Bunny could be safe or she could be hurt or dying at this very moment.
An unfamiliar emotion shook him to the core and turned his bones to water.
“Are you real or am I hallucinating?” The question shook him from his roiling thoughts. A woman wearing a thin, sleeveless garment that exposed her fleshy arms and heavy bosom leaned across a partition at one end of the store. She gawked at him. “I ain’t never seen a man as pretty as you in all my born days.”
Rafe stalked up to her. “You are the proprietress of this establishment?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I am looking for a woman.”
“My lucky day.”
He gritted his teeth. “The woman I am looking for is my wife.”
His wife; he felt a surge of fierce possessiveness at the words. She was his, and no one, man or demon, would take her from him.
“Ah, hell, you’re Bunny’s old man, aren’t you?” She straightened with a sigh. “Figured as much, you wearing a tux and all. But a girl can hope. You just missed her. She left a few minutes ago.”
“She was unharmed when she left?”
“Seemed fine to me, except for a major sugar Jones. She bought enough candy to choke a horse.” She shook her head. “It ain’t fair, her being able to eat like that and stay skinny as a straw-fed hog.”
“Did she leave alone?”
She made a face. “Nah, she left with a woman named Trish. Your wife seemed to know her. A real piece of work, this Trish. I’d call her a bitch, but that would be an insult to bitches everywhere. She left you her card.”
She held out a small, rectangular piece of paper. The moment Rafe touched the card it dissolved in a puff of greasy, black smoke. The smoke formed into a gaping maw. A rasping, sinister voice spoke from the dark abyss.
“
Mine
,
Dalvahni,
” the voice said.
Rafe’s mouth went dry and his insides twisted. Fear, he realized with a sense of shock, finally able to put a name to the strange sensations he’d encountered since entering the shop. He was afraid. He’d heard humans speak of fear many times, but he’d never experienced it until now. He tried to examine the sensation with calm detachment and failed. He could not remain detached when it felt as though a demon had pulled the heart from his chest.
The djegrali had Bunny.
Chapter Eight
R
afe materialized behind the wheel of the truck.
“Whoa, where’d you come from?” Cooper jerked open the passenger door. “And what do you think you’re doing? You can’t drive a stick.”
“I do not have time to argue with you, Cooper.” Rafe gripped the steering wheel. “Get in or stay put. I do not care.”
“Now see here, Rafe. This is my truck. You can’t just—”
Rafe turned his head and looked at Coop.
Coop jumped back. “Jesus, man, your eyes are glowing.”
Without a word, Rafe waved his hand. The engine started and the truck jerked into gear.
“Okay, okay, hold your horses.” Coop scrambled inside the moving vehicle. “How do you think you’re going to find the beach house without me anyways? You need me, man.” The truck careened onto the road, narrowly missing an oncoming van. Coop gave a frightened yelp. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Put your hands on the wheel before we have an accident. This is a brand new truck.”
“We will not have a mishap. But in the unlikely event that I do damage your truck I will purchase you a new one.”
Coop clutched the seat as the truck accelerated. “I don’t want a new one I want—Hey, slow down, you’re going ninety miles an hour and—Watch that old lady in that . . . Oh, God, you’re going around her. Oh, shit, there’s a beer truck coming—Move over, dude, move over. Wrong side of the road, dude.
Wrong side of the—
” Coop threw his arms over his head. “Oh, man, we’re gonna die.”
Rafe ground his teeth. He wanted to leave Coop on the side of the road. But, as much as it galled him to admit it, he needed Coop to find Bunny.
Coop lowered his arms as the driverless vehicle sailed around another slow-moving car. “You weren’t kidding, were you? You really are an alien.”
“I suppose that is one way of looking at it.”
“What do you want with my sister?” Cooper was pale and sweating. But his gaze was steady and he looked Rafe in the eye without flinching. “You ain’t going to suck all the blood out of her or turn her into jelly, are you? ’Cause I can’t let you do that.”
Rafe felt a grudging respect for the man. Cooper was obviously bewildered and frightened, but his concern and determination to protect Bunny were genuine. In this, at least, they were united.
“I would die before I hurt your sister.”
“Glad to hear it, ’cause the way you’re driving that’s gonna be any time now.”
“The Dalvahni are extremely hard to kill.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, the Raines aren’t, and you’re scaring the bejesus out of me.”
Opening a compartment in the truck, Coop took out a neatly folded white dress shirt and started putting it on.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing? If I’m going to die, I’d better be dressed. Audrey would kill me if I was to die without a shirt on.”
Rafe did not try to follow the logic in that. Humans were sometimes indecipherable. “You are not going to die, Cooper. At least not today.”
Cooper tucked his shirt into his pants and buckled his safety device. “So, you’re a demon hunter.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not from Earth.”
