Chapter Eleven – Stephanie

 

Ryder did something, where he whipped me around like a slingshot and sent me nearly flying towards the Camelot High Street Hotel. His hands were on my back and my ass, shoving me along.

Desperately, my legs stretched and launched me forward, the balls of my feet taking all the impact as I raced ahead, my heart approaching explosion levels of speed.

Behind me, the cat-people growled like feral felines and bounded after us.

My work shoe slipped a little on the concrete as we got into the parking lot, but Ryder’s strong arms grabbed me around the waist and lifted me like a feather to my feet, pushing me forward.

“Run!” Ryder growled, nearly picking me up with the force of his movement, as we raced up to the clapboard building together, its lights shining like a beacon in the darkness.

“Get them! Before they’re inside!”

Ryder and I darted between the luxury cars filling the small parking lot, his breath as loud in my ears as my own as we made our way to the front door.

“Goddammit!” Ryder growled, his heavy footfalls slowing to a stop. “Get off me!”

Still moving, I spun in time to see Ryder being dragged back, a black-furred cat pulling him towards the street. Their clawed fingers tore down his shirt, shredding it with ease.

My heart, previously racing like a locomotive set to break the sound barrier, felt like it came to a dead stop. “Ryder!” I screamed, coming to a halt.

“No!” he yelled at me. “Don’t!”

I balled my fists, prepared myself to go back for him. I wasn’t going to lose him, too.

He moved before I could, like the warrior he’d trained all his life to be. Dark blood welled up on his chest and side as he spun around, planted a boot firmly in the cat-mutant’s face, and sent him flying back into one of the cars. A rear passenger side window shattered as the creature went thudding back into it.

“Come on!” I shouted.

Ryder was back behind me less than a breath later, the strips that remained of his t-shirt flapping in the wind behind him like the flag of a ship that had just survived a battle at sea. Together, he and I sprinted the rest of the way to the two-faced front door, leaving the cat-people in our dust.

“No!” Centurion Chad the Cat screamed at our backs as we threw open the door and practically dove inside to the small lobby, with its big counter and wooden wall panels surrounding us on all sides. “Don’t follow them!”

“You okay?” Ryder asked as he slammed the door shut behind us. He flipped the bolt on the door and turned back to me. “Stephanie? Are you all right?”

“Jesus!” I breathed, my voice almost quivering with fear. My hands shook, my legs ached, my chest burned. A sob wracked my body, shuddering through me from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. “Jesus Christ!”

His arms were around me, pulling me against his broad, naked chest as he stroked a big hand down my damp hair. “It’s okay,” he said, his fingers tender as they smoothed my tresses. “It’s going to be all right, okay? We’re gonna get through this.”

I relaxed into his embrace, laid my head against his chest as I closed my eyes. Despite the cool weather, I was gushing sweat from the run, from the fear of nearly being torn apart by those…those things!

“What’s going on, Ryder? What were they?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. The air was heavy with the stench of something like burnt hair, a noxious smell that filled my nose.

“Hello?” Esther called from the back office as the door crept open by a fraction of an inch. Just on the other side of the crack, I could see the flowing black hair of the night shift’s main attendant, Esther.

“Ryder Will—”

His words were interrupted by the racking of a pump shotgun from the backroom.

“—iams.” Before he could even finish getting the words out of his mouth, though, he was already on his way down to the ground. And dragging me with him.

We hit the hardwood floor in a bone-jarring pile, my teeth clicking together as I came down prone by his side. “Ryder!” I shouted, frowning back at him. “She’s not going to shoot us!”

“Shows what you know!” Esther growled from the back as I heard the door open. “You’re not one of those crazies, are you?”

“Is everything in this fucking town trying to kill us?” Ryder growled.

“Dammit, Ryder! Esther, it’s me!”

“Stephanie? Sharon’s daughter?”

“Yes!”

“From across the street?” Esther asked, followed by the sound of the door opening wider and the shotgun being set aside. Footsteps followed as she came out to the desk. “I’m so sorry! With everything going on, I didn’t know what to think. Are you two okay?”

“You’re not going to shoot us or anything, are you?” Ryder asked, still holding me down on the floor. “Because that would really be fitting with the way this night’s been going.”

I gazed up at the desk as Esther’s piercingly wise gaze peered over the top, down at us. “Oh!” she said, her eyes falling on Ryder. “I remember you, now!” Her wavy, raven hair flowed around her features like a waterfall that seemed to block out most of the light. “And, no, silly, I’m not going to shoot. That wouldn’t be hospitable, would it? And, you’re a paying guest, after all. Well, I assume you will be.”

Ryder rolled onto his back, sighing. “Thanks.”

Esther made a wincing noise as he and I helped each other up from the floor. “That looks pretty bad,” she said, pointing to his chest. “Shouldn’t we clean that up, or something?”

Ryder and I both looked down at his torn shirtfront, at the expanse of toned, rippling muscles beneath it. He pulled it away from his body, revealing more skin, and longer scratches down his side. God, he must work out all the time. Run ten miles a day, and eat nothing but steak and greens for every meal. A body like that said one thing: no carbs.

“Shit,” he whispered, almost to himself, and winced. “Only spare I’ve got is in the car. No chance I’m going for that right now.”

“That one looks fine,” I mused, my eyes fixated on the hard, tanned body visible through the rent tatters.

“What?” he asked, drawing my gaze to his.

