IAN
"Oh,"Horton mumbles, still looking over at his phone in my hand. "She's cute. Big rack."
"Turn around and stop looking so I don't have to kill you, Bob."
"Okay." He turns around to face the wall behind the counter. "Hey, your future wife looks like the Frost's secret daughter that got hit by a bus yesterday. You know, the one everyone's calling Skidmark online."
My breath halts. I drop his phone and grip the gas station counter so hard that I accidentally break off a piece.
"What?"
"Yeah-huh, it's been all over the news and stuff all day," he shrugs, swaying again. "She survived, and now people are trying to figure out where she lives. The fae are mad at her for trying to steal from them or something, I dunno."
A million too-intense thrall emotions are overwhelming me. Relief that Heidi is alive. Bone-deep horror that she was hit by a bus. Rage at the people who harmed her and anyone whodaresbe mad at someone so perfect.
I need to get to her.
I was hoping to be a little more stable before she sees me, but fuck it.
Taking a steadying breath, I rub my face, swallowing down my out-of-control appetite once again. It sounds like someone is revving a motorcycle outside, and it's grating on my nerves.
"Gods, I'm so thirsty," I pant.
"We have fountain soda machines," he offers.
"You'd be the drink, Bob."
"Oh." Under the hypnotism, Horton only sounds mildly concerned.
"But I don't want to kill a nice kid like you if I lose control while feeding. Which I probably will, because being a newly-freed thrall is a mindfuck and a half. If only?—"
When the doors of the gas station chime, I dart away from the counter too fast for humans to see. Peeking out from a nook that's half-hidden behind the fountain drinks that Horton was telling me about, I watch as a fit guy about my height walks in.
He's dressed in dark jeans, a gray T-shirt, a black, ripped jean jacket, biker gloves, and unlaced combat boots. His dark hair's a mess, and he has piercings all over his ears and one through his nose. When the still-hypnotized cashier doesn't turn around at the sound of his entry, the newcomer raps on the counter.
"Hey, fuckass. Over here."
Horton doesn't turn because I haven't released him from the hypnosis yet.
The biker rounds the counter to wave his hand in front of the kid's face. When Horton keeps standing there in a daze, the guy shrugs, grabs a couple of boxes of extra-large condoms from behind the counter, and strolls back out of the gas station.
Petty condom theft is a paper-thin justification for draining someone dry. Still, my stomach is screaming, and all I can think about is blood. Blood, blood, blood. Dripping from my face and filling this excruciating void that demands all of my attention.
Moving toward the door, I glance over my shoulder at Horton. "Hey, Bob. Do you know how to access the security cameras in this station?"
"Uh-huh. My boss showed me a few weeks ago."
"Good. Find a way to delete any footage of me from them, then forget I was ever here and everything we talked about. If someone asks about all the blood in the bathroom, say you got a bloody nose. And if anyone calls that woman Skidmark around you, stick up for her because she's a godsdamned angel."
"Okay. Bye, Ian."
Pushing through the gas station doors, I see the black-clad condom thief fueling up a motorcycle at one of the pumps. This rural stop is somewhere just off the interstate in Iowa, and there's nobody else around at three o'clock in the dead of night, so I don't hesitate to blur toward him. He'll be dead before he can see me, anyway.
At least, that's what I think until a thick spike of metal skewers me.
A cry of surprised agony rips from my throat as I buckle onto the cold asphalt outside. My hands immediately go to my stomach, where my body is already trying to regenerate and close around the painful invasion.
"Serves you fucking right, trying to jump me like that," the biker huffs with an uncommon accent I can't pinpoint.
