by Naima Simone
As Resa neared the finish of her musical number, unease skipped down Tamar’s back. She’d walked this same stretch of sidewalk many times over the years and yet her gaze bounced around them as she guided her friend down the street. She couldn’t stop herself from glancing over her shoulder. Of course she glimpsed nothing but empty sidewalk. But this didn’t end the eerie sensation of being watched.
Long shadows stretched across the uneven cement, casting the night in a murky gloom reminiscent of a B-horror movie. She was only half-black but that part more than qualified her as a candidate for being killed off first by a machete-wielding maniac.
God, she hated the dark.
“I wanted to be on Broadway.” Resa slung her arm around Tamar’s waist and leaned her head on Tamar’s shoulder. “I was the star of the drama club during high school in Boston. My goal was to major in theatre in college, but my parents wouldn’t allow it.” Her voice dropped several octaves, imitating her parents Tamar assumed. “We have scholars in this family, not vaudeville entertainers.” Resa sighed and Tamar flinched, the alcohol fumes enough to knock out an elephant. Resa’s head became a heavier load as she slumped more of her weight on Tamar. Oblivious, the teacher continued her lament, her tone returning to its normal lighter notes. “So I majored in education and minored in theatre. But I still think about what if I’d followed my dream. What if I hadn’t let fear and my parents’ dictates hold me back?”
Resa stopped, drawing Tamar to a faltering halt. The slightly weaving blonde tossed her shoulders back, stretched her arms out wide as if she were a diva stepping onto a dim stage with a single spotlight beaming down on her. She threw her head back and opened her mouth wide. “Summerti-i-ime and the livin’ is easy… Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is hi-i-igh…”
She belted out Summertime from Porgy and Bess in a rich alto. Which was pretty funny considering the opera was about a black man living in the Charleston, South Carolina, slums. But hey, the girl had a voice on her. The things a person found out about their friends when they were three sheets to the wind.
Resa ended her performance with a sloppy bow that almost had her face-planting on the sidewalk. “Do you think I could have made it, Tamar?”
“Definitely,” Tamar assured, taking Resa’s hand. “You have a beautiful voice. Really. I’m surprised, actually.”
The other woman beamed. “Aw thanks.” She swung their clasped hands back and forth between them as if they were two grade-school girls. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Well…” her brow scrunched as she began walking again, “besides when Bobby Rivers told me I had the best boobs in the sophomore class.”
Tamar snickered. “Resa, hear me when I say you should never drink again. Okay?”
“You’re right.” Her sigh could have parted George Washington’s hair on Mount Rushmore. “I get a little emotional.”
Now there is an understatement. Tamar chuckled wryly.
“Hello, ladies.”
She staggered then drew up short.
He materialized out of nowhere. One minute the sidewalk in front of them had been empty and now a tall, lean stranger blocked their path. Over six feet in height, he towered over Tamar and Resa. The street lamp behind him cast shadows over his face, concealing his features and lending him a sinister appearance. Her nerves jangled a warning and Tamar cast an uneasy glance over her shoulder. But the entire sidewalk and street were void of people and sound. It seemed as if an evacuation order had been issued and everyone but Resa and Tamar had heeded it.
They were alone except for this man who set off an alarm clamoring in her head.
Resa beamed up at the stranger, the alcohol apparently lowering whatever defenses she may have had. “Hi. I didn’t see you there.”
“But I saw you. Aren’t you lovely?” The soft tone reminded Tamar of a stalking panther—dark, beautiful and lethal. Her sense of foreboding increased, streaking toward full alert. He shifted forward and, for a second, she caught a glimpse of his angular features, reminiscent of a bird of prey. Hawkish…yes, that was the word. On this summer’s night he wore a long-sleeved black shirt and pants, solidifying her impression. Tamar also wore a shirt with sleeves, but she hid her scars. She highly doubted this man was concealing anything.
