The Curse (Belador #3)(16)

She waved a hand at her throat. “A Svart troll jumped me tonight and wrapped a chain around my neck.”

The jaguar inside Storm woke and pushed at his skin, wanting to kill whatever had hurt this woman. He’d never before had the animal who shared his body notice a woman this way, not after what the witch doctor had done to him and his father. But his jaguar shared Storm’s protective urge when it came to Evalle.

He ran his fingers gently over the skin on her neck and she shivered. “Did you kill the bastard?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Though he’d have liked to hunt and dismember that troll himself. “What’s a Svart?”

“Some kind of black-ops mercenary troll.”

“You get extra points for killing those, like in a game?”

She laughed at his teasing and the sound woke his heart with a jolt. Shoving a handful of hair over her shoulder, she said, “No, just extra bruises.”

With her soft and pliable again, he wanted one more kiss. He lowered his head, touching his lips to hers and smiling over the way she leaned into the kiss and let him bunch her into his arms.

Another small step forward.

She made a throaty sound and the world disappeared around him. One day, he’d have all of her. But not right now on a public sidewalk. He slowed the embrace, kissing her lips lightly once more.

This time when she put her hands on his chest and pushed away, she did so reluctantly and with a smirk. “Enough distracting me.”

“Oh, that’s just a brief interruption. I would need a far more private place to fully distract you.”

Her eyes flared with awareness.

She wasn’t backing up and snapping at him, so he went fishing for more. “Speaking of which, it seems like you agreed to have dinner with me for helping you with Tristan.”

She stabbed a hand at each of her hips, then quirked a saucy eyebrow at him. “I don’t think that was the deal.”

“I remember dinner being in there somewhere, but we can talk about it later.” He’d planted the idea. “Back to this e-mail. I had no way to send one after Sen tried to kill me.”

A flash of worry swirled around her when he mentioned his near-death. Storm indulged in a moment of pleasure. He’d spent a lot of the last twenty-four hours concerned over the reception he’d get after not being in touch for almost a month.

She had a grim set to her mouth. “So you didn’t get your phone out of my tank bag.”

“No. Thought your bike was warded.”

She shook her head. “It is, at least against most beings, which means someone powerful got past it.”

“Was anything else missing?”

“No. I looked for the clothes you left near the MARTA station, but they were gone … and so were you. What happened?”

I came close to spending my eternal life wandering in the hellish half-world where my father is stuck because we don’t have our souls. But he couldn’t share that yet with Evalle, a woman who spent her nights hunting demons and other powerful dark beings. At one time he’d thought if he told her the truth about having no soul, she’d see him only as a dangerous demon to protect humans against, but now he worried that she’d take it on herself to hunt the witch doctor. She might be terrified of intimacy, but she was fearless in battle.

Evalle waited silently. She deserved as much truth as he could share.

He hooked his thumbs in his jean pockets and tried to explain something most people would have a hard time comprehending without the benefit of his upbringing. But Evalle dealt with strange every day.

“You know I’m Ashaninka and Navajo. I have a guardian spirit from my Navajo side who watches over me—”

“Like Grady?”

“No, your Nightstalker friend is a soul that is stuck in this realm. A guardian spirit is one who chooses to watch over us. Some are passed down from family to family. Mine came to me when my father died.”

“Is yours a man or a woman?”

“Woman. Her name is Kai, which means ‘willow tree’ in Navajo. We hold the willow tree in high regard.”

“How old is she?”

Storm hid a smile at Evalle’s suspicious tone, confirming that he would be wise to keep the details of his recovery to a minimum. “She was in her late thirties when she died and has been a guardian for many people over something like twelve hundred years.”

“Oh, okay. So what did she do?”

“She watched over me while I was unconscious—” He stopped short of saying his guardian had located a human to help him.

Evalle chewed on one side of her lower lip. “I don’t understand. Did Kai teleport you somewhere safe?”

“She can’t do that. She cloaked and shielded my body with a field of protective energy—what you might call a smoke screen, but the smoke was invisible.”

“Then what? Did this Kai save you with majik?”

“No, she can’t do that either. But I’m healed now. About that e-mail from my cell phone—”

Evalle had that stubborn look, the one she got when she would not let go of a topic. “If she can’t save you from dying, then what did your guardian spirit do that kept you alive?”

He could probably tolerate the low level of pain that came with skewing the truth some, but not an outright lie. Leave it to Evalle to ask a question that left him no way to give anything except a straight answer. “Kai found a human who could help me.”