Chapter Seven

Apparently tiring of shaking her, Enrico slapped Kylee, jerking her head sideways. Her body followed. She’d barely touched down when he grabbed her and jerked her to her feet again. His hands closed around her throat, pinching off her air. Instinct kicked in and Kylee clawed at Enrico’s fingers, trying to pry them loose. There was a roaring in her ears, growing louder and louder that made it impossible to hear the curses he growled at her as he choked her and shook her like a pit bull with a terrier in its teeth. The light dimmed. Suddenly, she felt warmth at her back. An arm slid around her waist to support her. A hand reached from behind her and closed like a vice around Enrico’s neck.

The fingers around her throat slackened, fell away. Still gasping for air, Kylee found herself freed of support and wilted to the floor between Enrico and Gabriel, struggling to focus her vision when blackness was crowding so close she could barely see.

Instead of slackening his grip on Enrico’s through, Gabriel lifted the man clear of the floor. Enrico’s eyes bulged, either from lack of oxygen, or sheer terror, or both as he looked into the face of the being that slammed him against the door he had burst through only moments before. Struggling to scream, Enrico gave up on trying to pry the fingers from his throat and began to fumble with the pockets of his pants.

“Watch out! He’s got a knife!” Kylee gasped out hoarsely just as Enrico dragged a blade from his pocket, flicked it open, and shoved it to the hilt into Gabriel’s mid section.

Kylee tried to scream but her bruised throat prevented more than a hoarse croak.

Gabriel exhaled on a grunt of pain, grabbing Enrico’s hand in a grip that produced the distinctive, sickening crunch of breaking bones. Enrico’s face contorted, though he didn’t manage to force a scream out.

Wrenching the knife from Enrico’s hand, Gabriel pulled it from his belly and dropped it to the floor. It bounced, landing near her and Kylee struggled to grab it, uncertain of whether she meant to make sure Enrico couldn’t get it again, of if she wanted it for self-defense.

“This is the one who killed your sister?” Gabriel growled, turning to look down at Kylee.

Kylee struggled up on one arm, tried to swallow past her bruised throat and squeezed her eyes against the pain, coughing for several minutes when she choked. “Yes! He killed my sister,” she managed to gasp out in a hoarse whisper finally.

Before she could say anything else, Gabriel released his grip on Enrico’s throat. Even as Enrico’s feet hit the floor and his legs wobbled as he tried to support himself, Gabriel whipped his sword from its scabbard. Grabbing Enrico by the hair of his head, he swung the blade.

Kylee’s first inkling that Gabriel meant to mete out justice himself was the sword in his hand. “No!” she cried even as the sword descended with lightning speed, cleaving Enrico’s head cleanly from his shoulders.

A fountain of red spewed from the headless body. Something heavy and moist hit the floor with a sickening thud and rolled toward Kylee. She stared at Enrico’s expression of horror, his lips still moving to form a scream he could no longer utter and then the blackness she had been trying to fight off consumed her.

She had no idea how long she lay unconscious, but she awoke to frantic activity. She was seized and hauled to her feet before she could manage to open her eyes. Terror immediately assailed her and she screamed hoarsely. The effort gagged her and she choked, coughing for several moments before she could control the spasms.

“What the hell happened here?” a familiar voice growled. “Did you do this?”

Kylee opened her eyes with an effort, staring at Detective Strand blankly.

“Did you do this?” he barked the demand again, gesturing toward the floor.

Kylee’s stomach rebelled when she followed his gesture, clenching so hard she thought for several moments that she would throw up. Blood had formed a huge pool beside Enrico’s headless body. When she had followed the flow of the pool to her toes, she saw that she was coated with the blood.

Clutched in one hand, she saw to her horror, was Enrico’s knife. She dropped it abruptly, wondering how she had come to be holding it at all. Dimly, she remembered picking it up when Gabriel had tossed it to the floor, remembered some vague thought of using it to defend herself.

“I didn’t! I didn’t kill him!” she managed to choke out the denial finally as someone hauled her arms behind her back, twisting them painfully and roughly binding her wrists.

