That was unexpectedly sweet of him to say. I paused, tilting my head so that I could see his face. I caught the hint of a frown. “Are you really concerned?”
He looked up at me this time, eyebrows raised in surprise. “You work hard. You do good. You deserve the help.”
I searched his face to try to find a hint of something more. Affection? Desire?
He gave me an awkward smile that looked more like a grimace before looking away at the boring decor in the patient room. Anywhere but my face.
I was breaking a sweat trying to figure this guy out. Either that or it was just another symptom of my oncoming heat. Probably both.
By the end of my day, he hadn’t said much more, and I drove us home in our usual uncomfortable silence.
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked after getting a couple of blocks from my apartment.
He shrugged, looking out of the window. His arms were crossed, and he was twisted toward the door as far as he could be from me.
I let out a deep sigh, reaching my limit. “Why don’t I just take you back home? I can ask Kai to come back.”
“I’m fine staying,” he replied, not turning toward me.
Screw that. “Cool, well, I’m not. You’re weirding out my patients. You don’t talk to me. You clearly don’t want to be here. I’m sorry the others made you come watch over me.”
He finally turned, brows furrowed and upper lip turned up. Why was he so angry? I was giving him an out. “I want to stay,” he snarled.
He was seriously confusing me. I looked back at the road, turning into my garage. “You’re mean.”
He relaxed his face. Just a tad. “Sorry, I—” He paused, lifting his chin and sniffing the air. A deep growl vibrated from his chest.
I slowed down the car as I drove further into my garage to my assigned parking space. “What’s wrong?”
“Demons. Nasty ones.”
My body froze in fear. It’d been so quiet all this time. “Wait, there’s more than one?”
“I smell three.”
I stopped the car and then went into reverse. “We need to get out of here.”
Lance raised a hand, nostrils still flaring as he looked around the underground space. “Stop. We can’t run. We need to get rid of them, or they’ll keep coming.”
I looked at him with wide eyes. Surely, he was kidding. “There are three of them and only two of us. Those are so-so odds.”
He opened the passenger door. “No, it’ll be one against three. You stay here.”
“What? Wait!”
But he already took off ahead of my stopped car. “What the hell, man,” I grumbled, locking my doors. I kept my car on, putting it into drive but with my foot on the brake. I then recited a warding spell to cover my car. My magic was reaching its limits for the day, so maybe it was good I stayed in the car. However, I still had enough energy to hurt someone.
Lance was now out of sight, and I had no idea what was going on. The space was silent. I kind of felt like a sitting duck because I had no idea where the three demons were down there. My only guess was that they were in the direction that Lance had zoomed off to, but I had no clue. I looked out all of the windows in a rotation. Not even another car came in through the gate, and it was still pretty early in the evening.
A terrifying roar rattled the window next to me. I wasn’t sure if it was the demons or Lance. I also didn’t know if it was a battle cry or a cry of pain. Everything in my body pushed for me to drive to find out. I felt stupid sitting there while Lance fought. Yes, I was a healer, but I could also use my magic to fight.
Something hit the back of my car, and I spun around in my seat. There was nothing there. Crap. I turned back to the front expecting to see some demonic nightmare, but there was nothing. And then I heard a slap against my window. I jumped and looked to see something of nightmares. It was dark green and bumpy like a toad and shaped like a gigantic blob with arms and legs. Its eyes were yellow with black slits for pupils, but its mouth took up half its face and split its head almost in half. It opened its wide maw, exposing several rows of tiny, yellow and very sharp teeth. It stuck its long black tongue out and licked my window. The glass where it left its saliva began to come apart, melting.
Fuck me. This thing had an acid tongue. But I had a ward. It wouldn’t be able to get in for a while. I hoped. If I worked a spell against it, the act would break my ward, so if I was going to risk that, I had to make sure it worked.
The goblin-like demon banged angrily against my window, clearly upset that it hadn’t broken.
My window began to crack. I thought my ward would hold up. Yeah, no, I wasn’t going to sit still until that thing broke my ward and shot acid at me. I needed to protect my pretty. I put my car in reverse, and the demon tore after me.
