Leave him. He didn't deserve anything better than to be stung until his head exploded. Every part of her wanted to hear him screaming in pain.
He saved your life just now.
So what? That didn't undo her parents' deaths.
But what if he wasn't lying? What if someone else had really killed them? If he died, she might not ever find out the truth.
The thought made her pause. If Sundown hadn't killed them, who did?
And why?
There's more to all of this. She could feel it with every heightened instinct she possessed.
I've never been an unreasonable person. She prided herself on that fact. When others panicked and freaked, she was always calm and rational. Methodical.
More gunshots sounded.
Unable to leave him to the scorpions until she knew more, she reversed course toward the hole in the floor. She knelt down so that she could see him below. Sure enough, the area around the bed was crawling with the arthropods. "Give me your hand."
Sundown looked up at her with a shocked expression that would have been comical if they weren't in such a bad situation.
She leaned down and held her hand out to him.
"Get back," he snapped.
"I can help you."
He grinned at her, flashing his fangs. "I'm a little wider than you are, sweetheart. I won't fit through that."
She started tearing at the floor to widen it.
Jess arched a brow as he realized what she was doing. Damned if she wasn't trying to help him. Who'd have thought? Amazed, he turned the gun around and started pounding at the ceiling on the other side with the stock again.
Within a few minutes, they had the hole bigger.
And the scorpions were already on the bed.
Jess kicked at them before he handed her the shotgun. "Back up and I'll jump."
She took the gun and vanished.
Cursing as a couple of the scorpions stung his leg, he launched himself at the ceiling. He caught it barely and hung above the bed that was now completely swimming in those nasty little buggers. He kicked his legs until he was sure they were free of scorpions. His arms bulged as he pulled himself up, through the hole and onto the wooden floor. He made it, but his skin was stinging from the scrapes of wedging himself through. Not to mention his leg that was on fire from the scorpions.
Abigail was crouched by a wall, aiming the gun at him.
Jess ignored her as he moved to the bookshelf against the wall and slammed it down to cover the hole. Hopefully, that would delay them a bit longer.
Abigail cocked the gun.
Now, that amused him. "You can't kill me with a bullet, darling. You'll just piss me off."
"Maybe, but shooting you might be fun." She lowered the barrel to his groin. "And while I might not be able to kill you, I sure could ruin your social life."
He laughed at her conviction. "There's only one problem with that."
"Yeah?"
He indicated the shotgun with a jerk of his chin. "The gun's not loaded. I used the last of the ammo downstairs."
She opened the gun and cursed as she realized he wasn't lying. "Figures."
Yes, it did. He wouldn't have handed it to her otherwise. He hadn't been that stupid in a very long time. Still, he admired her gumption.
Jess took the gun back and made a mental note of where the sun was shining in his house and where it wasn't. Man, I hope Andy remembered to lock the house down. If not, she'd stand a good chance of escaping, and there would be nothing he could do until dark.
Unless he wanted to shoot her. He did still have a couple of shells in his pocket ...
Another quake shook the house.
She gasped in alarm. "You think that's more of them?"
"Our luck? Probably."
"How do we stop them?"
He had no idea. Not this many of them. If he were Talon, he might could drop the temperature here to freeze them to death. But unlike the Celt's, his Dark-Hunter powers didn't include weather control.
No sooner had that thought gone through his mind, than the house went completely dark. As dark as a midnight sky from the days when he'd been human and out on the range. He hadn't seen anything like this in decades. Not since modern lights had dimmed the night skies.
"What's going on?"
He ignored her question as he peeked around the wall, toward a window. Thunder rolled like an angry growl. A moment later, snow started falling.
Jess gaped at the last thing he'd expected to see. Now, that was more startling than the scorpion invasion.
"It's snowing." In April. In Las Vegas ...
Yeah, the world was definitely coming to an end.
Abigail didn't believe his words until she stepped past him to look outside. Sure enough, large clumps of snow fell from the sky. The contrast of the white against the black was absolutely beautiful.
And yet ...
"I really did start the apocalypse," she breathed. There was no other explanation. Things like this didn't happen except in movies and end-of-the-world prophecies. "What have I done?"
Sundown rested the gun on his shoulder in a manner that smacked of his past. He looked like a rogue cowboy, locked and loaded and ready for the next round. All he needed was a hat, and he'd be the perfect cliche. But what really bothered her about it was how sexy that pose made him even in Psycho Bunny pajama bottoms.
I have lost my mind.
Surely the stress of the last few minutes had driven her insane. It had to. There was no other way she could see him as anything but a monster.
She swallowed. Her adoptive father had always told her that evil was beautiful and seductive. Otherwise, no one would ever fall for it. That was why Artemis had made the Dark-Hunters so sexy. It was how they lured their victims in before they slaughtered them.
Whatever she did, she couldn't let herself forget that.
Sundown shrugged. "Well, it appears to me that you have opened a big old can of worms. And according to what Z said, you're the only one who can close it."
She pressed her fingers against her temple to help relieve the ache that was starting right behind her left eye. "All I was trying to do was protect my people and family from you."
"I was never your threat."
Abigail started to argue, but she'd barely parted her lips before the floor beneath her feet literally opened up and sucked her down.
Oh, dear Lord, she was going to die!