by Nina Bangs
She barely had time to draw in a deep breath of courage before Al freed his soul. He loomed above her in the darkness, a forty-foot-long, sixteen-foot-high prehistoric monster with four-inch serrated teeth and short arms with clawed, three-fingered hands. It was too dark for her to see the human form within the beast. Jenna took only a moment to appreciate the total weirdness of standing next to an ancient predator while she watched cars whiz across the nearby Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
When she glanced around, Shen was gone. He was probably back in snake form slithering toward the ship.
A million uncertainties flashed through her mind at warp speed. They were near Market Street. No matter how late it was, cars still rolled along. What were the chances that no one would notice a battle between the Earth’s greatest predators and an immortal who probably wouldn’t hesitate to launch a sound-and-light show?
They had a big open parking lot to cross. The few cars there must belong to Eight’s people. But no one could convince her that Eight didn’t know they were coming. He could just zap himself out of there as he’d done at the museum.
Fin was an uncertainty. Did he have the strength to take down any ward Eight managed to throw up? Could he cloak his people until they at least got to the ship?
And then there was their very own Unseelie prince. He was the true wild card.
Jenna traded a brief glance—very brief—with the Fae prince. “Time to take this show on the road.”
Chapter Nineteen
Jenna followed blindly behind Al, running to keep up with his giant stride. She couldn’t see past his huge body, and even though she knew the raptors must be close behind them, she couldn’t see or hear them. She resisted the urge to glance back to make sure everyone was still there.
Al didn’t bother trying to be sneaky as he strode toward the ramp leading onto the ship. Not that anything as big as his Allosaurus could “sneak” anywhere. The ground vibrated with each step.
And in the eternity it took to cross the parking lot, Jenna thought of many things—how easy it would be for someone to kill her once she emerged from Al’s shadow, what she’d regret most if she died, what she’d regret most if he died.
It all came down to one truth. She loved him and she should have told him so. Too late now. The truth would only distract him at a bad time. But afterward, she’d tell him. And there would be an afterward. She’d make it happen.
Maybe he’d just look at her blankly when she told him. Then she’d smile a lot as she caught the first flight back to Houston. And she’d keep smiling because, well, life went on. Didn’t it?
Jenna felt when Al picked up his pace. The ground vibrated faster. Someone somewhere must be cloaking them, because Eight and his cronies should have been on deck by now firing away. Nonhumans weren’t dumb. They’d have guns. And where were the lookouts?
Al took the ramp in one stride. Which was a good thing, because it probably would have crumpled under his weight if he’d spent any more time on it.
On each side of the ramp, she spotted the bodies of several werewolves. Guess Eight did have lookouts. Shen’s work? He must be one lethal snake.
And then violence exploded. Al was already moving along the deck toward the bell when Eight and the rest of his recruits erupted from below. The immortal didn’t target Al or her. He couldn’t touch Jenna, and he knew from the museum that it’d be tough to bring down Al.
So as his assorted vampires, werewolves, demons, and unidentified nonhuman entities tried to get to her, Eight took aim at the raptors.
But Utah and Tor were determined moving targets. They leaped past Al and raced in different directions. Eight’s power blasts left a fiery trail of destruction but didn’t quite catch up with either raptor.
Al moved his massive body forward while fighting to protect Jenna. His tail swept charging werewolves aside at the same time he ripped a vampire into bloody bits.
Jenna was officially freaked. She’d never thought it was possible to be this scared and still be alive. When a demon took flight, beating its leathery wings madly as it gained height and then plunging toward her, she shrieked. Al was involved with other attackers. He wouldn’t be able to help her.
Then Jenna heard a strange cry that jerked her attention away from the demon. Before she could even wonder what it was, a huge shape plummeted from the dark sky. With a wingspan of what had to be close to forty feet and a huge head ending in a long, long beak, she didn’t have to see the human form within the beast to know that Q had arrived. He skewered the demon and flung it far out into the Delaware River. The demon would take a few minutes to recover, precious minutes that would get her closer to the bell.
