The town was younger than that ancient, cataclysmic battle but older than most. Worn cobblestone streets cut across one another in a crooked pattern. The shops had closed some time earlier, all except for a single newsagent"s, a liquor store at one end of the high street, and a large, sprawling pub nestled in the center of the town, named Dark Knight.
The pub"s wooden sign had a painting of a knight, bearing a shield with Oberon"s crest-a white lion rampant against crimson crossed swords on a black background. Some people had long memories in these places.
When Nikolas came to the pub"s parking lot, he saw Gawain"s Harley-Davidson parked between other vehicles. A Mini was tucked out of the way at the back of the lot. He pulled in and switched off the engine.
Briefly he checked his phone. Gawain had texted him fifteen minutes ago. Waiting for you in the pub. Robin"s been here. I can smell him.
So as he had suspected, the puck and the woman had indeed come into town together. That was a tale Nikolas quite wanted to hear.
And if the Mini was any indication, at least the woman was still here.
He texted Gawain, Guard the front door. I"m going to test a theory and come in the back way.
You got it, Gawain replied.
Sophie couldn"t make it until the evening.
No matter how she fought to stay awake, an inexorable black tide washed over her, and she fell into a deep pit of unconsciousness.
She dreamed she lived in a cage.
She stared between the bars at a woman who was both beautiful and terrible to look at, with long, shining golden hair and wide, cornflower blue eyes, and a lovely, young face that was a cross between a flower and a nightmare.
The woman"s gigantic face came closer, and the nightmare was the rage in the woman"s eyes.
I warned you to watch your tongue, Imp, the woman said. So. You will watch your tongue.
Then others came and put their giant, hurting hands on her. No matter how she struggled, she couldn"t break free of their grip. They had too much strength, too much magic. They forced her mouth open, took hold of her tongue in iron tongs, and ripped it out. She screamed and screamed, a wordless wail of b.l.o.o.d.y agony. As she watched, they threw the piece of her flesh into a fire.
With an appetizing smell of roasting meat, the tongue turned black as it burned.
Sophie woke with a m.u.f.fled shout. Heart pounding, she stared around the shadowed, unfamiliar room. For a moment she felt completely displaced. Where were the bars of her cage?
Then a snore beside her on the bed snapped her fully back into reality.
She was in her room at the pub, lying fully clothed on top of the covers. The newly shorn and washed dog lay sleeping at her side.
When she had arrived, Arran, the owner of the pub, had sent his son, who owned a rusted Land Rover with a tow bar, to retrieve the Mini. According to the son, when he had turned the keys in the engine, the Mini had started perfectly.
Of course it had, the f.u.c.king f.u.c.ker.
Arran"s son had towed it into town and parked it at the back of the pub. When she had tried to apologize for the inconvenience and pay for the tow, neither Arran nor his son would accept her money.
Arran had told her good-naturedly enough, "Not to worry. Odd things happen around here sometimes. Living here, ye get used to it."
"Good to know," she muttered. The Mini inspired her with hope. Maybe her cell phone wasn"t as dead as she had thought. Pulling it out of her pocket, she checked the power. Sure enough, the screen lit up.
So she had settled into her room, borrowed sewing scissors from Arran"s wife, Maggie, who had clucked sympathetically over the dog"s condition, and had cut away all the matted hair. Underneath, he looked as starved as she had suspected, with protruding ribs, a concave belly, and hip bones visible under his skin. The area around his neck was thick with deep, half-healed blisters that were half her thumb"s length in size.
Clenching down on a rage that wouldn"t ease, she had washed him gently and wrapped him in a towel, and together they had shared the snack of boiled eggs Maggie had offered to tide them over until the pub started serving supper.
At least he didn"t have fleas. Sophie had been surprised at that.
He had gulped down without chewing the pieces of egg she had fed him and growled at her when she stopped. "You quit that," she said in a firm voice. "It"s not okay to growl at me. I don"t want you to throw up again. You can have more food soon, I promise."
At that, he had stopped growling, almost as if he understood her, and curled into a tight ball on the old narrow bed. Intense weariness dragged her down beside him. Unable to fight off the black tide that took her, she closed her eyes.
She had only meant to rest for a few minutes, not fall asleep. Now jet lag would keep her up through the night.
The horrific dream still clung to her, like sticky black cobwebs in her face and hair, and her heart raced. Just another thing to add to her what the f.u.c.k list. Rubbing her face, she sat, turned on the bedside light, and looked down at her unexpected companion. She didn"t know how to cut a dog"s hair, and he looked pretty bad, a small bundle of ragged hair and bones. At least the mats were gone.
She washed her face and hands at the small basin in one corner of the room, then walked over to gently touch the dog"s shoulder. "Time to wake up, kiddo."
He growled without opening his eyes.
"Hey!" she said sharply. "No growling! Do you want supper or not?"
At that, he snapped upright and looked at her alertly. Again, almost as if he understood her.
