The Forbidden Life of Alex Moore(2)

Alex didn’t need the warning. He could feel the chuff-chuff of their breath; see the lathered hides, the gaping jaws.
He cut his eyes back at the woman. She was bent over a tiny dog he hadn’t noticed earlier, trying to catch it as it hopped anxiously around her legs. It looked like a prancing toy. Every time she got ahold of it, the stupid thing twisted away, yipping like no one could hear it.
Alex didn’t think—he didn’t have time to think. He charged her in silence, hoping to scare her off without drawing the big dogs back. If he could get her to run, maybe he wouldn’t have to watch her die. Or worse, kill her himself.
Behind him, he heard Caleb curse. “What the fuck are you doing?”
More chilling bays shrieked through the twilight. Harsh. Bloody. Close. She looked up, saw him coming and tried to maneuver the dog she’d finally captured and her rifle all at once. He reached her before she had the chance, not that he thought she’d shoot him. It took meddle to pull the trigger on another human and she had no reason to suspect he wasn’t one.
He grabbed the barrel of her rifle and shoved it in the air. She pulled the trigger just as it cleared the top of his head. The blast burned his hand, rang in his ears, and told him he’d underestimated her. If he’d been a split second slower, he’d be dead.
The rifle’s kick pushed her back as he used his momentum to yank her forward. He caught her with his free arm, rifle gripped by both of them in the middle.
It brought her close. He could smell the clean scent of her shampoo, the warm fragrance of her skin, the sweet puff of her breath. Perceptions overwhelmed him, blocking out all else, and his fear highlighted each nuance. The coat padded her figure, but beneath she was small framed and lushly curved. Her breasts pressed against his chest, indescribably soft and weighted. His hips found the cradle of hers, rousing feelings that lit his nerve endings and heated his blood. All the while her scent wrapped around his thoughts like an opiate, guiding him to a place he’d never want to leave.
She stared at him with wide, blue eyes flecked with crystals of white and lavender. Long, golden-tipped lashes fringed them. He’d never seen anything so beautiful, so arresting. Did his have as many colors melded into them as hers?
The hellhounds howled again, a litany of terror that snapped him from the mesmerizing sensations.
“You need to run,” he said hoarsely, his gaze still trapped by hers, her body caught against his. Now was the time to let her go, to push her away. But neither of them moved. In her arms, the little dog growled and snapped at him. Under other circumstances, Alex might have laughed at its tactics.
But right now, hellhounds were coming. The loud and deep barks of her other dogs stopped on an abrupt yelp. The woman’s eyes widened in fear. At the same time, halfway down the slope to his left, trees shivered. As if something had brushed against them on its way to the bottom.
“Run,” he said, desperate now as all hope of chasing her quietly out of danger dissolved. His arms finally opened. “Run, you demented female.”
She pushed away from him and cold rushed in where her body had heated his. She shouted for her dogs as she bolted down the trail and into the deepening gloom. The dogs barked in excited response and Alex heard them barreling down the trail after her.
Another wail whipped over the treetops and whisked around the peaks. Instantly, an answer came, this one low and fierce from the ridges to the south. Others joined in, baying a cold, hostile challenge. Alex pulled out his blade—an iron machete that weighed twice what it should—and spun around. Across the distance that divided them, he met Caleb’s gaze.
They’d trained for this, yet nothing could have prepared them for the real thing. Like the human world itself, the feel of the hellhounds bearing down was too intense to ever be simulated.
The first hellhound slipped out of shadow like the demon it was. Huge and hulking, it held its head low, white eyes glowing like lanterns in its black skull. A bizarre melding of what seemed to be several different creatures, it moved with all of the grace of a lion but none of the beauty. The shoulders rolled, the head bobbed, and the teeth... So many and all shiny and sharp.
The woman’s dogs had been fierce, but this creature was ferocious and fearsome, covered in a leathery hide with sparse fur and tremendous jaws. Jaws that could crack bone and tear limbs from the body.
The thought barely formed before another black blur streaked into sight, heading past him, after the retreating woman. The horse-sized dog bringing up the rear of her pack spun to search the chaos it had left behind, looking for…what? Surely it sensed that what came next would be slaughter?#p#分页标题#e#