Instead, what they got was pain and a close personal introduction to the same floor their unconscious friend now lay on. The woman took out all comers, one, two, and three at a time as they reached her. Jack could hardly track her, she moved so fast, and even he had to wince as he heard various bones snap and watched skulls bounce off the cracked tile floor. By the time his angel was done, nothing in the room was moving and there wasn’t a sound to be heard. Even Lacy had stopped her whining whimper.
“Breathe.” The word was a bare whisper of sound from where she stood halfway across the room, but Jack heard it and realized he’d been holding his breath. He sucked in a deep one now, and heard Lacy gasp in a shuddering breath of her own, but his gaze didn’t leave the angel. Now that she was out of the beam of light coming through the open street door, he could see her better. Not well, but enough to note that she had long, dark hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head and every stitch of clothing she wore was black leather: high-heel black leather boots, skintight black leather pants, and a tight black leather jacket that was half-open over a black leather bustier. None of which hid the killer figure it covered.
The woman was walking sin, Jack thought faintly as he watched her slide a phone out of the black leather jacket and begin to punch in numbers. Just three of them. 911 was his guess as she murmured something into the phone and then pushed a button and put it away.
“Help will be here soon.” The words were soft, almost a whisper, which made it hard for him to identify the trace of accent his ears caught. Without another word, she left the building the same way she’d entered, walking out the open door. But her exit seemed to leave a vacuum in the room that sucked the air out of it. At least, that was how it seemed to Jack as the darkness began to close in around him. His last thought before losing consciousness was that he had to find out who his angel was.
One
“Professor Straithe is late.”
“Si, but he’s always late,” Ildaria pointed out as she pulled her notebook and a pen from her knapsack and then set the bag on the floor next to her seat.
“Yeah, but he’s really late tonight,” Lydia responded and then added eagerly, “Five more minutes and he’ll be fifteen minutes late. Then we can leave. Class will be canceled and we can hit a bar or something.”
Ildaria shrugged as she opened her notebook to a clean page and predicted, “He’ll walk in one minute before the fifteen-minute point and we’ll be stuck here. He’s done it several times this semester.”
“Yes, he has,” Lydia agreed, sounding deflated now, and then her tone turning irritated she added, “It’s a night class for cripes sake, not a morning class he has to drag his butt out of bed for, yet the man is always late.” She scowled and then muttered bitterly, “And then he’s a boring lecturer when he finally does get here. I swear if he weren’t such a hunk, I’d hate him.”
Ildaria chuckled at the claim. She doubted Lydia had it in her to hate anyone. The woman was just too kind. It was one of the things she liked about her.
“Oh myyyy. What have we here?”
Eyebrows rising, Ildaria glanced around and followed Lydia’s gaze to the top of the tiered lecture hall where two men now stood just inside the door. Both were tall and muscular, dressed in black T-shirts, black jeans, and black leather boots. They were carbon copies of each other . . . from the neck down. Only their faces and hair coloring differed. The Nordic blond had sharp features and an aquiline nose, while the dark-haired man had blunter features. Both were gorgeous. Both also looked lean, mean, and dangerous as they surveyed the class, obviously looking for someone.
“No books, no bags . . . They can’t be students,” Lydia commented, ogling the pair, and then she suggested, “Ooooh, maybe they’re new TAs.”
She was probably already planning on requesting after hours help, Ildaria thought on a sigh and muttered, “Or bloodsucking putas here to execute someone.”
“What?” Lydia turned on her with amusement, but Ildaria just shook her