Pausing, he added,
“Now, I find myself angry at the thought of anyone trying to hurt you. As in you. You, personally. Not an object. Not a risk vector… Marion.”
Marion felt her cheeks warm.
It hit her again that it wasn’t his words so much as what she felt behind them. She sensed an openness of some kind, even a kind of vulnerability. Strangely, he seemed almost unsure what to do with that openness himself.
He cleared his throat, shrugging as he lifted a hand off the McLaren’s steering wheel.
“Perhaps we could… do something,” he said, making a vague, graceful gesture in the air. “After this. Once it is resolved.”
“Do something?” Marion looked over at him, puzzled. When he didn’t go on, she arched an eyebrow, refolding her arms. “Like what?”
“Food?” He glanced over, his eyes flickering down her body. “Swimming. Perhaps horses? I am fond of horses. We could go riding. If you are not adverse.”
She felt her cheeks warm a second time, but smiled.
“Are you asking me out?” she said, half-amused, half-bewildered. “On a date?”
There was a silence.
Then he looked at her, his dark eyes serious.
“Yes,” he said.
She returned his stare, lost once more in those dark, volcanic-stone eyes, the stern beauty of his face, the strange transparency of his expression.
She opened her mouth, about to answer him––
––when a car slammed into them on the driver’s side.
M arion saw it coming.
She saw the silver grill, the looming shadow, the headlights approach at a terrifying speed, but all too quickly to make a sound. The dark shape with the halogen lights came out of nowhere, accelerating as it approached.
She didn’t have time to brace herself.
She didn’t have time to even finish opening her mouth.
She saw the rush of chrome grill, a flash of light, looming darkness––
––then impact.
It threw her back.
She slammed back and sideways in her seatbelt, thrown into the car’s door, her arms unfolding and slamming outward as the McLaren got hit.
The car’s nose slammed to the right, pushed into a hard spin.
She thought of Tyr, of the man on the same side of the car where the impact occurred, but the car was spinning so fast in those first seconds, Marion couldn’t see anything but a blur of light and dark. Her scream caught in her lungs and throat, glass flying around the inside of the car, nicking her face and neck and shoulders.
The car hit into something again, from the opposite side.
That time, the whole thing flipped.
Marion screamed.
It flipped once, twice… half a turn.
When it finally stopped, it took her seconds to orient herself.
Marion found herself gasping for breath.
She stared down at darkness, seeing glimpses of broken glass and pavement below where she hung. Her head throbbed; she had no idea which side of the car she was looking at.
Then movement happened fast inside the vehicle.
Something jumped at her––no, flew at her.
It seemed to leap up from the darkest part of the car, where she’d seen the shards of broken glass, the faint outline of the car’s frame.
The car got hit again, spinning it backwards.
She gasped, immediately in pain.
The pressure in her lungs and around her ribs sharply worsened.
Then something was holding her, and the pain lessened again.
She couldn’t see a damned thing.
The glass was no longer hitting her from all sides, but she could hear more things breaking. She heard the crunch and screech of metal. The sounds were muffled now, as the car continued to spin, almost like everything happened from further away. She still half-hung from the McLaren’s leather seat, cocooned in darkness… it wasn’t until she looked up that she saw a pair of dark, faintly-glowing eyes staring down at her.
It took her a few seconds more to make out the rest of him.
Then, all of a sudden, the vague outlines, contours, and shadows clicked into place. She saw him, his angular face hovering only a few inches away from hers.
His dark, oddly-glowing eyes watched hers.
His nearness didn’t alarm her.
Rather, it brought up something she’d been repressing since she first saw him––since she first noticed him sitting there, in that bar on St. Barts.
A kind of longing, pulling, compulsive feeling rose in her gut and chest, making it hard to breathe as she watched him look at her. She fought with a sharp desire to wrap her arms around him. Inexplicably, insanely, she remembered him asking her out right before the car got hit.
He wanted to take her horseback riding.
He’d asked her out on a date.
She really, really wanted to go on that date.
Hell, there were a lot of things she wanted to do with him… and, frankly, to him.
She studied his face, thinking about all of that in the silence.
She studied his face, and wondered if she was dead.
Then she realized he was bare-chested.
Her eyes had begun to adjust to the dark, to the lack of lights from the dash, the lack of lights visible outside the car. She found herself staring down at that muscular chest, the dark lines and shadows, and wished she could see him better. What she could see in that darkness didn’t lessen that dull, pulling, longing feeling in her gut and chest.
“You’re beautiful,” she told him.
Again, not the most logical timing to say that kind of thing.
She saw his eyes flinch, right before his gaze narrowed.
That glowing, burning red light that lived inside his dark pupils and irises grew brighter, turning into a desert flame. He never took his eyes off her face, but she felt something in their expression change.
She really, really wished someone wasn’t trying to kill them right now.
The car’s spinning began to slow.
