“We don’t know what will happen. Planning is futile,” he responded.
“You didn’t get where you are without planning and training. Because of your experience, you can adapt to handle any situation.” She took a deep breath and realized she was trembling. Nik placed his other hand over their entwined fingers. “When whatever horrible thing is coming happens, you’ll be able to act on instinct and training, while I only have ignorance. Everything is new to me. I need help to learn how to fight whatever is going to come along. If I’m really this Uniter person, I need to stay alive.”
“I’ll protect you,” he said.
“What if you’re injured or we get separated?” She pulled her hand from his. “I have some wacky superpowers now, and I need to know what to do with them.”
The waitress returned and dropped the check on the table. Nik picked it up and retrieved a roll of cash out of his pocket. He slid some bills from the roll, put them with the check, and handed it back to the waitress. “No change,” he said.
The girl’s eyes widened. “Wow! Thanks. Thank you so much.” Then she scampered off super quick, probably thinking he had made a mistake and would catch it.
“I won’t let anything happen to you, Elena. You’re too important to me.”
Her heart skipped a beat. He cared. “Then you’ll train me and get me ready?”
He stood and held out his hand. “I will.” She placed her hand in his and stood. He pulled her against him in an embrace. “I want to show you something first.”
“What?”
He looped his arm around her waist. “Well, you’ve never been to New York City before, so I thought I’d show you Times Square. It’s only a short walk from here.”
She adored this side of him. It felt so human to stroll from the restaurant arm in arm. The streets were buzzing with people rushing to work.
He guided her to the end of the block and turned left.
Then she saw them—three creatures walking in a huddle directly ahead. She froze, jerking Nik to a stop. “It’s some of those things,” she said with a shudder.
“What things?”
“The ones on the snowmobiles.”
“Wood elves, here, in New York? That’s impossible. They can’t tolerate urban areas.”
“Well, they’ve developed a tolerance, look.” She pointed to the three creatures crossing the street one block up with a large group of people. They stopped halfway up the block from them, crossed the other side of the street, and looked into a luthier shop with stringed instruments hanging on display in the window. “Don’t suppose they’re musical, huh?”
“Not at all,” Nik said, tensing. “Something is up.”
Then, one of the glowy creatures like she’d seen in the forest with Nik exited the shop.
“And a light elf, too,” Nik said. “Very strange.”
The light elf saw the three wood elves and basically lost it. She screamed at them so loudly everyone within a mile radius should have heard it, but no one reacted. Obviously, the creatures were under the Veil. They spoke a funky language Elena couldn’t understand, but pissed off was pissed off in any tongue.
Elena covered her mouth to prevent a scream as one of the wood elves pulled out a gun and shot the light elf in the chest. The creature shrieked, fell to the ground, and disappeared.
“Oh my God,” Elena whispered. “They killed her.”
Nik took her hand and pulled her back against the building. “No. She’ll be fine. She teleported back home to heal. They just wanted to get rid of her. If they killed her, the light elves would eliminate every wood elf from the planet. They have some kind of pact that goes way back.”
The oddest thing about all of this was that the people on the sidewalk continued on as if nothing had happened. They hadn’t heard the gunshot. They hadn’t seen the woman fall.
“So, has shit like this been going down my whole life, and I just never saw it?”
“Yes,” he answered, never taking his eyes off the men as they headed down the sidewalk. “We should follow them. I find it odd they’re here, but odder yet they’re wearing human disguises. They plan to lift the Veil, and when they do, they are in violation of the code. I will have to take them prisoner.”
She punched him in the shoulder. “Hey, big guy. Stop thinking like a cop. Who will you turn them over to? Fydor? I think your Slayer duties have been suspended.”
“I can’t let them harm humans,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”
And this, she realized, was why she was so attracted to him. He was a good man who longed to do what was right, and something in her had recognized that from the moment of their dubious first meeting.
He placed a hand on her shoulder. “I guess your training starts now. Do you know how to cloak yourself in the human Veil?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how this Veil business works at all. I need a full tutorial.”