I was too tired.
What is wrong? You feel sick. Or ill—
I continued to ignore the press against my mind, struggling to wake up, but the bonds of sleep were…powerful. Too powerful. And that cold chill pressed so close. Shivering, I wiggled away from it, instinctively seeking out the warmth I felt in the bed.
Warmth.
Strength.
Part of me knew exactly what that warmth and strength was.
The rest of me didn’t care.
As strong arms came around me, the cold chill faded away and I sank back into a dark, dreamless sleep.
“Scream.”
The whip came flying through the air again.
I’d bitten my lip bloody and I knew I’d scream again.
But not yet—
“Scream, you useless waste.”
A broken whimper escaped me as the edge of the whip came around, the tip licking the bottom curve of my breast.
“You tried to enter the Dominari.”
I tensed, certain for the next lash of the whip.
It didn’t come.
“You actually think you can run the Dominari.”
Her voice was a mocking, ugly laugh as she came close. Her hand shot out, fisted in the long tangle of my hair, jerking my head back. “Why do you bother?”
Because I’d fail.
The race was brutal and cruel, and of the twenty or so students who ran it every year, nearly half of them had to be rescued or they’d die on the course. Of course, they always called for help. I’d screw up. And when I faltered, I wouldn’t call for help. I planned to go out there and die. It was my best chance at escape.
“You know you can’t survive such a…Oh. Oh…now I see.”
Her mocking laughter surrounded me and once again, the whip lashed through the air.
Once more, I woke and I was unable to move.
It wasn’t weakness that kept me pinned immobile, though.
This time, it was arms. Massively muscled arms that held me sprawled atop a massively muscled chest. One arm was banded across my upper back. The other hand cradled my head.
Cradled—
I tensed, squeezing my eyes closed. Okay. This was awkward. I didn’t know entirely why I was sprawled across Damon’s body, or why he was clutching me like an overgrown doll, but he wasn’t cradling anything. Probably debating on the best way to snap my neck when My Lady told him to.
“Go back to sleep,” he muttered.
I shoved against his chest.
Those arms didn’t loosen one single bit.
He heaved out a sigh and rolled and now, instead of sprawling across his body, I was pinned under it and that wasn’t any better. Not at all. Startled, I stared up into his face. The storm clouds in his eyes were sleepy and his short hair was about as mussed as it was ever going to get. “Can’t you ever just do what you’re told?” he asked irritably.
“What in the hell are you doing?”
“Well, I was sleeping,” he drawled. “And it was the first peaceful night’s sleep I’ve had since the kid disappeared, too. Hard to sleep soundly when I’m keeping one ear cocked for whatever harebrained scheme you’ve got cooked up, but since I figured you’d have a hard time getting out of the bed without waking me, I figured it was a good time to let my guard down.”
“Why in the hell are you in my bed?”
“Easy.” He sprawled on top of me, pressed far, far too close for comfort, seemingly completely content to do so. “It’s not your bed. The witches only had the one open room and I wasn’t about to sleep on the floor when there was a giant king-sized bed up here. You’re a little thing. How was I to know you’d end up on top of me?”
Blood crept up to my cheeks as I tried to wiggle away from him.
The arm he had around my waist was putting a damper on that, though.
And against my belly, I felt something else—
Oh, hell.
Asshole. He fell into asshole territory and he’s not getting out of it. You don’t sleep with assholes.
Something brushed against my neck. The pads of his fingers.
“Let go of me, damn it,” I whispered. Although I wasn’t exactly expecting him to listen.
It was something of a surprise when he rolled away and did just that.
Scrambling out of the bed, I all but fell on my ass in my hurry to get away from him. “Look, I don’t know what in the hell your problem is, but you need to get over it,” I snapped.
That cagey grin lit his face. “Oh, you know what it is. You just don’t want to think about it.”
I opened my mouth. Closed. Opened it again. Then, still not sure what to say, I decided to err on the side of caution and closed it. Stumbling to my feet, I looked around the room. It was simple, done in dark wood, a dresser by a window covered in heavy drapes. I caught sight of my reflection and then yelped as I realized I was only wearing a shirt.
And not one of mine.
One of his, if I guessed right.
“What the hell…?”
A heavy sigh came from the bed. “Don’t go getting all riled up, baby girl. You needed to sleep in the worst way and you weren’t going to get it dressed in that combat gear you call clothing. I promise, I didn’t even look. Well…much.”
“You…” I shoved my hands through my hair. “You’re an asshole.”
He came up off the bed and prowled closer. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah…I know. I’m an asshole. An abusive one, and now you can even add a perverted one to the list of my sins.” He dipped his head and I stiffened.
Move—my brain screamed.
My legs wouldn’t cooperate.
Heat bloomed inside my belly.
“Here’s the funny thing, though, baby girl…you’re the one who all but climbed on top of me during the night. You had your arms wrapped around me, practically your legs.”
I swallowed, blood rushing to my face.
