Burn (Dark in You 1)

“Dear God, why?”

He chuckled. “I knew I was the best choice. Levi has always been Knox’s personal guard and it would be better for it to remain that way. Keenan and Larkin wouldn’t have been good guards for you. Keenan would have flirted with you, and Larkin would have conspired with you to do crazy shit just because she’s weird like that. Both would have driven Knox insane, which is never a good thing.”

She nodded. “Got ya.”

“Sometimes I think—” He grunted as his whole body seemed to jolt. Then he slumped in his seat a mere second before the car flipped in the air once, twice, three times and landed upside down. Then it was sliding along the ground, making the metal hood screech. Eventually, it ground to a halt. What the fuck?

Coughing, she called out, “Tanner! Tanner!” Nothing. Her inner demon was at serious risk of freaking out.

Instinctively, she spoke to the one person she knew would come. Um, Knox, we’ve got a problem here. Okay, maybe that was understating things a little, but she didn’t want him to lose his shit.

What sort of problem? His voice was tense, hard.

Undoing her seatbelt, she awkwardly fell to the ground. Ow. Well, the car kind of flipped over a few times, like a huge wind caught it up and hurled it. That was after Tanner suddenly lost unconsciousness. And…oh shit.

What?

Well, a black SUV is heading right for us.

Where are you? It was a rumble of danger.

It’s hard to tell. Scanning her surroundings as best she could, she realized… We’re in an alley. Tanner had only been driving for maybe five minutes or so; the alley can’t be far from the studio. And as the alley was blocked off on one side, it meant there was no way out. But she wouldn’t have left without Tanner anyway.

I’ll come for you.

She knew he would. She also knew he was beyond pissed and there was a very good chance these people would die. Grabbing Tanner’s arm, she shook him. “Tanner, wake up!” she hissed. Noticing the blood trickling out of his ears and nose, she suspected he’d taken a psychic blow to the head.

Harper stilled at the sound of car doors swinging open. Then there were urgent footsteps crunching on the gravel. Two sets of footsteps, she sensed. The door on her right was abruptly yanked open. A hand closed tightly around her arm and snatched her out of the vehicle. That same hand shoved her toward the blond muscular asshole now rounding the Bentley; both males reeked of something which made both her and her inner demon tense: magick.

So she was up against dark practitioners. That wasn’t good.

She didn’t scream or fight. That would only tempt them to deal her a psychic blow to the mind that would render her defenseless. For them to have not already done so, they believed she would be easy to handle. How silly.

The blond smiled at her, looking cool and smug. It was the smugness that irritated her the most. It also irked her demon, who saw it as a challenge to prove what it could do – to demonstrate just how badly they had misjudged their target. Unfortunately, neither of the practitioners were close enough to touch; if she dived at one, the other would attack her.

“You’ll come with us,” the blond stated, scratching at his goatee.

“Um, actually I won’t.”

“You should—”

“You don’t want me to go with you,” she said in a compelling voice. He blinked repeatedly. “You don’t want to hurt me.” Sphinxes didn’t befuddle people with riddles as mythology stated, but they did have the natural ability to confuse people. She’d much rather stab them with her blade, but they couldn’t die until Knox had interrogated them.

“What are you doing to him?” demanded the other practitioner.

“You don’t care about that,” she told him in that same compelling voice. “You don’t remember who he is. You don’t remember why you’re here.”

The dark-skinned male stumbled. “What’s happening?”

Harper looked back at the other practitioner…only to see that he was doing some kind of silent chant. Something heavy and solid slammed into her head. She swayed and staggered, blinking repeatedly. Her vision began to darken around the edges as she fell back against the car and slid to the ground. But she fought the fog and the darkness closing in on her, and she somehow held onto consciousness.

His eyes widened as he struggled to his feet. “That’s not possible.”

A growl made everyone freeze. Then the Bentley shook as if something was struggling to get out. Tanner. By the sounds of it, he’d let out his inner demon.

A mere moment later, the demon was out; launching itself in the air and over the car to land in front of Harper, growling at the practitioners. Hellhounds were like wolves on steroids, yet they had a majestic air about them. They had fur as black as coal, eyes as red as blood, and they brought with them the scent of burning brimstone.

Gripping the hound’s fur, she struggled to her feet, her head still throbbing with pain. “Motherfucking motherfuckers need to motherfucking die.”

In full agreement with that, her demon barged its way to the surface just as it whipped out the stiletto blade and infused it with hellfire. Loving the fear that wafted from the practitioners, it spoke and as it petted the hellhound. “You cannot win this. Of course, you could try. You could attempt to take out myself or the hellhound. It might even work. But while you spend precious time doing a little chant, the other of us will be on you. That means that at least one of you will die.”