Page 3 of Shadow's Edge (Night Prowler 1)
She was unable to answer or even move her arm to hand him the ruined bottle. She lifted her gaze to his face and he did an immediate double take.
“Wow! Your eyes are amazing! I’ve never seen that shade of green. Or...yellow? It’s so unusual. They’re beautiful.”
“Contacts,” she lied, one of many little white lies she told about herself to mask the truth.
The blaze of fear and fever hit her again, electric and stabbing, like a knife in the gut. She had to grit her teeth against a sudden, wrenching light-headedness. The cashier saw something on her face that made him blink, his brows drawn together. She dropped the ruined plastic bottle on the conveyor belt, stammering excuses.
“I think—I don’t really need another soda. In fact, I’m going to leave everything. I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well. I...I have to go.”
“You’re sure? It won’t be any trouble, it’ll just take a sec. I’ll get one from the fridge at the customer service desk, it’s right over there—”
But Jenna had already turned away. She began to push past the giant man, but he was wedged so securely between the counter and the large refrigerated case of drinks there was no way to get past him, and there were ten people in line behind her, pressing close. She was trapped.
So because she was panicked and had no other option, she did something she never allowed herself to do and used her strength.
All of it. In front of everyone.
The collective gasps of twelve people were drowned out beneath the piercing metallic shriek of the refrigerated case as it was dragged across the linoleum, its round feet cutting deep into the steel and cement floor beneath. There was twenty feet of gouged floor between the aisle where she’d been standing and freedom, and it took only a few seconds and a very slight push. She didn’t look back as the refrigerated case came to rest against the customer service
counter with a muffled boom, scattering a stack of coupon flyers into the air like confetti.
She began to run.
She almost made it to the sliding glass doors at the front of the store when she felt the jolt of electricity again. It was a concussion that pierced down into her muscles, into the very marrow of her bones. A rising thick pulse of intuition flooded through her veins and she felt something vast and intangible rushing at her, heated and dark and inevitable as death. She stumbled into a dust-covered display of Duraflame logs stacked in a wire rack and sent row upon row of plastic-wrapped logs bouncing to the floor.
And then, shaking and gasping for breath, gazing out the sliding glass doors into the shimmering heat of the parking lot, Jenna saw them.
Tall and graceful, lithe like dancers, sleek and silent and dark.
They stood on the far side of the parking lot in the long shadows of a tall hedge of shaped ficus trees, staring right back at her from beautiful faces with detached expressions and very sharp eyes. All three were dressed in black clothing, obviously expensive, fitted and formal and distinctly out of place in the bludgeoning summer heat. There was nothing but grace and loveliness about them, nothing to suggest danger, but her skin crawled with bone-deep fear.
Because even from here she saw it. For all their elegance, there was something very wrong.
It could be seen in the planes and angles of their faces, in the slanted set of their eyes, in the cold red curve of their unsmiling lips. Their posture, the lines of their bodies, even their faces were perfect but—odd. Carved and otherworldly, almost elfin. They were beautiful in the way that certain predatory animals are beautiful.
And just as devoid of humanity behind the eyes.
One stood apart, slightly ahead of the others. Like his companions he had ebony hair, honey-bronze skin, feral, flashing eyes. But he was larger, broad-shouldered and substantial, forbidding even with all that perfect symmetry of bone structure, that jawline that seemed sharpened on a diamond cutter’s lathe. Something about the mouth: sensual but hard, so hard it seemed he hadn’t smiled in years. Or ever.
Their eyes met, and it gave her a jolt like lightning to her toes.
Who, she thought, and then, what? Her mind struggled to keep up with the adrenaline that flooded her veins. Her limbs lifted into sudden power and buoyancy, her nerves screamed RUN!, but she could only stare at him across the distance of the parking lot, into eyes beast-bright and wondering, luteous green. He stared right back at her with a gaze so intense and burning she thought he might ignite her with it.
On instinct she inhaled and caught the essence of him distilled into one tiny, heady whiff: Male. Potent. Dangerous.
Then he shifted his weight forward on one leg, and with that small movement, everything changed. His expression darkened, sharpened. He looked for a moment like he would cross the parking lot and devour her whole.
Another blistering shock of heat hit her—heart- stopping, blood-curdling—and to her great horror, everything began to slide sideways in one long, nauseating pull. Her body went curiously limp, out of her control. Her eyes blurred and focused, only to lose focus again when she slumped hard against the rack of fake fireplace logs and hit her head on a metal bar.
Spots of color popped and faded in her peripheral vision, the world leached of color. Except for those eyes that remained a constant, phosphorescent glow against the encroaching darkness.
No! she thought, panicked. No! I’m not—I can’t—
Just before she fainted, Jenna saw the feral green-eyed stranger lick his lips.
“Well, Leander, she certainly looks charming. Though a bit equilibrium challenged. Are you sure we’ve got the right blonde?”
Leander didn’t turn at the sound of his younger brother Christian’s amused voice, nor did he move or blink, or in any way acknowledge he heard him. He only stared, with fevered eyes and a flush of blood creeping over his cheeks, across the parking lot and through the doors to the grocery store, where a small crowd had gathered around the slim female figure recently collapsed onto the floor.
