A metallic rattling clatters across the marble floor of the kitchen.

Darius pauses, his arm outstretched toward one of the cakes nestled in the box, and turns to look behind him.

I already see it. But I don't know what I am looking at. It's smooth, brushed metal, a cylinder of some sort. A beat later, a beep and a thick white fog hisses out of it an opening in its middle.

"Tear gas!" Darius cries and leaps over the kitchen island faster than I have ever seen anyone move. In one smooth movement, he lifts me off my feet and tosses me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. From upside down, and through the curtain of my hair, I watch the kitchen and my cakes become enveloped in the gas as he sprints out of the kitchen, through the dining room, and back into the front hall of the house, carrying me as if I weigh no more than a feather.

I figure he's heading back to the car, counting on the door to open from my biometrics.

Except it doesn't.

He tries the handle. Nothing. He swings me around. I press the code. Nothing.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Darius growls as another one of the canisters rolls into the hallway from the dining room doorway, and a beep lets us know more tear gas is incoming.

"Panic room!" I cry. "The stairs." He bolts up the stairs three at a time, and I guide him through the maze of rooms and suites until we reach the walk-in closet of a spare room. He drops me to my feet and goes back to the wardrobe door, vigilant while I access the hidden entry panel, type in the code with shaking fingers and have my eye scanned.

Just like Mom always feared, I think as I berate myself for sending Stuart and Dalia away, this is it, my abduction. Fear claws at me. I can barely breathe. If they have tear gas and can jam the biometric access to the front door, then they are pros.

"Hurry," Darius says, bouncing on his toes. "I can hear them coming."

I don't hear anything, but his hearing has always been exceptional.

There's a faint beep from the panel, then nothing. The screen goes dark. I jab at it to come back on. Nothing. It's dead. Just like the biometrics on the front door.

"It's not working," I pant, frantic. "It's shut itself down."

Darius lets a thin breath out through his nostrils, his lips press into a harsh, tight line. In the shaft of moonlight streaming in through the window, he suddenly looks a lot older than eighteen years. More like thirty. I put it down to terror fucking up my senses.

"I wish it didn't have to be like this," he says, as the heavy footfalls of my ambushers pound down the corridor.

"What do you mean?" I ask, naked fear cutting me into tiny sharp pieces of heightened awareness. "Like what?"

"Don't be scared," he says and reaches out to touch my cheek.

"I'm already shitting mys—"

I scream. The mercenaries coming to get me no longer my biggest problem because something far worse is happening three feet away from me. I press my body as flat as I can against the back of the wardrobe wall.

I want to look away, but the hardwired survival part of my brain won't let me. The sounds are all wrong—the bones breaking, the squelch of flesh and organs shifting into a miasma of I don't know what, but it's worse than the goriest horror movie I have ever seen and I just want it to stop.

After what feels like an eternity, but is probably only a matter of seconds, it rises from its crouch. It's much bigger than Darius was and stands at least seven feet tall on two legs like a person—but it's not a person—not anymore.

In the faint light of the moon, a definite, dark sleekness covers its body, and its hands and feet no longer resemble those of the man who carried me upstairs, but of a supernatural creature from a Marvel film, hard with muscle, with long, razor-sharp talons at the ends of its fingers and toes.

It turns and for a moment, I see its face and realize it's old. Very old.

Ancient golden eyes gleam out at me from within a scarred face, its snout, and fangs ten times bigger and more vicious looking than in any of the documentaries I've seen about killer guard dogs.

Its head swivels fast back to the door, and it growls soft, its lip curling in what looks like distaste, then looks once more in my direction, before it slips out the door, soundless, a monster, a killing machine. Darius. My protector. I cover my ears. I don't want to hear what will come next.

