“I don’t have to remember him to feel the power coming off him.”

That was true enough. The power seemed to snap and spark around him, like it was a living thing embracing him.

“Er… my apologies, Your… uh… Highness, is it?” I gave the man a little smile, even though that was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

He just stared at me, a dead look in his eyes that increased the feeling of dread until I thought I was going to be pushed down into the ground by it. His dark gaze crawled over me again for a few seconds. “You are a wyvern’s mate.”

I filed away that statement to trot out to Kostya at a later date. If even the head of hell knew I was his mate, Kostya could just get over his emotional baggage and embrace the fact. “Yes, I am.”

“That is satisfactory.” He gestured toward me. “Take my ring from her.”

“What?” I clutched my hand, ignoring the squawk from Jim as I smooshed him against my side, backing up as one of the bouncers came forward. “I don’t think you can do that, can you? It picked me, evidently, so it’s kind of mine now.”

“If you do not give it willingly,” the bouncer said, her voice as harsh as the lava rocks underneath my feet, “I will simply take your hand to present to Lord Asmodeus.”

I stared at her in horror, not just because of the appalling things she was saying, but because her teeth were pointed. All of them, and she seemed to have an extraordinary number of them.

“Sweet suffering sycophants,” I whispered, getting ready to turn and run, although I had no idea where I was going to escape to. But at that moment, there was a rustle in my arms, and Jim leaped down to stand in front of me, his spindly little legs vibrating, his hackles up all the way down his back.

“You’re going to have to go through me first,” he growled at the bouncer.

She lifted one heavily booted foot as if to stomp him into nothing, but I shrieked and scooped him up, clutching him to my chest as I backpedaled madly, stumbling over the lava rocks. “Jim, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Protecting you. I’m a demon and you’re my demon lord; as you can see by Hans and Franz there, that’s what we do. It would have been more effective in proper form, but you won’t let me have that.”

I turned and ran to the other end of the room, looking desperately for a door or some means of escape, but there was none, of course. That would have been far too convenient. I spun around and watched as the two bouncers stalked forward, neither of them in a hurry and both with expressions that I swear took off at least ten years from my life span.

Hastily, I set Jim down. “I order you to go back to your old form.”

He turned into a Dalmatian. “Criminy dutch, Eefsters! I thought we had this discussion.”

The two women got closer, the one with the smile now holding a wicked-looking dagger.

“Crap! The dog form, the dog form!”

A Chihuahua faced me with an extremely bitter look on his tiny little face. “Fires of—”

The second woman started smiling now, and hard to believe, it was even worse than the first bouncer. Panic filled me, along with a desperate need to be anywhere but that exact spot. “No, the other one! The big one that comes from that place in Canada. Crap, I can’t remember the name of it. Nova Scotia?”

“Eefs, how hard is it to—”

My mind shut down at that point, unwilling to deal with the fact that two horrible women were about to hack off my hand in order to give a ring to the prince of hell and unable to think of the name of Jim’s preferred form. “For the love of all that’s not canine, just change back to human form! Now, take down Shark Teeth there while I tackle her buddy.”

Naked human Jim stared at me in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Attack!” I screeched, and threw myself onto the sharp-toothed woman.

The scuffle that followed was anticlimactic at best, due in part to the fact that Jim didn’t even make it to his assigned bouncer before they both grabbed me.

“Get her hand,” one of them said, which just made me try to punch her in the face. I didn’t connect, of course, because evidently I’m doomed to never land a blow.

Jim leaped at the first one when she twirled her knife around her fingers, but the woman just slashed at him, leaving two long bloody marks across his bare chest. Jim looked down in stupefaction, touching one of the gashes and holding up the red-stained fingers to show me. “Um. Ow?”

“Gods of the woodlands and fields,” I shouted, fighting the woman who held me in order to get to Jim.

Asmodeus, who had strolled nonchalantly across the ballroom while his bouncers were stalking me, now arrived and said something that caused his bouncer to release me.

“Are you okay, Jim? That looks terrible! I need to get you to a doctor.” I grabbed the hem of the front of my shirt and ripped it off, which more or less evened the garment, since Jim had poached part of the back. “Stand still. Try not to breathe hard. I’ll wrap this around you now, in order to put pressure on the owies. Stop looking like you’re going to faint. It’ll be okay, I promise.”

“I feel woozy,” he said, weaving a little. “There’s a bright light. Is there supposed to be a light? Should I go into it? It looks warm and happy, and I want to go into it.”

“If your comedy act has finished,” Asmodeus said, holding out his hand, “I would like my ring returned.”

“Stop being so dramatic,” I hissed to Jim out of the side of my mouth. “You’re not cut up that badly. And as for you, Prince Asmodeus, or however you prefer to be addressed, I don’t think this ring is what you think it is. Kostya—he’s the dragon that I’m evidently a mate to—he tried to use the ring, but it was dead to him. The ring seems to like me, so I don’t think it’s going to work the way you expect it to.” I was bluffing, true, which might not have been the brightest idea since the man I was trying to fool was the head of hell itself, not to mention the fact that I had no idea of whether what I said was true, but really, I didn’t feel there was much other choice given that situation.

After all, the bouncers were quite willing to lop off my hand to get the ring to Asmodeus. I suspected that even if I handed it over willingly, they wouldn’t throw me a “thank you for being so cooperative” party and send me on my way. It behooved me, therefore, to find a way to stalemate his attempt to acquire the ring.