She flew through the air, instinctively drawing her limbs tighter around her as she hit hard and rolled. Her helmet deadened the initial impact of her skull smacking the asphalt, but by the second flip she’d completed, it flew off and there was nothing between her face and the street.
The car screeched to a stop, dragging the scooter along with it. It took her a second to figure out if she could still breathe and follow that thought with an actual breath. Her skin was raw and bloody, and she wasn’t sure her arms and legs worked since she couldn’t feel them. It didn’t hurt, but she had the feeling it would when her brain started firing enough to send the signals.
The driver-side door opened, then slammed shut. Kara saw the outline of black shoes walking around the bumper through her squinted eyes and took stock of her options. Since she wasn’t sure she could move, “play dead” was at the top of the list.
The passenger door opened and another set of large shoes joined the first, hovering over Kara. “You think she’s dead?” the passenger asked nonchalantly, like he was inquiring about the weather.
“Nah. I heard the only way to kill one of these is to cut off their heads,” the driver responded.
“It’s going to be hard to make it look like an accident if we cut her head off, dipshit.”
“People get decapitated all the time. It wouldn’t be farfetched to lose your head riding a bike like this one. Hell, most people who had to ride a piece of crap like this would probably take their own life.”
The passenger laughed. “She doesn’t look that important to me.”
“Who knows? I just follow orders. You got the sword?”
“It’s in the trunk.”
“Well, get it. And hurry up.”
As the passenger went to the trunk, Kara decided it was time to get the blood flowing to her extremities again. Without much movement, she tried to flex her toes within her tall boots. With her brain fuzzy, she couldn’t decide if she should try to summon Jaxon, or if moving her hand to her throat would get her head chopped off all the quicker.
“Hey, what about this crowbar?” the passenger asked.
“What about it?”
“Well, if we can get her head off with this, it might look more realistic than if we use a sword, more like she’d had a real accident. You know, rougher around the edges.”
“What are you, a forensics expert now? They told me you should use the sword—so use it,” the driver said.
The second man returned with the long blade and dropped the crowbar beside Kara’s body. “Just in case,” he said to the driver.
“Are you forgetting something, Steve?” the driver asked.
“What?”
“A cloak would be nice. I don’t really want to get caught out here with our pants down, so to speak.”
Kara flexed her muscles, careful not to move. When she felt the responding tension in her arms and legs, she was amazed her battered limbs were listening to her at all.
“Seriously?” Steve huffed. “I have to do everything? I’m the one doing the decapitation here. You can’t do one little spell?”
“You have your job, I have mine. I drove.”
“You loved it! The car has hydraulics.”
The driver snickered. “Yeah. You’re right. I’ve always wanted to try that.” He stepped closer. “Okay, here goes.”
Kara heard him chant and felt the power being called down around them. It was strange. Not the same words Abbey used, and the spell seemed to cover an area instead of just a person.
“Thanks, man,” Steve said.
When she glimpsed the passenger’s face hovering above her, pondering how he wanted to go about severing her head, she knew her moment of truth had arrived. When she moved, she was doing it full force, with the expectation her body was going to obey. If she was wrong, she was dead anyway.
Kara rolled to her side as the sword came swinging toward her shoulders. She snatched the crowbar as she went, rolling from a somersault into a crouch with the crowbar out in front of her—and then she promptly fell on her ass.
“Shit! She’s conscious,” the driver shouted.
“Not for long,” the other man said, swinging the sword like he knew how to use it as he walked toward Kara.
Now that Kara had her eyes fully open, she took in the men before her. Caucasian, average height, mid to late thirties, both with brown hair.
“Put down the crowbar, Fallen. It’ll all be over soon. It won’t hurt, I swear, and then you can go back to hell where you came from.”
“Fuck you,” she choked out, rising to her knees. The pain radiating out to every muscle was almost too much for words.
The driver laughed. “Too bad about this one. She’s got spunk. And she’s not bad looking…for a filthy demon spawn, I mean.”
Steve-the-passenger lifted the sword and brought it down with all his strength. She countered with the crowbar at the same time, and the force of the two meeting rang through her whole body. He was strong, but then so was she. When he stumbled back a step, she swung and knocked the bar into his stomach with enough power to pick him up off his feet and launch him backward.
“Shit!” The driver looked as though he was deciding if going after her was in his job description, and Kara saw when he decided it was.
She stood and twirled the crowbar in her hands, then caught herself when she wobbled sideways. Hopefully she looked scarier than she felt. When the driver bent down to pick up the sword Steve had dropped, Kara growled. “Don’t even think about it.”
But apparently, a bloody, clumsy woman wasn’t scary enough. When he clenched his teeth and lifted the sword, Kara hauled back her arm and chucked the crowbar like a spear, aiming straight for his heart. When the weight left her hand, she fell to one knee, glancing up in time to see the driver scream and clutch his impaled chest on the way to the ground.
When Steve got his shaking hands under him and pushed off, trying to stand, Kara stalked forward and planted her boot in his face as hard as she could. Blood sprayed from his nose and mouth in an arc as he flipped onto his back.
The driver whimpered and started to chant, his hands trying to steady the bar protruding from just under his collarbone. Blood gushed from the wound, and he didn’t look like he could chase her, but the energy in the air was dark and getting darker by the second. She wasn’t going to wait around to see exactly what spell he threw.
She turned and ran, hoofing it down the street as fast as her Demiáre feet could carry her. She wasn’t bothering with human speed. Let the passersby wonder if they were seeing things.
All that mattered was making it home with her head.
When Kara finally got through the front door, she collapsed in the entryway. The only thing that had gone right in the past few hours was entering the building through the parking garage and riding the elevator up without any other tenants.
