He blinked and made a faint whining sound in his throat. The sound of a lost puppy.
It was the last sound he made before I shoved the silver stake into his heart.
“Shia, no!”
That anguished, broken voice came moments too late. Not that I would have stopped. Thick, almost black heart’s blood dripped off the tip as I pulled it free, dulling the metallic sheen of the silver. My fingers tightened on the leather grip until it squeaked as I slowly got to my feet and turned around, lifting my eyes to focus on the figure at the head of the stairs.
He was dressed only in jeans, his bare toes curled over the edge of the top step and his crystalline blue eyes wide with shock. That tousled blond hair was sticking up in all directions, in desperate need of a trim, his tanned chest and arms thick with hair, and his jaw covered with stubble. Maybe he’d just shifted back to human. Or maybe he’d been on the run for so long that he hadn’t been able to see to those simple, mundane necessities of personal grooming. It didn’t matter. Even now, after all he had done, he was beautiful, a golden god among mortal men.
He stood there, watching me, unmoving as I approached. My world narrowed down to a tunnel. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed for me. The patter of the liquid dripping off the stake in my hand. The stink of Were and smell of burning things, stinging my eyes. The embers floating like fireflies, winking in the space between us. None of it.
I’d found Chaz.
Chapter 20
He stayed frozen in place as I stalked up the stairs. I had eyes only for him. I didn’t even realize I’d tried to stab him with the stake until I felt a sudden shooting pain in my wrist, noticed his hand had closed around my arm and his fingers had dug into my tendons until the silver thudded against the floor and rolled down the steps.
A sound bordering on a sob died in my throat as I rounded my other fist and threw a punch at his jaw. It connected, the silver studs on my knuckles cutting into his cheek, throwing his head to one side.
With a snarl, he yanked me up into his arms, trapping me against his chest as he pulled me onto the landing. “Jesus Christ, what the fuck’s gotten into you? Are you on vampire blood again?”
I squirmed and fought, landing a pretty decent blow to his nuts before he slammed me against the wall hard enough for a couple framed pictures to fall and shatter at our feet. The belt was a huge help, but when he pinned my hands at the wrists and used his lower body to pin my legs, pressing against me like he had the right to be as intimate as a lover, his superior weight won out. Still, I struggled, my hands curled into claws as I strained to escape, hoarse sounds that might have been screams of fury passing between my clenched teeth.
“Stop it,” he hissed, staring down at me with eyes that glowed with an inner light. “For God’s sake, stop! Listen to me! We’ve got to get out of this house or we’re going to die!”
With an anguished moan, I shoved at him, succeeding in making him take a step back to readjust his position. I had to get him off of me. Had to. If I didn’t, I’d die, and he would live, and all of this would have been for nothing.
His shock was fading. Calculation was setting in. He looked down at me as though he’d never seen me before, while all I saw was a lying, cheating, murderous scumbag—a walking plague upon this earth.
“Shia,” he whispered, “what’s happened to you?”
I headbutted him. He reeled back with a curse, letting me go so he could press a palm to his forehead. With a sweep of my leg, he fell on his ass with a startled yelp.
At that point, I was too far gone to think to use any weapon but my hands. I fell on him in a straddle, one hand under his jaw to hold him in place, the other settling into a steady rhythm of pounding his stupid, perfect face into the back of his skull.
He flailed under me, struck me, but I barely felt it, even though I heard a distinct crack that came from somewhere inside my own body. It wasn’t until he loosed a roar and rolled that I stopped, and then only to catch my balance as I arched my body to avoid his grasping hands.
I fell onto my back and shot a kick at his jaw as he surged to his knees. His head snapped to the side, blood spraying the wall and a tooth rolling across the floor. His lip lifted in a gap-toothed snarl, and his eyes literally glowed with rage. He hefted himself up on his arms, and then to his feet, the floor shuddering under his weight with each heavy step.
He was after me now.
Once again, that deadly calm stole over me. I knew what needed to be done. I knew neither of us was going to live through this.
His nails were growing—not quite talons, not yet—as he reached down to grab hold of me. With a sinuous twist, I avoided his grasp, moving out of the way and landing a sucker punch just below his ribs. He gasped and rounded on me with a wild swing that managed to clip my shoulder and numb my arm.
Quietly, in the back of my head, the belt was whispering a litany (‘kill-swing-kill-kill-kill-it-duck-kill-kill’) that was like a mantra, keeping me focused through the pain and the shortness of breath. The fluid movements were mostly the handiwork of the belt. I was long beyond the point of sanity, my only desire in that moment to take Chaz down with me before I died.
We exchanged blows. He didn’t fight dirty. I did. At one point, I had a good grip on his inner wrist with my teeth, and he made a sound that nearly busted my eardrums.
When he clipped the side of my face with an uppercut, making my eyes water and everything wobble in my vision for a second, he seemed to come to some kind of realization about what he’d done. He grabbed my shoulders to steady me. I used the grip and his uneven footing to topple us both to the ground again, but miscalculated the distance to the stairs.
We tumbled down in each other’s arms, the wooden steps snapping under our weight.
Though my ears were ringing and everything hurt from that fall and my skin was stinging from the heat of the nearby fire—which had spread and was now creeping up the walls near the doorway to the kitchen—I was amazed I was alive. Chaz had put his hand behind my head on the way down so my skull wouldn’t be crushed.
It was a terrible tactical error on his part. I might have been shaky, but I was still functioning, and the fight wasn’t over yet.
He blinked down at me through watery eyes, his hand going to my cheek where he’d landed a good one. I stabbed him in the side with a stake while he was distracted.
A pained howl was torn out of his throat, and he flung himself to the side, grabbing the weapon and tossing it away in the process. His palm was singed from the brief contact, even through the leather grip. I reached for another stake.
“Chaz! Chaz, the passage is open, we can leave—”
Kimberly’s voice abruptly cut off as she noted exactly what he was up to. Seeing her readjusted my priorities a tad, considering he was down for the count. She must have escaped from Isabelle when the Moonwalker chased her in Central Park.
The shock on her features, combined with the new angle of her formerly pert and perfect nose and the scarring on her cheek from the silver I’d pressed against her in the park, made my day. I gave her a bloody smile, spitting some of the copper taint out of my mouth before advancing on her. She squealed and retreated back into the basement she’d been hiding in, slamming the door behind her.
Just before I could reach the knob, Chaz grabbed me around the waist and flung me back, sending me skidding over the floor until my head and spine connected painfully with the wall. It was hot enough to the touch that the heat of it was burning my back through the armor. Everything went dim for a few seconds, and my body ached abominably, but I was conscious enough to keep going.