“Shh.”

“No, I will not ‘shh’—”

Sahvage threw his hand up and continued to scan the shaggy, shadow-infested landscape. “Stop talking.”

The female snorted. “Okay, I realize this is going to come as a crushing surprise to you, but I do not have to listen—”

“Where’s the sky.”

There was a pause. “What?”

He pointed overhead. “Where are the stars. It was a clear night when I arrived here just now. Where are they.”

“It’s called cloud cover.”

The hell it is, he thought.

And meanwhile, down on the ground, there was no wind to disturb anything and no moon to throw any light—and yet something had moved out there.

Even if his eyes were telling him nothing was wrong, his instincts knew better.

“Get in the house,” he said in a low voice.

“I will. As soon as you leave—”

Sahvage pegged her with hard eyes. “I’m not bullshitting you. Something isn’t right—”

Her stare shifted over his shoulder. And then she grabbed his arm and pointed into the messy brambles. “What the hell is that?”

He wrenched back around and moved so that his body was between her and whatever was out there—and it took him less than a split second to see what she was talking about. A shadow was swift’ing across the scruffy ground, traveling like a snake over the obstacle course of downed limbs and dead weeds. Yet there was no origin for it, nothing in the air above that would cast that kind of thing. No light source, either.

“Get inside—”

Sahvage didn’t have a chance to finish the and shut the fucking door part. The slithering dark patch exploded up off the ground, becoming a three-dimensional figure that had arm- and leg-like extensions as well as a torso-core that was the size of a male.

Before Sahvage could marshal one of his weapons, the thing, whatever the fuck it was, rushed forward with a screeching sound that went into the ear and throughout the body. To protect the female behind him, Sahvage threw his arms wide—

The entity cast out one of its appendages and lashed across Sahvage’s chest, the impact like the sting of a thousand bees, the pain ricocheting into his spine and rippling throughout his muscles. He stayed standing only through will alone, his determination to keep the female safe giving him a strength he otherwise wouldn’t have had—especially as the second strike caught him in the face, blinding him.

As his brain clogged with agony and he staggered back and forth, for the first time in recorded memory he prayed like hell he wasn’t going to die. He couldn’t leave her defenseless in the face of whatever the fuck this was. So when his suck-ass vision told him the entity was coming at them again, he braced himself, baring his fangs and trying to marshal a defensive response—

Directly by the side of his head, extending forward from out of nowhere, an arm—a real one, not whatever the shadow was—appeared. Or at least it looked like that. His eyes were so fucking blurry—no, it really was an arm and it belonged to the female. And at the end of the thing, gripped in a tight hold, was a small canister-like object.

The female yelled as she pressed a discharge mechanism, the noise she made not from fear, but aggression. Yet the aerosol cloud that came out was instantly swept away, except like the shadowy thing had eyes? Still, it was good of her to give a shot—

There was a sudden yank at his waist.

From under his armpit, on the other side of him, the muzzle of his gun popped into sight. And as the female pulled the trigger, there was an explosion from the barrel, a bullet discharged toward the entity—but with only one hand, she couldn’t control the forty’s aim or recoil.

The mace wasn’t going to have any effect, but those lead slugs sure as shit might.

Sahvage gripped her hand. “Aim! I’ll stabilize it—aim, goddamn it! I can’t see!”

With his huge palm locked over her grip, the female took charge, pointing and squeezing the trigger, his forearm muscles and biceps absorbing the kick, keeping the forty wherever she needed it to—

The shadow was struck square in the torso, the impact blowing it off the extensions of its lower body, the upper torso thrown off-balance, another terrible screech reverberating through the night.

Before Sahvage could tell her to shoot again, the female pumped that fucking trigger over and over and over. And even though he had no distance vision at all at this point, he could tell she was spot-on with where those big-ass lead slugs were going.

The whatever-the-fuck-it-was stumbled back and tottered.

“Keep hitting it!” Sahvage hollered over the sounds of the gun.

In preparation for her emptying the clip, he reached for the small of his back and got out one of his backups.

The second the last bullet in the magazine left the chamber, he barked, “Reloading now!”

He took the gun from her, kicked out the empty, slapped in the full, and re-angled the aim. This time, she gripped his forearm with both her hands and moved the gun around.

“Fire!” she said into his ear.

Sahvage followed her direction, and let her control his arm as if it were part of the weapon. And the bullets went where they had to go. As his pain levels improved, Sahvage could see a little better, and the shadow was pockmarking with holes—

And then it flew apart.

In a flurry of feathery shrapnel, the entity blew into component pieces, like a vulture hit by a cannonball.

“Get inside!” Sahvage shoved the female to the door. “Get in!”

God only knew whether that thing was going to put itself back together—

There was a creaking as the entry was thrown wide, and then Sahvage felt himself get pulled along. As he caught the toe of his boot on the weather stripping, he pitched forward and hit the floor. The good news? Before he could yell at her to shut the goddamn door, there was a resounding slam—

Immediately, the female was down with him. “Are you okay?”

As Sahvage tucked his gun away, his eyes were still not working well, but his nose was johnny-on-the-spot with its job—and oh, the scent of her.

He breathed in deep and couldn’t stop from smiling. “I am now.”

• • •

Mae stared at the fighter. At Shawn.

His face was swollen in a ridge that ran across his mouth to up over one of his eyes, the skin unbroken, yet raised as if burned. And though the black jacket he had on was in one piece, she could smell fresh blood—so her trembling hands pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his combat pants.

Mae looked away as his tattoo made an appearance, the bony finger extending from its black background scaring her. But then she refocused. Oh . . . wow. His musculature was the kind of thing you couldn’t help noticing again—and not with disapproval.

Except then she forgot about all the holy-cow stuff: His flesh looked like he’d been whipped, the welts crossing from his shoulder to his abs. And yet how had his clothes not been cut through?

“You’re hurt,” she breathed.

Unbidden, her hand reached out and touched the—

The fighter hissed and jerked up, and in doing so, his abs tightened like thick ropes under his skin, no fat obscuring the contours of his anatomy.

“He is indeed hurt!” Tallah exclaimed from the archway into the kitchen. And then the elderly female seemed confused. “Wait, who is he—and did I hear gunshots?”