Lovecraft

Chapter 3: The Morning After

Mila woke to sunlight. Real, honest-to-god sunlight, streaming through a window and warming her face. For a blissful, stupid second, she was home. In her own bed. The nightmare was over.

Then she moved, and the scratchy wool of a blanket she didn't own rasped against her cheek. She sat up too fast, her head swimming. She was on a leather couch in a room she'd never seen before. A study. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A massive mahogany desk. The acrid smell of old whiskey and gun oil.

Last night crashed back into her. The rain. The alley. The door. Kael.

She looked down at herself. She was still in her dress, but it was dry now, and someone had draped a heavy blanket over her. Her shoes were gone. Her purse was gone. Panic fluttered in her chest.

She swung her legs off the couch, her bare feet silent on the cold hardwood floor. The study door was ajar. She could hear nothing. No movement. No sound. Was he gone? Had he left her here?

She crept to the door and peered out into the hallway. It was empty. She followed it, her heart a trapped bird in her ribs. She passed a closed door, then another. The third was open. It was a bedroom.

And he was there.

Kael was asleep. He lay on his back, one arm thrown carelessly above his head, the other resting on his stomach. He was shirtless. The bandage on his forearm was fresh, the red stain gone. But that wasn't what held her gaze.

His body was a roadmap of violence. Scars. Dozens of them. A long, puckered line across his ribs. A cluster of small, round marks on his shoulder that she recognized as bullet wounds. Another, thicker scar snaked from his hip, disappearing beneath the sheet. He looked like a warrior from some ancient, brutal tribe, carved and marked by every battle he'd ever survived.

In sleep, the hard lines of his face were softer. He looked younger. Almost peaceful. Almost human.

Her eyes fell to the bedside table. A glass of water. A book. And a gun. The same sleek, black gun from last night. It lay next to a small stack of photographs, face down.

Don't touch anything, he'd said.

Mila took a silent step into the room. Then another. Her hand reached out, trembling, towards the photographs. She just wanted to see. To understand who had given her shelter.

Her fingers brushed the edge of the top photo. She turned it over.

And her blood turned to ice.

It was a picture of her. Mila. Smiling, unaware, walking down a street she recognized. She flipped to the next one. Her again. At a café. The next. Leaving her apartment building. The dates were stamped on the bottom. The most recent was from three days ago.

They weren't just photographs. They were surveillance photos. A dossier. On her.

Her gaze flew back to the sleeping man. The angel with the scarred body. The stranger who had let her in.

He wasn't a sanctuary. He was part of the hunt.

His eyes opened.

The frozen blue was wide awake, and there was no softness in them now. Just the cold, sharp edge of a blade.

"Looking for something, Mila?" he asked, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.

He knew her name.