BERKLE Y SENSATION,
SIGNET ECLIPSE,
& SIGNET SELEC T
S
S
AS DARKNESS FALLS
SS
COMPLIMENTARY
PARANORMAL ROMANCE
SAMPLER
SIGNET SELECT
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Published by Berkley and NAL Books,
divisions of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
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Excerpt from Alpha Instinct
© Katie Reus, 2012
Excerpt from Dire Needs
© Stephanie Tyler, 2012
Excerpt from Wicked Edge
© Nina Bangs, 2012
Excerpt from Chaos Burning
© Lauren Dane, 2012
Excerpt from Darkness Devours
© Keri Arthur, 2012
Excerpt from Liquid Lies
© Hanna Martine, 2012
First published by Berkley and NAL Books,
divisions of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, 2012
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Copyright 2012
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S
S
AS DARKNESS FALLS
ALPHA INSTINCT
by Katie Reus
1
DIRE NEEDS
35
WICKED EDGE
67
CHAOS BURNING
87
by Stephanie Tyler
by Nina Bangs
by Lauren Dane
DARKNESS DEVOURS
103
LIQUID LIES
129
by Keri Arthur
by Hanna Martine
SS
SIGNET SELECT
Signet Select, Signet Eclipse, and Berkley Sensation
Penguin Group (USA) Companies
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ALPHA INSTINCT
A Moon Shifter Novel
by Katie Reus
Available now in paperback from Signet Eclipse
Ana Cordona has been a strong leader for the lupine shifters who survived after all the males and most of the females
in her pack were mysteriously poisoned. As tough as she is,
with no Alpha male, the pack is vulnerable to the devious
shifter Sean Taggart, who wants to claim both their ranch
and Ana as his own. When Connor Armstrong comes back
into her life, promising protection, it’s almost enough to
make Ana forget how he walked out on her before— and
reluctantly accept his offer to mate.
The minute Connor sees Ana again, a raw hunger reawakens. He must have her for his bondmate—his wolf
cries out for it. But his human side knows he must proceed
with caution because of their complicated past. If he is to
truly have her, body and soul, he must go beyond his burning desire and win back her heart. Whatever it takes, he is
determined not to leave her side again.
But Taggart and his rival pack are not their only enemies. A human element in town is targeting shifters. Their
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plan threatens not only Ana and Connor’s future, but the
lives of the entire pack . . .
“[A] perfect blend of shifter, suspense and sexiness . . .
a winner.”
—Caridad Piñeiro, New York Times bestselling author of
The Lost
“A wild, hot ride . . . The story grabs you and doesn’t
—Cynthia Eden, author of Deadly Heat
let go.”
N
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CHAPTER 1
Analena Cordona shoved her hands into the pockets of her
thick, quilted down jacket. Not because she was cold, but
because for the second time in the past ten minutes she was
questioning her decision to meet Sean Taggart without an
escort. It was likely stupid— scratch that; defi nitely stupid—
but she couldn’t drag one of her sisters or cousins along to
meet with him. Taggart was one of the most devious shifters
she’d ever met, and she couldn’t risk her pack getting hurt.
Despite her effort to appear casual, an unwanted shiver skittered down her spine. If need be, she was ready to run at a
moment’s notice.
The wind howled mercilessly through the trees of Fontana
Mountain and when it shifted south she caught Taggart’s distinctive, foul scent. He was close. Watching her, no doubt.
Pervy bastard.
“I know you’re there, Sean. Come out now so we can get
this over with.” She was thankful her voice didn’t shake.
To her surprise, a hulking brown-and-white wolf emerged
from a cluster of trees. What the hell? They’d agreed to come
in human form. Glancing around, she saw he hadn’t brought
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anyone else. That tamed her nerves a little but not much. He
was still older and stronger and a lot more ruthless. Even
though she tried to mask it, he had to smell her fear. “What
are you doing?” she snapped, hoping her anger would cover
her alarm.
When the animal stood a few feet in front of her, he
changed to his human form. Ana looked away but could hear
his bones break, shift and realign. Many shifters didn’t mind
others watching them change, but to her it was such a private,
painful thing, she didn’t do it in front of just anyone.
She turned back to face him and immediately wanted to
wipe the smirk off his face. Of course he’d be arrogant enough
to stand naked in front of her when they were supposed to be
having a serious meeting. She attempted to keep the loathing
out of her voice. “I thought we agreed to come in human
form.”
He shrugged and had the nerve to grab himself. “I wanted
the exercise. Besides, you should get to see what’s going to be
yours soon.”
Mine? Gross. Bile rose in her throat, but she pushed it
down. Sure, the man had a nice body, but what lay underneath that exterior scared her. She’d seen the way he treated
the women of his pack. He was mean just for the sake of
being mean. As Alpha, he should set a better example, but no
one had stood up to him yet. “Excuse me?”
“That’s why you wanted to meet, isn’t it? To proposition me?”
“Not exactly.” She cleared her throat and looked around.
A light layer of snow had fallen over the normally grassy
incline. Other than the wind and rustling trees, she was suddenly aware of how alone she really was. She was at least two
miles from her family’s ranch. “We’ve had a few attacks over
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the past couple weeks. Some of our cattle have gone missing
and I’ve found a few mutilated cows. And just this morning I
found one of my sister’s horses dead.”
The increasing vandalism against her pack’s ranch was a
message. Taggart wanted to unite his pack with hers and
would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. She was surprised he hadn’t done worse.
“And you think my pack had something to do with it?”
His voice was monotone.
She noticed he didn’t deny it. “I didn’t say that. I don’t
know many humans who venture into our territory, so I just
wanted to let you know about it.”
He crossed his arms over his bare chest and she forced
herself to keep her eyes on his face. It pissed her off that he
just stood there naked. He must have known it would make
her uncomfortable.
“Fine. I’ll keep an eye out, but we haven’t had any problems. If you had better security, I doubt you would either.”
His voice was taunting.
“We’re doing fine.” But they weren’t. Not really. Financially they were on solid ground, but with all the males of
their pack dead, it was only a matter of time before another
pack would think they could move in to their territory and
force them to assimilate. They might live peacefully among
the humans now, but they still had their own laws to worry
about. Their black-and-white laws were a lot more primal. As
unguarded, unprotected females, they were more or less fair
game. It might be bullshit, but there wasn’t much she could
do about it unless she wanted to take on the Northern American Council. They wouldn’t allow a she-wolf to remain
Alpha without proving herself. As with males, a true Alpha—
regardless of gender—had to prove she was strong enough to
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protect her pack from anything. If it came down to an actual
fight, she couldn’t take on Taggart and she knew it. No doubt
he did too. And she hated that. Pack law was so different
from human rules, and while her animal side acknowledged
and understood it, her human side fought against the archaic
rules of the Council. Sometimes she worried the eight council
members headquartered in Chicago were too out of touch
with the changing needs of their kind.
He took a step forward and traced a fi nger down her
cheekbone. Alarm fluttered through her. On instinct, she
slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
His dark eyes flashed in anger, and instead of moving
away he grabbed her by the back of her neck and tugged her
against him. She started to fight but contained her rage. Her
inner wolf told her he wanted her to struggle. She needed to
play this right. Among shifters violence against any females
was rare, but Taggart was a bastard and nothing he did
would surprise Ana. She didn’t know much about his parents, but she’d heard his father had been absolutely archaic in
his rules with his pack, and it was obvious the apple hadn’t
fallen far from the tree.
“Soon enough you’ll come crawling on your knees, begging to be my mate,” he growled in her ear.
I’d rather die first. “Let. Me. Go.”
“I think I’m going to have a little fun first.” The menacing
note in his voice sent up warning bells.
The Cordona women might be small but they were lightning fast. In her shifted form she knew she could outrun him,
but she’d have to get away from him fi rst. He grabbed the
zipper on her jacket and snapped it down. Adrenaline pumped
through her when she realized what he intended.
She kicked at him. He deflected the blow with his thigh.
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His grip on her tightened for a split second, and then suddenly she was free. Taking her off guard, he shoved at her
chest. She hit the ground with a thud.
Shift.
Run.
Escape.
Thoughts of survival overtook her. She rolled over and
prepared to go through the change when he dove on top of
her, pinning her to the ground. Her throat tightened as she
struggled against him.
“Get off of her!” A loud, dominating male voice roared
through the woods, reverberating off the trees.
Taggart shifted his weight, and she didn’t waste the
opportunity. Scrambling away, she put a few yards between
them. If he made one wrong move, she was going to shift and
take off. Her canines were already extending. They pressed
painfully against her gums. Her inner wolf begged to be unleashed.
The need to survive was taking over most of her reasoning, and the only thing keeping her from shifting was sheer
willpower.
She wasn’t sure where the voice had come from, but she
recognized it as sure as she knew her own name. Unless the
wind was playing cruel tricks on her. She hadn’t heard that
soothing voice in about fifty years. Her mouth dropped open
when two men she knew and eight wolves she didn’t recognize appeared from the thickest part of the trees lining their
meeting place. By the large size of the wolves it was obvious
they were all part of the warrior class. Where alphas were
dominant in disposition, warriors were all that and more.
