I can’t stay here, and I need to ditch the Honda. I need to get new wheels and make it an arbitrary switch, difficult to trace, maybe change rides a couple of times fast. It might slow him down. I need to move in a random way and disconnect completely from Quentin and my past. And I need to find a way to block that bastard from my dreams.
To do that, she would need more magical expertise than she could muster. Her mother could have kept herself obscured, in both a psychic and physical sense, but her blood didn’t run as strong in Pia. While she had a highly educated sense for magic, she couldn’t do half the things her mother could have done.
The last gift Quentin had given her the night before had been an 800 number that he had made her memorize. I know people in Charleston, he’d said. If you need help, call them.
Did she dare? Who were these people? She turned north and started walking back to the beach house. And did she dare stay here another night?
She glanced at the sky and paused. In the distance over the water, a patch of the sky rippled. It looked like the watery shimmer of heat waves off an asphalt highway on a hot summer day. But the May evening was cooling down, the sky just starting to darken in the east and there was no asphalt anywhere near that ripple.
She shaded her eyes. What was it? It was big and seemed to be getting bigger fast. She watched the patch grow, her stomach clenching. She’d never seen anything like it before, but she knew it was wrong.
Wait a minute. That shimmering patch of air wasn’t growing bigger. It was getting closer.
Oh shit.
Pia’s thinking splintered into raw instinct. She whirled and sprinted. She may not have inherited many of her mother’s abilities, but if there was one thing she could do with an extravagance of talent, it was run. Her bare toes dug into the sand and she nearly flew down the beach.
But nearly flying isn’t the same as really flying. Even as she pushed with all the speed she had in her, she knew she wasn’t going to be able to outrun what hurtled toward her.
A shadow engulfed her from behind. She caught just a glimpse on the sand in front of her of an enormous winged shape with a serpentine neck and a long wicked head. Then the shadow collapsed in on itself and a split second later, a mountain slammed into her back.
She crashed into the sand so hard it knocked the breath out of her. The mountain resolved itself into the hard, heavy body of a male. Muscle-corded arms came down on either side of her. Huge hands latched onto her slim wrists while a long thigh crossed over the backs of her legs.
She wheezed, struggling to get her bruised rib cage to expand so her lungs could function, her palms and knees abraded from the impact. She stared at those imprisoning hands. Like the arms, they were powerful, colored a dark bronze that looked very dramatic against her pale skin.
Her mind wailed. She was so dead.
The male put his nose in her hair and took a deep breath. A convulsive shiver racked her body in response. He was sniffing her. She felt his nose at the back of her neck. He rubbed his face in her hair. A whimper was born and died at the back of her throat.
“Good chase,” he growled, his voice a dark rumble at her back.
She coughed and sand puffed up in front of her. “Not long enough.”
The weight lifted from her back, and he flipped her with mind-numbing swiftness. She slammed back into the sand, arms spread-eagled as he held her by the wrists again.
He bared his teeth at her in a machete smile. “We could always do it again.”
She thought of him letting her go and pouncing again, playing with her like a great cat, and shuddered.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she whispered. Her eyes had gone watery from the force of the impact that knocked her down. She tried to focus on the dark, fierce face bent over her. Then her vision came clear.
Cuelebre was breathtaking. Energy and Power boiled from him; he radiated it like a dark sun. He had a handsome brutality, facial features cut into bold lines and angles as if a sculptor had hewn him from granite. His skin was a dark brown with a bronze hue, and those brilliant dragon’s eyes were hot gold. In his human form he was almost seven feet tall, three hundred pounds of dominant Wyr male sprawled like an avalanche across her body. In comparison she felt delicate, very breakable.
His hair was inky black. Just like in the dream. It had slipped through her fingers like silk.
The shock of his assault had not begun to pass, but through it she noticed one astonishing thing. He had thrown his thigh over hers again. He stared at her neck. Realization pulsed. He was looking at the bite he had given her. A hard length was growing against her hip.
“So, is that your long, scaly, reptilian tail, or are you just happy to see me?”