As his hands closed on her shoulders, something whizzed past his arm with a soft whine. Snaking an arm around her waist, he twisted and ducked, pulling her into the shelter of his body, wincing as something burned the back of his shoulder.
Closing his eyes, he held her tightly and sifted place in a general southerly direction, pushing to the farthest limits his diminished power could carry him. The moment he rematerialized, he instantly sifted again, arms locked around her.
Railroad track. Sift. Grocery store. Keep moving. Roof of a house. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Sift. Cornfield. Bloody Midwest. Sift. Atop the steeple of a church with no way to balance on the narrow slippery spire.
They began to fall, plummeting past crosses and gargoyles, and he hastily sifted them in midair. He kept moving, faster and dizzyingly faster, without pausing for a breath, trying desperately to put as much distance as possible between his enemy and his wee, much-too-mortal ka-lyrra.
* * *
Gabby was sure she was screaming at the top of her lungs, but nothing was coming out.
Adam Black's arms weren't just tight around her body, he'd managed to wrap himself around her like a living shield.
But that wasn't what was making her choke on a scream. It was that she kept materializing and dematerializing. Sort of. One moment she existed, and then she didn't exist, and then she existed again. She didn't like it one bit. Each time she was in a different place. Stores. Parking lots. Cornfields. A lot of those. Suddenly on the peak of the slender, pointed spire of— ack!— a church, and falling!. As the pavement rushed up to meet them, they were suddenly, blessedly, somewhere else.
After a while, she just closed her eyes and prayed, trying really hard not to think about much of anything, especially not how wrong the Books of the Fae had been about the Hunters.
They'd been even more horrifying in the flesh, if that was what they were made of, than the O'Callaghan Books had said. Naturally, there were no pictures of them, because any O'Callaghan who'd seen them had been taken. What little description was given, likened them to a classic version of the Devil, hoofed, winged, and horned. And they were, sort of, but even worse. Tall, leathery-skinned, with glowing orange eyes like windows into hell, they had wings, sharp teeth, and long, lethal claws. And she wasn't certain, but she thought she'd seen a tail. The only thing she didn't understand was why, when they were so obviously capable of ripping their prey to shreds with their bare... er, handlike appendages, they'd been shooting at them with human guns.
* * *
When finally they stopped in a grassy dealing. Gabby couldn't speak for several long moments. She was, she realized, soaked from head to toe. Water was gushing from her hair, plastering it to her face. She stood shaking in his arms, leaning back into the strength of his hard body, gulping one deep breath after another.
"Are you all right, ka-lyrra?'' he said close to her ear.
"All right? All right?" Exploding from his grasp, she spun around to face him. Scraping the sodden hair from her face, she shouted.
"Do I look all right? Of course I'm not all right. My life is falling apart around my ears and you ask me if I'm all right?"
Mascara was dripping down her cheeks, splattering on her shirt. She backed away from him, eyes narrowing. Her shoes squished with the movement and, as she peered uncomprehendingly down at them, a tadpole emerged from the leg of her jeans and flopped about on the ground.
"Eew!" She pointed a shaking finger at it. "A tadpole. I had a tadpole in my pants!"
"Lucky tadpole," he murmured. Then, "When one sifts place, ka-lyrra, one comes out on top of whatever currently occupies that space. Which isn't much of a problem if one also has all one's other powers. But I don't. We hit a lake somewhere around the ninety-seventh hop. And, contrary to popular belief, I don't walk on water."
Frantically running her hands up and down her drenched jeans, feeling about for anymore creepy-crawlies, she hissed. "Oh, I hate you. I hate you." So maybe she sounded like a child having a temper tantrum, but really, she seethed, ever since she'd met him she'd just been having one unsettling, disturbing, bizarre experience after another. She'd nearly had a heart attack on top of that church. Just when she'd begun to think she was getting the hang of it, that it wasn't quite so awful being deconstructed then reconstructed again and again and again, she'd been gagging on foul-tasting, smelly, fishy, mossy water.
"No you don't," he said softly.
"I drank some of that lake! I might have choked on a fish or a frog or a... a... a turtle!"
"It is wisest to keep one's mouth shut while sifting."
She skewered him with a frosty stare. "Now you tell me." Damn the fairy, anyway. There she stood, feeling ragtag and bedraggled, and he only looked more beautiful wet, all drippy and shimmery gold-velvet, his hair a wet tangle to his waist.