Rocked by Love (Gargoyles, #4)(79)
Kylie shifted in her seat and glanced down at the time displayed on her phone. T-minus eight minutes. She wondered if her nerves would survive the wait.
“Relax,” Dag whispered, leaning down to place his lips near her ear. “Your worry will only slow your responses. Do as Wynn advised you and breathe slowly.”
“Easy for you to say, Goliath. You were made to fight Demons. I was made to eat latkes and kvetch about the state of the world. There’s a big difference.”
“No,” he disagreed, brushing his mouth against her temple. “You were made to set me free, little love, and to spend a lifetime by my side. Never forget that.”
Well, when he put it that way …
It didn’t do away with Kylie’s nerves, but it allowed her to press them back enough to manage a deep breath. The feel of his huge, warm hand enveloping hers didn’t hurt, either. Both gave her courage, and if all else failed, she would do the one useful thing her father had taught her—fake it with authority.
When the lights dimmed and music began to hum through the loudspeakers, she felt every muscle in her body go tense and had to force herself to shake off the instinctive reaction. Adrenaline, Wynn had taught her, could be her friend or her enemy. Enough of it would sharpen her senses and hone her reflexes, helping her out in tight situations, but too much could make her freeze and leave her vulnerable to attack.
Fight or flight. Kylie sure as shudden intended to fight.
The focus in the room turned to the stage where a small, portly man in a wrinkled pair of khakis and an ill-conceived shirt-and-tie combination appeared behind the podium to introduce the keynote speaker. With a forced-casual glance she saw the ushers who had manned the doors step inside the room and pull the panels closed behind them. All perfectly innocent actions to ensure privacy and minimize the chances of outside interruptions and distractions, but to Kylie it smacked of sinister intent. The ushers to her appeared more like guards, stationed at the exits to prevent any attempt at escape.
She forced her attention back to the man speaking at the front of the room. Kylie barely heard a word he said. While the music had gradually lowered and then turned off, the buzzing in her head had quadrupled in volume. She felt as if a swarm of bees had nested in her ear canals and settled in for a long honey-making chat. She couldn’t seem to sit still, either. Her habitually bouncing foot shook so fast her eyes could barely focus on the movement.
Beside her, Dag shifted, his gaze moving over her with obvious concern, but she couldn’t do much to reassure him. She couldn’t even reassure herself. Something was so very, very wrong. She felt it in her bones.
Obviously, they all knew something was wrong with this meeting; the eight of them wouldn’t be here otherwise. But this was a wrongness that didn’t quite fall in with the kind of wrong they were expecting. Something else was going on, something that seethed beneath the surface of the room’s energy, like a great dark snake stalking its prey. If she listened closely to the sound waves beneath the buzz, she swore she could hear it hiss.
She laid her hand on Dag’s leg, trying to think of what to tell him, how to describe the sensation crawling under her skin, but he had his gaze focused on the stage like most of the others in the auditorium. She wanted to shout to get his attention, but she couldn’t even manage a whisper. It was like her voice had become locked inside her and she couldn’t find a key.
“And so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen,” the man at the podium intoned, “it is my pleasure to introduce the organizer of this event, the inspiration for good works around the globe, and today’s keynote speaker, Mr. Richard Foye-Carver.”
The audience stood to applaud. The move should have made it impossible for supershort Kylie to even see the stage, let alone the tall, fit man currently striding across it, one arm lifted to wave to the crowd. Providence, though, had carved a path through the bodies, leaving her a perfect sight line to the man of the hour.
She could see every detail as if she occupied a much closer spot than her seat at the back of the room. She saw his perfectly coiffed, elegantly graying hair and his expertly tailored suit. She saw the healthy tan of his skin and the flashing white of his disarming smile. She even saw the way he leaned down to shake hands with a few attendees who approached the stage for the chance to bask in the fame and glory that surrounded his noble acts.
She saw all of that, but beneath it, she saw something else.
As if she viewed a data construct or a hidden code, Kylie stared at the man with a hazy green veil before her eyes. The filter seemed to blur his outer appearance, make it vaguely translucent, and show her an image of what rested inside.
The sight made her want to scream.
Her hand flew to her mouth, instinctively protecting against the quick rise of nausea. Bile choked her and her mouth flooded with sour saliva as the thing seethed and writhed beneath the skin of the man. She had no words to describe it, nothing to compare it to, no frame of reference for the mass of rotten, festering evil that hid within the photogenic masculine exterior. She couldn’t name it, but she knew instinctively what it wasn’t.
It wasn’t human, and it wasn’t something they had been prepared to face.
Clinging to Dag’s hand, she used every bit of strength she could muster to pull him down to her. Of course, she couldn’t force a Guardian to move, so she had to wait until he turned his attention toward her and leaned in close, a clear mask of concern molding his features.