by Jaime Rush
His eyebrow rose the slightest bit. “Maybe I was lying.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, hoping he was bluffing. “Even though Eric was my younger brother, he bossed me around. And I let him. That was my bad. But I’m not letting anyone boss me anymore.” She pressed her finger to his chest, which left her only inches from his face. She felt something hard beneath his loose shirt. “Especially some guy who flashes in and out of my life with no intention of staying in it.”
He leaned a hair closer. “I admire your spunk, but you’re in way over your head here, princess, and that ‘guy’ who flashes . . . is the only one who can save your life right now. So I suggest you save your spunk for your boyfriend and do what I say.”
She huffed out a breath, because he was right, of course. “I need chocolate.” She glanced at the cabinets. “I don’t suppose you have any in here.”
He paused for a moment, but she wasn’t sure he recognized her retreat for what it was. Well, that was as good as he was going to get.
He turned and opened a cabinet. “I’ve got raw cocoa powder.” He set a bag on the counter. “I mix it with maca, milk, and protein powder for a power shake. You didn’t get to eat dinner. I’ll make up one to tide you over.”
“How do you know that?”
“No dirty dishes, and you were still eating chips. I make it a point to be observant,” he added at her surprised look.
She liked watching his hands as they scooped out the powders, pouring in milk, all without measuring. Maca was some kind of Incan super food, according to the package. The blender whirred for a few seconds, and then he poured the light brown mixture into two glasses. She took the one he handed her, and he tipped his glass toward hers. “Cheers.” He chugged it down in one gulp.
She tasted hers. Not bad. Her throat was so tight, though, that it felt like the liquid was squeezing down a straw. “Tell me what I’m involved in? What was that . . . beast dog thing?”
“That was a Glouk, an odd life-form from Surfacia.” His expression darkened. “I’ve fought them before.”
She leaned against the counter. “Surfacia? That’s where Pope is from. The other dimension.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You know about Surfacia?”
“Pope told us how the humans on the surface of the planet destroyed themselves, and that the Callorians—Pope’s species—came up from their underground labyrinth to live there. But he never mentioned Glouks. You said they were an odd life-form?”
“Dogs in the other dimension are bigger and used in the way horses are here, and they had a special property: like a chameleon, they could change their appearance, only they changed their whole form. Callorians discovered that a human scientist had the warped idea of making the dogs more intelligent and less aggressive by inserting human DNA into them. The enhanced dogs, called Glouks, were employed for search and rescue missions and other high risk situations. There was an interesting side effect: the dogs could change into humans, though only for brief periods of time.
“Glouks survived the human decimation, maybe because there wasn’t enough human DNA in their brains. The Callorians came to the surface many years later and didn’t know what to do with these hybrid creatures. They tried to control them, using them like the humans had. Sometimes the Glouks reverted to their animal nature and attacked, the way so-called ‘tamed’ wild animals will sometimes attack their keepers. They are put to death then. Some escape to this dimension.”
He leaned against the refrigerator across from her, hooking his fingers in the cabinet handles above his head, like a prisoner chained to the wall. The movement stretched his shirt tight across his chest, but she could see the faint indent of the hard thing she’d felt a few inches below the hollow of his throat. Not a gun. It was long, straight.
He set the glass in the sink. “Coyote attacks, wild dogs found in suburban areas—usually a Glouk. The wolf attacks northwest of Baltimore . . . Baal.”
“That thing is what’s been on the news, those horrible maulings?” Two hikers had been found, their bodies shredded. “But why?”
His expression turned grim, and she knew she wasn’t going to like this. “They crave human flesh. The more they eat, the more it feeds the DNA they already have in them. It makes them more human and able to maintain the form longer.”
She put her hand over her mouth, her stomach turning.
He ran his fingers through his hair, snagging on a couple of knots. His narrowed gaze was aimed just past her, his mind working. “Now Baal knows about you. How the hell did it track me so fast?”