His obsidian eyes followed the pretty, loose lines of Resa’s face with unsettling focus. He moved another step forward and Tamar received an up-close-and-personal view of him. She gasped. He was gorgeous. With full lips, a patrician slant to his thin nose and a wide brow, he wouldn’t have looked out of place standing on the steps of a sweeping Italian villa atop a craggy cliff, sensual and masterful all at once.
But Tamar could name several predators that used their beauty to lure unsuspecting prey into their clutches. His face didn’t disarm her, but set her further on edge.
Her heart tripled in pace and the bitter tang of fear flooded the back of her throat and spilled onto her tongue. They had to get out of here.
“If you will excuse us,” Tamar murmured.She shook loose Resa’s clasp on her hand to grasp the other woman’s upper arm and urge her forward and around the man.
His gaze slid from Resa and settled on Tamar, his bottomless eyes unnerving in their intensity.If she’d thought his contemplation of Resa had been troubling, the way his steady black gaze seemed to drink her in was downright disturbing.
“The likeness is uncanny,” he whispered, the tone breathless, awed. He studied her, seeming to track every feature of her face, lingering so long on the cleft that dented her chin she almost reached up and brushed a finger over the genetic characteristic. “Part of me wants to wait until he gets here. But I gave him a chance.”
He smiled.
Terror coursed over and through her with the speed of an out-of-control freight train headed toward a cataclysmic and explosive end. That terrible, beautiful smile promised pain, horror and death.
She stumbled back and took Resa with her. The teacher squealed in dismay, but Tamar ignored her.
“Where are you going?” he purred, claiming the space she’d placed between him and them. “Oh I’m going to enjoy this.” The unmistakable glee in his tone—like a child who had discovered a piece of candy—chilled her. Tamar wouldn’t have been surprised if he clapped his hands and jumped up and down. “You,” his eyes narrowed on her, “I will save for last and take the most pleasure in.”
That was the only warning they received. Yet if he’d shot a starter’s pistol in the air and given them a ten-second head start it wouldn’t have prepared her for what happened next.
One moment a man stood on the sidewalk and the next a monster from her most horrifying nightmares crouched before them. And like in those dreams, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t turn and run. The cement under her feet seemed as if it had transformed to quicksand. It clutched her ankles, sucking her down into its lethal depths. Beside her, Resa emitted a frightened animal-like whimper.
The beast tilted its eagle head to the side and tracked them with a disturbing intelligence that glittered in its black eyes. All the gray and obsidian shadows of the night had coalesced and formed the wings that settled alongside the beast’s huge carriage. Feathers the color of dirty dishwater covered its wide breast and thick legs that ended in wicked dagger-sharp talons. It lowered into a deeper crouch like a deranged version of a courtier’s bow and Tamar glimpsed the powerful muscled back, legs and tail in the shape of a horse.
“Jesus,” she breathed. What the hell was it?
“Do me a favor,” the eagle-horse-man thing’s voice rebounded inside her head and Tamar wanted to clap her hands to her ears at the ugly gloating in the sonorous tone. “Run.”
The quicksand disappeared and Tamar wheeled around, complying with his instructions, dragging Resa with her. But her leg squawked an objection at the sudden movement and Tamar went down—hard. Her palms slapped the ground. Tiny loose pebbles bit into the heels of her palms. Yet her knee smacking the unforgiving cement drowned out the small discomfor
t of her hands. Pain screamed up her thigh and hip. Her teeth snapped together and a black shroud of unconsciousness swooped over her. But with a force of will she hadn’t known she possessed, Tamar shoved it back.
“Resa,” she rasped and her lips grazed the sidewalk as she turned her head to look for her friend. Maybe she’d been able to get away, run for help…
The other woman was sprawled on her stomach beside Tamar, but she scrambled to her back, performing a crab crawl away from the monster who stalked them. Her high-pitched shrieks ended on an abrupt note, replaced by a jarring bone snapping and crunching.
The beast had pounced, taken Resa down.
Fear, a living, breathing entity, crawled alongside Tamar as she sobbed and whimpered, trying to get away from this scene straight out of a horror flick. The beast’s immense body hid the carnage from sight, but the wet, meaty slurp and the metallic, blood-drenched scents were worse.
