by Alyssa Day
Once again in corporeal form, he landed on the edge of the wall and scanned its rock face and the grounds below for any further attackers. They needed to know what they were dealing with. Now.
All clear, at least on this side of the fort. No time to worry about the other sides, though. He spun around as the snarling and eerie high-pitched screams of panthers filled the air, almost drowning out the worst possible sound in the world: the recruits, all loud laughter and drunken singing, were arriving back at the fort.
Another scream, this one behind him, and Alexios whirled around to find Grace standing over the body of the black panther, calmly pulling her knife out of its throat. Or maybe not so calmly, he realized, as light flashed from the blade when her hand trembled.
“They’re going after the rookies,” Sam yelled, and Alexios turned again, this time to realize that only five of the panthers lay dead or dying and the rest were flowing down the stairs toward the courtyard in a silent wave of lethal purpose.
The shouting and screaming started before Alexios had made it three paces toward the stairs, and he didn’t wait to see if Sam followed before transforming into mist again so he could put himself between the attackers and their woefully inexperienced and unprepared prey.
Alexios soared down the stairs and plunged in between a snarling tangle of shifters and humans, steeling himself to tune out the screams, howls, and shouts—to focus—as he transformed back into his body in a barely sufficient circle of open space.
“Bet you didn’t see that coming,” he said to a very startled panther as he drove his dagger into the side of its neck, efficiently opening its jugular vein and stepping out of the path of blood spray with the agility of years of experience.
Too many years. Too many battles. Too much blood.
“Alexios! Here!” Sam’s shout wrenched him out of his self-indulgent musings, and he whirled around in time to see another of the attackers clamping its powerful jaws down on the back of a human’s neck. Alexios lunged for them, but he was too late. With a grisly crunching sound, the cat chomped through flesh and bone and then shook the body as if warning them away.
Another one of the recruits screamed, but Alexios ignored it, heading straight for the cat. The dead human was female, and she looked like . . . Smith. It was Smith. The cheerful one he’d helped earlier.
Alexios’s rage built inside him with the power of a raging typhoon, until fury exploded into sound and the noise coming from his throat had more in common with the screams of the cats than it did with any noise a man could make. He dove toward the panther, shouting at it to let her go, stretching full out in a leap that took him over the cat’s back. As he rose above its spine, he drove both daggers into the base of its skull, smashing through into its brain.
He collapsed on top of the cat, hands still clenching the hilts of his daggers, and then he wrenched the blades out, scraping past bone. The cat’s head flopped back down on the ground. It was dead. He’d killed it. But killing the cat meant nothing.
It wouldn’t bring Smith back.
And Grace . . . He shot up off the ground, whirling around to find where Grace was in the fray. Sam stood near the base of the staircase, Glock still at the ready, with the forms of two dead panthers at his feet. One of the recruits knelt by another dead cat over near the wall, the human gripping the hilt of the sword that pierced the cat’s chest.
Five of the recruits were down, but three of them were moving and trying to sit up. The other two were ominously still.
But no Grace. No Michelle.
Oh, no. Please, Poseidon, no.
“Where’s Grace?” he shouted at Sam. “Where is she? Where’s Michelle?”
The man shook his head. “I thought she listened to you and stayed topside, out of trouble.”
Alexios shot across the ground, running so fast his feet barely touched the grass. “Grace? Listen to me?”
Sam’s face went cold. “Oh, no. Oh, not Grace.”
But Alexios was already gone, taking the steps four at a time, racing to discover a truth he wasn’t sure he was brave enough to face.
“Please, please, please, please,” he chanted as he ran, and when he hit the top of the stairs he skidded to a stop at the sight of three figures huddled by the wall.
She looked up at him, oh, thank the gods. Grace looked up at him, and his world hadn’t ended before it had even had a chance to begin. He shot across the space between them so fast he barely had time to register that Michelle seemed to be fine, or that the panther wasn’t completely dead, but twitching on the ground next to them. But then he reached Grace and swept her up in to his arms so fast that she let out a startled squeal, but it didn’t matter because she was alive, she was alive, and then he was kissing her and devouring her mouth and she was alive and he was never, ever going to let her go again.
She kissed him back for a moment, but then she made a noise that sounded like protest and he loosened his hold on her and lifted his head, finally noticing the pain in her eyes and the tight way she held her body upright.
He lowered her to her feet and, still holding on to her arms—unable to let himself release her completely—he scanned her frantically, looking for a wound. At first he saw nothing, but then the wet darkness along the side of her shirt under her arm caught the light. He touched her gently, and his hand came away warm and wet with her blood.
“No. No, I won’t have it. You cannot be injured,” he commanded, knowing even as he said the words that it was ridiculous—that he was ridiculous—that he couldn’t command an injury to un-happen. “Where is Alaric? Where is one of your human healers? How bad is it? Why are you standing? Let me take you to the hospital immediately,” he demanded in a confused jumble of words.
