Page 15 of Heir of Blood and Moonlight

“Fuck,” he growled. “Go into the bathroom, turn on the shower, and shut the door. Let me know when you’ve done that.”

Panic rising, I crossed the cramped living room to my bedroom door, then hurried into the attached bathroom. I started to shut the door but had to wait for Sombra to slink in before shutting it the rest of the way. My hand shook as I turned on the shower faucet, and the small bathroom filled with the sound of running water.

“Okay,” I said, putting the toilet lid down and sitting. I fumbled to switch the phone off speaker and held it up to my ear, hugging my middle with my other arm. “It’s done.”

Sombra leapt gracefully onto the edge of the tub and perched there like an obsidian gargoyle, watching me.

“Listen to me very carefully, Sophie,” Gavin said, enunciating each word. “You need to leave your apartment as soon as we end this call. Do not pack a bag. The shifters are likely surveilling your place at this very moment, and since we’re within the full-moon window, you’re in incredible danger.”

That meant the Sun assassins could shift into their other, deadlier forms. I may have been ignorant of many of the finer details of the way the immortal world worked, but I knew that much.

I gulped and nodded. But then I realized he couldn’t see me, so I forced out a hoarse, “Okay.”

“Do nothing differently than you would normally do if you were heading out to run some errands,” he added.

I clutched my side, my fingers digging in painfully through my T-shirt. “Will I be coming back?”

“Not for some time,” he said.

I glanced at Sombra. “I have a cat. I can’t just leave him.”

“Then you’ll put the cat in its carrier and act like you’re taking it to the vet,” he said evenly.

How was he so calm? My whole body was trembling, and I felt like my heart was going to hammer through my sternum.

“The shifters will follow you,” he went on. “But they should have no need to approach so long as they think nothing has changed. I’ll meet you in the parking lot of the veterinarian’s office. Once I’m with you, they’ll retreat to regroup, which will give us an opportunity to make you disappear.”

I nodded dumbly.

“Now, tell me what you’re going to do.”

10

Iturned off thetub faucet and scooped up Sombra, carrying him out to the living room. He didn’t struggle as I put him in the extra-large cat carrier I had purchased a couple of months ago when I took him in for his first post-stray vet visit.

I had almost made it to my sedan when a man and a woman emerged from the door of a ground-floor apartment near my covered parking spot. They headed for a car a few stalls down from mine while I struggled to wedge the carrier into my compact’s pint-sized backseat. It could fit—I had done it before—but it had taken some finessing. I wasn’t currently in a finessing state of mind.

“Here,” the woman said, jogging ahead of her companion. “Let me help you.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Thanks, but I’ve got it.” With a grunt, I shoved the carrier into the car.

And the woman kept coming.

Alarm bells went off in my head, but before I could do anything—before I could even shut the back door—the womanlunged forward. The air shimmered with magic around her, and in midair, she transformed into a huge red wolf.

I shrieked, stumbling backward into the side of the car parked beside mine.

Sombra’s carrier exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel flying. The small metal-grate door slammed into my knee, causing a starburst of pain, and bits of razor-sharp plastic sliced through my jeans. But the pain was quickly overshadowed by my shock at seeing agiant fucking pantherleap out of the backseat of my car.

I gaped as it crashed into the wolf shifter. “S–Sombra?”

Someone grabbed my arm, yanking me out from between the relative shelter of the cars. The wolf shifter’s male companion. My initial shock faded, and Javier’s training finally kicked in. I reflexively spun toward my attacker and punched him in the throat. When he released me to clutch his neck, I grabbed his shoulders and kneed him as hard as I could in the groin. He dropped to the ground on all fours.

I spun away from him and raced back toward my car. The panther and wolf growled and snarled as they viciously wrestled on the walkway beyond the front bumper. I dove into the driver’s seat of my sedan and pushed the ignition button.

The engine rumbled to life as the man I had taken down regained his feet. The air around him shimmered. He was shifting.

I put the car in reverse and slammed my foot on the gas. The tires squealed, then caught the pavement, and the sedan lurched backward. The rear bumper rammed into the Sun assassin mid-shift, and he vanished from sight, the car bouncing as the tires rolled over his body. It would take more than that to kill a shifter, but at least the injuries would stun him for long enough that I could get away before he transformed into his animal form and healed himself.

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