Rise of the Lost Prince (2 page)

“Did you card them?” she asked.

He nodded. “They’re twenty-one,
just barely, but legal. They came to celebrate with the blonde who’s wearing
the shiny silver dress and the princess tiara.”

Sven was being far too kind when
he described the blonde’s clothing. Oh, it was shiny, and silver, although Bell
didn’t believe what the blonde wore actually qualified as a dress. More like a
sequined Band-Aid. In fact, if the girl giggled any harder, the bountiful,
bouncing cleavage she was obviously so proud of was going to give way, and the Bobbsey
Twins were going to pop into full view.

Fairy godmother help her. Later,
she’d need to scrub her eyeballs clean. Bell quickly looked away. The last
thing she’d wanted to see was the color of birthday girl’s barely there panties.
Didn’t the tiara-topped princess know how to close her legs when she sat?

“Celebrate what?”
Being a skank?
Bell bit her bottom lip, glad
she only thought the last part of her question. How some females chose to
portray themselves didn’t really matter to her.

“Her twenty-first birthday,” Sven
answered.

“Ah.” She would never understand
why humans actually wanted to celebrate the fact they were getting old, but
whatever. She arranged five martini glasses in a straight line. “I’ll be a
minute on the drinks.” Bell turned and stretched up on the toes of her pink and
black lace-up platforms to snag a bottle of vodka from the neon-lit liquor
display behind her, then twirled gracefully with the bottle in hand in time to
see the local frat-boy pack come wandering in.

Oh,
no.

The self appointed leader of the
group, Blain…Blain…
what was his last
name?
No matter. Blain something-or-other would eventually work his way
over to the bar, flirt and do so horrifically, and then attempt to regale her
with NOT jokes.

Crap
on a cracker
.

He smiled at her—all teeth. Could
the night get much worse? Then she figured the night sure could, and so would,
when part of the testosterone frat-pack broke off and gravitated toward the
table of over-the-top glitter-gals, leaving Blain something-or-other—whom
clearly, and to her great dismay—was headed in her direction.

****

From Petúr’s vantage point on the
rooftop, he witnessed the horrified expression on the young woman’s face as she
backed herself down the dim lit alleyway. Her conservative tan pant suit was
disheveled, and her autumn colored hair had partially fallen free from the clip
placed crookedly on the back of her head. The dangling strands halfway obscured
her pale cheek.

With blue eyes rounded, she tore
the purse from her shoulder and threw the accessory in front of her. “Here.
Take it,” she said with a quivering voice.

The purse skittered a few feet
then came to a stop by a dumpster before the contents spilled out. One lone
tube of lipstick kept rolling, making a warbling sound as it continued its
getaway.

“It’s not your money I desire,”
came a lisping low voice as the cloaked figure stalked forward, gliding across
the pavement beneath him then stopped. His hooded head lifted, and Petúr knew
he could smell her essence. Her fear. “Innocence.” He made a show of sucking in
the night air. “My favorite. Always sweet, and the most addictive soul to feed
upon.”

Petúr swooped down, coat tail
flapping in the breeze, the bottom swishing about him when he landed in a
cat-like crouch between the dark one and the terrified woman. Senses honed as
sharp as razors, he became acutely aware of everything. The woman’s
respirations. The rapid tattoo of her heart. His smooth, unhurried, even
heartbeat. Rats scurrying. Far away sounds of street noise. Sea-salt air mixed
with rotting trash and the chemical stench of plastic. He even experienced the
way his hair dangled around his face and how his warrior’s braid tickled his
right cheek.

Behind him, the human let out an
ear piercing scream.

 
“Woman,” he said through gritted teeth. “Do
not move.”

Slowly, he glanced up to see the
face veiled beneath the black hood. The features distorted and took on the
appearance of melting wax. Petúr growled low in his throat, watching the drips
on the deformed face until they finally took shape and froze into a fixed
sneer. Rotted teeth came to sinister points. When hollow black holes for eyes
met Petúr, he stood up to his full six-foot-seven height and moved forward.

