Page 22 of Bite of Passage
Everything inside him shifted into high alert.
He hadn’t sensed this presence in at least five or six years.
The reason this being was here probably had everything to do with the woman on his bed.
Distracted, he glanced between her and the door.“I have to deal with something that has arrived.”
“Right now?”She sat on the edge of the bed, her feet dangling a few inches off the floor.
He ignored her to don his leather armor and selected several knives to carry with him to meet his “guest.”As an afterthought, he draped a green plaid woolen tartan across his chest, one that’d remind his visitor of their shared origins and perhaps distract him.
She could choose to cross the divide and leave while he was gone, but he wasn’t done with her.Wasn’t done interrogating her on the type of magic she used to travel or how she opened the doorways between realms.He ordered, “Stay here.Don’t return to your world yet.Don’t step outside the room.Keep the windows locked.Stay as quiet as possible while I handle this.”
“I’m not a dog you can order around.”She stood and crossed her arms.
“Please.Stay put,” he gritted out.
She grabbed something off the bedside table and thrust it at him.“Wear it.I don’t want any witches having an advantage.Or mages.”
He put the hexenspiegel around his neck.“He’s neither.He’s far worse.”
She threw her arms around his waist and buried her head in his chest.“My imagination offar worsewhen it comes to your world is pretty bad.”
What the hell?Was she…was this human worried about him?He sucked in a shocked breath.“Get away from me.We established I’m tempted to chew your neck to pieces.”
She jumped away and put a hand up to shield her neck.
“Don’t try to leave.Don’t follow me.This threat can’t get through the door into this room.It’s warded to only grant entry to those I allow.”
“Who’s here?”
“Stay,” he ordered from the doorway.
“I’ll do whatever I…” She crossed her arms and squinty eyed him.“Fine.I’ll stay put, but you better not do anything stupid.”
“Stupid is a good word for today.”He could kill any being who crossed him, even his visitor.He slammed the door as he left.
ChapterEight
Gemma’s chest burned.Breathe.
She forced herself to suck in air while rotating the crystal between her fingers.
This was real.Real!
A vampire almost bit me.He’d torn off her shirt in the sexiest moment of her life, shortly after the scariest moment of her existence when someone almost murdered her.
Trembling started in her hands and traveled up her arms until whole body tremors shook her.
When the twin white tips of his fangs elongated and peeked out from his parted lips, she’d frozen.The red glow of the eyes, which on the show signaled imminent attack, made her lose her sanity.But not in a normal,I’m-going-to-dieway.She wanted him—his bite, sex, and anything else he might give her.Instead of retreating, she’d touched his teeth as if she was trying to befriend a great white shark.
“I’m an idiot,” she muttered.“A suicidal dummy.”
When he attacked creatures in the show, it hadn’t been portrayed as a romanticized, easy death of fast blood loss, his victims simply fainting into death.No, his kills had been vicious—nearly chewing out the throat and decapitated his victim each time.Horrifying.Bloody.Gross.
She drifted around the room, touching his things—a belt missing a buckle, a used shirt that smelled like him, a hairbrush, a discarded tartan.These normal items weren’t on TV.They weren’t part of the average fictional character on a supernatural show.The clutter humanized him.There was no toothbrush or toothpaste.Then again, this wasn’t the bathroom.Did bathrooms exist in a stone castle like this?His breath hadn’t smelled like that of someone who never brushed.
On the top of the dresser she found another hexenspiegel and the metal disks with runes she’d seen him use in some episodes.