Suddenly, something rose from the water beside the boat. Something so horrific that everyone paused to stare. The whole of the creature was too amazing to take in all at once.
Jenna felt as if her heart was about to explode from her chest, her breaths came in panting gulps. Oh. My. God.
It was almost half as long as the ship. Huge head. Teeth that had to be eight inches long. It lunged after the demon and clamped those enormous teeth onto him. Then it dragged the demon beneath the now-red-tinged water.
Kione had done his job. Lio was one pissed off Liopleurodon. He’d make sure that any enemies who dropped into the water wouldn’t rejoin the fight.
Then the scene on deck became a maelstrom of twisting bodies and bloody death.
At some point Eight climbed the middle mast. He balanced high above them and shouted his defiance. “You will not take my ship.”
He accompanied his prediction by sending streamers of fire across the surface of the water, forcing Lio farther out into the river. Then he caught one of the raptors with a blast of energy that spiraled him off the ship and all the way across the parking lot. A bunch of demons crowded around the ramp to make sure he didn’t get back on the ship.
Uh-oh. Al had stopped moving. He was too big to go any farther without damaging the ship so much that she wouldn’t be able to reach the bell.
Jenna was able to crawl around him while he blocked as much of the area as he could and dealt out destruction
Too bad several werewolves were near the bell. Checkmate. What the hell would she do now? Al didn’t want her to try for it. She could feel his fear for her pounding against her will. But she didn’t have a choice. She had to go on.
Jenna didn’t even see the werewolf that flattened her. All she knew was that suddenly she was looking up into a pair of slathering jaws filled with huge teeth.
She heard Al’s crazed roar a second before he lunged forward. There was a snapping sound at the same time that the wolf disappeared from sight. Its blood sprayed her face, her hair, and her coat just as she realized what the snapping sound had been.
Looking up, she screamed as the nearest mast crashed to the deck. It missed her, it missed Al, and that’s all that mattered. She rolled onto her stomach and crawled toward the bell as Al fought nightmare creatures above her.
Sobbing, she was finally there. Dragging herself to her feet she reached for the rope attached to the bell’s clapper.
That’s when she saw Utah. He’d leaped past Eight’s remaining recruits to reach her. Now as she watched, his soul faded and he stood there in his human form. He looked as shocked as she did.
“I don’t know…” He raked shaking fingers through his blond hair, returning its spikes to their former glory. “Rap died as a human. What I’m feeling is human emotion.” His blue eyes blazed with sorrow and hate. “I can’t hold it all in.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “I need to witness justice for him as a man.”
Drawing his lips away from his teeth, he glared up to where Eight stared down at them. “The prick doesn’t have a clue what’s about to happen.” He lowered his gaze to her. “Do it. Now.”
“No. You do it.” Where the hell had that come from? But even as she said it, she knew it was the right thing to do. She didn’t need to be Kickbutt Heroine of the Universe. Even though she’d been i
n Fin’s vision, she wasn’t the important part of the equation, the bell was. This moment belonged to Rap’s brothers.
Eagerness glittered in Utah’s blue eyes. “You sure?”
Eight must have realized that something suspicious was going on because he suddenly loosed a thunderous blast of energy. It hit right behind Jenna and Utah. She glanced back in time to see Al stagger and fall.
“No!” She grabbed Utah. “Ring the damn bell. Eight times.” And then she scrambled back to Al.
Confused, Al had returned to human form. He didn’t even notice as Tor, still a raptor, leaped over him so he could protect Utah as he rang the bell.
Jenna knelt beside him, leaning over to shield him from Eight. The immortal could kill Al while he was in human form, but he couldn’t do a damn thing to her directly.