By nature, warriors were born fighters. It was something
ingrained deep inside them, and Ana had always thought
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they were a bit more in touch with their inner animal than
other shifters. Warriors could be intimidating, but she’d always
respected them. They wanted to protect and take care of
alphas and betas alike, not only because it was the pack way,
but because the need to protect those weaker was in their
blood.
Taggart turned and glared at her. “You think you’re so
smart, you little bitch. This isn’t over.” He shifted into wolf
form with the speed only an Alpha could manage and darted
past her in the direction opposite the newcomers.
As she stared at the two men who’d once been her best
friends, she wasn’t sure what was going on or why they were
there. She truly didn’t care. All thoughts of running away dissipated.
Connor and Liam Armstrong strode toward her, of course
dressed in all black. Some things hadn’t changed.
Before she could contemplate whether it was a good idea
or not, she launched herself at Liam, but only because he was
closest. She wrapped her arms around his neck in a tight hug.
“I can’t believe you’re here.”
He returned her hug in equal measure. “Good to see you
too, little wolf.” Chuckling, he finally put her down, and she
paused for just a moment before wrapping her arms around
Connor.
Once upon a time she’d thought she and Connor might be
more than friends. Until the day he’d left her without an
explanation. Even though he’d taken a little piece of her heart
all those years ago, she was still grateful he was with her now.
At fi rst he stiffened under her hold. She started to pull
back when he murmured something foreign in her hair—
Gaelic, maybe. She couldn’t understand his words, but that
deep voice of his sent a warm ribbon of awareness curling
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through her. She prayed he couldn’t smell her desire. When he
put her on her feet, she was speechless as she stared into his
bright green eyes. He still had the ability to take her breath
away without even trying.
“Did that bastard hurt you?” His words were almost
devoid of emotion, but the flash of anger in his eyes gave him
away. His green eyes started to turn almost black as the animal in him prepared to take over.
Though she was tempted to say yes, she shook her head
and ran a light hand down his arm. The last thing she wanted
was for Connor to go after Taggart. If he did, she’d bring
down the wrath of Taggart’s entire pack. Considering the
Cordonas had no Alpha or male protectors at the moment,
she’d be signing death warrants for all her packmates. No
matter how much she hated Taggart, she couldn’t risk the
fallout. She didn’t know why Connor was there, but he was a
nomad and once he left she’d be stuck defending her pack
until she could come to an arrangement with the Council.
And that was a headache she didn’t want to dwell on now.
“I’m fine . . . thanks to you.”
“I should hunt him down.” This time he didn’t bother
hiding the rage in his voice. Connor sounded as if he had
gravel in his throat as he took a menacing step past her.
She grabbed him and squeezed. “Please don’t. It’s not
worth it.”
His muscles flexed under her touch and his breathing was
slightly erratic, but at least he stilled.
Looking behind them, she eyed the foreign wolves, then
looked back at Connor and Liam. “What are you doing here?
And who are they?”
The two men exchanged a guarded look before Connor
spoke. “We heard about your pack.”
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Suddenly wary, she took a step back. “What exactly have
you heard?”
“That your father and your . . . mate”—he seemed to
choke on the word—“were killed two months ago.”
Ana had never officially taken a mate, but she didn’t voice
that aloud. There was no reason Connor needed to know.
“My father and all the males of our pack were poisoned. And
all the pregnant females too. My mother wasn’t pregnant, but
she died anyway.” Of a broken heart, Ana was certain. It was
as if her mother had just given up the will to live once her
mate was gone. Even saying that out loud hurt more than
Ana could describe, but she pushed past the pain. As current
leader of the Cordona pack, she didn’t have time for self-pity.
“How and by whom?” he demanded.
“I don’t have answers to either of those.” Not that she
hadn’t tried her damndest to find out who’d killed them. One
day all of the males and the pregnant females in her pack had
gotten sick, and days later they’d all been dead. Her father,
two uncles and their pregnant mates, seven male cousins and
their pregnant mates, and Ana’s own intended mate. And
then her mother was gone too. Twenty-one members of their
pack gone. Just like that. It had happened so fast. They hadn’t
realized what was going on at fi rst and by the time they did,
it had been too late.
“What did our Council say?”
She snorted softly. “They’re supposed to send someone
down to investigate the poisonings, but we’re apparently not
very high on the food chain. Probably because we don’t have
a lot of political pull now that we’re just a bunch of females.”
She didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in her voice. She’d also
been holding off on contacting the Council about Taggart’s
vandalism. The Council would just view it as weakness and
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as proof she couldn’t run her own pack. If they found out
he’d tried to attack her tonight they would no doubt swiftly
and harshly punish Taggart, but the entire situation was a
catch-22. Their help would come at a price that would likely
mean immediate assimilation with another pack not of her
choosing.
Connor stared at her but didn’t say anything. Silence descended over them, and she wished she’d kept her big mouth
shut. She hadn’t seen him in a long time and didn’t need to
announce her pack’s issues to him. Not to mention that she
had a hundred questions—like why he was on her land—but
wasn’t sure where to start.
“You cut your hair,” Connor said, breaking the awkward
moment.
Self-consciously she raked her fingers through the shorter
tresses. Her dark hair barely touched her shoulders now. The
last time she’d seen him her hair had been at least a foot longer. She’d also worn bell-bottoms, tie-dyed shirts and tried
to emulate Brigitte Bardot. Times had changed and so had
she. She shrugged. “It’s been half a century. What did you
expect?”
He reached out and fi ngered it. “I like it.” When his callused fingers trailed over her cheek, her breath caught in her
throat.
Despite her desire to remain immune to him, she could
feel her cheeks heat up at the statement. It wasn’t even a compliment. Not really. But her traitorous libido didn’t seem to
care. It roared to life at those words. After years of being
dormant, that’s all it took for her hormones to wake up.
Three stupid words.
His hair was shorter now too. And so was Liam’s. Both of
them looked liked they’d stepped off the cover of Soldier of
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Fortune. They wore black cargo pants and black, long-sleeved
shirts and had military-style crops. But she didn’t comment.
She didn’t want to stand around talking about how much
they’d all changed. She needed to get back to her pack. “You
said you heard about my pack, but are you just passing
through?”
Again they exchanged a look. “Not exactly.”
She frowned at the nonanswer. “Listen, I need to get back.
Do you have a place to stay tonight?”
They both shrugged noncommittally.
She bit back a sigh. She’d forgotten how infuriating they
could be. “I’m assuming those wolves are with you and that
they’re trustworthy. I’ve got two empty cabins that should be
big enough to accommodate all of you. A couple of you will
have to share rooms, but it’s a place to sleep.” There were
more than enough beds and bathrooms for ten wolves.
Back when she’d known them they’d been lone wolves, so
it surprised her they had their own pack now. Connor was
definitely an Alpha but he’d never seemed interested in a formal leadership role. And leading a group of shifters was a big
responsibility. As she assessed the shifters she realized the
smaller wolf hiding behind one of the bigger wolves near the
back was female.
“The female can stay at my place unless she’s mated. . . .”
Her voice trailed off as the reality sank in that Connor could
be mated. Hell, he probably was. What sane, single she-wolf
wouldn’t scoop him up? Still, she didn’t scent anyone on him,
so maybe not. I hope not. She gritted her teeth at the thought.
She didn’t care. If she kept repeating it, maybe she’d believe it.
This time Liam spoke. “Thank you for the offer. Erin’s
unmated, and I think it would do her good to have some
female company. She’s had a rough year.”
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Ana noticed that both Connor and Liam shifted uncomfortably, so she didn’t pursue the topic. She motioned back
toward the riding trail that led to her ranch. “I walked here,
so if you’re ready, we can head back now.”
Connor nodded and motioned toward the wolves. They
paired up in twos and fell in line behind them. Maybe it
shouldn’t have surprised her that Connor was now Alpha of
his own pack. He was a natural-born leader. Broad shouldered and standing over six feet tall, he was almost a foot
taller than her. Of course, most people were taller than her.
She stole peeks at him as they headed down the trail.
Even though it was shorter, his hair was still a dark chocolate brown. He was 110 in human years, but he only looked
to be about thirty years old. He wouldn’t have any signs of
gray hair for a few hundred years to come. There was a
sharper, deadlier edge to him that she didn’t remember, but
he was still handsome. In a rugged sort of way. And he still
had the ability to make her stomach do flip-flops by simply
looking at her.
She might be irrationally pleased to see him, but a part of
her was terrified over the reason he’d come. It was silly to
think he’d hurt her, but what if he wanted to take over her
pack? Her family’s land? Or claim one of her sisters as a
mate? That was probably the one thing she didn’t think her
heart could handle. The thought of him with someone else—
someone close to her—made her ache. Worrying about that
wouldn’t do her any good now. Soon enough she’d have her
answers.
Connor sat on one of Analena’s couches and tried to contain
the sexual energy humming through him. So many years had
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passed and he thought he’d been ready to see her again. All it
had taken was one look into those espresso-colored eyes and
he’d felt himself falling. Fast and hard.
