He stood tall and capable-looking, his indigo eyes glowing with that otherworldly light, and something besides her heart leapt. Her stomach flipped.
Two lycans lay dead. Blood so thick that it looked black seeped into the snow around their bodies.
She watched Niklas approach and riddle several more bullets into each of the bodies. Steam wafted over the wounds. Silver. It had to be. She knew it was the only thing that could stop a lycan.
A blur flashed across the air. In a blink, Niklas turned to greet the new threat. They came together simultaneously in a crash of bone on bone.
Niklas had been lucky with the shots. She was sure his luck wouldn’t last. Not against creatures with supernatural powers. Even if he beat this one, there were still two other lycans unaccounted for. Her skin shivered at the memory of them. She wasn’t sticking around for them to direct their attention back on her and Aimee.
She lowered Aimee to the ground and grabbed hold of her hand. “C’mon, sweetie. Keep up.” Holding tightly, she took off, pulling the child after her.
Even as they tromped through the snow, guilt pained her for leaving Niklas. She wanted to stay—wanted to help him. But she knew she could do nothing except get them both killed if she did that. And there was Aimee she had to consider.
“Were those monsters?” Aimee gasped beside her, and Darby grimaced, realizing she’d let the girl see them, after all. Guess she could only shield her from so much when this was the frightening reality that surrounded them.
Ignoring the question, she tugged harder on her slight hand. “C’mon, keep up. We’re putting them behind us.”
Then suddenly she wasn’t holding anything anymore. Her fingers groped air. She spun around—assuming the child had fallen—ready to haul the girl back to her feet again.
But she was gone. Darby jerked her gaze off the empty space in front of her, where she expected Aimee to be, and scanned the area all around her.
From the corner of her eye she glimpsed a streak of brown. She narrowed her gaze on the spot and a lycan running away through the trees with Aimee struggling in his arms.
“Aimee!” she screamed, running several steps before tripping on a tree root hidden beneath the snow and falling to her knees. She was up again, still screaming even when she could no longer see them. They were gone.
She followed in the lycan’s tracks, only dimly wondering about Cyprian and Niklas as she focused on finding Aimee. She struggled ahead, even after it became clear she wouldn’t catch up with them. The only sound she could hear anymore was the crashing of her labored breath on the vanishing night. And then a scream—shrill enough to shatter glass.
She froze for a fraction of a moment, goose bumps breaking out over her flesh. “Aimee!”
Spurred to life, she pushed harder then, freezing tears trailing her cheeks as she ran.
She stopped suddenly, seeing something, the bright splash of pink that was Aimee’s coat through the trees in the road ahead. She rushed forward, numb to her actions, uncaring that she in no way could stop this from happening. She had to try. Her aunts had been there for her after her mother died. Someone needed to be there for Aimee, too.
She grabbed the discarded coat with both hands and hugged it close, glancing around, despair rising up to choke her as she felt the slick sensation of blood on the fabric. “Aimee!” she screamed. “Aimee!”
A shot rang out in the woods, reverberating off the towering trees.
She picked up the tracks in the snow again and charged through the trees, stopping when she came upon a person bent in the snow.
Catching her balance, she eyed the broad back of the familiar figure. “Niklas?” she whispered. Apparently he was okay.
He unfolded his great length from where he crouched, turning to face her. And that’s when she saw his arms weren’t empty. He cradled an unconscious Aimee, and behind them lay the corpse of the lycan, gradually returning to his human form.
“Aimee,” she breathed, reaching for the girl, eager to take her back into her arms. “You saved her.”
He sharply pulled her out of Darby’s reach, like a toy he would hoard for himself. “No. I was too late,” he announced. “She’s dead.”
Darby’s gaze flew to the still girl, only then seeing the nasty wound at her shoulder—the shredded purple sweater soaked in blood, where the lycan’s teeth had torn through to get to her. A