“I’m Jewish,” I lied.
“You’re special,” she said. It sounded campy, but her tone was strange. I snapped my eyes to hers in the mirror. There was something almost creepy in the worshipful way she looked at me as if she was thinking of her favourite Sunday picnic treat and had been fasting all night.
Cult alarm sirens screeched in my head.
“Can you make sure the coast is clear?” I asked, not planning on sticking around for her return. I had already fought off one attempted kidnapping tonight. “Check the whole rink,” I suggested.
Once she left, I pulled out the screamer keys carefully and clipped them to the bag’s strap. I put the empty hair product cans in the bottle holder, stretching the elastic at the top of the open net pocket to hold them both. My red skates barely fit into the big sack part of my purse, popping out of the top a little, but they were too distinctive to leave out and carry for my disguise to work.
There was no room for anything else, so I swiped all the makeup into the trash bin, regretting the lipstick only. I promised myself I could go to the drug store and buy a new tube in the morning, like an alcoholic thinking about the bar’s opening time at last call.
I didn’t look for Eloden on the benches as I exited the bathroom. I used a trick I had learned from working convenience store jobs instead, checking the surveillance mirrors that had been set up in the rink to show blind corners to the referees and skaters.
He wasn’t there. I moved.
Nobody hollered at me to stop. I walked around the center snack bar, bending down to check out the chocolate bars locked behind glass like packages of cigarettes and sneaking a real glance across to the empty rest benches. I had felt like a real detective dick for the first thirty seconds of my walk out of the washroom, but now, I had to fight the panicked urge to spin around and find where Eloden was hiding.
Did he give up? The thought was a bit anticlimactic, but I reminded myself that boring was safe. I ate humdrum for breakfast to top my oatmeal.
The adrenaline from my fear was finally abating. I took my first big, deep breath since Eloden had said my name. This had honestly been the most bizarre thing to ever happen to me. I didn’t have friends and acquaintances to bump into in random places. My family was small and restructured, my biological father dead or a deadbeat, and never spoken of by my mother. The twin’s biological mother had died from cancer. I had just my mom, step-father and the twins. It was all I ever needed.
I could go days without even speaking to another person and suddenly a complete stranger was cozying up to me and calling my name like I was his real sweetheart?
My phone buzzed and I jumped. I pulled it out with a muttered curse and saw one of the twins had gotten my message.
Matthew: OMW
Matthew: U r such a grl
Matthew: Lock the doors
I hated short form in text, but I knew this one well, OMW: on my way. Usually, the twins hung out together, but there was a chance it would only be the older one coming. That would be a lucky break.
Matthew was the softer one, more likely to give up a hot date if his sister needed him. He didn’t ask as many hard questions and was easier to fool into believing I needed help.
I bought a Mars bar from the snack stand, hoping I could sweeten my brother’s temper when he found out the Civic was sputtering along just fine. He sounded worried by the end of his texts. Feeding his secret sweet tooth might help.
The door guard-slash-cashier gave me a second look as I hurried outside to get into my Civic before my brother arrived. The longer it took Matthew to figure out I lied, the better. It was too bad my other brother, Jackson, had shown me how to change a flat, the oil, windshield washer fluid and my wipers last summer. Would Matthew really believe I didn’t turn the key far enough, or I had left the lights on, but somebody else gave me a boost before he came?
“Eve?”
Crap. Eloden had found me.
Chapter 3:
THE PROBLEM WITH LEAVING early during a four-hour skate? No traffic to fight because the parking lot was deserted, except for me and my stalker.
“Eve,” he called again, accent drawing it out like Ev-ah. There was no mistaking it was him despite our short acquaintance.
I pulled one of my fake cans of mace from the side pocket of my purse and shoved the Mars bar in to replace it. Holding the hairspray carefully like a live grenade, I swung the can to find my target with my right index on the trigger. My left hand covered the label, hopefully. I better be pointing the sprayer in the right direction.
“Eve.”