“Chill, brother. You’re gonna freak her out if she gets a
whiff of that lust.” Liam stood by the fireplace with his arms
over his chest. He leaned casually against the mantle but he
looked tense.
He knew his brother was right, but it was hard to think
around her. Pack Alphas talked among one another, and
when he’d heard what had happened to the males of her pack
he’d known it was time to come back. He’d stayed away long
enough, and he’d be damned if he let some other mutt claim
what was his.
The sound of footsteps descending the stairs alerted them.
Before she even entered the room, he knew it was Ana. Her
scent was so distinctive he’d be able to pick her out of a
crowded auditorium. Raspberries and sunshine. That’s what
he thought of every time she was near.
He automatically stood when she entered the room. Now
that she’d taken off that puffy jacket, he could see what he’d
been fantasizing about for decades. She was still petite and
fragile-looking, but he knew otherwise. The sleeves of her
long T-shirt were pushed back, showing lean arms, and her
form-fitting jeans did little to hide those tight, muscular legs.
The soft curves of her breasts interested him much more.
Liam loudly cleared his throat, jerking him back to reality. He looked at his brother, then at Ana, who hovered by the
love seat opposite the couch he’d been sitting on. Instantly he
sat back down, and she did the same.
“How’s Erin?” The she-wolf he’d picked up months ago
was skittish as hell and he couldn’t help but worry about her.
They all did.
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Ana’s expression darkened. “I think she’s okay. We put
her in one of the guest rooms upstairs, but I think Carmen is
going to stay the night with her. It’s a strange place to her and
I don’t think she wants to sleep alone.”
Connor nodded. “Yeah, when we found her, she’d been . . .”
“Brutalized?”
He nodded.
She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “Do you know
who hurt her?”
He shook his head. If he’d known, whoever had hurt her
would be dead. He wouldn’t have bothered going to the Council to bring them up on charges. “She won’t talk about it.”
She looked pointedly between him and his brother.
“Where are your other . . . friends? I thought you said you
wanted to talk.”
“We do, but we thought you’d feel more comfortable discussing some things in private. Did you want to invite Carmen and Noël downstairs?”
She shook her head again. “No. My sisters trust me to
make any decisions concerning our pack. I’m tired and a little
cranky, so let’s just get down to business. Why are you guys
here?”
“You need protection.” He and Liam had discussed things
earlier, but now that he was actually sitting in front of her, he
wondered how well his proposition would go over.
Her dark eyebrows rose. “Oh, really?”
“There are no males left in your pack and you are not an
Alpha.” She might be an alpha in nature but she didn’t have
the cutthroat qualities it took to lead a pack. It was one of the
things he loved about her. She had a steel backbone but was
still soft and empathetic, sometimes letting her heart rule her
decisions. Or at least that’s how he remembered her. “And if
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Taggart’s attempted attack on you tonight was any indication, I’d wager he’s been trying to unite his pack with yours
for a while. Am I wrong?”
She shrugged noncommittally.
“It’s only a matter of time before someone else comes
sniffing around looking to claim control of the Cordona
women.” He paused, hoping she’d say something. She knew
the Council’s rules as well as he did, and he didn’t want to
spell it out to her. Once a pack was officially formed the
Alpha in charge was basically supposed to self-govern and
deal with internal problems alone. Now that Ana’s Alpha
was dead, they were still considered a pack, but they couldn’t
continue much longer without an official leader.
“And you’d like to take on the role of our protectors? Out
of the goodness of your heart?” Mistrust crept into those
dark eyes, and his gut clenched.
“Over the years Liam and I have . . . done well for ourselves. We’ve formed our own pack— one recognized by the
Council— and we’re looking to settle down somewhere. Put
down roots. All of our packmates are of the warrior class. We
have a lot to bring to the table.” Years ago he’d had nothing
to offer her. At least now he was more than a lone mongrel
with no pack and no real money, trying to win her heart.
“What do you want in exchange for your protection?”
“A place to live and work peacefully.”
“What about the males of your pack? I don’t know anything about them. Are they trustworthy?”
He understood what she was asking even though she
didn’t spell it out. “I respect man’s laws and the Council’s
laws. No female will be forced into any union they don’t
want.”
She relaxed against the couch and absently tapped her
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finger against the armrest. “I’ll need time to think about
this.”
“There is one more thing. If we do this, you’ll no longer
be known as the Cordona pack. We will all unite as the Armstrong pack.”
Her head tipped slightly to the side and her luscious mouth
pulled into a thin line. “Like you said, if we do this— and
that’s a big if—we’ll be called the Armstrong- Cordona pack.”
It wasn’t a question.
He looked at his brother, who grinned slightly and nodded. Connor had known she wouldn’t acquiesce that easily.
Something deep inside him had always told him he’d run his
own pack one day. Now he understood it was his inner wolf,
his Alpha begging to get out. While he might not have liked
her old man, the name Cordona was still hers, and linking
their names wasn’t exactly a hardship. If it got her to accept
his protection, he’d do it. “Fine. I also have another stipulation. If and when we combine, I take the mate of my choosing. Immediately.”
Ana’s dark eyes flashed with something he couldn’t put
his finger on, but then it was gone. “I’m surprised you’re not
mated by now. No one will be forced, but my sisters and
cousins have all grown into beautiful women. I don’t think
you’ll have any problem convincing—”
“Ana, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. You
are mine.” He hated thinking that she’d been mated to
another wolf, but at least they hadn’t been bondmates. If they
had been, she’d still carry his mark and possibly his scent.
Sometimes even death couldn’t wipe away a bondmate’s
scent. Though her mate was now dead, Connor wanted to
bury whoever he was all over again. No one else would ever
touch what was his.
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Her head snapped back up. He wanted to kick himself at
the way he’d spoken to her, but he couldn’t take back the
words now. She was his. It was about damn time she figured
that out.
“I don’t understand. You want to mate with me?” The
question came out breathy and seductive as hell. And laced
with shock. He couldn’t ignore the not-so-subtle wave that
rolled off her.
Even Liam raised his eyebrows at his bluntness and found
a spot on the coffee table to stare at.
Connor ignored his brother. He had to refrain from growling as he stared at Ana. “I want you as my bondmate.”
That got her attention. Her spine went ramrod straight.
Plenty of shifters mated but they didn’t all bond. Mated shifters could leave if they wanted to, much like how humans
divorced one another. Bonding united their kind for life. Even
if one of them wanted to leave, they’d be marked and another
wolf wouldn’t touch either one of them. It was a big decision
and one he knew she wouldn’t make lightly. But when he
took her as his mate he wanted her completely.
“Bondmate?” The word sounded almost angry.
He abruptly stood. “I don’t expect your answer right
away. We’ll let ourselves out, but we’ll be back in the morning to introduce everyone.”
Frowning, she nodded.
Once they were outside, Liam punched his arm. And not
softly.
He glared at him. “What are you, twelve?” he muttered.
“What the hell was that?” his brother growled.
Connor shrugged and ignored the heated look his brother
shot him. “I laid out the stipulations.”
“That was not part of the plan. You were supposed to give
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her a chance to warm up to the idea of mating with you. Then
you were going to ask that she bond. Not demand it. Damn
it, Connor. You’re such a fucking Neanderthal.”
He clenched his jaw. It probably wasn’t the best decision
he’d ever made, but as far as he was concerned his brother
was lucky he’d shown as much control as he had. Ana and her
family had rejected him once, but things had fi nally come full
circle. It might be selfish to demand her submission now when
she was at her weakest, but he couldn’t walk away from her.
Not again. “What’s done is done. Let’s go check on the men.”
His brother muttered something about him being a stubborn asshole, but continued walking with him. The memory
of Ana’s sweet scent and the shock in her wide brown eyes
rolled over him. He should have eased her into things, but
walking away right now was taking all the restraint he possessed. The wolf inside him wanted to take her hard and
rough, then soft and gentle. For hours. Until neither of them
could walk or think straight.
The houses and cabins surrounding the ranch fanned out
in a circle around the main house. They were far enough
apart that the pack members had some privacy, but close
enough that they could alert one another if there was trouble.
It was like a little village.
Liam nudged him and nodded toward one of the distant
fields. “Hey, what—”
They both paused as an orange ball lit up the sky. “Fire!”
N
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CHAPTER 2
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Connor’s heart pounded an erratic tattoo against his chest as
he raced back for the main house. He banged on the front
door, then opened it.
From the entryway Analena glared at him. “What the—”
“Fire. In the west field. Not close to the buildings, but that
could change.”
Wordlessly she turned and fled up the stairs. Seconds later
she came barreling back down with her two sisters, Noel and
Carmen. Erin wasn’t too far behind.
“What precautions do you have set up?” he asked as they
jogged toward the barn housing the horses.
“I’ve got a stockade of fi re extinguishers and blankets in
the barn. If the fi re gets out of control, we’ve got vehicles
prepared to transport the animals.”
“Good. I’m going to get Liam.”
Nodding, she didn’t break stride as she headed for the
barn.
He’d sent his brother to round up the rest of his pack. At
least the wind had shown mercy on them and died down.
