Of Love and Darkness

by Lund, Tami

  The dog was suddenly tackled from the side by another animal, this one with thick, jet-black fur and a lean build. Sydney saw that Gavin’s car was still parked behind her own, with the driver’s side door hanging wide open. Gavin was nowhere to be seen.

  Great. He’s so chicken he just gets out of the car and makes a run for it.

  Sydney turned with the intention of rushing to her car to climb inside and get the hell out of this crazy place when she heard a gravelly voice shout, “Look out!”

  It sounded like Gavin, but when she jerked her head around, all she saw were two dogs, and one of them was flying toward her. She shrieked and tried to move out of the way, but she wasn’t fast enough. The animal’s front claws caught her on the arm and she felt a searing pain, as her flesh was torn open from shoulder to elbow.

  Sydney gasped and dropped to her knees, clutching her arm in an attempt to stop the flow of blood. She could hear the sounds of a scuffle behind her, but the pain was too great for her to focus on anything else. She’d never felt pain like this before, not even when she’d broken her wrist falling off the swing set when she was seven years old.

  It was silent for long moments before Sydney realized the two animals had stopped fighting. She risked a quick glance over her shoulder and saw that one of them—the larger, bulkier one—lay on the ground in a pool of blood, his lifeless eyes staring at her, unseeing. Sydney swallowed back bile and turned away from the grisly scene.

  And found herself staring at Gavin’s T-shirt-covered chest, as he crouched in front of her and cradled her wounded arm with more gentleness than she would have given him credit for. She tried to wrench her arm free and let out a gasp of pain.

  “Stop moving,” Gavin commanded in his gravelly voice. He gently slid her shredded coat off her shoulder, as if he meant to inspect the wound more closely.

  “Where the hell were you?” Sydney demanded. “I just got attacked by a rabid dog. A really big dog. I need to go to the hospital. I need a rabies shot. Damn it, that hurts.” She hissed as he ripped off the arm of her sweater, instead of trying to tug the entire thing over her head.

  “Hey,” she protested, “that’s my favorite sweater.”

  Gavin gave the sweater a look that indicated he could not quite understand why it was her favorite, and then he prodded the wounds on her arm. Blood poured freely from four long slashes, dripping off the tips of her fingers and onto her now-ruined coat.

  “I doubt he had rabies,” he muttered as he continued to inspect the wounds. “And I just rescued you, so you’re welcome.”

  Sydney gaped at him. “Rescued me? Rescued me? You ran like a cat when somebody pulls out the water hose, you moron. There were two dogs. One jumped out at me and the other attacked him. They started fighting and I somehow got caught in the crosshairs. We should probably get the hell out of here though, because only one of them is dead back there. The other one might decide to come back and attack us.”

  “He won’t,” Gavin said with an odd inflection in his voice. “But you’re right, there are others, and the scent of blood will bring them relatively quickly. Especially your blood. What are you?”

  To Sydney’s utter horror, he leaned close to her wounded arm and sniffed, like a dog checking out another dog’s scent.

  She gave her arm another jerk, but Gavin held her in a death grip. “What are you doing?” she asked as he bent closer still and then . . . licked her wounded arm.

  “Ew!”

  Gavin’s eyes glazed over, as if he had fallen under some sort of spell. He blinked dazedly for a few heartbeats, his hands grasping her arm in a tight enough grip she thought the appendage might go numb. And then he bent his head and licked her wounds again, this time with earnest, licking over and over, as if he intended to clean up every last bit of blood. By the time the entire area was cleansed of all traces of blood, he was panting heavily and his eyes were still glazed. Sydney couldn’t be certain, but the bulge in his pants seemed to have gotten larger.

  “Gross,” she snapped. “Now I have to get a rabies and a tetanus shot. I hate shots. Can you get hepatitis this way? I bet you have some sort of sexually transmitted disease, and now you’ve given it to me.”

  “No disease,” he managed between pants and licks.

  “I’m supposed to take your word for it? Get away from me.” She twisted her shoulder, and slid her arm out of a grasp that had gone slack. She was startled that she only experienced a twinge of pain, and when she looked down at her arm, her eyes widened as she realized the four long gashes were no longer bleeding, and in fact, appeared to actually be healing right before her eyes.

  “What the . . .?”

  “Chala,” Gavin whispered, his eyes still glazed and—were they glowing? It was the third time that evening she thought she saw glowing eyes. Sydney glanced up at the darkened, cloudy sky and wondered if it wasn’t some trick of the lights in downtown Detroit.

  “Chala,” he whispered again.

  Sydney gave him a cross look. “My name isn’t Chala.”

  “You are a Chala,” Gavin said. The glazed look faded from his eyes, and while they still appeared to glow faintly, they had taken on a far more calculating look. Despite her current situation, she couldn’t help but think he had lovely silver-blue eyes.

  “And you are my mate.”

  While she mulled over the color of his eyes, he sat on the cold pavement and pulled her into his arms. She was so startled, she didn’t struggle out of his grasp quickly enough and ended up in his lap. As he stroked her cheek and murmured suggestions that involved hot, sweaty sex, Sydney stared up into an unshaven face covered with scratch marks that looked unnervingly like the ones even now fading from her arm. There was also a wound on his neck that appeared as if an animal had bitten him.