“So you’re, what, in a battle with this thing?”
He met her gaze. “I’m hunting it. But the thing about hunting prey—it sometimes hunts you back. Baal’s the reason I told you that now wasn’t a good time to meet. We’d better get moving.”
He dropped into the driver’s seat while pulling the keys out of his pocket.
She sat in the passenger seat, which was more like a chair with a high back. “You hunt these things.”
He backed up at an angle without giving the surrounding trees much notice. Like he’d already calculated what it would take to leave quickly. She watched his hands, strong and capable, maneuvering the wheel. They were the hands of a man who used them. She could easily conjure the memory of how they felt on her arm, rough and firm. Unfortunately she could imagine how they’d feel on other parts of her body, too.
He didn’t answer, and she realized she hadn’t actually asked a question.
“Okay, so you hunt Glouks,” she said again. “For fun?”
He slid her a Are you kidding me? glance, but focused on what he was doing. Since he was, after all, driving a large vehicle out of a forest, she supposed she’d let him concentrate on that.
As soon as they were on the highway, though, she continued. “You don’t get paid for it, do you? Unless you’re a secret government agent or something?”
Still, he only gave her a look that she supposed was an answer in the negative.
“Do you have a job?” she asked.
“I don’t need a job.”
He hunted Glouks, creatures that liked to kill humans and livestock. Then it hit her. Her eyes widened. “That’s why you can’t be around me—us. You said it was to protect us.”
He kept his gaze on the road, his voice devoid of emotion. “Kind of hard to have a life when you’re all over the country dealing with killer vermin.”
Her body melted into the soft leather chair, the relief at finally knowing the truth softening her bones. It wasn’t that he couldn’t stand the sight of her, thought she was too flaky, or any other reason she’d thrown at the wall to see if it would stick.
It would be especially hard to have a woman with him who was a scaredy-cat. That he could turn into a panther scared the hell out of her, and he was the good guy. Now she’d seen the other side.
“So you think this Glouk will hurt me?”
“Yurek is the bigger problem. He’s targeting you on purpose. Baal would only kill you because you’re with me or in the way.” He slid her a dark look. “Which you were.”
“Well, excuse me for trying to help.”
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with. You don’t have the skills or experience to throw yourself into my battles. Just because you survived Darkwell doesn’t make you capable of handling either of these enemies.”
“You told me I was stronger than I thought.”
“You are. But you’re not strong enough for this.” He looked at her. “Have you ever killed someone? Something?”
“Flies.” She shrugged. “I put out mousetraps last year when I found droppings.” She wasn’t about to tell him she’d begged Eric to take away the snapped traps.
Cheveyo chuckled, shaking his head. “Yeah, you’ve got a real killer instinct.”
“I didn’t think about how it would feel to stab a living creature. I just didn’t want that thing to win.” She pulled her legs close to her chest and wrapped her arms around t
hem. “What now? You said we were going to your place to meet up with Pope. Where is your place?”
“Arizona.”
That surprised her into silence for a moment. “How long will that take?”
“Day and a half.”
She glanced back into the RV. “And we’ll sleep here?”
“Yep.”
She realized this was probably his home more often than not. She looked at him, still in disbelief that he was here, she was here, that they were together. Temporarily. Good God, the last thing she needed was to be hung up on a guy who not only morphed into a black panther, but hunted things supernatural. He was the perfectly wrong guy. Perfectly gorgeous, intriguing, yummy, and totally, completely wrong.
Nice, normal life. Greg, with his easy smile and normalness, yes, that’s what I need. Want. Desire. Lust for.
Except her gaze slid down Cheveyo’s shoulders, wide and strong under his now wrinkled red shirt. He was lean but muscular, strong thighs encased in dark blue jeans. His gaze kept slipping to the monitor mounted above the rearview mirror, which showed what was behind them. Whenever a car passed, he surveyed the driver.