“She smells good enough to eat,
doesn’t she?” the being asked.

“Name yourself, darkling.”

Shivering in horror, Wyndi stared
at the silver cross-bone buckles on the heavy looking boots of the man who’d
apparently dropped from the sky. They glinted within the slice of light
slashing over him in a forbidding focal point. Forcing herself to look at more
of him, her gaze trailed up. And up. He was a giant. Even taller than that
monstrous
thing
who’d been stalking
her.

The monster laughed, causing her
attention to snap back to him. Or it.

“I am called Kros.” He flicked a
nasty sharp tooth with one tip of his…
forked
tongue
? “I do not fear you, Petúr of the lost boys.”

Lost
boys?

Her tall, gothic-looking hero
gave a deceptively pleasant smile before he said, “That’s your first mistake.”
With a flip of his wrist, he threw his hand forward, releasing a black throwing
star.
 

The four bladed weapon
whooshed
through the air. Kros made no
move other than to lift up a skeletally thin hand. The star slowed. Stopped and
hovered midair?
Terror stricken and
confused, Wyndi watched as the weapon did something impossible. The star
reversed direction. Okay. What was going on? She needed to consider she was
having a horrible nightmare. Maybe she was home, in bed, and….

Before she could flinch, the man
who told her not to move grabbed her, and took her to the ground in a tumble.

They rolled, and
Petúr
, the thing had called him,
positioned his much bigger body overtop hers. The weapon imbedded into the
brick and mortar of the wall where she’d been.

“Stay down,” he commanded,
pulling away.

She lay in a whimpering heap on
the dirty gray concrete. If this was a night terror, it sure felt real.

Her savior leapt to his feet and
bounded toward Kros. In a millisecond, the monster blinked out of reality. She
frowned. She couldn’t have seen that, but…. She couldn’t attempt to wrap her
mind around what she saw. Kros was back. Gone one minute and there the next.
People didn’t just poof in and out of existence. For that matter, people didn’t
look as though they belonged in a haunted house as the main attraction either.

Placing her hand over her mouth,
Wyndi held onto the scream wanting to escape her parched lips when the dark
demon monster caught Petúr by the throat and gripped.

 
Damn it.
Grappling Hook’s bastard spawn had Petúr in an iron vice throat hold, cutting
off his air. He slammed his elbow back, intending a gut blow, yet hit nothing.
The darkling had vanished. Petúr sucked in a breath. He glanced around. Kros
reappeared. Disappeared. Behind him, Petúr felt a kidney punch and grunted. The
darkling was strong. And fast with that blinking in and out shit. It felt as
though he’d been walloped with a sledge hammer instead of a bony fist.

In the next instant, Kros had
glommed onto him. Petúr attempted to work himself free, to reach for the blade
in his boot and sink it into the dark one’s jugular.

Wham!

Petúr’s head went forward, taking
a sharp blow to the back of his skull.

No
choice.
He mentally blocked the pain, took flight, breaking past the clouds, flying
fast and erratic. The oversized leach on him snapped rotten teeth at his neck,
but failed to make contact. Petúr zigzagged left. Shot right. Flew up. Down.
Up. Flipped in mid-flight. The smell of sulfur and something putrid wafted
around him. His coat and shirt ripped, freeing his right shoulder and arm. Kros
had been shaken off.

A creepy cackle echoed from the
freefalling being. Petúr banked left, and shot downward, hitting the ghoul in
the midsection, hearing an
oomph
.
They plummeted toward the ground—the wind whistling past them. The only way to
kill a darkling was to behead them, so the impact about to happen wouldn’t end
Kros, nonetheless he could rattle the assholes skull. Payback for the blow to
the back of his head.