Realizing I was biting my lower lip, I shook my head. “Uh, I said it doesn’t look too bad. We can get you cleaned up. Right, Esther?” I turned back to the night desk clerk, who promptly tried to hide the fact that she was having to stifle a laugh. I glared.

“Yes,” she said. “Absolutely. I’ve got a first aid kit right back here. May even have a spare shirt, too.” Still trying to hide her laugh, she disappeared into the back office.

Ryder reached down, a confused look on his face as he poked at the cut, winced again. “Damn that hurts.”

“Well, yeah!” I said. “Of course it hurts! And you’re only making it worse by poking at it!”

He went to poke again, and I had to slap his hand away.

“What the hell’d you do that for?”

“I said to stop messing with it, dammit!”

“Sorry,” he said, wincing again. “Just not every day a guy gets cut up.”

“No, I don’t suppose it is.”

“You doing okay?” he asked. “Not every day someone gets chased by half-cat, half-humans, then gets a shotgun pulled on them, either.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding, “doing great. I mean, I guess I’m okay.”

“Well, it seems safe enough here. Might as well hole up for a while. What do you think?”

I rubbed my arms, looked around the lobby. “Think she has space for me?”

He cocked his head to the side in a curious gesture before nodding. “Yeah. Pretty sure she can put you up for the night.”

“What do you mean?”

“He means,” Esther said from behind me as she popped back out of the office, “that we’re vacant.” A clean t-shirt was draped over one shoulder, and she was carrying a white metal box with a vibrantly red cross painted on the lid.

“Completely?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them.

“Well, no, not completely vacant. No one’s officially checked out. But, at the same time, no one who went out for the night has returned, so we’re vacant for all intents and purposes. Except for you, of course, Mr. Williams.”

“Ryder,” he said as he stepped up to the desk. “Please.”

“Well, if you two will follow me to the bar, we can start getting you cleaned up. Then, I can show you to your room.”

“Sounds great,” Ryder said as Esther came out from behind the desk and led us down to the small hotel bar down the hall. The Camelot High Street Hotel had been here almost as long as the town, give or take half a century. It was a post-Winifred O’Bannon building. Lighting installed in wall sconces lined either wall, interspersed with framed pictures of the founders and historic photos and sketches of Camelot’s origin as a mining village. It may have been bigger back then, but it had still been just a small frontier town. Mud streets, cheap wood-framed buildings, no sewage system or running water. It had been about as far from a city as you could get.

We turned into the bar, a small room with an unlit fireplace tucked into one wall, and tables scattered about. On the opposite side was a full bar, with a wall of liquor on display behind it. Predictably, it was all empty.

“Have a seat,” Esther said as she slipped back to the sink. “Just need to get some water so we can get those scratches cleaned up.”

“Have any disinfectant in that kit?” I asked as Ryder pulled out a chair at one of the tables near the bar, and I pulled out one beside him, slumping into our seats. Suddenly, I felt bone-tired. Exhausted, even.

“I think we have some,” she said as she began to fill an ice bucket with water. “If not, we’ve always the whiskey.” Her voice was light and airy, almost carefree. Like we weren’t currently under siege by a pack of cat mutants. She came back around from behind the bar, ice bucket full of water in one hand, and first aid kit in the other. She set both down in front of me, and laid down some clean towels she’d found behind the bar.

I gave her a look.

“Oh,” she said, one hand to her breast. “Blood makes me shudder.”

I sighed as I grabbed the towel and turned to Ryder.

Now it was his turn to give us both a look.

“Shirt?” I asked, as I dabbed the towel in some warm water. “Come on, it’s nothing we’ve never seen before.”

“Oh, right,” he replied, feeling for the bottom hem of his shirt. “Sorry.” He peeled off the remains of his t-shirt and balled it up in one big fist.

Okay, maybe I’d lied. The glimpse I’d caught through the rips and tears in his shirt had barely done his form justice. He looked like a professional boxer, the kind of athlete that could go on to win gold in any kind of sport. The kind of man that could have any woman he wanted.

Suddenly, my hands felt clammy and nervous, my mouth dry and overly salivating at the same time. I dabbed my towel back into the water again as I tried to calm down a little.

Maybe I hadn’t quite seen that before.

Esther cleared her throat. “If you two will excuse me, I think I should be watching the front desk.”

Before either Ryder or I could say anything, she was up and out the door, headed back towards the lobby.

“Here,” Ryder said, his throat bobbing as he swallowed hard. He rose a little, just enough to scoot his chair forward, and positioned himself right in front of me like a Greek god coming down from Olympus itself. He settled down in front of me, wearing only his jeans. Four evenly spaced, foot-long scratches tore down his side. The wounds had begun to clot, but some of the blood had smeared across the side of his abdomen and down towards the top of his hip. “That better?”

“Sure,” I squeaked as I grabbed the towel and leaned in, beginning to clean the cuts on his side.

He winced again as I crossed over the fresh wound.

“Sorry,” I said.

“No, you’re fine. Normally, this just isn’t that big of a deal, that’s all.”

“Get cut up a lot?” I asked as I rinsed the towel of blood and went back to clean some more.

“Not like I go out of my way, if that’s what you mean.”

“Well, as great of a job as you’re doing handling this,” I said with a wry smile, “I can’t wait to see how you’ll react when we start to disinfect it.”

He swallowed hard again, his Adam’s apple bobbing more.

Oh, this was going to be interesting.