Despite the slightly damp ground, he’d noticed how thick her
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pasture was. The recently wet weather had probably prevented her from doing contained burns earlier in the year. A
fi re could still lap up this foliage. And fast.
One shift in the wind and the now small fi re could spread
out of control all the way to the mountains. He couldn’t let
that happen. He’d come here to take care of her, and that was
what he was going to do.
As he neared the cabins on the south end of the circle,
Liam and his seven men streamed out, half-dressed.
“They’ve got fi re extinguishers in the barn. Grab a couple
each.” He turned on his heel after shouting the order. His
guys wouldn’t need to be told twice.
He risked a quick glance in the direction of the field as he
sprinted toward the barn. Flames painted the field in a bath
of orange and yellow, but it didn’t look out of control yet.
When he raced inside, he found Carmen and Noel passing
extinguishers to their packmates.
Wordlessly each female took one and raced out the other
end of the building. They were like a well-oiled machine.
“Give me two and give my guys two,” he said as Carmen
handed him one. Ana wasn’t anywhere to be seen, so he
guessed she was already at the fire.
Panic bubbled inside him but he forced it back down. This
fi re wasn’t an accident. If he had to guess, he’d say that bastard Taggart had set it. Maybe in an attempt to scare him off,
or maybe as punishment for Ana. He didn’t know and he
didn’t care. This type of shit wasn’t going to happen under
his watch.
Whoever had set it better pray they weren’t still hanging
around. If he scented anyone who didn’t belong, they were
going to pay tonight.
His boots pounded over the grass. As he neared the fire, his
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spirits lifted a fraction. The women had formed a giant half
circle and started dousing the blaze. It had grown to the size of
a small swimming pool, but it was fairly well contained.
As he raced around to the other side and unleashed a
stream of white foam from an extinguisher, he realized Ana
wasn’t there. He couldn’t see in the pitch-black, but thanks to
his extrasensory abilities he could see better than humans.
Though he didn’t want to leave, he set the extinguisher down
and hurried away from the fi re when he spotted Ana racing
across the dark field. Still in her human form, she was fullout sprinting toward the fence line.
That’s when he scented it. Someone who didn’t belong.
Definitely male. And he was close.
Danger.
Something deep and primal inside Connor flared to life.
Protect Ana. The two words sounded in his head like a gong.
He had to protect his mate. At this point semantics didn’t
matter. She might not be mated to him, but his inner wolf
would protect her at all costs.
His canines started to lengthen but he willed himself not
to shift forms. Not until he understood the situation.
“Ana!” he called her name as he ran after her.
She glanced over her shoulder at him but barely paused.
Now he was thirty yards from her.
Panic surged through him. What the hell was she doing?
Didn’t she smell the threat? As he covered the distance
between them he spotted a pair of glowing amber eyes in the
forest. The animal hovered just inside the tree line to the east.
It was far enough away that it couldn’t attack Ana, but he
didn’t care.
A feral growl tore from his throat. The sound was foreign
even to him.
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Twenty yards and closing.
“Damn it, Ana! Stop!”
To his surprise she jerked to a halt. Because of his command? He wasn’t sure. As he came up to her, she didn’t turn
to look at him.
“What the hell are you doing, woman?” he barked.
“Adalita,” she said softly, still not glancing at him.
“What?”
“There.” She nodded to the west, right by the tree line,
but didn’t make any sudden movements.
A brown horse whinnied and kept trotting back and forth
nervously. Connor had been so focused on Ana and the threat
that he hadn’t noticed the other animal.
“She’s my horse and she was locked up earlier,” Ana continued.
The nervous, almost pained note in her voice told him a
lot. She truly cared about this animal.
“Stay here,” he murmured, and headed toward it.
“No.” She grasped his upper arm tightly. “She might run
from you.”
“Trust me, okay?” He looked into her dark eyes. She
opened her mouth once as if to argue but nodded.
It was a small act but it touched him that she was putting
her trust in him. “I saw a wolf to the east of us. It’s probably
one of Taggart’s and I think it’s gone, but don’t go anywhere.”
Without waiting for a response he strode toward Ana’s
horse. Keeping his movements steady but casual, he quickly
breached the distance. Adalita pounded her hoof against the
ground twice, as if ready to charge, but the closer he got, the
calmer she became.
Animals had an innate sense of survival. She knew he
wouldn’t hurt her. By now she was obviously used to the scent
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of lupine shifters. Connor murmured soothing sounds until
he stood directly in front of her. He reached out his palm and
let her smell him. When she didn’t bolt, he gently petted her,
then loosely grabbed her mane.
Without bothering to get on her back he hurried the horse
back toward Ana, who hadn’t moved.
“Thank you. I—”
“Ride her back to the barn.”
“What?”
“I don’t know if Taggart or his wolves are still in the
woods. Now ride.” He could barely think straight, knowing
danger lurked so close to them. To her.
She wanted to argue. He could see it in the stubborn set of
her jaw, but she did as he said. Part of him knew he needed to
stop with the demands, but he didn’t want to waste time worrying about being polite when all he cared about was getting
her to safety.
As Ana rode back to the barn, he ran toward the fi re.
Flames still licked into the sky, but the extinguishers did their
job. After what felt like an eternity they managed to douse
the flames. Tonight could have gone a lot different if not for
Ana’s preparedness.
He couldn’t help but be impressed by how quickly she and
all the women had acted. Even if he hadn’t been there the
Cordona women would have had no problem taking care of
the fi re. Of course, it never should have happened in the fi rst
place.
The dwindling smoke curled into the cold night air, wrapping around all of them. The chemical scent of accelerant was
unmistakable. Whoever had set this hadn’t tried to cover it.
Even a human could smell the kerosene permeating the air.
N
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He stiffened as Ana circled around her packmates, heading
straight for him.
His heart beat faster and he had to contain the lust flowing through him. He didn’t want to scare her even more.
She stopped a foot away from him. Her dark eyes were
expressionless. “I’ll do it.”
“What?” He frowned, unsure what she referred to.
“I’ll mate with you on a temporary basis. If it’ll save my
pack I’ll do almost anything. I just can’t agree to be your
bondmate. I’m sorry, Connor. We haven’t seen each other in
decades, and I—” She shook her head and her voice broke on
the last word. Her normally silvery voice was distant, remote,
and it clawed at his insides.
Not exactly what he’d wanted to hear. And it was his own
damn fault. He should have romanced her, courted her, like
she deserved. Taken things slow. Told her how he really felt
about her and why he’d left all those years ago. Instead he’d
barged in like a jackass and made demands. After what had
happened she’d probably agree to mate with just about anyone who wasn’t Taggart, to save her pack. Shame burned
through him like swift, hot lava at the way he’d pushed her
into that proverbial corner, but he couldn’t take back what
he’d said. Demanded. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t
know that he wanted to. Part of him— a very selfish part—
knew that if he pushed her now he could probably get her to
agree to be his bondmate. But the human part that deeply
cared for her won out and he kept his mouth shut.
Despite his better judgment, he slipped an arm around her
shoulder and pulled her close. She didn’t look at him, but
kept her face against his chest. She felt so fragile in his
embrace. It killed him to think she’d been by herself the past
N
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couple months, taking care of her pack without any help.
And he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t contacted him.
He buried his face in her hair and inhaled her fresh scent. This
close to her, it overpowered the smoke.
“Ana, are you sure? I . . .” I’ll protect you anyway. The
words were on the tip of his tongue. He shouldn’t have made
those demands, but he couldn’t squeeze out the words. He
was a selfish bastard. He’d wanted her for so long, the need
nearly smothered him sometimes. Instead, he wrapped his
other arm around her and pulled her into a tight hug.
She stiffened for an instant before slipping her arms
around his waist and returning his embrace. That small gesture of surrender turned him inside out. Her fi ngers dug into
his back with surprising intensity, and he wondered how long
it had been since she’d let someone hold her. The mere thought
of someone else comforting her sent another dagger through
his chest.
After a long moment, she looked up at him. There was a
flicker of something in her dark eyes that he didn’t recognize.
Wasn’t sure he wanted to. Finally she spoke and her voice was
soft. “I’m sure. I’ll be proud to call you my mate.”
Something foreign pushed up inside him. He was a mongrel who’d been roaming the globe since his parents died
more than a century ago. After his father had shamed their
family by not protecting what was his, he and Liam had been
thrust out into the world on their own and with nothing. She
shouldn’t be proud, especially when she deserved better. Hell,
she was probably saying what she thought he wanted to hear.
Swallowing hard, he reluctantly released her. “I’ll make the
announcement in the morning. Have your she-wolves meet in
the barn at seven.”
She dipped her head in acknowledgment and stepped out
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of his embrace. As he looked around the quiet circle of wolves,
he realized kerosene and smoke weren’t the only things he
smelled. Desire and hunger rolled off most of his pack.
As long as it wasn’t directed at Ana, he didn’t care. He
might be their Alpha, but they’d all agreed to come here after
a vote. His guys had all been loners for decades until he and
his brother had convinced each of them to form a new pack.
A stronger pack. Settling here and taking mates was the best
thing for all of them if they wanted to flourish.