A big hand curled over the back of my neck, his fingers pushing to tangle in my hair. I felt the warm puff of his breath against my ear as he whispered, “I have to admit, it was one of the nicest handfuls I’ve had in quite a while. But don’t worry. I behaved myself completely.”
That heat curdling inside me threatened to explode. Slowly, I pulled away.
Without looking at him, I snagged my bag. There was a door a few feet away. I was praying it was a bathroom. But even if it was the hallway or a closet, I didn’t care. I needed to get away from him.
Before I did something really, really stupid.
Chapter Thirteen
The last witch hadn’t been able to shed much light on the subject, other than the fact that yes, she’d seen another witch. One who was missing, in this general area.
It hadn’t been a black car, though.
It had been a busted-up, steel blue van.
Something about that niggled the back edge of my memory, but I couldn’t figure out what.
“Now where, baby girl?” Damon asked as he tossed our bags into the back of the car.
I ignored him as I pulled a map out of the glove box. He came up behind me as I was unfolding it. The wind kept grabbing at it and he leaned over, pinned it down on one side, while I held the other.
“What you looking for?”
“A sudden, blinding flash of insight,” I muttered. Since I wasn’t really expecting that to happen, I pulled a pen from inside my black vest. He’d referred to it earlier as combat gear. It wasn’t. It was just…useful. Very useful. I bent down and marked an X on the map. “First sighting.”
Finding the next was harder.
I marked it and put a tiny little two next to it.
The third and fourth had been practically on top of each other.
I starred the fourth—something about the van was still bugging me.
“Why the star?”
“The van.” I fisted a hand in my hair and stared at the map, although I wasn’t seeing it. In the back of my mind, I saw a dusty blue van. Where, though…where did I
remember seeing it? In person? On the news? Hell, for all I know, it could have been one of the hundreds of MP reports I had to churn through. Shoving my hair back from my face, I stared at the starred X. “Something about the van is bugging me.”
His hand stroked up my back.
I was so busy concentrating for a minute, it didn’t occur to me to notice.
But as he rubbed his thumb over my nape, I tensed. Swallowing, I closed my eyes. “Damon…why in the hell are you touching me?”
“I think we’ve already established this,” he said, his voice low as he leaned in over the map, studying it with the same intent gaze I was. “I think you know, if you’d just let yourself think about it.”
I set my jaw. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh.” He tapped a point on the map. “We should go visit the park. Since we’re here. Take a hike or something.”
“A hike?” Shrugging away the hand at the nape of my neck, I started folding up the map. “I’m sort of in the middle of working a case that I need to solve unless I want the Alpha Cat to try and rip my throat out.”
He reached up. Laid a hand on said throat. “I’ll take care of your throat, Kit.”
“Uh-huh. So reassuring from the man who all but crushed it a week ago.”
That look darkened his eyes, the one I couldn’t quite comprehend. “I’ll take care of it,” he said again. “And we need to go on a hike. I caught weird smells on the wolf kid. Maybe I can track them.”
I trudged along behind him, swatting at mosquitoes, cursing the heat, still feeling too damned tired and wondering how long we’d be out here. We’d spent most of yesterday in the woods and had collapsed at a little roadside hotel only to get up at dawn and return.
He’d wanted to check out the northern part of the park, but my gut told me to go south. So here we were. And I was miserable.
Thirst nagged at me and I tugged the bottle from the pack I carried. I emptied it in three long drinks and added it to the small collection in my bag. Rummaging through the pack, I unearthed a granola bar, but before I could tear into it, I found myself trapped between Damon’s body and a bent, gnarled tree that felt rough against me, even through my T-shirt and the material of my vest.
Swearing, I jerked a look up at him. “L—”
A hand covered my mouth and he looked down at me, shaking his head.
Storm clouds swirled in his eyes and the pupils swirled. Flared. And as I watched, the bones in his face started to shift.
Swallowing, I nodded.
He backed away, lifting a finger to his mouth.
Yes, yes. I get the point.
He held out the pack he’d slung on his back. His hand was human when he started the motion, but furred, clawed by the time I caught the pack. The damn pack was more than twice the weight of my own. I shifted my balance and swung it onto my back. He pointed to the tree and mouthed, Stay.
At least that was what I thought he said.
Hard to say…because the bones around his mouth, the shape of it…everything was changing.
Slowly.
I decided it was easier to watch a shift in full speed rather than this. Muscles appeared in places where they didn’t belong and bones broke, realigned, formed, as fur spread and flowed along his body.
He stripped out of his clothes as he changed, the slow shift giving him the time to get of them without them falling to shreds around him. And it was all so completely silent. Completely eerie.
I still couldn’t hear whatever had caught his attention.
Even when he turned his back, standing on two massive legs, more than double the width they’d been only minutes earlier and prowled forward, I couldn’t hear anything.
Dark golden fur, almost the same gold as his skin, spread across his body. There were spots of deep, dark gray, nearly the same shade as his eyes, all across his arms, shoulders and legs.
He almost looked like a wereleopard I’d seen once, but that didn’t seen quite right.
Cat. I could only think cat.