“Does the Glouk—Baal—know how to drive?”
“I don’t think it does, but they’re good at hitching rides, either as human or canine.”
He picked up his cell phone and issued a command: “Call Pope.”
She heard ringing, and then Pope’s voice. “Hello.”
“It’s Cheveyo. Everything all right there?”
“I’ve been reading your survival manuals and studying the maps. It’s very quiet out here, except at night. What kinds of creatures reside in the woodlands?”
His mouth quirked in a grin. “Wolves, bears, panthers—”
“Oh, my,” she added with a grin.
He gave her a tolerant grin. “Nothing as dangerous as the Otherling. Or the Glouk that’s tracking me.”
“A Glouk?” she heard Pope say.
“I’ll fill you in when we get there.”
“We? Petra’s with you?”
He looked at her, making it all too clear that he wasn’t happy about it. “Yes. And she’s going to stay with you. Yurek’s targeted her.”
Silence. “Not good.”
His words tripped her heartbeat. Terrible. Awful. Much worse than not good.
“Not good at all. We’ll be in morning after next. Call if you have any problems, and keep an eye out for big mangy dogs—or men. You may see my cleaning lady, Suza. Try not to startle her.”
“If I see her, I shall depart from the house altogether.”
He signed off, settling into silence. She was a burden on him, that’s what he was thinking about, with those furrowed eyebrows and tightened mouth.
She used the bathroom, washed her face with the plain soap he had on the counter, and applied the powder and blush she kept in her purse. She pulled a brush through her tangled hair, reviving faint memories of a mother who used to brush her hair every night. She took the stuffed Toto from her bag and sat down again, catching Cheveyo’s tug of a smile when he saw the dog on her lap.
“What happens to your clothes when you morph into a cat?” she asked. They were wrinkled but hadn’t sustained any damage in the fight. The cat, of course, hadn’t been wearing clothing.
“I change my energy, rearranging it into the form of the cat. Clothes, everything, is energy, and so it changes, too.”
“Can you become any other animal?”
“No, just cat.”
“Your father became a hawk. We learned that from the director of the psychic research place where he’d been working before he joined Darkwell’s team.”
Darkwell, the CIA hotshot who’d started a covert program to use first their parents’ paranormal abilities, and twenty-some years later their offsprings’ powers. He was dead now, the program dead and buried, too. Their parents had been terminated by Darkwell’s silent partner to protect the program and his political career.
“My father only told them about becoming a hawk. He could morph into any animal he desired.”
“How did you become a panther, then?”
“Actually, I become a black jaguar. My father took me out into the Sonoran Desert when I was a boy. He performed a ceremony. I wish I remembered more of it. I didn’t understand all of this yet, and it was a bit unnerving as a kid to be out in the desert with a father who was chanting and dancing.
“We sat in the desert most of the night, a fire burning. Then a jaguar—a rare black jaguar—walked to within a few feet of us. He stood there for several minutes, and I thought he was looking into my soul with those golden eyes. Something shifted inside me. He turned and left, disappearing into the darkness. My father was elated. That night, while we slept in the desert, I dreamed of being the jaguar. Somehow, through my father, the jaguar chose to be my totem animal. We all have a totem animal, but because of who I am, I become my animal.”
When she opened her mouth to ask more, he shook his head. “I need to concentrate.”
“You don’t like talking about yourself, do you?”
“I told you more than anyone else knows about me. That’s enough.”
Not really. But she did like being the only one who knew so much about him.
She looked around. “I need to stop at a store and pick up some magazines and face cleanser. That soap will dry out my skin big-time.”
“Soap is soap.”
“No, actually, it’s not. Most soaps are made with animal fats, chemicals and synthetic detergents that rob your skin of the essential oils that keep it soft and smooth. And don’t get me started on the artificial fragrances they put in there.”
“Okay, I won’t.” He shot her a smile. “We can make a quick stop the next time we pass a populated exit.”
