“Remember what I said, lass, you and your ilk aren’t welcome here. And you can tell that bawbag you’re working with the same.”
“Thought you said he was a scrote?” I glanced back at Marcus, giving him as innocent a look as I could muster.
The crystal tumbler he’d been holding shattered against the wall just millimetres from where my head had been mere seconds before I ducked out through the door. Marcus’ rumbling growl could be heard all the way out onto the street.
Perhaps pissing him off further wasn’t such a good idea? Who was I kidding, it had been so worth it.
Chapter 23
Standing next to The Ram’s Head, I blew out another breath, watching the mist form in front of my face. My limbs were leaden, the cold seeping in from the ground, up through my boots and into my legs. Behind me the rough-hewn stones of the pub oozed ice into my back despite the layers of clothes between me and them.
“Still here?” The woman’s voice was like velvet and the hairs on the back of my neck reluctantly stood at attention.
From the corner of my eye, I watched the vixen emerge from the alley next to the pub. She wasn’t alone, her partner flanked her, his eyes fever bright, his excitement palpable as he rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms like a boxer prepping for a fight.
“My lift is running a little late,” I said, rolling my weight onto my back foot. The vixen’s eyes darted down, watching my subtle adjustments with interest. Her amber gaze slid up and over my body in a possessive manner that set off my ‘creep’ alert.
“Can we play, baby, can we, please?” the guy said, the pleading note in his voice set my teeth on edge.
“This one’s dangerous,” the vixen said, a lazy smile curling her full lips. “If you bite, she’ll bite back.” She spoke about me as though I wasn’t standing a few feet away from her.
“I’m not looking for trouble,” I said. The cold seeping into my bones would make me slow and up against two foxes wasn’t the time to be sluggish.
“But maybe we are.” She growled, the sound sent a skittering of anticipation racing down my spine. Her muscled legs tensed as she flexed her fingers into fists, sign-posting her movements that set alarm bells clanging in my head.
I waited for her to move but she didn’t.
The man leaped. One moment he was standing on the pavement, the next, he was airborne. He sprang almost straight up and it reminded me of the nature documentaries I’d watched on television of foxes hunting in the snow. In mid-air he twisted his body down, pouncing on me from above. His fists angled toward my unprotected face and head. A blow like that would have me seeing stars for a week, if it didn’t cause me to pass out altogether.
I rolled backwards out of his reach, allowing gravity to do the heavy lifting as I executed a back flip that was far from perfect. In this case, beggars could not be choosers and so long as I was out of his reach, I didn’t care how sloppy I looked. Sometimes it really was function over form. My half frozen body protested at the sudden movements but I pushed the discomfort aside, sending a pulse of power rippling through my muscles. He thumped onto the sidewalk, the noise of his body as it hit caused me to cringe. If I’d hesitated, he’d have definitely broken some of my bones.
Before I could catch my breath, he came at me, fists swinging.
Twisting to the side, I snapped my leg up, he tried to change course but he was already committed and my booted foot made a satisfying crunch as it connected with the side of his jaw. The kick saw his head jerk painfully to the side and he staggered. Without thinking, I spun, driving a thunderous dropkick to his centre that sent him toppling backwards over the ground.
As though I hadn’t just rattled every bone in his body, he spilled fluidly up onto his feet once more. Blood dripped from the side of his mouth.
I stared at him, my brain fighting to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. His face looked wrong, his mouth hung ajar, his jaw jutting off to the side, giving him a kind of lopsided grin.
Without breaking eye-contact, he punched his lower jaw back into place. The audible crack as the bones realigned brought water to my eyes. I knew from experience just how painful a dislocation could be and yet it didn’t appear to concern him in the slightest.
“Perhaps we’ll continue this another time,” the vixen said. She hadn’t moved throughout the fight. Instead, she’d watched everything I’d done. No doubt searching for a weakness, something she could exploit. Was this how it felt to be a bug under a microscope? Yet now she was calling a halt to the brawl. She didn’t appear overly concerned with me beating the crap out of her other half. So what was I missing?
The rumbling of an engine that sounded like it was on its last legs broke the silence and I straightened up. The glare from the headlights hurt my eyes and set the vixen’s eyes aglow.
Had she really heard the car engine before me?
I rolled my eyes at her. “You sound just like one of those cartoon villains,” I said, “at least try to be a little original.”
The vixen’s grin only widened but there was a definite flinching around her eyes, as though she’d have loved nothing more than to cross the pavement and batter me into a fine paste.
“Enjoy your human.” She melted back into the yawning darkness of the alley mouth as the car pulled up to the curb. The guy lingered. In his eyes, I could see his indecision and I flexed my fingers in response.
An eerie screech ripped the air, causing the guy’s eyes to blaze orange. His animal peeking out at the world in response to the call of his mate. Without a word, he spun on his heel and darted down the alley, leaving me to stare after them.
“Jenna…”
The voice was familiar but with the glare of the headlights I couldn’t see the man who’d stepped out of the beat up Volkswagen.
Raising my hand, I shielded my eyes from the worst of the yellow light as I moved over to the car.
“Eli?”
