Mac forced out a laugh and hauled himself up off the ground. “Damn wolves. I was so focused on the possibility of big, bad, and ugly that I missed the pitter-patter of little feet.”
“Brownies?”
“Leprechauns. Bastards tripped me up, and the wolves jumped me when I was down.”
Alejandro shook his head and then blasted a hole in the side of the building. Welcome sunlight poured in, and he stepped over the bodies of the shifters to reach his friend. “Let’s move.”
Mac nodded, but shrugged off Alejandro’s hand. “Thanks, but screw that. We’re going to walk out of here like it was no problem, and then we’ll get me to the infirmary after. I don’t want any of those punks laughing at us.”
“There are worse things than laughter,” Alejandro said, eyeing Mac’s wounds. Looked like claws. He hoped.
“Yeah. Fucking leprechauns.” Mac bared in his teeth in a grim imitation of a smile. “At least one of them won’t be tripping anybody else, ever again.”
He jerked his head to indicate the far corner, and Alejandro could just make out a small green shoe pointing at the ceiling.
Alejandro headed for the hole in the wall. He needed to get Mac to the infirmary before anything worse showed up.
“Could have been worse. Could have been trolls.”
Alejandro ducked his head to exit the building, so the huge wooden club smashed into the wall instead of his skull.
“Fee, fie, foe fucking fum, little Mayan,” the attacker growled in a voice deeper than the interior of a volcano and just as hot.
Alejandro hit the floor and swept a foot at the troll’s ankles, sending it crashing to the ground with a resounding thud. With anything that big, the trick was to go for the feet, ankles, or knees. Before he could cock the shotgun, Mac pointed his Glock at the troll’s head and shot it through one eye.
Alejandro stood up and nodded his thanks.
“I owed you one,” Mac said, but he was now noticeably leaning to the right, and the blood dripping out of his wounds wasn’t showing any signs of stopping.
Alejandro sighed. “Why is it always trolls?”
Dark and Deadly: Eight Bad Boys of Paranormal Romance by Jennifer Ashley, Alyssa Day, Felicity Heaton, Erin Kellison, Laurie London, Erin Quinn, Bonnie Vanak and Caris Roane
CHAPTER 2
Garden City, Ohio
Rose Cardinal added a pinch of cayenne pepper for interest as she stirred a potion for sparkling conversation and tried not to glare at her mother.
“You didn't have to call P-Ops for a garden pest, Mom,” she repeated for the eighth or ninth time. “We could have handled it. Now they're going to put us in some kind of file as nuisances. Do we need to be in a governmental file? No. Look what happened when the sheriff wrote us up for indecent exposure for dancing sky clad at the solstice.”
“It's the law,” her mother reminded her, also for the eighth or ninth time. “Also, I took care of the sheriff, didn't I? His wife didn't speak to him for a month. Anyway, we have to report any occurrences of potentially dangerous supernatural activity. You can't say this isn't dangerous, after that incident yesterday with the paperboy who was trying to deliver the Witchcraft Daily News.”
Sue Cardinal might dress like a hippie, but there was pure steel underneath the deceptively sweet face, waist-length white hair, long, brightly colored skirt and dozens of bangle bracelets.
“We fixed him! He never even realized anything happened to him.” Rose protested, turning the heat off under the pot and placing a lid on it to trap the aroma inside. The last thing she needed around her house was more sparkling conversation.
“Marigold Rose Cardinal, what have I taught you? With great power comes great responsibility,” her mother said, untying the red-and-white checked apron she insisted on wearing whenever they mixed spells and potions.
Rose threw her hands in the air. “That's Spiderman. We're witches. And don't call me Marigold.”
“It's your name. Also, I don't care. I phoned them, they're coming, and that's that.” Her mother stalked out the kitchen door, chin held high and an air of injured righteousness surrounding her like the dozens of butterflies that usually flocked to her in the garden.
Rose closed her eyes and counted to ten, then to twenty, before giving it up as hopeless and cleaning up the kitchen. The bright, airy room was her favorite in the entire cottage, which was saying a lot since she loved every single room. She'd painted the walls a sunny yellow with bright white accents and trim, and her sparklingly shiny copper pots shone from the open shelving on one wall.#p#分页标题#e#