Things That Go Hump In The Night (17 page)

"What—?" Nicole began to say, as Gabriel's face and the upper half of his body went oddly blurry.

Then he came back into focus, and the scent of magic, so similar to Erik's scent, hit her full-force.

Gabriel was still beautiful, but in an alien way now. He was...
blue
.

As she watched, paralyzed by shock, he shrugged off his suit jacket and rapidly unbuttoned his shirt before stripping it off.

Then he stood before her, bare-chested, and she saw the cobalt-colored scales, which looked like a snake's skin, covering his arms, his shoulders, and his chest.

"Nicole?" asked the monster who had been Gabriel. As he spoke, she noticed that his canines were very white and pointed. "Are you all right?"

He raised his hand, as if wanting to touch her, and she saw that it, too, was covered in fine blue scales, each finger tipped with a neatly trimmed blue-black nail.

Terror swept over her in a dizzying, icy wave, choking her. Nicole gasped, suddenly unable to breathe properly.

Gabriel was—
Gabriel
, her gorgeous, funny, sexy Gabriel, was...

Just. Like. Erik.

Nicole's wolf woke up and rose within her, looking for the source of the danger that had roused her.

Danger! Run!
Nicole screamed silently, unable to move.

She felt like she was choking, unable to draw a full breath as her heart went into overdrive and black speckles began to drift across her field of vision like sooty snowflakes.

Run, oh please, help me run away,
she begged her wolf, as she finally remembered Mark Aquila's lessons how to draw upon her wolf's strength without giving her control.

Gabriel would never hurt us
, said her wolf, sounding puzzled.

Gabriel is a monster like Erik!
Nicole responded.

"Help me," she whispered, barely audible.

But Gabriel heard her anyway. "What? Nicole, are you—"

Able to move at last, she turned and fled, her wolf lending her strength and speed.

"Nicole!" she heard Gabriel call, hoarsely, as she sprinted through the office and for the stairwell. "Nicole, come back! Please!"

Chapter 12 – Damage Control

She was gone.

Gabriel braced his hands on his desk, the antique mahogany creaking under his grip. He cursed in Greek, calling himself an idiot and worse.

He had been so happy that she had finally decided to trust him with her secret. When he revealed himself to Nicole in turn, he had been braced for disbelief and possibly revulsion at his inhuman appearance.

But he had not expected her expression of sheer terror when he dropped his glamour.

He had hoped that their mutual revelation would lead to a deeper relationship between them. Instead, her reaction had felt like a dagger thrust to his heart.

He had been reckless and overconfident, and he had driven her away.

Now she was gone, the gods only knew where, and it was his fault. It hurt to think that his actions might drive her to flee the city...and him.

What if I never see her again?

The pain raised by that question was nearly unbearable.

He fastened his shirt with clumsy fingers, re-donned his glamour to once more appear fully human, and sat down behind his desk. He told himself that he would wait fifteen minutes, and then he would drive to her house and see if she would talk to him.

At the very least, he needed to apologize.

Nicole, give me a chance. Please.

* * *

Nicole's red Honda was gone when Gabriel finally allowed himself to take the elevator down to the parking garage.

He breathed a small sigh of relief. Wherever she had gone, at least she wasn't rampaging through the streets of the city in werewolf form.

Then it occurred to him that the fact that she'd taken her car might mean that she intended to leave the city. If he was lucky, she would go home to pack her belongings first.

He strode to his Tesla and got in.

He hoped he wasn't too late.

* * *

When Gabriel pulled up in front of Nicole's house, he spotted someone sitting on her front steps. His heart leapt momentarily—until he recognized Mark Aquila, his face eerily illuminated by his phone as he rapidly skimmed through email messages.

Gabriel parked his car and walked over to Mark.

"Where is she?" growled Mark, raising his head at Gabriel's approach. "She was supposed to be here a half-hour ago for a security review of her house."

"She may not be coming," confessed Gabriel. "I think I fucked up, big time."

Mark tucked his phone away in his jacket. His gray eyes, cold as ice, fixed Gabriel with an unfriendly stare. "Oh, yeah?"

With a sigh, Gabriel lowered himself to the step next to Mark and told him what had happened in his office and how Nicole had reacted.

When Gabriel finished speaking, Mark shook his head.

