by Tessa Blake
She turned, figuring she could at least retrace her steps to someplace where she could get directions, and somewhere close by, a woman screamed.
It was one of those moments to either think or act; somewhat uncharacteristically, she chose the second option. The scream had seemed to come from off to her right; she looked cautiously down the nearest side street and saw nothing, then moved halfway down the block in the same direction and peered into a parking garage.
The wan illumination of the overhead lights barely penetrated into the far corner of the garage, but it was enough to show her that this was trouble of the worst sort. A petite blond woman wearing a tiny red skirt and bandeau top was trying her damnedest to pull out of the grip of a stocky, bald guy in a black sweatshirt, while another guy, this one in a T-shirt and baggy shorts, tried to trap her wildly flailing legs.
Not that getting away from them would have been particularly helpful anyway, not when there were two other guys standing ready to catch her if she did.
Lily thought about leaving … and then she remembered that she was a woman, and thought about how that could have been her in there, if she’d walked by five minutes sooner.
“Hey,” she shouted, and took two steps inside. “I called the cops! Let her go!”
In her head, this was perfect. It was going to send the guys scattering to the four winds, and then she’d help the woman to safety.
In reality, the two guys not currently holding a struggling woman came after her at a dead run. She had time to think, Oh, shit! and turn to run—and then they were on her.
She screamed and got backhanded for her trouble, which pissed her off enough that she started kicking and punching in earnest. But there were two of them and one of her, and it was a matter of less than a minute before she was hauled back into the garage and pushed up against a wall next to the other woman.
Their eyes met as one of the guys holding Lily slid his hand up under Lily’s shirt and copped a quick, assessing feel, the zipper at the wrist of his red jacket scraping against her skin. Lily felt like she might be going a little mad, and was surprised that no matching expression could be found in the other woman’s eyes; the other woman just looked—what?
Resigned, Lily decided. She looks like that scream was all the fight she had in her.
The fourth guy, who was decked out in a blue wifebeater and—of all the crazy-ass things—yellow flip-flops, let out a yelp then swore and let go of Lily for a moment. “Fuck! Something bit me!”
“What the fuck, dude?” Red Jacket said, though at least it got him to take his hand off Lily’s boob so he could restrain the arm Wifebeater had let loose.
“I don’t know— I thought it was a cat, but then— I don’t know. Fuck!” Wifebeater was rubbing his forearm, and it did indeed have a giant, reddening welt on it.
“Never mind your fucking arm, for Christ’s sake,” Red Jacket said. “Get one of her arms.”
Wifebeater complied, recapturing Lily’s left arm and pinning it against the wall. He looked at her with a lecherous grin. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, getting in close to her face. “We’re gonna party, okay?”
Okay? she thought. It is most certainly not okay. Has he lost his mind?
Rather than get into a debate about his sanity, she spat in his face.
Not smart, as it turned out, since he backhanded her—this was her evening for being backhanded, it seemed, which would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been so terrifying. To think that thirty minutes ago she’d been in a however-many-thousands of dollars per night hotel suite with the hottest guy she’d ever met, eating gourmet food and trying to decide whether to cap off her night with an hour in the solarium or the jacuzzi.
Now she was being smacked around by a couple of lowlifes—and the smacking around was actually the least of her worries.
She tried again to get a limb loose, but after almost a full minute of struggling her hardest, she got nowhere; they had her arms well-pinned and Red Jacket was pressed against her legs in a manner that was both repulsive and impossible to escape.
She cast her gaze over to the other woman, and swallowed convulsively when she saw her shirt was in shreds and her skirt was rucked up completely over her hips—and the furious kicking with which the woman was keeping her attackers at bay was becoming less effective as they used the sheer weight of themselves to press her against the wall behind her.
At least I’m not wearing a skirt, she thought—as though that was going to make any difference at all, in the end.
Closing her eyes, she sent up a wordless prayer for help.
14
Gabriel stood at the window, a glass of Drambuie in his hand, staring down at the fountains below without really seeing them. The sky was fully dark now; night had fallen, and Lily was out there in it, doing who-knew-what.
It was infuriating, actually.
Her admission had rocked him to the core. At first, his indignation had been righteous indeed, and that indignation had carried him through the half hour following her departure, when he’d finished his meal and poured himself an after-dinner drink. He’d sat, fuming, in the sitting area, fully expecting her back at any moment—but it was coming up on an hour now, and he was starting to get worried.
To say nothing of the guilt. Because really, once he’d calmed down a little, he had to admit—if only to himself—that the fact that he hadn’t spiked her drink didn’t mean her overall premise wasn’t correct. He had done something to make her more open to his advances. Only that first night, yes, and even then only to dance, no more—but so what? It was still a bit much for him to behave as though she’d paid him some unwarranted insult when, in fact, there was a grain of truth to what she said.
He drained his glass and set it on the table nearby with a faint click. It was time, he thought, to swallow his pride a bit and find her. He couldn’t tell her she was right—how could he, when she would have to believe the impossible to even understand what he was telling her?—but he could at least tell her he wasn’t angry and that he understood where she was coming from.