Marion felt faintly sick from the motion, but barely noticed as she stared up at that angular face, the vague outline of a broad, muscular chest, his strangely glowing eyes. She was gripping hold of something, she realized, holding it for balance, but she hadn’t really looked at what it was. Whatever she held onto, it was soft and thick and all around her, like a dense blanket made of enormous feathers.
She slowly grew to realize that whatever it was she held on to, it held her back. That blanket wrapped around her firmly, keeping her close to the angular face, the dark, glowing eyes, those muscular arms and the disturbingly perfect chest.
Marion didn’t fully comprehend any of that until the car’s spinning finally slowed.
It froze out of its spin entirely when it hit a hard bump in the road, then skidded a few yards further, skidding and bouncing on the metal driver’s side door before it finally came to a complete stop.
For a few seconds, everything grew strangely quiet.
Their breaths echoed, panting in the dark.
Somewhere in the distance, Marion heard a siren.
Closer, there was shouting, the honking of horns, screams, what might have been gunshots––
But in their little cocoon of metal and darkness, it was nearly silent.
Marion panted, trying to pull her mind back online, trying to think through adrenaline and what had to be shock. She swore she could hear her own heartbeat.
She swore she could hear his.
Then the shadow over her spoke.
As he did, his hands and arms reached for her. He gripped her around the back and waist, carefully pulling her closer to that warm, muscular chest.
“We have to go,” he said.
The familiarity of his voice shocked her, making her breathe harder.
Even now, after both of them nearly dying, covered in broken glass, in a much more broken car, he managed to sound totally unruffled. Th
e person hovering and hanging over her stroked her hair out of her face, caressing her cheek and jaw as he seemed to be warming her with his large hands, or maybe calming her down like one might reassure a panicky animal.
She felt a shock of heat hit her belly at his touch.
She felt another when she looked up, just from the sheer intensity in those glowing, dark-red, coal-like eyes. His deep voice did something to her, even apart from the calmness, the utter assurance she heard there.
Her own confused reactions flustered her, but his presence calmed her down.
When he spoke next, something in the depth there, in that calm, unshakable assurance, also made her feel strangely safe.
“We have to go, Marion,” he repeated. “They’re coming. Now.”
Instead of panicking, she only nodded.
Her fingers wrapped around the hand on her face, and she nodded again.
14
The Least Strange Thing
T here was a flex of muscles over her, one Marion tangibly felt.
A sharp wind flashed, ruffling her hair––
––then a piece of the car flew away from her.
It flew straight up and back, leaving their immediate physical proximity in a near-silent rush. Marion found herself looking up over her shoulder, half in alarm, half in wonder as that same piece of car disappeared into the darkness.
Where it had been, she now saw only night sky.
It took her a second more to realize it was the car door.
That same car door had just been thrown off at a speed fast enough to blur its shape as it disappeared into darkness. Displaced air rushed in to fill the void the door left behind.
Marion shivered, both from that wind and the rush of snowy, early-evening air.
Hands wrapped around her again.
She hadn’t noticed those few seconds they left her, but now they felt warm, comforting, and insanely distracting. He gripped her tighter, pulling her closer to him.
“Seat belt,” he said.
His deep voice remained calm as a monk’s.
“…It would be easier if you removed it,” he added. “I can’t see where it’s attached.”
Bewildered, Marion looked down to her lap and shoulder. She found the latch and clicked it, and thankfully, it worked, retracting from around her.
She hadn’t fully comprehended the angle where she and the car hung, suspended in space. She’d forgotten that pressure against her chest and ribs once the car stopped spinning on the icy road. When the belt clicked from around her, however, reality returned.
So did gravity.
Marion fell, straight down, in the direction of the McLaren’s driver’s side door, which had been smashed into the road.
She might have fallen all the way to the pile of glass where the driver’s side window used to be, but her shadowy protector stood in the way.
He caught her, midair.
As soon as the unlatched belt freed her, and she began to fall, his arms encircled her.
He wrapped his arms around her then, and lifted her out of the seat.
“I’ll need to carry you,” he said, his voice a low murmur. “Do you mind? I’ve managed to have the streetlights extinguished, so that should give us some cover.”
Marion shook her head, but she barely heard his words.
He was climbing with her out of the car window, and suddenly, she was fully comprehending everything that surrounded her, even as her eyes widened in shock.
When he stood on the passenger side of the electric orange car, in the freezing night air, surrounded by snow, somewhere in Washington D.C., she looked around at the scene that greeted them, sure she must be dreaming.
That, or maybe she truly was dead.
He was right about the streetlights. They were all out. Every light along the four-lane road near a midtown shopping center had been mysteriously extinguished.
That didn’t mean no one could see them.
Screams and amazed shouts rose as the man holding her grew visible.
Marion was staring at him, too.
He stood there, his black hair ruffled by wind, his coal-black eyes glowing with that strange, otherworldly light. He gazed out over the cars that had piled up in the intersection since they got hit, then shifted his eyes towards the people pointing and staring from restaurants and buildings on the side of the street nearest to the shopping center.
