He nodded tightly as he turned his head, his gaze locking on whatever he saw there. She knew what it must be, but was too afraid to look.
A wyrmwolf.
“Do you have anything in your reticule? A knife, a gun? A garrote?” Colin’s body still pressed hers into the wall; protection instead of passion now.
“No weapons. I’m sorry.”
A feral snarl ripped through the air, shivered down her spine. Why did it wait? Was it uncertain, confused by the two of them there?
Though he didn’t look at her, his lips tilted in a quick smile. “Don’t apologize, sweet. Just brace yourself, and hold on. It’s a short distance to my car, but it’ll chase us.” He pushed a pair of keys into her palm, then slowly bent and slid his forearm behind her knees. “If I fall, get inside and use the symbols.”
Her heart thundered, a protest rose in her throat, but she didn’t let it out. She wound her arm around the back of his neck and tucked her chin down.
Even with that precaution, the rotation and acceleration whipped her head against his shoulder, made the world swim sickeningly around her.
She forced herself to stay conscious, though she couldn’t breathe, though her chest felt weighted by a boulder. G-forces? The rear end of the Bentley rushed toward them with startling speed. Oh, god, how would he stop in time?
He didn’t. They were suddenly airborne, and the world spun again as Colin twisted, lifted her arm from his neck, and curled himself around her. She had a brief glimpse of the wyrmwolf directly behind them, its jaws wide open and slavering.
They crashed through the wide rear window; Colin took the brunt of the impact on his back, but it still slammed through her. Lights exploded behind her eyelids. She barely felt it when he tossed her over the headrests and she landed in the front seats. She bit back the gasp of pain as her stomach jarred into the console.
She had no air for it, anyway.
Growls filled the car, Colin’s and the wyrmwolf’s. Tiny cubes of glass lay on the seat beside her; with shaking fingers, she picked one up and sliced the edge across her palm in a jagged line.
She held her hand over the symbols on the dashboard, and turned to look, waiting.
The wyrmwolf’s head and shoulders were through the shattered window; Colin was ripping at the backseat, while trying to hold it off with his other hand. He didn’t make a sound when it clamped its jaws around his wrist, but used his trapped arm to batter the thing’s head against broken glass and metal trim. The roof dented with the force of it.
It whimpered and let go; Colin pivoted on the seat and slammed his foot against the side of its jaw. It fell back, outside the car.
Savi activated the symbols.
The wyrmwolf smashed soundlessly into the back window as if the glass had been intact. The Bentley rocked beneath the impact, but the spell held.
Colin clawed at the seat back, leather and stuffing flying to the side. Trying to get to the trunk, she realized. He must have weapons inside. She could see the small leather loop that would allow him to pull the seat forward, and give him access—didn’t he know it was there?
“Colin—”
“Don’t talk!” he commanded hoarsely. The seatback tore from its fastenings with the rip of fabric and screech of metal. “Don’t fucking move, and don’t lower your shields.”
She bit her lip and nodded. Her palm burned, and she cupped it tightly over her knee to staunch the wound—but he must smell it. Shudders wracked her body, welling up from deep within.
Her blood, his blood. The pain of the wyrmwolf’s attack. He had to be at the edge of his control.
She could hardly believe he had any control.
He leaned forward and withdrew two swords from the trunk before straightening up. He kneeled for a moment, his back rigid, his breathing harsh.
“Are you hurt?” he finally asked.
The wyrmwolf’s grisly muzzle and glowing red eyes appeared in the window beside her face. She swallowed her scream, and whispered, “No.” Not critically.
The car shook. But the wyrmwolf outside the window hadn’t—
“There are two,” she realized in horror.
“Yes,” he said grimly. “It’s on the roof, waiting.” He turned his head, looked at her over his shoulder, his profile drawn in stark relief against the darkness of the empty window beyond. “I can’t stay in here, Savi. You’re bleeding.”
She forced the words past the ache in her throat. “You would have fed from me tonight anyway.”