  “Where were you when those dogs were fighting?” she asked as she struggled to climb out of his lap. It felt good there, too good. His body temperature was elevated, as if he had a fever, and she hadn’t been crazy a short time ago when she imagined the bulge behind his zipper had gotten bigger. She could feel it pressing into her backside, and it was certainly . . . large. Sydney’s experience with sex was embarrassingly limited, but she was knowledgeable enough to know that size really does matter.

  “I was one of those dogs,” Gavin said as calmly as if he were explaining that two plus two really did equal four. “The one that won, obviously.”

  Sydney shot out of his lap with a speed that surprised even her. “Oh my God, I just let a crazy man lick my arm. Gross, gross, gross!” She tugged her shredded coat sleeve back over her arm. Surprisingly, she didn’t feel nearly as cold as she should, given the fact the outside temperature hovered in the teens.

  “It wouldn’t be gross if I wasn’t crazy?”

  Sydney’s arm shot out, palm facing him. “Stop. Do not come any closer. I am going to get into my car now, and go straight to the nearest hospital. Do not follow me. If you do, I’ll tell the hospital personnel that you’re stalking me.”

  She slowly backed toward her car, and gave a little shriek when she nearly tripped over the body lying on the ground next to her car.

  A human body?

  “Ahh! That’s a dead man! A man! He’s dead! A dead man! Ahh!”

  In the blink of an eye, Gavin stood in front of her, wrapping his arms around her back and shoving her face into his chest to muffle the sound of her shrieks.

  “If you keep screaming like that, even that one will wake up and come after us. Damn, woman, can’t you shut up?”

  Sydney abruptly stopped shrieking and gave him a shove. He relinquished his hold and let her out of his arms. She jabbed a finger at the dead man at her feet.

  “There was a dog there five minutes ago.”

  Gavin nodded. “We always revert back to human form when we die.” He shrugged, as if his w
ords had little consequence, whereas Sydney stared at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted a second head.

  “We?”

  “Yeah. We.”

  “You are absolutely crazy. And I’m still talking to you. Which means I have, apparently, gone crazy too. Probably you infected me with your craziness when you licked all the blood off my arm. Which, by the way, was really, really gross.” She wrapped her arms around herself, dimly aware that she felt no pain whatsoever anymore. As if she had never gotten slashed by a dog that was no longer there.

  “I’m not crazy, although I’ll admit I do not normally go around licking people’s wounds. Unlike most of my kind, I no longer have a taste for human flesh. But your blood smelled so . . . tantalizing, I suppose is as good a word as any. I couldn’t help myself. And now I know why. You’re my mate. You are the vessel through which I will repopulate the world with Light Ones. We’ll finally be able to get the Rakshasa population under control, if not destroy them entirely.” He spread his arms wide and grinned, clearly pleased with himself.

  Sydney paused for two heartbeats, and then, without saying a word, she turned and strode to her car, wrenched the door open and climbed into the driver’s seat. She dug around in her purse until she found her keys, shoved the car key into the ignition, and cranked.

  Nothing.

  “Shit.”

  Chapter 3

  “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

  Sydney sat in the passenger seat of the Camaro, her hand firmly wrapped around the oh shit bar, as Gavin drove the rear-wheel drive vehicle as if there weren’t a thick, slushy coating of snow covering the roads. Every time he came to an intersection where the light was red, the car fishtailed dangerously as he pressed the brakes at the last minute and slammed the car into neutral, and then fishtailed again because he pressed the gas too quickly when the light turned green. He did not appear at all concerned that they might go careening into a light pole or another car at any moment.

  Unfortunately, she’d had little choice but to get into the car with him. When her vehicle wouldn’t start, she had demanded he let her use his phone so she could call her stepbrother to come rescue her. He had willingly handed over the phone, but as soon as William picked up, Gavin snatched it back and began talking in his low, gravelly voice. Sydney caught snatches of words like “shifter” and “mate” and “Chala,” none of which made any sense to her. A heated argument seemed to have ensued after Gavin said the word “Chala,” and after a few minutes of fervent discussion, he abruptly handed the phone to her. When she put it to her ear, she heard her stepbrother’s voice reluctantly tell her to let Gavin bring her home.

  “What about my stuff?” she had demanded, talking into the phone.

  “What stuff?” Gavin had answered. When she explained that her supplies from the display booth at today’s event were still sitting on a cart in the lobby of the convention center, he had made an impatient sound and then drove the block to the building, only to be annoyed anew when her equipment did not fit in his sexy yet compact sports car.

  “I could have told you,” she had commented when he began cursing.

  “Why didn’t you?” had been his reply, before he shoved her into the passenger seat of his car, locked the doors, took both sets of keys, and then grabbed the cart and dragged it, presumably, back to her sedan. She had spared a brief moment to contemplate climbing out of the car and hurrying into the building to seek help from someone—anyone—but before she could fully formulate a plan, he was back, sliding into the driver’s seat and cranking the powerful engine.

