Alex reached down and pulled her to her feet. “Get your gun,” he murmured.
She’d left it leaning beside the wood pile. She retrieved it and held it at the ready, scanning, searching. Belle dashed down the stairs and herded the other dogs up to the porch. The dogs shied to the right as they followed, and Lilly suspected the hellhound was there, but she could no longer see it.
A tree near Alex shuddered and suddenly he burst into action, swinging his blade and hacking at whatever had come at him. Lilly saw blurred shapes merging in the darkness and she fired, aiming for what she hoped was their massive heads. She picked two off while Alex cut down others like weeds.
A growl came from behind her and she spun to find two dark creatures with blazing eyes and long, curved teeth standing there. She stumbled back, trying to aim at the same time.
Something launched itself from the porch. Belle’s hellhound. It sank its teeth into the throat of the hellhound closest to her and shook, towing the bigger beast away from Lilly. The other turned in surprise, giving her a chance to aim and fire. Its head exploded.
She could hear frantic growls and yelps of pain coming from nearby, followed by sudden silence. Belle’s phantom hellhound solidified for a moment. It had blue eyes, she realized. As she took aim at its head, the creature stared at her with resignation Lilly couldn’t mistake. The hellhound in her cross-hairs braced, ready for the death sentence that Lilly had the power to give.
But she couldn’t pull the trigger. As horrendous, as vicious as this killer might be, it had protected Belle and it had protected Lilly.
She lowered her rifle.
“What are you doing?” Alex demanded, moving in front of her and raising his machete.
“No. No, Alex. Not that one.”
“It’s not a dog, Lilly. It doesn’t belong here.”#p#分页标题#e#
Lilly grabbed his arm, refusing to let him slaughter this wretched creature. No, it didn’t belong. It was an outcast. An outlier. Like Alex. Like Lilly. It had acted outside of its instincts or perhaps it had been driven by instinct older than the cursed body it inhabited.
It didn’t belong and yet…
“Maybe it can, Alex. If it has a chance.”
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 10
The hellhound eyed Alex suspiciously as it backed away, then turned and dashed up the stairs onto the porch, rubbed its body down the length of the Great Dane’s, before it bounded over the railing and into the trees. Alex stared with his mouth open, unsure what to make of it. Of any of it.
He turned back, staring at the bodies littering the clearing. Six of them. When he’d seen them emerge from the shadows, his only thought had been to protect Lilly. She would not be ripped apart by them, not while Alex still had strength enough to lift his weapon. Not while he still breathed. He was still shaking from the power of those emotions.
Exhausted and strangely wide awake, he moved from one corpse to another. He put his blade through their hearts and whacked off their heads—even ones that Lilly had shot dead on. This time, it wasn’t luck that had guided her bullets. It was aim. She’d seen them. He didn’t know how or why, but he knew it was true.
He finished his task as fast as possible. In the morning, he’d burn the remains, but right now he just wanted to get Lilly and her crazy dogs into the cabin. Her face was pale, her blue coat splattered with hellhound blood. It hurt to think of the danger she’d been in.
When the door closed behind them, he pulled her tight against him.
“You could have been killed,” he said, his voice breaking. Emotion he didn’t understand washing over him.
“The hellhound…it protected me, Alex. Just like you do.”
None of this made sense, but Alex had seen the hellhound attack its own, just as Alex had fought one of his own when Jared had threatened Lilly. While Alex had battled the other hellhounds, the blue-eyed one had defended Lilly’s dogs. When the other hellhounds had cornered Lilly, it had saved her life.
He cupped her face and kissed her with his mouth open, pouring all of his confusing, anger and relief into it. His other hand started on the fastenings of her coat and her fingers were there to help. He pulled back, watching as they both fumbled with the thick coat and cumbersome buttons. Her eyes were heavy lidded. But they spoke, those crazy, beautiful eyes. And he understood everything they said.
Her coat fell to the floor in a synthetic swoosh and beneath he found a beautiful woman with intriguing curves, soft breasts and skin that felt like satin. For a moment, neither of them moved.