Authors: Eve Jameson
Amdyn was on his feet instantly and Connyn moved between
Aurora and the closest knot of people. The baby let out a shriek of laughter
and darted away between tables.
“Chloe!” Aurora shouted, jumping up and darting after her.
The heavy bag Aurora had looped over her shoulder swung down to her elbow and
slammed into Connyn’s groin.
With a hissed curse, Connyn bent reflexively at the waist
and cupped himself. Before he could draw in a full breath, two Predators came
out of the crowd. One from the pedestrian walkway and another from the
restaurant’s door that led back into the main lobby and central seating area.
Both Predators looked like they had been spawned from the same mutant
combination of ugly and vicious.
With fists the size of bowling balls swinging at their
sides, the creatures zeroed in on the two women Amdyn and Connyn had come to
claim. Uncaring about the near riot they caused as they advanced on their
targets, the Predators let nothing impede their progress through the crowded
café and closed the gap with surprising speed for so much lumbering girth.
Amdyn jerked Ellyna to her feet and Connyn made a quick grab
for Aurora before she could make it out of his reach. The command to split up
and remove the women to safety Amdyn flashed into Connyn’s mind came a second
after Connyn had already started to push his way through the crowd with Aurora
in tow.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jordyn scoop up the
escaping toddler and yank a screaming woman out of the path of the first
Predator.
“
Chloe
!” Aurora tried to pull out of his hold, but
her best efforts didn’t even slow him down.
“She’s safe,” he said as he pushed past a line of people
trying to get around a baby stroller stalling quick progress. “One of our best
soldiers picked her up.”
“I can’t just leave her!”
A startled, high-pitched scream from behind them was
followed by a shout and a splash as something large went into the river. Connyn
glanced behind him. Amdyn and Ellyna were headed in the opposite direction down
the Riverwalk and Jordyn was nowhere in sight. But dogging their steps and less
than a half-block behind them was one of the Predators.
“If you go back there, you’ll die and lead the Predator
right to the child or Ellyna. Is that what you want?” He threw the words back
at her but didn’t pause to let her consider any response other than following.
They were coming to a bridge and from what he could see,
they could get to the other side of the river and then up a set of stairs to
the street just beyond that. He pushed through a group of teenagers clustered
around wooden carts with large iron wheels filled with tourist-trap jumble.
Ignoring the testosterone-filled blustering of boys still shaking hands with
puberty and the high-pitched screeching of the girls they were with, Connyn was
closing in on the bridge when Aurora swung her purse around and thumped him
hard in the chest with it.
“What are you doing?” he snapped, catching the purse before
she could strike him with it again.
“I
said
my car is that way.”
He turned to find her pointing up toward a narrow stairwell
almost hidden as it was tucked in and back between two restaurants. Easy to
miss if you didn’t know it was there.
“It goes up to street level,” she said, already turning away
from him and tugging her purse out of his grip. “My car is in a parking lot
right across the street.”
Instantly he switched directions and took the lead,
barreling up the steps. Aurora took too long to readjust her direction and was
flung around, her body jerked into position as if they were playing a child’s
game of Crack the Whip and she were on the tail end trying to keep up. Her
purse and shoulder crashed into the wall bordering the stairs. Aurora cursed
and looked positively mutinous.
“You need to keep up,” he growled and took the next three
stairs in a single step. Aurora flailed behind him, but managed to move her
feet fast enough to avoid being dragged up the stairwell.
An ornate iron gate stood open at the top and the lights at
street level cast a cold glow marking their exit. They had just cleared the
passage when he was yanked to a stop so suddenly that Aurora’s hand jerked free
of his hold. With fear clawing at his throat he spun around to confront the new
threat, expecting to see Aurora in the Predator’s grip. Instead, he found her
bent at the waist, untangling one of the long leather handles on her bag from a
piece of the ornamental ironwork of the gate. The curlicue that had snagged her
purse stuck out at an odd angle as if it had been bent under someone’s weight
as they tried to scale the door instead of opening it.
