We dashed into Pioneer Square and down Yesler. “Stay in the open,” Quinton yelled. “Its keeping to the alleys! If we can force it into the dead end of Post at the Fed Office Building, we might be able to slip it!”

We ran past Post and turned at Western, keeping the tall old brick warehouses between us and Sisiutl. My knee protested every step, but I didn’t dare slow or limp and Quinton seemed to be having more trouble than I was, since he kept looking back to keep an eye out for Sisiutl.

I didn’t need to: the roaring and hissing of the zeqwa was as loud as traffic to me. I could hear its enraged babble as it pursued us, spitting words in dozens of languages. We had a lead of about a block, since it had had to go several blocks out of the way to stay out of sight while we just ran as straight and hard as we could. The cold air burned my lungs and I could feel the instability of ice forming on the bricks of this stretch of road. Sisiutl had kept to Post, as we’d hoped, but we couldn’t know if we’d be able to keep ahead long enough to lose the monster at Marion.

We shot out of the narrow confines of Western at Marion and into the open ground behind the Federal Office Building. We heard Sisiutl’s shriek of frustration and the ground shook as it slammed into the buildings wall at the end of the cul-de-sac. Quinton’s tugging on my wrist didn’t let up.

“He’ll avoid the open. He’ll dive for the sewer.”

“He’ll be pushed toward the bay,” I gasped.

“Right!” Quinton yelled, and jerked me in that direction, up Madison on the other side of the federal block, and then body checked me to the left onto Post.

We pounded along for one block before pausing.

“We lose him?” Quinton panted.

I couldn’t hear the roaring of Sisiutl’s curses so well, but they weren’t gone and they seemed to be getting closer under the street. “No,” I gasped back.

Quinton nodded and dragged me out of Post Alley and up Spring Street to the door under McCormick and Schmick’s side entrance without even checking for observers.

He wrenched the faked lock open and shoved me through the door, pausing only long enough to close the door properly behind us before we were pelting down the ghost-thick passage under First Avenue to the last wall at Seneca—the wooden wall between Quinton’s lair and the rest of the underground.

Quinton grabbed something from his pocket and pointed it at the wall, which twitched and sagged a little as we dashed closer. Quinton dug his hand into a crack in the wooden structure and heaved his back door open, throwing me through and following just as fast before slamming the door closed again and slapping at a few bolts and switches to secure it.

My knee started to fold and Quinton slipped one arm around my waist, drawing me close as he leaned against the wall and stared at his security monitor.

Both our chests were heaving as we panted for breath, trying to keep our noise low and not alert the monster if it should find the passage. Quinton kept me pulled to his chest and I noticed one or both of us were shaking. I kept my ears cocked and my sight tuned to the Grey—just in case.

But the roaring and multilingual cursing had moved away and was fading toward the waters of Elliot Bay.

“He’s not coming,” I panted.

“Looks like you’re right,” Quinton replied, pulling his gaze away from the monitor. He leaned his head back against the wall, his chest still heaving. “I thought we were gonna buy it. Holy crap…” He looked back at my face and wrapped both arms around my shoulders like he didn’t plan to let go for a long time. “I thought he had you. I thought that thing was going to eat you. You kept pushing me out of the way and I thought you were too worried about saving me to get out of its way.”

“You had to save me at the end. Lets not get stupid here,” I admonished, at least as much to me as to him. I was trembling and it wasn’t all from flight adrenaline and imminent chill. Some people get a rush of excitement from surviving a near brush with death. I’d never been one before, but this time I was sweating and restless and throbbing with heat.

Quinton’s eyes in the dim safety lights of his refuge looked smoky and hooded as he looked at me, still breathing too fast. “Oh, no. Lets,” he said, and brought his mouth hard against mine.

I clutched him and pushed into him, kissing back and feeling the quickening of desire between us and some tiny voice telling me to stop stop stop…

“Stop,” I panted, pushing back.

“What?”

I looked him in the eye, terrified I wouldn’t see the mate to my own emotion, and tried not to laugh with delight. “I want to be sure this time…”

“I was sure the minute I met you.”

Catherine wheels of pink and gold sparks spun off of him, lighting my world with the glow of his affection and desire. I laughed and dropped my mouth back onto his, pulling and shoving at his wet clothes and warm body, wanting him against me and in me and right now, damn it!

We staggered as my knees gave out and tumbled onto the narrow pallet of his bed under the stairs, tearing each other’s damp clothes off and scattering the pieces everywhere as we fought our way to bare flesh. We tangled together roughly at first in demanding sexual frenzy, relieved to be alive and frantic to be together. Crying out and laughing ran one into the other as we gentled, finally, into making love, coming to a shattering peak, and falling, finally, against each other, exhausted and wet.

Then we rolled apart and blinked at each other, my sight filled with the afterimages of flashbulbs and fireflies. Before I could get cerebral about it, I stumbled off the bed and grabbed his clothes, throwing them to him. Then I started snatching and donning my own, grinning like a maniac, even as I fought to stay upright on my abused knee.

“Lets do that again. At my place,” I said.

Quinton dropped the wet things I’d thrown on the floor and yanked on dry jeans from a pile by the bed. He grabbed me by the shoulders as I went by, a blaze of gold and pink around his sweat-gleaming body.

“What?” he asked, shaking his head, bemused.

I leaned over and kissed him. “I want to take you home and ravish you, idiot.”

“When?”

“Now!”

I did not care that my clothes were damp, torn, and dirty, that I ached all over, or that the drive to West Seattle was long enough to restart the chill on my skin. Quinton didn’t let me keep the wet things on once we were inside my condo and I heartily approved of his methods of warming me back up. The electricity of our coupling lit my world in giddy swirls of hot pink and gold light until we both curled into my devastated bed, quivering with happy exhaustion that dropped us into deep, contented sleep.

CHAPTER 15

I tend to wake up grumpy. I am not a morning person in spite of years of rolling out of bed early to hit the gym or practice hall or to pound out a few miles of calorie-burn on the street before breakfast. Tuesday, I woke up downright effervescent—even if I did have to ice my knee and take pills to relieve the swelling. I’d never “done” bubbly before that I could remember—not since being a little kid bouncing out of bed in anticipation of holidays and Christmas packages—not even with Will. Warm, mellow, glowing, yes, but not, as my uncle put it, “bright eyed and bushy tailed”—which I always thought sounded a lot like a squirrel, and considering my uncle’s.22-caliber reaction to squirrels, I found the phrase horrifyingly ironic.

I let Quinton get up at his own speed while I started coffee and took a shower.

Chaos had been irascible, dancing around in fury and then throwing herself on the floor like a bratty child pitching a fit. She was bouncing around, trying to get a bite of my bare toes, when Quinton emerged from the bathroom, pulling his shirt on over his shower-wet hair.