Crying, Tamar hauled her body up, using the brick building behind her for support. Her left leg throbbed, the angry pulses like a thousand bee stings in her knee, thigh and hip. Still, gripping the wall, she tried to escape the fate that had befallen her friend.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The question halted her progress as if it had reached out and snared her by the shoulder. Slowly she pivoted, the brick strong and sturdy under her palm. A calm settled over her. She couldn’t run—her leg wouldn’t permit it. Even if her limb would allow it, she couldn’t outrace this monster. But she refused to be taken down from behind.
She’d rather see it coming.
“Brave, are you?” It taunted and its cruel words and laughter grated the walls of her mind like acid. “It won’t save you,” it murmured, placing a claw closer to her sandal. The clack of the sharp tip against the pavement scraped over her nerves, raw and terrifying. “And unlike your friend, I’m going to take my time with you.”
She believed the creature, the promise evident in the evil glimmer that sparkled in its gaze. Sucking in a deep breath, Tamar pushed away from the building and caught the flash of surprise in its too-human eyes. Limping, she balanced most of her weight on her right leg and tilted her chin up. Her heart thudded against her rib cage, adding another ache to the chorus. But in a few minutes, none of the pain would matter. Not after he ripped her apart. In her head, she heard the nauseating cacophony of torn flesh and snapping bone that had been Resa’s horrible death and her courage flagged. She closed her eyes.
A deafening roar filled her ears.
A surge of power, wind and heat blasted past her, again knocking her to the ground. Her spine and the back of her skull cracked against the cement and she cried out.
Another monster—just as big, just as terrifying—emerged out of the night. It plowed into the one who’d murdered Resa and the tumble of feathers, wings and muscle slammed into the building, a crater forming under their hulking bodies.
“To the victor goes the spoils,” she uttered. Then slid over the edge into unconsciousness.
* * * * *
“There,” Nicolai growled inside his hippogryph beast. Satisfaction coursed through him for the first time in hours since tracking Evander to this small town hugging the Massachusetts coastline. Nico had spotted him from the sky, his gray-and-black banded feathers and crest unmistakable. The fool rogue hadn’t even bothered to cast a gyges to conceal himself. If any humans happened to pass by they would see him. He had endangered them all.
Shit.
Rage streamed through him in a hundred swirling ribbons, snaking around his organs until he breathed it. A human female. Evander stalked a human female.
Nico folded his wings to his body and swooped, bulleting through the air as if shot from a high-powered rifle. Seconds from impact, Evander lifted his head, and in his dark face Nicolai caught delight rather than fear or anger.
Whether in human form or in his beast, he was fucking crazy.
And he would die tonight.
Nicolai summoned every emotion that had carried him on this mission of vengeance—fury, grief, resentment—and crashed into Evander head-on. The collision reverberated like a clap of thunder.
Flesh split open under Nicolai’s talons and grim satisfaction rushed through him when Evander’s blood spattered his breast, staining the gray feathers like an oil spill. The rogue shrieked and the two rammed into the building next to them. Brick and mortar cracked and showered dust onto their feathers and hides.
Fire sizzled along his neck. The bastard had stabbed him. Rearing back on his hind legs, Nicolai used the momentum and heaved Evander off him. Their harsh breath filled the night as they faced one another. Then the rogue’s head cocked to the side and an instant later Nicolai detected what had snagged Evander’s attention. Police sirens in the distance. Maybe five minutes away. Fuck.
“’Til next time, Nico,” he said. “I left you a gift.” The hippogryph wheeled around on his rear legs, took several loping strides then soared into the bruised sky. A shimmer like a falling star twinkled before disappearing.
Now he uses his damn gyges. Nicolai shifted to his human form and scowled. He stared at the black, cloudless skyline for another long second before turning his attention to the limp bodies on the sidewalk.
