I’d stopped at the Wolf Inn to ask about finding someone named Elias, but that annoying jerk at the bar had made me feel vulnerable with the way he’d put his hand on my shoulder a little too firmly, as though I belonged to him. After that, asking about Elias there in a public place like the bar didn’t seem to be the best idea. I supposed I could have asked that Milo guy, but there were too many people standing around with big ears, and I was afraid someone might hear and figure out who I was. I’d only arrived in Dark Moon Falls last night, and finding Elias was my first priority. Though, I didn’t know who I could trust.
As I came out of a sharp turn in the road, I stepped on the gas. The car accelerated but then quickly slowed. Perplexed as to why I was slowing down instead of going faster, I pressed the pedal to the floor, but nothing happened. Frantic, I pumped my foot against it, but the car continued to decelerate. Unable to do anything else, I steered toward the shoulder until the car came to a complete stop.
I twisted the key in the ignition and gave it some more gas, but it didn’t even crank. Didn’t make a sound. “Great.” I looked out at the vast expanse of nothing except darkness. “Not the best place to die on me.”
I rifled through my purse for my phone and pulled it out. No bars at the top meant no service. Being the ever positive, glass half full kind of gal of the 21st century that I was, I entered a search for a tow truck service, but positive thinking or not, nothing happened.
A few minutes later, the glare of headlights caught my eye in my rearview mirror, and I tensed as they slowed down and stopped several yards behind me. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or scared. What if it was some ax murderer, or worse, that creep from the bar?
From the position of the lights still shining brightly, it looked like a large truck. Keeping my eyes peeled to the mirror, I prayed that it was a tow truck.
The vehicle’s door opened and a tall figure stepped out. Here I was, sitting on the side of the road in the pitch dark of night with a dead car battery, or whatever the problem was, and a stranger walking toward my vehicle. Could I trust him?
I recalled my mom’s last words to me: Don’t trust anyone. I glanced at the photo on my phone’s lock screen. It was a picture of Mom, taken a few months before she died. We’d been fooling around with our new phones, and I’d taken that picture without her knowledge. I was glad too, because it captured her exactly the way I remembered her. She had a faraway look on her face, and I’ve always wondered what she’d been thinking of when I snapped the picture. I wished I’d asked her.
Even though Milo had assured me that this was a safe place, it was Dark Moon Falls, and I’d heard stories. Frightening stories, I might add. Aside from shifters, there were witches and even vampires. Of course, some of them simply considered themselves to be gifted and not like my father at all. And who knew which ones were good or dangerous? Like that guy at the bar who’d been harassing me. I’d encountered his kind before. He was definitely not one of the good guys. At least I could tell that much.
I stared into the rearview mirror and watched as the man moved closer to my car. He had a smooth, easy gait. Could you tell from the way someone walked if they were dangerous? I shook my head at the absurd thought and glanced down to my right at Leonardo, the dagger I always kept wedged in between my seat and the middle console.
I’d placed it there when I fled from home to escape the goons who’d murdered my father and then my mother. My mom had been the one who’d named the dagger. She had instantly called the slick Italian steel a work of art. Smiling, she had held it up, the sharp tip pointing toward the sky, and said, “Skye, meet Leo,” and then handed the dagger to me. Leo’s smooth, shiny blade had a nice sharp point that didn’t take much effort when penetrating skin.
The guy walked right up to my side of the car and stood staring into the window. I looked up, and to my surprise, it was the guy who’d helped me out at the bar.
He followed me? Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. That seemed a bit creepy even if he had come across as a nice guy at the bar.
He tapped his finger against the window and smiled. Sexy grin or not, I still wasn’t entirely sure of his intentions, so I didn’t move.
He’d been helpful to me at the bar, but again, he was a shifter, and a wolf shifter was not to be trusted. I had a sixth sense and had always been able to scent werewolves and vampires. Most likely, another trait inherited from my father.
He’d seemed nice back at the club. Even saved me from having to break that bastard’s arm when he wouldn’t remove his hand from my shoulder. Not something I wanted to do in a public place.
But why had this Milo guy followed me?
Back at the bar, when his beautiful, dark eyes had skimmed over my face and settled on my lips, I couldn’t do much except excuse myself from his presence. Otherwise, I would have kept staring at him, unable to form a coherent sentence. There was nothing worse than being reduced to a blubbering idiot whenever an attractive guy confronted me.
And now here he was standing outside of my car window in the dead of night on a dark road on the outskirts of Dark Moon Falls.
When I didn’t open the window, he tapped the glass again, then made a rolling motion with his hand. I shook my head, no.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice sounded muffled through the glass.
Come on, Skye, get it under control. Even if this guy’s intentions weren’t good, I knew how to defend myself, plus I had Leo. I unsnapped the strap securing Leo inside his leather sheath and wrapped my right hand around the bone hilt of the dagger and with my left forefinger, pushed the window control button down, lowering the glass about two inches. It was a good thing my car had an accessory delay feature, or I would have had to open the door instead.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Why can’t he just leave me alone and go?
