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 fuck 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 hell, 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 asshole 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 classic 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. Bitching under her breath for letting herself get caught unawares—like the magic fucking rope didn’t give you enough of a massive fucking clue to make sure you had your shit 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 space, 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 goddamn 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 damn 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 gods, 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.
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 damn 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 space.
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 bastard! 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 hell of a lot of strength to bring down these two males. Chances were good she would just piss 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. Hell, 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 goddamn sword pulled out, so you can, what—chop him in half? Fuck 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 assault wasn’t sexual 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.
She said between gritted teeth, “I don’t care who you are or what you are. This dog has suffered more abuse than most prisoners of war do. I’m not putting him down or giving him over to you. So if you want him, you’re going to have to come through me to get him. And for Christ’s sake, what’s the matter with you? Who wants a dog this badly anyway?”
It was sheer, stupid bravado. She was outclassed and outgunned, and the only thing she had going for her at the moment was a curse that was more likely to kill her than cause them anything more than a few moments’ discomfort. They were so much stronger. Damn it. She might be stupid and crazy, but she wasn’t suicidal.
A tiny silence fell as they stared at her again.
Then Thunder said, “Lady. That’s not a dog.”
“What?” she uttered. She glanced down at the ridiculous Ewok face tucked under her arm. Huge, walleyed, filmy eyes blinked up at her. Whatever it was, it looked aged and sad. Her voice hardened. “I don’t care what it is. It’s been hurt and used badly, and I won’t stand for any more of it.”
If, that is, she had any choice about the matter. As far as strength went, they could easily wrestle it away from her.
Unpredictability shimmered in the air. She held firm in the face of it. She had dealt many times with those of the Elder Races, and despite the vastly different personalities and situations, invariably, they all respected a show of strength.
Nikolas’s attention shifted down to the creature she held. After a long moment, he lifted his sword behind his head and sheathed it. She watched him warily. In fact, she couldn’t look away.
He didn’t need to feel for the sheath with his second hand or fumble to get the sword in. He knew precisely how long his sword was and exactly where the sheath rode between his shoulder blades, like both items were extensions of his body. This was not a man to engage in a sword fight.
Then he released her wrist and took a step back. She felt, rather than heard, their witnesses let out a collective sigh. If she were honest with herself, she would admit to losing her own breath as well.
“You’re American.” His voice was clipped and cold. “I want to hear what you were doing two weeks ago when your magic accosted me. And I want to hear everything about how you and the puck met.”
The puck. The puck?
The only puck Sophie knew of was a hockey puck. And this guy might be able to carry off every ounce of his monumental arrogance, but after he’d bared his weapon and assaulted her, she was still too full of anger and adrenaline to give in to it.
She told him in an insolent, indifferent voice. “Do you? I want a million bucks and a villa in Capri. Thanks for asking, asshole.”
The lightning of his Power flared, whiting out her mental senses until all she could see was the masculine outline of his body. He looked—felt—like an avenging angel.
He
snarled, “Do not push me, human.”
But when Sophie reached this level of overload, she truly had no concept of sense or limits. She lifted her face to his and hissed. “I’ll push you every bit as much as you’ve pushed me.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thunder’s fingers clench on Nikolas’s shoulder, and suddenly Arran was on his other side as well.
Arran said in a conciliatory tone, “Tempers have run very high on both sides, my lord. Perhaps if everyone could take a moment, I’m sure this unfortunate misunderstanding can be cleared up. I would be honored to offer you all a drink, on the house as it were, and you can sit down to discuss your differences all civil-like. And I can get the miss a bite of supper. I know she was looking forward to a hot meal, seeing as she just arrived in England today.”
My lord. Arran talked as if this guy was a prince of his people. Sophie tried to sneer at the thought, but actually, given his utterly atrocious behavior, she could well believe it.
On the other side, Thunder muttered, “Damn it, man, listen to him. Do it.”
The rage in Nikolas’s face eased somewhat as he listened to the others speak, but Sophie’s didn’t. She wanted to push him, and push him, and see what he might do then, because like the part of her that had needed to melt down earlier, the part of her that had no sense, had the bit between its teeth and wanted to run amok.
Then she caught another glimpse of Arran’s wife, back against the wall. Maggie wiped her face with a visibly trembling hand, and Sophie’s uncontrollable rage died. This confrontation was not just frightening for her. It was frightening other people.
Sliding away from Nikolas’s taut body, she said directly to Maggie, “I’m sorry we’ve caused such a fuss. If we have any more arguing to do, we’ll take it outside, well away from here.”
She put an extra glare in her glance at Nikolas as she said that. He looked supremely, utterly indifferent to it. In a calm voice, as if he had never lost his temper, he said to Arran, “Thank you for your offer, but there’s no need for you to bear the financial brunt of our conflict. Please see that everyone gets a drink, whatever they want, and put it on my tab. We’ll be at the corner table when you’re done.”
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