I slowly backed up towards the safety of the rink, blinking at the gloomy parking lot, but I still didn’t see him. They really needed to fix the broken lights out here for the sake of safety. I guess it wasn’t an issue until somebody got jumped. Don’t make me into a warning example.
“Eve.”
My heart was still lodged in my throat, so I dry swallowed. Was there an echo out here? “Get bent,” I muttered.
“Eve.”
Eloden’s dark form slid out of a shadowed light post and in front of me as I swung my can back around. He strode toward me without caution, big, asphalt-eating strides quickly bringing him into sharper focus.
“I have mace that will melt your eyeballs, asshole, so back up,” I told Eloden in my threatening voice reserved for spiders that got into my apartment. The spiders always defied my eviction notice, too.
I heard a gasp. We were not alone.
I swung around with my mace because that gasp had been right behind me and was considered the enemy until proven otherwise.
“Do not disfigure Eloden for his offence,” begged the prettiest man I had ever seen. Seriously pretty. My can of hairspray may have dropped a little as I stared at him, gobsmacked.
Long, platinum hair hung halfway down his back, bouncing with more vitality than every shampoo commercial ever made as he swung his head to look between me and Eloden. That was a mane. His fine-boned features and slender nose would suit a model and gave him a metrosexual vibe that was accenuated by the three-quarter, black-wool dress coat and white turtleneck he wore like he’d come off the runway. His honeyed voice was still deep enough to be male, smooth but thickened with testosterone that edged him away from too pretty to be straight.
Not that I cared if he was gay, I reminded myself, shaking off the holy hotness batman trance. Voices didn’t characterize sexual orientation. I raised the hairspray back up at blinding range, wondering if it would give away the contents if I shook the can first.
“Back up,” I told Pretty and Eloden. I took a menacing step forward, swinging my can between the two of them in a hyper pendulum. It would take a miracle to hit guys this tall square in the face. They were cutting off my exits. My only choice was to hold them off until I got to my car and locked myself in the relative safety of her metal and glass cage.
I wanted to run.
“Orin, maybe you should touch her,” said another voice, much deeper, from my left. “Skin-to-skin contact would be best,” he suggested as I wrenched my neck around to find my flanks were being closed in.
“The first one to touch me gets a kick in the ‘nads on top of mace to make you scratch your eyes out,” I threatened, trying to fight the shaking in my hands.
I was surrounded. Two more tall blondes came out of the shadows. I must have walked right past them in my rush to get to the parking lot. They were nearly twins, a few inches difference in height between them and more muscular than pretty Orin. Neither was dressed appropriately for the cool evening, long-sleeved tunics that hung to mid-thigh and were belted at the waist with actual weapon belts. The taller one had a dagger and a sword on his belt, sheathed but very close to hand. The shorter one had a sword and another leather band wrapped diagonally across his right shoulder to his left hip, where I saw something peeking up over his shoulder that he had to be carrying on his back. I suspected arrows, possibly spotting a feathered end.
These freaks should be co
splaying at a convention. Why were they here harassing me and how did they know my name?
“Get back, or your eyes are all going to melt,” I reminded, but none of them listened to the too often repeated threat.
I shook the damn can, so it wouldn’t sputter, and started spraying it wildly around, only to have it plucked out of my hands by another guy that appeared from behind me. He reached right over me and grabbed the can from my hands, throwing it away to the night. I went for the mousse, twisting from the newest, presumably tall, unseen threat.
“Falin, gentle!” warned the deepest voice yet, belonging to the can thief, as I stared at his hulking body stepping towards me. His thuggish hands could have crushed my fake mace cans like empty plastic water bottles.
I found out who Falin was as I backed up and twisted myself right into the arms of the most delinquent looking thug of the bunch. He had pierced everything, eyebrows, nose and lip, all on the left side of his face, and both ears with half a dozen rings and studs each. I had no doubt there were other piercings covered by clothing. His black hair was shaved short at the sides and he had scruffy, loose curls with longish bangs. Green eyes drew all the attention after his piercings, an unusual hue that reminded me of a lizard. He must be using shocking contacts for fun, that eerie gaze currently looking over my made-up face with disgust as I started back up at him.
