by Meg Ripley
“You’re going to kill us all?” The dragon’s tone was filled with disbelief, but beneath it, he could hear the undercurrent of fear. It had been some time since he’d pursued the hunters, and while he’d abandoned that fight—coming to realize that for every hunter he eliminated, two more rose up to take their place—he was well known for his strength and skill.
“If I have to,” he said coolly, “but I’d much rather you just do as I ask.”
The dragon laughed, glancing back at his compatriots and then moving aside as several of them stepped forward. The dragon should have known better. If he knew Grant by name, then he also knew they were no match for him.
They continued toward him, but he was ready for them.
He struck out at the first man who approached him, the heel of his hand driving hard into the center of man’s face. The crunch of bones resounded in the air as the man fell to the ground, dead. Another came close, and he snapped his neck with little more than a flick of his wrists.
And then, as more of the dragon’s lackeys approached, he saw it out the corner of his eye, and it had been so unexpected, that it nearly broke his concentration. Freya had yanked her arms free from the two sets of strong hands that held them, and in the next second, she sat straight up. Her arm shot out, the base of her hand making violent contact with an assailant’s nose, whose head jerked back and crashed into the man behind him.
The injured men rolled to the ground, and she pulled her freed leg up to kick out at the man on her thigh. The blow didn’t just make contact; it sent the villain flying backward, crashing into the man behind him and sending them both sprawling three feet from her body.
She was on her feet in a flash, and was ready for the attack when a man to the left of her came at her. But he wasn’t a man, Grant noticed as he took down another weak human who’d come at him. The man was a púca, a species that had never involved themselves with hunters, but they did have a distinctive, peculiar odor to them no matter what form they took. The púca had been known to play tricks on humans, but never this. He'd never known them to be violent, nor had he ever seen one take human form.
She sent the trickster-turned-hunter sprawling backwards on the ground with one well-placed kick.
Two men came at him then, and by the time he turned back to her, it was too late. The dragon had come up behind her, and he jabbed outward, the fine tip of a needle he’d had concealed in his hand penetrated the bruised flesh of her neck, straight into her carotid artery before Grant could reach her.
She spun around to confront him but no more than three seconds passed and she dropped to the ground, lifeless.
A painful vice gripped his heart, at the same time rage filled every fiber of his being, but before he could unleash it on the few men left standing, a scent in the air wafted toward him and he knew she wasn’t dying. The bittersweet odor of etorphine—it must have come from the dragon’s syringe. He’d rendered her unconscious, not dead. But why? Hunters didn’t take prisoners or hold creatures for ransom. What was she that was so valuable to them?
He eyed the dragon, and the dragon gazed back through human eyes while Grant sent the remainder of his men to the next realm. But just as he stepped toward the dragon who looked immobilized with fear, the human body gave way to blood red scales, and the dragon launched into the air, abandoning his prey to save his own hide.
Grant could have pursued him easily, but he didn’t. He’d find him; he’d sworn to kill every man who’d touched her and he would make good on his promise. But he couldn’t just leave her there, lying unconscious and bleeding on the ground.
So, he bent down and gathered her in his arms, holding her as gently as he could while he unleashed the fire in his core once more.
Chapter 7
Oh no, not again! she thought as she opened her eyes to unfamiliar surroundings.
She didn’t recognize the paintings on the wall or the curtains on the windows. The bed on which she laid was not her own, and the satin sheets against her skin were far too luxurious for her budget. Her breathing came faster as her eyes darted back and forth, searching for anything familiar.
Nothing.
But this wasn’t like the last time. For one thing, she could clearly remember the panic that had welled up inside her the last time she’d woken up with no memory of anything. If she’d lost her memory, then how could she remember the last time it had happened?
And there was more. She remembered walking out of the museum, and the fear that had grabbed hold of her when she spied the man in the parking lot.
And the strange calm that had come over her seconds before she’d turned into some sort of human fighting machine.
Where the hell had that come from? The woman with the strength of ten men? Well, perhaps not quite so much. She could also clearly remember when the group of them had overpowered her. She’d given in to a split second of fear, and the calm that had settled over her fled just long enough to render her ineffective against them.
The rest came back to her quickly. A man had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, but her vision had been so blurry, she hadn’t been able to see him clearly. He’d fought them though, she was sure of it, and watching the mesmerizing way he moved, she’d felt the calm come back to her.
But what happened? One minute, she’d been back on her feet fighting, and the next…she had no idea.
She looked down at her body, inspecting her physical condition, which surprisingly wasn’t so bad. There was blood on her torn clothing, but it didn’t appear to be hers because she bore no evidence of injury. Her wrists were smooth and flawless, despite the vicious grasp that held them and there were no bruises where the man had crushed her arms in his grasp. She could still clearly recall the painful throbbing in her face, quite certain at the time she’d broken every bone from her forehead to her jaw, but there was no pain there now.
But why couldn’t she remember what had happened next?
She tested the back of her head with her fingers, searching for some sign of injury that could explain it, but found none. Quickly she realized though that the biggest problem she faced at the moment was figuring out where she was, not how she got there.
