It took a moment, but he had Chess over his shoulder and carried her to the empty parking lot, where the motorcycle crouched sleek and gleaming under a cedar tree. I'm not even going to ask you where you found that thing, sweetheart. The attendant was gone, his cubicle dark and forlorn, and that didn't seem quite right. He discarded the thought as immaterial. They wouldn't be here long. He could hear her heartbeat; it was, as Paul had said, reassuringly strong. She was breathing too, beginning to stir.

The motorcycle roused itself, its kickstand popped up and its seat swiped free of water. Paul grinned. “She's got great taste."

She obviously loves it. The way Chess had touched the motorcycle before leaving it here this morning had told him that much. Even if he had almost missed her speeding out of the parking garage on it. “Take care of that thing, or I'll sic her sister on you. Godspeed."

"You too. See you soon.” And Paul eased it out of the parking spot and turned right on Vox Street. Then he gunned it, and Ryan sighed.

Another high, crystalline hunting-cry shook the air. Ryan didn't hesitate, cutting diagonally across the lot and gaining the safety of a dark alley. He muscled up a metal ladder bolted to the side of a brick building, handling her slight weight carefully. He reached the roof just as she stirred again and made a low moaning noise.

Hang in there, sweetheart. He reached the roof just as the heavens opened. Cold rain began slashing down, the storm front he'd been smelling for hours while watching the library dumping yet another load of water on the weary earth below—and not so incidentally, blurring his trail.

The hunting-cry came again, like a crystal glass stroked just right, chilling his skin and calling up a tide of instinct from the darkest basement of his mind. Hunting. And she's the prey. More speed, breath tearing in his lungs. She was awake and starting to struggle.

He found a handy, defensible corner behind a billboard tacked to the top of a three-story concrete building that, from the smell, housed a dry cleaners, and eased her off his shoulder. The billboard cut the force of the wind, and he found himself holding Chess's slim shoulders and restraining the urge to shake her. “Calm down, sweetheart. It's only me.” I hope you're glad to see me.

"Ryan?” She sounded dazed. Her eyes were dark, her hair sticking in damp tendrils to her forehead. But her pupils were even, her breathing slightly fast but nothing to be worried about, and she wasn't bleeding. “What the… Ryan?"

Sorry, sweetheart. He leaned down, kissed her forehead, slid his fingers under her hair and checked her skull. She hadn't hit her head. He checked her ribs, too, sensitive fingertips trying to sense even hairline fractures. “Christ,” he whispered against her forehead. I never want to do that again. Trying to track you across a city while keeping a Malik with me is not a good time. And if there's a High One in town…?

"Ryan?” She tried to twist away from him, and his fingers clamped down on her nape, stilling her.

"Just stay still. What the hell were you thinking, woman?” He scanned the rooftop, heard the hunt-cry rise again. Was it farther away? Chess shuddered, and the small movement brought her closer to him. He filled his lungs with her smell, under the thin copper of adrenaline: warm gold, female, the summa of every good thing in the world now. “Christ. Thank God you're safe."

"What are you doing here?” It was a fierce, shrill whisper, but at least she held still. “Did you follow me?"

He was about to answer, but glancing out over the rooftop again made him uneasy. The instinct was unerring, born of wars in dark places, protecting a Malik and keeping back the tide of demons so normal people could go about their oblivious lives. He clapped his free hand over her mouth, gently, the touch of her lips sending another hot flare of sensation through him. “Be quiet. Can you be quiet?"

Her eyes were huge. It wasn't his imagination, the gold in them was much more pronounced. I think that was the worst fucking moment of my life, wondering if I was going to get there in time. Thank God for Paul.

She nodded deliberately. Swallowed, the movement visible even in the darkness. The wind shifted, rain smacking the other side of the billboard, and he heard the slight shifting sound that meant something had arrived on the rooftop. Chess's eyes flicked past him. Whatever color she had left in her face drained away and her right hand patted her side, desperately searching for her knife, safe in her purse.

"Don't worry.” She probably couldn't hear him over the rain and the sudden inaudible sound of bloodlust curling over the roof, but he told her anyway. “Everything's all right.” Here, with possible avenues of escape and only Chess to worry about protecting instead of both her and the Malik, things were much more palatable.

He let go of her and half-turned, his eyes moving over the rooftop. Not bad, he thought. Three leapers and a spider. That tears it. Of course a High One's in town. The question is, where is he? Not like a pretty piece of high demonflesh to come out in the rain. So this is a tracking party, probably under the control of the spider there or another spider on the ground. The knife appeared in his hand, and the rain began to steam before it hit his skin. He was radiating again. Of course. Here with her to protect, he wasn't disposed to play very nicely with his new friends.

Ryan moved out from the shelter of the billboard just as the first irikornic sprang. He heard Chess's short terrified inhale and felt a nasty flare of happiness that she was, at least, worried about him before the red rage of combat took over.

"Hold still.” She bit her lip fetchingly, and dabbed at the scrape with the cotton ball. Her hair, tangled and dark, fell in her eyes. She found her apartment comforting, her pulse rate dropped as soon as she was inside. Paul hissed out between his teeth, Ryan's eyes were locked to Chess's profile. She was pale, extraordinarily pale. Her sodden sweatshirt jacket was tossed in the laundry hamper and her jeans were damp to the knee. But her hands were steady, and she cleaned the long, vicious claw-swipe on Paul's forehead before dipping her finger in the mint and wormwood ointment and applying a thick streak of it. “There. Does it sting?"

"Yes."

"Good. How long have you two been following me?” She slanted a dark glance at Ryan, who stood by her window, occasionally looking out and down into the alley. His T-shirt was in rags, his coat wasn't much better, and his jeans were just starting to dry. For all that, he felt the slight trembling in his bones, weariness over a deep well of fury. He was wound far too tightly, accepted it, and kept breathing, not seeking to calm himself down.

He'd fought them free of the leapers, and she'd put up with being carried by a running Drakul. Manhandled was the word she'd used, and she wasn't too happy about being followed. It was probably the damn library, it would take a fool not to figure out what she'd been doing inside that building with its soaring, beautiful lines. Paul had canvassed the place from top to bottom during the day and hadn't found her, but Ryan's instincts had shouted with crystal clarity that she was in there, and hours after she'd gone in, she'd walked right out again. So either there was a library inside the library, or it was a way to shake pursuit… but that was ridiculous. With the amount of demonic activity on the streets, she'd have been picked up if she surfaced anywhere else. She'd spent the whole time inside the library, in some corner that for some reason a Malik couldn't find.

"You didn't seriously think we'd let you wander out on the streets alone?” Paul didn't sound conciliatory in the least. “We saw hunting teams last night, out looking for you. You're in danger, girl."