Eternal Prey--chapter three

So Adam has summoned Utah's new partner.

It's an unseelie fae elf.

This is a book that contains men possessed by the ghosts of dead dinosaurs, the Mayan 2012 prophesy, cell phones, vampires, cars, immortal number beings and now elves.

I want you to take that in for a moment before we continue. Okay? Okay.

The elf's name is Kione. Everyone immediately notices, this dude is pretty.

Meanwhile, Utah is having past issues again:

First, Utah didn’t trust Kione. Yeah, so he didn’t trust many people outside of the Eleven. And even the Eleven were iffy except for Tor. Utah was too close to his past to trust anyone but pack. Besides, he sensed that Kione was a loner. No pack would ever hold him.

Again: "past" equals "before he was sentient". Factor that in, and Utah sounds like he's one broken stick away from going full on godzilla-raptor on your ass.

...I also still can't get over the naming convention. The Dino-Boys get a pass because this whole "thinking actual thoughts" thing is only a couple months old for them, but Fin et al are friggin immortal beings of immense power (who act like Jeremy Irons). Are numbers seriously the best they can come up with? I mean, I can come up with a few better. The Cretaceous Club. The League of Extraordinary Tyrannosaurs. And if you have to be a number, pick a cool number. (Mine would be Pi. ALL OF IT.)

 Adam tells Utah that Kione is a fitting partner for a dinosaur.

Lia, of course, responds in kind:

“A worthy partner? What am I, day-old blood?”

And it takes effort to turn her back on Kione, because he is, how you say, le sex.

And of course, Utah, who did not know Lia yesterday, feels all roar-protector over Lia being humiliated. I'd say something about how she's human and therefor squishy, but humiliating her is kind of Adam's whole point, so I'm gonna give Utah a couple brownie points.

Meanwhile,. Utah starts checking out the summoning spell, which uses human blood. "Only the best to get the best" is what Adam says. Only he actually was trying to nab himself a demon. I guess summoning spells have such a thing as a wrong number. (God, could you imagine trying to dial summon-an-imp and instead you get Cthulhu in the middle of a nap?)

 I think I've pointed out more than once that NOBODY in this book has gotten more than a sentence worth of description. We know that Utah is big and he has "predator" eyes and that he looks like Tor. We know that Lia is blond and leggy. We know that Fin glitters and is pretty, and that Adam has weird eyes. Got it? Mkay. Here's Kione's description:

Fine, so calling Kione a man understated what he was by a few light-years. He was over six feet, but she couldn’t tell much about his body because he’d wrapped himself in a dark cloak. But that was okay, because Kione was all about his face. And his face was all about sex. From the perfect lines of his jaw and cheekbones, to the curve of sensual male lips, to intense forest green eyes framed by thick dark lashes, he oozed erotic promises. A woman might die from the pleasure of what he did to her body, but she’d die happy. And if he chose to trail his smoke-dark hair across her bared flesh, he’d leave first-degree burns behind.

So apparently dial-an-imp connects to Merry Gentry's harem, and the descriptive paragraphs come with. That said, I kind of like that last sentence.


Neither Lia and Utah want Kione as a partner because Kione makes them want the sexy-sexy. Not just with Kione either. Lia is about to jump Utah, and that's not me, that's the text saying that.


Adam, meanwhile, is outlining that he wants the competition to end. He trapped one of his "lost sheep" and tortured the everloving shit out of him until he got enough to say the competitor is definitely a vampire. They know nothing else.

We watch Adam humiliate his underlings for a while--mostly by making Jude give Lia his car, thus replacing the one that got squished offscreen--and then he informs Utah that when he stops being useful, Adam is going to kill him because Utah's hobby is killing vampires. And oh GOD I love the dialogue in this book:

Adam nodded. “Don’t worry, though. I won’t do it until you’re no longer an employee. Oh, and I never got a chance to explain company benefits: full health and paid funeral expenses. No retirement plan. You won’t need it.”

I think it's supposed to be a threat.

It's kind of precious.

Utah and Kione troop out of the room, and Adam tells Lia that when they're done, Lia is to kill Utah. She sighs and rolls her eyes and follows after the boys.

Seriously. That's her entire reaction.

Upstairs, they get into the car. Lia and Utah try not to make out. Apparently Kione intercepted the "inbound demon" (...that makes it sound like an airport. Traffic control in hell must be a pain) and the effect of the summoning has amped up his sexual compulsion. He's not sorry. They get out of the car.  Jude and Utah have a pissing contest over Jude's car. Because they are friends-ish, and Utah does need a car, but

 it’s mine, so no one else should be driving it.”

Jude. What are you, two?

He gets all vampiry and Utah's inner fossil threatens to come out, but nothing happens and they all pile back into the car.

Utah decides they need a plan. Kione offers this one:

Kione stared out the window. “We search until we find a vampire. We ask some questions. If we don’t get the right answers, we find another one. Does that sound like a plan to you?”

Right.

Utah says no, but they decide to go where Utah usually finds vampires to kill, and do fuck if I know. On the drive over, everybody sulks because Kione's sexy and it's pissing everyone off.

Whatever the unseelie prince was doing, it was messing with Utah’s sex drive. His gas pedal was stuck, and he’d just burned out his emergency brake.

That's cute. And it keeps on like that for a couple paragraphs, but I'm actually just happy that it's just cheesy sexual metaphores and innuendo, because if this were AB/MG we'd be pulled over playing hide the salami about six pages ago. (...actually if this were Anita Blake we'd still be heading into the summoning basement.)

Utah asks if Kione got his rocks off making everyone else...um, want to get their rocks off. Kione explains that the Fae do not feel emotion.

So elves in this universe are basically Mr. Spock.

Live long and procreate.

Kione then explains that he will live until he decides to "end it" and that he's considered this more than once. So we've got suicidal elf-Spock, a vampire with anger issues, a Jurassic Park reject and Bella Swan with a spine.

This book is the definition of the mind-fuck.

Oh, and just in case you thought I was maybe exaggerating a little about "Bella with a sword" Lia is wandering around this modern day city where the paranormal is definitely not out of the coffin/broom closet/kennel/whatever with her sword hidden under her trench coat. Because this isn't conspicuous at all.

Lia tells Utah that she'll get pissed if he kills too many vampires, or as she puts it:

“I might forget we’re partners if I show up to find you surrounded by the bodies of my people.”

Utah gets equally pissed and says that humans are Lia's people.

This does not go over well.

The chapter ends with them splitting up so that they can cover more ground.

...is it like a rule that people in paranormal mysteries just don't watch horror movies? I mean, if you're hunting vampires/werewolves/dino-ghosts/whosawhatsis from planet Mars, you'd think you'd know better than to say "I'll be right back" EVER AT ANY POINT.

Whatever.