“Is something wrong with your car?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want his help. Well, maybe I did, but I didn’t want him to know I was stranded if his intentions weren’t the best.
“Then why are you stopped here? You do know it’s not safe to hang out here in the dark, right?”
Oh, God. Yes, I knew it. I tilted my face up to the opened part of the window. “That’s why I’m not rolling the window down any further.”
He nodded. “Okay.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and glanced up the road, then back down the other way. “Listen, I can help if you’re stuck.”
I sighed and tightened my grip around Leo and rolled the window down another inch. “I’m not sure what the problem is. It suddenly just stopped.”
“I smell gas. Maybe there’s a loose connection to the fuel tank. I can check it out. Let me get my flashlight. I’ll be right back.”
I rolled the window back up and watched him through the side mirror as he started back to his truck. But before he even made it to the end of my car, he quickly pivoted and hurried back to my car. Without so much as a warning, he yanked the door off its hinges, tossing it to the ground.
And then he grabbed me as I screamed.
3
MILO
Man, she was difficult. But there was no time for arguments.
I heard something strange, off, something ticking, as I reached the back end of her car; the gas I’d smelled quickly igniting into a rush of flames underneath the chassis of her older Buick sedan.
There was no time for her to resist my help, so I used my wolf’s strength and tore the door off the hinges, then reached inside and grabbed her arm, yanking her out.
“Let go of me!” With her free hand, she stuck something fucking sharp and painful into my shoulder.
“Ow! Fuck, lady! Come on! You need to get out now! Your car’s on fire!” I backed away from the burning vehicle, tugging her with me, but before my foot had a chance to make contact with the asphalt, every particle, every cell, every molecule of my body flashed at lightning speed through the air. Our feet touched down on the dirt and the w
eeds across the road as the cells in my body fused back together as though they had never been apart.
Then a blast shattered through the darkened silence of the night, the explosion catapulting our bodies several more yards. I kept my grip on her as we sailed through the air again and landed in the grass, before tumbling down a short embankment and into the shrubs flanking the side of the mound. She landed under me when we stopped rolling, and when I realized I was squashing her, I splayed my hands on the ground—one on each side of her shoulders—holding me in a prone position above her as I looked down at her.
“Are you hurt?”
“I … I don’t think so.” She stared at me with wide, frightened blue eyes. So bright in the dark against her pale skin. “What happened?”
“Not sure. But a better question is, how did we end up all the way across the highway without our feet touching the ground? No … it was more like all the cells in our bodies flew at hyper-speed through the air and re-attached when we touched back down. And why the fuck did you stab me?” I still had my hands on either side of her, pinning her to the ground under me. Blood dripped down my chest. Luckily the blade hadn’t penetrated very deep.
“I …” She briefly glanced at my bloodstained shirt then shoved her hands at my chest. “Maybe you should get off of me before I stab you again.”
Her sexy, plump lips pursed in annoyance, and a small line formed between her brows as she glared up at my eyes. For a small instant, I thought of leaning down and kissing her. But I quickly let that idea go and lifted myself off of her. “As you wish.”
We both stood, and I rubbed my shoulder, the skin under my ripped shirt already starting to knit back together, but damn, it stung like a bitch. The transport sending my molecules into the air and reforming must have helped the healing, but I needed to shift to my wolf for it to mend completely. But that would have to wait. She was already freaked out; my shifting would probably send her over the edge.
She glanced up the hill toward the black smoke and the flames at what used to be her car. “Oh, God! How … what, why did my car blow up?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“What question?”
“What question? Lady, you are a piece of work ….” She frustrated the hell out of me the same way she had back at the bar, and I swiped my hand through my hair. “How did we get from your car to here without our feet touching the ground?”
She gazed back at the burning wreck and slowly shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
She let out an exaggerated sigh and scowled me, her gorgeous blue eyes narrowing to slits. “I mean, I don’t have an answer for you.” Her voice cracked a bit with the rise in her tone.
“Well, I sure as hell didn’t send us teleporting several yards through space. So, it must have been you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I was a little pissed off that she stood there, pretending not to know what she just did. She was either lying, possibly to protect herself, or she was in shock and honestly didn’t remember flashing our bodies away from the car. Hell, I’d only known this woman for approximately two minutes, not counting the few in the bar earlier, so I couldn’t assume either of those reasons were correct. Best to table that discussion for later. “You’re lucky I came by when I did. You would have died when the car blew up.”
She brushed dirt off the front of her blouse and pushed those midnight dark curls away from her face as she frowned. Then she studied me as though I was the reason her car blew up. At first, I thought she was going to cry. Or gasp at the fact that she almost fucking died if I hadn’t shown up. Or maybe even a thank you would have been appropriate.
But then she shocked the hell out of me when she asked, “Why were you following me?”
