Moving with tactical precision, he forced the other man to retreat until the backs of his legs hit the low coffee table and he stumbled. Falling backward.
Aidan tossed his glaive to the opposite hand and leaped to the tabletop, his knees bending, carrying the force of his downward descent in his fist. The connection to Chad’s jaw was marked with a sharp crack, and then the man fell limp. Truly unconscious, far beyond the Twilight. He lay arched over the table with arms flung wide. His weapon fell from his slackened grip and landed with a thud on the carpeted floor.
“Oh my god!” Lyssa cried. “Did you break his neck?”
Swiveling his head to the side, Aidan found Lyssa standing at the bottom of the stairs, her lips and knuckles white with tension, her outstretched hand shaking violently. He arched his brow at the sight of the object she held, and jumped off the table. “What were you going to do? Parry with your pen?”
Swallowing hard, she sputtered, “P-pepper spr-spray.”
His gaze narrowed. “You grabbed that before the doorbell rang.”
She blinked.
The implications of her actions made him grit his teeth. He collected Chad’s sword and put it on the opposite side of the room.
He retrieved his scabbard from the floor and sheathed his glaive, setting it next to the other weapon with deliberately casual movements. Then he went to her, wrapping his big hand around the one she held out.
“Gimme that,” he murmured, prying her nerveless fingers open. Keeping her icy cold hand in his, Aidan side-stepped just far enough to reach the entertainment center. Then he set the pepper spray pen atop it, far from Lyssa’s reach.
Her free hand touched his chest, making the muscle beneath it jump. “You’re barely breathing hard at all.”
Aidan caught her wrist and pulled her hand away. “Were you planning on spraying me with the damn pepper spray?”
Again she blinked huge, dark eyes at him, the irises swallowed by dilated pupils. “Stacey said I should if you wanted to sacrifice me or came from another planet.”
“Sacrifice—?” He growled. “And you call me insane?”
She frowned. And then burst into tears.
Relenting with a sigh, he tugged her into his arms. His brain acknowledged that she had a right to be wary and to consider self-protection. Another part of him—his aching heart—didn’t care about that.
“Did you call anyone?” he asked.
“N-no.”
“Good girl.” He stroked the length of her spine.
“What’s going on?” she sobbed, her voice muffled.
He rested his cheek against the top of her head and told her.
“When he wakes up,” he finished, “he’s going to hurt like hell and have a nasty bruise on his jaw, but he won’t remember any of this.”
“I’ll never forget it.” She sucked in a shuddering breath and rubbed her face into his damp skin in a way that made the ache in his chest worse. “So you told me the truth.”
“Of course.” He pushed her away and moved to Chad’s splayed body. “Listen, I’ve got to get him to his place before he wakes up. We don’t have time to change our clothes.”
He dug in Chad’s pocket and withdrew his car keys. “I’ll follow behind you in his car, then you can drive us both back. Are you okay to get behind the wheel?”
“I think so.” She went to the kitchen to collect her purse, and Aidan bent low to heft Chad’s body over his shoulder. He found the red Jeep parked just outside Lyssa’s garage, tossed his burden into the passenger seat, and moved the vehicle out of the way so she could pull out.
He’d considered the possibility of controlling Dreamers from the Twilight. When he first saw the cavern the Elders used to contain hypnotized humans, he’d thought surely the ability to control the mind in that state would work both ways. It appeared it was true. He wondered if Chad had initiated the connection on purpose—turning to hypnosis to cure some ailment—or if the Elders had the ability to control the human body through dreams. The latter thought was terrifying. It made every single person around them a threat.
Lyssa wasn’t safe anywhere.
Lyssa backed out of her garage with more care than usual, then took a long moment to stare at the Jeep and the man who sat so pensively in the driver’s seat. She held the steering wheel with white-knuckled force to keep her hands from shaking uncontrollably. Everything she knew about her life had just blown up in her face. An alien invasion wouldn’t come by air. It would come from within, like zombies or Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
But Aidan wasn’t like that. He was warm, caring, passionate. Human.