I would have panicked if he wasn’t so obviously hesitant to hold me longer than necessary, recoiling so I bounced off his chest and was held at an arm’s length.
“She smells, Dain. We’ll have to bathe her first,” Falin insisted as he sniffed me from a distance, then slowly moved in. I tried to pull away from his steely grip.
He picked me right up off my feet as Eloden had with no effort at all. He sniffed closer and closer to my mouth until I could just lean forward and nip that lip ring of his and give it a punishing tug. I chewed my grape Bubblicious to soften it and stuck my tongue in the wad, starting the biggest bubble that was guaranteed to blow up right in the face sniffing me.
“Arrg!” came Falin’s aggrieved cry as he dropped me to my feet.
That had worked better than I hoped. He was going to be spending hours getting the purple gum out of his eyebrows, eyelashes, and piercings. Who needed mace?
I was grabbed from behind before I could run. The hands that took me hostage swallowed my shoulders and pulled me hard against his chest, the back of my head slamming against his sternum so hard I saw stars. Forget Eloden’s bicep band, this guy’s entire chest was made of rock.
“That wasn’t nice, girl,” growled out a black as midnight voice. Dain and my can thief, I identified. “I’ll make you clean Falin off with your sassy mouth,” he threatened, hands tightening as Falin screamed his skin was melting.
Pretty Orin was hysterical, too, until he touched Falin, and then he told Falin to shut the hell up. The language coming out of that pretty boy’s mouth was enough to heat even my ears.
“It’s harmless foodstuff,” Orin declared to the group, pulling some gum off Falin’s cheek and licking it off his finger.
Okay, super gross. The drama queens could keep my Bubblicious. I didn’t want it back.
I took advantage of everyone’s distraction to grab for my can of mousse, finger brushing my keys instead.
The screamer.
I pulled the personal alarm to activate it before I could think myself out of it. All the noise we had made hadn’t gotten the attention of anyone in the area with the music pumping in the rink. Maybe the ear-shattering shriek of an old-fashioned rape alarm would work better.
I had tensed but really there was no way to prepare yourself for the sheer volume and pitch of the alarm. Dain said something I was sure was as dirty as the back of a gas station toilet, but it wasn’t in English, so I ignored it. I twisted hard at his shock-slackened grip. I’m sure he wanted to clap his hands over his ears. Fighting the instinct was almost overwhelming for me, and I had been the one to pull the alarm, knowing what to expect.
The rest of them, a whole gang of the most motley crew I’d ever seen outside of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, caved to the pressure to cover their ears. I kneed Dain and told him I wasn’t a nice girl, but I’m not sure he heard me. He felt me, though, clapping his hands over his groin instead of his ears.
I ran.
I used to run in elementary school. At first, it was because the teachers made everyone do it to encourage involvement in track and field since kids in elementary didn’t dream of doing boring sports like shot-put. We had to try everything on a track day and that’s when I found out I could run. The wind couldn’t have caught up until life tripped me.
Guess it was like riding a bike.
I sprinted to my car. Big-heeled boots were not made for running but my legs compensated, getting as much bounce and rebound as I needed to fly. I fiddled with the snap-lock clasp of my keyring to get it off my purse strap, finally getting it when I had almost slammed into my car’s rear bumper. I hit the two-footed brakes, pivoting to the left in a move I knew my knee would pay for later, finding the door key by feel alone. I had the key in the slot already when two big hands slammed on either side of my head.
Dain’s dark voice sounded like it was out of a nightmare.
My key shook in the lock. The shaking only got harder when I heard more voices behind us telling Dain he couldn’t kill me. It was official. I was being jumped by some seriously bad dudes no matter how ridiculous they dressed.
Where the hell was Matthew?
“I’m sorry,” I told my reflection in the driver’s window. The pissed off visage of Dain over my shoulder was so black it looked like a demon in the tinted windows. I hadn’t gotten a good look at him earlier in my rush to escape, but big, dark and dangerous seemed to cover it.
