Mastim's Curse

Chapter 16

What little control I've managed to muster dissolves when she and her entourage of body guards and hangers-on step down from the trailer and start walking toward us. Once she's near us, Julia goes to her and points us out. Despite the raging inferno of darkness that is inside of me, I force a fairly normal smile to my face when she walks toward us. She looks directly at me, and for a moment, I'm memorized by the force of her presence and stunning beauty. Her hair is red today and it looks fantastic as it curls down around her bare shoulders. She even makes a simple tank-top and cut-off shorts look stylish.

First Julia introduces Dad, then Jaidee, and then me.

I hold out my hand to her, and when our hands touch, the world explodes... literally. The shockwave from a huge, orange and red burst in the parking lot rips though the air as a police car goes up in flames. The explosion is followed by the sound of gunfire. With a surge of dark energy, I jump forward to pull Aleale down to the pavement, using my body to shield her.

At the same time, Dad holds Jaidee down so she's lying flat on the ground with her hands covering her head. Dad's got that wild look on his face he gets when he goes berserk. The storm comes. Time slows and my hunger to kill boils over. There's more gunfire now as the area becomes a war zone. Yelling and screams of pain and confusions fills the air as one of her bodyguards falls to the pavement next to us clutching his bleeding side.

When Aleale screams the name "Dan" and tries to get up, I have to force her down again. I tell her to stay down with a voice that has deepened and contains a power that is not easily ignored. She nods and hugs the pavement just as a uniformed guard nearby draws his pistol, but before he can return fire, he's cut down by a barrage of bullets that cause his body to jerk in a sickening dance of death. All we can do is watch in shock as his gun drops to the pavement a moment before his lifeless body.

Chaos continues around us with people yelling and running in all directions. I desperately need to kill someone and look around for a target. Fate answers my wish with a masked man running right toward me.

My dark yearning flairs when he raises his gun to take aim at me and I roll off Aleale and to grab the huge revolver from the fallen guard just as a bullet zips past me. The gun I'm holding is a 44 magnum. It's a fucking cannon and the side of the masked man's head explodes in a vivid burst of blood before I even realize I've pulled the trigger.

Another gunman jumps from behind a car towards us and two slugs from my gun tare through him. A wicked grin forms on my dark lips as I relish the kill and look around for more.

Aleale apparently has had enough of this because she takes off running and screaming toward the arena entrance. Dad grabs a masked man as he tries to run for Aleale and lifts him clean over his head before slamming him back down to the pavement face first.

Ouch! Dad gets so primal when he's berserk. There's no doubt in my mind that these men are after Aleale, and I'm not in the mood to let them have her.

My heart is bursting with dark power as I sprint after her, heedless of the bullets that rain past me. I'm catching up to her when she makes it inside, but there are two more gunmen running toward the entrance. My lust to kill them is strong but my desire to stay with Aleale is stronger, so I only pause long enough to blast the remaining bullets in their direction before ducking inside and chasing after her. She's already dashing into a stairway and soon disappears from sight. Crap, she's fast for a rock star.

I tuck the smoking gun into my jeans at the waist and leap down the stairs and into a hallway where she's shouting hysterically at two stunned coliseum employees. She's a mess and is half crying, half yelling at everyone near her. It totally doesn't help that she's reverted to her native Barbados dialect. Everyone is clearly shocked to see her like this. None of them seem to know what to do. She cusses and pushes desperately past their dumbfounded responses, fleeing down the hall, recklessly bumping into more confused workers.