With a steady hand, he pulled the mask off himself. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Ainhoa.”
He had pale skin tone, pale, nearly white eyes, and white hair. His age was . . . unknowable. He was not young, but he wasn’t old, either, his lean face unlined and hawkish.
There was a sharp sound of metal on metal, a switchblade triggered.
The blade entered her visual field, shiny and clean, and the hand that held it was wearing a dark gray glove. In the back of her mind, she thought that the reflected light on the honed steel was the color of the man.
Icy cold.
“We’re going to have some fun now.”
The knife left her eye line—
As she felt the tip in between her breasts, she groaned and the man laughed again. “We’re going to have so much fun, Ainhoa. And I shall call you by your given name as we work through this process together. Although I’ve heard people call you by Rio, I prefer to be formal about things. No reason to be common in this.”
As the Hyundai sped away from the alley, Lucan knew he wasn’t going to last long under the damn thing’s belly. His hands were sweaty from the effort of holding his two-hundred-and-sixty-pound weight up off the blur of pavement—and the engine was transferring more heat down every piece of metal he was gripping or next to. And the woman was continuing to accelerate.
She was swerving, too. So if he timed the drop wrong, he was going to get mowed flatter than grass.
Meanwhile, his abs were screaming in pain from this death plank, his pecs and biceps were worse—and the going was rough, every manhole and sewer-access panel in Caldwell passing under the car like the woman was steering for the things.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” he growled through gritted teeth.
The car lurched around a corner—
The brakes were hit so hard that he didn’t get a chance to form an opinion about releasing his hands. His body just shot forward as the car stopped short, momentum taking control of his destiny as he was propelled out from under like a missile.
Lucan had a brief image of the front wheels passing on either side of him and then the front bumper—
Blaring. Honking. Flashing lights.
Sudden death.
As he exploded into the intersection, the vehicles traveling through on a green light swerved and stomped on their own brakes. Twisting onto his side, he bounced along the asphalt and the car chaos, Ping-Pong’ing off the box grille of an old Toyota, before rolling up the sloped hood of a low-slung Pontiac from the eighties. As the firebird stencil made an impression in spite of the danger he was in, he thought of his female from the night before.
Not that she was his.
And then it was time to stop with the freestyle acrobatics. Kicking out on the windshield of the Firebird, he jumped himself into a change of direction, and got the fuck out of the way on a tight tuck—
Just as a series of impacts crunched and crackled in the center of the intersection, vehicles crashing into each other.
Lucan’s boots landed flat on the ground and the second he felt his feet under him, he burst into a run. Zeroing in on the shadows in front of him, he plunged himself into darkness to get cover. When he was sure he was out of sight—not that those humans were focused on anything other than their airbags—he slammed his back against a dumpster that was empty, given the hollow clang!
Panting, he caught his breath and focused on the pileup. Out under the dangling traffic lights, a collection of body-repair jobs had replaced the previous going concerns of five vehicles—but his blond unknowing Uber driver was not having it. Even though she still had the red light and there was a junkyard of automobiles in front of her, she shot up onto the sidewalk, bypassed the accidents she’d played a solid role in creating, and hit the gas.
Given the asshole who’d come after her, Lucan couldn’t say he blamed the woman.
Closing his eyes, he listened to the humans as they got out of their cars and had one of two reactions: Half got onto 911, and the other half started yelling.
He’d never thought of a pileup as a personality inventory test before, but there you go.
When his breathing had calmed and his heart slowed, he had one good thing going for him: His wolven side had fully retreated, and it was a relief not to have to rein it in.
As sirens sounded from far away, that was his cue to split. But when he tried to dematerialize, there was no shift of his molecules, no ghosting.
He tried again.
Nothing.
And that was when he realized that one of his feet was soggy in its boot, like he’d stepped in a puddle. Looking down, he shook his head because he was not seeing what his eyes seemed to be reporting: He was absolutely not staring at a dark, spreading stain on the outside of his jeans’ pant leg. He just wasn’t.