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“Well, he won’t get a chance to kill anyone else because he’s dead himself,” Solon said flatly. “This time I didn’t waste time with punishment—I just broke his neck.”
Abbey remembered the flat crack! she’d heard as she hid under the bed and shivered.
“Oh my God—is…is that his body?” she asked, nodding at a dark blur in the middle of her tan carpet. For once she was glad she couldn’t see details clearly.
“Afraid so. I think we need to call your authorities. We might want to call the human lawyer, Lizabeth Paige first, though,” he added. “At least I have a witness who can testify on my behalf this time.”
“You do? Who—me? Because I didn’t, uh, see anything, though I can certainly tell them how he was trying to drag me out and…and…” But Abbey couldn’t make herself say the words.
“No, actually I have my friend Brone with me. Brone?” he rumbled and a large, dark shape appeared in the doorway.
“Sorry, I was trying to give you guys some privacy. Yeah, I saw it all—I was here for backup but Solon didn’t need me. He snapped that guy’s neck like a fucking chicken bone,” a deep male voice said.
“Brone is the one who helped me re-route your exemption paperwork,” Solon told her. “But he is not to blame—I asked him to do it.”
At the moment, Abbey wasn’t up to blaming anyone for anything.
“Hi, Brone,” she said, nodding in the general direction of the doorway. “It’s, uh, nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too. Hey, you two relax—I’ll call the lawyer,” Brone told them. “She helped me last year when I had to defend my mate against an attack. Excuse me.”
He left, presumably to make the call, and Abbey looked up at Solon.
“I’m so glad you came in time—I didn’t even hear you come in!”
“Well, I can be quiet when I need to be. I wasn’t sure if the attacker had a weapon or not.”
“Did he?” Abbey asked anxiously.
“He had a knife,” Solon said shortly. “There’s no blood on it, so I assume he didn’t use it on you. Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Spex saw him looking at me through the window and warned me. So I was able to get in here to hide—but I wouldn’t have lasted two minutes once he dragged me out from under the bed.” She shivered again. “I’m so glad you came, Solon! And I’m so sorry we broke up.”
“I’m sorry too.” He sounded sad. “But I want you to know, I respect your wishes. I’ve Renounced my Claim on you so you don’t have to worry that I’ll try anything to resume our relationship.”
“Wait…what? What does that mean, Renounced your Claim?” Abbey demanded. But just then Brone came back into the room.
“Both the lawyer and the human authorities are on their way,” he informed them. “I’m hoping the lawyer gets here first. Less messy that way.”
42
ABBEY
As it turned out, Lizabeth Paige reached them at the same time as the police. She listened to what had happened and went with them to the police station, where a very unhappy Captain Hogan was there to greet them.
Though Abbey had the feeling that Hogan would have liked to charge someone with a crime, he couldn’t deny the facts. Henry—whose real name turned out to be Larry Dernhurst—was The Wheelchair Killer and he had been in the act of trying to murder Abbey when Solon had caught him and killed him instead.
With such a clear-cut case and Brone as a witness, they were out of the police station fairly quickly. Well, in a couple of hours, anyway, because there’s no such think as a really fast trip to the PD. It would be like a really fast trip to the ER, Abbey thought. But almost before she knew it, Solon was taking her home.
“Are you by yourself?” he asked, as he walked her to her front door.
“Yes, I am.” She nodded. “Aunt Rose is at a convention.”
She hesitated, not sure what to say after that. Solon had been kind and caring and comforting, but he hadn’t kissed her or hugged her, other than to comfort her when she’d first come out from under the bed. In fact, all night he’d been treating her more like a little sister than a girlfriend.
Abbey didn’t like that, but she didn’t know how to change it either. She kept remembering that he’d said he had “Renounced his Claim” on her. She still didn’t know what that meant, but she was kind of afraid to ask. What if it meant he had to leave and never see her again? Now that the big Monstrum was back in her life, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him again.
“Please don’t leave me here alone,” she said, taking his hand as they stood on the front porch together. “Can’t you come in and stay—at least for tonight?”
