The bar was only a hundred feet away, the music was louder here, but it didn’t hide the crunch of approaching footsteps on the snow. From the shadows of the trees, more Savages materialized.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Elyse stirredin his arms and whimpered when he knelt to set her on the ground. He’d prefer not to lay her in the cold snow, but he needed his hands free to fight these bastards. He removed his last two stakes from inside his jacket and gripped them as he stepped protectively over Elyse, using his body to protect her while she lay between his legs.
The Savages slipped in and out of the trees, disappearing behind the trunks before emerging again. They moved like wraiths, and he knew they were playing with him, but he refused to move away from Elyse. He glanced back toward the motel, but though there were a couple of lights on in the windows facing the back, he saw no sign of the others.
Power pulsed through him as each beat of his heart pounded in his temples and sent more color through him until his body swelled with it. He would destroy every one of them.
The first Savage ran at him. Coming in low, it tried to wrap its arms around his waist, but he shifted his foot back and grasped the creature. Lifting it over his head, Saxon flung it into a tree. Three more came at him, and this time he kept his feet planted over Elyse as he knocked one aside with a backhand. He couldn’t stop the other two as one pounced on his back, and the other hit his chest.
Elyse opened her eyes to find a foot only inches away from her nose and another leg dangling against the one beside her. She blinked the snow from her lashes; cold permeated her bones, and her teeth chattered as she tried to figure out where she was and what was happening.
The last thing she remembered was putting on the sneakers Declan brought her and loving how they felt on her feet. Then she’d run into the bathroom. Before she could sit on the toilet though something… something….
She recalled the glass raining down on her and slicing her skin as she stood beneath the window. Like something out of a horror movie, arms stretched down as a Savage hung half in and half out of the window.
When she opened her mouth to yell, it battered her against the wall and knocked the wind from her. She was still trying to catch her breath to scream when it dropped into the room to crouch beside her.
She’d beaten at the monster, but she was as effective as a mouse against a lion while it lifted her and shoved her out the window. She hit the ground and pushed herself up to start running.
That was the last thing she remembered until she woke up now. A grunt from above had her turning to look up at the man towering over her.
It took her a second to recognize Saxon as his fangs hung past his lower lip, blood streaked his face, and something black also coated him. The Savage sticking to him snapped viciously at him. The leg hanging off his side dropped onto her. Instinctively knowing any sound she made would distract Saxon, she bit back a grunt as she curled in on herself.
Then, hands gripped her calves and yanked her out from under Saxon. She kicked at the monster, but they didn’t let go. Sitting up, she swung at the creature; it laughed at her when she connected with its chin. That laugh infuriated her, but when she tried to hit it again, it knocked her hand aside, and its red eyes narrowed on her.
“Hit me again, and I’ll break your arm in two,” it snarled.
Elyse’s first instinct was to recoil from him, but she was so sick and tired of being a prisoner, feeling weak, and cowering before these bastards.
Saxon broke the neck of the next Savage before tearing its heart out. He released it and turned to search for Elyse. She sat before another Savage who was reaching for her; as it did, she punched the bastard in the face.
The blow caused the Savage to recoil, but it grasped her arms. The murderous look in the eyes of the vampire she’d punched made Saxon’s blood run cold. Saxon lunged for her as three more Savages pounced on him. Elyse kicked out at the vamp trying to drag her closer while Saxon tossed one of the Savages aside, and Lucien burst out of the trees with Logan on his heels.
Saxon shook off another Savage as the vamp grabbed her left arm and, before Saxon could stop him, drove it over its knee.
Elyse’s scream reverberated through the trees, and she tried to yank her broken arm away, but the vamp didn’t release it. With the other Savage still cleaved to him, Saxon lunged over Elyse and grasped the shirt of the one who’d dared to touch her.
He plucked the bastard off the ground, and spinning, he smashed it into a tree. A cracking sound filled the air before a fissure raced up the tree trunk. Saxon grasped the other Savage by its hair and ripped it off him. He flung the bastard’s hair and a chunk of its skull aside before turning his full fury on the creature.
A haze of red clouded his vision as he pummeled the Savage over and over again. No matter how hard he hit it, or how much he pulverized its bones, he couldn’t rid himself of the image of thisthingtorturing Elyse.
An ominous groaning alerted him the tree was giving way before it tilted to the side. Saxon grasped the Savage’s head and twisted it around before tearing it off and throwing it under the tree.
With his shoulders heaving and blood dripping from his hands, he turned toward where Elyse sat huddled in the snow with her arm against her chest while she watched him. Lucien and Logan had finished with the other Savages and were coming closer, but they held a few feet back from her as they gazed warily at Saxon.
He stepped toward her, but when she paled and scooted back a little, he realized blood coated his skin and clothes. Kneeling in the snow, he tugged his shirt off before wiping his hands in the snow. He wasn’t astounded to discover his chest pulsing with the black and red color when he lifted handfuls of snow to wash the blood off his face.
He ignored the cold as he glanced at his jeans and saw the blood splattering them too, but he could keep her away from them until they returned to the hotel. Clutching more snow, he scrubbed it into his hair as Elyse shivered and then whimpered when the motion jarred her arm.
Lucien kept an eye on Saxon as he approached her. She cowered from him when he knelt and held his hand out to her. “Let me get you out of the snow,” he offered.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
Lucien jerked his hand back. “I was only trying to help you.”
“It’s not you,” Saxon said as he finished wiping the blood off him, rose, and brushed past his friend to approach Elyse. “It’s the blood she doesn’t like.”
