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Until suddenly, he didn’t have to run anymore.
The second explosion was so great, it sent them both airborne, the hot breath of a dragon more deadly than Rhage’s curse ushering them into flight. Propelled over the ground, Darius had an impression of scrubby weeds moving underneath his body and then the tire gouges in the driveway rushed up to eat him.
He landed on a skid, tasting dirt and getting punched in the eye with a stray rock—
Jesus, the heat of the blaze was so great, he could feel it even from this distance—
“You’re on fire!” Vishous shoved him over. “Roll! Roll!”
Oh. So he was the source of the roasty-toasty.
As he struggled to follow orders, he had to rely on Vishous for most of the rotation, his vision going sky to earth to sky to earth to sky to earth while he was pushed along, the bonfire that was still on him spinning with—
Eventually, he threw an arm out and stopped it all. Making one last quarter turn, he settled on his side—and just happened to be facing the farmhouse.
Billowing black and gray smoke curled up into the dull night sky, orange and yellow flames tickling the undersides of the clouds that coalesced over the inferno. And goddamn, he could swear that just looking at it all made his back feel hotter.
“We gotta get out of here,” Vishous said. “The humans are going to come, especially if this spreads to the forest.”
“Okay.”
Except when Darius went to sit up, he felt like someone had draped his shoulders and spine in a cape of pain, the contours of his upper torso a tuning fork for agony.
“Shit,” he breathed as he collapsed onto his side once more. “I don’t think I can dematerialize.”
Vishous’s face appeared before his own. “Are you sure?”
Darius closed his eyes and tried to concentrate through the waves of pain. Willing himself to ghost away, to lose his corporeality, to become nothing more than a scatter of component molecules…
He opened his lids. “I’m… fucked.” As V cursed, he could only nod. But then he added, “At least I’m alive, so your vision didn’t come true, right?”
“Alive for now,” Vishous hedged as the flames created restless shadows on his face. “My vision had rain in it. Only the explosion part was right here. This… is not where you end.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
You won! Yes, you won!”
As Anne reached across the kitchen table and gathered up the cards, her gin rummy pupil was looking as if he had a sunrise in his old face. And you know, she had to smile as well. The idea that there was a place in such a grand, formal house to play a little game and snack on some finger food and have a good laugh with someone’s butler?
Well, she supposed it was no more impossible than her getting hit by a BMW and meeting a man she had a true, honest connection with.
“Oh, I am most excited to have prevailed!” Abruptly, Fritz looked worried. “Is that not rude, however, mistress?”
“To win and be happy about it? It’s not rude at all. It’s the point!” She started to shuffle. “And if it makes you feel better, I’m taking no small amount of pride in my teaching ability—”
The back door opened and a huge figure dressed in black entered—except it was not the one she’d been waiting to see, not the blue-eyed man who had kissed her as if she were the most precious thing he had ever held in his arms.
It was the other man. The one with the cold, pale eyes, and the tattoos at his temple, and the jet-black hair.
The butler immediately stood up from his chair, all levity and delight gone. “Am I summoning the van, sire?”
“Yes. Now.”
As Fritz headed into a back closet, Anne slowly got to her feet. “What’s happening. Is Darius all right?”
The other bodyguard looked through her, not at her, as if she were nothing that mattered to him—so she was surprised when he replied. “We’re going to bring him home.”
“Is he alive?” she croaked.
“He’s going to be okay. He just can’t—” The man stopped as the butler came back with keys in his hand.
“I’m coming with you.” She knocked over a chair as she jumped forward. “I have to help—”
The man in black leather jabbed a forefinger at her. “You are staying here. If you think I’m going to allow you into the field of combat, you’re out of your mind. He’d kill me, and he’d be right to do it—”
“I’m coming—”
Annnnnnd that was how she ended up with a gun in her face. As she gasped, and couldn’t believe she was staring into the black hole of a muzzle, the man growled, “You’re staying here. I don’t have time to change your mind in a civilized way. If you want to see him alive, you will sit your ass back down at that table and fucking wait. I’m not debating you on this.”