His eyes closed. The blades rattled together before he separated them; he held them to his sides, one in each hand. “I don’t know that I could stop, or make it pleasurable. I’m not at my best at this moment.” He dragged in a deep breath. “Auntie will shortly be leaving the restaurant.”
Oh, god. He’d danced with Nani, kissed her. If the wyrmwolves were attracted to his scent, they might abandon the protected car for easier prey only two blocks distant.
His face wavered in front of her. “Colin—”
“Don’t cry, sweet; I’ve every intention of trouncing them soundly.” He sighed. “Though I must confess I didn’t expect to make my heroic exit through the boot.”
She covered her face with her uninjured hand. How could she laugh at such a time? “At least your exit will be a beautiful one,” she said, looking through her fingers. “Your assumption was correct; you are spectacular from this angle.”
His teeth flashed in a grin. “Consider yourself kissed senseless. I daren’t do it in reality.”
He paused, held her gaze for a long second. Then he was gone in a blur of movement; the trunk lid swung up and thudded shut.
The wyrmwolf at her window disappeared.
Savi scrambled into the destroyed backseat, peering into the trunk cavity. There had to be something. She was useless with a sword, far too slow, but with a gun or a crossbow she could remain at a distance and offer him some help.
Blood spattered silently across the passenger side window. Let it be theirs. Please let it be theirs. She groped wildly, blindly around the trunk’s interior.
Nothing. The car rattled, as if an earthquake shook the ground beneath. She rose up on her knees, her breath coming in desperate pants as she stared into the darkened parking lot. Think, Savi. But everything took too long, or would put her in a position that might divert his attention and endanger him.
A short, hysterical laugh fell from her lips. As if he could be in any more danger than he was.
Colin suddenly landed on the trunk, splayed on his back. He instantly flipped upright, and his feet danced across the gleaming surface before he leapt down. A wyrmwolf’s underbelly—scales and glistening flesh—flashed into her view as it followed him. Only one…where was the other? Had he killed it?
Her fingers clenched into fists. She really fucking hoped so, and she wished she could have seen it happen.
At the far end of the lot, another four-legged beast streaked across the pavement, its canine form lit briefly by a security light.
Savi started forward in terror, ready to jump through the back window and alert Colin, but there was no need—halfway across the parking lot, it shifted into a familiar, horrifying form: a hellhound in its demonic state. As tall as Colin at its shoulder, three heads, and eyes that shone with hellfire.
Sir Pup.
Colin’s blades caught the moonlight as he slashed at the wyrmwolf. It launched itself at Colin’s head; he ducked, and Sir Pup caught the wyrmwolf mid-air. The middle pair of the hellhound’s jaws clamped over the wyrmwolf’s midsection, the others on its hindquarters and head.
Sir Pup made a single, jerking motion, and the wyrmwolf ripped into three pieces. He tilted back his heads and gulped them down.
Savi clapped her hand over her mouth, and was suddenly grateful for the symbols that disallowed sound to accompany sight.
Until Colin looked up at the sky, and the expression on his face told her he was laughing—she’d have loved to hear that. After a moment, he waved to
ward the car with one of his swords, and Sir Pup hopped eagerly in place, like a dog waiting for the toss of a Frisbee.
Telling him where to find the other wyrmwolf, she supposed. And indeed, Sir Pup ran toward the car, paused briefly with his forelegs braced on the trunk to look at her, and clambered up. He dragged a carcass to the ground beside the car and began tearing at it.
Oh, no. “Wait!” Savi cried, but of course they couldn’t hear her. She slid into the front seat, pushed open the door on the opposite side. “Wait, don’t eat it!”
Colin stood near the trunk, watching the hellhound. “A little late, sweet.”
“Oh. Dammit. We might have been able to use traces of soil from its feet to determine where it came from.”
“Its head is here.” He nudged a lump on the ground with his foot, then glanced down at his shoe and grimaced. “Perhaps it ate a few things on the way, and you can pick bits of them from its teeth.”