  “You’re fast,” she had commented, not hiding the frustration in her voice.

  “Not always,” he had replied, and she was pretty sure she understood the sexual implication behind the words. At least, she hoped that was what he meant, and she hadn’t turned into a hussy who read into everything the man said to her.

  “Do you and William know each other?” she asked now, in an effort to distract herself from his frightful driving.

  His phone announced their next turn in a sexy, female, computer-generated voice, and Gavin twisted the wheel, causing the car to skid across three lanes of traffic in order to turn left at the next intersection.

  “Who’s William?”

  Sydney ground her teeth and resisted the urge to growl. “My brother. Stepbrother, actually. The guy you talked to on the phone earlier. Which I guess answers my question, since you don’t even know his name.”

  “He isn’t your stepbrother, and no, I don’t know him. Although, I’m not surprised that he comes with the package. Chala are always assigned their own personal Fate, to watch over them until they find a mate.”

  The car slid through the next intersection and Sydney held her breath as they nearly sideswiped a pickup truck doing the same thing. Gavin didn’t even break a sweat.

  “William is too my stepbrother,” Sydney replied once they were safely through the intersection and her heart dislodged itself from her throat. She ignored the rest of what he said, since none of it made any sense anyway. “His mother married my father when I was thirteen. They both died when I was sixteen.”

  “How?”

  “Home invasion. Criminals who meant to break in and steal our TV and stuff, but when they discovered my dad and stepmom were home, they killed them and then took off, without even taking anything.”

  “Where were you when this happened?”

  “William and I had gone on vacation with one of his aunts. I didn’t have any family except my dad, so my stepmom’s family felt sorry for me and let me tag along on their family vacations sometimes.”

  Gavin snorted. “Feeling sorry for you isn’t why they took you away at that time, Chala. I’m sure they knew, or at least suspected the attack was coming, and they knew they had to protect you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It was a home invasion. I still have the police report. And why do you keep calling me ‘Chala’? What does that mean, anyway?”

  “The word loosely translates to mean Mother Goddess. Chala are very rare. Always have been. I wasn’t even sure there were any more left in the world, since the Rakshasa have been so intent upon destroying you.”

  “Mother Goddess?” Sydney laughed, slightly hysterically. “You think I’m some kind of goddess? I’m flattered and all, but come on. I’m about as ordinary as you can get.”

  “A disguise,” Gavin said dismissively. “I suppose your Fate should be congratulated for that. He’s done a decent job of hiding you from the Rakshasa—from even me, and I’m a Light One. Well, a cursed Rakshasa, but it’s all the same in the end. How old are you, anyway?”

  “None of your business.” Sydney sniffed. “What’s a Rakshasa?”

  “Shape-shifter. The dark kind. The ones who like to snack on human bones.”

  She shook her head. “Shape-shifters aren’t real.”

  Gavin reached across the seat and squeezed her thigh.

  Sydney smacked his hand away.

  “You feel pretty real to me.”

  “You’re an idiot. I’m not a Rakshasa.”

  “No, you aren’t. You’re a Light One. Actually, you’re a Chala. The rarest type of Light One.”

  “I’m not a shape-shifter. I’m not a Chala or whatever you call it, either. I’m just Sydney Amataya, ordinary girl.”

  “Regardless of what you look like, you are far from ordinary, Chala.”

  Sydney’s lips thinned as she absorbed the insult in his words. She looked ordinary, did she?

  “In fact,” Gavin continued, oblivious to her annoyance, “you are really quite extraordinary. Quite possibly the only one of your kind left in the world. And I get to claim you as my mate.” He sounded almost giddy at the prospect, as if he’d won a life-size stuffed animal at the fair.

  “I’m not a prize,” Sy
dney muttered darkly. “And you can’t just claim me.”

  “Sure I can. Is this the house?”

  Sydney looked out the windshield and nodded.

  Gavin whipped the car into the driveway of the basic brick ranch home she shared with William, and skidded to a stop inches from the closed garage door. Ignoring her completely, he unfolded his tall frame from the driver’s seat, strode up the steps of the front porch, and headed toward the door.

  Sydney climbed out of the car and hurried after him. “Wait,” she said, recalling that he actually did not know her stepbrother. “I should probably warn you—”

  The words were out a scant second too late.

  The front door opened and a hulking figure loomed behind the glass storm door. Gavin’s steps faltered as his gaze swept over the closely cropped blond hair, smooth-shaven face, narrowed brown eyes, and rigid set of the thick jaw. His gaze travelled south, to take in the muumuu decorated with cabbage-sized flowers visible under a hot-pink satin robe. Thick, tree trunk-like, shaven legs could be seen under the hem of the muumuu, and feet that were at least a size thirteen were shoved into clearly custom-made hot-pink high-heeled slippers with a fluffy, pink ball of puff on top.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Gavin said as he turned to face Sydney, with an accusatory look in his eye. “This is your Fate?”

  “This is my stepbrother,” she retorted as she shoved past him, jerked open the storm door and allowed herself to be pulled into a hug by the huge man on the other side.

  “Fuck me.” Gavin stepped inside behind her.