Holy Smokes
Page 78

Jim stepped on my foot.
I returned my attention to the man as he went on about renewing our faith in each other and allowing the marriage to breathe with the air of love and support. I tried to pay attention to him, but the vague something was starting to take on a more alarming state. I ran down a mental checklist of everything I’d had to do and didn’t see what it was that would be causing this feeling.
“What token do you, Drake, offer Aisling as a sign of your commitment to her?”
Kostya, standing at Drake’s side, handed him a platinum ring. I smiled at the sight of it. Drake had told me that gold on my finger would be too distracting and opted to have our rings made of the less attractive (to dragons, anyway) metal.
“Do you, Drake, take Aisling to be your wife? Do you pledge to honor and respect her, and to live in fidelity and love with her from this day for—”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted, turning to Drake. “Something’s wrong.”
“Aisling!” Paula moaned. “Not again!”
A normal man might point out that what was wrong was a woman interrupting her own long-awaited wedding, but Drake was head and shoulders above normal. Instead of asking silly questions, he simply asked me, “Dangerous?”
“I think so. There’s something here that isn’t right.”
Instantly Pál and István were at his side. “Take Aisling’s family and the mortals out the side entrance,” he told Pál. “István, check the street. Kostya—”
“I’ll have a look around the chapel,” he said, suiting action to word.
The sudden breakup of the dragons had Gabriel hurrying up. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Drake filled him in while I turned to the guests and, with an apologetic smile, said in a loud voice, “I seem to have the worst luck with weddings. I’m very sorry to have to do this, but there seems to be a problem with the chapel, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to evacuate it. Quickly. We’ll regroup outside until we know the problem is fixed.”
“Aisling, this is the limit, this is the very limit,” Paula said, jerking away from where Pál was trying to move her. “You will go back in front of that minister and you will let him marry you, or so help me, I’ll…I’ll…well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but it won’t be pleasant!”
I hated to do it, I really did, but I didn’t have time to reason with her. I swung open the door in my mind and gave her a huge mental push. “Paula, you need to leave the building now. It’s nothing but a gas leak, but it’s dangerous to stay here. You must help the others get out quickly and stay out until we say it’s safe to return.”
“Oh, my!” she gasped, looking somewhat stunned. “A gas leak is dangerous! People! Quickly! We must leave immediately!”
She hurried off to herd people out the door.
“I’m going to end up frying her brain one day if I keep doing that,” I said under my breath.
Jim heard me. “Think anyone would notice?”
I ignored it as Rene caught my eye. “Can I do anything?”
“No. Just get your wife out and make sure no one comes back in.”
He nodded and gave my hand a little squeeze before dashing off to grab his wife and follow the last few people leaving.
“Aisling? What is it?”
Nora’s voice was quiet but calming. I turned around to find her, but with my enhanced vision turned on, I wasn’t so much seeing people as seeing their elemental parts. “I’m not sure. Do you feel something?”
She was silent a moment, then nodded. “It’s very faint, but yes, there is something here that is imbued with evil.”
“Jim?” The demon’s warm head pushed under my hand. “Where is it, Jim?”
“Can’t tell. I wasn’t sure there was anything until you started wigging out.”
I walked blindly down the center aisle of the chapel, searching in the corners and niches for signs of something that wasn’t right.
“Here!” Gabriel emerged from one of the back rooms and shouted out his findings. “I think it’s a bomb!”
“Get her out of the building,” Drake told his brother, who started toward me at a run, but I knew in a flash that he wasn’t going to make it in time.
Everything seemed to slow down, like time itself had telescoped as I flung myself sideways onto Nora, knocking her down onto a wooden pew. An explosion tore through the building with a vengeance, the scream of metal an almost human sound, followed by a concussive blast as the windows shattered. Shards of glass and wood and bits of stone rained down upon us, but to my relief, when I looked up the bulk of the building was still intact, with only the far end having been blown to smithereens.
Drake shouting my name relieved my paramount worry.
“We’re here,” I yelled, coughing at the dust that resulted from the wall of the nave being destroyed. “Nora, are you all right?”
“I think so. Yes. Dear god, who would bomb a church?”
“Are you hurt?” Drake yelled, pulling a large piece of the baptismal font off of someone.
“No, we’re OK.”
“Stay back there,” he ordered.
I pulled bits of wood and rock off Nora, helping her to sit up. Her hair was white with dust, her glasses broken and hanging askew.
“I have a pretty good idea that we have some dragons to thank for that. Jim?”
“Right here.”
“You OK?”
“No. I don’t seem to be able to feel my back legs. And it’s…it’s kinda hard to breathe.”
I crawled out of the shelter of the pews to find Jim lying in the aisle, one of the wooden benches that lined the nave broken on top of it.
“Oh, no,” I cried, half crawling over to where it lay. “Don’t move. We’ll get a vet. Oh, dear god, there’s so much blood! Drake! Jim’s hurt!”
With an effort, Jim lifted its head and turned its eyes toward me, fear stark in their depths. “Ash, I don’t feel so good. You think I broke my form?”
“I don’t know,” I told it, cradling its head and brushing grit from its face. “But if you did, we’ll get you another one just as nice.”
“I don’t think there is another one this nice. I’d like to save it if I could.”