She tried to cover her disgust with a smile; she could smell the odor of its blood now—rotten, sulphuric. “I can scour the missing pet notices. ‘Your cat, Fluffy, is missing? Yes, we’ve found his collar caught in a wyrmwolf’s jaws. Do you have a portal to the Chaos realm in your basement?’”
Her smile failed as his jaw hardened, and he turned his face farther away from her. Stop, Savi. Don’t mention Chaos again.
His sleeve was torn from the attack in the car, and a stain spread over his abdomen near the top of the inverted V formed by the unbuttoned bottom half of his jacket. She’d have gone to him to examine it more closely and would have tried to bandage it if not for the forbidding expression on his face.
“You were bitten.”
“And I’m not likely to forget it.” He tossed his swords through the shattered back window, and they clanged together as they landed on the seat. “You’re still bleeding.”
She tucked her hand beneath her opposite arm. Blood soaked the denim over her knee—cold and wet, sticking to her skin. “Sir Pup will protect me.”
“And who will protect me from Sir Pup?” There was no amusement in his tone. “You shouldn’t have come out.”
Her stomach twisted painfully. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.” She’d just trusted that all was well after she’d seen him laugh, that he’d regained control. And acted impulsively, to stop Sir Pup from devouring evidence.
“Ah, yes.” A sardonic smile thinned his lips. “You didn’t think. I thought I taught you well; yet despite your playing the wronged little girl for eight months, and your insistence that you know better now, you haven’t learned a bloody thing.”
The color drained from her face, left her features stiff. Her wide smile almost cracked her cheeks. “Excuse me.”
The car door was open; she only had to reach in and slip her cell phone from her bag. She couldn’t look at Colin, and perhaps it was foolish to turn her back on him, but she did. She dialed the number for the taxi service from memory and walked to the front of the car as it rang.
Her legs shook with the need to run, but she forced herself to sit down on the concrete parking stop. She leaned her shoulder against the bumper, and began counting the tiny, pentagonal holes in the radiator grill.
She was at fifteen when the disinterested voice of the dispatcher answered. For a moment Savi couldn’t recall her location, but it only took a second for it to pop into her head.
Sixty-five holes when she hung up. Fifteen minutes until the taxi would arrive. She could make it to two thousand holes by then.
Colin’s cold laughter floated over the night air. “I must confess I’m shocked you didn’t ring Castleford. Your knight in armor, come to defend your honor and save you from the evil vampire. Would he have been pleased he didn’t have to pry you away from me this time? Or disappointed he didn’t have a reason to exile me for another month? Or, God forbid, a reason to remove my head from my shoulders?”
That was why Colin had left for England? Because he’d been a danger to her?
One hundred and seventy. Don’t think, Savi.
But it was impossible. She knew what he was doing; perhaps she should have been glad of it. He’d coated truth with cruelty at Polidori’s, too—as his fucked-up method of protecting her from himself, and of putting distance between them.
But it didn’t make sense. What kind of bastard protected someone by hurting them?
“Perhaps I should give him a reason,” Colin rasped into her ear. His knees rose alongside her waist, his chest hard against her back. He must be sitting on his heels directly behind her, like a hawk over its prey. Her teeth dug into her lip as his hands slid around to cup her breasts. “Why deny myself? You run now, when you should have run a week ago. You claimed you’d learned and yet you agreed to try friendship, then denied our mutual satisfaction like a tease. Did you think to hold off until I panted after you?” She shuddered when his fangs scraped the soft skin below her ear. His erection was thick against her bottom, his breathing harsh. “I felt your jealousy, little Savi. Did you intend to string me along until I was so mad for you that I’d beg and promise to forsake every other woman for a taste of you? Perhaps I should give you a repeat performance; you’ll certainly learn then. It can be just like Caelum.”
A selfish bastard. A thoughtless one.
“Sir Pup,” she said, and flattened her palm, holding it out. “I need a knife.”
In his Labrador form once more, Sir Pup looked around the front of the car and whined softly. A long-bladed dagger appeared in her hand.
Bless demon dogs and their limitless, invisible hammerspace.