Trust was a fragile thing, and he hadn’t done anything to earn hers. Who was he to demand it?
Especially when she was that littlest bit correct…
He turned from the window and pulled out his phone. Text or call? Text, he decided. It was less demanding, and she didn’t need him making demands on her right now.
He tapped out a brief message: I understand why you thought as you did, and I’m sorry we fought. I wish you’d come back.
His heart sank when he heard her phone signal the incoming text. Shit.
A quick look into her room revealed the phone right there in the damn valet. He picked it up and resisted the urge to look through it. Nothing currently in there would help him figure out where she was, and peeking at her texts with her friend—something he was ashamed to admit he was powerfully curious about—was a violation of privacy.
It was powerfully tempting, though.
He dropped the phone into his own pocket, and went back out into the suite to call the concierge and ask if anyone had called a cab for her, or taken note of what direction she’d gone in. It was a long-shot, but the staff was paid well to keep an eye on who came and went from the most expensive suites, so it was possible.
No one had noticed her, though. He sat and looked out the windows again, feeling frustrated and a little helpless. She was probably fine. Why wouldn’t she be? She lived in New York City, and probably knew how to handle herself.
Why, then, did he have a low-grade tension in his neck when he thought about her? Why did he feel almost as if something was urging him to take action, calling him in a voice he couldn’t quite hear?
There was something wrong, damn it. Whether through some sixth sense, or some connection with her, or just good old-fashioned intuition, he knew something was wrong.
The certainty sizzled along his nerves, and for a moment he thought he might just go down and follow his whim. Wander the city an
d see if he came across her. But that was madness. He wasn’t a GPS, for crying out loud, and he couldn’t even really tell what direction the feeling was coming from.
The air pressure in the room dropped, and the familiar sulfur smell preceded Pusboil’s appearance. It winked into existence at Gabriel’s feet, its eyes a bit wild. “You have to come,” it said without preamble. “There’s bad trouble.”
“I don’t have time for—”
“It’s the girl. Some men are—”
Gabriel was at the door in a flash. “Show me,” he said, and followed Pusboil out and toward the elevator.
15
Red Jacket rocked against her, and Lily felt the same resignation she’d seen in the other woman’s eyes take up residence in herself.
Some things you just couldn’t fight.
And then someone came in through the side entrance, fast. Faster than she’d ever seen anyone move in her life.
And it was Gabriel.
He was coming straight at her. In the second she had to realize it was him, their eyes met, and she saw murder in his. She’d never understood what that saying meant until now, but she saw death in his eyes as surely as if he’d been the Grim Reaper himself.
He moved past her. For one confused second, she thought he was a hallucination or something—this was the part of the movie where the hero pulled the attackers off the heroine and smacked their heads together like coconuts, wasn’t it? So what was he doing?
What he was doing, apparently, was being smarter than her … and better at prioritizing. Wrapping a hand around Black Sweatshirt’s throat, he pulled him off the other woman with not a moment to spare; given her attire, her location, and the lateness of the hour, her virtue was likely to be nonexistent, but apparently Gabriel thought—and Lily agreed—that whether she chose to compromise it further really ought to be up to her.
Baggy Shorts gave a shriek, but Lily couldn’t really see what had happened—and then the shriek spiraled up an octave … and up … and up. Then Gabriel shifted slightly to the right and Lily saw he had quite literally lifted the guy up by the crotch of his pants and was holding him about four feet off the ground, body bowed back in agony, long greasy hair just barely brushing the ground. Judging from the screaming, that wasn’t just fabric Gabriel had bunched in his fist. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Lily wondered how well everything was still attached in there.
Gabriel let go and the guy fell in a heap on the ground, crying and puking. Black Sweatshirt, meanwhile, was still immobilized by Gabriel’s grip around his throat.
How is he doing that? she thought frantically.
Then, incredibly, Gabriel picked the guy up and threw him—literally threw him, a good ten feet—against the concrete wall adjacent to them, so hard Lily heard bones crunch. Black Sweatshirt hit the ground as his friend had done, but there was no crying or puking; he was soundly unconscious, and the way the side of his head was dented, it didn’t look like he’d be waking up any time soon—if at all.
The two guys holding her had let go—only about forty-five seconds had passed since Gabriel entered the garage, but you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see whose side he was on, or how badly everything was going for anyone not on that side—and they were both turning tail to run when Gabriel caught Red Jacket on the back of the skull with a roundhouse kick right out of a karate movie.
Red Jacket crumpled, and Gabriel reached out, grabbed Wifebeater by the back of his neck, plucked him right out of his flip-flops, and turned him to face Lily.
“Tell the lady you’re sorry,” he said, and Lily couldn’t even recognize his voice. It had gone deep with fury, and his eyes—
His eyes were red. Glowing. Red.
Wifebeater moved his mouth, perhaps attempting to produce the apology that had been demanded of him, but nothing came out.
