Mated by Moonlight. Jessa Slade
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Название: Mated by Moonlight
Автор: Jessa Slade
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
isbn: 9781472014948
isbn:
He needed to hasten the shift and hold his focus for those crucial moments. He just needed a concentration point... He thought of Merrilee, stumbling unaware upon this creature as she sneaked back to steal his jeans.
Between one footfall and the next, he shifted.
The pain and dazzle of the verita luna almost made him stumble. Only blind stubbornness kept him on the pavement.
As his vision cleared, sure enough, the spider thing was veering toward an alley.
Beck lunged, right behind it, with all four paws digging into the gravel.
The thing squealed, a shrill and livid sound, like sheet metal tearing. From the next alley over, a dog barked.
Obviously, the creature had thought it could escape when he shifted. Despite his insta-fur coat, he felt chilled. It knew what he was. Worse, it had thought it knew a wereling’s weakness during the change.
It scuttled for a wooden fence, vaulting with blurred speed over the edge.
Beck launched himself behind it and managed to catch its trailing third claw in his teeth.
The thing slashed backward at him with another leg, but that left only one leg for it to catch itself.
They fell and rolled across the backyard in a flurry of fur and slashing barbed legs. In a noisy clatter, they bashed through a set of folding chairs and a grill. The puff of charcoal ash made Beck’s nose itch with a terrible sneeze, but he held on grimly.
The backyard deck light flashed on, halogen bright.
“What the h—?” The last word was lost in a rising bellow.
Beck dug his feet into the lawn, struggling to hold back the squealing spider that nevertheless managed to drag his two-twenty weight several yards.
Until the grizzly—clad in shreds of striped pajamas—reared up and came smashing down with both front feet, monstrous claws curving wickedly.
The spider made one urk sound and greenish goo sprayed from the eyeball.
Beck leapt back, pawing at his muzzle to get rid of the foul taste.
When he looked around, Orson, the barbershop bear, had shifted back and stood in the remnants of his nightclothes with a pair of grill tongs hefted like a spear over his gray head. He plunged the tongs into the splattered spider, pinning it to the earth.
A spiral of oily smoke twisted up from the creature.
This time, Beck sneezed.
Orson planted his hands on his scrawny hips. “Well, hell. Look what the dog dragged in.”
* * *
By the time Orson had gone inside to fetch a robe and an extra pair of pajama bottoms, Beck had shifted and was rinsing out his mouth from the garden hose.
“Imp tastes like ass,” the old man said.
“More like acid,” Beck corrected as he took the offered cotton pants.
The pants were far too small since they fit Orson in his human incarnation, not his verita luna shape. Where the old man packed away all the pounds he added to his grizzly form was one of the mysteries discussed at length—in the proper company—over beers at the bar. Most of the townsfolk werelings had decided he kept it in his voice.
But Beck was relieved there was still considerable strength in the old man. And he was glad enough for the pants too.
Avoiding the squirts of green goo, Beck approached the thing impaled on the lawn. “What is an imp?”
“Phae.” Orson spat the word as if he too tasted the fetid, greasy char.
Beck frowned. “We haven’t had trouble with their kind in...” He shook his head. “Since before my time.”
Orson huffed out a breath. “Not before mine. I was a boy last time I saw one. Cocky bastard, walking through town just as dusk settled, all wrapped up in his glamour. Lying through those smiling teeth. Probably fanged, though no one could see.”
Pursing his lips, Beck decided not to remind Orson that they had fangs of their own. Though he’d never dealt with phae himself, he knew all the old stories. Werelings had always hated the phae. Phae glamour was an affront to the verita luna, where the shape was the truth.
Not that it was always a truth they could share.
But werelings had not abandoned the sunlit world as the phae had. They’d kept to themselves, kept quiet, and kept their ways while the phae had skulked away, driven by changes in a world to which they would not—or could not—adapt.
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