Rogue Darkness by Dianne Duvall

A gunshot rang out.

Nicole jumped as blood spurted from Sean’s chest.

Warm liquid splattered her face.

What the hell?





Chapter Thirteen





Pain erupting in his chest, Sean pushed Nicole down behind the dubious shelter of the seats and swung to face the threat.

A second gunshot rang out.

The bullet pierced his arm before Sean could dodge it and passed right through. Eyes widening, he glanced over his shoulder.

The bullet plowed into the door to the cockpit a few inches from the first… and stopped without penetrating it.

Oh. Right. Terrorism. The door must be reinforced with steel.

Only partly relieved, Sean faced forward.

The bastard he’d left unconscious on the sofa squinted up at him through two swelling eyes. One arm clung to the sofa’s seatbelt while he aimed a 357 SIG with the other.

“Are you crazy?” Sean blurted as he raised his hands in surrender, his phone still gripped in one. “We’re on a plane!” If he took a single step toward the man, he knew the idiot would shoot again.

Sean thought furiously.

“I saw what you did,” the man said through puffy lips. “You’re not gonna get me, vampire.”

His finger tightened on the trigger.

Oh shit!

The gun fired. Sean dove toward Nicole as glass broke behind them.

A thunderous BOOM filled the plane a split second before hurricane-force winds tugged at him.

Two steps away, Nicole screamed as she rose off the floor and flew toward the broken window.

Sean locked an arm around her waist and grabbed a seat to halt their flight, thankful for his enhanced strength.

Laptops, water bottles, and everything else that wasn’t fastened down flew past them. Kent, Rylan, and the other guard did, too, partially plugging the hole in the window.

Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling.

The shooter clung madly to the sofa’s seatbelt and fired his gun again.

Sean looked around frantically and spotted the emergency exit a couple of yards away. “Wrap your legs around me!” he shouted over the howl of the wind, and lunged toward it.

Nicole turned in his hold and locked her arms and legs around him as he grabbed the handle with his free hand. Muscles straining, Sean operated the lever and forced the door open.

Wind reached in and yanked them out of the plane.

Sean held on tight to Nicole and made damn sure they weren’t drawn into the engine.

Icy wind buffeted them. The air was freezing! Cold enough to frost his breath and swiftly spawn frostbite.

In the blink of an eye, he called on his ability to alter his body temperature and heated up like a freaking furnace to warm Nicole as he tried to cover as much of her body as possible instead of adopting a spread-eagle skydiver’s position.

Nicole whimpered as they free-fell through the clouds. “We don’t have parachutes!”

Neither did Kent, Rylan, or the guards, all of whom plummeted toward the ground some distance away, having been sucked out of the larger opening he’d provided. The shooter was the last to fall.

He must not have been able to hold on.

Once Sean and Nicole passed through a bank of clouds, he got his first glimpse of the ground far beneath them. Time was short. Breathing grew difficult. Too little oxygen.

Nicole would pass out within seconds from hypoxia.

Heart racing, he peered over Nicole’s shoulder at the phone he still held in a death grip. Careful not to let the wind drag it from his grasp, he dialed.

“Yes?” a deep voice answered.

“Seth!” he shouted. “Come now! Come now!”

Seth appeared beside them an instant later. His eyes widened as he seemed to hover in place for a second before gravity started dragging him down. By then, Sean and Nicole had fallen quite a bit farther than him.

Flattening his arms against his sides, Seth rocketed toward them headfirst.

Nicole’s hold on Sean weakened as she began to lose consciousness.

“Hold on, honey,” he urged.

“Love you,” she murmured.

Just before Seth reached them, his form shifted into that of a massive dragon.

Sean gaped as the beast reached down and wrapped them in a huge taloned grasp.

Warmth immediately suffused them. Oxygen filled their starving lungs.

Nicole’s hold tightened as she drew in great gulps of air.

When the dragon spread its wings, their descent halted so abruptly that Sean would have lost his hold on her if he weren’t so strong.

Those wings swept down and up again to keep them stationary.

Nicole looked up to see what had halted their fall.

Her jaw dropped.

Sean had never seen her so flabbergasted and couldn’t help but smile.

In the blink of an eye, the clouds above them changed, as did the countryside below.

Sean glanced down. They now hovered above David’s backyard in North Carolina.

Beneath them, Sheldon was waving a large bubble wand in an arc. When the dragon’s shadow fell upon him, he paused. The two toddlers chasing bubbles stopped and looked up. Both grinned and squealed with delight as the majestic beast slowly descended toward the lawn.

Sheldon grinned, too. “That. Is. Awesome!” he cried, as excited as the children.

The dragon gently lowered Sean to the ground and released him.

Still clinging to Sean’s neck, Nicole let her legs slide down until her feet touched the ground. Her whole body shook violently against his. And when she pried her arms from around his neck and slid her hands down to his chest, she fisted them in his shirt as though she weren’t confident her legs would support her.