The Forbidden Life of Alex Moore(6)

His unusual eyes were the only light in a face that didn’t smile. He was big, covered in gore, and out in the middle of nowhere. Her gaze shifted to the mutilated body of the man who’d come with him. She’d arrived in time to see something eviscerate him, but all she’d witnessed was his thrashing and screaming and a bloody death that seemed to be inflicted by the churning air around him.
The stranger—Alex Moore—watched her with a guarded expression. His eyes shimmered with pain.
“Was he your friend?” she asked softly.
“Yes.”
The word seemed to crack something open inside him. Lilly understood. Her sister had died less than a month ago and the loss still felt like an echo chamber. Hollow, yet filled with memories.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He looked startled by the sentiment, or maybe it was the empathy he heard. For a moment, their eyes locked again and Lilly felt like his gaze was a towing beam, pulling her in.
She forced herself to look away while she fumbled for her phone in her pocket. Getting a signal would be a miracle, though. On a clear day, it was iffy up here. With the sky so low that it practically touched the ground…
“What are you doing?” he asked when she held her phone in the air and turned around.
“Looking for a signal. You need a doctor and your friend…”
Needs a coroner.
“No. We need to get out of here before they come back.”
She agreed wholeheartedly. The sense of eminent threat may have faded with the stench of rotten eggs, but she didn’t doubt for a moment that it—they—would return. Of course they would, those ghostly demons that could rip a man to pieces without being seen.
She cast a troubled gaze at the woods and then back to the stranger.
“What about your friend?” she asked gently.
“He’s gone.”
“I know, but…you don’t want to just leave him here, do you?”
He gave her a flat look. “Yes.”
Eyes wide, she watched as he unsheathed his machete. Graceful. Fast. Cirque du Soleil. With hellhounds
He walked through the blood-soaked clearing, paused, and drove his blade down to the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure they’re dead.”
Which meant they were still there, lying in bloody pools a few feet away. He pulled his machete free before bracing and bringing it down with a chop.
“What are you doing now?”
He gave her a dark look. “Making sure they stay dead.”
Oh.
“You shot three of them,” he said in a casual tone as he moved to the next.
“I did?”
He nodded. “Headshots on two of them.” He slid a curious glance her way. “How did you do that?”
“I’m a good shot.”
“But you couldn’t see them.”
“I could see you.”
He met her eyes, his narrowing. She hadn’t intended that to sound so deep, but it had. And now she felt like being the first one to look away would give it more meaning.
Alex went back to swinging his machete. Relieved, Lilly swallowed hard and glanced at the dogs near her feet. She heard a thunk and the blade resisted when he tried to pull it free. He had to put his foot down to tug it loose. Lilly’s stomach rolled at the sight.
“Not even a hellhound can come back from that,” he told her, clearly satisfied with himself.
“Good job?” she offered.
He gave a curt nod: You’re welcome.
Methodically, he worked through the bodies of the hellhounds only he could see. Stabbing, severing. Sometimes he had to kick and hack. At Lilly’s feet, her sister’s dogs watched with curious eyes. All but Belle. She paced with agitation. Lilly gave her an uneasy look, wishing she understood the animal better—or at all.
“Let’s go,” Alex said, cleaning his bloody knife with snow before wiping it against his jean-clad leg and sheathing it.
Startled, she said, “Where?”
He walked right up to her without even one of the dogs making a move to stop him, took her arm, and turned her around the way she’d come.
“This way,” he said.
Well, that made everything clearer. Harley growled from her arms and showed his little teeth.#p#分页标题#e#
“Quiet,” Alex ordered.
Harley shut up but did the teeth-flashing thing whenever Alex looked his way. Alex kept hold of her arm and set a brisk pace, back to the trail, back to her Range Rover through a world of falling snow and isolation. Only a fool would go with him.
“You’re no safer out here,” he muttered, reading her expression.
She glanced over her shoulder. Four dogs trotted behind her. Even Belle, but she paused to look back with a wistful whine.
“I can keep up without you dragging me along,” Lilly informed him, a few steps later.