She frowned at him. What the h.e.l.l, maybe the dog did understand her. She had seen a lot of strange things in her life, both inhuman creatures and events that logic alone couldn"t fully explain.
"And you need to go outside so you don"t have an accident in this nice place," she told him, then sighed. "And tomorrow we"ll start looking for a good home for you, with someone who will love and take care of you."
At that, the dog let out the cutest little whimper and, tail wagging, came across the bed to stand his forelegs against her hip as he nudged her hand.
Stroking his round head and thin, silken ears, she scowled against the sneaky melting in her heart and muttered, "Suck-up."
Scooping him under one arm, she left her room, locked the door, and pocketed the key in the back of her jeans. As she headed down the narrow, steep staircase, she told him, "I"ll look after you, and I promise, I"ll make sure you"re okay. But you"ve got to understand something-I don"t live the kind of lifestyle that"s good for a dog. Do you hear me? I"m not good for you. I"m too mobile, and I"m not just an a.s.shole magnet. I"m a weirdo magnet. Weird things happen to me all the time."
Kind of like the dog itself. And that rope tied around his neck. That rope hadn"t just been weird. It had been evil.
As she told the dog all the reasons why she couldn"t keep him, she reached the ground floor. The pub had several public rooms, and the staircase let out into the game room toward the back, where a dwarf and a human male were smoking, drinking pints, and throwing darts.
She raised her eyebrows at the smoke, pretty sure the two were breaking the law from the articles she had read about the UK in preparation for her trip, while the two males watched her with unbridled curiosity.
Giving them a nod, she strode to the front room. She was starving again, and a cla.s.sic pub supper of fish and chips or shepherd"s pie sounded heavenly. It probably wasn"t the healthiest thing to feed the dog, but any calories right now had to be good calories for him. A diet of proper dog food could start tomorrow.
As she stepped across the threshold into the front room, the dog started making noise, a cross between a growl and a high whine. Staring down at it in puzzlement, at first she didn"t take in the details of who populated the room.
Then she felt a male presence so heavy with Power it felt like a thunderclap.
Lifting her head, she found the male sitting by the large picture window near the front door. He wore biker"s leathers and was as big as she remembered, this saber-toothed tiger of a man, only now his face wasn"t obscured by the blank, featureless helmet.
She took in the sharp eyes that were at odds with his relaxed demeanor, and the strong features that carried a rough sort of handsomeness. While she was usually good at spotting and identifying those of the Elder Races, she couldn"t place his heritage. But whatever he was, he wasn"t human.
He was looking right at her or, more accurately, at the dog under her arm. He recognized the dog, and clearly, the dog recognized him.
Leisurely the male came to his feet.
A heavy dose of adrenaline dumped into her veins. b.i.t.c.hing under her breath for letting herself get caught unawares-like the magic f.u.c.king rope didn"t give you enough of a ma.s.sive f.u.c.king clue to make sure you had your s.h.i.t together, Sophie-she backed out of the doorway, turned and strode rapidly toward the back.
Her limbs shook. There was too much fight or flight going on for her system to absorb.
Just as it had been when she"d watched the gun swing toward her, and she looked down the wrong end of the barrel as the shooter had taken aim.
She"d reached for the shadows to pull them around her, but she"d been too late for that trick to work. He had already laid eyes on her... and she"d heard a flat tat-tat-tat and felt the individual blows to her body, but by then Rodrigo had dived into the room, his own gun firing.
As her body went into a slow spiral downward, she watched red dots explode across the shooter"s forehead, arm, and chest, and they both fell together....
A part of her still lived in that s.p.a.ce, always falling. She was in no shape for a possible confrontation, either mentally or physically. It was too soon. She was still healing. And she didn"t have her Glock or any offensive spells prepared.
But she had the dog, and she"d made it a promise that she would make everything okay. She wasn"t going to give it up to more abuse, not without a fight. Sometimes confrontations came whether you were G.o.dd.a.m.n ready or not, so somehow she was going to have to suck it up and make something good come out of this.
Her mind sped like a race car hurtling down an open highway. The shadow trick wouldn"t work, not indoors. Not now that he knew she and the dog were here. The best defense she had was the other people in the pub... hopefully... and the best offensive spell she had on the fly, if it came to it, was a raw, inelegant curse she"d learned in the backwoods of Kentucky that would knock her down as much as it would flatten the other guy.
Not an optimal choice.
But hopefully it wouldn"t come to that if she could only get outside first, and under the trees, then she was confident she could pull enough shadows around them to hide them from the most intensive scrutiny, if only the d.a.m.n dog would stop that high, wacky sort of growly-whiny thing it was doing.
She hissed at it. "Shush!"
Ahead of her, the door to the kitchen opened, and a bolt of lightning came toward her.
Lightning, she saw as she blinked rapidly to clear her overloaded vision, which was just barely contained in a lethal male form that moved toward her like Death shadowing a dying woman...
His face. His face.
She knew his face.
The planes and angles so sharp they appeared as if they had been cut from an immortal blade. The indomitable will in those dark, chilling eyes and the ferocity.
