"You don't know the half of it."
Daimons came at her from all directions. How the hell had they gotten into her home? But she didn't have time to contemplate that. Right now, all she could focus on was survival. She kneed the next Daimon who reached her and fought a second one. Stryker stayed back as if the fight amused him.
Another Daimon, this one with a long blond ponytail, attacked. Cassandra flipped him over. As she went to stab him, Stryker came out of nowhere to grab her arm.
"No one attacks Urian."
She shrieked as he wrenched the dagger from her hand. Cassandra moved to strike him, but the instant her gaze met his, all thoughts scattered. His eyes turned to a strange, swirling silver. They moved in a hypnotic dance that held her spellbound and turned her thoughts to oatmeal.
All the fight inside her instantly vanished. A sly, seductive smile curved Stryker's lips. "See how easy it is when you don't fight?" She felt his breath against her throat.
Some unseen force tilted her head to the side to give him access to her neck and to the throbbing carotid artery she could feel pounding in terror. Inside, Cassandra was screaming at herself to fight. Her body refused to obey. Stryker's laughter rumbled a moment before he sank his long teeth into her neck. She hissed as pain sliced her.
"Am I interrupting?"
Cassandra could only vaguely recognize Wulf's voice through the numbed haze of her mind. Something jerked Stryker away from her. It was a few seconds before she realized it was Wulf knocking the Daimon back. Wulf whisked her up into his arms and ran with her. Cassandra could barely keep her head from lolling back as he headed for a large dark green Expedition and tossed her inside it.
The instant Wulf was in the car, something struck it hard. Out of the darkness, a large, black dragon appeared on the hood.
"Let her out and you can live," the dragon said in Stryker's voice.
Wulf answered by putting his SUV in reverse and gunning it. He turned the wheel and sent the beast flying. The dragon shrieked and blew a blast of fire at them. Wulf kept going. The dragon took flight and dove at them, then arced up, high into the sky, before it vanished into a shimmery cloud of gold.
"What the hell was that?" Wulf asked.
"He's Apostolos," Cassandra murmured as she struggled to snap herself out of her daze. "He's the son of the Atlantean Destroyer and a god in his own right. We're so screwed."
Wulf let out a disgusted sound. "Yeah, well, I don't let anyone screw me until they kiss me, and since there's not even a snowball's chance in hell of me kissing that bastard, we're not screwed."
But as his Expedition was suddenly surrounded by eight Daimons on motorcycles, he reconsidered that. For three seconds at least.
Wulf laughed as he surveyed the Daimons. "You know the beauty of driving one of these?"
"No."
He swerved his Expedition into three of the bikes and knocked them from the road. "You can swat a Daimon like a mosquito."
"Well, since they're both bloodsucking insects, I say go for it."
Wulf glanced sideways at her. A woman who could keep her humor even in the midst of death. He liked that. The remaining Daimons must have rethought acting out Mad Max with him and dropped back from his SUV. He watched as they faded out of sight in his rearview mirror. Cassandra let out a relieved breath as she pushed herself up more in the seat. She turned her head and tried to see where the Daimons had vanished. There was no sight of them.
"What a night," she said quietly as her thoughts cleared and she remembered everything that had happened in the apartment. Once more, panic consumed her as she remembered Kat hadn't shown up. "Wait! We have to go back."
"Why?"
"My bodyguard," she said, gripping his arm. "I don't know what happened to her."
He kept his gaze on the road ahead of them. "Was she in the apartment?"
"Yes… maybe." Cassandra paused while she thought it over. "I'm not exactly sure. She went to make a phone call in her room and then she wasn't in there when I went to see if she'd go with me to the door." She released his arm. Fear and grief warred inside her heart. What if something had happened to Kat after all these years they'd been together? "Do you think they killed her?"
He glanced at her, then changed lanes. "I don't know. Was she the blond woman in the bar?"
"Yes."
He pulled his cell phone off his belt and made a call. Cassandra chewed her nails as she waited. She heard someone's faint voice on the phone.
"Hey, Binny," Wulf said. "I need a favor. I just left the Sherwood student apartments over by the University of Minnesota and we may or may not have a casualty there…" He glanced at Cassandra, but his eyes betrayed no clue as to what he was thinking or feeling. "Yeah, I know tonight's been a real freak fest. You don't even know the half of it." He switched hands with the phone.
"What's your friend's name?" he asked Cassandra.