Rogue Rider

She shook her head. “They’ve only been here for a few months. Honestly, they were jerks. He shot one of my goats for wandering onto their property, and his wife didn’t care at all. But I didn’t wish… this on them.” She shivered. “That was no wild animal, Reseph. We both know that.”

His heart nearly stopped, and even in this cold, his palms began to sweat. “Do you know what it was?”

“Yes.” Her green eyes came up to cling to his. With shaking hands, she unzipped her coat and lifted her sweatshirt.

On her belly were scars. Scars scratched into her skin in the exact same pattern as the claw marks on the dead woman.

Ten

“What happened?” Reseph’s voice was low, deadly, and this time, Jillian knew she wasn’t going to get away with deflecting or telling him she didn’t want to talk about it.

“I’ll tell you everything.” She looked around and shivered. “But I want to go home first. This place is giving me the creeps.”

Reseph gave a decisive nod and headed to the snowmobile. “I’ll drive. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“Do you know how to operate one of those?”

“Strangely, yes. I can drive a car, too. Pretty sure I’m good at horse-drawn buggy.” He hopped on and held out his hand, which she took, and settled herself so her body was flush against his, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. “Lower.”

“What?”

“Move your hands lower.”

Inhaling the warm, earthy scent of his silky hair, she obeyed, and then punched him in the shoulder. “You and your one-track mind.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying.” He started the engine, the roar cutting off any hope of a smart comeback. Which was, no doubt, the reason for his convenient timing.

He gunned it, turning them around in the circular drive. As they started down the long, winding driveway, headlights flashed between the trees, coming at them. Reseph stopped the machine.

“Who is that?”

She tightened her arms around him. “Could be the police. Or the special investigators.”

“Who are they, anyway?”

“Demon hunters.” She’d never seen any, but talk of them was all over the news.

Reseph went taut, the muscles in his back turning to cement against her chest. “Is there another way back to your place?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just have a bad feeling.”

“About them?”

“No,” he said roughly. “About me.” His entire body went even stiffer as the vehicle got closer. “I can’t explain it. We just need to go.”

Unease licked at her, but Reseph hadn’t steered her wrong yet. She pointed toward a thin grouping of trees. “That way. There’s a meadow we can cut through.”

Reseph didn’t waste time. He hit the gas and tore through the forest. Jillian held on for dear life, although she had to admit that he drove the snowmobile like he’d been doing it professionally for years.

“You’re good,” she yelled into his ear.

“I know.”

“Arrogant ass,” she muttered, and she swore he chuckled.

He ripped across the field, keeping close to the tree line, as if he didn’t want to get caught out in the open. Ahead, a deer bounded over a log and into the trees, turning to look at them as they sped through the snow. Reseph saluted the creature and turned the machine into the forest at the trail Jillian gestured toward.

They arrived at her house in one piece, which almost seemed like a miracle. Reseph drove well, but he drove like a maniac.

As soon as they were inside, he stripped off his shirt and socks, leaving him only in jeans. She might think his hatred of clothes was strange, but she certainly didn’t mind looking at his bare body.

“Now,” he said, crossing his arms over that magnificent chest. “What happened?”

“I don’t even get a chance to relax?” She headed into the bedroom, and he followed.

“You had time to relax on the way here.”

She shot him a dirty look. “If you think being on the back of a snowmobile with you is relaxing, you’re crazy.”

“That’s highly likely.” He propped himself in the doorway. “So.”

“So.” The dark memories of her past rose up. Delay. She needed to delay even for just a minute. “Why don’t you go first and tell me what about the demon investigators made you nervous?”

“I don’t know,” he murmured. She measured him for the truth, studying his body language right down to the twitch in his straight, strong jaw and the glint in his eyes, but it dawned on her that it was a waste of time. She was batting zero when it came to judging men. “I guess I had a witch hunt freak-out. You know how zealots see what they want to see? What if they took a gander at my situation and decided I should burn at the stake? Look what happened during the Salem witch trials. No one put on trial was actually a witch. One was a demon, but no witches.” He paused. “How do I know that?”