Eight shouted his triumph from above them, where he still clung to one of the two remaining masts. “You’re beaten. You’re all beaten. There are more of my workers left than yours. Where’s your great and mighty leader Fin? Where’re your reinforcements? All I see are two of the Eleven in human form, one stupid human, and one raptor. Oh, and I guess you can count the big dumb monster in the parking lot. He doesn’t matter though, because I’m not going back to shore. I’ll create a new mast, and then I’m sailing this ship out of here.”
Eight glanced around. “I suppose the Fae prince is skulking around somewhere, and I really wanted to keep the Liopleurodon. What a magnificent sea creature. But I suppose one doesn’t always get what one wants in life.” He started to climb down from his perch.
Awareness returned to Al’s eyes. They blazed into hers. What she read there made her weak. Then she heard the bell.
Utah yanked on the rope attached to the clapper, and with each ring he shouted, “This is for Rap.”
By the third ring, Eight realized what was happening. But it was too late; he’d begun to shimmer. He screamed his fury. “No! What the fuck are you doing? You can’t send me back. I have to sail my ship into the Atlantic. I’ve waited millions of years to ride the fucking waves.”
The shimmer grew brighter and brighter. Eight slid down the rest of the mast and tried to cover his ears with his hands. Rocking back and forth he shouted, “No, no, no!”
The bell rang for the sixth time, and Eight began to break into millions of sparkling bits. Faster and faster he disintegrated until only his mouth remained.
And at the end, he stopped screaming. “Free my seagull,” were his last words.
As the bell rang for the eighth time, the millions of sparkling pieces of what had been Eight spiraled into a shining ball of light and disappeared.
The shocked silence lasted only until Eight’s recruits realized they were on their own. They charged down the ramp—no one was willing to take a chance with Lio—and were met by Gig, Jude, and his five vampires. The ones who tried to fly away found Q waiting for them.
Jenna didn’t watch. She could only stare at Al. Until she felt a presence above her. She looked up.
Kione stared down at them. “I’ve repaid my debt, woman.”
“Thanks. We don’t know anything about you. Any little insights you want to leave with us?” What a stupid question, but Jenna was at the dumb-question stage of exhaustion.
Without answering, he flung his cloak wide. Jenna gasped, and Al cursed. Kione wore no shirt, and every inch of exposed skin was covered with angry red welts that seemed to pulse with a life of their own.
“What the hell happened to you?” Al’s sympathy was real.
Kione didn’t answer his question. He stared into the darkness. “A reminder that power always has its price. Tell that to your leader.” And then he was gone.
The proof of Kione’s suffering along with every other horrible thing she’d witnessed left Jenna feeling numb. Quiet had settled over the dock. Al rose and helped Jenna to her feet. Then they picked their way past the carnage and destruction. But she stopped Al before they got off the ship.
“The seagull.”
Al nodded and disappeared belowdecks. A minute later he returned with the seagull’s cage. He put the cage on the deck and opened it. The seagull stepped out, glanced around, and then took flight. They watched it disappear into the darkness.
“He loved the bird. Do you think that counted? I mean, after all the evil he committed?” She pushed a strand of her hair away from her face and tried not to think about the blood coating it.
Now that her life wasn’t hanging in the balance, Jenna realized the wind blowing in off the Delaware was damn cold. She pulled up her collar and stuck her hands into her pocket.
Al shrugged. “I guess every little bit counts. The sea was his weakness. If he wasn’t so determined to save this ship, if he’d just disappeared when we attacked, he wouldn’t be heading home right now.” He guided her off the ship.
They’d only taken a few steps when Utah and Tor caught up with them.
“Thank you.”
Jenna didn’t know whether Utah or Tor had spoken, but it didn’t matter. There were no shadows in their eyes now. And for that she was glad. “Wherever he is, I know that Rap is cheering you to night.”
Al wrapped his arm around her waist and guided her away from the parking lot and what was happening there. When he reached a quiet spot where no one could see them, he stopped.
“I learned something to night. When I saw that wolf on top of you and knew you might die, I packed a lot of regrets into a few seconds.”
Jenna tried not to hold her breath.
