Eve of Darkness - By S. J. Day Page 0,62
impact. She dropped it with a curse and searched for a replacement.
“Eve!” Alec barked as a tremendous crashing noise was heard from the street below. “We need one of them.”
She winced. “Sorry. Don’t know my own strength.”
The one-legged tengu shrieked and hopped after Eve in retaliation, wielding her broken-off leg like a club. Alec lashed out with a fist, but haste threw off his aim. He struck the beast’s rear lower flank, sending her into a tailspin. Her velocity increased, then she struck Eve, knocking Eve to her back.
The tengu landed on her thighs. Stone arms rose to brain Eve with the leg. Eve screamed and recoiled, shielding her head with her forearms. Braced for the beating, she squeezed her eyes shut.
Then a hideous stench roiled over her, turning her stomach and making her choke.
A roar filled the air, like the sound of a mighty waterfall. The ground slithered beneath her back, dragging her several feet. Her eyes flew open and she watched the scene unfold as if in slow motion.
The water surged into a tidal wave. An all-too-recognizable face emerged within the center of the liquid wall. The tengu shrieked and dropped the leg.
“She’s mine!” the Nix roared.
In a churning, foaming mass, the Nix swept the tengu over the edge of the roof.
And took Eve with it.
CHAPTER 14
Alec!”
Eve tumbled inside the wave like a wiped-out surfer. Her back hit the edge of the brick safety surround and she flipped over the top, arms and legs flailing. Her fingers grappled for purchase, one digit breaking in the effort. Then she was falling, weighted down by the tengu that clung to one leg and the Nix that was wrapped around her entire body in a swirling vortex of water.
As the lip of the roof escaped her vision, an arm reached over and clasped her wrist in a viselike hold. She glanced up, watching how her momentum and gravity pulled Alec inexorably until he dangled from the waist. She screamed. Not from the fear of falling, although she was deathly afraid of heights, but for Alec, who appeared ready to tumble over the edge with her.
“You’re going to die,” she yelled at Alec, kicking madly at the screeching tengu. “Let me go!”
“No way.” He clutched at her with both hands. “Deus, invictæ virtutis auctor, et insuperabilis imperii rex, ac semper magnificus triumphator—”
As Alec continued to speak, Eve flopped from side to side. Her shoulders creaked with the tremendous weight of the beings hanging on to her. Her arms felt on the verge of ripping from their sockets. She was fairly certain that would have happened already if she weren’t superhuman.
She looked down, aiming at the tengu’s eyes with the heel of her boot and kicking at her with all her might. Alec slid farther over the ledge, his hips the only anchor keeping them from free-falling four stories to the ground.
“Per Dominum nostrum!” Alec roared.
The water exploded outward with teeth-rattling violence, knocking the tengu free and slamming Eve into the brick facade. Alec yanked her up and over the top with such force that they both landed in an ignoble sprawl of tangled limbs. From below, the reverberation of the crashing tengu caused a car alarm to wail.
“What the fuck happened?” she gasped, pushing her soaked hair out of her face.
Alec lay beneath her, laughing. “I asked for a blessing of the water. God made it holy and it kicked the Nix out.”
“How can you laugh?” She smacked his shoulder. “This job sucks. And we’re empty-handed.”
“We’re alive. And you were right.” He cupped the back of her neck and gave her a quick, hard kiss. She cried out at the unintentional jarring of her broken finger. He set her beside him, then sat up. Catching her hand, he looked it over. “Angel . . .”
She couldn’t look. Regardless of whether or not she was capable of physically vomiting, the thought of seeing her distorted finger made her sick.
“Come here,” he murmured. Bending forward, Alec took her mouth, first gently and sweetly, then deeper. So startled was she by the action and the first tendrils of desire that she failed to register his changed grip until he yanked her finger into place.
Eve screamed just as the door to the stairwell burst open and the two security guards rushed out to the roof. Slipping in the water, they skid several feet before falling on their asses.
“My life just keeps getting better,” she groused.
As Eve traversed the distance from the elevator in her condominium complex