I tried to catch my breath, stand straight, and not let any part of me extend outside the circle, which would break its circuit and negate its power. My arms were shaking and my legs felt weak. Susan, too, was visibly trembling.
The demon stalked over to us. I could see it clearly in the light of my staff, and I wished that I couldn't. It was horribly ugly, misshapen, foul, heavily muscled, and I compared it to a toad only because I knew of nothing else that even remotely approached a description of it. It glared at us and drove a fist at the circle's shield. It rebounded in a shower of blue sparks, and the thing hissed, a horrible and windy sound.
Outside, the storm continued to rumble and growl, muffled by the thick walls of the subbasement.
Susan was holding close to me, and almost crying. "Why isn't it killing us? Why isn't it getting us?"
"It can't," I said, gently. "It can't get through, and it can't do anything to break the circle. So long as neither of us crosses that line, we'll be safe."
"Oh, God," Susan said. "How long do we have to stand here?"
"Dawn," I said. "Until dawn. When the sun rises, it has to go."
"There's no sun down here," she said.
"Doesn't work that way. It's got a sort of power cord stretching back to whoever summoned it. A fuel line. As soon as the sun comes up, that line gets cut, and he goes away, like a balloon with no air."
"When does the sun come up?" she asked.
"Oh, well. About ten more hours."
"Oh," she said. She laid her head against my bare chest and closed her eyes.
The toad-demon paced in a slow circuit around the circle, searching for a weakness in the shield. It would find none. I closed my eyes and tried to think.
"Uh, Harry," Bob began.
"Not now, Bob."
"But Harry—" Bob tried again.
"Dammit, Bob. I'm trying to think. If you want to be really useful, you could try to figure out why that escape potion you were so confident of didn't work for Susan."
"Harry," Bob protested, "that's what I'm trying to tell you."
Susan murmured, against my chest, "Is it getting warm in here? Or is it just me?"
A terrible suspicion struck me. I looked down at Susan and got a sinking feeling. Surely not. No. It couldn't be.
She looked up at me, her dark eyes smoky. "We're going to die, aren't we Harry? Have you ever thought you'd want to die making love?"
She kissed my chest, almost absently.
It felt nice. Really, really nice. I tried not to notice all the bare, lovely back that was naked underneath my hand.
"I've thought that, many times," she said, against my skin.
"Bob," I began, my voice getting furious.
"I tried to tell you," Bob wailed. "I did! She grabbed the wrong potion and just chugged it down." Bob's skull turned toward me a bit, and the lights brightened. "You've got to admit, though. The love potion works great."
Susan was kissing my chest and rubbing her body up against me in a fashion that was unladylike and extremely pleasant and distracting. "Bob, I swear, I am going to lock you in a wall safe for the next two hundred years."
"It's not my fault!" Bob protested.
The demon watched what was happening in the circle with froggy eyes and kicked a section of floor clear enough of debris for it to squat down on its haunches and stare, restless and ready as a cat waiting for a mouse to stick its head out of its hole. Susan stared up at me with sultry eyes and tried to wrench me to the floor, and consequently out of the circle's protective power. Bob continued to wail his innocence.
Who says I don't know how to show a lady a good time?
Chapter Fourteen
Susan tugged at my neck and jerked my head down to hers for a kiss. As kisses went, well. It was, um, extremely interesting. Perfectly passionate, abandoned, not a trace of self-consciousness or hesitation to it. Or at any rate not from her. I came up for air a minute later, my lips itching with the intensity of it, and she stared up at me with burning eyes. "Take me, Harry. I need you."
"Uh, Susan. That's not really a good idea right now," I said. The potion had taken hold of her hard. No wonder she had recovered from her terror enough to come back up the stairs and fire my gun at the demon. It had lowered her inhibitions to a sufficient degree that it must also have dulled her fears.
Susan's fingers wandered, and her eyes sparkled. "Your mouth says no," she purred, "but this says yes."
I went up on my toes, and swallowed, trying to keep my balance and get her hand off me at the same time. "That thing is always saying something stupid," I told her. She was beyond reason. The potion had kicked her libido into suicidal overdrive. "Bob, help me out here!"
"I'm stuck in the skull," Bob said. "If you don't let me out, I can't do much of anything, Harry."
Susan stood up on tiptoe to gnaw at my ear, wrapped her shapely thigh around one of mine, and started whimpering and pulling me toward the floor. My balance wavered. A three-foot circle was not enough to perform wrestling or gymnastics or … anything else in, without leaving something sticking out for the waiting demon to chew on.
"Is the other potion still there?" I asked.
"Sure," Bob said. "I can see it where it fell on the floor. Could throw it to you, too."
"Okay," I said, growing excited—well. More excited. I might yet get out of this basement alive. "I'm going to let you out for five minutes. I want you to help me by throwing me the potion."
"No, boss," Bob said, his voice maddeningly cheerful.
"No? No?!"
"I get a twenty-four-hour leave, or nothing."
"Dammit, Bob! I'm responsible for what you do if I let you out! You know that!"
Susan whispered, into my ear, "I'm not wearing any underwear," and tried something approximating a pro-wrestling takedown to drop me to the floor. I wavered in balance and barely managed to stave her off. The demon's frog-eyes narrowed, and it came to its feet, ready to leap on us.
"Bob!" I yelled. "You slimy jerk!"
"You try living in a bony old skull for a few hundred years, Harry! You'd want to get a night off once in a while, too!"
"Fine!" I shouted, my heart leaping into my throat as my balance wavered again. "Fine! Just make sure you get me the potion! You have twenty-four hours."
"Just make sure you catch it," Bob replied. And then a flood of orangish light flowed out of both of the skull's eye sockets and into the room. The lights swooped down in an elongated cloud over the potion bottle that lay on the floor at the far side of the lab, gathered it up, and hurled it through the air toward me. I reached up with my spare hand and caught it, bobbled it for a minute, and then secured it again.
The orange lights that were Bob's spirit-form danced a little jig, then whizzed up the ladder and out of the lab, vanishing.
"What's that?" Susan murmured, eyes dazed.
"Another drink," I said. "Drink this with me. I think I can cover us both in the focus department, get us out of here."
"Harry," she said. "I'm not thirsty." Her eyes smoldered. "I'm hungry."
I hit upon an idea. "Once we drink this, I'll be ready, and we can go to bed."
She looked up at me hazily and smiled, wicked and delighted. "Oh, Harry. Bottoms up." Her hands made a sort of silent commentary on her words, and I jumped, almost dropping the bottle. More shampoo from my hair trailed down my already burning eyes, and I squeezed them closed.
I slugged away about half the potion, trying to ignore the flat-cola taste, and quickly passed the rest to Susan. She smiled lazily and drank it down, licking her lips.
It started in my guts—a sort of fluttery, wobbly feeling that moved out, up through my lungs and out along my shoulders, down my arms. It also went down, over my hips and into my legs. I began to shake and quiver uncontrollably.