Had they taken her somewhere? Was she being held captive? And again…why?
She leapt from the bed suddenly alert, looking for something—anything—she could use as a weapon. If she’d failed fighting with her hands, then she needed something more. She’d be ready the moment they opened that door.
The pickings were slim, but she found a candlestick. It was very old, but sturdy, and the base of it was embellished with gold leaves, each of which came to a nasty point.
She’d no sooner picked it up when the door began to open, so slowly, her anticipation grew and stretched taut. She clutched the makeshift weapon tight, prepared to attack, but then she froze.
It was Grant, and seeing him now, she was suddenly quite certain he was the man who had come to her rescue last night—or, at least she thought. But if he’d been there to help her, why was he holding her captive now? Her arm shook with her indecision.
“Is that any way to say thank you?” he asked, his deep whisky voice making her muscles relax just a little. While he appeared at ease, he also seemed to be eyeing her just as suspiciously as she was eyeing him.
“Where am I?” she asked, delaying the decision to attack.
“You’re in my home.”
Why would he tell her that if he had any intentions of letting her go? Why would he have shown his face, for that matter? A niggle of fear tickled the base of her spine, but she forced it back, remembering what had happened when she’d let the paralyzing emotion rise up.
“Why am I here?”
He chuckled lightly, but then his look turned serious. “What… are you, Freya?” he asked.
What? She wasn’t a ‘what,’ she was a ‘who.’ “I’m Freya Cullen, as you very well know. What am I doing here?”
He ignored her question, throwing his previous one back at her. “What are you
?”
It was her turn to ignore him. “What are you going to do with me?”
Whatever his plan for her, she had no intention of going along with it, but she could try to glean as much information as possible.
He stared back at her; his eyes met hers, and it seemed like he was searching for something. Like yesterday, it felt like he was trying to see deeper, but his broad shoulders relaxed a moment later, and the look on his face changed.
“I plan to take you home once you’re up for it, which appears to be soon,” he said, glancing down the length of her body. “And I trust you’ll stay out of trouble in the future.”
“You’re going to let me go?”
Was he the decoy sent to put her at ease? If so, he was one hell of a decoy. Despite the upheaval going on inside her, she was innately aware of him; his broad chest and muscular arms barely concealed beneath a soft cotton T-shirt; the slim taper of his hips drawing her gaze downward, settling on the bulge beneath the fly of his jeans that couldn’t possibly be all him. Could it?
If those men were hiding somewhere beyond that door, waiting for her to let her guard down, she was sunk. But he wasn’t like them; some part of her was sure of it.
“You…you aren’t one of them.”
“No,” he replied simply.
“Then why did you bring me here?”
He was silent for a moment, and it appeared that he’d turned inward, as if he were searching for an answer to that question, too. “You were unconscious,” he said matter-of-factly. “It didn’t seem wise to leave you to see to your own well-being.”
“Thank you,” she said after a long, troubled moment, staring at him, trying to ignore the awareness that was sending tremors of desire through her veins. And by the heat in his eyes, she’d guess he was experiencing the same thing. But there was still no proof his intentions weren’t sinister. It could still be a ploy, and even if it wasn’t, she needed to get out of there; to go home and try to sort through all that had happened.
“Look, I appreciate your help, but I really have to go.”
He was silent for a long moment, but then he nodded. “As you wish. There are clothes next to the bed. I’ll be down the hall when you’re ready.” He looked at her for a few more seconds, then turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.
She listened closely, waiting to hear the turn of a lock, but she heard nothing except his footsteps that grew quieter with every step.
Reeling with confusion, she found the clothes he’d mentioned next to the bed and stripped out of the dress that had been torn in so many places, it did little more than create a lace-like cover over her body. Undressed, she surveyed her body once more, still amazed that she hadn’t suffered more damage. There was a yellowish bruise on her hip she hadn’t noticed at first, but aside from that, she’d escaped unscathed.
She slipped into the borrowed clothing and then hesitated. It could still be a trap; there was no proof otherwise. But then, why would he go through the charade of pretending to let her go?
Summoning as much of last night’s courage as she could muster, she left the room, taking a step out into the hallway. But which way did she go now? The hallway continued to both the left and right of her, and she could see that a few doorways up on the left, there was another hallway as well.
Eenie meenie miney mo…she turned to the right. Please let this be the right direction, she thought, and took a few tentative steps down the hall. Fortunately, not five seconds later, she spied the man standing alone in front of an enormous hearth in a grand living room at the end of the short hall.
“I see you made your way just fine,” he said without turning around, though there was a note of irritation in his tone. When he finally faced her, however, it seemed to dissipate. His eyes blazed hot with desire, and her own body responded, making her wonder if there was really any need to leave so quickly.
But yes, there was. Though she’d escaped unscathed—thanks to Grant—her mind was reeling with questions. Who were those men? Why had they wanted to hurt her? How had she fought the way she did? And how had Grant, for that matter? Looking at him, she had no doubt he was strong, but he’d appeared to exude the same inhuman strength that had pulsed through her own veins last night.
“You’re ready then?” he asked, breaking into her thoughts and drawing her back to the present.
