I’ve got another excerpt today—and this might be my favorite scene in the entire book. They’re finally beginning to come to an understanding of each other and the bit about “precise handling”… well, you’ll see when you read the excerpt.
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He was strangling her again.
Only this time he wasn’t a man—he was a tentacled monster. When she pulled one of his arms free, another took its place to wrap around her throat, each one tighter than the last. They constricted until she saw stars, then gray.
Until at last everything turned black.
Isabel opened her eyes to darkness, her throat closing with panic. She sat up in her bedroll, her lungs burning with the speed of her breathing, her heart climbing up her rib cage.
It was only a dream. He wasn’t here, didn’t have his hands at her throat. She repeated the words again and again, until her heart came back under her command and slowed its futile race to nowhere.
She looked into the blackness surrounding her, the fire having dimmed to coals hours ago.
He was out there, somewhere.
Her entire body went cold, ice creeping under her scalp. She was ready for him. This time she would not miss. Because if he caught her again, it would mean her death.
Your hands are still shaking. You missed last time because your hands were shaking.
She curled her hands into fists. They would not shake. She would not allow it.
“Can’t sleep?”
The voice from the other side of the fire made her start, a whimper escaping her throat.
“It’s only me,” the voice assured.
“Marshal Spencer,” she breathed. “You’re awake.”
His form slowly coalesced in the darkness as her eyes adjusted, revealing him perched across from her, some great beast come to warm by the fire as they slept.
She blinked to clear her head. He was not a beast or a monster. The only monster was the one they were tracking.
“Try to sleep,” he said softly.
Oh Lord, she wanted to. She wanted to sleep as she once had, free of nightmares chasing her from dusk until dawn, to wake without her throat aching as though phantom hands had encircled it all night long.
“Are you going to sit up all night?” she asked.
“Mmm,” he answered. “I won’t allow anything to happen to you. Go to sleep.”
His assurance was quite solid in the unreality of her half-awake, post-nightmare state. She lay back at his command, ordering her heart to slow and her jitters to still. The sky was heavy with stars and she began to pick out familiar constellations. She didn’t know many, but she could find the Dippers—and there was Orion.
“You’re not sleeping.” A hint of gray annoyance crept into his voice.
“How can you tell?” she demanded.
“I can hear you thinking.”
“One can’t hear a person’s thoughts.”
He sighed. “You’ve a gift for attributing words to me I didn’t say. I don’t know what you are thinking, only that you are. The air fairly hums with it.”
She smiled into the dark. “I have to be precise with you, don’t I?”
“You don’t require precise handling?”
She couldn’t stop smiling, although no one other than herself would consider such a thing a compliment.
“Go to sleep, Señorita,” he urged.
She did as he said.
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