But how was that possible? Even if I wasn’t what my agent generously described as ‘full-figured,’ this wouldn’t be possible. No person could toss another one so high into the air. No one could—
Oh God. Look at how high I was. There was no way to survive this. I was going to splat against the ground like a bug, if the branches didn’t impale me on the way down.
A scream, shriller than I thought I was capable of, escaped my lips. Suddenly, I felt colder. I would die out here in this woods, just like all the other women who looked like me.
And the worst part was I would never get the answers to the questions swirling about in my mind. No one would. They would all think I was just routinely murdered. Or maybe Abram would cover it up as a hiking accident. Hell, maybe my body would just go missing and no one would ever know what became of me. I would be a fixture on those Walmart missing poster boards, forgotten by time.
I began to fall. The earth sped toward me at lightning speed. I would have screamed again, but what use would it be? Screaming wouldn’t stop this. Nothing would, and I didn’t want my last moments to be spent howling like some doomed idiot. Even if that’s exactly what I was.
Instead, I shut my mouth, closed my eyes, and tried to settle both my stomach and my mind. If this was the end, and it most certainly was, then I was going to face it with as much dignity as I could muster.
Still, if I was gonna die, I wished I could do it in Versace.
Something caught, and I jerked to a stop.
Was that the ground? Was I dead?
I opened my eyes, fully expecting to see either nothing or the golden (and hopefully bedazzled) gates of the afterlife. Instead, I had to begrudgingly admit what I saw was just a beautiful.
Abram had me in his arms, cradling me like I was friggin’ Scarlett O'Hara.
I brushed windswept curls out of my eyes. “How did—You just—”
“I told you. There’s a beast in me.”
“But you didn’t kill me.”
He growled as though I’d either hurt him or offended him. “Of course I didn’t ‘kill you,’ Ms. Bellamy I only threw you to prove that even the most unbelievable things can be true.”
“Mission accomplished,” I muttered, and I pushed my way out of his arms.
He didn’t fight me.
“So explain this unbelievable thing then,” I continued. “Tell me what ‘there’s a beast in you’ means.”
“Let me ask you,” he said, lowering his brow. “What do you know about magic?”
I fumbled through my purse, fingers grasping at the metal cylinder that held my mace. Abram’s eyes bore into me, though they lacked the sort of delusional flair you might expect from someone who just seriously asked you whether you believed in magic or what you knew about it or whatever.
Finding the fresh can of pepper spray (replaced after the last incident), I yanked it out of my purse and emptied its contents right into Abram’s glowing red eyes. He jerked away from the mist, covering his face with his hands and growling.
It was strange. Not twenty-four hours ago, I would have told you this man was someone special. Okay, so I probably wouldn’t have actually admitted that out loud, at least not before our massive sex session. But the truth was, deep down, in a place within myself that I so rarely went that I barely recognized it, there was a piece of me that felt like I might be falling in love with him.
What a difference a couple hours could make.
I turned to run again, but before I could make even a step, he was in front of me. His eyes were watery, puffy, and still red. He grabbed me hard on either arm and somehow looked even larger than he had just a moment ago.
“It is entirely too close to sunset for this sort of dalliance, Ms. Bellamy.” He ground his teeth together. “Now, I’ve already thrown you halfway to Jupiter. Should I plant you at the top of the nearest pine? Would that be enough to convince you that what I say is the truth? Or would you prefer this?”
His lips receded, revealing long hooked fangs where his teeth should be. They were huge and crowed out of his mouth. Suddenly, in the light of the setting sun, Abram looked less like a man and more like a monster … as if everything he had said was true.
Maybe there was a beast inside of him.
Whatever that meant.
I pulled away hard, stumbling over my feet and falling to the ground. The mace fell from my hand, not that it had done much good anyway.
“You’re … You’re …” I stammered.
He just stared at me with the saddest, scariest eyes I had ever seen.
It all came together. The missing girls, the glowing red eyes, the monster that chased me through the woods and into the strange house I had just ran away from.
There was a beast in him. He was the monster that had chased me.
But no, that wasn’t right. Those eyes, I recognized them. Monster or not, I knew them.
“You were … you were the one that saved me,” I said quietly. “Weren’t you?”
His fangs receded and he stepped toward me. “Yes.”
I flinched back. “What are you?”