Lucan sprang forward, putting all his strength into the surge, and just as he got in range, gravity won out over her forward motion, and her tender flesh started to fall with her skull leading the way—
He went airborne, throwing his body parallel to the pavement because it was his only chance to get there in time. With the wind in his ears, the stink of car exhaust and burnt rubber in his nose, and a pounding in his chest, he flew . . . flew . . . flew . . .
Like he was a bird instead of a wolven.
He grabbed whatever he could of the woman, locking his arms around her and rolling in midair so that his back and not her brains took the impact of their combined weights. As they began their joined descent, he tightened his left arm, and leveled the gun in his right to the shadows just beyond the fire escape.
The shooter there was still focused on the Charger, pumping bullets into the car, pings! and bursts of Roman candle sparks turning the thing into a deadly disco party.
Lucan got as many bullets off as he could before he landed so hard, the breath knocked out of him and his vision went on the fritz. He told himself that the distant shout of pain was the shooter going down, but he had no proof of it. He might have made the sound.
Now . . . no more shots. Just a soft moaning.
His? The human female’s? Not the shooter, too far away.
Meanwhile, the Charger was no more. The engine roar was dimming . . . and now disappearing.
Breathing. His. Hers.
Then he felt the pressure on his chest ease up and that on his hips increase. He opened eyes he hadn’t known were closed.
The woman was sitting up with her back to him. Right on his pelvis. Talk about bull riders.
As his thoughts went to places where they were naked, she was yee-hawing all over him, and things were on the hot and sweaty side of hi-how’re-ya—she cursed and put her hand up to her head. Then she looked around. Twisted around. Met his eyes with ones of her own that went wide as paper plates for a second time.
“Oh, Jesus—” she barked.
The woman pushed herself off the cradle of every bright idea he’d ever had—and it was pretty clear she meant to leap to her feet. That was a no-go. She slumped to the side and grabbed for one of her legs.
“Are you okay?” he said. Or at least, that was what he meant to say. He wasn’t sure what kind of fruit salad’s worth of syllables came out of his mouth.
“It’s not broken.” She hissed as she rubbed her calf. “It’s not broken, dammit.”
Sitting himself up onto his elbows, he thought about pointing out that if a cast was required, that pep talk wasn’t going to do shit for the situation. But really, why waste breath on the obvious—
Boom!
They both jumped at the explosion. Putting his arm out to shield her even though he didn’t know what or where the threat was coming from, he looked down at the far end of the alley. Flames. A bonfire’s worth of them. About six blocks away under one of the city’s twin bridges by the river.
The orange strobe-lighting was impressive, and courtesy of the flickering show, he could see that the black muscle car was at the center of the bomb burst. And as street people ran away, he knew that soon there would be flashing blue and red lights, and all kinds of humans with badges, and spectators with camera phones.
“We gotta get out of here,” he said as he stood up—and put a palm to the small of his back with a curse.
When she just looked at him, he extended the hand that didn’t have a gun in it toward her.
“Do you need a doctor?” he asked.
“No.”
As she left his palm out there in the breeze, he’d really had it with the way things had been going tonight.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he muttered. “I saved your life, twice. And if we keep hanging out in the middle of this fucking street, you and I might have to go for a threesome.”
There was an awkward pause and then Lucan shook his head.
“Wait, that came out wrong.”
Or did it, he wondered to himself.
Vishous re-formed on the roof of a walk-up apartment building that had trap house written all over it. As his full weight of nearly three hundred pounds solidified in his boots—hey, he’d been working out hard, and all that iron humping was paying off—there was a creaking that suggested he needed to step carefully. Easing forward, he checked out the raw tar paper, the pockets of leaf debris that were ossifying into topsoil, and some twists that looked like clothes caught up in a crime scene.
’Cuz human flesh would be unlikely. Not a lot of Buffalo Bills in Caldie at the moment. That anybody knew about, that was.