From the other direction, there was a rustling sound, and Lily and Gabriel both turned to see the other woman attempting to get the tatters of her clothes to cover her. Gabriel stretched out his arm, put his hand on her shoulder.
The woman went stiff and stopped moving.
Gabriel turned back to Lily.
“Did he put his hands on you?” he asked her, and it took her a minute to understand what he’d asked, the words were that close to a growl.
“Y— Yes—” she stammered. His eyes. What was going on with his eyes?
With the hand that wasn’t holding him immobile, Gabriel reached out and broke Wifebeater’s wrist. Just … snapped it. Like a twig. The man screamed, a long, terrified sound that was cut short when Gabriel shook him like a mother cat shaking a kitten by the neck.
Then he broke his other wrist.
This time, shaking him didn’t stop his screaming, so Gabriel settled the matter by hurling him against the same wall he’d used to dispatch Black Sweatshirt, with much the same result: unconscious would-be rapist in a pile at the base of the wall.
With all four threats removed, Gabriel seemed momentarily at a loss, then he took a step toward her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“Your eyes,” she said. “Your eyes are glowing.”
He closed them, took a deep breath, let it out, opened them.
They were still glowing.
“I’m sure it’s the light,” he said.
She felt a high-pitched, frantic giggle bubble up out of her and barely recognized her own voice.
“They’re glowing,” she said, and shook her head when he took another step toward her. “Don’t touch me.”
He looked sad—how could someone look sad when they had glowing eyes and had just destroyed four human beings in the span of sixty seconds?—and turned to the other woman. She didn’t object when he approached her, so he went in close, speaking softly, putting a hand on her shoulder again, but more gently this time.
Maybe she was too traumatized to notice the eyes thing, or to care about the violence she had just witnessed—but Lily didn’t think so. Gabriel had done something to her, something to make her stand there like a mannequin when by all rights she should have already been a mile away.
Lily could hear him murmuring to the woman but couldn’t make out the words. The growling rumble of his voice seemed to be easing, though; he sounded more like himself every second. The woman nodded, seemed to be listening.
Then she put her face in her hands and started to cry.
Gabriel took out his phone and spent a moment swiping and tapping, then pulled off his coat—a coat which Lily figured had cost something in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars—and wrapped it around the woman, buttoning it at the collar as gently as any mother had ever bundled a child into a jacket.
He finished saying whatever he was saying to her, and tucked her hair behind her ear. She looked up at him and Lily’s heart tripped a little—the naked gratitude was hard to watch.
The two conversed in quiet voices for another minute or two, and then a boxy black SUV with an Uber sticker in the window pulled in and came to a stop beside them. Gabriel opened the back door and the woman climbed in—still wearing Gabriel’s coat, Lily noted. After a brief exchange with the driver, Gabriel shut the door and the SUV pulled back out onto the street.
Gabriel watched it go, shoulders slumped a little, then turned and walked back to Lily’s side. “Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said, softly. “I won’t touch you.”
“What was that?” she said, shaking—still pressed against the wall where she’d almost been violated, because at least it was rock solid. The whole rest of her life felt like it was on shifting sand right now.
“Can we just go back to the hotel?” he said. “We can talk there, I promise, but I’d really like to be anywhere but here right now.”
She looked at the crumpled bodies around them—Baggy Shorts had managed to evacuate at some point, but the other three were still down—and nodded, shortly. “Okay.”
She followed him back to the Bellagio meekly, and didn’t ask any more questions until they were safely ba
ck in the suite.
But as soon as the door closed behind them, she swung around and poked him in the chest. “Explain that to me.”
“There’s nothing to explain, Lily,” he said. “I assume you wouldn’t have preferred I just left things as they were?”
And she could see he would dismiss her, and evade any questions if he could.
So she said it, the thing she’d been thinking of all the way back to the hotel.
It was crazy, but she said it anyway: “You’re not human.”
16
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gabriel said, but he didn’t look her in the eye, “or what you think you saw—”
“I saw you,” Lily said, “tossing four guys around, one hand each, like they were rag dolls.” She knew she wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t sure she was entirely sane, either, but that was not the point right now. What he’d done wasn’t possible. “No one is that strong.”
“I am.”
“No one normal is that strong,” she insisted. “And I’m not talking, like, ‘Oh, I work out.’ What … what are you?”
The question hung in the air, like it had a life of its own. Just by being spoken, the words divided her life; there was the part up until now, when things were how they’d always been, and the part from now on, where she admitted there was more to the world than she’d known. Because what had happened went beyond abnormal. What he’d done wasn’t something a human being could do.
Until now, her world had been … regular. Now, her world held the unhuman.
Maybe being so quick to accept it meant she watched too much television; if that was the case, then so be it.
Gabriel wasn’t human.
He also wasn’t answering her question, so she asked it again. “I said, what are you?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. “That’s an odd way to phrase a question, Lily.”
“It’s the exact right way to phrase the question,” she shot back. “If I’m gonna be inside an episode of Supernatural or whatever, fine. I can live with that. What I can’t live with is not knowing, being ignorant. I want you to tell me the truth, now.”