There was no way it could be him. It was far too much of a coincidence that he’d be driving around in the dark this far from home.
“Megan got a call at the coffee shop from some guy, said you needed a ride home…”
“You can’t be serious…”
I was going to kill him. Trust Adrian to not want to get out of goddamn bed and instead call someone else in to do his dirty work.
“So what, Megan roped you into doing it?” I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Actually, I offered.” Eli’s smile was more than a little nervous. “Were they friends of yours?”
I opened my mouth to answer and remembered the look of fear in his eyes when he’d realised I wasn’t human.
“No, just a couple who had a bit too much to drink.”
It was a blatant lie and, judging by the tightening around Eli’s eyes, he knew I was keeping the truth from him. I half expected him to call me on my bullshit.
“You look frozen, hop in.”
Even from where I stood, I could feel the warm air that rolled from the open car door and it beckoned me with its siren call. I really wanted to get into his car but something made me hang back.
“I wanted to apologise for the other night,” he said, pushing his hand back through his tousled hair. There wasn’t a hint of the curl I’d seen in it before, which told me he’d tried to tame it with some kind of product.
“There’s no need.” I kept my voice deliberately even. It wasn’t my first time meeting humans who were afraid of the preternaturals.
“No,” he said sadly, “there is. I was rude and I behaved like an ass. I just don’t think I was expecting you to be so—”
“Blunt?”
He frowned and shook his head. “No, that sounds terrible… You’re just so…” He gestured helplessly to me. “Oh, God, this is coming out all wrong.”
“I promise not to bite,” I said, noting the colour that rushed to his face. Letting go a sigh, I straightened. “Look, I get it, some people just can’t handle what we are and—”
“Yo
u’re beautiful,” he blurted out, cutting across me. Cringing, I let him continue. He clearly needed to get whatever was bugging him off his chest or he wouldn’t be standing here.
“You caught me off guard, I mean on some level when I watched you train, I knew you couldn’t be human, no one is that slick. Yet—”
“Still not making this any better,” I said.
Eli shook his head. “I’ve never been very good at this. My friends tell me I have a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease. They don’t think there’s a cure for me.”
He looked so forlorn I couldn’t stop the chuckle that escaped me.
“You haven’t been around many preternaturals, have you?”
He shook his head. “Where I lived before, we didn’t have a preternatural population.”
It seemed unlikely that there would be a place where no preternaturals lived. Instead, many lived in hiding, refusing to reveal the truth of their nature for fear of reprisals against them or their families, but if Eli wanted to believe he’d lived his life mostly preternatural free, I wasn’t going to burst that bubble for him.
“Can we just start over?” He smiled at me. “Hi, I’m Eli Raphael.” He held his hand awkwardly out over the car bonnet toward me.
“Jenna Faith,” I said, taking the outstretched hand. His fingers were warm against mine and it sent an involuntary shiver through me.
“Seriously, Jenna, hop in,” he said. “You really do look half frozen.” He reluctantly released my hand. “I’ve got the heater on full blast, we’ll soon get you warmed up.”
Tugging open the car door, I slid inside. The scent of something warm and hairy assailed my nostrils and I almost climbed back out of the car.
“We?”
The word barely made it past my lips when a large dark head covered in shaggy black hair appeared between the car seats. The dog, if you could call it that, yawned, showing me an expanse of sharp canines longer than any I’d ever seen in the mouth of a pet before.
“Your face is a picture,” Eli said, grinning at me from behind the beast’s head.
I raised my hand to shield my face from the creature’s wash of hot breath but that only seemed to entice it. Before I could manoeuvre, the dog squeezed more of its barrel shaped body out between the seats and pressed its cold wet nose to my palm.
“This is Gromit,” he said, struggling to wrangle the creature back. Not that the dog was paying any heed to Eli. From where I sat, it seemed to be intent on wriggling out through the tiny gap so it could crawl into my lap.
“He’s a little large, isn’t he?” I huffed under the weight of a giant paw that pressed down on my stomach. “You sure he isn’t a shape-shifter?”
“Come on, boy,” Eli said with a grunt, but trying to push it into the backseat was like trying to shove dough back inside a can. Gromit just wasn’t having it.
A slobbery tongue slathered against my cheek, leaving a trail of warm drool across my skin.
Eli whistled, a short sharp blast that in the confined space of the car set my ears ringing.
Gromit responded instantly and slithered back into his spot with a soft whine. Twisting in my chair, I stared into the darkened back seat at the hulking shape that was panting softly and watching me with wide expressive brown eyes.
“What is he?”
“Newfoundland,” Eli said, turning up the heater, fanning Gromit’s scent around the car. “He’s a good boy really,” he said, “he just gets a little over excited with new people. I think it’s a puppy thing.”
“Wait, that’s a puppy?” I couldn’t keep the squeak from my voice as I side-eyed the black beast on the back seat.
“Yeah, barely a year old.” Eli reached into the back seat and Gromit practically fell over himself to get at the extended hand with his lolling pink tongue.
I made a mental note to avoid sticking any part of my anatomy back there.