Teresa, Ana’s cousin, stretched out on Ana’s bed and put her
hands behind her head. “You think Carmen and Noel can
hear us?”
Ana rolled her eyes as she pictured her two sisters as she’d
left them, drinking wine and munching on salty popcorn.
“No. They’re downstairs, watching one of those stupid reality shows.”
Her cousin grinned. “They’re worse than my sisters—but
that’s not what you want to talk about. Since you and I both
know we could have handled that fi re on our own, I can’t
believe you actually agreed to mate with Connor Armstrong.”
Ana scowled at her as she paced at the end of the bed.
“This isn’t about the damn fi re and you know it. Things have
been escalating, so what choice do I have?”
“We could contact the Council and tell them about Taggart’s harassment.” There was no fi re behind Teresa’s words
and Ana knew why.
“Great idea. And then what? They’ll send an investigator
down here and likely find him guilty. I’m sure there’s at least
one female in his pack willing to testify against him, in addition to me.”
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Teresa raised both her eyebrows. “Those females are so
weak and brainwashed, I doubt it.”
“Whatever. Speaking hypothetically, say he’s punished—
and probably executed. You know what will happen after
that. The enforcer will clean up his mess, but instead of being
free we’re the ones who will get the shaft. Not right away, but
eventually it will happen unless one of us mates with an
Alpha.” Some days she hated pack law so much she wanted to
run screaming to the humans to intervene, but she knew that
would cause more trouble. Humans didn’t understand anything about their laws and would just make everything worse.
And the Council wouldn’t allow her to remain in control
indefinitely if she came running to them with every little
problem. Even if Taggart was out of the way, she knew
another pack would come sniffi ng around, wanting to take
their land under the guise of protection. Most Alphas would
take no for an answer and leave her alone. But all it would
take was one land-hungry Alpha challenging her for control
of the Cordona pack, and there would be no one to stand up
for her family. She could appeal to the Council if they didn’t
want to assimilate with that pack, but they’d have to make a
choice on who they wanted as their leader. Or they could just
sell their land. Without valuable property, neither she nor her
pack would be of any interest to other packs. Absolutely
archaic and total bullshit, but that’s just the way it was. And
while she hated some of the laws, she loved the others. Having the protection of a strong pack meant sleeping soundly at
night and not worrying about survival. Their rules dated
back thousands of years and though one day they might
change, it wouldn’t be now. Hell, their own North American
Council had been around only forty years, and that semiunification was a pretty big, civilized step for their kind.
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They’d been created to keep communication open between
packs and to protect packs in positions such as hers. Without
them she’d have had no one to turn to in this kind of situation.
“I know,” Teresa muttered. “It’s just . . . I don’t like the
thought of you sacrificing yourself to be Connor’s mate.”
To her horror, Ana’s cheeks heated up. Her traitorous
body flared to life at the thought of mating with him. Her
breasts were suddenly heavy as she pictured what he could do
with those strong, callused hands. The mere thought of him
rubbing his palms over her breasts and . . .
“Woman, I don’t even want to know what you’re thinking
about.” Teresa sat up and brought her knees to her chest, a
wicked grin on her face.
Ana cleared her throat and tried to get her lust under control. Now was so not the time for this. And the mating would
be only temporary. Her pack needed an Alpha until she could
figure out what else she could do. She couldn’t keep warding
off Taggart forever, and soon someone could truly get hurt
because of him. If anything happened to one of her sisters—
or any of her pack— she’d never forgive herself if she thought
she could have done something about it. “Connor’s offer is a
good one. At least we know him and his brother, and if the
Council has officially recognized them it means they have the
financial wherewithal to support all of us.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Teresa pushed off the bed and stood.
“Sleep on it and we’ll tell your sisters in the morning, unless
you change your mind by then.” She gave her a quick kiss on
the cheek before leaving.
After she’d gone, Ana stripped out of her clothes and fell
onto her bed. Sleep on it. Good advice, but it wasn’t going to
happen. Not with Connor in the same vicinity. Every time
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she closed her eyes all she could picture was that ruggedly
handsome face, his broad shoulders, strong arms . . . Groaning, she turned over and screamed into her pillow. It was
going to be an annoyingly long night.
N
Lounging casually on the bench outside the Native American
gift shop, Chuck took a long drag of his cigarette. He savored
the smell and taste of tobacco. Darkness had fallen early, but
downtown Fontana, North Carolina, was lit up like a fucking Christmas tree. Literally. Twinkle lights were strung up
around most of the light poles in the historic downtown.
Everything about Fontana was quaint, picturesque. Boring.
Nestled between the Beech Mountain and Sugar Mountain
ski resorts, it was almost identical to the other mountain
towns. Christmas was almost two months away but storefronts already had holiday scenes in the windows, and joyful,
annoying music blared most of the day. The place was too
damn peaceful, too cheerful. It was like the people didn’t
realize a revolution was coming.
What would it take for them to get it? When the streets
were decorated with blood and bodies they would. Then it
would be too late.
Two different packs of fucking shifter animals lived right
on the outskirts of town and people didn’t care. Most were
even friendly to them. It was insane. Even more insane than
all the interracial couples he saw lately. That shit just seemed
to flood television and movies. Tainting the pure white bloodline of their ancestors with filth. People were so immune to it
that nothing fazed them anymore. So why should a group of
freaks who could turn into animals be any different? America had turned into the land of pussies.
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He took another drag of his cig and glanced away when a
young white couple strolled by, walking a yappy little dog.
The dog was a waste of space, but at least they were dating
their own race. All the stores were closing, so most people
were down a few blocks where the restaurants were, but he
didn’t want to chance getting noticed. Chuck knew he looked
casual enough. Wearing jeans and a dark blue hoodie thick
enough to block him from the icy wind, he fit in perfectly.
And the gloves he wore weren’t out of place. It was too cold
not to be wearing them.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. When he saw the number
he rolled his eyes. This jackass was constantly checking up on
him. Chuck could barely stand to look at Adler and his nasty
burned face, but the older man was technically his boss. He
wasn’t a high-ranking leader in the Antiparanormal League
but he was still one of their local leaders. And if Chuck was
honest, the man scared the shit out of him sometimes.
He answered the throwaway phone on the third ring,
knowing the delay would annoy Adler. “Yeah?”
“Is it done?”
“No. The bitch is still closing up shop.”
“Don’t kill her!” Adler’s gravelly voice was condescending.
Chuck gritted his teeth. He already knew that. But because
Adler’s boss was breathing down his neck to grab this woman
meant Chuck had to take flack from Adler. “I know. I don’t
need a fucking babysitter. I told you I could handle this and I
can. It’s just one old woman.”
“This is your fi rst assignment. Don’t get too cocky.”
But it wasn’t. Not by a long shot, he thought with a grin.
Just his fi rst with the APL. “If you have so many doubts why
didn’t you do this yourself?” Chuck asked the question even
though he already knew the answer. With his scarred face it
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was difficult for Adler to blend in anywhere. People would
remember him. That’s why Chuck had been sent.
“Remember who you’re talking to, son.” The deadly edge
to Adler’s voice sent an unexpected chill up his spine.
Chuck cursed his fear and he cursed the man on the other
end of the line for instilling it in him. He’d seen what Adler
did to people who failed him— and to women in general. The
man was a misogynist of the worst kind. He didn’t even like
white women. Something Chuck didn’t understand. Women
were great, all softness and femininity, as long as they were
white. Adler didn’t seem to think so, though. He hated them
all. Fucking idiot. And he wanted to tell him how to do
his job?
He cleared his throat. “No disrespect, sir. I’ll call you
when I have her.”
As they disconnected, the lights to the store dimmed.
Finally. How long did it take to close up her pathetic little
shop? He glanced to the left and right. There weren’t any
locals or tourists strolling by. Tourists didn’t venture into
town after dark anyway. They usually spent most of their
time at the big ski lodge a few miles down the road.
The Indian woman, or Native American or whatever they
called themselves now, flicked a quick glance in his direction
as she stepped outside and locked her door. Her long, dark
braid hung down her back. His free hand balled into a fist.
With hair like that it would be easy to restrain her if she tried
to run.
Holding her purse tightly against her side, she hurried
down the sidewalk in the direction opposite the restaurants.
He’d been watching her for a couple days, so he knew where
she usually parked.
Tossing away his cigarette, he stood and kept pace a few
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A LP H A IN STIN CT
33
yards behind her. His rubber-soled shoes were silent against
the icy sidewalk. They’d salted the ground earlier, so it was
easy to keep up.
His heart pounded against his ribs as he closed in on her.
Withdrawing his KA-BAR, he drew in a quiet, cold breath.
He was so close he could reach out and touch her. The old
woman didn’t even know he was there.
A powerful wave of adrenaline hummed through him.
This must be what those aberrations felt like when they
hunted someone. Powerful. It felt good, filling him with an
almost superhuman strength. Being the hunter was so much
better than being the prey.
As she neared the end of the string of shops she started to
turn toward him. They weren’t going to kill her— at fi rst—
but he couldn’t risk her seeing him.
Lunging, he slammed her face-fi rst against the brick wall.
Pressing his knife into her neck, he didn’t say a word. He
loathed being this close to her but he didn’t have a choice.