“No.”
“And you’re here, so I’m guessing you’re after a demon.”
“Yes.”
Coop took a deep breath and blew it back out. “I know I’m gonna be sorry I asked, but what does Bunny have to do with this?”
“A demon attacked her the first night we met. I intervened.”
Rafe decided not to tell Cooper about the change in his sister. The man could only handle so much. Besides, Bunny needed time to adjust to her new self. Later, she could tell her family, if she so desired.
Later. After he left.
The thought of a future without Bunny sent a blinding spasm of pain through Rafe. The years without her stretched ahead, lonely and endless, a dull, meaningless blur. When had she become so necessary to him?
Coop was talking.
“You mean the mugger?” he said. “Oh, boy. You think this demon is still after Bunny, don’t you? That’s why you’ve been acting so squirrely.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, boy,” Coop said again. “Do my parents know any of this?”
“No.”
“Good. Don’t tell them. They’d never understand. Good folks, my mom and dad, but real down to Earth. Don’t believe in all that boogedy woogedy stuff.”
“And you do?”
Cooper shifted on the seat and looked uncomfortable. “Going to tell you something I never told nobody, not even Cam. Promise not to laugh?”
“The Dalvahni rarely indulge in mirth.”
“No kidding. I noticed.”
“What did you want to tell me?”
“Know it sounds crazy, but I saw a werewolf when I went boar hunting a few years back. I was on my way home, and I took a shortcut through Froggy Bottom. This weird mist rolled in and I got lost. By the time I got my bearings, it was dark and the moon was up. I heard a noise in the bushes over to the yonder of me, like an animal thrashing around. I sneaked up, real quiet like, and that’s when I saw it, standing in a little clearing on its hind legs. Must have been eight feet tall. All jaws and teeth.” Coop gave a shaky laugh. “Scared the hell out of me. Haven’t been hunting by myself since.”
Rafe felt a surge of satisfaction. Conall had been right to send him here. There was more to this backwater hamlet than met the eye. Perhaps he should request assignment in Hannah. Exhilaration filled him at the thought. For the first time in weeks, some of the perpetual tightness in his chest eased.
His elation sprang from an eagerness for the hunt, of course. He was
needed
here. It was his duty to investigate unusual demonic activity.
His desire to remain in Hannah had nothing to do with Bunny or his
feelings.
“Probably the werewolf you saw was a demon,” he said.
“The djegrali take on many shapes, though it is taxing on their hosts.”
“Hosts?” Coop swallowed. “You mean humans, don’t you? Why do they need us, if they’re so all-fired powerful?”
“The djegrali are amorphous creatures of the spirit world and lack substance. A human host satisfies their thirst for the physical sensations they crave. In human form, they can eat, drink, kill and have sex. Unfortunately for those they possess, they often indulge in sensual pleasures in excess, draining the humans of life. When the shell they occupy is spent, they seek another and the human dies.”
Coop shuddered. “Shit, the damn things are like ticks. I hate ticks.” He peered over his shoulder as the truck sped past a vehicle with flashing lights parked on the side of the road. “Hey, that looked like Trish Russell back there sitting on the ground. Wonder what happened?”
Rafe brought the truck to a screeching halt. “What did you say?”
Coop made a strangled sound. “Seat belt,” he said with a gasp, loosening the safety device. “What’s the big idea putting on the brakes like that? You dang near cut my windpipe in half.”
Rafe turned the vehicle around. “The woman back there, you recognize her?”
“I told you, that’s Trish Russell. Her daddy’s the president of the First National Bank of Hannah.”
“Bunny knows this person?”
“Sure, sure. They went to high school together. I ran into Trish at the drug store yesterday. She was in town visiting her folks. She lives in Fairhope now, I think.”
Rafe parked the truck across from the vehicle with the flashing lights and got out. Cooper got out, too, and they walked across the road.
“The female is injured?” Rafe asked a police officer standing next to the vehicle.
“I found this woman wandering down the side of the road. She seems disoriented. You know her?”
“No,” Rafe said.
“Then move along, buddy. We don’t need rubberneckers.”
“I know her, Officer,” Coop said. “Her name is Trish Russell and she’s from Hannah.”
The man in the uniform scribbled something on a pad of paper. “Thanks. I think she’s suffering from a concussion. Her eyes are dilated and she’s complaining of a headache.”
Rafe listened to them with half an ear. The woman on the ground appeared bruised and shaken, but otherwise unharmed. More importantly, though, he detected the residual stink of the djegrali on the human. The demon was gone.
By some miracle, Bunny had escaped the clutches of the djegrali.
