Chapter Thirteen

Angelo

Lydia was uncharacteristically quiet on the way back to Haven Hollow.

Don't get me wrong, she wasn't the chatty type at the best of times, but I wouldn't have characterized her as a shrinking violet either. Yes, she preferred to have her cute little nose stuffed into a book or hovering inches away from some occult knick-knack or other. Usually, I wanted to rip the book away and kiss her breathless when she tried to protest. But I never acted on my impulses. Instead, I usually compromised by initiating a conversation. I was good at it after so many years working at the realty office. If you kept the social gears well-oiled, you were more likely to sell a house. A creepy realtor resulted in a home sitting vacant for months, if not years. Lydia was a verbal jouster, always keeping a quip ready in case I gave her cheek.

I liked that about her.

More and more, it wasn't just her looks that drew me in. It was the way her head canted to the side when she was thinking deeply about something. It was the uptilt of her lips when she smirked at something I'd said. It was the bubbling sound of her laughter that evoked the image of bubbling champagne every time I managed to be lucky enough to make her laugh.

It was her.

Dark ones below, was this woman underneath my skin? Was it even possible that an incubus could form real feelings for a woman? I mean, yes, it was obvious such was the case with Fifi and her sasquatch, but I'd always imagined she was just the outlier—the one succubus who was born with more morality than was fair. But could the same be said for me? Was I becoming less superficial? Was I getting attached? Dark ones below, I hoped not. My poor parents were already pulling their hair out due to the quandary that Fifi represented. If I turned out to be cut from a similar cloth, they'd probably suffer total hair loss.

"Egad," I whispered. "I'm going soft. And that's something that no incubus wants to be."

Lydia didn't laugh or ask me what the hell I was talking about. In fact, she didn't react at all. Her stare was focused on the middle distance before us. The stretch of land between Haven Hollow and the nearest hospital wasn't much to look at. Just long stretches of farmland dotted occasionally with a church or a cemetery. Judging by the glazed look in her eyes, I doubted she was even seeing it. She got that look when she was having an internal conversation with herself. It happened often. Introspection was a hobby of hers.

"Lydia?" I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the drone of the radio. It wasn't a tune I'd heard before. But that wasn't super surprising—if it wasn't music from my youth or played over the speakers at clubs, I wouldn't know it. I met a lot of willing prey that way. At a bar or on the dance floor. Strangely, I hadn't found myself in such places in a long time—well, since Lydia had come into my life, anyway.

Lydia jerked upright at the sound of her name, choking down a spluttering sound. The look on her face would have been cute if her persistent silence hadn't been so concerning.

"What?"

"I've been trying to talk to you for a few seconds now. Where is your head at?"

Her demeanor was... off. I wanted the Lydia I knew back, but I wasn't sure how to manage that.

"It's nothing," she lied, trying to discreetly rub away the evidence of the goosebumps rising on her arms. "Ignore me. I'm just being paranoid."

"Paranoid about what?"

She cocked her head to the side as if she was searching for a response. "I think the Estelle and Lavinia thing spooked me."

"If you're scared, I want to help."

"I'm not scared," Lydia snapped back. "I'm just... spooked. There's a difference."

"Yeah, ‘spooked' has two o's in it, and ‘scared' has none. Want me to track down my pocket thesaurus and demonstrate how synonyms work?"

She smacked my bicep, and I hid a grin. There she was again. When she settled back into her seat, she folded her arms sullenly across her chest. Better. I liked sullen more than scared.

"Since when do you own a pocket thesaurus?" she muttered. "I wouldn't even think you had a dictionary."

"Well, technically the thesaurus is Fifi's and, you're right, I don't own a dictionary either. And I'm pretty sure the only reason Fifi bought the hardbound thesaurus was because she thought it was a decent weight to chuck at my head whenever I annoy her."

"I don't blame her," Lydia laughed.

I nodded. "The first word she told me to look up was ‘ass.'"

"Meaning you?"

I nodded.

Her lips twitched once. "And what are the synonyms for you, then?"

"I was rather partial to ‘knave', now that you ask," I frowned at her. "It has a kind of old-school flair you just don't see these days."

That earned me a brief but genuine smile. If I hadn't been driving, I would have tipped her chin up to taste her lips. When a woman was happy, I could taste it, like powdered sugar on a brownie. You could eat it without that extra sweetness, but you appreciated it when it was there.

"Tell me what's bothering you," I repeated after a moment of silence.

"It's nothing. Just a feeling."

"What sort of feeling?"

