Free To Hell and Back (Hellcat Series Book 4) by Sharon Hannaford Page A

in
her element and delighted to have them in her domain. She was
almost bouncing as she led the way to one of the cubicles near the
rear of the building. Both the lab technicians glanced their way as
they passed, but neither seemed overly surprised to see two
strangers and an overly large cat in their workplace.
    The cubicle Savannah led them to was a lot less tidy than the
others Gabi had peeked into; bits of what looked like scrap leather
lay in heaps on the floor while precise cut-outs adorned the
pristine, white countertops. Knives, daggers and swords lay piled
and crisscrossing the large central counter alongside baths of
chemicals and pages of handwritten notes on large sheets of thick
paper. A whiteboard dominated the wall on one side of the room, and
there was barely space to put a finger amongst the chemical symbols
and complex equations scrawled across it.
    Savannah swept to the far counter, the one with all the
leather cut-outs, and then turned back to them. “Does he have a
name, your cat?”
    “ Yes, of course,” Gabi replied. “His name is Razor, but I
usually call him Raz.”
    Savannah smiled brightly. “Razor, of course. That suits him
perfectly. Would Razor mind getting on this counter and letting me
fit something to him?”
    Gabi quirked an eyebrow. The inventor Vampire had designed
something for Razor?
    “ Oh, don’t worry,” Savannah said quickly, misinterpreting
Gabi’s look. “I won’t harm him. I heard that he was injured once
before when fighting off demons, and I thought I could make him
something that would protect him in the future.”
    Gabi was finding it hard to merge this animated, almost
hyperactive person with the composed, elegant woman she’d met just
a few days ago at the Consort ceremony.
    “ Something to protect him?” Gabi asked as she patted the
counter and gave Razor a tiny mental nudge. “You mean like
armour?”
    Razor obliged by jumping lithely up on the counter and
sniffing the bits of leather inquisitively.
    “ Yes, exactly like armour,” Savannah agreed approvingly. “I’ve
been working on treating tanned hide with the same compound I used
on your car. I’ve had to make some tweaks to get it to adhere to
the surface without making the leather as stiff as metal, but I
think I’ve almost got it.” As she spoke, she lifted what looked
like a pile of small leather patches, but once she picked it up,
Gabi could see that the patches were actually attached to a piece
of woven fabric, each patch slightly overlapping the next, like the
scales on a fish. “As I said, I’ll have to make some adjustments
for size, but I’d like to see how it moves on him if you think he
would let me put it on.”
    Gabi nodded, reassuring Razor as a sudden warmth for this
slightly eccentric Vampire suffused her. This vampire that she
barely knew had spent hours, possibly days or weeks, designing
something to keep Razor safe. Julius, busy inspecting the pile of
weapons, tried to keep a smile from his face. Gabi shot him a
surreptitious ‘don’t push it’ glare.
    Razor allowed Savannah to carefully shift him into a sitting
position facing the wall. Then she lifted a section of the armour
and placed it carefully over his shoulders. It draped over him,
instantly conforming to his shape, but only covering about two
thirds of him. Savannah flitted to a desk in one corner, grabbing a
clipboard and pen and returning to Razor, poking, lifting and
adjusting the armour, taking measurements and making
indecipherable, to Gabi at least, notes on the clipboard. After
several minutes Savannah seemed to realise Gabi and Julius were
still there.
    “ You’re welcome to have a look around,” she said with a wave
of her hand. “There are offcuts of the treated hide over there if
you’d like to try to damage it. In fact, I’d be grateful if you
took some pieces and, when you next encounter a demon, see what
demon blood and saliva does to it.” She was talking as she worked
over Razor, removing and