Alex watched the hellhounds disappear into the trees with bewilderment, leaving him standing in a clearing filled with dead hellhounds, owing his life to a human female—one dressed up like a blue frosted cupcake with pink sprinkles on top.
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 2
Lilly didn’t lower the barrel of the rifle, but she wasn’t going to shoot the stranger. She wasn’t going to do anything that might bring back…
“What the hell was that?” she demanded, still trying to find words for what she’d seen. What she hadn’t seen.
The stranger standing in front of her looked ready to keel over, but he managed to catch her gaze and hold it with his strangely colored eyes. Not brown, not green, but some mixed up, striking version of both. He looked nearly as stunned as she felt.
She squared her shoulders and scowled when he didn’t answer. “I asked you a question.”
“I can’t tell you what they are,” he said.
“You can or I’ll call 9-1-1 and tell them there’s been a shooting. Possibly a fatal one.”
Her words made him still. Not that he believed her. She wouldn’t have believed her either. She was shaking so hard she had to give in and lower the barrel of her rifle. Her dogs circled anxiously at her feet. Harley—a petite Pomeranian who thought he was king of the jungle—danced on his hind legs and rested his front paws on her knees. His fluffy little ears were pinned and his brown eyes wide. Poor thing was terrified. So was she.
“Is that a dog?” the stranger asked in a deep, husky voice. He stared at Harley with a cross between fascination and disgust.
Lilly scooped up the little dog. “What were they?” she repeated. It was hard to look tough with a Pomeranian in your arms, but she did her best.
“They?”
She nodded. It had felt like they. Many. Multiple. An invisible threat that had come from all sides. Whatever they were, they’d left tracks and blood. They’d held the stranger down. At least that’s how it had seemed. She’d fired at them, not even knowing what she was shooting at.
The stranger gave her a hard look and she thought he might not answer again. It seemed to worry him, her asking. It worried her, too.
“Tell me,” she said, and fear gave the order a ring of desperation he undoubtedly heard.
“Hellhounds,” he answered with obvious misgivings.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Yes, she’d heard. She just couldn’t believe what she’d heard. She swept the clearing with her gaze, remembering the sense of danger so thick it had nearly paralyzed her. When the stranger told her to run, she had. She’d felt the peril in the air. But Belle had bounded off and Lilly had come after her. She’d seen the Great Dane slam into something that seemed to have the man trapped and then she’d watched in horror as his limbs had been jerked and torn at by something else that churned the dirt and gravel but couldn’t be seen.
“Why couldn’t I see them?”
“Because you’re human. You’re not meant to see them.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that so she simply stared at him, speechless. Her mouth was probably open, but she was too numb to care.
He moved forward, wincing and unsteady. Lilly forced herself not to step back, but he was tall enough that she had to look up to meet his gaze and she knew that beneath his black jacket his body was layered in muscle. She’d had a taste of his strength when he’d yanked the barrel of her rifle up and held her against him. The memory made her ridiculously breathless.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Alex Moore.”
She’d been prepared for more evasion but he offered his name like it should mean something. Anything.
“Why are you here?”
“Why are you?”
Lilly frowned at him. “That’s not your business.”
“My reason’s not yours either.”
He raised his brows, daring her to argue. She might have been intimidated if not for the way his hand trembled where it gripped the hilt of a blade that stopped just short of being a sword.
Machete. That’s what it was. The man was carrying a freaking machete. He took another step closer.
“That’s close enough,” she told him.
With a shake of his head, he sheathed his weapon and raised his bloody hands, palms out. “I mean you no harm.”
His deep voice did funny things to her insides. Or maybe that was simply shock.
She wanted to believe him, though. She was up here, miles from the nearest city, all alone with nothing but an empty shotgun and a pack of dogs she’d inherited from her sister. Of course she wanted to believe he meant her no harm.