As he disappeared into the trees, I dealt with the bags. I managed to shove them into the branches of the tree, hooking the straps around another branch to keep them from tumbling out of place. Out of the way, off the ground, and I didn’t have to worry about tripping over them.
That done, I gathered up his clothes and wedged them on top of the bags. Once I’d done that, I drew my blade and faded.
There was no way I was standing here in this hot, oppressive forest for anybody to find me.
Especially when I didn’t know just what had sent him prowling off into the silence alone.
A breeze kicked up and that’s when I heard them.
Dogs. Baying.
Voices…
Backing up against the tree, I held my breath.
I could climb the damn tree if I had to get away from the dogs but then I could end up trapped. I didn’t know if they were coming—
So focused on the dogs, I didn’t notice the bigger, quieter problem.
She tore through the trees, naked and trembling, young and terrified. I can see the mantle of her energy hovering over her—an overgrown housecat, I thought, spine arched, hair on end, swiping out at anything that moved. Too terrified to fight well.
I dropped the invisibility and moved forward.
She saw me—briefly, I realized that something about her face seemed familiar. Very familiar…blue van, I thought dumbly.
Oh, shit—
This was the girl that had gone missing from Atlanta, I realized. A month ago. Son of a bitch—
But even as my brain processed that, she started to scream.
“Shhh.” I struck out and grabbed her wrist, whirling her around and slamming her against the tree. I caught her off guard, just enough to stun her, the only reason it worked. Mind whirling, I grabbed the shirt Damon had shed from the pile of clothing and shoved it at her.
It fell to her feet.
She just stood there. Trembling. Abruptly, she just collapsed, curled in on herself and moaning like a cornered animal. I guessed that wasn’t too far off.
And all the while, the baying of the dogs got closer.
This was bad.
Very bad…
When Damon sprang through the trees, I had never been so glad to see him. Glad enough to see him that I just might forgive him almost anything. He saw the girl, saw my sword. In his half-form, a weird look that might have been a smile split his monstrous face.
“Foolish enough to fight,” he rumbled.
I lifted a brow and then looked to the girl.
He picked her up, hefted her over his shoulder. “Just humans. The dogs are a problem, though. You hide,” he said shortly. “And be here when I come back.”
Just humans…nothing I couldn’t handle, I figured. But yeah, dogs are a problem. While I could outrun any human on earth, dogs were a different story. Sighing, I glanced up into the limbs spread out over my head. “Can you boost me?”
I’d barely gotten the question out before I was scrambling up through the branches. I hauled the bags as I went, stashing his as best as I could in foliage and slinging mine back into place. As long as I was wearing it, it would fade away when I did.
He stared at me for a long, hard moment and even after I faded from sight, he lingered for a moment. Then he was gone.
I calculated two minutes before the dogs burst into the clearing.
They paused, sniffing at the tree and tipping back their heads to howl like the devil.
Shoo, I thought, glaring down at them.
A couple of them were staring right at me, but they couldn’t see me. They could smell me, yes, and hear me, most certainly, but they couldn’t see me.
When the humans stumbled out behind them, I clenched the blade even more tightly. Two, three, four…five.
I waited with bated breath for another one, but that was it.
They all gathered around the dogs, peering up at the tree. “What the hell’s the matter
with them?”
Tall guy. Blond, dirty. Looked like he hadn’t bathed in a month. Stank like it, too.
“Maybe she hid up there, thinking to throw them off.”
Dirty-Blond sniggered. “Won’t work. I bet she tried the swamps next. Hope not, though. Gators don’t like cats being around them. If they get a bite of her…”
Another one, short and stumpy with stringy hair, shook his head. “She’s still too strong. She won’t get caught by a gator.” A smile split his face. “We’ll be looking for her for a while. And if we catch her before the other team…”
Teams.
I studied each face. Committed them to memory.
I didn’t mess with humans. I stayed away from them because they could bring too much trouble down on us.
But these weren’t humans. Not if they were hunting kids.
That made them monsters.
“Come on. We need to get moving. If somebody else finds her, we have to pony up the dough. Not this time.”
They moved off into the woods. I settled deeper into the tree and drew my knees to my chest. Part of me wanted to climb down and go after them. If it hadn’t been for the dogs, I might have.
I could take five humans.
But the dogs evened the odds in their favor just a little bit.
Too bad I hadn’t brought my bow and arrow.
I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Of course, if I’d realized we’d be dealing with something like this, I damn well would have brought it.
Live and learn, Kit. Live and learn.
Night was falling by the time I saw the brush and branches swaying. It had been a couple of hours, easy.
If this wasn’t Damon, screw him—
Rising, I stared down as the trees parted and I found myself staring down into feline eyes that reflected the fading sunlight.
He was searching the tree for me. I faded back into sight with a sigh and groaned as a headache slammed into me. Swaying a little, I started to work my way down. “It’s about time,” I muttered.
Exhaustion made my hands clumsy but I determinedly kept on climbing. By the time I stood on firm ground, my muscles were trembling and my head was pounding in time with my heart.
Deceptions: A Collection Page 28