She glanced around the small store once more before walking toward the cash register. Her handsome warrior must have slipped out. Feeling foolish and distracted, she paid for her groceries, loaded up her tote bag, then walked out the door and collided into someone walking in.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, looking up into a black fathomless gaze.
Shay’s heart slammed against her rib cage. She’d been foolish enough to walk out the door without putting her glasses back on or her earbuds back in her ears. An angry buzz filled her head, growing louder by the second. She shook her head, trying to dispel the distracting noise. Color—or the lack of color, more like a muddy darkness—surrounded him. Head down, she pushed past him. Gooseflesh raising her skin where she’d touched him.
Just go in the store, she thought. Go in and leave me alone.
She should have known that would be too much to hope for.
The man turned and followed her. Fear twisted and turned in her stomach as bile rose in her throat. They are coming, Daddy. They’ve found me. She quickened her step, trying to put distance between her and the man. It didn’t work. He kept after her. What did he want?
She hesitated at the mouth of the alley between the two buildings that led into the parking lot and the quickest way back to her house. To Buddy. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to go in there. And worse, beyond the alley, beyond the parking lot, she would be at the highway and once crossed, there was nothing but woods. She’d be alone. Where no one would be able to see her. Or hear her.
She screwed up her courage and spun around on the sidewalk to face her pursuer. Hoping he wouldn’t be there.
But he was.
“Excuse me,” she said in what she hoped was a strong, steady voice.
His clean-shaven face held no expression. With his dress pants and polo shirt, he looked like any other tourist up from San Francisco. He certainly didn’t look like something evil. But he was. She could tell by the dark shadows circling around his head and the slightly bitter, metallic way he smelled.
His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air around her, then he moved closer, his eyes a black void of nothingness.
“Can I help you with something?” she asked, a slight quaver shaking her voice as she took a step back from him.
He didn’t answer. Just moved closer, uncomfortably close. She stepped back again and found herself at the mouth of the alley. She squared herself, planting her feet in a wide stance. All those years with her paranoid father teaching her everything from judo to how to shoot a revolver came rushing back. She dropped her tote bag, raised her hands, leaned her body weight slightly forward and loosened her knees.
“Turn around and get away from me,” she demanded. “Now.”
He stared at her with those obsidian black eyes that held no soul, and smiled. It was that smile, dripping with evil, that scared her more than anything he could have said.
What was he?
“What do you want from me?” her voice squeaked. She tried to stop looking at him. She didn’t want to see the dark, shifting shadows encircling his head or what was moving within them. What was that? She could have sworn she’d seen teeth. And claws.
A violent shudder shook her.
He grabbed her arm. “This way,” he snarled through a clenched jaw, and pushed her into the alley.
Fear, white-hot and molten, surged through her. She forgot her fighting stance, forgot every move she’d ever learned as her brain flooded with adrenaline. “Let me go!” She screamed, pulling and twisting, trying to break free from his grasp. But he was too strong.
He continued to push her forward, toward the large black van parked at the end of the alley. And she knew once they reached that van, once he got her inside, no one would ever see her again.
“Please,” she cried and pried at his fingers, trying to loosen his grip on her arm.
“You heard the lady. Let her go.”
The calm voice surprised and confused her. She looked up and saw the man from the store. Her knight in shining armor with the warrior hands stood not four feet away, watching them. Relief filled her, weakening her knees to the point she wasn’t sure she could continue to stand. She tried to pull free once more, but the crazy loon still wouldn’t loosen his grip.
What was wrong with him? There was a witness. Someone to help her.
Her rescuer set down his bag, took off his brown leather jacket and laid it neatly across the bag so it didn’t touch the ground.
As if in a dream, she watched him, unable to comprehend what was happening. All she knew was that she no longer felt so afraid.
“You should do as she says,” he said, walking toward them, and planting one of his hands on her attacker’s shoulder and squeezing.
She looked up at the man still holding her arm and could see the fear and anger surrounding him; it puffed up as a red cloud within the muddy darkness. Without looking at her, he dropped her arm, shrugged out of her savior’s grasp, turned and walked away. As if he’d never stopped, as if he’d never touched her.
Shay stared after him, astonished.
“Does that happen to you often?”
She turned back to the man from the store, blinking. “No, but it’s been happening more frequently lately.” That man wasn’t the first person with a black aura to take an unusual interest in her. But he was the first one who’d ever touched her. “Thanks for coming to my rescue.”
“I was actually looking for that real-estate office you told me about. Luckily, I couldn’t find it.”
Luckily for her, but she might not be so lucky the next time. And somehow she knew there would be a next time. And like this time, she wouldn’t be able to handle it alone. “How long did you say you’d be in town?”
“Hard to say. Anywhere from four to eight weeks, depending on how quickly I can get the job done. Why, have you thought of someplace?”
“It’s not much and it’s been sitting empty for a while, but I sure could use the money.”
“No lease?”
She smiled. “No lease.”
“Great. I can pay you by the week.”
“Sounds fair. But don’t you want to see it first? Then we can discuss price.”
“Sure, should I drive? My truck’s right down the street.”
She looked toward his truck and shook her head. Her nerves were still too shaky to get into a stranger’s vehicle. And yet, here she was taking him to her home. But for a reason she didn’t understand, she trusted him. It had to be his aura, the warm vibrant colors surrounding him, so different from the muddy dark aura of her attacker.
“I really could use the fresh air, if you don’t mind. It’s not a far walk.”
He gestured forward with an easy smile that immediately set her at ease. “Lead the way.”
She took a step forward then stopped, turned back to him and held out her hand. “I’m Shay. Shay Mallory.”
His large grasp enveloped her small hand, surprising her with its warmth. “Jason Stratton.”
She turned and, for a moment, felt a prick of fear as she led him toward her home. An absolute certainty that everything was about to change.
Chapter 2
Jason was more than a little surprised when the woman offered her apartment so quickly. He wondered how long she’d been attracting the Abatu, men so lost and confused that it was easy for a demon to hitch a ride. Those types of lost souls were scary and bothersome,