Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

I whipped around the nearest corner, sneaking a glance behind me as I turned. One of the punks punched Blake right on that luscious mouth of his, but it didn’t seem to bother him much. He shoved the guy away hard enough to send him to the pavement.

I kept running at top speed. There was a parking garage a few yards ahead of me and another street a few yards past that. If Blake managed to get away from the punks—which I suspected he would soon, if he hadn’t already—he was going to catch up with me quickly. I’m a relatively fast runner given my size, but at five-two, my stride is pretty short.

I ducked into the garage, hoping Blake would assume I’d run all the way to the corner before turning.

My breath was coming in frantic gasps, the muscles in my legs burning like hell. There was a fair amount of activity on the ground level of the garage, people cruising for spaces or trying to remember where they’d parked. A few of them glanced at me curiously as I blew past, but no one seemed particularly alarmed.

The muscles in my legs complained even more as I forced them to carry me up the ramp to the next level of the garage. I was still hoping Blake would run right past the place, but with my luck these days, I wasn’t counting on it. If he found me, he could use his special power to force me to go with him, right under the noses of any number of witnesses, and they would never know anything was wrong. I, however, would need my gun to defend myself, and that meant getting away from potential witnesses.

There were fewer cars on the second level, but there was still enough activity that I didn’t dare draw the gun.

My pace wasn’t much faster than a brisk walk as I forced myself onward, climbing the ramp to the third level. There were only a handful of cars up there, and no people.

Finally allowing myself to slow down, I examined my options as I sucked in air. If Blake managed to follow me up here, I’d pretty much run myself into a corner, but that wasn’t entirely by accident. Best to be in a place where I could keep an eye on all the entrances.

There was a bank of elevators to my right, and a stairwell to my left, but other than the ramp, those appeared to be the only two ways up to this level. If Blake was following me, he’d have to use the ramp, otherwise it would be too easy for him to go right past me in the enclosed stairwell or the elevator.

I crossed the garage at a halfhearted trot, my legs feeling like they weighed about ten tons each. I can jog for miles if I have to, but the all-out sprint with the extra weight of the backpack had exhausted me.

When I reached the cluster of cars near the stairwell, I ducked down between them and crept forward until I was crouched between one car’s bumper and the wall. I then quietly unzipped my pack and pulled out the gun. If Blake cornered me up here, I’d have to find the guts to shoot him. I didn’t want to shoot him, but I doubted I’d have a lot of options if he found me. I couldn’t risk letting him use his nasty special power on me.

I crouched in the shadow of the car for what felt like forever, my body practically vibrating with tension. The day wasn’t particularly cold, but the air still felt icy against my sweaty skin. I was finally beginning to catch my breath after the long run, but my heart was still tripping on adrenaline.

It was all I could do not to groan when I saw Blake’s silhouette as he stalked through a patch of sunlight. Goddammit! Why couldn’t he have just kept on running? Or better yet, given up the chase? I should theoretically have had enough of a head start that I could be anywhere by now, so why was he here ?

I carefully slid over so that I was in the deepest pool of shadow available. I kept my entire body hidden behind one front wheel—the driver hadn’t bothered to straighten out once he’d pulled in, so the wheel gave me a gratifying amount of cover—and peeked from under the bumper to monitor Blake’s progress as he approached.

He was moving slowly, staring at something in his hand. At first, I had no idea what he was doing, but when he got closer, I could see he was looking at the screen of a phone. I didn’t think he was checking his email or surfing the Internet.

I mentally let out a stream of curses as I remembered Jack handing me my pocketbook. The purse itself had been ruined, but when I’d gotten home, I’d transferred its contents into my backpack. Evidence suggested there’d been something in that purse that wasn’t mine. Like, say, some kind of tracking device.

I was sure the jig was up, but even so, I remained stubbornly hidden. Blake was so close now I could see the thin, angry line of his lips, and the dangerous intensity of his eyes. He stood at the top of the ramp and turned a full circle, looking back and forth between the phone screen and his surroundings.

Maybe the smart thing to do would have been to leap to my feet the moment his back was turned and fire. I would have to take Maggie’s word for it that he was immortal and I couldn’t kill him by shooting him. I urged myself to do it, picturing myself as an action movie heroine blasting away, but the mental picture was so absurd it almost made me laugh.

It would have taken at least an hour for me to talk myself into shooting, and I had about two seconds. Blake had finished his circle before I’d gotten through preliminary arguments. I thought sure the tracker was going to lead him straight to me, but he just stood there, scowling and shaking his head in frustration.

Blake hit a button on his phone, then held it to his ear. I took a wild guess that he was calling Anderson, and that guess was confirmed by the conversation I overheard.

“She’s in here somewhere,” he said into the phone. “Or at least her bag is. The tracker can’t tell me which floor she’s on. Jack gave you a cell phone number for her, didn’t he?”

Oh, shit! My heart shot into my throat, and I reached for my backpack. I tried to hurry, but I was hampered by having to hold on to the gun and by having to be quiet. If I just yanked open the zipper, that sound would give me away just as effectively as the stupid cell phone.

I didn’t make it.

Before I’d even gotten the zipper halfway open, my cell phone played the opening riff of George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.” It had been Steph’s idea of a joke, but I kinda liked it. At least under normal circumstances.

There was no point in hiding anymore, so I stood up and pointed the gun at Blake, praying that no one else would come along and become an inconvenient witness. I’d be in deep trouble if I got caught carrying a gun. Blake’s expression was somewhere between a sneer and a grin. I guess the lighting was kind of dim and he didn’t see the gun at first. When he did, the grin disappeared.

Half a second later, heat suffused my body. My nipples hardened to aching peaks, moisture flooded my core, and my eyes started to glaze over.

The effect was almost instantaneous. One moment, I was staring down the barrel of my gun trying to work up the nerve to pull the trigger, the next, I wanted to fling the gun to the ground and tear off my clothes. I had only an instant to realize what was happening before I was under his spell, but that was enough.

Desperation gave me the will I needed, and my finger squeezed the trigger.

The tide of lust stopped as fast as it had started, and my vision cleared as Blake clutched the bleeding wound in his chest, gave me a wide-eyed look, and fell to the floor of the garage.

To say I wasshocked by what I’d done was an understatement. For a long, breathless moment, I just stood there and stared, hardly believing I’d actually shot someone. Blake’s face was squinched in pain, and his hands were stained crimson as he tried to stanch the flow of blood.