Strand’s face hardened. “I suppose his head just sort of popped off his shoulders? Christ almighty, this was stupid! We had him! You just had to take matters into your own hands, didn’t you?”

Kylee gaped at him. “No! I didn’t do this. Gabriel did it!” She glanced around the room a little frantically, searching for him, stunned to see that he was not among the people crowding the room.

Something flickered in Strand’s eyes. “Gabriel?”

“Yes! Gabriel! The—uh—the Elumi. He was here. Enrico broke the door in and grabbed me by the throat and Gabriel appeared behind me ….” Her voice petered to a halt when she realized what she’d said and how it sounded.

“The angel Gabriel,” Strand said, nodding wisely. “That’s good. Try a mental.”

“No! Really. I’m not making this up.”

He nodded at the man behind her and she was half pushed half carried from the room, her arms jerked up so high behind her she had to bend over to relieve the painful pressure. She was shoved into a waiting squad car and the door slammed firmly behind her. Righting herself with an effort, she stared out the window, too stunned to completely assimilate what was happening as she watched the chaos outside.

Lights flashed in her eyes, blinding her. A moment later, a cop climbed into the driver’s seat, started the car and pulled away.

What followed was the stuff of nightmares. Fortunately, Kylee was still in a state of shock when they arrived at the police station. Cocooned by that state of unreality, she was thoroughly confused, but unable to really grasp what was going on, or to feel any real fear. The only thing she did feel was a vast weariness that further impeded her ability to think clearly.

Like a zombie, she merely moved her feet when she was led from place to place, told to sit, told to stand, told to turn.

She wasn’t allowed to bathe. The blood dripped for a while and then began to dry before they’d finished taking the pictures they wanted, asking her questions, inking her fingers. When she’d been booked, she was taken at last to get cleaned up. Bathing in a communal shower, and being searched, was almost more nightmarish than wearing the blood, though. She was allowed to collapse weakly on a hard bunk for a perhaps an hour and then dragged down to an interrogation room where she spent several more hours.

After repeating her story over and over, she fell asleep in the chair.

Nobody had bothered to ask if she was hurt until she’d finally had the chance to bathe off and Strand noticed she had new bruises blooming. He wasn’t sympathetic. In fact, it was pretty clear that he wasn’t happy to see evidence that she might be able to claim self defense.

They didn’t bother to take pictures of her bruises.

The lawyer she’d asked for didn’t arrive until the police had already interrogated her for hours. She was almost sorry to see the woman, though, because the first thing she did was demand to have a doctor see her and Kylee was already so near to dropping she had to struggle to keep from bursting into tears of sheer exhaustion.

She fell asleep on the examining table and was woken to the unpleasant discovery that someone was probing her vagina. Horror filled her when she realized they were collecting a rape kit. It didn’t hit her until the nurse had left with the collected ‘evidence’ that it was proof that she hadn’t been in the room alone—maybe.

More photos followed, this time for her defense.

It was horrible that she was downright grateful when she was finally thrown into a jail cell and locked in, but all she could think about was that now, at long last, she could rest. She didn’t think she actually rested, though. It was more a matter of passing beyond consciousness and when she was woken again, she felt nearly as tired as she had before she’d lain down.

The institutional atmosphere, being woken at all hours without any possibility of rest, and having virtually no privacy made the experience rather like being in a hospital—except worse.

Her attorney met with her sometime during the second endless day, informing her that her arraignment had been set for the following day and arrangements couldn’t be made to get her out on bail until then. Afterwards, Kylee slept some, but spent most of her time huddled in one corner on her bunk just staring at a spot on the floor.

Mentally, she wasn’t in a much better state than when she’d been arrested, but she saw that she was in deep trouble. Strand was trying to charge her with first degree murder, citing the fact that she’d come to the city specifically to catch Enrico for her sister’s murder and, when that fell through, had lured him to her room to murder him in cold blood.

She didn’t see how he could possibly believe that, but he claimed to, and he claimed to have evidence to support it—which was a hell of a note, all things considered. She hadn’t done anything to the bastard and they were willing to manufacture evidence—which they would have to do since she was innocent—yet they knew Enrico had killed her sister and he could walk because they couldn’t get evidence? Some frigging justice!