“Calm down,” she said, her voice shaky but determined. “It’s not really that bad. He caught a claw on my side and ripped, but my rib cage blocked him from doing any real damage.”
Sam, who’d rushed up behind Alexios, quickly assessed the situation and nodded. “Right. Glad you’re okay. I’m off back downstairs to sort things out there. Michelle, can you help?”
Michelle nodded and followed after him after she retrieved her shoes. Alexios noticed she held both shoes in her left hand while still clutching the pistol in her right. “You were very brave,” he said to her, acknowledging her courage during the fight.
Michelle shook her head once, her face very grim and pale. “No. I wasn’t.” Then she headed for the stairs.
“I’ll be right down,” Grace said. She took a step, but then winced and made a small helpless sound.
“It does hurt a lot more than you’d expect,” she said, with an attempt at a smile. “I bet you think I’m being a big baby about a scratch, though, after all the injuries you’ve suffered.”
He gently gathered her back into his arms, needing to hold her, careful not to jar her wounded side. “I would suffer a thousand more deadly wounds than ever I have before in order to spare you this single one, mi amara. Where is the hospital? I’m taking you there now.”
She shook her head, her sweet-smelling hair brushing the skin of his throat and chin and almost masking the coppery-rust smell of blood. “No, you’re not. You need to tell me what happened downstairs. We’ve got to take care of the recruits, decide what to do about these bodies, and question this one when he shifts back to his human shape.”
As if on cue, the panther at their feet snarled and tried to pull himself up from its prone position but then fell heavily back onto its side.
“Is this the one that harmed you?” Alexios fired the question at Grace, but never took his eyes off the panther.
“Yes. But don’t hurt it. We need to question him to find out what he knows.”
Grace leaned her head on his shoulder for a few seconds and sighed. “Please put me down, Alexios. Really, I just need a bandage. Maybe some peroxide and Neosporin. But first we need to lock this shifter up in one of the cells downstairs while we deal with the rest of them.”
Bu
t it was as if all the gods of war were pounding their drums inside Alexios’s brain. He could hear nothing over the crashing, hammering pulses of rage that demanded he hurt and tear and rend this monster who’d dared to touch Grace.
He carefully released her and pressed a brief, gentle kiss on her lips. She said something, but he couldn’t hear it over the drums.
He couldn’t hear anything over the drums.
The monster had hurt her. It needed to die.
He whipped around, between her and the panther, just in time to see that it had been deceiving them. Masking the extent of its injury. Because now it had its legs underneath it, as it crouched, ready to spring at him.
“Grace, get down,” he said, shouting so that she would hear him over the escalating pounding in his head. Then he leapt forward, but this time he didn’t bother to draw his daggers. This time he’d kill it with his bare hands.
He launched himself toward the snarling beast, matching feral rage with his own primal fury. He smashed into the cat in midair, escaping its opened jaws by inches and catching it around its thickly furred neck. He twisted in flight, using his forward motion to jerk the lower half of his body around until he was almost straddling the panther, and scissored his legs around its middle.
Together, they slammed down to the concrete, knocking the wind out of both of them, but a split second later the cat was bucking and twisting underneath him. He could see it snarling and distantly hear that it was screaming, but no sound could fully penetrate the percussion of his rage thrumming through his skull, through his spine, through every nerve in his body.
His fists took up the beat, took up the rhythm, and he started pounding on every inch he could reach, beating the shifter with every ounce of his strength behind each punch.
“You. Hurt. My. Woman,” he said, reduced to nearly incoherent speech. Grunting, caveman-like utterances. Me Alexios. Her Grace.
Hurt her and die.
His fists pistoned forward, over and over, catching the beat of the drums in his head, and then there was screaming or shouting or someone calling his name, but he couldn’t hear it over the drums, couldn’t understand it through the beat of the drums, except the sound was different. Silvery and musical and lovely, even while shouting. It was her. It was Grace. And she wanted something . . .
She wanted him to stop.
He blinked and suddenly the sound of her voice—pleading and demanding and Grace—cut through the drums, and he looked down at his fists and there was redness and stickiness and the cat lay lifeless underneath him. If he hadn’t killed it, he’d come damn close.
Grace grabbed his arm and shouted in his ear. “Alexios, damnit, you stop it right now!”
He fell to the side, rolling and shoving and scrambling to be away from her and away from the cat’s bloodied body, but even as he moved, the cat shimmered with the oncoming Change. In seconds, the cat was gone and a man lay in its place, bloodied and broken but still breathing.
Still breathing.
Alexios didn’t know whether to be relieved or sorry.
Chapter 15
Grace stared down at the man she’d thought she knew. The man she thought she might be falling in love with, who she’d finally convinced during the day and at dinner to give her a glimpse of the man behind the mask. His true self that lay hidden behind his warrior persona.