Marion noticed other things––details that wouldn’t come back to her until later.
Like the fact that the McLaren had slammed into a curb, which is likely what stopped it spinning and skidding. Like the piles of snow covering the streets on both sides. Like the fact that it was snowing, even now, the flakes getting caught in her hair, melting on her cheeks and nose, getting stuck in her eyelashes. It was snowing into the hole in the side of the car where the McLaren’s door had been.
She also saw Christmas decorations on all of the buildings, inside restaurants and bars, wrapped around trees along the street. She saw red bows, snowmen, and Christmas messages spray-painted in fake snow across glass storefronts.
Those things all came back to her later, however.
In those endless-seeming few seconds, Marion saw only the people staring at them and pointing, the shock on their faces.
Then, when she turned to look at the man holding her in her arms, she saw only him.
Those faintly glowing eyes were the least strange thing about him.
Much more interesting, to Marion at least, were the enormous wings stretched out to either side of him, made of deep black feathers run through with scarlet, like they were made of fire and blood and volcanic stone.
Staring at those massive wings, staring around at the street––staring at the people screaming and shouting and pointing at them––Marion barely had time to take it all in. She watched in awe as the wings stretched out to their full span. She saw Tyr frown faintly, his angular face as beautiful as a statue as he took in the number of witnesses.
Then she heard something else.
Gunshots.
That didn’t last long, either.
There was another feeling of muscles flexing, tensing, contracting, releasing––
––then Marion’s stomach dropped.
It made the most intense roller coaster she’d ever experienced feel like nothing.
It made the time she’d gone bungee-jumping in Patagonia feel like nothing.
It made those times she’d gone base jumping in New Zealand, in Thailand, in Spain, in Austria, all feel like nothing.
She opened her mouth, maybe to let out a scream, maybe just to yelp in surprise, but the wind rushed in so fast, she couldn’t do anything but press her face into the bare chest between the arms that held her. Snow and cold wind rushed to meet her as they rose soundlessly into the air. Nothing but the wind broke that silence, threaded through with receding screams and sirens.
And gunshots.
She still heard gunshots… but those grew quieter, too.
Marion should have been terrified.
Truthfully, it was pretty scary.
But she snuggled against that warm chest, and strangely, she felt safe.
It might have been the safest she’d felt since her mother and sister died.
It might have been the safest she’d ever felt in her life.
15
I Told You This
S he must have blacked out.
She didn’t remember them landing.
She didn’t remember anything about them going back indoors, or about him getting them a room, or a key, or anything about where he might have left her while he was handling all of those things––those real-world, relatively-mundane things.
All she knew was, she was flying…
…Then she was being laid carefully down on something soft.
Marion blinked into the overhead light, shivering as the man over her released her into the mattress and straightened.
He no longer had giant, black and scarl
et wings on either side of his muscular upper body, but she stared at him anyway, noting the lines of muscle making up his chest and abdomen, the dark olive of his skin, the strangely glowing, pale-blue and pale-green tattoos that covered his chest and made lines of esoteric-looking script down his ribs.
The tattoos, which all seemed to be made of the same symbols and language, ended just above where his hip bones were visible above the suit pants he still wore.
She wondered what the tattoos meant.
Still staring at him, she pushed herself up to her elbows on the hotel bed’s comforter.
Her jeans squished as she did. So did the thick sweater she wore, and the socks inside the brand new hiking boots.
She grew uncomfortably aware of how wet and cold and… well, dirty … she was.
As for Tyr, he stepped back from the bed, but didn’t stop looking at her.
From the faint frown on his lips, and the way he tilted his head, looking her over, he was evaluating her condition in some way, although she wasn’t quite sure how. If he was trying to decide if she was hurt, trying to determine her mental state, or trying to determine something else about her, she honestly didn’t know.
In the end, she found herself looking away from him and down at herself, trying to see what he saw.
It hit her again just how wet she was.
And cold.
She was probably going to soak through the bedspread if she didn’t get up off it.
Another quick glance around the room told her she was lying on the hotel room’s only bed. While it might be King-sized, it probably wouldn’t be super-great for anyone to sleep on, if she managed to soak a giant wet spot into the middle of the mattress.
She slid off the bedspread at the thought.
Grabbing the edge of the thick fabric once she was standing, she pulled it off the bed before the wet part could soak through to the blankets.
Meanwhile, Tyr moved towards her, his hands out in apparent alarm.
Without speaking, he stopped when he saw her steady on her feet.
He remained standing only a few feet away, lingering close by, as if worried she might lose her balance, or possibly collapse right in front of him, knees buckling. From his expression, he was genuinely worried her legs might not hold her up.
Gods on Earth: Complete Series (Books 1-3): Paranormal Romances with Norse Gods, Tricksters, and Fated Mates Page 42