At the sound of my name, the power clutching my heart eased a bit. I gasped at the sight of my hand gripping his throat. But I didn’t let go. I couldn’t until I knew what this man was doing here. “How do you know me?” I demanded.
I looked the man over for the first time. Or what little I could see of him, since I was straddling him, pinning his arms down with my knees. He had longish auburn hair and a short trimmed beard. He was tall, almost as tall as Don Mooney—whom I always thought of as being as big as a grizzly—had been, but slim. He wore black from head to toe, which had made him seem sinister at first. But then, a horrible realization dawned on me as I noticed the white square notch in his black collar—a pastor’s collar, like the one my dad sometimes wore when he was working.
“Oh, no!” I let go of his throat and scrambled off him as fast as I could. I clutched at the moonstone pendant that hung from my own neck. I let its warm, calming strength wash through me. “I’m sorry, Pastor. I’m so sorry.” Heat seared my cheeks. “I don’t know what came over me, Pastor … I just … just …” I let my sentence trail off. How could I possibly explain what I had just done to this man?
I mean, I had attacked a pastor—in a freaking church! My anger had been replaced by embarrassment, which quickly edged into shame.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. Could I possibly apologize enough? “I saw you in here with that knife …” I pointed at the silver dagger, lodged in the ground with its handle sticking straight up in the air. A small scrap of fabric had fluttered to the ground near the knife when I’d knocked it from the man’s hand. It was Don’s infamous knife—the one that I’d plunged into Daniel’s chest. The one I’d used to break the curse. I’d found it in the parish a few weeks later, brought it here to Don’s apartment, and left it with his things, where it belonged.
“I thought you were a burglar. I thought you were trying to steal that knife.” The knife was ancient, made of very pure silver, and I always figured it could fetch a nice price with the right buyer. But pastors don’t break into churches and steal stuff. There had to be some other explanation.
The man smiled again, and with a quick movement he reached down and picked up the scrap of cloth and then wrapped it around the hilt of the silver knife and pulled it out of its sticking place in the floor. He looked at the dagger with appraising eyes, like a collector inspecting an antique. “How can I steal something that already belongs to me?”
“What?” I looked at him again—the body of a young man with the eyes of an ancient seer. I noticed the way he gingerly held the knife in his hand, careful to keep the scrap of fabric between his skin and the knife. I could think of only one reason that this man would be afraid to touch silver.
My muscles tensed immediately as the thought took root in my brain. This man wasn’t a pastor. This man wasn’t even human. Then another thought surpassed those, and my body trembled with fear. They’re coming for you. He makes you think you can trust him, but you can’t, Jude’s voice echoed in my head.
“I’m sorry,” I said, backing away toward the door. “I need to go.” I bumped into a chair and tried to steady myself without looking too frantic. I didn’t know what I’d been thinking coming into this room in the first place; I was no match for this man. I might have fought a couple of punks at a nightclub last night and run at full capacity without faltering this evening, but that was nothing, I realized now. No matter what kind of power I could summon, it was nothing compared to what he could do to me. This man was dangerous. This man was a werewolf.
This man was—
“Gabriel!”
“What?” I whirled around toward the open door.