And here is a final excerpt ~
*A hollow echoing sound made her jerk around to look behind her”¦nothing.
Deep breaths, she reminded herself. The sound came again, and suddenly she knew someone was following her. She heard a soft thump thump, like shoes echoing off the damp concrete, maybe a block behind her.
Embracing her panic, she started running. She needed to get somewhere with a lot of people. The Seattle Center would still have activity, even at this time of night, so she headed up Third Avenue toward Mercer. Another noise ahead stopped her cold. Someone was ahead of her now. Again she heard the distant footsteps behind her. Scanning the streets, she wondered why no one was out tonight. Was it her imagination that several of the street lights were out, too?
Keep the panic down, stuffed, buried deep. Her mantra came back to her now as she spotted the alley across the street. Sprinting across the avenue, she ran into the alley and pulled her little pistol out of her purse. Ambient light from the far entrance cast the alley into slippery shadows. Sonja steadied the pistol in her grip and paused to listen.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Fighting paralysis of her limbs, she pointed the pistol toward the soft voice. Her heart raced as a man stepped from the shadows. A man in his late twenties, early thirties? She couldn’t really tell in this light. He had dark hair that came to the collar of his leather jacket.
“Put the gun away.”His voice took on a sharper edge. “It wouldn’t help you anyway,” he said in a simple declaration. He stepped forward into the vaporous light revealing the black lily he held in his hand. He brought the flower up to his nose then let it drop to the ground. “Sonja, I’m just the messenger.” His gaze swept over her face and body. She let out a gasp when his eyes reached hers. A deep orange fire flickered deep in the man’s pupils.
“No.”
He crushed the lily under his boot. “I have a message for you from Chac.”
“No, please don’t. I don’t”””
The man held up a finger to his mouth. “Shhh. He wishes you to know you have something he wants, so he’s stirred up the pot so to speak, to get you to listen.”
No this wasn’t happening. He couldn’t have found her.
She forced herself to speak, even though her arms felt numb, like they had a sheet of ice over them. “Who the hell”””
A sudden low snarling burst from the shadows.
The strange man snapped his head toward the snarl. A slow smile came over his face. “Perfect.”
He turned back to Sonja. “Here, this is yours. Gotta go.” There was a flurry of movement and whisper of air, as his body rippled and folded in front of her.
With another menacing snarl, something leapt from the shadows.
At the same time, great gusts of air blew over her face. She looked up just in time to see a large raven ascend toward the sky.
The ice was not only trapping her arms but her legs now. Her lungs were heavy, and when she lowered her gaze from the sky, Aiden Pierce stood directly in front of her.
Sonja’s heart kicked into a dizzying tempo. The panic punched through. All those memories from years ago came on like a raging flood.
She put a hand to her chest. “I”¦I can’t breathe.”
He reached his hand out to her.
She backed up to the wall of the building and tried to pull air into her lungs.
He moved forward. “Relax, you can breathe; you’re just letting your body get the best of you.”She cringed when he laid his palm over her cheek. “Just breathe,” he said in a calm voice.
Warmth like sunlight on a winter’s day slid from his hand to her cheek, down her throat, into her chest and belly, until her whole body was loosened, and the ice melted away. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. “Okay that’s better.” Taking a few more full breaths, she opened her eyes. His hand was still on her cheek, and for a brief moment, the intensity of his dark eyes bore into her own, making her heart race again.
He jerked his hand away as if sensing her response to him. Taking a step back, he put distance between them.
Sonja straightened herself up and looked down at her still trembling hands. The little pistol was still in the right one. She fumbled to open her small purse and put the gun a way.
He was still staring at her. She could almost feel his gaze on her.
“Well that was an interesting way to end an evening,” she managed, trying to put a “no big deal, this happens all the time’ tone in her voice.
He didn’t look happy as he pulled a linen hanky out of his coat pocket and bent over to the ground. When he stood back up he held a gun, her gun, with his thumb and index finger, the cloth keeping his fingers from touching the Colt.
In a low voice, he barely concealed the edge of anger. “I thought you didn’t own a gun?” *
Buy Links ~ Muse It Up Publishing ~ Amazon
Leave a Comment