Page 39 of Slayer Mom
I dodged each slash of claws and snap of teeth for maybe forty seconds, and then I stumbled on a loose rock, and that was enough for his claws to get me. The burning pain swept through my side and then Ihit the ground, head first, then the rest of me. Stars and stripes danced in my vision while I struggled for breath.
The monster was on me in the next moment, enormous mouth open to bite me in half and swallow me down, but then a cloud of pepper spray filled the air as Hazen reached into that mouth and sprayed.
He pulled his arm out, dropped down on top of me, and rolled us away from the creature. I gasped a breath and then struggled up. I had to protect them, but then Tom was there, walking towards me while wiping his blade off on an old rag that smelled like kerosene and tar.
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” he said, crouching down over me while I kept struggling for breath and against gravity. He’d gotten it. He’d killed it while we’d distracted the beast, while Hazen’s pepper spray did its damage.
Tom pulled up my shirt and then poured something over my wound that hurt worse than the monster’s claws.
I gasped and buried my face in Hazen’s chest. He kept stroking my hair and telling me that everything was okay, and that I was so brave, and all the things I’d ever said to Wat and Lock when they got hurt. He didn’t say that to them. He was very manly and, ‘shake it off, get back on that horse,’ kind of thing.
It made me smile even as Tom reached into my side and pulled out a claw.
I screamed and then Hazen was carrying me towards the van.
“Give her some morphine or something,” Tom called. “I’ve got to take care of the body.”
“I’ll help,” Gloria said cheerfully. “I still have my lighter.”
“Psychos,” Hazen muttered, but that’s the only criticism he gave. We reached the van, and he got usinside and then shut the door before he turned to face me. He took my face in his hands and then said, “I think prostitution would be a better way to make money.”
I frowned at him. “Gloria said that pimps aren’t scouting middle-aged housewives this year. Maybe next spring.”
He nodded soberly and then he kissed me.
I shouldn’t have been in the moment, but I’d been so terrified that he would die, but he wasn’t dead, and neither was I.
He broke away to ask breathlessly, “Do you need morphine?”
“You are all the morphine I’ll ever need,” I said, then pulled him back down to kiss me.
We definitely shouldn’t have gotten quite so naked, but I had to change out of those clothes, anyway. Yes, I was bleeding, and there was some kissing while Hazen somehow wrapped bandages around my torso, and then he had to check to make sure I wasn’t injured all over my body. That was fine with me as long as I could keep my legs around his waist and my hands in his hair.
It was definitely one of the strangest experiences with intimacy I’d had, but being with him was so utterly perfect, right up to the point where I sank my teeth into his neck and drank his blood.
And then it was even better.
eleven
. . .
“Doyou want to talk about last night?” Gloria asked, sipping champagne from her teacup the next morning. She had stopped to get the champagne out of Hazen’s car last night before driving home with me in the passenger’s seat while Tom took Hazen to the movie theater.
I was curled up on her green velvet chaise lounge in front of a fire. I wanted to find a grave and bury myself twelve feet under, but I had a bone to pick with the Grand Master first. This was all his fault. I was almost positive about that, but that was the only thing that I had any certainty of.
Hazen was still with Tom, being treated to make sure that he didn’t turn from my bite. He claimed he was fine, that it wasn’t a big deal, but Tom had had to wrestle me off my husband last night, because I’d been killing him.
“You weren’t killing him. He had good color. You were just caught up in the moment. I mean, him reaching into the monster’s mouth with his pepper spray was so brilliantly stupid. You can’t help but love someone who would do something so senseless for you.”
“And love equals biting. I don’t thinkthat Tom’s reaction was the same as mine to the Grand Master’s serum. Maybe it’s because I don’t come from a long line of slayers. I’m just a normal human.”
“Not normal, Lucky, but who wants to be that boring? Oh, I remember, you want to be that boring, but you see what happens when you repress your natural impulses? They explode in wild sex in the back of a van. Hm. Maybe we should all be more repressed.” She wiggled her brows at me.
“Did he get a good salt soak?” I asked, sitting up and grabbing my phone. I texted Tom for the twentieth time. As I was texting, my phone rang, and I dropped it with trembling fingers.
I checked the number, and it was no one I knew. I answered it cautiously. “Hello?”
“This is the Grand Master. Why are you killing hounds of death? That isn’t extermination. That requires skill, skill that you don’t have.”
