Page 2 of Bound to the Minotaur
Up close, he smelled faintly of oil and something earthy, like fresh-cut wood or rain on dry ground. His coveralls clung to his broad back as he crouched down to peer under the front of my car, the thick muscles of his shoulders and arms flexing beneath the thin, worn fabric.
I tried not to stare. I really, really did. But my eyes had a mind of their own, trailing down the strong line of his back to where the material pulled tight over his very nice, very firm-looking butt. Heat rushed up my neck and into my cheeks before I could even think of looking away.
Of course, that’s exactly when he looked up. Our eyes met—his brown gaze sharp and unreadable in the dark—and I jerked my head away so fast, I nearly gave myself whiplash. Mortification burned through me, and I fumbled to pretend I'd been inspecting a spot on the hood instead.
A low, rough sound—something between a snort and a grunt—escaped him. I didn’t dare look at him again, but I could feel his amusement hanging in the cold air between us. “Brakes are shot,” he said gruffly, as if the moment hadn’t happened at all. “Could’ve got yourself killed.”
I swallowed hard. “I know,” I mumbled, hugging myself tighter against the chill. “I didn’t mean to—it just...happened.” And now I wondered how much it was going to cost to get them fixed. I could see his bill eating into my survival budget already. How much would I have left to rent a hotel room until I could find an apartment? Would I have enough to pay the first month’s rent? This venture was already beginning to crumble. Maybe my father didn’t need to chase me down; maybe he knew I’d be forced to return.
He gave the car a final once-over, then straightened up with a smoothness that shouldn’t have been possible for a guy his size. He towered over me, his presence so solid and overwhelming that for a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
“You’re lucky I was still at the shop,” he muttered, jerking his thumb toward the idling tow truck. “Get your stuff. I’ll haul it back.” There was no warmth in his voice, but there was something else tucked into the rough edges—something steadier, something that made the fear inside me loosen just a little.
I nodded, too flustered to say anything else, and stumbled back to my car to grab my overnight bag. Behind me, I heard the clank and rattle of chains as he got to work hitching up my poor car for the tow. Maybe he didn’t want to help. Maybe he was the grumpiest man I’d ever met. But hehadcome. And for now, that was enough.
Chapter 2
Gregory
Standing inside my living room, I stared at my phone as if it had just sprouted a head. Getting a call this late at night? That had never happened before. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. The inhabitants of Hillcrest Hollow kept odd hours, at least some of them did. Once upon a time, I’d frequently get calls at odd hours: from the vampire broken down after his moonlight drive, or the troll by the north bridge who thought he could fix his motorcycle at midnight. But nowadays, Hillcrest Hollow was as quiet as a mouse, and I’d grown to like that.
But tonight, that caller had been human. Distinctly, devastatingly human, and very much in distress. My instincts roiled inside my chest with discomfort, another damn word starting with a “d.” I was turning into a regular poet right on the spot, and I didn’t like it. Snorting heavily, feeling a heavy dose of self-mockery, I stomped to the backdoor. My cat, Avis, traipsed after me on dainty feet, his tail waving high in the air like a flag. He meowed as I began stomping into my boots with as much force as I’d used to clomp across the short distance.
“What?” I said, the single word coming out in a short, clipped tone that made Avis hiss. He gave me his haughtiest, most annoyed look, then twisted to lick at imaginary ruffled fur. I wasn’t going to get any answers from him, so I picked up my jacket and pulled it on, the worn leather creaking as it stretched over my shoulders. Patting my pockets, I wondered whether I’d need anything else.
My forehead itched, and I knew what that meant, but I ignored it. The human had demanded my help; there was no time to shift and let out the beast. The maze behind my home called to me, though, pulling on my gut with the lure to build, to expand it, to perfect it. I snorted again, but this time, my breath fogged into two perfect white plumes in the cold night air. Temperatures were plummeting toward the freezing point; the human would struggle if she wasn’t adequately dressed.
My boots crunched on the gravel path as I circled my house toward where the tow truck was parked. She was getting on in age, but her engine was still a work of art and powerful enough to haul pretty much anything I asked of her. My fingers brushed across the hood, where a new spot of rust had marred it. I needed to do something about that, but bodywork was not my favorite part of working on cars. I was better at repairing or reshaping. My eyes flicked back to the shape of the maze that I had carefully shaped and built over the past years. I was good at building stuff like that.
I swung myself into the cab of the truck, rubbing at my itchy forehead with one hand while flicking on the ignition. Avis meowed as he leaped into the cab with me, his body a gray blur as he skipped right past my lap to land on the gearbox. Then he padded to the seat at my side and curled his tail around his paws. He was a big fellow, so he could peer over the dash and out into the night. “What?” I said again, though I knew how useless it was to talk to this lunkhead. He never answered with anything but glares and hisses. “Since when do you come out on calls with me?”
I slammed the door shut and turned the truck into the night. The engine rumbled pleasantly, vibrating the seat and the steeringwheel. It was bright out, with a moon that shone silver light on the bare branches of the forest. My sharp eyes could still make out the hints of red and gold that lay in drifts of fallen leaves around the base of the trees, or still clung stubbornly to a few last branches. A pleasant night for a drive, if not for the problematic fact that I was heading out to meet a human.