He wanted to shout with relief. And on the heels of that sensation was a driving need to be with Bunny again, to hold her and kiss her. To run his hands over every inch of her satin skin until he was satisfied that she was unharmed, to mark her as his with his teeth and body.
He wanted to make love to her until she lay pliant and weak in his arms. Until his damnable addiction to her was satisfied once and for all.
He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled for putting him through this hell.
By the sword, she would not run from him again.
Chapter Nine
I
t was late afternoon by the time Bunny got to the beach house. She parked the car under the wraparound porch and walked barefoot down to the beach. Sitting on the sunwarmed sand, she listened to the shrill cries of the gulls and the steady wash of the waves against the white shore. The sun slowly set, melting into the ocean in a glorious puddle of orange and pink. Her earlier anger was gone, leaving her feeling sad and drained.
Nothing about this day had turned out as expected.
Her big, fat supernatural wedding had been a fiasco. Instead of Prince Charming and a happily-ever-after, she was married to an inter-dimensional bounty hunter and pregnant with ET.
Audrey’s beloved pink Caddy was missing a door. Bunny cringed at the thought. She was going to have a hard time explaining that one, much less paying for it.
Her beautiful wedding dress was damp and full of sand. Her carefully coiffed hair was in tatters and so was her heart. She had a hoedown throw down with a demon with a taste for junk food and—oh, yeah—her body and her husband’s super powers.
Worst of all, she was on her honeymoon alone.
Not the wedding night of her dreams.
Would Rafe come after her? She couldn’t blame him if he didn’t, not after she had run away.
She couldn’t call him, because she didn’t have her cell phone. Rafe didn’t have a cell phone anyway.
He was a demon hunter. He probably communicated by owl or something.
She could drive back to Hannah, but she had a feeling he was long gone. Her bottom lip trembled.
He was probably back on Planet Hot Stuff or wherever it was he hung out when he wasn’t kicking demonic booty. She doubted she’d ever see him again.
A suffocating ball of sadness welled inside her and she began to cry. She cried for a long time, until she was exhausted and her eyes felt dry and sandy. She wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hands. She didn’t have to look in the mirror to know she was a pink, swollen blotchy mess. She was
not
a pretty crier.
She got up and plodded to the house. That’s when she remembered she couldn’t get in because she didn’t have a key. She almost sat down on the porch steps and cried all over again, but tried the door instead. To her surprise, the knob turned with a muffled
snick
. Stepping inside, she flipped on the lights and gasped. The wedding fairy had paid a visit, transforming the beach house into a honeymoon paradise. Bunny’s eyes filled with tears. Her parents, her sweet wonderful parents, had done all of this. There were candles and fresh flowers in the foyer. In the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator. It was stocked with milk, juice, beer, white wine, eggs, cheese, steaks and salmon. On the kitchen table were a basket of chocolates, an arrangement of fresh fruit and two bottles of champagne. Bunny examined the bubbly. Wow, it was the good stuff, not the grocery store kind that gave you a headache.
She went into the great room and did a double take. A faux fur rug, complete with a snarling tiger head and outstretched paws, sprawled in front of the fireplace. Silk cushions littered the floor. Draped across a chair was some kind of filmy garment. Good grief, it was like something out of Arabian Nights.
Scratch that. This was Alabama. More like Ali Bubba and the Ford-y Thieves.
A remote control sat on a table behind the couch. Beside it was a place card with an arrow pointing to the device. Bunny picked up the card.
Push Me
the card said in her mother’s handwriting.
Bunny pressed the button. Ravel’s
Bolero
blared out of the speakers on the wall.
Ugh, she had the uncomfortable feeling she’d just gotten a glimpse into her parents’ sex life.
Double ugh.
She turned off the music and headed for the back of the house. As she passed the master bedroom she did a double take and backed up. The room had been completely redecorated. Gone were the worn bed and serviceable chest of drawers her parents had used for more than twenty years. A path of rose petals led to a sumptuously appointed four-poster bed with a sheer canopy. The covers were turned back, exposing crisp, linen sheets. More rose petals were strewn across the sheets and pillows. Candles beckoned from the heavy wall sconces on either side of the bed and from the bedside tables and dresser.
It was a love nest, romantic, sensuous, evoking images of heated caresses and panted entreaties. But Rafe wasn’t here. He was gone and her love nest was empty.
In more ways than one.
She couldn’t sleep here. Not without Rafe. She fled down the hall to her old room. To her relief, her bedroom remained unchanged. Same soothing green and white décor. Same pale furniture. She opened one of her dresser drawers, took out some of the extra clothes she kept at the beach, and headed for the shower.
