Her sharp hearing picked up muted laughter from the nearby galley. A couple of the people laughing were feminine, and one was unmistakably Quentin. He wasn’t doing anything interesting in the lavatory. He was flirting with the flight attendants.
The last of her lingering arousal soured into irritation. She twitched a shoulder, more annoyed with herself than with anything else. The longer he flirted with them, the longer he stayed away. They could have him.
Eventually Quentin came back and eased into his seat. Aryal kept her eyes closed. She sensed that he was looking at her. The touch of his gaze was almost physical, and the skin along her cheek tingled.
He shifted, a slight creak of leather boots and the brush of denim. She knew without looking that he was bending closer. She could feel the heat of his body, and her muscles tightened, twitching with the desire to smash her fist into his face.
Back off. Back off.
He whispered, “I know you’re not sleeping.”
The warm, moist breath from his words licked along her cheek in an invisible caress. It was intimate and sensual. It felt good.
Her body was a gun, and the desire for violence vibrated like a finger on the trigger. Just one good punch. One well-placed punch with the full weight of her body behind it would do a lot of damage to that sexy, treacherous face of his.
But it wouldn’t be just one good punch. It would be a match to dry kindling, and there were too many innocent, vulnerable people surrounding them in quarters that were much too tight. She was going to have to wait.
She held still, not breathing. He hesitated then eased back into his seat. Then the hours scrolled by slowly, flowing over the plane’s wings into the past, and they didn’t speak again for the rest of the interminable flight.
Eight o’clock in the morning in Prague was as bleak as New York had been, the temperatures hovering just above freezing. The skies were overcast, gray streaked with pale light, and as the plane dropped in altitude and prepared to land, Aryal could see a light snow sprinkled on terra-cotta-colored rooftops and in fields surrounded by dense hedges and stone walls.
Disembarking was an excruciating process. They were on a Boeing 757 and Aryal guessed the plane had carried over two hundred and fifty passengers. When it came Quentin’s turn, he slipped into the aisle and gestured for her to precede him.
Even though they were still surrounded by other people, she couldn’t bring herself to put her back to him. “That’s all right,” she said. “You go ahead. I’ll be off in a minute.”
Watching her with a narrowed gaze, he inclined his head and moved forward when the line allowed. She waited until he was ten people ahead of her then slipped into line too.
They kept their distance from each other as they went through customs. Entering the Czech Republic was a longer, more involved process than leaving the States had been. Along with their passports, they had to provide documentation of their sentinel status, declare their weapons and purpose, submit their packs to a thorough check, and then wait for the Czech customs officers to make phone calls and independently verify their presence.
Aryal’s temper was shredded by the time they were finished. She was tired, bitchy and starving, and her right fist was still stuffed full of that one good punch that she had not yet thrown. That fist kept asking her, When? When? She didn’t know, other than that it needed to be outside of the airport, and preferably out of Prague itself.
If she were on vacation, she would have enjoyed playing tourist, touring Prague Castle and Old Town and drinking Czech beer, but Prague was just a leg on their journey. The crossover passageway to Numenlaur was located a couple of hours’ drive away from the city, deep in the heart of the dense Bohemian Forest.
On her own, Aryal would shapeshift and fly the distance, but she didn’t have the capacity to carry someone as large and heavy as Quentin for any kind of distance. Hands on her hips, she studied her enemy. He looked as tired and as irritable as she felt.
She said abruptly, “We need a hot meal, and we need to rent a car. We should pack some supplies in case we run into any issues with hunting for food, and right now I can hardly stand to look at you.”
Quentin’s lean features wore a sour look as he contemplated her. “Go rent a car and get something to eat,” he said. “I’ll get supplies. I know a good camping store, and there are Tesco grocery stores dotted throughout Prague. We’re both predators, so I know you need a lot of protein too. Meet me in two hours southwest of here, at the junction of highways E48 and E50. We’ll need to take E50 for the first half of the journey to the Forest.”
She cocked her head. “You’ve been here before.”
“I’ve toured Europe,” he said, his tone short.
“Fine,” she said, relieved he had come up with a solution that meant she could get a break from him. After all, working in partnership didn’t mean they had to be joined at the hip. “Two hours.”
He pointed at her. “Then we talk.”
Oh yay. Her fist was ready for that conversation. She gave him a tight smile, flipped him off and strode away. After a quick look around the airport, she bought some Czech koruny, the local currency, as the Republic hadn’t yet converted to the euro. Then she located the car rental companies and rented a Peugeot 207 Affaire from Europcar, which was supposed to be a van, but by American standards was just a hatchback. While at the rental counter she bought a map, and after consulting it, she drove through the narrow European streets until she had found the highway junction Quentin mentioned.
She stayed on local streets and cruised around, studying the area. A heavily industrial section lay spread out near the highway junction with what looked like warehouses, many of which were boarded up and had the appearance of long neglect. The gray day and half-melted snow didn’t help matters. The whole scene looked dismal and bleak, and utterly deserted.
Deep in thought, she went on the hunt for some hot food.
By then the local time was almost eleven o’clock. She found an old, crooked pub with dark, worn wooden tables and benches. The pub had just opened for the day’s business, and she ordered a huge meal of a double helping of pork, potatoes and bread dumplings, and cooked cabbage, and she washed it all down with a beer from a local brewery. As both a predator and a large avian Wyr, she needed a lot of calories and she ate like a trucker. The hot food steadied her and sharpened her thinking.
Afterward she ordered three donutlike pastries called kolá
e, much to the fascination of her taciturn server. When she was finally through with eating, she ordered a second beer and nursed it between her hands, staring out a dirt-streaked window as she contemplated the upcoming “talk” with Quentin.
How in hell was she supposed to get along with him? She had no idea. If they tried to clear the air, they might just kill each other after all. If she sucked it all down and tried to pretend—well, she was horrible at pretending and hiding how she felt. She might as well go back to clearing the air again.
That led to killing, which she actually didn’t have a problem with, except that she wasn’t supposed to kill Quentin. She was supposed to find some outside agent in the guise of an act of God that was supposed to kill Quentin. Pushing her beer to one side, she thunked her head on the table. Argh, Dragos! How did this whole thing get so complicated?