He shifted his working arm into a blade as wide as a broadsword and, in one sweep, lopped off Jack’s head.
Without a sound, the woman bolted sideways, escaping the path of spraying blood as the head fell at Vidar’s feet with the inimitable sound only heads made on impacting asphalt.
Keeping her behind him, he faced the remaining seven. The horror in their eyes was turning to desperation.
Sustaining another injury was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He couldn’t go down and leave even one standing to hunt her down. He had to finish them all off, quickly.
He waited until they charged, rage and dread and momentum throwing them off-balance, before shifting his arm into a tentacle as thick as an Asgardian serpent. He lashed it out, reaping them all and lassoing them up in the air. Then he catapulted them to crash down at his feet.
Before any of them could regain his feet, he shifted his arm back to sword-mode. Beheading was one sure way to kill a mortal Endowed. Ripping out hearts and spilling brains worked, too. But those methods were messier and not time-effective. Any other injury could leave the injured able to regroup, reattack.
He finished off the seven, turned to the ones he’d injured first. They’d gotten over their shock and were trying to slink away.
But even armless and h
andless, they posed as great a danger to her as their now-headless friends had. She could implicate them to the human authorities. They wouldn’t let her be. They had to join their gang in death. In moments, they did.
Standing over the scattered body parts, he forced himself to straighten, looked over to her. She was still there.
Her eyes were stricken.
She hadn’t looked alarmed when she’d seen him rip off limbs with his bare hands. But seeing parts of him shift into weapons and creatures that existed only in mortal nightmares had probably been too much. Not to mention watching him behead ten men, even if they’d been about to rape her to death.
It was a miracle she hadn’t run away screaming long ago.
“God, you’re…” She encompassed him with a frantic gesture.
He looked down. His right arm, still shifting back to its natural shape, looked even more grotesque in midform.
Guess that meant ravishing her was out of the question now.
“I-I’m so sorry.” She was? For what? No longer being interested in jumping his bones? “I should have followed you sooner.” He stared at her. That was what she was sorry about? Being slow to attend this massacre? “They…they tore you apart….”
She stopped again, swallowed, a shudder racking her.
His erection, unheeding of any other part of him that was torn or crushed, made its approval of everything about her rock solid. The siren song that flowed from her lips, the beauty that was now a canvas for such vivid emotions, the generosity of the body that trembled with the effect of each.
Her voice caught, cracked. “It’s just…I hesitated to call the police. I wasn’t sure you’d appreciate their presence.”
He sure wouldn’t. Mortal scum he could dispatch. Mortal law enforcement he avoided at all costs.
But did she mean that… “You called them?”
She nodded.
Shit.
His hand, which was back to its natural form but felt more shattered than before he’d shifted it, hurt like Odin’s sorry ass as he fumbled for his cell phone. He speed dialed Daven.
On the second ring, the line opened. Daven’s mocking voice poured into his ear.
“Legion of Loki Lodge. How can I help you, darlin’?”
“You can grab Alvar and get your smart asses down here, stat.” He grunted the address, specified the alley. “Get the big truck.”
“Clean up detail?” Daven tsked. “And the big truck, huh? You’ve had a busy night. And you call us when it’s over. Serve you right if we made you clean up after yourself.”
“Daven, shut up and get down here. And I mean in under five.”