She washed and dried her hair and slipped on a pair of cotton panties and one of Coop’s old T-shirts. Going back onto the porch, she watched the last, silver light of dusk fade, leaving the shore clad in velvety darkness, and wondered what to do. In retrospect, maybe running away hadn’t been such a good idea. For one thing, in spite of everything, she still loved the big jerk. She couldn’t imagine life without him. But she’d screwed it all up and now she didn’t know how to fix it.
The beach had been quieter and less crowded since the BP oil disaster. The kids were back in school, and the summer tourist season over. Gulf Shores was once more a little town that happened to be on the ocean; empty, except for the locals and the snow birds from Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin who wintered here. But the snow birds mainly stayed in campers, RVs or condos farther down the strip. The private homes along this stretch of the shore were dark and vacant.
Bunny normally liked Gulf Shores this time of year. Things moved at a slower pace. The beaches and restaurants weren’t as crowded or the streets as congested. But now it seemed desolate and lonely.
She heard the dull
thunk
of a car door. Her senses sharpened and her skin tingled in warning. Someone was here.
She leaped to her feet, her heartbeat thudding in her ears. Alarm skittered along her nerves. Danger; danger had found her. She could feel its approach. The air throbbed with rage and suppressed violence and raw, primal hunger. Oh God, the demon.
Run.
Get away before it finds you.
She raced down the steps. A formless shape, darker than the surrounding night, blurred and materialized on the path in front of her. She screamed and ran back up the steps. The house, she thought, panicking.
Get inside the house and lock the door.
She reached for the doorknob.
“Bunny.”
The sound of that deep, magical voice stopped her in her tracks and made her shiver with longing.
Rafe. He was here. Oh thank goodness, he was
here.
She whirled around with a cry of delight and gasped. He stood at the foot of the steps. The black tuxedo jacket and bow tie he’d worn at the wedding were gone, and his white shirt was unbuttoned, exposing his muscular chest and ridged abdomen. His chiseled features appeared strained and harsh in the dim light from the porch and his eyes . . .
They glowed in the darkness, feral green, like a jungle cat’s on the prowl
.
And she was his prey.
Good Lord, the dark, throbbing menace she’d sensed just now was
Rafe
, not the demon. Even during the heat of the battle in the rose garden, he had not seemed so fierce and intimidating.
He stalked up the steps toward her, his gaze on her face. She backed away. Energy pulsed around him in jagged black and red currents. She felt the porch rail against the back of her thighs and stopped moving.
He halted a few feet away from her. His hard, shining gaze moved slowly over her bare feet and legs and drifted past the worn T-shirt. Her skin burned and tingled from the blistering contact.
“You are well?”
There was a hard, gruff edge to his smoky baritone that she did not recognize.
“Yes, Rafe, I’m fine. Listen, I want to tell you that I—”
“The djegrali did not harm you?”
Her heart sank. He looked so stern and rigid . . . so
angry.
But at least he was here. She thought she’d lost him. Thought she’d never see him again. This was her chance to explain, to try and make him understand.
“No, I’m not hurt. Listen, Rafe. I know you’re angry with me, and I don’t blame you. But if you’ll just—”
“I am not angry. There are no words in your language to describe what I am. The Gorthians call it
hrul chathka,
the black flame that devours. But even that is inadequate.” He took a step closer. “Do you have any idea the torment I have suffered imagining you helpless and at the mercy of the djegrali? Terrified that you might already be dead? You left me. To make matters worse, I have been forced to spend an eternity of an afternoon with that idiot brother of yours because he knew where to find you.”
“Which idiot brother?”
Bunny jumped as Rafe threw back his head and roared, the veins in his neck bulging. “Never mind which brother! Did you hear what I said? I was afraid. I, a Dalvahni warrior! I have faced death countless times and in many forms, but I have never known fear until I met you.”
Bunny felt a wave of remorse at his words. And at the same time a flicker of hope. He had come after her. He was afraid for her. Surely that meant he cared for her a little.
“So, you and Cam followed me here?”
“ ’Twas Cooper.”
“He dropped you off and went back home?”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “Yes.”
“I’m glad you came after me.” She smiled up at him.
“And I’m sorry you were worried. But I had a few things to think about.”
His eyes glittered, fever bright. “You left me.”
“I know. But it’s not every day a girl finds out her husband is a demi-god and she’s had a supernatural makeover.”
“I am not a demi-god.”
She waved her hand. “Close enough for government work. The point is, I’ve had a bad day, but that’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have run away.”
“No, you should not have.”
“And I’m sorry.”
“You should be. You will not run from me again.”
It was a statement, not a question. She straightened her shoulders. “Of course not. I learn from my mistakes.”
“That is good to know. Now take off your shirt.”
Bunny blinked. “What?”
“I can see your nipples and the soft sway of your breasts through the thin cloth of the garment you are wearing. I have had a bad day, too, Bunny. If you are truly sorry, take off your shirt.”