She had not told me exactly where she was, but I didn’t need to hear it from her to know. There were only so many roads into town, and I had a gift for sensing those in trouble. I knew exactly where she was, and the sense of impending doom I got from her was only growing larger. She was in danger—not the immediate, I’m-about-to-die kind of danger, but danger nonetheless. The feeling was too big for it to be simply about her car trouble. I didn’t like it.
This was why I couldn’t live in a big city, and why I much preferred the solitude of my home on the edge of Hillcrest Hollow. A town with a population of about a hundred, the number having dwindled over the years, though it had never been large even in its heyday. In a town that size, I could enjoy the peace and quiet, not constantly feeling pulled in every direction by people whoneeded.
Avis licked his whiskers when I turned onto the one decent road into town. An asphalt stretch barely wide enough for two cars or a single tractor. Whoever this girl was, she had to be lost, because no sane person came here on purpose. That brought me back to the pull of her need, her danger. It had to be a large, looming danger, and she was on the run from it. I never should have answered my phone, and even now, I could feel it burning a hole in my pocket.
“Are you going to behave when I get there?” I said to fill the silence. It wasn’t Avis who had to worry about his behavior, though, he was always nice to my customers. It was me who only knew how to bark orders or growl like a bear. The look in his blue eyes told me as much: a mocking reprimand, a disdainful flick of his tail.
I huffed, glaring at my mussed reflection in the rearview mirror before focusing on the hilly road. I’d help this lady, then get the hell out of Dodge before she wanted more help than I was willing to offer. This was already too much. My forehead wasn’t just itching now, it ached, as if ready to sprout horns right that instant. Beneath my jacket, my shirt was stretched tight over my chest, as if my body had already shifted. I needed to fix her car, send her on her way, and get rid of this agonizing, half-shifted pull. Maybe I was unused to the intensity of this feeling, having been isolated as much as I was, but I couldn’t recall ever feeling the pull this badly before.
The car was visible before I spotted the woman, and I tried to make it my only focus when I parked the tow truck and got out. Don’t look at the pale face and pink cheeks. Donotstare at the long blonde hair and pretty sapphire eyes framed by a pair of black-rimmed glasses. She was dressed in jeans and a sweater beneath a far-too-thin jacket, and was shaking with the cold, her hands buried deep inside her pockets.
I’d forgotten how lovely her voice was, even with that scared, helpless little tremble in it. That was the first thing I’d noticed when I answered the phone earlier. I couldn’t stop noticing it now when she spoke, either. Or how she stared at me when she thought I wasn’t looking. Too bad for her, I had senses far beyond those of a mere human. I knew.
The car was a mess. Old, badly maintained. It was a miracle it had driven at all, but that was not why it had broken down now. The uneasy pull in my gut was right: shewasin danger. The worst kind of danger. And there was nothing I could do to fix her car on the side of the road; I’d need parts I didn’t even keep stocked at my shop. Which meant… ah fuck, she’d have to get a room at the B&B, and I’d keep feeling this damn pull until she got the hell out of here.
I told her to wait in the truck while I hitched her car to the back, and she gave me the most grateful look. It did something strange to my belly that had nothing to do with her pull ofdanger. I found her attractive. No surprise, she was young, she was pretty, and she had curves in all the right places. A perfect handful, even for my big mitts. I eyed my hands with a glare as if that were their fault, then noticed how much grime had gotten stuck in the rough skin from today’s work. They’d never get clean enough to touch a pretty lady as pristine as her.
With a growl, I picked up the front of her car with one hand, easily lifting it so I could attach the winch without bending down. Then I realized that maybe I shouldn’t do that in front of a potential human audience and glanced over my shoulder. She was inside the cab, twisted in the seat to stare out the back window right at me. Avis was next to her, standing on his hind legs so he could peer out with her. They made a pair, one pale blonde, the other silver gray.
She definitely saw. Fuck. I hooked the winch—might as well now—and proceeded as if nothing strange had happened. I ignored her gaze on me, blue like my cat’s, and focused on the work. That, at least, was as familiar as breathing. By the time I wasdone, it was past midnight, and I could tell the late hour was taking a toll on my damsel.
She wasn’t going to make it to the stupid B&B, and what was I thinking, anyway? Mr. Halvers wasn’t going to open his doors at this hour, he was a bigger grump than I was, and a bigot when it came to anything supernatural, to boot. With a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, I opened the door on the driver’s side and got in, eyeing the strange woman as if she were a rattlesnake. We hadn’t even exchanged names, at least, I didn’t recall hearing hers, though she might have said it. I definitely hadn’t told her mine.
Her pale face caught the silver light of the moon, her expression expectant and soft. She was unsure, a little wary, as if I might be a danger to her, and at the same time, she looked hopeful. I didn’t have answers for her, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to help her with her massive, undefined, but imminent problem. No, I was not getting involved. Not a chance.