Horror slid into his chest, between his ribs, like the razor-sharp tip of a rapier. Two women. The soft limbs of the woman closest to him were splayed like a broken Barbie doll. He crossed the small distance on swift feet and called on the magic within him to clothe his body in a black shirt, jeans and boots. The cops drew closer with each passing second and it wouldn’t do to have a naked man hovering over the bodies of two attack victims.
“Damn,” he whispered, hunkering down on his haunches next to the body. The woman hadn’t died easy, though Evander hadn’t taken as much time with her as he had with his previous victims. From the awkward angles of her arms and legs, Nicolai surmised they were broken, most likely upon impact. She’d been eviscerated like the other women, but her chest and abdomen had been torn open with brutal gashes, her entrails hanging in a tangled, bloody mess outside her body. This had been a slash ’n’ dash while before Evander had carved them open with careful slices worthy of a practiced surgeon, taking the intestines and organs with him—probably consuming them. The crushed bones and the terror on the woman’s face…those signatures remained the same.
So why the rush? Nicolai rose from his crouch. His gaze swept the sidewalk and landed on the feet and legs of the second woman. Two quick strides brought him to her. The pale-yellow illumination from the streetlight didn’t reach her, but he had no trouble seeing in the dark as he lowered next to her still form, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet. She had been alive when he’d sighted Evander, and though her legs and arms lay limp, they weren’t bent unnaturally or damaged. Beneath the long-sleeved yellow shirt her chest rose and fell in shallow but even breaths. Relief flooded through him. At least this one had been spared the gruesome death of the other woman.
Had that been the reason behind Evander’s hack job? To get to this female before she escaped? As soon as the explanation came, Nicolai discarded it. Evander could have easily subdued both women, even carried them off to play with them at his leisure.
“So what is so special about you that he couldn’t wait,” he murmured, his perusal rising to the woman’s face. A roar like a thousand tidal waves converging and crashing filled his ears. His heart stuttered then raced. “No.”
Shock, a freezing cold fist to his throat, squeezed the air from his lungs. He felt encased in ice, the bitter chill spreading to every extremity, numbing him from the inside out. His knees hit the pavement and he was surprised he didn’t shatter into a million shards.
“Pria,” he rasped.
His bondmate.
His dead bondmate.
* * * * *
From his perch atop the pharmacy roof, Evander chuckled.
The shock on Nicolai’s face. Priceless.
And to think he’d almost ruined this moment with hi
s impatience.
The dark excitement that had poured through him as he’d stared down into Tamar Ridgeway’s upturned face had nearly jeopardized his ultimate goal. Anticipation and hunger for her pain and death had consumed him. He’d forgotten the plan, revenge and Nicolai. All he’d lusted after was her blood and agony. After four weeks stalking her, the wait had proved too much.
He supposed he had Nicolai to thank. If not for his former commander’s timely arrival, Evander wouldn’t have Nicolai’s suffering and torture to look forward to. The irony was just too good to be true.
The frenzied activity on the street below electrified him. The crimson blur of the ambulance lights, the gathering of busybodies outside the yellow police tape. The scurrying of paramedics and law enforcement as they scraped the blonde’s body off the ground and hoisted Tamar Ridgeway onto a gurney to be transported to the hospital. And off to the side, hidden from human eyes, lurked Nicolai, his attention glued to the woman who was a living replica of his dead mate.
Evander smiled, grim satisfaction pounding within him.
Unlike humans, he could see through the gyges. And on Nicolai’s face he spied shock, pain and—glee leaped in his chest—longing. Such longing.
Pleasure coursed through him, the power so strong it neared sexual.
He backed farther into the shadow of the rooftop in case Nicolai sensed his delight or one of the krinos still searched for him. The Fates had handed him this victory on a silver platter—or rather, a news segment.
Several weeks ago, holed up in another motel room, he’d glanced at the muted television in time to catch a news piece. But the vapid red-haired reporter hadn’t snagged his attention. That honor belonged to the picture flashed across the screen. Pria. His breath had stalled in his throat, disbelief and astonishment had knocked him back to the bed.
