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It would be better for us both if he wasn’t following me at all, but that didn’t seem to be an option right now. “So you’re just going to sit back and watch? You’re not going to do anything else?”
“I am not here to interfere with your life or anything that happens to you,” he said softly. “I merely wait to see if your father will contact you.”
For how long? I wondered, but didn’t bother voicing the question simply because I doubted he would answer. “I’ll talk to you later, then.”
“Or not,” he said, and disappeared.
No one in the restaurant seemed to notice or care. He may have been visible to everyone, but there was obviously some sort of magic at work, because it was simply impossible for anyone to disappear in the middle of a crowded room like that and not have anyone notice.
I rose and headed out of the restaurant. It was still raining, so I flicked the collar of my jacket up and ran for the underground parking garage. After finding the ticket machine and paying, I headed for the stairs and walked down to sublevel two, my footsteps echoing sharply in the silence.
I’d parked my bike in the slots near the elevators, which were on the opposite side of the garage from the stairs. I waited for a car to cruise past, then stepped out, but as I walked through the half shadows, the awareness that I was not alone hit. Which, given this was a multistory underground parking lot, wasn’t exactly surprising. But the sense of wrongness that came with the realization was.
I glanced around. Cars were parked in silent rows and there was no one in immediate sight, walking either toward or away from them. The air was thick with the scents of dirt, oil, and exhaust fumes—aromas that seemed to be leaching from the concrete itself. There was nothing that suggested anything or anyone was near.
Yet someone was. The sensation of wrongness was getting stronger, crawling like flies across the back of my neck.
I’d lived with clairvoyance, warnings, and portents all my life. I wasn’t about to start ignoring them now.
I slowed my steps a little and flared my nostrils, drawing in more of the air and sorting through the flavors.
And I found him.
Or rather, them—because there wasn’t just one person nearby, but four. One ahead, one to the left, one to the right, and one attempting to sneak up behind me. Effectively, they had me b
oxed in, and you didn’t do that unless you wanted to ensure your prey couldn’t escape.
I flexed my fingers and wondered how I should play it. I could fight—years of sparring with Riley and Quinn had seen to that—but they’d also impressed upon me the need not to fight unless it was absolutely necessary.
I wasn’t sure yet that it was necessary. It was possible my stalkers intended nothing more than to talk to me. They might even be intending to follow me. Hell, I already had a reaper playing tag, so why not four strange-smelling men?
But if these men had intended to do nothing more than talk, they wouldn’t have bothered boxing me in so completely.
They were here to attack. Nothing more, nothing less.
I reached into my pocket as I neared the bike and wrapped shaking fingers around my keys. Doubt skittered through me, but these men left me with little in the way of options.
I couldn’t see the man up ahead, but his scent suggested he was standing behind the cars to the left of the bike. The two to either side hadn’t moved in closer, but the one behind had—although he still wasn’t close enough to react to.
Obviously, though, none of them had any idea I was part wolf; otherwise they would have used a scent-erasing soap. Or, at the very least, eaten less garlic last night.
The back of my neck continued to crawl with the nearness of the man behind me. I resisted the growing need to turn around, and flipped my keys up between my fingers so that the sharper ends stuck out like little metal prongs. Just about anything could become a dangerous weapon if you had the know-how—and I certainly did. Then I shrugged off my backpack, holding it in my free hand as I walked on. The air was thick with the scent of garlic and the musk of the man behind me. He was human, not wolf. Not shifter.
I had no idea what the others were. I might be able to smell their body odor, but there was precious little else coming through. And that was weird. If I could smell them, I should have been able to tell what the hell they were.
Maybe the garlic was deliberate. Maybe they were using it the same way someone might use scent-erasing soap. And if that was the case, it was working.
Although if this was a chance robbery attempt, why would they reek of garlic? Even humans had noses good enough to catch a whiff.
And yet, despite my certainty otherwise, what else could it realistically be? Why would these men be sitting here waiting to ambush me when they couldn’t have even guessed that I’d be here?
No one had followed me from home, I was pretty sure of that. Then again, I might not have noticed given I had no reason to look.
The garlic stink suddenly sharpened and the air stirred with movement. It was warning enough. I spun on my heel, letting the backpack fly, hoping to distract my attacker as I lashed out with a booted foot. He dodged the pack but saw the second blow too late, and my foot took him high in the chest. He staggered backward, arms flailing to keep his balance.
As the other three erupted from their hiding spots, I lunged forward, my right fist swinging upward, hitting the human as hard as I could under the chin. I might be only half werewolf, but that still gave me a whole lot of strength. The keys dug deep into his neck even as the force of the blow threw him off his feet. Blood gushed, but I was already spinning around to meet the next man, and heard rather than saw the first hit the concrete.
The man who’d been hiding behind the car nearest my bike was in the air—literally in the air—his shape shifting, pulsating, becoming something less than human but not actually cat: a panther who retained human characteristics and height. He was grotesque—like something you saw in a bad horror movie—but that didn’t make him any less dangerous.