4
SKYE
My heart pounded so hard, surely it was about to make a hole in my chest, and I was having trouble catching my breath. My car had just blown up, and he was standing here with me. Milo from the bar. He had to have been following me. Why else would he be here? I swiped away the wetness on my cheeks and stared at him. I couldn’t believe he showed up here. Furthermore, I couldn’t believe I’d teleported both of us. I’d never done that before.
“I wasn’t following you!”
“It sure appeared like you were following me.”
“I mean, I guess I was behind you, but I wasn’t following you, per se. I was simply heading in the same direction. I didn’t even know it was you ahead of me, but when I saw the car slow down and pull over, I thought something might be wrong because no one stops in the middle of this road in the dark unless there is something wrong.”
I supposed that made sense. I took a step up the small embankment to look at my car. Flames consumed the entire inside, spurted out of the windows and from underneath the hood, as well as from under the chassis, devouring my vehicle. Still holding onto Leo’s hilt, I wrapped my hands around my arms to contain the tremble that began to rattle through me. Then it hit me. I would have still been inside if he hadn’t yanked me out.
He stepped up beside me, rubbing his shoulder. “You sure you’re okay?”
I shook my head. I honestly couldn’t say for sure, but I answered with, “I think so.” I turned to him. “Thanks.” I glanced at the blood on his shirt from where my blade punctured him. “I’m … sorry for stabbing you. I thought you were trying to hurt me.”
He nodded and stuck his other hand inside the pocket of his jeans and tugged out a phone, and glanced at it. “At least we’re in one of the rare spots along this road that has cell service.” He swiped it on with his thumb and pushed a button. “Yeah, we need the fire department and the sheriff … Yes, ma’am. We have a car on fire on Highway 89 midway between Main Street and Feather Falls Creek … Yes, we’re safe … Yes, we’ll wait here.” He ended the call.
“Why do we need the sheriff?”
He cleared his throat. “Your car just blew up. So … I think it’s wise to call the authorities, don’t you? Besides, I’ve got a hunch.”
“A hunch about what?”
“I heard some sort of ticking sound coming from your car. That’s what made me hurry back and pull you out.”
“You tore the door off.”
He chuckled. “Sorry about that. But I didn’t think we had time to argue about me being a stranger and all that.”
I sensed that he was a shifter, that and the fact that he could do such a thing so easily. It took superhuman strength to rip a car door off its hinges that way. “What type of shifter are you?”
He gave me a sideways glance, then stuck his hands in his pockets again in that non-threatening way. I think he did it because he thought maybe it eased the scariness of what he was. “I’m a wolf shifter.”
“I suppose you’re a member of the pack here in Dark Moon Falls?”
“Yeah.” He narrowed his eyes as he studied me. “How do you know about the pack?”
“Like you said earlier, it’s a small town. People talk.”
“Right. I’ve been away and not sure about everything that’s been happening around here lately.” He gazed at me. “What’s your name, anyway?”
I didn’t feel comfortable revealing my identity to a stranger, especially a wolf shifter, but he’d saved my life, so the least I could do was give him my first name. “It’s Skye.”
“Like your eyes.”
I frowned. It wasn’t the first time a guy had focused on my eyes, and it always made me uncomfortable. I knew they were a different sort of blue than most, but I’ve become immune to the pickup lines that men all seemed to use. You have something in your eye; oh wait, no, it’s just the sparkle from their striking blueness, or, now I know why it’s cloudy today, all the blue from the sky is in your eyes. Those lines always made me want to scream.
But his next words took me by surprise. “They’re bluer than the clearest sky I’ve ever seen and make me think of the expans
iveness of open space, the inspiration I gain whenever I’ve gotten lost in thought, while mesmerized by the beauty of it all.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I’d been told my eyes were pretty, but I’d never been told it quite that way before, and it gave me a tingle throughout my core. How poetic. Not very many men, particularly a wolf shifter, could say something so profound to move me that way.
Well, that wolf shifter part might be a bit pretentious considering I didn’t know very many of them. All I did know was that a wolf shifter had taken my parents’ lives. That would tend to make anyone skittish about being close to one. But Mr. Milo Hart seemed to be genuinely concerned about me and my predicament at this junction in time, and he did have a way with words.
Was Milo a good guy? Well, he did save my life a few minutes ago, but I wasn't ready to trust anyone completely. I glanced at him. He stood facing the burning vehicle. I could get lost in simply staring at his profile. Handsome didn’t do it justice. His straight nose was the perfect size. And he was tall. I was too, and standing in my stiletto boots gave me even more height. I was practically eye to eye with Milo.
Then he looked at me with kind eyes. Dark, a little mysterious, but soft at the same time, and I knew if I stared at them for too long, I’d get lost in their depth.
“You told me earlier you moved here from Seattle. What made you move to a small town like Dark Moon Falls?”
“My parents,” I mumbled and shivered, remembering that I’d told him that lie.
“You must be cold standing out here with no coat. Hold on; I have a jacket in my truck.”
Dark Moon Falls: Volume 2 Page 59