“Yes.”
He nodded toward another hallway at the same time he started toward it. She followed Grant to a door at the end of the hall that led to a garage—a garage filled with more cars than she’d seen in some sales lots. Certainly, none of the cars in front of her—Lamborghinis, a Porsche, several Aston Martins and a dozen other cars she didn’t recognize—had ever graced an ordinary lot.
He pressed a button on the remote in his hand, and the passenger door of the car nearest to her opened. She slid in and Grant came around to the driver’s side, and though the car was relatively spacious, his large frame seemed to fill up the space, making Freya even more aware of the potent male figure next to her.
Without looking at her, he revved the car engine, a smooth purr that acted like a balm for her jagged nerves. With another press of a button, the wide garage door slid open without a sound. He shifted the car into gear and drove out, easing down the long, winding driveway and along the near-empty street that would lead back to the highway. She remembered the route from days before and managed to relax another degree. It was as if the drive back could somehow undo all that had happened; it was a foolish thought, of course, but soothing, nonetheless.
Grant then turned onto the highway, and her heart nearly leapt into her throat. Every bit of calm she’d managed to call forth vanished in an instant. Sixty miles per hour…one hundred miles per hour; the speed increased exponentially with every second. One hundred and twenty miles per hour…
Though the car glided down the highway smoothly, she gripped the sides of her seat, praying they’d make it off the highway before he spun out of control and she wound up wrapped around a tree.
Fortunately, at that speed, it didn’t take long to reach the city. He veered onto the exit ramp, slowing to something that approached the speed limit, and she released the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Out the corner of her eye, she could see that he was smiling to himself, and she glared out the windshield. Did he do that on purpose? she wondered with annoyance.
Caught up in her irritation, it took her a moment to realize he’d taken the exit that led to her apartment, and was even now making the turn onto her street.
“How do you know where I live?” she asked, panic rising in her chest anew.
“Your wallet,” he replied matter-of-factly.
“You went through my purse?”
Her nerves were overstrung, no doubt, but finding out he’d gone snooping through her purse was the final straw in the long list of things that had happened in the past forty-eight hours that were definitely not okay.
She’d found a woman dead and probably stumbled upon the escaping assailant; her apartment had been broken into; she’d been attacked by a mob of strangers and had somehow transformed into a woman with superhuman strength and speed she didn’t know she possessed; and she’d been rescued—or kidnapped?—by a man who seemed to have the same freakish strength she had called up out of thin air. And, oh right, he also happened to have an unhealthy need for speed that could have landed her dead in a ditch on the side of the highway.
The fact that he was sexy as hell and part of her wanted to forget about everything else and climb over the gearshift onto his lap just went to show how crazy the past two days had made her.
“Forgive me, but you weren’t offering up too many answers at the time.” His reply did nothing to placate her.
“Of course, I wasn’t. I was unconscious!”
“Precisely,” he answered, as if that cleared up the issue succinctly.
“Do you go through every woman’s purse when she’s not conscious?”
“No, of course not—just the sexy, unconscious ones.”
“Oh? And do you come by those often?”
He chuckled, but didn’t reply, and that was probably for the best. “Is there somewhere else you can stay?” he asked instead, changing the subject abruptly.
Yeah, sure, she lived in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment but secretly had a mansion stashed away in another city. Who didn’t? “No…I only have one apartment. Not all of us have a house the size of a shopping mall.”
“Yes, I appreciate your…modifications—much easier to navigate now.”
“Modifications? What are you talking about?”
He eyed her suspiciously once again, but then turned his attention back to the road in front of them and abandoned the subject without answering her. “Freya, I suggest you pack a bag and find someplace else to stay for a while.”
“Thanks, I appreciate the advice and all, but I must have left my money bags in my last life.”
He cocked his eyebrow, but didn’t respond, and immediately she felt chagrined. He’d helped her—probably saved her life—and even driven her home, and here she was giving him attitude. “I’m sorry, I really do appreciate what you’ve done for me. Thank you. But I’m sure those men were just random troublemakers—it isn’t exactly unheard of in Las Vegas. I’ll be fine—thanks to you.”
Obviously, that wasn’t entirely true. She had no idea who those men were, or why they’d attacked her, but until she could make any sense of all that had happened, she had no idea what to do next.
So, it was time to try to make sense of it. She thanked him again after he pulled up at the curb in front of her building and slid out in a hurry, anxious to put some space between herself and the man who was doing nothing but adding to the confusion in her head at the moment.
She raced up the four flights of stairs to her apartment and closed the door behind her, but it was as if the click of the handle unlocked the floodgates and all that she’d been keeping at bay, all that had happened in the past day, burst forth.
She sank to the floor and waited for the well of emotions to overwhelm her, but like the other day when she’d happened upon the poor woman who’d been murdered, they didn’t come—at least most of them didn’t. What she felt more than anything was a tidal wave of confusion. It seemed all so familiar, the way her body had handled those men. She wasn’t oblivious to the fact she would have lost if Grant hadn’t shown up, but she should never have made it as far as she did. It seemed so long as her mind stayed clear, she’d been unstoppable.