She rubbed the grit from her eyes. Framed in the balcony window, the sun was sinking low, turning the clouds red and lavender. It was too beautiful for what she’d just been through.
Those men had tried to kill her. Her—Kara. But why?
She rolled into a ball, closing her eyes against the pain. If she was supposed to be fully healed by now, her body hadn’t gotten the memo.
The walk back had been the worst of her life. Twice, concerned citizens had offered her help, one calling an ambulance from his cell phone despite Kara’s protests, forcing her to run again when all she wanted to do was collapse.
As soon as she thought she was out of spell range, she’d tried to summon Jaxon, but he didn’t answer. She couldn’t sense a damn thing from her winged warrior, and it had her worried.
Kara stumbled to the kitchen and reached for the home phone. She dialed Abbey’s number with sticky fingers coated in drying blood. It went straight to voicemail. “Crap!” Now what?
Should she call Dora and tell her she was attacked and that she was worried about Abbey? Hell, the men who’d attacked her were witches. After the way Teri treated her, she wasn’t sure what Dora would say. Was she the same old sweet Grammy D, or was there something more going on here?
She closed her eyes as the sky continued to darken, the night soaking into the clouds, turning lavender to purple. She’d almost nodded off when a snap rocked the ward, the blue light quaking visibly for a fraction of a second before returning to the ether. At the same time, a guttural groan carried through the walls, coming from the master bedroom.
“Oh, hell no.” Kara staggered toward the bedroom. She cracked the door open and peeped through, just a shadow of her normally brave self.
There on the bed lay Julian, his hands clutched at his head and his black wings spread across the mattress at an awkward angle. Forgetting her pain and her sense of self-preservation, Kara lurched toward the bed and fell to her knees at his side.
“Julian?” She reached out to touch his arm, but as his moan morphed into a growl, she snatched her hand back.
He sat up, staring around the room as if he’d never seen it before. With his disheveled hair and sickly skin, he looked like he’d spent the day with a bottle of cheap bourbon and was paying for it now. Finally, his eyes focused on her face. He took her in from top to bottom, then frowned. His eyes were red, and she wasn’t sure if it was only the irritated whites. They actually seemed to be glowing.
“Kara?”
Why was she relieved he remembered her name? “Yeah, it’s me.”
He swallowed, looking enraged and ashamed and dangerous as hell, all at the same time.
“I did this to you?” His hand swept up and down, indicating her bloody clothes, torn from her brief love affair with the pavement. Her road rash had healed, but the bones were taking longer.
“No, Julian. You didn’t do this to me. You did
this
to me.” She ducked her shoulder to him, but his bite at her neck had long since healed. “Don’t you remember?” She was almost insulted. He’d seemed to like it at the time.
His wings spread from his back, nearly stretching from one wall to the other. His top lip curled and his fangs came down. “Who hurt you?”
Now she was sure his eyes were glowing. As the sun faded, his red eyes cast a glow over the small room.
“No one. I’m fine.” Almost being killed today, she couldn’t handle even a well-meaning snarl. She was shaking like a leaf, and she had to put some distance between her and Mr. Frowny Fangs. “I’m going to get cleaned up. Uh…make yourself at home.”
He looked as though he was coming out of whatever stupor he’d been in, and he wasn’t moaning like he was in pain anymore, so she fled to the bathroom and turned on the faucet to fill the tub. Was she really going to take a bath with an Aniliáre in her house? Yes, apparently she was. She had to get the blood and grime off before she could change into something else.
She filled the tub with steaming water and grabbed a towel, then shucked her clothes and stepped into the brew. Oh, ouch. She’d made it a little too hot, but she sank in to her shoulders and let out a sigh. Hot baths might be the next best thing to orgasms. Still, she didn’t forget about Julian in the other room as she quickly lathered her hair and inspected her body for injuries. She felt the bruises under her skin where there’d been more serious injuries just an hour before. It hurt, but she was healing.
She dunked her head a final time and came back up, snorting water out her nose and almost choking on suds when she spied a pair of sturdy, naked thighs hovering over her.
Chapter Nine
“What are you doing in here?”
Julian’s wings receded into the slits in his back. He stood perfectly still, his gaze fixed on Kara like a hawk about to swoop on a field mouse. “Your water,” he said, “it’s pink.”
She glanced down. “Yes, it is.”
It wasn’t the first time. If it was someone else’s blood, a shower was the only option. But tonight, steeping in her own red cells was worth it for the good it did her sore muscles.
“It smells of flowers and female.” His large shaft stirred to life. She tried not to look at it, but the damn thing was at direct eye level.
She picked up her shampoo bottle and held it out to him. “It’s herbal.” He simply stared at the bottle. “Go on. Smell it.”
He stuck his nose to the cap, and the corners of his lips twitched. “It’s you in a bottle. I will wash with it.”
He stepped into the hot water and sat, sloshing it dangerously close to the side. As big as he was, the old apartment tub was no match for the two of them. His feet wedged into the remaining space by Kara’s thighs.
“Uh, the water’s slightly nasty,” she pointed out.
He finally smiled and leaned his head back, soaking his black hair in the sudsy pink liquid. “Mmm-hmm.”
When he lifted his head, water sluiced from his hair down the sides of his face. “The herbal.” He paused, as if thinking about his words. “Please.”
The head of his erection peeked from the water, but Demiáre or not, Kara was too scared and confused to be excited about the situation. She simply squeezed the shampoo onto her hand and started lathering his hair.
A white strand of foam trailed into his eyes, and he hissed. “You’re hurting me.”
Oh, brother. She smiled. “Then try keeping your eyes closed, big guy.”