Page 154 of Blue Moon Mistress

Chase’s gaze slides to the now-dark bar. “I’d suggest hopping you up on the bar, but… health codes.”

Laughing, I take his hand and he pulls me out through a side door. It has just as many deadbolts as the front door, and he only lets go of my hand long enough to secure them.

The staircase looks rickety, but that might be by design. And the small, weed covered path he leads me down opens directly into the tiny parking lot.

A pair of tail lights glow red before the last car that isn’t ours pulls out of the lot and onto the still-busy highway.

Old lamp posts cast a jaundiced light on the cracked and crumbling pavement, but it feels a little magical.

I know it’s Chase.

I know that the guys are the reason things feel this way, not where we are, but…

Tugging me to a stop, Chase wraps his arm around my waist and pulls me to him, kissing me in the dimness of the night as cold wind washes to us from the bay.

“My dance, I believe?” He chuckles against my lips.

Held tightly to him, he twirls us around, dancing us toward my car.

A big rig thunders past, using the late hour as an excuse to ignore the speed limit. And a crow takes flight, shrieking as it flees.

But otherwise… it’s like we’re completely alone.

“I know I should wait until we’re with the others, so you know that we all feel this way, but,” He smiles, a quirk of his lips so sweet, I want to kiss him. “Last weekend was amazing. Not being around you after that, not so much. We know you’ve got your own life and heaven knows ours are all over the place, but we thought, maybe—”

A shadow in my periphery, like the whole hillside has shifted, is my only warning.

I yank Chase to the side and we both fall to the pavement a moment before heavy rock hits beyond where we’d just stood.

“What the—?”

But there’s not time to explain yet. Even if I had a concrete answer to his half-question. “Up. It’s not going to stop with just one.”

And it doesn’t. Another rock hits the pavement, half of it breaking off to splinter.

But we’re on our feet and I get a good look at the thing that’s emerged from the trees on the hill.

The creature isn’t natural—for all that it’s made of nature. Dark and sickly magic is required to create a terratoma. Spells stolen from the Jewish people, like so many other things,mangled and mutilated to create a monster similar to their golem… but it’s not a protector.

There is nothing good about this vile creature composed of rotting intentions and stolen earth.

These are made with one intention: to kill.

It stumbles out of the trees, a thick and stubby leg smacking against the pavement, splattering like mud.

The magic that made it wasn’t strong if it’s already having problems staying together. But even a weak terratoma is dangerous.

And I need time to think.

Whispering a spell to pull the power of the breeze that floats around us, to coil it between my hands and concentrate its power…

I throw as much energy as I can muster into the force of my push and the thing moves backward… but not far.

The thing that gives us a moment to breathe is that it’s still weak—still forming—and that burst tore off one of its arms and punched a hole in its muddy torso.

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a terratoma… but I haven’t seen one this big before.”

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