“Maybe you saw it when you were online. But yes, I can see how running into demon police types could be a little unsettling,” she admitted.

“Exactly. Now,” he said, in a deep voice that dripped with command, “tell me what happened to you.”

Dammit. He definitely wasn’t letting this go, but she couldn’t blame him. She’d invited the discussion the moment she showed him her scars. God, she wasn’t even sure what had possessed her to do that. She hadn’t even let Stacey see them.

“It happened a year ago.” She sank down on the bed and pulled a pillow onto her lap. “I was leaving work at the Orlando air traffic control tower after a swing shift, so it was almost midnight. The parking lot was well-lit, but all of a sudden, the lights dimmed.”

“A year ago. That’s about when all the demon stuff happened, right?”

“Sort of. Apparently, it had been happening for a few months, but the general public didn’t really know until then. That’s when the shit hit the fan and just kept getting worse.” Until three months ago, when everything just… stopped. “So yeah, there were rumors and stuff, and it was getting scary, but world leaders were trying to downplay everything.” A shudder rattled her. “I wasn’t as cautious as I should have been, but I was supposed to be meeting my fiancé in the parking lot—”

“Fiancé?” Somehow, Reseph’s voice went even deeper.

“Yes, but, I mean… it’s over. We’re not together anymore. Obviously. Or I wouldn’t be here.” Good God, could she have babbled more? And why did she feel the need to explain? “Anyway, I was in the lot, and when the lights went out, I should have run back inside the building. Instead, like an idiot, I went to my car.”

“You couldn’t have known,” he said. “And weren’t you at an airport? Isn’t the control tower in a secure area?”

“Yes, which is probably why I had a false sense of security.” She inhaled, bracing herself for the rest. “When I was almost to my car, I saw blood. A lot of it, leaking out from under the truck parked next to mine. At the time, I thought it was oil.”

“Because it was dark.”

“Exactly.” She winced. “But I remember the smell. I should have known. It was so stupid.” She didn’t give him a chance to offer comforting, useless words. “I walked around the back of my car, and that’s when I saw Sandy. She was the electronic technician who monitored the weather instruments in the field. She was being… attacked… by some kind of monsters.” The things had been sexually assaulting her, even as they ripped at her body with their massive teeth. “She was dead… God, I hope she was dead.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran. Tried to run, anyway. One of them had me on the ground before I made it ten feet.” She looked up at Reseph, who was watching her with concern, but, thankfully, not pity. “The strangest thing is that I don’t remember the pain. I know it was cutting at me with its claws, and I was terrified, but I don’t remember it hurting.” The fear though… she’d never forget that.

“What else do you remember?”

“Its breath.” She shuddered again, this time hard enough to shake the bed. “It was like rotting eggs and meat mixed with feces.” She realized she’d been rubbing her belly, running her palm over the scars, and she pulled her hand back. “And then there was the man.”

Reseph shoved off the door frame in a slow, sinuous motion. “Man?”

She nodded. “In the shadows. I didn’t see him, but I… felt him. It was like he was a big furnace, only instead of giving off heat, he was radiating evil.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

“We’re talking about demons,” Reseph said, as he moved in front of her. “So nothing sounds crazy. Or maybe all of it does.”

“I think it all does.”

He kneeled at her feet and put his hands over hers. “Then what?”

“I don’t know.” It was a lie, but she wasn’t ready to relive the gory details. She doubted she’d ever be ready. “I remember the sound of flapping wings, though. It was so odd. There were all these growls and snarls… and through them, I heard the whisper-soft flap of wings.” A few seconds passed in silence, and when she spoke again, her lips were numb from pressing them together. “I woke up in the hospital a month later. The doctor said airport police had found me during a routine patrol. I didn’t remember anything for a few weeks, and by the time I did, I was discharged from the hospital. I couldn’t go back to work, so I quit my job and came here.”

“And your… fiancé?” Reseph’s last word came out as a low growl.

“I never saw him again.”

A vicious smile curved Reseph’s mouth. “Did the demons eat him?”