The second man sat back on his heels, helping hold down Alasdair as he watched his friend choke the life from him.
He smiled as if enjoying the show.
Which one? She weighed her options, the stone warming in her palm. Knock out the kneeling man, or distract the other? First things first.
Alasdair was being strangled to de ath. He pummeled his attacker, the brute force of his blows making his enemy sway with each hit. But the man clutched tenaciously at his neck, despite the blood that blackened his nose and eyes in the darkness.
“Alasdair!” the other woman screeched.
The attackers' attention momentary faltered, and Haley saw her opportunity.
The one choking him then.
Haley was crouched in the grass, clinging tight to her stone, its sharp point jutting from her fist like an arrowhead. She sprang, landing with a thud on th e man's back, wrapping one arm tight around his neck as she brought her other down hard, slamming the rock into his temple.
“Alasdair!” the other woman screamed again, this time with a sound like hope in her voice.
She loves him.
Haley didn't have a moment to contemplate the import of that last thought. She felt the ground whooshing from the balls of her feet as the man bobbled to standing and began to thrash her arms with fierce blows.
Haley threw down her rock and hung on to her attacker, trying despe rately to gouge his eyes, wrapping her legs around his waist to slam her heels down at his groin.
Alasdair had recovered quickly and was locked in a hand-to-hand battle with the one who'd been kneeling over him. Fragments of his fight pierced her consciousness. The whistle of steel slashing down to his neck. His left arm jutting over, catching his enemy's blade arm. His right swinging up, cracking the man's arm at the elbow. A grotesque wet snap sounded, and the blade flew to the ground.
The man Haley rode spun and slammed her hard to the ground. Her breath came out in a sharp squeal, and she forgot Alasdair. The man turned, pinning her, yet the only thought she could spare was the desperate desire to pull air into her lungs.
Something very wrong had happened to her ribs. The man over her seemed merely a nuisance now; pure bodily survival had become the far more acute crisis. She fought to breathe, feeling as if each inhale sucked shards of glass into her chest.
Time slowed. Darkness nagged at her, as Haley came to, then went dim, and then roused once again. And still the man was over her, until it seemed he'd always been over her, trapping her hands, grabbing at her breasts, fumbling his knees between her own.
And then, suddenly, he was gone. He'd just disappeared from over her, as if more than merely pulled away, the man had simply been eradicated from being.
She lay in the grass panting shallowly, each breath a shocking, nauseating stab. Haley brought a trembling hand up, wiping cold tears and warm snot from her face. The movement was fresh agony.
Ribs. She fought to dampen the fresh spike of adrenalin.
Something was gravely wrong. Broken?
She tuned her senses outward. What was happening?
Focus.
She tried to slow her breathing and her teeth ground together, biting through the shrill keening that escaped her with each exhale.
Can't breathe. A fresh spill of tears was hot on her cheeks.
She tried moving. Was able to shift, ever so slightly. Not broken. Fresh nausea roiled through her, and she parted her lips to breathe through clenched teeth. Something…torn.
A dull scuffling sounded at her feet. Clipped grunts. And then silence.
Haley braced, wondering if she had any fight left in her, fearing more than anything the resignation that beckoned. She didn't have to find out what had happened, where she was or with whom, when darkness was teasing her with such promise of stillness and peace.
There was movement again. She stiffened, readying herself for the inevitable.
But the hands that picked her up were gentle. She hated the whimper of pain that escaped her.
It was the black- haired man, his face close in the moonlight. And this time his eyes were soft as he looked at her.