Just as he reached for her again, Aurora’s head came up with
satisfaction stamped on her face as she held the bag aloft. “Got it!” She
pivoted around his outstretched hand and beat him out the door. “Quit messing
around and come on,” she said over her shoulder. And promptly came to an abrupt
halt.
Aurora doubled over and jerked down to one knee, her long
black hair obscuring her face as it flew forward in an ebony wave. Her change
in motion caught him in mid-lunge after her and he had to leap at the last
second to keep from running right over her. His momentum carried him into the
street and over the hood of an oncoming car that had braked to a
tire-screeching, horn-blaring stop. Landing on his feet, he ran around the
front of the car to get back to Aurora, not paying any attention to being
called a fucking moron or the squealing tires as the car sped off.
“Are you okay?” He went down on one knee to see what he
needed to do to help. Aurora flipped her hair out of her way and looked up at
him as she tugged on the heel of her boot. “I’m fine. It’s just that my shoe is
stuck.”
He looked at her foot and saw where the stiletto heel was
stuck in the pick hole of a meter plate in the sidewalk. This woman was a
walking, talking comedy of errors. With a single, impatient jerk, he pulled her
heel free and yanked her to her feet once more.
“Thanks,” she said. For a moment, he forgot he was in a race
for their lives as he looked down into her thickly lashed brown eyes. Dark and
mesmerizing, they pulled on emotion deep inside him and made him want to wrap
her in his arms and brand her as his for the world to take notice and back off.
Her look of gratitude was short-lived. Fright replaced it as
she glanced behind him. He spun around and shoved her behind him. As the
Predator crested the top of the staircase, Connyn grabbed the bar running
across the top of the doorway and swung both feet into his age-old enemy,
connecting with a solid thump in the middle of his chest. The creature grunted
and flew back, barely stopping himself from falling back down steps with a wild
grab at the handrail. Pinwheeling his free arm, the mutant was trying to regain
his balance on the edge of the step when a blur of flying hair and twirling red
coat shot around Connyn as he dropped back down to the ground.
Before he could stop her, Aurora darted in front of the
monster and swung her bag up at him like a club. It collided with the Predator’s
chin, snapped his head back and ended the struggle for balance. Head over
heels, the Predator fell down the stairs with Aurora’s shouted
bastard!
bouncing
off the walls around them.
Several people screamed at the bottom of the stairwell as
the Predator landed on a couple of nosy tourists. Aurora didn’t seem to notice
the unwanted attention she had drawn to them as she stood like some ancient
warrior princess glaring in victory down at a subjugated minion. With her hands
on her hips, feet spread and hair streaming down her back, she turned to look
at him with her dark eyes flashing and a grim smile of satisfaction lighting
her face.
“You,” he hissed as he leaned down to within an inch of her
face, “are a menace!”
Her resultant burst of outrage was lost in a
whoosh
of air from her lungs as he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. It
was damn time they made themselves scarce around here.
Aurora squirmed around on his shoulder as he ran across the
street and into the middle of the lot where she had indicated her car was
parked. He did his best to ignore the long thighs and shapely ass his hands
were splayed over to keep her in place. There’d be plenty of time to explore
her body once she was safe and accepted her place. He’d not make the same
mistake Rordyc, Heir to the Fourth House, had made with his mate and wait for
her to fall in love with him before outlining the duties and responsibilities
her privileged birth brought.
His woman was obviously intelligent, even if she was clumsy
and fairly awkward. He expected it to take very little explanation for her to
grasp her necessary adherence to the Ilyrian tradition of a Mystic daughter—her—willingly
mating herself to the Eldest Heir of a Royal House—him—to further the lineage
prophesied to save his world.
Simple really, now that she had been rescued from the world
her mother had jumped into. Now with the apprehension of Aurora and Ellyna,
they could finally return to their people, complete the prophecy, crush the
Sleht and rule as they were destined to.
