CHAPTER ONE

      “LAURA—you fool!”

      Laura Burnside almost dropped the arms of the woman she was dragging along the ground.

      Freezing, eyes darting around the chaos, heart shaking her apart, she sought the source of the furious shout.

      Someone’s shoulder slammed into hers, jolting her back.

      Concentrate, Burnside, all her senses screamed. It doesn’t matter who’s calling you or calling you what. It can’t be him anyway. Get out of here. Drag that woman away…

      Another outburst of shots. Another man fell a few feet away from her. No way to help him, not now. One victim at a time. Bending again, tightening her grip on the woman’s wrists, she dug her heels in and pulled. Much heavier than her, getting heavier with every inch. Pain stabbed her side again.

      Fool. That was what the voice had called her. His voice. It couldn’t be him, of course. What would he be doing here, in Buenos Aires, hundreds of miles away from his home and work? His rage must be reaching out to her all the way from Santa Fe. No one disobeyed Armando Salazar.

      It could also be her mind calling her a fool, using his voice. And it would be right. She’d gotten herself into this, thought she could do it. It was amazing what looked plausible—not to mention how a mind could stray—in a desperate situation…

      Violent purple with sickening yellow blotches exploded behind her eyes. Someone’s forehead had rammed her left cheekbone. She staggered, letting go of the woman’s wrists, colors fading to gray. She held herself still as her consciousness wavered, drained, willing light and colors to come back. If she succumbed, let herself be KO’d, it’d be over for that woman. For her.

      Another body, then another collided into her, fists and feet plowing into her gut and shins. She was the only one going against the tide, and they were sweeping her backwards with them in their blind escape path.

      In the uproar, her own angry shouts reached her ears as if from a distance. The woman. She had to get back to her. She didn’t know how, but she made it.

      Just as she bent to her again, a thundering “Laura!” drowned even the cacophony of human shrieks and gunfire.

      It was him.

      Her head swung instinctively, violently, looking for him in the stampede. The next second a missile whizzed by her head. A fist-sized rock thrown with all the strength and fury of someone deranged by oppression and desperation. If not for his shout, it would have smashed her skull.

      Then he was there, materializing above her, face grim, wings spread, filling her vision.

      This is how Dracula—no, Batman—must look. A little voice inside her made the ridiculous, untimely observation. Swooping down on his quarry, staggering, scary even to those he saved.

      In the next heartbeat he snatched her up and under the protection of his massive body. It was almost a surprise to realize his spread wings were not a cape but a jacket, held up to block rocks that were falling short of their targets, pelting them instead.

      “Don’t— No…” She resisted him, desperate to return to her casualty. He only swept her higher. Her feet kicked air.

      Her fingers dug into his arm, his chest, anywhere, trying to gain his attention, to regain her freedom. “Put me down, Salazar! That woman—she’d been trodden on—and those two men…”

      She was talking to his jaw as he plastered her to his side, running with her to… Where was he going?

      The idiot man had taken them right into the thick of the riot!

      Her breathing stopped as the masses battered them. She’d rushed to the woman when they’d started receding, forced back by the police forces, when she’d thought she’d had a chance of pulling her away. It had been scary enough, dangerous enough then. She had the bruises to prove it. But now—being right in the middle of it all…

      Dread smeared her vision gray and red. Huge and strong though he was, no way was he a match for this mindless crowd. He was starting to stumble, her weight