Fiery breath baked my ear from behind. “Turn off that infernal noise,” Dain demanded.
His hard body was pressed up so close behind me there wasn’t an inch between me and the car to maneuver. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and Dain was the rock.
“Need room, keyring, hands,” I said stating my wants. I could add air to that list if Dain didn’t back off. I was going to faint from hyperventilation at any moment.
Dain removed his hands from the car and grabbed my hips, pulling me with him as he took a few steps back to give me my requested space. This was not what I meant, but I figured I could give a little, and maybe the rock would relax his dominant posturing a bit. Dain didn’t need his lizard friend’s piercings to look like a badass, he had that down pat with the attitude he wrapped around his body like personal armour. If the whole gang of them had walked in the room, Dain would be the one you looked at first and the last one you would take your eyes off when they left.
The silence that followed when I disarmed the screamer was almost deafening. I could feel the pulse of the noise echoing in my head with each thump of my heart, my brain not yet accepting that I still had hearing.
Dain grabbed the disarmed keyring from my fingers like he had the hairspray grenade. He reached right over me using his long arms and superior height, then he tossed the keys to one of the blonde, lookalike brothers.
I hadn’t heard their names for yet. I was good at remembering names, especially if I had a face to go along with it. Not quite photographic memory, which was a myth, but close enough to count when my boss asked me to get a specific plate out of hundreds in the growth chambers. I kept good documentation and the boss had stopped nagging me to take notes during processing since he realized I never forgot the details. I could get things done faster, and that meant I could do more work.
The shorter blonde brother had caught my keys and he said something rough and likely foul. It wasn’t English, reminding me more of German, with a harsher cadence than Eloden. After he complained, he tossed my keys to someone to the right, like bullies tossing a toy over the shorter kid’s head.
I made a sound of protest. That was my only set of keys.
Eloden caught my
keys with a grumble and told the prancing light fairies to wear gloves next time and speak English to not frighten me. The scared train had already left the station and done a loop. I didn’t really get the insult, either. Maybe Eloden was implying they were gay? Didn’t make any of them seem less dangerous.
Dain’s lips on my skin cleared my thoughts of anything gay. What was he doing? Just like Falin, he sniffed me, right at the nape of my neck, making all the little hairs stand up. I tried to squirm loose, but Dain walked me back up to the car door again, crowding me.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” I said, hissing the last word as Dain licked my neck. “I don’t know what the hell you all want with me, but my answer is no,” I yelled loud enough for the rest of them to hear.
“Quiet. Going to Mark you, bad girl,” Dain told me. I couldn’t complain about the nickname, I had been the one to tell him I wasn’t a nice girl, but the marking part was not happening.
“This is assault,” I gritted out, trying to elbow him. I stomped on his feet with my booted heels as hard as I could.
Eloden’s gentler voice interrupted before Dain could respond. “It’s too soon.”
Dain growled out something angry and flipped me around, so I could see the discontent all over his face. Honestly, I had been better off facing the car.
He was inhumanly monstrous. Logically, I knew men could grow that tall and filling out an oversized frame was simply a matter of eating as my brothers did for football, but my eyes and brain fought to accept this wasn’t the dark demon my fears had imagined in the car window.
Miss Righteous would know exactly what I meant if I said Dain looked like Lucifer, not the red-hoofed demon in caricatures, but the seductive angel that represented sin and ruled his kingdom with an iron fist. His black hair was so dark it seemed to absorb all the light around him, thick strands hitting high, broad-bladed cheekbones that hinted at mixed ethnicity and shadowing the black eyes that matched.
I reached up, mesmerized by the flash of yellow in his gaze as car lights shone through his bangs. Deep, golden brown then, I thought. My fingers learned the feel of his rough jaw, not quite bearded but it had been days since it had seen a razor. The masculine prickle I had never felt before was just enough to startle me as he leaned into my touch and I tried to shrink, pulling back.
No Faerie Tale Love (Faerie Series Book 1) Page 3