Without ceremony, he dropped Aurora back to her feet. She
pushed away from him and straightened her red nylon trench coat which had come
undone in their sprint through the Riverwalk. Besides the wrap-around gray
sweater which tended to gape every time she leaned forward, she was wearing a
short black leather skirt with two silver buckles up by her hip that matched
the large silver hoops she wore in her ears. Added to the black high-heeled
boots, her long black hair and red coat, the woman’s appearance screamed
look
at me and drool
. The sooner he removed her from public view the better.
She shouldered her bag and glared up at him. “I could have
walked.”
“Which is your car?” he asked, hoping for a nice,
inconspicuous beige sedan.
Pulling a key ring with a remote attached from one of the
copious pockets of her purse, she pointed it at the north end of the lot.
“That one,” she said as she pressed the button. Lights
flashed on a little BMW Roadster. A bright red convertible. Of course.
“Great,” he growled as he snatched the keys from her hand
and headed toward the car.
“Hey! That’s
my
car!”
Connyn opened the door and slid the seat back as far as it
would go before sliding into the driver’s seat and starting the car. “If you
drive like you run, we’ll be the main course at a Predator’s picnic by dinner.
Now go around and get in.” He paused for just a second. Aurora stood defiantly
challenging his direction by placing herself in the way of his closing the
door. “Fine,” he said.
The brief gleam of triumph in her eyes disappeared as he
grabbed her around the waist, lifted her over his lap and plunked her ass down
in the passenger seat. He slammed his door shut and threw the little car into
reverse. At least it handled well and had a decent amount of power under the
hood. Even if it did stand out like a fucking emergency flare lit on a deserted
road.
Aurora shifted so her feet were under the dash instead of
resting on top of it and then twisted around in the seat to give him a death
glare. “You are the most
insufferable
man I have ever had the
mispleasure to meet.”
He spared her a quick glance. “Put your seatbelt on.”
“God! Has anyone ever told you that you are—
shit!
”
He made a sharp right turn, throwing her against his side.
“I told you to put your seatbelt on,” he said calmly.
“You did that on purpose.”
“The only purpose I have at the moment is to get you out of
harm’s way as fast as I can. Something that’s proving to be much more difficult
than it should be, thanks to your way of hailing trouble like most people in
these cities whistle for a cab.”
“I cause trouble?
I’m
not the one who showed up
shadowed by two freaks from nightmare city.”
The high-pitched shriek to her words made Connyn
involuntarily squint and take the next corner sharper than he intended. He
immediately had to swerve to the left to keep from kissing the bumper of a
Toyota. Time to get on a highway and away from slow-moving traffic. Spinning
the wheel under his palm, he worked the clutch and standard shift like he’d
been born to it. Even in these circumstances, on a primitive level he enjoyed
the thrill of pushing a machine to the limit of its creation.
Cutting across two lanes to make the closest on-ramp, he
grunted as Aurora smacked into him again. She’d been in the process of shimmying
out of her coat when the force of the turn knocked her off balance. Her hair
whipped into his eyes when she lost her struggle to regain her own seat as he
merged into highway traffic and her hand slipped off his knee. She landed with
her head in his lap and shot his fantasy ride to a whole new level.
Aurora leveled a withering stare up at him. Unable to
resist, he grinned down at her and said, “Now may not be the best time for
that.”
Shoving herself back into the passenger seat, she made a
grab for her wind-lashed hair, twisting it around her hand and out of her face
all while hissing a stream of uncomplimentary monikers at him. Using the hand
not wrapped up in her hair, she reached behind her for the seatbelt and jammed
it into place.
“Slow down! You’re going to get pulled over. Do you even
have a driver’s license?”
“Does this highway merge onto I-10?”
Aurora took a moment from her ravings to look around at
where they were. “Yes. Take the next left.” She dug in her bag and came up with
an elastic band to hold her hair back.
He was wondering what else she kept in her purse when her
head nearly disappeared into it as she searched for something else. Reemerging
with a cell phone, she flipped it open and checked her messages before hitting
speed dial.