To his surprise she didn’t cower in fear.
Flailing and struggling against his hold, she screamed.
Loud and long. The piercing sound burned his ears.
“Hey!” A hostile male voice from behind him startled
him into action.
Shit! Grabbing the back of her head, he slammed it into
the wall. Adler wanted her alive, but she wouldn’t shut up.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. She was old and
he had a knife. She cried out again so he slammed her again.
This time she crumpled.
“I’m calling the police!” This time the male voice was
louder, closer. He didn’t turn around because he didn’t want
anyone to see his face.
As the woman slumped to the ground he grabbed her
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deposit bag and sprinted down the street. Since he’d been
noticed, he needed this to look like a robbery, nothing more.
Adler would definitely kill him if anything got traced back to
the APL. The police reacted fairly fast in this small town, so
he had to hurry. As he neared the end of the block he took a
sharp left, then stripped off his hoodie and tossed it into some
bushes. His long-sleeved orange shirt was a far cry from the
dark sweater.
Only now did he risk a glance behind him. No one had
followed him, but he kept running. He’d parked his car a few
blocks over and he needed to make it there fast.
Adler was going to be pissed that he’d failed. That thought
alone caused another surge of panic to hum through him.
Chuck had done a lot worse to stronger people. Why the hell
had he gotten so cocky just because she was old? He’d been
so focused on grabbing her that everything else around him
had funneled out. That wouldn’t happen again. No matter
what, he was going to get his target in the end. He always did.
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DIRE NEEDS
A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan
by Stephanie Tyler
Available now in paperback from Signet Eclipse
Feared by humans, envied by werewolves, the Dire Wolves
are immortal shifters, obeying no laws but their own bestial natures. Once there were many, but now only six
remain, a dangerous wolf pack forever on the hunt . . .
Rifter leads the pack, embracing the lifestyle and ethics of
an outlaw biker even as he battles an ancient enemy who
has become a new, powerful force. But with his Brother
Wolf raging inside him, howling to be unleashed, he needs
to satisfy his hungers. And when he meets a drop-dead
gorgeous blonde drinking alone in a bar that caters to both
human and nonhumans, Rifter’s primal instinct is to
claim her.
Gwen has her own desires, long unfulfilled. She hopes
a passionate night with the leather- clad, Harley-riding
biker will ease her suffering. The seizures that have racked
her body her entire life are incurable— and they’re killing
her. But none of that will matter if Rifter can’t stop the
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growing threat to them all— trappers who are determined
to enslave humankind and use the Dire Wolves as part of
their nefarious plan.
“Fast-paced, dark, and wickedly edgy.”
—Larissa Ione, New York Times bestselling author of
Immortal Rider
“A unique, fresh spin on shape shifter romance.”
—Maya Banks, New York Times bestselling author of
Whispers in the Dark
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Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the
strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
—RUDYARD KIPLING, THE JUNGLE BOOK
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CHAPTER 1
Rifter needed a woman, Brother Wolf needed to run wild,
and their appetites for sex and destruction mingled, rose with
a hot howl as Rifter’s Harley roared through the winter night.
Both knew which appetite would have to be sated fi rst—
the fucking; then the running. Rifter and his wolf were usually on the same page in that regard. Tonight was no different,
and he slammed his Harley to a stop in front of Bite, one of
the many bars along the strip, because he smelled danger. He
stomped inside, ignoring the way the room stilled and everyone turned to watch him. After hundreds of years, that shit
got old, and he was well aware of what he looked like.
He was also well aware that no one in this room would
want to be him, if given the chance. He could only pray no
one ever would be put in that position again.
No, he was already part of a pack of the last six living
Dire wolves, who cursed their immortality and wore their
ferocity on their sleeves because they literally had nothing to
lose.
Created by Hati, son of a Norse god, and watched over by
a mystical clan of Elders, Rifter was six feet eight inches of
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raw muscle and more than seven feet, three hundred pounds
when he was Brother Wolf, which explained the pain of the
transition..
Brother Wolf was part of him—when he was driving the
ship, Rifter could request things, and vice versa, but they
were both equal in power. It was the only way they could
inhabit one body. He had a great deal of respect for his wolf,
knew what Brother needed and when he needed it. Brother
did the same for him.
If one of them died, the other would too.
We should be that lucky, he thought, and Brother howled
in response inside his head, reminding him of why they’d
come here in the first place.
Brother Wolf’s biggest goal—beyond chasing moons—
was to become Father Wolf. That could happen only by mating, and that shit was not happening anytime soon.
Rifter’s main goal was to die, but again, he’d be waiting
on that one forever.
One of the female Weres, laced into a black bustier, caught
up to him when he was halfway to the bar and rubbed her
body against his. “Where’ve you been, Rift?” she purred.
“Prison,” he said as he pushed past her, semidisgusted
that his response seemed to turn her on. Prison couldn’t hold
Rifter and Brother Wolf, and God knew humans had tried
more than once over the last centuries.
He took in the human motorcycle gang and the pack of
wolves who’d started their own version of Hells Angels, only
far more deadly, and then his nose led him to the young
woman sitting alone at the bar. She was doing shots and
swaying to the music, and she’d caught the bikers’ attention—
human and wolf—neither of which was a good thing.
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He knew immediately from the rumblings that she’d been
here too long.
Typically, the wolves stayed among their own, but lately,
they’d been mixing it up with the locals, and that wasn’t
going over all that well with the weretrappers. This bar was
owned and operated by a Were—but catered to humans as
well. The thing was, most humans beyond the weretrappers
didn’t believe that Weres existed at all, and the Weres and the
Dires had been able to pass as full human for as long as they
could remember.
He could deal with a fight to get his blood going. But fi rst
things first. He moved next to her, watched her turn to him,
look up at him. Her eyes widened— appreciation rather than
fear, and yeah, what the hell?
“You’re not in a good place,” he growled over the music.
“I’ve got a seat at the bar— that’s the best place,” she told
him, not slurring her words yet, but by the way she was
motioning to the bartender, she’d find herself doing so soon
enough.
She was human and he was drawn to her.
Making sure she’s safe.
Right, because he was a goddamned Boy Scout. He didn’t
give a shit about humans— those who knew about the existence of Weres were either terrified, or idiot groupies, or
hunting his kind. The wider the berth, the safer for all
involved. But there was something that yanked him to her, a
zing right to his cock that had him by her side, watching her
lick the salt from her hand, down the tequila and suck on the
lemon while staring at him with green eyes that were far from
innocent.
“I’m Gwen,” she said, her voice all hot and smoky soundN
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ing even though there wasn’t a cigarette in sight. She leaned
back and stared at him again and let a smile tug one corner
of her lips.
“Rifter.”
He knew she wanted to comment on the name, but she
didn’t. Instead, she reached out and played with a zipper on
his black leather jacket, then let a long finger roam over the
soft, smooth fabric. He could picture the black against her
creamy skin.
“I want to wear this,” she murmured.
“Later. Naked,” he told her and she stared at him, her
neck graceful, her body more so, and she looked like some
kind of aristocrat, like she should be in a ballroom instead of
here.
But she was here. There would be no female Weres for him
tonight, even though more were already circling. He picked up
on the low growls, because Dires never went for humans.
Everyone was confused, and he was president of the club.
He expected this to be all over fucking Facebook within
the hour. “I want to take you home,” he emphasized, in case
the naked part hadn’t been enough of a clue.
Have to. Need to. Fuck, he felt like dropping to his knees
and howling and it had nothing to do with the full moon.
She tilted her head and continued to study him.
“I’m not into anything beyond sex.” Blunt for sure, but he
had to make that clear.
A small smile played on her lips. “Don’t worry— I won’t
be around long enough to stalk your tall ass.”
“You’re moving?”
“Dying.” Rifter froze and she shrugged. “You’re not going
to let a little thing like that stop you from coming home with
me, right?”
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“You’re joking.”
“No, I don’t joke about death. Well, that’s not true— I’m
a doctor—we have to. Gallows humor keeps us from getting
too emotional.”
“You’re dying and so you’ve decided to pick up strange
men in dangerous bars.”
“It’s like one of those bad game-show questions—if you
found out you only had a short time left to live, what would
you do?” She laughed but there was little humor behind it. “I
have no idea what I want to do, besides not die.”
She looked healthy to him—healthy and beautiful, with
long blond hair, wearing leather, and she did fit in here, in a
weird way. And Christ, he could think of nothing more he
wanted to do than die. I-fucking-ronic, as Vice would say.
“How long do you have?”
“At least through the night. And it’s not catching,” she
added as an afterthought. “Are you worth it?”
He didn’t know how the hell to answer that. So he did so
truthfully. “Hell yes.”
“Then let’s go.”
Rifter checked to see if Vice was hanging around, because
women sometimes acted this way with his packmate, who
was a walking ball of sin. But no, Vice was nowhere in sight
and everyone was antsy.
Goddamned full fucking moon. Like a bitch with a whip.
He didn’t bother to fight the urge to pick her up, and he
slung her over his shoulder, caveman-style, grabbing her
jacket off the back of her chair. He heard her startled, soft
gasp, but she didn’t protest as he walked out with her, daring
any of the wolves to follow him.
