Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1) by Ted Minkinow Read Free Book Online Page A

clumsy grip.  Girl had style.
    Soyla flipped a couple of times in the air—a bit cliché, if you ask me—and landed a hundred feet on the opposite side of the parking lot from where I hoped Sparky still waited.  At least I was between Sparky and her, though I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.  One hundred feet is almost holding hands for our type.  And she smelled like Lake Erie before the cleanup.  Her face hinted shock as she recognized me.  Acting?  But that was gone quicker than Bill Clinton unzips his fly.
    “Gaius,” she said, and turned my two syllables into three and drew them out like an incantation. 
    Must have been a magical call for mental Viagra because I could feel the spell working.  I looked for the club she’d dropped. I mean, I was seriously considering banging myself in the head to get my senses off Soyla’s body and onto whatever this latest unknown disaster in my life would turn out to be.
    It’s important we take just one more second or two discussing her body while she stood in that supermodel’s pose inside both of our lethal ranges.  Because as I looked down to pick up that club she’d jettisoned I noticed my arms were mottled with that same flat black color as those shiny leather hot pants that looked painted on. 
    Oh crap, her clothes were painted on.  Paint and nothing else.  I wondered if she allowed the artist to sign his work.  And where.  I mean, Soyla definitely had the looks to pull off the underdressed thing. But no matter how good she looked, the conversation or encounter, or whatever was going to happen between us needed to pull out of the station.  See, the smell isn’t just a repellant, it’s deadly.
    Think about what sunlight does to us in the movies.  The smell doesn’t melt us immediately, but we can expect mental confusion and motor-skill difficulties.  Like an ultra-big beer night. That happens within minutes.  Keep going and we get to experience that not-so-cliché-when-it-happens-to-you melting thing.  We don’t come back from that.  Gets the heart and everything.
    The other thing I noticed in the microsecond I let my eyes search for the club was this: it wasn’t a club at all.  I was looking at a hand attached to an arm and a bloody stump at the end.  And if that four-carat diamond wasn’t lying to me, the arm started life on the end of Sparky’s shoulder.  With a bit more focus I could have told you whether it was his left arm or his right one, though I thought the next few seconds would be better spent keeping Soyla at bay and my own arms safely attached.
    If she did end up adding one of my arms to her collection? I promised myself I’d defriend her on Facebook. And it would be final this time.  No matter how many pictures she sexted me.  Of course, I wouldn’t go so far as to change my phone number.
    She whispered my name again.  “Gaius.”  This time you’re allowed to believe what you’ve seen in the cheesy vampire movies.  Especially the parts with the burlesque Hungarian accents.  A dead ringer for Soyla.  I could feel the hairs on my arm responding. Worse, every other part of my body also wanted a look at her.
    I checked around to make sure our little battle hadn’t drawn any bystanders.  The last thing I needed was for somebody who worked at the Commissary to see the supernatural bump and grind.  The double last thing I needed was for somebody I knew to have witnessed a girl smashing my face into a light pole. 
    Nobody . 
    Fortunate that I’d hung around until everyone left and then had that little psycho-babe chat with Sarah Arias.  Lucky for me. Not so lucky for Sparky.
    Her voice sounded much further away than the 100 yards when she said, “Let me have him.”
    For a moment I thought she meant my little soldier, and the traitorous thing assured me he wouldn’t mind following that order.  Right . My brain needed clearing.  Think .  Of course Soyla meant Sparky and not a romp on the Commissary hillside.