He trailed his fingers along her jaw, leaving behind a path of warmth and hope. “I regretted spending so much time being mad at Fin and the whole world that I didn’t leave room for other feelings.”
“Uh-huh. Feelings.” What feelings?
“I didn’t want to like you. You were part of my punishment, someone who was keeping me from my nightly rampages. The ones when I pretended that every demon, every vampire, every werewolf I destroyed was really Fin.”
“You hate him that much? Why?” Jenna wasn’t comfortable with that side of Al; but love was nothing if not flexible. She wasn’t perfect either, and that was okay.
Something broke free inside her. She would never be the best at anything, but she could be damn good at something. And that something would be loving Al, if he’d let her.
Al shrugged. “I’ve never understood why. Maybe Fin knows, but he’s not the sharing kind. But we’re not talking about Fin here.”
All movement seemed to stop, even her breathing, as Jenna waited.
“For a while my human emotions were too new for me to recognize them. I understand them now.” He leaned forward, touching his lips to hers, murmuring his message. “I love you, Jenna Maloy. What you do with that love is up to you, but it’s there for the taking.”
“Consider it taken, Al Endeka. I love you, and I want to walk into the heart of your beast.”
Al stepped back as though giving her room to breathe, to run away if she chose. “You’ll be immortal. We’ll be bonded forever, however long that might be. Think about your family. Either you or Kelly will eventually have to explain things to them. How will they feel?” He took a deep breath. “And claiming a piece of my soul can be a one-way trip to insanity. At least that’s what Fin said.” He seemed hesitant to let her make the journey.
“It’s my choice, and I choose to take the chance. I love you way too much to let a hike through your past stop me. And my family only wants Kelly and me to be happy. When the time comes, they’ll accept our choices.”
Happiness turned his hazel eyes luminous. “Ty and Kelly went through an ancient ceremony.” His expression grew puzzled. “I don’t know where the ceremony came from, but it felt right at the time. Something else that Fin didn’t explain.”
Jenna wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest. “We don’t need a ceremony that you can’t remember. We don’t need a lot of people watching.” She looked up at him. “Let’s do it now.”
&nbs
p; Al scanned the area. They were out of sight of everyone. He nodded. When she would’ve spoken, he placed a finger over her lips.
She couldn’t help it. Jenna slid her tongue over the tip of his finger and watched his gaze darken.
“Don’t distract me.”
He clasped his bottom lip with his teeth and then released it, providing a distraction of his own. The damp sheen of it stirred something primal and sexual in her.
His gaze grew serious. “If at any time you can’t go on, just turn and walk back out. I want you safe.”
“I won’t be turning around, and I’ll always be safe with you.” She was sure of that.
There was nothing more to be said. Al backed up farther and then released his soul.
Jenna decided she’d never be able to see the Allosaurus materialize without experiencing a breathless moment of wonder. She controlled her need to gulp. The massive body looked way too substantial. She’d have to trust that when she reached him she wouldn’t just bounce off his body. But then she saw the man waiting within the beast and knew everything would be okay.
Taking a deep breath, she began walking. And when she reached his beast, Jenna took a leap of faith and didn’t slow down. She passed through him and into him. Then the world as she knew it disappeared.
His beast’s world was a blur of vibrant colors and unspeakable savagery. But it didn’t shock her. She knew this world because of him and what she’d read of this time. Still, treading in his pack’s footsteps, watching them bring down a hapless plant eater, smelling the scents of blood and hunger, and then seeing them feed, almost made her bolt.
And when the Al of that long-past time turned his massive head to look at her, she froze. Fear trembled through her as she scanned the area for a tree big enough to climb. Then she forced herself to relax, to remember. She was a spectator to his life, not a participant. She wouldn’t die here.
As the pattern of his beast’s life passed before her in ever-quickening scenes, she wondered why Fin would think it could drive her insane. It would be a weak woman who couldn’t survive this. She was feeling pretty smug about the whole thing and anxious for it all to be over so she could touch Al again.