She shrugged. "I think something was watching us in the parking lot before we pulled out. I had the same feeling when we left the hospital and the feeling hasn't left me. It's like—this weird fear that something is following us."

"Hmm."

"But it has to just be my imagination right? I mean, if a monster was tailing us, we'd know it, right?"

Not necessarily, but I didn't say as much aloud. Humans, and creatures built like them, don't look up as a general rule. Usually, there's no need. Nothing flying in the mundane world was strong or motivated enough to view humans as prey, so the instinct to check the sky was missing in most humans and in their evolution. It was the big bads on the ground—the bears, wolves, big cats—that humans had to fear. Supernatural predators were a different story though. And many of them could attack from the air. Better not to tell Lydia as much though—she was obviously creeped out enough as it was.

But if there was something in the air, surely I'd sense it. There'd be a feeling to it—an overall warning that would settle in my gut like an anvil. But all I could sense at the moment was the swirling cold of Taliyah's Winter magic. I wanted to call and tell her to knock it off because my defrost was barely keeping up, but I didn't. Firstly, I wasn't that suicidal. One did not tell the heir apparent to the Winter Court to calm herself unless they were prepared to become meat in an avalanche sandwich. Second, Taliyah had good reason to be upset. Her deputy was dead, killed by something large, nasty, and unknown. Stress was the name of the game right now. I'd done worse than lower the temperature when my powers had come online the first time. The ambient pheromones had actually made my aunt and uncle get back together again after inexplicably jumping each other. They were a holy terror at family reunions, constantly at each other's throats. Neither one of them had ever figured out why they'd been drawn back into a relationship, but I knew. I'd inflicted that unhappy couple on the family again. Shudder.

"I don't feel anything but the cold," I said.

"Yeah, me either," Lydia responded, rubbing her arms with more vigor. "It's like... fog."

"Fog?"

She nodded. "Yeah, does that make sense? When something is so thick and pervasive that you can't even see the world in front of you? Except it's magic, not mist?"

Actually, I did understand what she was talking about, despite the word salad. The cold was so thick and potent that I could barely pick up the tangible feeling of the Hollow's ley lines when we crossed over them. And that was strange. Not only that, but it shouldn't have been happening. Lydia was onto something.

I slowed the car to a crawl and pulled into the first driveway I could find. It turned out to belong to a church. A handful of cars and a hearse were parked in the lot. Must have been a funeral. I put the BMW into park then twisted the keys in the ignition and shut the engine down. But I didn't move. Instead, I scanned the surroundings, looking for a good place to get a read on the land. I'd be more likely to sense something hiding in the magical ‘fog' if I was stationary.

Lydia scanned the lot warily and reached for her seatbelt. "Shut the car off. You don't want to waste gas."

"I did," I said as I turned to face her with a frown.

Lydia cut her gaze to me sharply. "You did? Then what's that sound?"

"What sound—?"

But my words were cut off by the sound of a low growling that was coming from our right. It was quiet at first, like the sub-audible hum of a passing car, but it was growing louder by the second, soon transforming into the thundering bass beat of a subwoofer. I sat up straighter, eyes wheeling to find the source of the noise.

It almost sounded like a helicopter coming dangerously close above us. But it wasn't.

I found the source of the sound a second later.

The thing was big. Bigger than any natural animal I'd ever seen on land. Hell, it was bigger than some of the preternatural critters I'd seen, too. It was half the size of my sports car and covered in layers of thick, ropey muscle. Its paws were the size of hubcaps, and the claws that tipped them were made of something the color of glacial ice, but much sharper. Spikes of the same material studded its sloped back. It looked like a curious combination of polar bear and ice sculpture. Its pale fur was matted and stained with blood around its muzzle and forepaws.

Before I could so much as take in a breath, before Lydia could even think to scream, it was on us. Lydia seemed frozen, her arm still outstretched, holding her seatbelt in white-knuckled hands. I undid my buckle and seized her, pulling her onto my lap just as the thing sprung, landing on the hood of the BMW with a shriek of protesting metal.

Its momentum sent it through the windshield and into the space Lydia had occupied a moment before. Safety glass flew, pelting us like a localized hailstorm. A few pieces hit hard enough to score bloody lines in my face. I curled my body around Lydia's, protecting her from the worst of it. She wasn't a weakling, but she couldn't heal as quickly as I could, and that counted in a fight. I winced when the creature overbore Lydia's seat and the whole thing came loose in another shrieking chorus of metal and flying upholstery.

I kicked my door open and threw Lydia to the ground. I then gave her a shove toward the church and jabbed a finger at the doors.

"Run into the church!" She gave me a look. "Now!"