No one lived in a scary basement room off an alley under a Dumpster.
At least no one I wanted to know.
Vaguely, as I sat on that bed, it came to me that I hurt. My shoulders had scraped against the pavement when that guy took me down. But I ignored the ping of pain, seeing as I was clearly In Trouble, capitalized in a way that shit should be in neon. Blinking neon. In huge letters.
My mother’s voice all of a sudden came into my head. “You’re nuts. You’ve always been nuts.”
This is what she’d said when I’d told her what I was doing during my vacation days.
She believed this and I knew she did because she said it to me more than once, starting from when I was about four.
It was safe to say I wasn’t real tight with my mother.
“My little girl goin’ on a quest,” Dad had said when I’d told him. He’d also had a big grin of pride and approval on his face and he’d given me a tender cuff up the side of my head. “Good for you, Lilah. ’Bout time you took off and found what you needed to fill that hole in your gut.”
Dad understood.
Dad always understood.
I didn’t.
And now I understood it less.
My mind came back into the room when the guy walked toward me carrying some material in his hand. When he did, I couldn’t believe I’d let my mind wander.
I watched him warily as he moved.
He was tall. Tall and lean. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow, his legs long.
He had bulk, but it was spare. Regardless, even if I hadn’t experienced what I’d experienced not thirty minutes ago, one look at him and you knew he had power. That scar. The way he held himself. The economical way he moved. He was not a guy who went to the gym to hone his body because he was into fitness or wanted attention. He was a guy who, if he went to the gym rather than drinking raw eggs and doing one-armed pushups on the asphalt of the alley where he’d parked his bike, he did it as a statement that no one should mess with him, because if they did, he’d fuck them up.
He had that scar and it was nasty.
But I’d put money down that the other guy got worse.
“Shower,” he grunted as he tossed the material on the bed beside me and I continued to stare at him. “You reek of them.”
“I…uh” was the only thing I could get out, seeing as there was no way in hell I was going to shower in this weird basement room with a guy in attendance who I did not know, who also terrified me.
And this was saying something, considering I was covered in blood and I’d never wanted a shower more in my life.
“Now,” he growled.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
He didn’t reply.
It was then I saw his eyes, and in the light of the room I could make out the colors.
One was a startling light blue. The other was a deep, rich brown.
I’d never seen eyes like that. Not in my life.
They were enthralling.
“What are you?” I asked, still in a whisper, this one breathless.
“Shower,” he repeated.
I blinked, pulled myself together, and leaned a bit back. Even though he wasn’t close, just standing beside the bed, that was close enough. “I want you to let me go.”
“Case you hadn’t noticed, not safe for you out there.”
Uh.
What?
“I was…they were—” I began on a stammer, wanting to believe they were just bad guys out to do bad things and I’d gotten in their sights, but knowing in my gut it was something different.
Very different.
Freaky different.
“Hunting you,” he finished for me.
How’d he know that?
“They were just—” I tried again but cut myself off this time when he leaned slightly toward me.
“Hunting you,” he bit out.
“That’s what it felt like,” I said quietly.
“’Cause that’s what it was,” he replied, straightening.
“Why?”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “No fuckin’ clue.”
“You…you”—I scooted back several inches on the bed—“just killed three men and two dogs.”
He shook his head. “Not dogs. Wolves.”
What?
“Wolves?” I asked, my voice pitched high. “What are wolves doing in a city?”
“Hunting you,” he replied, losing patience. I heard it in his tone, saw it in his face, even in the lines of his body, and actually felt it in the room. “Now shower.”
“You killed them,” I reiterated.
“I did,” he agreed nonchalantly, like he did that crap every day.
And he could.
He probably did.
Yes, neon, blinking, huge letters In Trouble.
“Why did you do that?” I pushed. “How did you do that? There was only one of you and five of them.”
“Jesus, you need to shower,” he clipped.
“I’m not going to shower!” I cried. The terrifying insanity of the situation finally crashing down on me, I lost it—justifiably, to my way of thinking. “You just killed three men and two wolves! You’re covered in blood. I’m covered in blood and in a crazy basement room under a Dumpster where I do…not…want…to be!”
“Would you rather be dead?” he returned.
“No,” I snapped, then went on sarcastically, “but, you know, phoning the police rather than ripping five beings apart might have been a better option.”
“Yeah, good idea,” he retorted, matching my sarcasm. “I call the cops, they come in, and then those boys in blue are all dead because those things, they were not gonna stop until they took you out. They’d destroy anything that got in the way of them doin’ that. You want that on your conscience? Because I sure as fuck don’t.”