What she couldn’t understand was why Gabriel had abandoned her in such a callous way.

Almost as if thinking about him had conjured him, he appeared beside her bunk. She stared at him in blank disbelief for several moments before she decided he really was there. “Gabriel?”

He was frowning, studying the cell with patent disgust. “Why are you here?”

She should’ve been furious with him for getting her into the mess she was in, but all she could think about at first was that she desperately needed to be held. Scooting off the bunk, she threw herself against him. To her relief, he wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly against him. At first, she feared it was a prelude to sex—which she definitely wasn’t in the mood for at the moment, but he seemed to sense she just needed to be held and he didn’t seem to have a problem with it. He smoothed her hair and rubbed her back soothingly.

“Why have they brought you to this place, dearling?”

“They think I killed Enrico,” Kylee muttered against his chest, beginning to shake with reaction.

He pulled away from her to study her face. “Why would they believe that?”

Kylee’s chin wobbled. “Because I was the only one there and I was holding his knife. Why did you leave me like that?”

He pulled her tightly against his body again. “To protect you.”

“It didn’t work,” Kylee muttered.

Pulling away from her again, he tugged her behind him and settled on the bunk, dragging her onto his lap and cuddling her against his chest. “From my enemy, dearling,” he said patiently. “The one that I had fought that first night. Somehow he tracked me to you. I am not certain that he would have tried to harm you, but I could not be certain he would not when he found me with you. Even if that had not been his intention, you could have been harmed if we had fought there. I drew him off. When I had beaten him, I returned, but you were gone.”

Kylee shuddered. Abruptly, she recalled the ‘man’ she’d run into when she had gone to try to draw Enrico out, the one she had thought might be an Elumi like Gabriel.

The only thing she’d managed to do was to nearly get both herself and Gabriel killed, because she was certain, suddenly, that both Enrico and the Elumi had followed her back.

Stupid, stupid mistake! Why hadn’t she considered that before?

She found that she didn’t want to admit to Gabriel that it was all her fault they’d been attacked. Obviously, he had taken great pains when he had come to her to make certain he wasn’t followed.

“Somebody called the police, I guess—heard the commotion. I don’t know. I fainted. They were everywhere when I woke up. And I was holding the knife that ….” Kylee stopped abruptly and pulled away to examine him. “He stabbed you with that knife. I saw it!”

“Yes. He did.”

Kylee frowned, confused. “But—there’s no sign—not at all! You’re—immortal?”

He sighed gustily. “We are not immortal, but we are far more resilient than humans. We regenerate rapidly. Fighting with swords is much more than a matter of honor and skill for us. It is virtually the only way we can slay our adversaries, for if the head does not come away from the body, the body will heal itself.”

Kylee settled against him again, too relieved to discover he was unharmed to want to question the how or why of it, though the knowledge left her with an uncomfortable sense of separation from him.

“We’re not the same at all, are we?” she said in a small voice, realizing that that meant they would not be together, could not. She hadn’t considered it before because she hadn’t thought it would come to matter to her. She had wanted to believe that she could enjoy the passion they shared and there would be no strings attached, no baggage to deal with later, but she realized it hadn’t happened like that at all. “You’ve slain an enemy warrior. I guess that means you’ll be allowed to go home?”

He didn’t answer, not directly, which she took to be a yes. “I will not leave you in this place.”

Kylee swallowed with an effort, pushing away from him. “It’s a law thing—a human thing. You wouldn’t understand. I can’t escape. I have to go through with this and try to clear myself. If I escaped, they’d hunt me forever.”

He shook his head. Shifting on the bunk until he could lie down, he pulled her down beside him so that they were facing one another. “I understand. I will fix this. Trust me,” he murmured leaning close to nibble at her lips teasingly.

Warmth flowed through her despite her certainty only minutes before that she had no desire for sex. She wrapped her arms around his neck, shifting closer, suddenly as needy of his caresses as she was of his passion.