Swiping my hand across my cheek, I did my best to scrub away the worst of Gromit’s slobber. He whined and inched close to my seat, the feel of his moist breath on the back of my neck wasn’t entirely unpleasant but he was too big for me to really relax around him. I didn’t like having anyone at my back, and so having something behind me with jaws strong enough to crush my neck if it so chose to definitely didn’t sit right with me.
“He’s harmless, you really don’t need to worry about him.” The fact that Eli was trying to reassure me didn’t make me feel any better, but I gave him a tight lipped smile anyway.
“It’s fine,” I said, doing my best to relax back into the seat. Despite my unease, I’d faced more formidable stuffed toys and allowing myself to be so perturbed by a puppy wasn’t going to do any favours for my image.
The street was unnaturally quiet as we pulled away from the curb. By morning the road would be jammed with cars, nose to bumper, as everyone fruitlessly tried to travel in the same direction into town.
“So what happened?” Eli asked a little too nonchalantly as he steered the car carefully around the darkened streets.
“Sorry?” I asked, dragging my attention back from the empty streets.
“Did you break down or something?”
From the corner of my eye, I studied Eli’s profile. He was handsome in that wholesome kind of way that some guys have and I found myself wanting to relax around him.
“My car’s at home,” I said, “I forgot it was.”
“You forgot?” He stole a glance in my direction and colour crept up his cheeks as he realised I was studying him. “Do you often forget things?”
I shrugged. “Depends on how important I think they might be,” I said. “When things get a little intense with the job, it gets easier to forget you don’t have a ride home.”
“Those must be some pretty intense classes you run, then,” he said with a smile.
It took me a couple of seconds for my sleep deprived brain to figure out what he was saying.
“I work with Division 6,” I said, “it’s a new, old thing.”
“Didn’t have you pegged for a goon squad gal.”
“Most don’t,” I said with a small shrug. “Apparently I don’t look like a team player.”
His laughter took me by surprise, the sound warming me from my toes all the way up to the tips of my ears. It was a strange sensation, not entirely unpleasant, but certainly not one I was used to.
The seconds ticked by and we sat in comfortable silence.
“So,” he said, breaking the stillness, “you got someone waiting for you at home, then?”
I thought about the question. It definitely wasn’t the typical small talk I was used to. But perhaps this was how it was now between two strangers? I wasn’t exactly the foremost expert on all things chit-chat when it came to adults. Not to mention, I was used to being in control of dangerous situations that required my special brand of ass-kickery.
This was so different.
Eli was doing me a favour and I couldn’t exactly rely on my usual repertoire of snark and insults to get by. He was too nice. If I didn’t ease him into my personality, I would shock him so badly we’d probably end up in the ditch.
Shit. When did things get so complicated?
And now, I’d been silent for far too long and he was going to think I was acting suspiciously. As though to confirm my paranoia, he gave me another side-eyed glance.
“Two actually,” I said, “although they’re probably both in bed by now.”
From the corner of my eye I watched his shoulders sag as he ran his thumbs up and down the stitching on the steering wheel.
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” he said, managing to sound utterly deflated.
“What about you?” I tried to keep my voice light. Somewhere along the line I’d screwed up, clearly trying not to be my usual weirdly off-putting self had backfired.
“No, just Gromit, and he comes everywhere I go.”
On cue, the dog’s huge head appeared between the seats once more, an accusatory look in his brown eyes as he stared
at me.
We passed the journey in almost silence, only breaking it when he asked me for directions to my house. I’d done something wrong and I couldn’t figure out just what it was. There was a part of me that longed to simply snap and ask him what the problem seemed to be. After all, my direct approach had gotten me this far with all my body parts still attached. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Snapping at him would be a little too much like kicking a puppy. A really tall, ruggedly handsome puppy, with the most expressive eyes I’d ever encountered.
He pulled up in front of the house and left the engine running.
“Pretty isolated out here,” he said, staring out at the impenetrable darkness that pressed in on the car from all sides.
“It’s how I like it. Sometimes work follows me home. It’s easier to fight when you don’t have to worry about civilian casualties.”
“Wow,” he said softly, “I guess I never thought of it like that.”
Shrugging, I slipped out of my belt. “Hunting down creatures that take pleasure in the thrill of the chase has its downsides. Do it long enough and one of them invariably decides to test you on your own turf.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “Does your partner mind that something could follow you home? Or is he in the same line of work?”
“Partner?” I stared at him in confusion. Grey understood the perils of the job, if he was unduly worried about things following me home he hadn’t mentioned it. “Like my work partner?”
“No, your husband— Is he a preternatural, too?”
“I’m not married, Eli…”
“Sorry I…”
“You thought I had a husband? What gave you that idea?”
“When I asked you about who was waiting for you at home, you said you had two but that they’d be in bed,” he said, managing to sound both hopeful and flustered at the same time.
“I’ve got a roommate,” I said, “of sorts, anyway. It’s pretty new for us both actually.” I deliberately avoided mentioning either Carolyn or Merry’s names. They were running from someone or something, and while I didn’t think it was Eli, I had only just met him and I wasn’t going to volunteer information he didn’t need.
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