Her eyes flew open wide. She’d seen them before. In the parking lot behind XScream. With Theron.
The fuzzy memory she’d been fighting the last few days came back in a rush.
Theron’s big body moved between her and the first beast. His muscles coiled tight as he sprang down into a fighter’s stance. In a flash, he reached over his head and pulled a weapon that was a cross between a dagger and a sword and as long as his forearm from somewhere inside his jacket.
A momentary thought hit—that somehow she’d stumbled into some freaky sci-fimovie and none of this was real—and then she tracked nothing. Not the movements in front of her, around her or above her. All too fast for her eyes to follow. But she heard it. The clash of metal against flesh, of claws against skin, of teeth against bone.
And she screamed just as the beast to her right charged.
Isadora jolted awake in a cold sweat.
The sheets beneath her were wet and her heart was pumping as if she’d just competed in the modern-day Olympics. She focused on drawing air into her lungs as she glanced around the plush bedroom, with its heavy brocade drapes, antique furnishings, curved sitting area and soaring ceilings.
The castle. Her suite. A place these days she hated to call home.
It took her moments to realize she wasn’t actually in a small corner bookstore in the human world, one lined with wooden shelves and trailing plants and smelling of smoldering vanilla and the stench of impending death.
But she knew, without a doubt, that Theron was there. She could see him as clearly as if he were beside her now.
She threw the covers back and bolted for the door, barely caring that she was wearing her sleeping gown, that her hair was a mess or even that her feet were bare. She needed to get to her father. To find Theron. To warn him before he walked into a trap.
Her bedroom door flew open and banged against the wall. She gathered the floor-length, flimsy white skirt of her gown in her hands and raced down the corridor. As it was night, candles lit by servants lined the stone hallway. For a fleeting moment as she ran, she found it ironic that in this day and age, with their technology, her father still insisted on burning candles in the castle. He was as old-school as they came.
She rounded the corner, her hair flying behind her, and reached one hand out to grab the stone balustrade. The muscles in her thighs burned as her feet landed on the marble steps and she skipped stairs to get to the fourth floor as quickly as possible. Breathing heavy, she palmed the last railing and sailed around the corner, only to slam into a wall of muscle.
A gasp rushed out of her. Her hands flew out to the side to steady herself as the floor gave beneath her feet. And for one illuminating moment, she had a horrible premonition she was going to fall to her death from a towering height.
Which was ironic, and just plain wrong, wasn’t it? She could see into everyone else’s future but her own, so she didn’t know exactly how she was going to die. Though this would be a nasty way to go.
Strong fingers dug into the flesh of her upper arms, and before she could right herself, she was jerked forward and up against solid steel once more. She recognized the scent of the Argonaut holding her. And the wicked chuckle rumbling in his chest was one she’d never forget.
“Oh, Princess. What a precarious position we find ourselves in this night.”
Demetrius.
She teetered dangerously close to the edge. All he had to do was let go and she’d tumble backward and crack her head wide open on the marble her father so loved.
“I find myself in a conundrum,” he whispered in a menacing voice close to her ear. “To be the hero—or the villain, as you so peg me. Beg me to save you, Princess, so I can choose which one to be.”
Isadora’s adrenaline spiked. Every horrible sensation she’d ever had about Demetrius rushed through her. She knew he would let her go just to watch her suffer.
“Demetrius!”
Heavy footsteps echoed at Demetrius’s back. Isadora gasped again as those bruising hands yanked her against that unforgiving chest and Demetrius turned them both.
“What’s happening here?”
She recognized the other voice. Zander. One of Theron’s Argonauts. The most unpredictable, and rumor had it, the only one who couldn’t be killed.
Right now, teetering on the edge of this precipice, with Demetrius the only thing between her and death, she’d have loved to be immortal.
“Just saving the day,” Demetrius said, pulling her even closer until she felt like gagging. “It seems the night has drawn out all kinds.”
As quickly as Demetrius had captured her, he let go, and she found herself swaying on her own feet. Zander grasped her arm to steady her. “You don’t look well, Princess.”