Under His Wings(14)

Another monster—just as big, just as terrifying—emerged out of the night. It plowed into the one who’d murdered Resa and the tumble of feathers, wings and muscle slammed into the building, a crater forming under their hulking bodies.

“To the victor goes the spoils,” she uttered. Then slid over the edge into unconsciousness.


* * * * *

“There,” Nicolai growled inside his hippogryph beast. Satisfaction coursed through him for the first time in hours since tracking Evander to this small town hugging the Massachusetts coastline. Nico had spotted him from the sky, his gray-and-black banded feathers and crest unmistakable. The fool rogue hadn’t even bothered to cast a gyges to conceal himself. If any humans happened to pass by they would see him. He had endangered them all.

Shit.

Rage streamed through him in a hundred swirling ribbons, snaking around his organs until he breathed it. A human female. Evander stalked a human female.

Nico folded his wings to his body and swooped, bulleting through the air as if shot from a high-powered rifle. Seconds from impact, Evander lifted his head, and in his dark face Nicolai caught delight rather than fear or anger.

Whether in human form or in his beast, he was fucking crazy.

And he would die tonight.

Nicolai summoned every emotion that had carried him on this mission of vengeance—fury, grief, resentment—and crashed into Evander head-on. The collision reverberated like a clap of thunder.

Flesh split open under Nicolai’s talons and grim satisfaction rushed through him when Evander’s blood spattered his breast, staining the gray feathers like an oil spill. The rogue shrieked and the two rammed into the building next to them. Brick and mortar cracked and showered dust onto their feathers and hides.

Fire sizzled along his neck. The bastard had stabbed him. Rearing back on his hind legs, Nicolai used the momentum and heaved Evander off him. Their harsh breath filled the night as they faced one another. Then the rogue’s head cocked to the side and an instant later Nicolai detected what had snagged Evander’s attention. Police sirens in the distance. Maybe five minutes away. Fuck.

“’Til next time, Nico,” he said. “I left you a gift.” The hippogryph wheeled around on his rear legs, took several loping strides then soared into the bruised sky. A shimmer like a falling star twinkled before disappearing.

Now he uses his damn gyges. Nicolai shifted to his human form and scowled. He stared at the black, cloudless skyline for another long second before turning his attention to the limp bodies on the sidewalk.

Horror slid into his chest, between his ribs, like the razor-sharp tip of a rapier. Two women. The soft limbs of the woman closest to him were splayed like a broken Barbie doll. He crossed the small distance on swift feet and called on the magic within him to clothe his body in a black shirt, jeans and boots. The cops drew closer with each passing second and it wouldn’t do to have a naked man hovering over the bodies of two attack victims.

“Damn,” he whispered, hunkering down on his haunches next to the body. The woman hadn’t died easy, though Evander hadn’t taken as much time with her as he had with his previous victims. From the awkward angles of her arms and legs, Nicolai surmised they were broken, most likely upon impact. She’d been eviscerated like the other women, but her chest and abdomen had been torn open with brutal gashes, her entrails hanging in a tangled, bloody mess outside her body. This had been a slash ’n’ dash while before Evander had carved them open with careful slices worthy of a practiced surgeon, taking the intestines and organs with him—probably consuming them. The crushed bones and the terror on the woman’s face…those signatures remained the same.

So why the rush? Nicolai rose from his crouch. His gaze swept the sidewalk and landed on the feet and legs of the second woman. Two quick strides brought him to her. The pale-yellow illumination from the streetlight didn’t reach her, but he had no trouble seeing in the dark as he lowered next to her still form, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet. She had been alive when he’d sighted Evander, and though her legs and arms lay limp, they weren’t bent unnaturally or damaged. Beneath the long-sleeved yellow shirt her chest rose and fell in shallow but even breaths. Relief flooded through him. At least this one had been spared the gruesome death of the other woman.

Had that been the reason behind Evander’s hack job? To get to this female before she escaped? As soon as the explanation came, Nicolai discarded it. Evander could have easily subdued both women, even carried them off to play with them at his leisure.

“So what is so special about you that he couldn’t wait,” he murmured, his perusal rising to the woman’s face. A roar like a thousand tidal waves converging and crashing filled his ears. His heart stuttered then raced. “No.”