped us onto all fours and we scrambled out the other side, just as the chandelier burst like a crystal grenade all over the living room.
    It might not have been made for this type of activity, but the dozen or so thick columns of wood flying around looked sturdier. They also looked familiar. I finally recognized one when it slammed through the piano while trying to get at me. I stared at one of the legs off the dining set and wondered why the entity would bother trashing that. We were on the other side of the apartment now, so it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense.
    Until I saw one of the guards run past, being pursued by the equivalent of a flying stake. He dodged it—mostly—and it hit his leg instead of his heart. That was lucky, because it punched through flesh and bone as easily as the other pieces did the walls, the furniture and the flimsy sides of the piano.
    The vampires who formed my bodyguard were all senior-level masters and, presumably, they’d seen a lot of crazy stuff through the years. But it didn’t look like they’d seen this. Vamps who prided themselves on strength and impassivity were running around wild-eyed, attacking the misbehaving furniture as if they thought it was the problem, or just trying to avoid being vamp shish kebab.
    But other than for the sound of the suite imploding, it was weirdly quiet. I couldn’t talk and the vamps didn’t need to—at least not aloud. They could communicate mentally with each other as easily as I talked to Billy, something that usually gave them a hell of an advantage in a fight. Except, apparently, for right now.
    But at least one guy had decided that they needed outside help, because he’d whipped out a cell phone. He was on the other side of the room from where I was hunkered down behind the baby grand, and I didn’t have control of my vocal chords, anyway. So I poked the guy who did. Tell him to call Pritkin!
    And Billy tried. But between my burning throat and the mortal peril and the deafening noise, nobody paid any attention. These guys are new—I don’t even think they know who he is! Billy said frantically.
    Then you’ll have to go get him.
    How? We’ll never make it to the door through all that!
    I won’t, but you will . It isn’t after you.
    Yeah, except if I leave, that thing’ll have its claws back in you!
    And if you don’t, it’ll beat me to death! I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of difference, really.
    Okay, okay. Billy sounded like he was trying to calm down and wasn’t doing so great. Say I find the mage. Then what? He can’t see me.
    Shit. Billy was so solid to me that I had a problem remembering that that wasn’t true for everyone. But Pritkin wouldn’t even know he was there.
    It was hard to concentrate over the sound of the piano’s death throes, but I tried. Only the three A’s weren’t doing me a lot of good right now. I knew what the problem was: I needed to get to Pritkin. But I didn’t have any abilities to help me do that.
    If I could have shifted, it would have been easy. But his room was five stories down and on the other side of the hotel. And I knew without trying that I couldn’t make it that far. It was hard to shift after Billy had fed, even when I wasn’t already exhausted. As it was, I’d be lucky to get five yards, and that wouldn’t—
    I stopped, my thoughts reversing. Get to Pritkin, I told Billy over the sound of the blood pounding in my temples.
    I just told you, that won’t—
    Listen to me! He has Jonas’s necklace. He used it to pull me back to him today when I tried to