But maybe this was his true self. Maybe centuries of battle, no matter that it was always on the side of right, was enough to scour any trace of humanity from a man’s soul. But was humanity even the right word to use?
Perhaps these Atlanteans started from a baseline that didn’t contain any gentler emotions. Maybe there was lust and rage and the cold, steely calculation of battle strategy, but no room for kindness, hope, or love.
Maybe wanting to take a step forward into the future with him meant nothing more than exchanging one battlefield for another. She’d become a warrior before she’d grown into a woman, and now she wondered if she would ever make that metamorphosis. Perhaps it was something missing in her. Maybe her own lack of gentler emotions drew this type of man to her.
She took a step back, as if some long-dormant flight-or-fight response had finally kicked in on the side of flight. She would never run from the monsters, but she could run from this man who might break her heart.
She took another step back and hit something hard. A pair of strong arms steadied her and Sam’s voice spoke softly in her ear. “I saw the end of that. He did it for you, Grace. He did it because that damn panther hurt you. He saw your blood, and something inside him busted right past any civilized thought.”
She pulled away from him, shaking her head. Disagreement, maybe. Denial.
But Sam spoke again, stronger. “He’s a man, Grace, and whether you want to admit it or not there’s something between the two of you. His need to protect was burning so fiercely through his belly and brain that he probably couldn’t think straight. But it’s better this way. At least he got to you before it was too late. Not all of us have been so fortunate.”
Grace flinched at the pain rasping in Sam’s voice. Something in his past trying to bubble to the surface. She wanted to ask, but took a look at the way his face hardened and thought better of it. She owed him more than to pry into his personal life.
Alexios made a noise—a small, strangled noise—and slowly pushed himself up to stand, bracing himself against the wall with one hand. He winced a little as his bruised and battered hand touched the wall, but then he leaned heavily against it. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It hurt you—the drums, if only—but it hurt you. So sorry.”
His broken speech touched her in a way that any chest-thumping never would have done. But it simply wasn’t there, the arrogance or triumph she might’ve expected had he been the monster she’d been near to thinking him. Her adrenaline-driven terror had drained away, and she saw him, really saw him in the moonlight. Clearly, with all of her senses fully charged.
He was a man, and he’d called her his woman. Defending her from the panther who’d been poised to attack her didn’t make Alexios a monster. It didn’t make him a hero, either, on a pedestal and unattainable.
It simply made him a man who wanted to protect his woman. Even though she wasn’t the type to need protecting—in fact, was usually the one doing the protecting—she understood. Accepted. Something inside her, something cold and hard that had huddled alone in the dark for far too long, unfurled a tiny, cautious tendril of warmth.
Holding her wounded side with one hand, she held the other out to him. His eyes changed, widened a little, as if he’d been afraid to hope. But then he came to her and carefully pulled her into his arms, as though she were fragile and he were afraid that she might break with rough handling. He bent his forehead to hers and just rested there for a moment, leaning into her, and she felt an awakening. Finally, perhaps, that metamorphosis.
As though she’d finally come home.
Sam cleared his throat. “Let’s get our friend here down to one of the cells and locked up. We’ve got two dead, Grace.”
“No!” The words sliced into her as if digging a dull blade into her wounded side. “No, oh, God. No. Who?”
“That young guy from Texas, they called him Armadillo?”
“Reynolds,” she said automatically, though she hadn’t had time to know him well. What she did know of him sent pain shooting through her at the realization that she’d never again hear his Texas-is-bigger jokes; never again share a smile with the friendly, kind man who’d been so dedicated to the cause.
But Sam had said two dead. “And the other?”
“Smith,” he said, his face going dark and hard. “Alexios took care of the one who got her, but it was too late. She . . . well, it was quick, if that’s any comfort.”
Grace’s lungs suddenly couldn’t expand. Not Smith. Though it was stupid and ridiculous and Smith’s death was in no way about Grace, she couldn’t help but remember her last, unkind thoughts about the woman. Jus
t because Smith had been friendly to Alexios.
“She was so young,” she cried out, the hot, burning tears sliding down her face. “She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.”
Sam cocked his head to the side and stared at her with a curious expression on his face. “Honey,” he finally said, his voice gentle. “So are you.”
She couldn’t respond, couldn’t explain. Could only stand there mutely shaking her head back and forth in denial and sorrow.
Sam took a step toward her, but then appeared to think better of it. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Michelle and I are going to take the injured to see a doctor friend of mine. Just so happens I know a retired army doc who has a little place not too far from here. He said give them a call anytime I need them, so I took him up on it. He and his wife are expecting us. She’s some kind of big deal in Florida politics, and I know for a fact they’ve been to the house of that Vonos son of a bitch. Maybe I can get a little information while our friends are getting patched up.”