Without stopping the momentum,
Petúr hammered the darkling into the lid of the metal dumpster. The night
filled with the sound of a horrible collision. The dumpster collapsed as if
Petúr had smashed a tin can beneath his foot. Trash and debris flew up, then
rained down around them before Kros evaporated, completely.
  

“I see you have things under
control.”

Covered in rubbish, Petúr turned
and glared at his friend and brother-in-arms. Ever the picture of polished sophistication,
the tall, blond male was dressed in a suit instead of the way a hunter of darklings
should be.

“I think we have a problem,
Vibe.”

His brother shrugged a shoulder.
“When don’t we have one?”

“Shit, big guy,” Dash said as he
strolled up the alleyway as cool as you please. He glanced around then stopped
alongside Vibe. “Can’t you go one night without breaking things?”

“Bite me, Dash,” Petúr said,
wiping something that resembled wilted lettuce from his forearm.

Dash sniggered and pointed to the
top of Petúr’s head. “I think you missed some.”

Combing his fingers through his
hair, he didn’t want to consider what other nasty things hitched a ride on his
person. Whatever. He didn’t have time to really worry about it. He shook like a
dog then jumped out of the tattered remains of metal and trash. The woman
squealed.

He turned, palms up, and walked
toward her as if approaching a skittish alley cat. “It’s all right,” he
assured. “Everything is fine.” He knelt by her trembling frame.

“What in the heck was that thing?
You. He. You-you.” She tried to crab-walk backwards. “What are you?”

Excellent question. He wished he
knew.

“Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God,” she
spluttered.

“Shh….” Petúr placed his large
hand on her shoulder. She whimpered. He’d hoped to comfort her, but by the
level of her shakes, he was failing miserably. “You’re safe now,” he said. A
gust of wind disrupted her hair, causing some of the strands to whip across her
mouth and neck. He swiped her hair aside, letting his fingers bask in the silk
a moment before freeing her face. “I promise.”

There was a cute smattering of
freckles over her pixie shaped nose and she smelled of cotton candy. He usually
didn’t take much, if any, notice of the darkling’s victims. Especially not the
full shape of their lips.
Cherry colored
.
Or the gentle curve of their jaw and delicate line of their neck. The way the
pulse beat wildly in the smooth space of their throat.

What
in the hell?
He dropped the thought of placing his mouth and nose to the beat of her there
and turned to eye Vibe. “She’s scared shitless.”

Vibe nodded. Petúr didn’t need to
say anything else. They’d fought together, side-by-side, and dealt with the
aftermath of their scrimmages with the darkness for years. Vibe knew what to
do.

Petúr watched in amazement as his
friend and brother stared at the woman’s forehead. No matter how many times he
saw Vibe do his thing, it always astonished him to see what could only be
described as something akin to a heat wave undulate from Vibe’s body.

Dancing on air, the wave reached
out to the human. Contact. He experienced the warmth and low-line buzz overtake
the female’s frame while Vibe’s silver eyes gave the allusion of pools of
liquid rippling out from the dark centers.

“She’s questioning her sanity and
can’t wrap her mind around what she saw,” said Vibe. “She’s considering the
darkling to be some kind of demon. And has some crazy thought of you being her
sexy guardian angel.”

Petúr almost, but not quite,
broke a smile. “She thinks I’m sexy?”

Vibe chortled. “Or you could be
the devil in disguise.”

His brow crinkled at that.

“But then she goes back to her
original thought of being in her bed at home, having some sort of nightmare.”

Vibe snorted.

“What?” Petúr asked, curious.

“She thinks the bizarre dream is
a result of eating tainted shrimp and oysters from Manny’s Crab Shack for
dinner and is considering giving him a piece of her mind tomorrow morning when
she wakes up about serving bad seafood.”

“I hate to be the kill joy here,”
said Dash. “But, attacks usually happen in twos and threes.” Dash turned his
onyx gaze to Vibe. “So maybe we should wrap things up.”

“Because of her disbelief, it
will be easy to replace her memories,” Vibe said.