Natural Consequences (4 page)

“
Yet you accomplished all you set out to do,” Diana nodded. “I didn’t think you could. I underestimated you, and your friends. I didn’t even know you had friends there.”

“I’ve got lots of friends.”

“I can see why.” Diana took a step forward, offering a cool smile.

“I can’t,” Lambert chimed in.

“Shut up,” Diana told him without so much as a glance. Alex took a step back. She followed. “You’re brave. Intelligent. Handsome. Loyal. Deadly.”

“Yeah, I try not to focus a lot on that last bit,” he replied guardedly.
He shifted his grip on his helmet, now holding it low by the chin guard so he could use it as a weapon if necessary. He didn’t find the hungry look in her eyes comforting at all.

She struck a
n appealing image. The modern hippie look usually did little for him, but Diana made it work. Unfortunately, he remembered their first meeting all too well—and, in particular, her presumptuous offers and the fact that behind that pretty face was a towering furry rage monster that could tear his motorcycle in half and beat him to a pulp with it.

Now here she was, a month later, cornering him in the parking lot at his job.

Somewhere out there, Alex considered, was a campaign or a charity that worked to protect women from stalkers. They had just earned at least half of whatever he had coming to him in his last paycheck,
because this creepy shit right here just sucks.

“I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since we parted. As soon as I recovered, I began searching for you. And now here we are.”

“Yeah,” he swallowed. “In the parking garage. At my job.”

“Had I a phone number, I would have used it.”

Alex paused. That sounded reasonable.

“
I retrieved your home address from your office the other night,” Diana went on. “Your office manager didn’t even lock her door. But when I went to your home, I found no one lived there anymore. So I waited for you here.”

That didn’t sound so reasonable.

“Well,” Alex swallowed, keeping his voice calm and steady, “how about you give me your phone number… and I’ll give you a fake one, and I won’t call you, and you’ll get the hint and leave me alone?”

“Oh, Alex. Don’t you see? I didn’t do all this to let you go now.”

“Ma’am,” Lambert spoke up again, “it’s time for him to leave and for you to—“

Dian
a backhanded him across the face, sending the guard staggering back. “I said shut up.”

“Hey!” Alex snapped. “Leave him alone. It’s cool. There’s no call for that.”

“Lady,” Lambert huffed, snatching for the pepper spray on his belt, “you’re under citizen’s arrest!”

Diana’s eyes flared. She seized Lambert’s throat with one hand. She snatched his wrist with the other, turning it until he dropped the pepper spray. D
isplaying surprising strength for her admittedly fit frame, Diana lifted Lambert by his neck.

“Aw, shit,” Alex grunted. He shoved the motorcycle helmet down on his head. Not for the first time in his life, Alex wished he had a better plan, but there wasn’t time to think one up.

Alex drew back one gloved fist and planted it as forcefully as he could into Diana’s back, right at her kidney. The blow forced Diana to grunt and step forward to maintain her balance. She dropped Lambert to the concrete floor, turning to look at Alex with frustration plain on her face.

“We could talk this out…” she growled.

“Run!” Alex shouted at Lambert, already backing away.

“…if you would just
listen to me!
” Diana finished, showing sharp, fearsome teeth as she rushed forward. Alex caught only a glance of the suddenly feral look in her eye before he turned to flee.

He didn’t get far. Three, perhaps four steps at the most separated them for only a heartbeat, and then he felt her catch his arm. Diana flung him against the trunk of a parked car. She shoved him back against it with one hand on his chest before he could fall or dodge away.

“Now then,” Diana began again.

Alex caught her square in the cheek with a right hook.

The hand on his chest clutched at his jacket. She heaved him up and slammed him back into the car several times. “Stop hitting me!” Diana demanded.

Jostled and hurt by the brutal treatment, Alex gasped to breathe again. Were it not for his helmet, he’d have been hurt even worse. Diana took a quick, heavy breath as if to calm herself. “I enjoy a little rough play,” Diana told him, “but not so soon. Don’t make me be like this.”

Alex glanced off to his side. Lambert wisely took off—either for escape or for help. Knowing what Diana was capable of, Alex hoped it was the former. He didn’t see what good more security guards would do. Regardless, he needed to buy the guy a little more time.

“I’m in a relationship,
alright?” he grunted. “A serious, committed, permanent relationship.”

“You are under the sway of a demon.”
Her hand kept him up against the car.

“She’s a good demon,” he countered, then winced. “Okay, that’s not true. That’s just stupid. But she’s not a threat to me.”

“I am no threat to you.”

“
Could’ve fooled me!”

Diana tilted her head thoughtfully. “You bring this on yourself.”

“You were hurting that guy!”

“No one of consequence,” Diana shrugged. “I’m sorry if I frightened you, but you’ll learn not to take such things so seriously.” Her voice dropped somewhat, becoming almost playful. Flirtatious. Intimate. “
We both know you can defend yourself. You are mortal, but far from ordinary. I would not desire you so had I not seen you in action.”

“
I’d be happy to avoid violence altogether if it’s all the same to you.”

“It is not. You feel lost. Weak. Vulnerable, despite your vi
ctories. I can smell your fear.” Her face drew in closer to his. “I would make you stronger, Alex. Faster. Deadlier. Powerful, like the wild. Like me.
With
me.”

Alex tentatively reached out to take her shoulders. She allowed his touch, smiling. Then he slammed his helmeted forehead down on her nose with a crunch. Blood burst from her nostrils as cartilage fractured under the blow. The raised plastic visor of his helmet cracked and shattered as he swung his own head like a flail against her skull.

With a half-feminine, half-animal roar, Diana lifted him off his feet and hurled him away. Alex landed several parking spaces away on the concrete, tumbling as best he could but mostly just getting hurt. He didn’t stop to assess the damage he’d done. He just scrambled to his feet and ran for the stairway exit.

