Anything, that was.
The sounds of someone walking on the old floorboards got louder, and then it became obvious that there were two people out there among the shelves and the books. And she’d have had to be a different person, who’d had a different life, to believe that whoever it was was good news for her and the suspect—
The door to the storeroom reopened, the light from over the register streaming in on a slice that widened until it hit her face. As she blinked blindly, she heard a curse and then all kinds of illumination flared from what seemed like all directions. Someone had turned a ceiling fixture on.
Two men came in, and her first thought was that they were dressed in black leather, just like the suspect. The one on the left had a goatee and tattoos on his temple. The other was stockier, with a distorted upper lip. Both stopped and stared down at her as if they couldn’t understand what they were seeing.
“Help him,” she said in a guttural voice. “Save him…”
The one with the goatee turned his head to his shoulder and triggered a communicator. His voice was too quiet for her to hear what he was saying—but she prayed it was nine-one-one. The other man approached her and knelt down slowly, as if he were afraid of spooking her.
“Female, worry not. We shall take care of you both.”
His eyes bored in her own, and the steady confidence he projected made her vision go blurry with tears of relief.
“I’m trying to save him… he cut himself. With…”
His eyes left hers and locked on what had to be his colleague, his friend, his brother? When his lids closed briefly, it was as if he couldn’t hold in the pain he was feeling. And then he was leaning over her and laying his broad hand on his friend’s shoulder. The man started talking, but she didn’t understand the words, the language one that seemed to have words in common with both French and German.
She didn’t need a translation to know that he was rocked to his core.
“I tried,” she mumbled lamely, “to save him.”
“Female,” he said, “he’s still alive. He’s still breathing.”
“He is?”
The man nodded and then seemed confused. “Your hand… has stopped the bleeding somehow.”
“Not my hand.” When he frowned, she looked at where her palm was still pressed to the knife wound. “The light. The glow. It was… the glow. He’s alive?”
His brows got tighter, but then the man with the goatee ended whatever communication he’d initiated and spoke loudly.
“T minus five minutes. Manny’s not far.”
And then they were staring at her, like she was a stray at the side of the road and they were trying to decide if they had enough room in the back of their car.
“Don’t take my memories,” she blurted. “I don’t… understand any of this, just please. My mind can’t take any more amnesia.”
“We’re bringing you with us,” the stockier of the pair said. “Don’t worry.”
“Motherfucker,” the one with the goatee muttered.
“She’s his female,” came the counter. “She has to come.”
Abruptly, she heard the suspect’s voice in her head: I don’t care if I end up in Dhunhd forever if it saves her.
Annnnnnnnnnd that was the last conscious thought she had. As she took one last look at the injured man, and tried to see if he was drawing breath—or if maybe his friend was just wishful-thinking on that—she wondered if she hadn’t imagined the ball of light.
I’m his? she thought as she gave up fighting the darkness that rose to claim her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lassiter rode the evil rush of holding the human’s life in his hands—right up until the moment someone came out of the club. He almost didn’t look over, but at the last minute, he glanced in the direction of the figure who emerged from the confines of the computer-generated music and the drunken crowd. It was a woman, and her hand went to her hair and lifted its weight up off her neck as if she were hot.
It was not who he had come here to find.
Species divide aside, this woman had dark hair, not silver, and she was wearing a short skirt that he couldn’t picture on Rahvyn. Still, as she noticed him and the bouncer, he transposed onto her the features he had in his mind every waking moment.
As she narrowed her eyes, it was Rahvyn looking at him with suspicion. Like she knew something was wrong.
“Is everything okay here?” the woman asked.
Her words were a devastating condemnation of his actions. His lack of self-control. His absence of perspective, compassion, and connection.
It was as if that demon had possessed him even as she didn’t enter him.
Lassiter released his casting over the bouncer, and then, because he couldn’t bear even a hypothetical Rahvyn having caught him about to do something unforgivable, he went into the woman’s mind and sent her right back into the club with no memory of what she had inadvertently walked in on.