They all knew what he was— they may not like him, but
they sure as hell knew to respect his power.
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When he got to his bike, he set her down and handed her
the coat. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, her black tank
top had ridden up a little along her belly and her cheeks
flushed from the cold. “Thanks for the ride.”
“That was nothing.”
She refused the helmet he offered, instead wrapping her
arms around as much of his waist as she could, and off they
went. Normally, he didn’t give a shit about the icy roads, but
his passenger wasn’t as indestructible as he was. Though he
gave the bike lots of gas, he didn’t get stupid on icy corners
and snowy shoulders. After a while, she was no longer holding on and had put her hands in the air, yelling into the wind.
He went faster because it seemed to excite her.
When he stopped in front of her house, a pretty little Victorian in the middle of nowhere, she hopped off and he followed her as she walked up the path. Before she could get to
the door, he took her arm and pulled her close and brought
his mouth down on hers before he could stop himself. She
tasted like sugar and cranberries— tart and sweet— and he
wanted more. Wanted it all, and Brother Wolf seemed to
agree, as he was ignoring the running in favor of letting Rifter
take his time.
When he pulled back, her lips were swollen and she was
breathing hard and he was glad about that. “Every guy in
that bar wanted to take you home tonight. Why me?”
Her eyes flicked over him coolly. “You were the biggest.”
He couldn’t tell if she was joking.
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CHAPTER 2
Gwen wasn’t. He was huge. Really freaking huge—built like
a brick shithouse, long, shaggy blond hair, hard jaw, cut
cheekbones and those eyes—holy hell, they were gorgeous.
Gray and blue and black and brown, all speckled like a kaleidoscope that could pull her really far in.
She’d more than noticed him when he’d walked in—no,
she’d felt him.
Rifter. Even the name tugged at her.
He wouldn’t be gentle, and she was so tired of being
treated carefully. She just needed to get through the next few
hours without a seizure.
“Just give me a few minutes, okay?” she asked, and he
nodded, his gaze raking over her as he stripped off his leather
jacket and threw it across her couch. Looked between it and
her, and my God, she already felt naked.
He made her already small house seem like it was made
for dolls, but somehow, she’d fit against him surprisingly
well, despite the height difference. Her lips felt well kissed
and her body strummed in anticipation of more.
“Just a minute,” she repeated and backed out of the room
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before she stripped down and jumped him. A little tequila
and all her carefully held self-control obviously had disintegrated.
In the privacy of her bedroom, she downed a couple of
extra pills, the newest in a long line prescribed by the neuro,
but they wouldn’t work. None of them ever worked for long,
which was why she’d had to choose between med school and
having a life. Well, more so than the average med student,
because the damned seizures got in the way of everything and
the meds made her stupid or silly or sleepy.
She was tempted to throw them away, but then functioning would be gone. She was already living with a death sentence, so why make it harder?
God, the morning’s neuro appointment couldn’t have been
any worse. She’d demanded the truth and she’d gotten it.
“The seizures will kill you,” he’d said. “You’re close to
OD’ing on the meds and they’re not helping. The activity is
everywhere. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The MRI film left little doubt: The length and increasing
severity of each episode debilitated her—inside her brain was
the perfect storm of electrical impulses.
“Feel free to use my case as a write-up,” she’d told him,
and the doctor’s mouth had twisted in empathy and pain.
He’d been frank but not unsympathetic.
She’d gone straight to the bar from the consult.
Tomorrow, she’d go back to work for a twenty-four-hour
shift because what else was she supposed to do? Stay in bed
with this man for the next few weeks?
She peeked out at Rifter, the breadth of his back taking
her breath away. The leather jacket lay on her couch and she
shivered, thinking about the way she’d be wearing it.
There were definitely worse ways to go.
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He was looking out the window, no doubt because there
was nothing else to look at, unless he liked medical textbooks. For the fi rst time, she saw her place through someone
else’s eyes and realized how stark it was.
The house was white walls, bare floors. Rented. Even the
furniture wasn’t hers. The linens were bought on the cheap—
without much thought, at the closest store when they’d had a
sale. Everything was disposable because she never wanted to get
that attached to anything—or even anyone, something she
admitted to herself only in moments of extreme honesty—again.
She didn’t want roommates— didn’t want to live in a dorm
or an apartment with people. In the past years, being around
them had made her feel crowded, like she wanted to jump out
of her own skin.
No, the only thing that had given her peace over the past
years had been her daily runs. Sometimes she went twice, if
only to feel the freedom of the wind on her face, the road
before her open, her feet flying across the ground.
She wondered what would happen if she simply continued
running without looking back, running until she literally
dropped.
She’d lost so much and now she was literally losing time,
sand through an hourglass that slipped through her hands no
matter how tightly she fisted it. And her house mocked her
now, a blank slate, much like her life. She’d thrown herself
into medicine, wanting a way to make people feel better in
the way no doctor had ever really been able to help her.
At fi rst, the seizures hadn’t been an issue. They’d been
well controlled, almost suppressed while she was growing up,
but when she’d hit twenty-one, they exploded, and four years
later they were daily occurrences. She’d been so good— slept
as much as she could, ate well, exercised.
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Being good was so overrated. No one ever looked back on
their lives and thought, Well, at least I was good.
She’d bet even Mother Teresa had regrets about that.
And so, when she’d gone to the bar tonight, she’d been
looking to feed those long-buried instincts, her nerve endings
tingling as she’d downed the tequila, as if her body was thanking her for finally allowing it some enjoyment.
How long had it been for her? Felt like forever since she’d
had to choose between medicine and men. She couldn’t believe
she was still a goddamned virgin.
She’d made her bed and now she was so ready to undo it
and experience it all.
Funny thing— she didn’t feel like a virgin. It was like her
body knew what it needed, and now that she was finally giving in to that baser set of pleasures, it would guide her with
touchstones every step of the way, starting with the man she’d
brought home.
And so she went back out to Rifter. “Can I get you anything?”
“You.” He tugged her to him without further preamble.
She liked that—having spent her life dealing with logic and
science, and with her disease these last years, it was wonderful simply to give in.
Tonight she’d worn black leather pants, boots and a tight
black top and had felt more like herself than she had in a long
time. But now she just wanted skin to skin—needed to strip
all the clothes off and roll around with this man. She reached
up to twine her hands in his hair, pulling his face to hers for
a kiss.
He tasted better than any drug or drink—instant intoxication.
His hands skimmed her body, cupped her breasts and
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then lifted her shirt and broke the kiss to pull it off her. It flew
over her head with a soft breeze as his hands cupped her ass,
his arousal thick against her belly.
“Beautiful.” His voice was husky, and for a minute she
was sure she couldn’t breathe, because he looked at her with
such hunger . . . she’d never felt more wanted in her entire
life.
She tilted her head up, sure he would kiss her again, or
touch her breasts, take her pants off before she got more frantic, but he didn’t.
Instead, he tilted his head, but only to look at her strangely.
Narrowed his eyes and moved his hands from her ass to her
waist, as if holding her up.
“I understand if you’re freaked. But I’m not going to die in
bed with you. At least I don’t think so,” she muttered.
“Death doesn’t scare me.”
“I suspect not much does.”
He nodded his agreement but he still didn’t move.
It took her another thirty seconds to understand why, and
by then it was far too late to stop anything.
Brother Wolf caught the scent fi rst—the bitter, cloying tang
of trouble— and then Rifter smelled it as well. It was the odor
of a shift from human to wolf form. But the shift wasn’t his,
and Rifter went on full alert, a low growl rumbling up from
his chest. He tensed, prepared to bolt outside to find whatever stray wolf was prowling nearby, but a heartbeat later,
Gwen collapsed in his arms and the scent dissipated.
Brother Wolf howled, wanted to pace restlessly, and it was
then that Rifter understood.
Seizure. Shit, in all his years, had he really never been
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around a seizing human before to notice that a seizure smelled
like a wolf shift? Quickly, he lowered her to the bed, kept her
on her side facing him and watched her body struggle, fighting with itself for control. Gwen would hate him for witnessing this, but he couldn’t leave her. And goddamn, that
bothered the shit out of him, since he’d known this human
for less than an hour.
He looked toward the night table, checked the drawer as
he kept a hand on her and rifled through the pill bottles,
wondering if any of these might help. But Brother Wolf was
calming down a little now, and Rifter hoped that was a good
sign.
She was still helpless— she probably hated that most of all.
The only thing he could do to comfort her was sometimes
not a comfort at all. He had the ability to dreamwalk, which
made him a sort of human dream catcher by default. He
could hold someone’s nightmare at bay or help them through
it by absorbing the fear and pain.
His curse alternately freaked and pissed off the Dires, and
the Weres who knew about it. But his pull was strong and
there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot his family of Dires could do
about it when he would involuntarily walk through their
dreams in order to capture their nightmares.
The pack hated being so vulnerable to him, hated that he
was forced to carry all their fears, but that had been his ability since he’d been born. He’d learned to deal with the burdens he carried and the fallout that came with them.