"Well, I guess now we know that her stalker is a Child of Lilith. Poor girl—no wonder she freaked out when you dropped your glamour."

"What do I do now?" Gabriel asked. He had rarely felt so helpless.

"Now, we wait," Mark said calmly. "And hope she decides to come back for her stuff before hightailing it out of town." He pulled out his phone again.

After about an hour, Gabriel texted Nicole:
I'm so sorry. Can we talk?

He debated whether to add anything more, perhaps an endearment, and decided against it.

But he received no reply.

He waited in the chill of the late winter evening for a long time. Mark stayed with him, a taciturn but comforting presence.

After about two hours had passed, Mark looked up from his phone.

"Nicole, stop lurking already and come out to talk to us," he said, in a perfectly normal voice. "We're not gonna hurt you, but we're not gonna leave, either, before we've had a chance to clear things up."

"Nicole, I just wanted to tell you I was sorry," added Gabriel, thinking Mark's threat was only going to make things worse.

After long moment, Nicole emerged from her hiding place in the yard across the street.

She didn't immediately approach them. Even from this distance, Gabriel could see that she had summoned her wolf. Her hazel eyes glowed gold, and her lips were twisted in a snarl as she studied them, obviously trying to decide if they were a threat or not.

"Nice to see that I was able to teach you something,
puella
," Mark said, his voice still casual. "And the next lesson is gonna deal with staying downwind of your prey."

He sighed and rose to his feet. He put a heavy hand on Gabriel's shoulder when Gabriel wanted to rise, too.

"C'mon, Nicole. We just wanna talk to you. I'm sure you got questions," Mark continued. "If you want us to leave after you get your answers, we'll go. But come over here and talk to us first."

* * *

Nicole hesitated, still standing a safe distance away. She studied the two men as she debated what to do next.

Gabriel looked completely human again, tense and tired. Mark just looked like his usual, slightly exasperated self.

Neither of them looked or smelled threatening. They also looked like they were prepared to wait there all night.

I could always just make a run for my car and never come back,
she thought.

She kept a duffel bag with an emergency evacuation kit in the trunk of her car and kept all of her important papers and ID in her combination laptop bag and purse.

But she didn't want to leave, not unless she absolutely had to. And enough time had passed since Gabriel's shocking revelation that she'd had some time to think.

Once her panic attack had subsided, she had found herself parked at a strip mall way out in the suburbs somewhere.

There had been a café that didn't look too crowded, so she had gone in and ordered a hot cocoa along with a triangle of baklava, oozing honey and ground nuts.

She sat in there, sipping her cocoa and nibbling at the cloyingly sweet pastry, until her hands stopped shaking and she was able to think rationally again.

Gabriel was...well, she wasn't really sure
what
he was.

Half-human
, she reminded herself.
And half...something else.

He might not be fully human, but Gabriel certainly wasn't a real monster like Erik, either.

Gabriel could be imperious and occasionally brusque, but he was never unkind. She simply couldn't imagine him doing the same kinds of sadistic things that Erik had done to her.

And it wasn't just her.
Everyone
liked Gabriel. All of the Archangel employees adored him, and she had never heard anyone say anything bad about him.

Likewise, Alex Sato and his grown children. All of them had known Gabriel for a long time, and they clearly trusted him and held him in great affection.

Nicole remembered Ami Sato playing along with Gabriel's joke about the sardine-flavored cocktail and smiled at the memory.

That dinner at Shiroyama had been the best first date she'd ever been on...right up until the end, when she completely lost it.

As Nicole sat brooding over her now-lukewarm cocoa, her phone had buzzed with an incoming text message.
Gabriel
.

She read the brief text and had felt a strong twinge of guilt.
She
was the one who had behaved like a complete dork, and
he
was the one apologizing?

It had still taken her a while to gather the courage to leave the café and return home.

On her way back to her house, she had gotten lost a couple of times in unfamiliar suburbs. Her car was old enough that it didn't have a built-in GPS, and her phone's battery was drained and in the power-down zone by the time she started the engine.

When she finally made it back, she had parked a few blocks away from her house and approached cautiously.

Maybe Gabriel wasn't a bad guy, after all. She wanted desperately to believe that he wasn't.

But she couldn't take any chances.

