Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,94
before I became one of the intended recipients of the charity.
Pumping my legs even faster, I made for that one bit of shelter. Another gunshot crackled behind me, missing me but close enough that the tremble in the air crossed my cheek. Twenty feet left to go, my breath rasping in my throat... Fifteen… Ten…
Bang. A bullet I was instantly certain would mean my doom exploded from the gun—and a huge, speeding body crashed into me out of nowhere, slamming me off my feet and hurling us both the last short distance to the donations box.
The burly arms that had caught me managed to turn me as we whipped through the air and around the bin. I hit the ground on my back rather than face first, although the pain that lanced through my shoulder at the impact wasn’t anything to celebrate. I choked on a groan and found myself staring up into Thorn’s face.
I knew it was his face because of the scars that decorated it and the white-blond hair falling in disarray on either side, not to mention the hulking body looming over me. But the planes of his features had turned even harder than before, and amid them, the eyes that stared back at me smoldered as if they were made of dying embers—no pupils, no whites, just pure, dark red.
And then there was the fact that two immense, black-feathered wings had sprouted from his brawny back, arcing over us like a shield. Holy mother of mothballs. Of all the forms he could have revealed, I’d never have expected that.
The first inane words that fell out of my mouth were, “They could have shot you.”
“They were going to shoot you,” Thorn said. His voice had the same low gravelly rumble, but with a sort of reverb to it as if it were resonating through a majestic cavern. His eyes flashed an even starker red, and his lips curled back to bare his teeth. “They already did. They would have killed you.”
Was there something wrong with me that I was abruptly all kinds of heated up myself with those bulging muscles just inches from my prone body and that kind of vehemence lighting his gaze? Maybe it was just the adrenaline messing with my head.
My next words weren’t all that much more sensible than the first. “And here I thought you saw me as just a nuisance.”
I felt the warrior’s glower as much as saw it, washing over me in another hot wave, but a touch of gentleness came through the defiance in his tone. “You are irritatingly irreverent and infuriatingly obstinate, m’lady, but I’m finding that the thought of someone hurting you makes me want to rip out their entrails and choke them with their own intestines.”
It wasn’t heat but warmth that fluttered inside me then. He’d practically composed a poem for me. I beamed up at him, slightly delirious from the pain, and said, “Right back at you.”
Something flickered in his expression, and I half expected him to lean in and kiss me. Then thudding footsteps reached my ears over the roar of blood rushing through my head. The guards hadn’t given up the chase. Had they even seen what had dragged me to safety?
Somehow Thorn’s hard features managed to stiffen even more. He sprang off me and charged to meet them with a bellowed battle cry that rattled my eardrums.
One of the men let out a yelp. They’d seen now. Then all I heard was the sickening squelch of smashed flesh and the crunch of shattering bone, followed by skin and muscle rending with a meaty tearing noise. Neither they nor Thorn spoke another sound.
I’d pushed myself up into a sitting position when Thorn strode back into view around the donations box. He’d returned to the mortal-ish form I was used to, nothing otherworldly about him other than the crystalline glint of his knuckles.
Two heads, ripped from their bodies, dangled by their hair from one of his broad hands, the stumps of their necks dribbling blood and smatterings of gore. He held them up. “I didn’t know which one lodged that bullet in you, so I present you with both.”
My stomach churned, but I couldn’t say I didn’t appreciate the sentiment. “Um, thank you. I think we can leave those here, though. I’m not really a trophy type of gal.” At least not the bloody body part kind of trophy. “It’s not as if we can avoid the people who own this place realizing something