Colin’s laughter rumbled against her neck. “Do you think to fight me, sweet Savitri?” His long fingers sought her nipples, caught the taut buds in a pinch. Then he smoothed his thumbs over the stinging peaks.
She had to close her eyes against the pleasure that speared through her; she must be completely sick for him to affect her now. “Sir Pup, will you go make certain Nani is okay, and follow her home? But don’t let her see you.” When the hellhound hesitated, she looked up at him and repeated, “Go.”
He disappeared. A moment later, the rapid click of his claws against the pavement faded in the distance.
Behind her, around her, Colin’s lean body tightened. “I will disarm you without effort. Call him back.” An edge of desperation sharpened his voice.
“I’m removing a variable,” she said, and flipped the hilt of the dagger around in her hand. “One of your strengths. You use his presence to help maintain your control, or you wouldn’t have dared try to approach me and scare me like this.”
“Are you scared, Savi?” If he sought a mocking tone, he failed. Instead, he sounded anxious, as if he was suddenly afraid.
“I should be. Mostly I’m just pissed,” she said—and dropped her shields.
In his instant of paralyzed surprise, she pushed off with her legs and caught him off-balance.
She was more powerful than she’d realized; they flew back and skidded across the asphalt until his shoulders wedged against the front tire of the car in the adjoining space. She took no time to triumph in that small victory; before he could react, she twisted and slapped her bleeding palm over his mouth and nose.
He froze. Above her hand, his eyes widened. His pupils dilated, leaving a thin ring of pale gray.
Her breath came in short pants. She straddled his abdomen, the ground hard and cold beneath her knees. His fingers clawed at the asphalt, then clenched and stilled.
Keeping himself from touching her. If he could manage that much control, she’d be safe. And if not, Sir Pup would still hear her scream.
His chest was motionless, as if he was trying not to inhale the scent of her blood. His lips were sealed together beneath her hand, and she could feel the tightness in his jaw, the effort it took for him not to open his mouth. That suited her; he didn’t need to breathe except to speak, and she just wanted him to shut up.
She leaned forward until her hand separated them from a parody of a kiss. “You did teach me wel
l. Strength against weakness makes for a short battle. Your weakness is my scent and blood; they are apparently my strengths.” The dagger clattered to the ground as she opened her right fist. “I didn’t even need this.”
Not that she would’ve used it; it had only served as a distraction. Nor could she hang on to her anger any better than she did the knife. She’d never been able to.
She didn’t fight the deep, overwhelming exhaustion that took its place. “I think we can call the friendship experiment a complete failure,” she said, drawing back until she was sitting almost upright, her arm stretched out in front of her. Her sleeve was streaked with blood. “I’ve just proven that, even under the worst circumstances, you have enough control not to rape me or drain me to death—but you obviously don’t give a shit about the rest of me.”
His brows drew together, and his gaze searched her features. In her peripheral vision, she saw his hands flex.
“You don’t even realize, do you?” A short, tired laugh escaped her, and she shook her head before looking at him again. The wheel formed a dark nimbus behind his golden hair. “I thought, at the restaurant, you were feeling sorry for what you’d done to me in Caelum. But now I think you must’ve simply been feeling sorry for yourself. Perhaps concerned I’d change my mind about tonight; no wonder you danced with Nani when you found out otherwise.”
Something flickered in his eyes. It looked a bit like guilty comprehension, but the first thing she’d learned about him was that appearances were deceiving.
“And I can just imagine what went through your mind a couple of minutes ago: I’m doing this for her own good; this is hurting me, not her. I won’t get to fuck her now because she’ll hate me for this. I’m sacrificing tasting her to save her from me. I’m risking my friendship with Hugh and Lilith, and my pretty head.”
Her voice broke, and she dragged in a ragged breath. She swiped at her cheeks, pressed her forefinger and thumb against her eyelids to stop the burning.
“Do you understand?” she said hoarsely. “You’re not frightening me when you say these things—you’re hurting me.”
Demon Moon Page 20