Jacob. Jacquelyn Frank

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СКАЧАТЬ the creature focused directly on her.

      Okay, time to wake up, she thought as panic rose in her throat.

      The winged thing began to make a dive for her.

      Like flashing lightning, Jacob flew off the floor in another incredible leap, connecting with the monster midair. Their collision was a sickening sound of flesh and bone impacting, and Isabella flinched. Jacob’s momentum sent the tangle of their bodies hurtling into more boxes well across the room.

      Frantically, Isabella scanned around herself, looking for some kind of protection. The first thing she found was a heavy rod, rust flaking off in her hands and scratching at her palms as she picked it up. She scrambled to her feet, hoisting it like a Louisville Slugger, waving it threateningly in case Jacob hadn’t quite finished the job.

      He hadn’t.

      Suddenly the two struggling bodies leapt out of the boxes in a burst of flying cardboard. This time the slimy beast had the upper hand, its enormous wings building up speed as it hurtled Jacob helplessly upward, finally slamming him full bore into the ceiling. The sound of long metal plates buckling pinged through the shadows and Isabella watched in horror as Jacob plummeted to the ground like a weighted stone.

      He hit at bone-breaking speed, the appalling impact kicking up another cloud of dust. Isabella choked, horrified as she watched a dark puddle ooze out from beneath the darkly beautiful head of her would-be savior.

      She stood, frozen in place, as the creature circled above her once, twice, drifting down like an anticipating vulture until it lightly came to rest on the balls of its clawed feet just in front of her. She got a good look at it, taking in the slimy russet skin, protruding chest, and concave belly. Its lips were thin and pulled back to expose two rows of fangs, as well as the two that tusked out in a terrible snarl. The hands were the worst, tipped with greenish claws about six inches in length, dripping a dark liquid that looked suspiciously like the puddle forming under Jacob.

      “Pretty,” it hissed.

      Okay, so the voice is worse than the hands, Isabella amended mentally.

      “Yeah, well, you could use a facial or something.” Isabella slapped a rust-covered hand over her own mouth. Oh, great, Bella, antagonize the big bad creature, why don’t you?

      “Pretty meat,” the creepy thing elaborated.

      Well, that didn’t sound good at all, she determined.

      “Um…you know, I hear vegan is the way to go these days,” she offered, her voice pitching higher as the fiend advanced on her with a step, forcing her to backpedal.

      “Warm meat. Hot meat.” Then the thing made a crude speculation about the meat of a particular part of her female anatomy.

      “Hey! Watch your mouth, buddy! And stay where you are, or…or…” Isabella raised the rod threateningly, trying to think of the best way to intimidate a gargoyle. “Or you are going to get whacked in your meat!”

      Well, it was a male after all, and some things just had to be universal.

      Then again, she thought as it smiled wickedly and reached to fondle itself between the legs, maybe not. The look it was giving her was positively lascivious, its eyes rolling around in its head, drool dribbling down its chin.

      Now if that wasn’t universal, she didn’t know what was.

      Suddenly, it grew tired of toying with her and leapt forward. Isabella squealed in alarm, instinctively falling to the floor and somersaulting right out from underneath its target area. She scrambled to her feet much more easily than she would have imagined a bookworm like herself would have been able to. She turned, her heart pounding violently, just in time to see the thing regroup and lunge angrily toward her once more. This time all she could do was swing out at it with the rod in her hands, praying she made hard enough contact.

      She didn’t.

      Instead, she spun around, 360 degrees. She promptly fell onto her backside.

      All at once the creature was falling on her, laughing and slobbering with glee one minute…

      …screaming a terrible scream of pain the next as it landed right on the rod she still held, impaling itself through the chest. Isabella blinked, momentarily shocked at how easily it seemed to slide into the creature, hardly any pressure or counterforce from her hands needed. She was next aware of powerful hands jerking her out from under the writhing monster just in time to save her from being at flashpoint as the thing burst into a conflagration of flames.

      After a hot, wild burn, the creature disintegrated in a puff of smoke and ash. The overpowering stench of sulfur made Isabella gag even as she was pulled under the protection of a now-familiar overcoat and taken swiftly outside. Once she had a few gasps of fresh air and could wipe away the tears streaming down her face, she looked up into those dark, troubled eyes she had just begun to know.

      “Jacob! I thought you were dead!”

      “Hardly,” he assured her, reaching out to brush away the rust and tears streaking willy-nilly across her cheeks. “Just had the wind knocked out of me.”

      “I should think so! You’re bleeding!”

      She reached for his wounded head, but he caught her wrist in a sturdy hand before she could touch him.

      “I am fine,” he insisted. “I am the one who should be worried about you. How did you manage to keep him away from you?”

      “I don’t know. I grabbed the first thing I could.”

      She opened her hand, realizing she still had the rusty rod clutched tightly within it. It was covered in a goo she didn’t think she wanted to identify. She held it toward Jacob, but he jerked back away from her as if she were going to set him on fire. He grasped her wrist, turned it away from himself, and gave it a little shake until the offensive rod clattered to the ground.

      “Iron,” he said, his quiet tone clearly bemused. “How on earth did you know to use iron?”

      “I didn’t. It was the only thing there. Just lucky, I guess.”

      Somehow, Jacob doubted that. But he kept his counsel. Clearly, this chance meeting was turning into something much more complex.

      “Jacob, what was that thing? I mean, was it real? Wait. Don’t answer that. Of course it was real. But how? Was it some sort of experiment gone bad? I’ve never seen anything like it!”

      “That…” Jacob hesitated, sighing once. “That used to be one of my friends.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      Jacob paced his parlor, tunneling the fingers of both hands through hair that already wore deep impressions from previous passes. Though he had not relished telling Myrrh-Ann that her husband was dead, Jacob had done his duty to completion. She had known the implications of Saul’s capture and Noah had tried to prepare her for the worst, but Myrrh-Ann had understandably reacted with a mixture of grief and fury. She had attacked Jacob with both her power and the more personal contact of her fists.

      She’d had no time to cause him physical pain. Noah had reached out to touch her, draining the energy from her violent, flailing СКАЧАТЬ