[This post is from Matt’s point of view.]
The knock on the door echoed through the whole house. Matt froze up, holding onto Hecate a little tighter. She drew a rasping breath but stayed limp in his arms, either too exhausted to care or too emotionally wrung-out to react.
He pressed a kiss to her temple. “I’ll get it.”
“I’ll come with you,” she whispered.
His heart crept up into his throat but he nodded, his arms loosening. She got up first, then him, both moving silently in the dimness of the bedroom. Rain lashed the window and Matt thought that maybe, just maybe, he could hear the sound of hail against the shingles above their heads.
Her fingers caught his and squeezed for a second before she went to the closet even as he headed for the bedroom door.
Whoever was at the door knocked again, the sound a little more impatient now—or was that simply Matt’s imagination?
“It’s the back door,” she said as she took a pair of glittering silver blades from the closet, a pair of blades made of two half-crescents crossed, wrapped hilts along the inside of one crescent each. Matt’s heart gave a strange double-beat as he watched her take out the weapons, objects he knew he’d never seen in this life but had in another.
“How long has it been since you touched those?” he asked softly.
One corner of her mouth twitched upward into a rueful smile. “Centuries,” she said. “I usually only handle the box he made me.”
The urge to go to her was strong, to hug her and hold her and promise that everything would be all right—even if the words would be a lie—was damnably strong, but Matt managed to hold himself in check. She shot him a brave, if slightly wavering, smile.
“I have your back,” she said softly as she hefted the pair of crescent moon knives. “Nothing hurts you as long as I’m here.”
Matt nodded slowly. “Right back at you.”
There was a third knock on the door, the sound more rapid-fire, more staccato. Matt took a deep breath.
“Do you—”
“If it comes to that, yes,” she said. “The boar-spear, the axe, the warhammer. I have all of them. They’re here.”
He nodded slowly. “Bring the hammer. I’m going to answer the door.”
Matt turned but was stopped by her hand on his shoulder. She spun him gently back toward her, to face her, and pressed a kiss to his lips so hard that it nearly stole his breath.
“I love you,” she said after she drew back, staring up at him with fear in her eyes. Matt brushed a tear away as it tracked down her cheek.
“Agat mo chroí, mo ghrá.”
She bit her lip and nodded, letting go. “Be careful.”
“Always,” he said softly before he left the bedroom.
Another knock hadn’t come, but it was only a matter of time and he knew that as he moved quickly and quietly across the wooden floors toward the back door. Who it might have been was a mystery to him—but it was a mystery that he’d unravel soon enough.
That much, at least, he was certain about.