She'd forgotten that Mark was supposed to come to her place and take a look around before Werewolf Boot Camp started tonight. He'd be angry that she'd blown him off without even a text message.

He knew right away when she started watching them, but he hadn't given her away. Which had given her the chance to observe Gabriel for a while.

He looked worried and sad. Not a monster. Not...
Erik
.

Just Gabriel.

Nicole took a deep breath, gathering her courage, and crossed the street.

"I'm sorry," she said to both of them. "I panicked. It was stupid."

"I didn't mean to frighten you," Gabriel said, quietly, not meeting her eyes.

He sounded subdued and guilty, and it tore at her heart.

"It wasn't stupid," Mark told her, in his gravelly voice. "You saw a threat you couldn't deal with, so you ran away to fight another day."

"Yeah, that's me. I'm a real fighter," she said sarcastically. "I've got the running-away part down pat, though."

"Risk assessment is important." Mark said dryly. "Okay, lemme guess your first question. It's about
this
, right?"

He shrugged off his leather flight jacket, folding it neatly and putting it down on her porch step. The short sleeves on his t-shirt revealed his scarred arms, corded with muscle. He raised his left wrist and showed her what he was wearing.

You, too, Mark?
She stared at the red string bracelet in disbelief.

"And you saw that Jadikira was wearing one of these, too, right?" he continued. "And that's what worried you so much?"

She nodded, studying it until the elaborate loops and knots made her eyes hurt.

Oh, God. If someone as powerful and confident as Mark Aquila can be enslaved with one of those bracelets, then I never had a chance in hell of escaping.

"You're bound to Gabriel?" she asked, in a voice she didn't recognize as her own. "He's the one giving you orders?"

Without waiting for Mark to answer, she continued. "It makes sense, now that I think about it. He
made
you agree to train me, didn't he?"

"Bound to him? Oh, hell,
no
." Mark surprised her with a full-throated laugh. "When I heard there was a newbie shape-shifter working at Archangel, I insisted on coming. I told Gabriel I'd do your background check if I got to train you."

"But—" Nicole began.

Mark shook his head. "No one's making me do anything I don't want to do. I only take orders from the Amestras because they're the ones signing my paycheck."

"You're only here because I'm paying you? I'm hurt," Gabriel said lightly. "Doesn't a century of friendship count for
anything
?"

Nicole didn't miss the wary glance he sent in her direction.

Century? Century??
If they had known each other a hundred years, then how old was Gabriel? And how old was Mark?

Nicole looked at the faded Legio XII Fulminata tattoo on Mark's bicep, half-hidden by his short sleeve, and began to form a suspicion.
Wow
.

"Sure," retorted Mark. "It means I let you sign my paycheck. I wouldn’t work for just
anyone
."

Nicole recognized what they were doing with their banter—making sure they didn't freak out the crazy lady any further.

She sighed and relaxed the death grip on the strap of her purse.

Mark turned to her. "Look, Nicole, I don't know what happened to you, but I know it wasn't pretty and that it had something to do with one of
these
." He shook his left wrist. "So I'm guessing you ran into a Child of Lilith somewhere along the line, and he or she was an asshole and possibly a criminal."

"What's a—?" asked Nicole.

And winced as Mark's words sent a warning stab of icy pain through her.

Whatever a
Child of Lilith
was, it fell under the umbrella of things that Erik had forbidden her to talk about.
Interesting
. "I mean, what's that?"

Both men looked surprised, but it was Gabriel who answered. "Have you ever heard of an incubus or succubus?"

Nicole blinked. "Uh...they're sex vampires, right?" she asked hesitantly. "I think I saw a movie about them."

Gabriel made a wry face.

"Oh,
no way
," said Nicole. "You've got to be kidding me." But it made a strange kind of sense.

"The, uh, sex vampire aspect is only part of it," Gabriel said carefully, "but it's the part that has the most stories floating around. My mother's people are...not quite human. Most of them are powerful sorcerers, they're nearly immortal, and while they can eat normal food just fine, they also need to feed on strong emotions. Usually it's sex, but pain and fear work, too. But they're not monsters," he added hastily, as he noticed the expression on Nicole's face. "The Children of Lilith have very strict rules governing ethical behavior, especially when it comes to relationships with ordinary humans."