When he comes back to me, I hear him before I see him, the clack of his talons against the hardwood floor approaching, steady. I shudder and brace myself. He opens the door to the wardrobe almost furtively, which should have been comical since he's a massive hulking beast of fangs and talons, covered in a thick coat of dark hair matted in blood, and what looked very much like brain matter if the brain detail scene in Pulp Fiction was anything to go by. But it's not comical. Not at all.

His golden eyes meet mine again. There's what looks like an intestine hanging from his incisor. It slides off and hits the floor with a soft plop. He looks down at it, then at me. He waits. Slowly, carefully, I pull an empty weekend bag over to me and quietly puke up my dinner.

When I lift my head from the mess I made, the creature is gone. Darius stands over me, just as he was before he did whatever the hell it was he did.

"Aya," he begins, then looks away, back out the door. I get it. What can he say? Oh hey, I'm a werewolf by the way. A fictional creature, that's actually real. And by the way, I'm way older than eighteen.

I set the puked-filled weekend bag aside. And then, because it really stinks, I zip it up. It actually helps a bit.

"Are they dead?" I ask.

He nods.

"And they were?"

He shakes his head. "Mercs, high level. Very well outfitted."

I shudder. Lucky escape then.

I pull myself to my feet. When he offers me his hand, I shake my head. I don't want him to touch me.

"And you are?" I breathe.

He draws a long inhalation. "That's a long story." He casts another look over his shoulder. He's uneasy, and I sense it's not just about the fact that he's shown something to me he probably never meant me to see. "Aya, let's get out of here. I don't feel good about hanging around."

He pushes open the door, and I follow him out into the spare room. I hesitate.

"It's going to be gross out there, isn't it?" I ask.

He nods. "It won't be pretty." He tilts his head at his shoulder. "Want a piggyback?"

I don't, but I also don't fancy slipping and sliding my way through the blood and guts of a bunch of ripped-up mercs. I hesitate so long, that he clears his throat in a meaningful way.

"No," I say, not meeting his eyes.

"Okay," he says and heads to the corridor. I follow him. In the moonlit shadows I can see the shine of organs strewn a long way from his last or was it his first victim?

"Wait," I say, and clamber up onto his back. I close my eyes tight. I don't want to see. This is my home. I don't want to know. I don't want to remember it like this.

"Go," I say. "Fast. Please get me out of here."

He breaks into a run, and carries me past the stench of disemboweled bodies, down the stairs, and out into the humid night air.

I open my eyes as he sets me down on the terrace by the pool. The familiar smell of chlorine fills my lungs. Something normal, at last. I drink in the smell.

"Let's get to the car," he says.

A sharp crack flattens my hearing. Darius drops to the ground like a puppet whose strings have been cut. I spin around, searching for the sniper, terror clawing up my spine. There is only darkness past the terrace lights. A beat later another crack and pain rips through my shoulder. I scream, the agony is stunning, infuriating. And then I am running. Straight at the one who shot me faster than I ever thought I could run. I find him hidden in a patch of trees, my senses honed to a razor edge even as I dodge the bullets like I am in The Matrix or something. Even though I've never had any martial arts training, I throw an expert kick to his abdomen that drops him to his knees.

When my vision clears, I am panting, holding his bloodied head in my hands. His body lies several feet away.

I  shudder and drop the head. It hits the ground with an unpleasant thwack. I puke. Again. Pain shreds my shoulder. I run back to Darius and help him to his feet.

Together we make it to the car, but it's a nightmare, he's dead weight and I can barely stay conscious from the pain of him pressing against my wound. I throw him in the passenger side and jump into the driver's seat. There's blood everywhere, from both of us.

"I need to get us to a hospital," I say as I start the engine.

"No," he pants, his hand against his abdomen. "No hospitals. I know someone."

"No fucking vets," I say. "I got shot too; you know."

"Not a vet," he says with a grunt. "Someone else."

I tear out of the driveway, gravel spraying in our wake.

"Where am I going?" I demand.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and pulls up a map. "Here."

I glance at it. "There's nothing there."

"There is now," he says and passes out.