“Thank you.” She was already making a mental list of things she needed. Makeup. Hair spray. Chocolate. “Do you have disinfectant and antibiotic cream in here?”
“Yeah, in the bathroom cabinet.” His eyes narrowed with concern. “You okay?”
“I’m thinking of you.”
“Don’t worry about me, babe. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time.”
She tilted her head. “Do you call every woman ‘babe’? Is that just a word you throw out?”
His lips moved for a second without sound and then he said, “Yes. Don’t take it personally.”
“I’ll try not to swoon.” She got up and walked toward the back. “Do you have any books or magazines to read?” She opened a cabinet and her mouth dropped open at a display of knives like she’d never seen. Six knives of various kinds were mounted on a black velvet wall, their ornate leather sheaths beneath.
“Check the drawer by the table,” he said, and she caught his gaze in the rearview mirror. “Be careful of the knives.”
She quickly closed the cabinet door. “I will try to resist playing with them.”
“Not just those. They’re stashed all over the place. I need to be able to put my hand on one no matter where I am.”
“Good to know.” She found the drawer he’d mentioned. A couple of Harley magazines, an issue of Money magazine. Moments after resigning herself to Money, they slowed down. He was taking the exit ramp.
“You have ten minutes,” he said.
“Only ten? Really?”
He spared her a glance. “You want either of those guys catching up to us?”
“Well, no.”
“Then really. Don’t make me come in there and get you.”
“You’re not coming in?”
“I’m going to take a quick shower. I’ve got enough water in the tank for two showers.”
He was scanning the superstore’s parking lot, the rearview monitor, and, she guessed, sensing for the presence of an Otherling. He dropped her off at the front entrance of the brightly lit store then grabbed his cell phone from a holder near his seat. “What’s your cell number?”
She recited it, and he called. “Save that number. If you see or f
eel anything suspicious, call me. I’ll be there in a flash.”
She raised an eyebrow. “In a flash? You will put clothes on, right?”
Completely serious, he said, “Depends on how scared you are.”
Oh, boy, the thought of a naked Cheveyo racing in to her rescue. She scrambled out before he could remind her how long—or not long—she had. She scouted out what she needed, including basic cosmetics—drugstore brands, yuck. Except, interestingly enough, there was a brand called Petra.
“Too cool,” she said with a smile, choosing that, of course.
She grabbed up chocolate bars, three magazines, and a couple of paperbacks. She kept looking at her watch, eight minutes, nine minutes, waiting in the checkout line. Could she help it if the cashier was taking her ever-loving time?
Finally, at eleven minutes, she checked out. Her phone rang.
“I’m coming!”
But it was Eric’s voice that said, “You are? To DC?”
“Sorry, I thought you were someone else.” She exited and spotted the RV parked to the left. Cheveyo stepped outside, wearing only jeans, and walked to a garbage can. His gaze was on her.
“Is everything all right?” Eric asked. “Amy said she went by your place today and the door wasn’t locked.”
Uh-oh. “Oh. Did she . . . go in?”
“Yeah, when you didn’t answer the doorbell. She was shocked.”
“I can explain.”
“Why are you still changing your decor around every other week? I thought you did that because you were restless being locked in the Tomb.”
The Tomb was the name she’d given to the bomb shelter where they’d had to hide out. “I’m . . . bored.” Was bored. Wait. Hadn’t Amy seen blood all over? No, Eric would be freaking.
“It’s not like you to forget to lock your door. Where are you?”
“I’m . . .” She looked at the man who was stuffing what she thought were the clothes he’d had on into the can. The sight of his broad bare back and narrow hips made her mouth water.
“You’re . . .” Eric prompted.
“With Cheveyo. He came by to say hello.”
“Oh, that explains it. Dewy and gooey.”
“Yeah, that’s what it is.” She was standing next to him now, damp and smelling like a mixture of soap and pungency. “We’re spending some time together. I’ve got to go.”