The door opened inward; Alex pushed his way
past, then slammed it shut again and stepped beside it rather than rushing down the stairs. His hand reached inside his jacket, hoping to God that Diana had more reason to stop Lambert from pulling his pepper spray than a concern for what it would do to her perfume.

He couldn’t take her in a fight. She was plainly going easy on him despite her anger. He couldn’t hope to outrun her, either. It was either this or hope to survive until Rachel popped in on him again, and that might not be for hours.

Only a second passed before the door flew open again. Alex caught it and slammed it shut as hard as he could once again, catching Diana with it before she crossed through. He stayed low, avoiding the arm that flung out sideways to retaliate, and let loose his pepper spray in a wide, panicked burst. Much of it hit the wall behind her, but more than enough wound up in her bloodied face to do the job.

The overwhelming fumes from his weapon had an effect on him, too. He choked despite trying to hold his breath and
barely kept his eyes open. Diana swung around blindly, but didn’t fall.

Alex placed one leg between hers, caught her wrist and twisted. His free hand came up against her shoulder and pushed with all his strength. Disoriented, off-balance and without leverage, Diana went straight over the handrail and tumbled head-first over the stairway railing.

Tears welling up in his eyes, Alex threw himself back through the doorway. He blinked as quickly as he could to clear his vision as he got to his bike, his hands fighting to draw the keys from his pocket. He’d had dreams like this as a child: someone chasing him, escape nearby, just a matter of getting his keys, only to find it impossible to get them out of his pocket, or impossible to insert in the ignition or the door or whatever symbolized escape, and then the killer or the monster or whatever would get him. Déjà vu did nothing to calm his nerves.

The bike roared to life, never sounding
so beautiful or reassuring as now. He backed out without even looking in the mirror, realizing his mistake only after luck allowed him to get away with it. Alex kicked it into first gear, twisted the accelerator and swung around to head down the wrong way out of the parking garage.

She’ll hear this
, he realized.
She might already be up again. Might be waiting for me. Might jump me again before I get out of here.

He cursed his luck, knowing he had no other option. It wasn’t like he could hop onto a bus or call the cops. Alex swung down around another level, accepting the honking horn of an SUV and another from a Prius and wishing they’d just shut the hell up so he could get away.

On level two, he spotted the wolf. Its brown fur matched Diana’s hair, and the blood trailing from its nose and the anger in its eyes surely fit. Alex couldn’t help but notice how big it was—and how angry. The thing waited beside a car in a crouch, ready to leap out at him. Alex tilted his handlebars toward it, only for a split second, and flashed his high-beam while honking his horn.

The wolf turned its head, wincing and blinking, and then Alex was past. He swept on through to the first level, and then he was out onto wet, open streets.

He spared a glance in his mirror and saw the wolf lope out of the garage to watch him go. Then he had to turn his attention to traffic around him.

The straight shot to home took him to I-5, and then to downtown. At this hour, it would take him only fifteen minutes at the most.

Instead, Alex rode to the 520 bridge across Lake Washington, rode all the way to Bellevue, and then back again toward Seattle across the other bridge on I-90 before he went home, hoping all the while for a rain shower to eliminate his scent and wondering if it would matter.

*   *   *

Though they had no rent to pay, Alex contributed as a matter of principle. He covered utilities and association dues. Those alone amounted to his fair share in terms of his financial means… which, on their own, would never have taken him anywhere near ownership of a luxury condominium in downtown.

The
absurdity of it all sank in as he sat at the black marble-top bar of their spacious kitchen, staring at the depressingly short section of job ads in the newspaper. He had bigger concerns, of course, but at least unemployment was a mundane problem. He didn’t need supernatural help to find a job.

Alex hadn’t been out of work since he was sixteen. It was all part-time stuff, and living under his mother’s roof meant that he
hadn’t exactly faced homelessness or bankruptcy, but the mitigating details didn’t make much difference. He couldn’t hope to land a job that would bring him to Lorelei’s financial level, and that didn’t bother him… but the thought of having no job at all rankled him deeply.

The front door opened and closed. Alex heard heels click along the tile at the foyer, but didn’t look up from the newspaper. He figured he could get to the end of the page before conversation distracted him. It seemed crazy to him that the want ads section was so short in a city this big.

“Hey, are you home early from work?” asked a familiar voice—and not one he expected to hear. Alex winced. No matter what his body had to say about it, he was not up for what would inevitably come of this.

“Hi, Cindy,” Alex replied, still not quite tearing his eyes away. His mind sought out both answers to some of the acronyms and abbreviations on the page and for a way to dial things back with the part-time maid. From the state of the apartment, he figured she’d already come and gone.

“Is Lorelei home, too?” she asked as she came up close behind him.

“Not yet,” he answered. “Probably still out doing her fundraising thing.” Alex turned on his barstool and found exactly the sort of naughty grin on Cindy’s pretty face he expected. Mischievous eyes looked out at his from under
red locks. Her top showed off a little more cleavage than the last one she wore, but his eyes came back to those lips once again.

He felt her hands slip up to his thighs, but she seemed to catch on to his mood even as she touched him. “Are you okay?” she asked, putting aside her obvious plans for the briefest of moments.

Alex gently put his hands over hers to stop them from roaming. “I’m fine,” he said. Desires rose in him, reminding him of how much fun they’d had the last time she came by while Lorelei was out. More than half of him wanted to go for a repeat, but not with so much on his mind. He shut his eyes to block out the distraction of those appealing lips long enough to get a sentence out. “Listen, Cindy, you’re awesome, but I don’t know if we should keep going with—“