Page 15 of Kick the Candle (Knight Games 2)
"What I want, I can't get inside." He extended his hands toward her shoulders.
Crap. With a thrust of encouragement from Rick, I bounded into the alley, Nightshade heralding my arrival with the blue glow of her blade. "Hold it right there," I yelled, using his startled composure as opportunity to slide in front of Stella. "Identify yourself."
The man took a step back, and the angle of the light gave me a good look at his coat. Seal skin. Bastard. With a strange hand gesture that I assumed was a foreign version of giving me the finger, the stranger turned to run. I wasn't sure what I was dealing with, but he wasn't human, not if he'd popped up in our silver mirror, so I leapt forward and swung Nightshade. I wasn't trying to kill him, only to maim him so that I could find out more and pass judgment. But I missed because at that moment Poe came shrieking at my face, talons bared.
"What the fuck?" I yelled as I dove sideways to avoid him. My shoulder smacked on the concrete but not hard enough for me to miss the enormous barbed club that whistled through the air over me. My momentum rolled me to my back.
A smoky black column blew through the alley. Rick! He materialized in front of the stranger in the seal coat, blocking the man's escape. "Grateful, move!"
The barbed club came crashing down toward my head. I barrel-rolled out of the way, getting my first glimpse of a meaty, stump of a leg and a furry bare foot as large as my torso. Flipping to my feet, my eyes followed the leg to a fur-toga wearing creature, big as a house, with a pushed-in pig face complete with lower tusks that protruded in hideous arcs on either side of its snout. Poe was circling its head, trying to distract it, but the creature kept coming.
This time when the club fell, I darted between the beast's legs stabbing toward the Achilles tendon on the back of the ankle. I missed. The force of the club upended the section of concrete I stood on, sending me flying into the opposite wall. I bounced off the bricks and landed on my feet. Thanks to the magic of my role and Rick's blood, I was stronger than an ordinary human. Good thing. That last blow to the head would've been fatal.
I raced forward before the beast had a chance to turn around and stabbed where I knew it would be most effective-the balls. Sure enough, as Nightshade sank through fur and soft flesh, the club dropped and the creature listed to the side, hands cupping between its legs. I wasted no time with formalities; this thing had tried to kill me. Using its knee and hip as leverage, I propelled myself over the massive pig creature and, in one lithe stroke, decapitated it. Blood erupted from the kill, a geyser of red that showered the alleyway.
Once the spray of blood settled, I pivoted toward Rick and the creepy stranger he restrained at the front of the alley. Soft sobs reached my ears, Stella crying in the arms of another fae in the doorway to Maison des Etoiles.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," I said to her, then stomped up to Mr. Evil-Seal-Coat-Wearer and pressed the tip of my bloody blade into his neck. "Who the hell are you? And what the hell are you?"
The man started to laugh, so hard that it sounded like a low bark. With a movement like a backward shrug, he offed the seal skin, slipped from Rick's arms and fell to the pavement, writhing and foaming at the mouth.
"What's happening?" I asked Rick as the man flip-flopped. He coughed up a spew of liquid, and gasped repeatedly. "Does he need CPR?"
Rick looked at the pig creature I'd slain behind me and then at the coat in his hand. I was so busy analyzing his expression that I didn't see the seizing man reach out and grab my ankle.
I hit the pavement so hard my teeth clacked together.
* * * * *
I came awake with a gasp, stretched out on my side in a Victoria's Secret ad-cherry red silk sheets, a plush velvet comforter. Rick leaned over me, blotting the back of my head with a rag. I grabbed his wrist.
"Where am I?"
"Inside Maison des Etoiles," he said, placing the rag on the nightstand.
I tried to look around the red-on-red decorated room but my head was throbbing. I closed my eyes and leaned into the pillows. "What happened?"
"The finfolk caught you off guard. You hit your head. He's dead."
"You killed him?"
"No. He committed suicide. When he shed his skin, he reverted to his water form. He suffocated."
"Finfolk? So he was a type of shifter, like a mermaid? A sea creature that turns into a human."
"Yes, but, usually, they must return to the sea within a few days or they die. I've never seen one this far inland."
I thought about the coat the man wore. Rick's explanation sank in. That wasn't sealskin; it was his skin, the finfolk's. I shivered at the thought of wearing my own skin as a coat. Eww.
"And what was that thing with him?" I asked.
"An Appalachian troll."
"Of course it was. Seriously, can my life get any weirder? You know, a few months ago, I'd never have believed any of this existed."
Rick sighed and resumed cleaning my head wound. "Would you like some of my blood?"
His blood would heal me. As the vessel of my soul, my caretaker was mystically designed to maintain my life. Vitamin Caretaker. But I balked. Not that I didn't want it; his blood was liquid orgasm, but something was bothering me about the finfolk attack and my injury was making it difficult to concentrate. I couldn't get distracted.
