Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

He glared at her, while behind him, the weight of something heavy creaked on the stairs. Before she had a chance to call out a warning, Nikolas had already whirled. He was ready when another one of the monsters rushed down into the room and attacked.

Sophie struggled to get out from under the dead weight lying on top of her. The monster lunged, and Nikolas danced to one side, the blade of his sword flashing silver and crimson. As she wriggled free and rolled to her feet, Nikolas hit a pool of blood and skidded, going down on one knee. Flawlessly he shifted position with his sword to cover his fall, as the monster bunched its muscles to leap at him.

Both Nikolas and the monster were wholly focused on each other. Taking advantage of that preoccupation, she jumped forward and slapped the monster on the haunch with the telekinesis spell. The blow spun it around and knocked it sidelong into the damaged wall, which brought a fresh rain of plaster down.

When it whirled toward her with a snarl, Nikolas had gained his feet and was standing between them. In a powerful, full-body swing, he decapitated the monster. Wincing, she watched the head spin into the air and bounce into one corner.

Silence fell again. Outside, sirens approached, and she could hear people shouting. None of it touched the room, where she and Nikolas stood staring at each other. Plaster dust floated in the air like white powdery snow, coating the sprays and pools of deep, liquid red.

Nikolas threw his sword down, strode over and grabbed her shoulders. “Are you hurt? Did you get bitten?”

“What?” She didn’t understand his blazing expression, and her attention wandered back over the scene. The monster that had landed on her was gone, and in its place lay a dead, decapitated man.

What. The. Fuck.

He shook her urgently. “Sophie, did one of them bite you?”

“No! I’m fine!” She tried to shrug off his hold. “I know I must look like Carrie at the high school prom, but none of this is my blood. Nikolas, where did the monster go?”

He looked where she gestured, at the body of the man nearby. He told her grimly, “That is the monster.”

She nodded. It was the only thing that made sense. As he bent to pick up his sword, she turned and walked through the ruined front room, out into the cool night air.

As she stepped outside, Maggie and Arran rushed at her. She fielded questions and effusive, tearful thanks as best she could, while the police arrived. Then she fielded questions from them too, answering everything patiently, sometimes multiple times. No stranger to crime scenes, she felt a tired calm settle over her as she watched them cordon off the area.

Since Sophie was a latecomer to the scene, the police focused much of their questioning on Arran and Maggie, and when Nikolas stepped outside, they focused on him too, giving her room to breathe.

Walking several yards away to get some space, she drew in deep breaths of the cool, damp air. A neighboring woman brought her a warm, wet towel, a hot cup of tea, and a blanket.

“Don’t worry about the towel or the blanket, love,” the woman told her when Sophie tried to refuse it. “They’re old, ragged things, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest if you get blood on them.”

Thanking her, Sophie moved several yards to the side and used the towel to wipe off the worst of the blood from her face and hands. Then, as the night had turned damp and cool, she pulled the blanket around her shoulders and sat at the curb to drink the tea. It was hot, creamy and sweet. It wasn’t how she usually drank tea, but it was utterly delicious.

When she sat at the curb, the monkey reappeared. It climbed up her body and pushed its way into the blanket, chittering at her grumpily.

“Don’t you be grumpy at me,” she told it as she put an arm around it. “I’m very annoyed with you right now. What was all that pinching about?”

The monkey bitched back at her wordlessly, dark eyes snapping.

She rubbed her tired face. “Stop. Just stop.”

It fell silent and huddled against her side.

Why hadn’t anybody remarked on the monkey? Granted, the scene in the pub was dramatic in its horror, but a monkey was quite an oddity. Couldn’t they see it, or was the puck cloaking himself? She gave up questioning and focused on drinking her tea.

Black-clad legs appeared beside her, the material streaked in blood. As she looked up, Nikolas squatted beside her. Dark hair fell on the strong plane of his brow, and his expression was shuttered. He carried a mug of tea too.

She told him, “I’m surprised you stayed to talk to the police. I half expected you to disappear out the back when they arrived.”

“I almost did,” he said. “But too many people had seen me, and you’d given your statement before you and I had a chance to discuss it. Besides, I might come into town again. Better to be upfront. We didn’t do anything wrong, and we prevented more people from getting killed.”

She nodded. “So, about those werewolf-y looking monsters.”

“They’re werewolves,” he replied.

She took a deep breath. “Is that why you said it wasn’t wise to roam the countryside during full moon?”

“Yes, although London and other urban areas are worse.”

“London.” She set her mug down on the curb and turned to look at him. “You’re saying there are werewolves, in London? Like the song—‘Werewolves of London’?”

He raised one sleek eyebrow. “Of course. That’s where the song came from. Didn’t you know?”

A laugh barked out of her. When a nearby man frowned at her, she covered her mouth to muffle the noise. When she could speak again, she said, “No, I didn’t know.”

“You don’t have werewolves in the States, do you?”

Lifting one shoulder, she replied, “I don’t know, we might. I don’t know of any. If we do, they aren’t prevalent enough to reach the news. The only wolves I know of are Wyr shapeshifters, which isn’t the same thing.” She paused, frowning. “I guess I shouldn’t take anything for granted. What do you mean when you say ‘werewolf’? Are we talking about the same thing?”

“I mean lycanthropy, a virus. It was why I was so worried about your being bitten. A victim who has been bitten has only a short window of time to get treatment before the virus becomes irreversible.” He shifted closer to her and said in a low voice, “Those weren’t just normal werewolves that attacked the pub.”

That was another unwelcome set of concepts. There was such a thing as normal werewolves? And abnormal ones?

Sophie watched his mouth as he shaped his words. Really, he had the sexiest mouth she had ever seen.

Fascinated and feeling as if she had stepped into a strange dream, she murmured, “How could you tell?”