I left the riverbank and headed once more into the trees. Whoever she was, she thought she was hidden. In the hush of a thickening night, I sensed her heartbeat—a little too quick. Maybe she was scared. And, well, maybe she wasn’t wrong to be. As I moved among the dark trunks, she began to move in opposition. The prey could tell she had been rousted out.
This knowledge would not help her. I was nothing if not far too adept in the search for and subsequent extinguishing of life. But Orion had said to bring her back, hadn’t he? That was something new and intriguing. Who was this individual, that I had not been granted the typical permission to kill on sight?
The game of cat-and-mouse went on between us for only a couple of minutes—as long as I allowed. She had nowhere to go but away from me, and I was the faster between us. Her pulse grew steadily louder in my ears, until I could nearly feel it with my own. Silent as a shadow, I rounded the trunk of the next tree…and heard a tiny gasp.
The human girl knelt on the frozen ground, staring up at me through huge, moonlike eyes. She had taken the chance to remain inconspicuous, efforts that struck me as pitiable more than anything. The dark hat over her head struggled to contain unnaturally bright waves of hair. I reached out to touch one of the escaping locks, momentarily transfixed. She made a valiant effort not to flinch.
In that moment, an impossible note of familiarity sounded within me, like the chime of a sacred bell. I looked down into her wide blue eyes and wondered if it was possible that we might have something, anything, in common.
“Who are you?” Her impressively calm inquiry shattered the spell.
“It doesn’t matter.” I grasped her by the arm, though not as firmly as I had meant to. She was small beneath my hands, but sturdy too. A woman of tempered glass and secret steel. And unlike the bodies I had grown so accustomed to handling, she was warm.
In a heartbeat, her free arm lashed forward, and she drove the heel of her palm into my chest, catching me off guard, which surprised me. She wrenched her other arm from my grip, and stepped back. I already liked her. She didn’t let anyone push her around.
“Why not?” The girl planted her feet as hard as she could into ground. I looked into her then, at the face of her soul, the relative newness of her life. So young and vital, and yet oddly wise. Was that why Orion wanted her? I doubted it. He had never struck me as a man appreciative of depth.
“Because.” I spoke in measured tones. “Ask me again, and you’ll be dead.” Briefly, I regretted my coarse phrasing; that type of rhetoric was usually enough to induce panic in the hearts of mortals.
She narrowed her gaze at me, her pose ready to fight me. “Fine. What do you want, then? Why are you tracking me?” The considerable weight of either courage or stupidity filling her voice was enough to give me a moment of pause. I turned halfway to see her once more. She was a mortal, wasn’t she? The echo of that one clear note haunted me. Maybe I was misjudging her. There was something odd about her I couldn’t pinpoint.
She stared at me, a cold, defiant fire now burning in her eyes. “I’m not afraid of you. If you’re not going to talk, then you can be on your way.”
This was partially a lie. I could feel it coming off of her no matter how deeply she drew from her well of strength. There was nothing she could have done to mask it any further; fear was a vital instinct for any being with the inconvenient ability to die.
“Yes, you are.” I leaned down. Her breath caught slightly in her throat, and she recoiled out of my reach. “Just as you should be.”
She chuckled grimly. “I don’t think so.” The next thing I knew, she had kicked at my ribs, ripped her hat off, and thrown it in my face. The flash of black cloth was just disorienting enough to lose sight of her as she took off in the first direction she saw. I blinked and shook my head. She hadn’t gotten far, what with her fragile human legs.
And now I was getting annoyed, fire igniting in my veins. As usual, the living were proving to be far more difficult than the dead. Not that it mattered, in the long run. I gave her a few seconds to believe her flight had a chance of success, and then I drew in a breath, pulling my power from the other side of the veil. The world washed white around us. I watched her slow to a halt mid-stride, her hair suspended in a glorious pink banner behind her.
My wings, no longer hidden in the liminal space between my domain and hers, weighed heavy on my back. Often, I wished they weren’t necessary to use what cursed gifts I had been granted, but they were always mine to bear. They unfurled slowly as I approached her from behind. Up close, I could see her moving a fraction of an inch at a time. The sole of her right shoe descended gradually through still air. One wing formed a wall in front of the fleeing girl.
I exhaled.
She ran into a cloud of black feathers at full speed—the hollowness of my wing-bones did nothing to cushion the impact. I caught her as she reeled back, stunned.
Pivoting on the spot, she threw a fist at my shoulders and drove a knee into my gut, then shoved herself away, breaking free past my wings caging her.
She was good, but I was better.
Each wing folded against my body, and I ran after her this time refusing to have Orion make comment on a human outsmarting me.
A small clearing ahead, and I spread my wings wide. They snapped outward, catching the wind and beat. My feet lifted off the ground. In seconds, I swooped right behind her and looped my arms under her armpits, hauling her into the air.
“Put me the hell down!” She writhed against me, but I held on tight, my wings beating, carrying us over the trees. Her fingers dug into hands, pulling at my hold as she thrust for freedom.
I admired how she didn’t let fear paralyze her at a time when most humans would panic.
By the time the river was back in earshot, she was kicking and shouting to be put down. I fought the sudden, vicious impulse to crush her right there, to break her delicate neck in one effortless snap. As much as I would have enjoyed it, something about her made me want to study her further, to understand who she was.
Less than a hundred feet ahead, Orion stood on the side of the water, awaiting my return. I had no doubt that if I delivered him a dead girl, she wouldn’t be the only one who ended up broken. I may have held death in my hands, but as it turned out, it was harder to deal with one who was already there.
To that end, the girl was still fighting as I set her down in front of the others. Seth had just finished sending the body off downstream, and as he moved back toward us, he caught sight of the captive girl for the first time. She stumbled out of my reach, her body poised to fight. Against anyone else, she might have stood a chance.
Orion smiled. There seemed to be a hint of genuine pleasure in his expression. “Hello again, little one,” he said.
The girl whipped around at the sound of his voice. From that moment on, her giant eyes never looked at anyone else.
Chapter 8
Orion
I liked the way she stared at me in that moment of true recognition, her upturned face illuminated by a fall of silver moonlight, her full lips, and cheeks rosy from the cold. Behind the mask of bravery in her blue eyes, there was a hint of fear, and also innocence. She stood about five-foot-eight, toned, and my gaze traced the curves of her full breasts. My presence had surprised her, truly. That palpable element of shock was what I enjoyed most—a way to let her know exactly where dominance lay.