The killer"s grace that was purely inhuman, sleek muscles sliding underneath his skin like a python swimming underwater, and oh my G.o.ds, he carried so much Power, even more Power than the other male did. He wore all black, the uncompromising clothes outlining every lethal line of his lean body. Once, Sophie had helped the LAPD catch an infamous gang leader who had always worn black, the better to hide all the blood.
The male newcomer recognized her too. She saw the moment it happened.
His eyes narrowed, and that incredible face of his sharpened-really, she wouldn"t have thought he could have looked any sharper or harder, but he did, he did-and he reached up and behind his head, and she knew what he was doing then too.
He was pulling his sword. The one that had dripped crimson with blood in her vision.
Everything crescendoed inside, the terror and the shakes and the sense of doom connected to the realization that she was trapped, with Lightning headed straight at her and Thunder coming up behind, and all that nightmarish PTSD she had bottled up inside her, and the d.a.m.n dog hadn"t shut up at all. Now it was yodeling.
And she was full up. Full up and overloaded until she shot into a completely different mind s.p.a.ce.
Ah, well.
There really was no fixing stupid or healing crazy.
"You!" she spat. Rage blinded her. She hated things that scared her. They made her so angry. She strode toward the terrifying male and shoved him in the chest as hard as she could with her free hand. "You b.a.s.t.a.r.d! You attacked me for no reason! Are you nuts-what is wrong with you? Who does that?! Crazy people? Serial killers?"
He raised his hand, and the hilt appeared.
Oh dear, here comes the sword. Better get ready with that curse.
If she could put enough strength into it, they would all go down together. But it was going to take a h.e.l.l of a lot of strength to bring down these two males. Chances were good she would just p.i.s.s them off while she knocked herself out.
As Lightning finished drawing his sword, he grabbed her wrist. A liquid, foreign language spilled out of his cruelly beautiful mouth, and she tensed, but it didn"t seem to be a magic spell. He had turned those ferocious eyes onto the dog, and he was...
Telling it off?
The dog bared its teeth at him, and it had a surprising number of teeth. For such a small creature, those fangs looked surprisingly wicked, long and sharp.
Part of her sensed the moment Thunder stepped into the room. Even though her attention was on Lightning, she couldn"t help but know it. Between the two males, there was so much Power in the room, together they could blow out the walls of the building if they wanted to. h.e.l.l, they could probably blow out the town.
She tugged at her wrist and struggled to free herself from his hold, but Lightning"s long, bruising fingers were like a manacle.
His hard, deadly eyes lifted to hers. When their eyes met, the shock of connection almost sent her to her knees. In slightly accented English, he ordered, "Drop him."
"Drop him?" she repeated blankly. "Drop who, the dog? While you"re standing there with your G.o.dd.a.m.n sword pulled out, so you can, what-chop him in half? f.u.c.k you."
Both men stared at her. She didn"t let any hint of her intention cross her face when she stepped into his body, quick and smooth, and hauled up her knee.
It was an awesome move. She had practiced it countless times and used it more than once. She was good at it, confident in using it, and she didn"t hesitate. And she was very motivated to land that blow. Maybe it would loosen his grip on her wrist.
But she had used her right knee, on her bad side, and she hadn"t started back to training and conditioning after her hospital stay. The move pulled weakened muscles in her abdomen, so that she groaned in pain as she tried to knee him.
With a swift move as balletic as a dancer"s, he shifted lean hips to avoid the hit, and her knee grazed along his lean, hard thigh. Then he leveraged her around, shoved her against the wall, and pinned her in place with his body.
"Nikolas," Thunder said, frowning. He placed a big hand on the other man"s shoulder.
Lightning-apparently named Nikolas-shrugged angrily at Thunder"s hold. Another quick stream of the Gaelic-sounding language spilled out of his mouth.
He was breathing hard, still staring at her, and while his a.s.sault wasn"t s.e.xual in any way, still there was something about the way he looked at her. A pivotal awareness of his maleness and her femininity. She recognized it because she carried the same awareness of him. She couldn"t stop watching his lips.
The dog snarled and snapped, biting at their attacker"s shirt. Thunder stood just at Lightning"s shoulder. Behind them, the customers in the pub had gathered, along with Arran and his white-faced wife.
All of them existed on the other side of an invisible wall, along with decency, right and wrong, social mores, and normal behavior. Inside the wall, she and Lightning stared at each other.
Male. Female.
A connection so sizzling it whited out every other consideration in her head. If she"d had a free hand, she would have reached up to trace the line of his cruel, beautiful mouth. She was dying to know what it felt like....
"Nikolas, hold." The strength in Thunder"s voice finally broke through to both of them.
Almost imperceptibly, Nikolas eased his weight off her, although the bruising hold on her wrist never loosened.
Shaken at her own impulses, Sophie reached deep into her personal well of strength, stiffened her spine, and mentally readied herself to throw the curse. Man, this was going to suck if she had to use it.