Page 36 of Rapture's Edge (Night Prowler 3)
The last year had been better; once they were settled in France—Silas had the foresight to stuff a bag full of money before they fled, not enough to last but enough to get them established—the attacks tapered off, and for the past year she hadn’t suffered even one. Not when she’d been caught by the police, not when she’d been tortured by Édoard and Dr. Frankenstein, not when the police station blew up around her and she was kidnapped and awoke with two sewn-up bullet wounds, locked in a strange room in a strange house, alone.
No, it took a kiss to bring one on. A kiss from him.
And this was the mother of them all.
Crouched on the bed like a cornered animal, she watched with wild eyes as D leapt from the floor, his huge body coiled to spring, his face tense, a look of pure, murderous rage in his eyes, which were trained on the bedroom door. With a growled, “Stay here!” he moved silently to the door, looked out, and then disappeared though the doorway without looking back.
Once he was gone she felt a surge of relief, but she still couldn’t get her gelatinous legs to move. She gulped large swallows of air, willing her heart to slow its furious beat, telling herself she wasn’t dying, she was going to be fine, she just needed to get out of this room and away from him.
And whatever else had recently arrived.
Still shaking, she tried to step off the bed and instead fell flat on her face on the floor. She lay there panting a moment, listening hard to catch any noise above the hideous whine of the alarm, but she didn’t hear anything. She finally managed to get her legs to work and crept to the doorway. From the floor she snatched the dagger D had wrestled from her hand. She reached the door and peeked out.
A long corridor lined with doors, some open, a few closed. A spiral staircase at the end, leading up to another floor.
No windows. No other way out.
She crept down the hallway, glancing into each room. All were bedrooms, none had other interior doors. She’d have to go up the stairs.
Taking each step much more carefully than the adrenaline screaming through her veins wanted, she progressed up the steps until she reached the top, then peeked over the last step: Living room. Sofas, huge flat-screen television, modern, masculine décor. No one in sight.
The alarm screamed shrilly on and on, urging her forward.
With her heart in her throat, she eased up the last few steps and ran to the opposite wall, where she flattened herself beside a tall bookcase and paused a moment to catch her breath. Her pulse throbbed through her head, pounding a staccato beat that nearly drowned out the alarm.
She heard voices. Male voices. Shouting. Her heart took off like a rocket, and her hands began to shake so badly she nearly dropped the dagger. She tiptoed across the floor to another spiral staircase that led up to who knows what, the only way out of the room.
When she reached the top of the staircase, she didn’t fall apart so much as implode.
Three huge males, black-haired, strapped with weapons, larger and more menacing than any human could ever be, were wrestling Demetrius down to the floor. Trying to wrestle him down to the floor, without much success. They were all snarling and shouting at one another in Latin, massive arms swinging, black hair and fists flying, a heavy oak kitchen table and wooden chairs knocked aside like children’s toys as they grappled with one another and staggered across the room.
D. Lix. Celian. Constantine. Her father’s personal guard.
Her father’s traitorous assassins.
A thermonuclear urge to kill them all with her bare hands forced blood to her face where it spread, throbbing hot, to her ears and neck. It warred with a deeply ingrained, stubborn survival instinct that screamed at her in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of there while they were busy doing whatever it was they were doing. It seemed like the other three were trying to take D down, but why, she couldn’t fathom. It occurred to her that possibly D had gone rogue and killed her father himself without the knowledge of the others, but she dismissed that thought as quickly as it came, knowing the Bellatorum were like the musketeers—all for one and one for all and all that nonsense. If D had hatched a plot to kill her father, they were all in on it.
And this was her chance to get revenge.
Or—escape.
Which would it be? She couldn’t take them all at once, she only had the dagger—but their backs were turned, they were all distracted, she had the element of surprise—
Then something strange happened. In the middle of the snarling ball of fury
that was the fighting warriors, D spotted her crouched there at the top of the stairs. Over the shoulders of the others, their eyes caught and, for one infinitesimal moment, held. Then he glanced to his right and glanced back at her, a look of intense concentration on his face, as if he were trying to communicate something crucial. Eliana’s gaze darted right, following his.
The sliding glass door in the family room across from them had been smashed. In its place was an enormous, ragged, gaping hole that led directly outside.
To freedom.
The bottom fell out of her stomach. She stared back at D, and he nodded once; then with a thundering bellow, he dragged all three Bellatorum down to the floor with him.
Eliana sprang to life.
In three long bounds she was across the room and through the smashed door, outside into a large yard of trees and grass lit ghostly blue by moonlight. She couldn’t Shift, but she could still run, and run she did, like the wind, never looking back, the snarls of the fighting males she’d left behind fading as she bounded off into the moonlit night, clearing fences, climbing walls, sprinting across lawns and streets and yards, her mind a viper’s nest of unanswered questions, writhing and twisting, spitting black.
D kidnapped her.
