Entanglement

Dante jerked back, pulling away from Azlynn as her eyes went wide. He spun around to see Miller standing rooted in the doorway, his eyebrows raised and fighting back a smile.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked. Azlynn slid off the railing, cheeks bright pink, and slipped past them both to dart into the house.

“Miller, you cock-blocking asshole!” Dante snapped.

“Sorry,” Miller replied with an innocent shrug. “It’s not like I expected to come out here and find you playing tonsil hockey with the receptionist.”

“Well from now on, if me and a girl are alone in a room somewhere, just assume someone is naked.”

“First of all, neither one of you was naked-”

“Yeah, because you interrupted us!” Dante protested.

“-and second of all, you’re a cocky bastard, aren’t you?”

“Well I was hoping to be, until you came out here and ax murdered the mood like Freddy fucking Krueger.”

“Freddy Krueger didn’t use an ax.”

“Well whoever the fuck used an ax then.” Dante shook his head.

“How the Hell did you two end up out here…like that, in the first place. She usually acts like you’re the plague,” Miller said.

“I wasn’t planning on questioning it,” Dante replied.

“Are you telling me you weren’t the one who initiated that whole…spectacle?” Miller regarded him skeptically. “Azlynn doesn’t really seem the type to be doing that with anyone, let alone you.”

“Yeah, well, again; wasn’t gonna question it. Sometimes you just have to go with it. And then you have to come out here and scare her off! What happened to the bro code, man?”

“Well next time put a sock on the door, like any normal person would do,” Miller said lightly. “The porch is a rather odd place to be boffing, though, I must say.”

Dante snorted. “Did you just say boffing? What are you, my grandmother?”

“What? Boffing is a modern word,” Miller said defensively.

“Just know this, man, I’m going to remember this little incident when you finally man up and tell Charlotte you wanna bang her.”

“That’s so classy, DeMarco, you’re such a romantic- wait a minute, how do you know about that?” he demanded.

“You can’t hold your liquor,” Dante said smugly.

“Fuck,” Miller groaned, rubbing his hands over his face.

“Hey don’t worry, man, just get her a collar and maybe you can do her doggy,” Dante joked.

“Fuck you, dude,” Miller grumbled.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Probably upstairs, with Azlynn, not having sex with you,” Miller shot back.

“Dude, that is just cold and wrong. So wrong.”

“Go to bed, DeMarco.” Miller strode back into the house, shaking his head and chuckling. Grumbling, Dante followed him into the house then went upstairs to unpack his things. Azlynn’s door was partially open as he walked by, and he saw her struggling to untie the ribbons on the back of her shirt, her back to him. He stopped short in the hallway, watching as she untied the last ribbon and tugged the shirt off. His eyes fell on the intricate black and white wing tattoo that covered her entire back. That’s interesting, he thought. I didn’t peg her for the kind to have that kind of ink.

Azlynn slipped a silky camisole over her head, then paused as though she was listening to something. She started to turn around, and Dante jerked away from the crack in her door, hoping she didn’t see him. He pressed himself against the wall as she came forward to shut her door. Breathing a sigh of relief, Dante continued on to his room. He took a shower and tugged on a pair of tattered pajama pants.

He climbed into bed, his mind replaying the events from earlier. Damn you, Miller.

He drifted off into sleep, dreaming about smoky eyes and wings. He woke up at some point, rolling over to check the time on the nightstand clock. It read 4:25 A.M. Groaning, Dante buried his face in his pillow, trying to go back to sleep. He gave up after several minutes and padded downstairs to the kitchen to find something to eat. He rummaged through the refrigerator, quickly dismissing the fruit salad and protein shakes. He moved on to the cupboards, grinning when he found a box of macaroni and cheese.

Returning to the fridge, he dug around until he found some bacon, then set to work making his nighttime snack. As the bacon was frying on the stove, he heard the sound of a window sliding shut. He turned around, eyes narrowed. His ears picked up the sound of stealthy footsteps through the front hall. He moved to stand in the entranceway of the kitchen.

A shadow moved near the stairs.

“Hey!” Dante shouted. The figure jerked in surprise, turning towards him.

“Who the Hell are you-” Dante’s irate question was cut off as the intruder rushed him, metal glinting in their hand. A gun. Dante was able to twist so that his heart was out of range, but the bullet still raked across his bare shoulder.

You son of a bitch!” he growled. The attacker came closer, and Dante’s hand shot out, gripping their gun-wielding wrist and slamming it hard against the doorframe. There was a crack of bone and the gun clattered to the floor as his assailant cried out in pain.

Dante wrapped his free hand around their neck ,dragging them into the kitchen. He’d been cooking with the lights off; Dragons had excellent night vision, but as he slammed the man against the wall, cutting off his air flow, the light flicked on. Azlynn stood in the doorway, her hand frozen on the light switch as she took in the scene before her.

“He broke in,” Dante said casually, crushing the man’s wind pipe. “And the fucker shot me.”

Azlynn stooped to pick up the fallen gun while Dante summoned his fire powers, burning the man to nothing but a pile of ash. The whole thing had happened in less than a minute.

“True Form society?” Azlynn asked, and Dante was surprised by her calmness, given that she just watched a man die right in front of her. She must have been made of tougher stuff than he had thought.

“What the Hell?” Miller and Charlotte joined Azlynn in the kitchen, looking from the gun in her hand, to Dante’s bleeding but now healing arm, and the ashes on the floor in front of him.

“Someone broke in,” Azlynn said.

“DeMarco,” Miller scolded. “You should have detained him for questioning.”

“Why? We know who sent him.” Dante walked over to the counter and picked up some paper towels, pressing them against his wounded shoulder.

“Maybe so, but we don’t know how he found us here,” Miller pointed out. Dante paused in his clean-up. “Oh. Sorry.” He shrugged nonchalantly. Miller shook his head.

“Hey Azlynn,” Dante said, something finally occurring to him. “How’d you get down here so fast?”

“I was using the bathroom, and heard the gunshot,” Azlynn said dismissively.

“He used a silencer,” Dante said, frowning.

“Well I heard something.” Azlynn gave him a hard stare. He was about to say something else, but just then a huge arm reached out of the shadows behind Azlynn, wrapping around neck and dragging her out of the kitchen.

“Azlynn!” the three of them shouted in unison. They rushed into the living room, finding a shape shifter that was only half-transformed into a Bigfoot-like creature dragging her across the floor. Dante darted forward, fire already crackling around his fingertips. But suddenly the wolf yowled in pain and backed away from her. A silver knife was embedded in its chest. Azlynn squirmed away from the choking creature and scrambled to her feet. As the shifter shuddered and began to turn back into its human form, there were two thoughts that went through Dante’s mind.

Since when does the True Form Society work with shifters? And then, Where the fuck was Azlynn hiding that knife?