As a child, he’d been confused by the ability, but as he got
older, his mother explained, It’s a blessing. It was only before
his Running that he’d been told that he’d actually been cursed
with the ability, not born with it, and that he’d never be free
of it.
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Still, it helped him to keep track of what was happening in
his pack.
While Jinx didn’t love it, he was used to it—his own born
ability of being able to talk to ghosts and helping them pass
over into the spirit world meant someone was always fucking
with his mind, and he would typically tell Rifter to just get
the fuck out.
Vice was usually too busy indulging in one of his vices to
give a shit what Rifter did. The man was born with seven
deadly sins rolled into one sinful-as-hell body that women
and men—both human and wolf— couldn’t get enough of.
And although he couldn’t be separated from the sins that
ruled his life, his ability let him use those extremes to help
others find their balance.
Stray’s dreams were almost completely quiet— centered
more on hiding and being caught— and Rifter often wondered if he had the power to block Rifter from them, but he
never asked. No, Stray was jumpy enough, having been found
fifty years earlier in some back alley. He’d been separated
from the pack after what the Elders called the Extinction,
when they had smote all living Dire wolves except for them
during the Viking Age Extinction, and ended up nearly losing
his mind from lack of pack company.
These days, he spent most of his time hanging at the
house, listing to old-school eighties metal and keeping up
with the latest technology. But man, Rifter would let Stray
have his back during a fight any damned time.
If the man had an ability beyond being an immortal Dire,
he hadn’t let anyone in on it, although Rifter had his suspicions.
And then there was Rogue—Jinx’s twin, who could contact spirits. Rogue, who’d been captured months earlier by
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the weretrappers, a group not unlike homegrown terrorists
who wanted to experiment on Weres and Dires. Lately, there
were rumors that the trappers planned to clone the Weres for
some kind of superarmy to use for their own purposes.
The weretrappers were humans, but they’d made a deal
with the witches— one of whom was Rifter’s former best
friend, Seb, and now the trappers had some powerful spells
on their side.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Rifter and the other Dires were charged with keeping the
rest of the humans safe from the evil that could entail.
But he didn’t want to think about Seb right now. Not
when Rifter could close his eyes and still hear Rogue’s howls
in the night. They’d gotten him back, but not until terrible
things had been done to him.
Rifter knew from personal experience what kinds of horrors the man and his wolf had endured. He’d been with Rogue
that night six months earlier. Both had been captured and
taken to separate cells. It took Rifter three weeks to escape
and take Rogue with him.
By that time, the man was a shell of his former self.
Now Rogue remained in the attic of the house, as comfortable as they could make an immortal in a coma. Whether
he would come out of it— and how he would be when he
did—remained to be seen.
Rogue’s mind was a terrifying blank, and Rifter couldn’t
get inside, no matter how hard he tried.
And then there was the one they rarely spoke of: Harm—
aka Harmony— the Dire who could calm the masses or incite
riots with his singing, who’d gone out on his own thousands
of years earlier and most recently made a name for himself as
the unpredictable superstar singer of a rock band and who
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now lived as a recluse. Rifter would rip his fucking head off
if he ever found the man—rip it off every day for the rest of
his miserable life for the danger he’d put all of them in.
Along with the six of them were the Weres they’d let into
their Dire pack, mainly those who’d gone rogue from their
own packs because they were too mean or rowdy or didn’t
follow direction well . . . or they were still moon crazed, like
the young twins Jinx had taken under his wing.
They listened to the Dires. Had their backs. The Weres
weren’t nearly as strong as the Dires, but they were formidable powers in their own right.
And oh yeah, no female Dires, because there were none.
The Extinction that occurred in the eleventh century, toward
the end of the Viking Age had taken care of that, left the
remaining male Dires with immortality and a shitload of
gifts they did not want.
The female Weres they hung with as part of their group
were cool, and they could handle the Dires moderately well,
sexually and otherwise, if they weren’t newly shifted. It took
a hell of a lot for a Dire to be with a human. Rifter couldn’t
remember the last time he’d let that happen but suspected it
was right after he’d shifted for the fi rst time, the moon craze
making him goddamned insane with lust and hunger, and
Brother Wolf hadn’t had any measure of control either.
Slowly, the two of them pulled back, got some form of measured control and agreed to keep their shit together.
Brother Wolf tugged—rightfully so, because Rifter was
encroaching on his time—but he couldn’t leave Gwen now.
She was still twitching, a restless combination of sleep and
unconsciousness, and nowhere near peaceful. He remained
fi rmly rooted in reality, not attempting to enter her dreams
like he itched to.
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The dreamwalking had become worse in the months leading up to his capture. Since Rogue’s coma, it had only gone
downhill. Rifter had always been able to control it, but lately,
his own dreams had been stranger. He’d wake up speaking
the old language, unable to remember where he’d been.
The dreams were draining him. He wasn’t scared of anything, but they freaked him the fuck out.
Jinx did what he could to help keep the dreams at bay,
which included the use of Native American dream catchers,
while Rifter actively tried not to sleep. Much. And even
though he’d promised Jinx and the others that he wouldn’t do
this because they couldn’t be sure the new dreams weren’t the
insidious work of Seb and his witches, Rifter pulled off the
dream-catcher necklace and put it around Gwen’s neck
instead. Then he prepared to put himself in a danger he’d
sworn not to.
He closed his eyes, her hand in his large one, her skin soft
and smooth and cool, and goddamn, it would feel good on
his cock. But this wasn’t about him, and he had nothing but
time, so he could afford to be magnanimous.
He settled into a light sleep. The push into her subconscious wasn’t effortless, which was strange, because in her
state, there should have been no resistance.
But very few could resist him for long, especially humans.
Finally he broke through and began the dreamwalk— a
combination of actually walking through the person’s dreams
and then influencing said dreams. A handy skill. Inside Gwen’s
dreams, he got sucked into a swirling mass of terror and confusion and . . . hope. Strangely enough, there was more of
that than anything.
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how, with the dreamwalk, he was both by Gwen’s side physically while his dream self walked with Gwen inside her mind.
In that dream state— suspended from the reality of her
world—he took her away from the pain and fear and put his
leather jacket on her, over her bra and underwear, even
though she wouldn’t really feel the cold, and holy Mother of
God, she looked fine. He almost stayed on the bed next to
her, but instead, he put her back on his bike . . . and because
they were in the dream, he rode faster than he ever would
with her in real life. She laughed, her hands in the air the way
they’d been before, and the vibrations rang through both like
a fever.
But Brother Wolf’s needs were becoming increasingly
hard to ignore, what with the white round bitch hanging in
the sky, and he needed to run. Had no choice but to take
Gwen with him.
Rifter’s skin tightened, and he didn’t fight the change
from man to beast. He reveled in it. Letting the wolf take
over was sometimes the easiest thing in the world . . . would
be so damned easy to let him take over full-time. And so he
was now Brother Wolf both in Gwen’s bedroom and in her
dream, and Brother Wolf complied by keeping his paw on
Gwen’s hand to not break Rifter’s way into her dream.
In the dream, though, Brother Wolf was free, and he
stopped and howled, and Gwen was watching warily. He
smelled the fear on her skin, watched her face pale and her
mouth gape in a frightened O, because, yeah, Brother Wolf
was a big, scary-looking motherfucker, although a hell of a
looker too. He shook his head and the fur around his neck
shifted, and then he bared his neck and howled, his way of
telling Gwen she was safe, although she wouldn’t know that.
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And obviously she didn’t because just then she backed up and
began to run from him.
He caught up to her and for a while they ran side by side,
until he stopped smelling her fear . . . until he saw the smile
on her face. Brother Wolf dusted up the leaves from the
ground, and they swirled around their feet, crunching in the
night. And when Brother Wolf sat, she even reached out—
hesitantly— and patted his back.
He gave a contented whimper in response. Bastard.
It was after one in the morning when Brother Wolf conceded. Rifter stood naked in front of her as she lay on the
forest ground on a blanket of old leaves untouched by the
snow, thanks to the thick covering of trees. She could see
pinpricks of moonlight coming from above, her body sated
from the run. As she gazed at him as if he was the best thing
she’d ever seen, it made him feel like beating his chest.
Father Wolf, Brother Wolf whispered in his ear.
His cock jutted out toward her, and in response she
reached to unhook her bra and stripped it and her underwear
and lay on the soft ground naked under the moonlight, waiting for him.
In the dream state, he was supposed to lead her through a
higher reality, a place she couldn’t get to herself. He wasn’t
supposed to gain pleasure from it, but he couldn’t help himself, not when her nipples tightened into perfect buds the
color of ripe berries, her breasts a little more than a handful.
A perfect blond triangle between her legs.
She had a runner’s body—lithe, long, finely muscled, and
his hand dipped between her thighs, a fi nger exploring the
wet heat. She would feel this to her core. Her hips already
began to rock against his hand in response to his touch, her
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fingers moved across her belly and her body thrashed, this
time for pure pleasure.
He couldn’t remember wanting a woman this much. He
wouldn’t take her like this, felt badly about doing this to her,
but judging by the length of her orgasm, she needed it.
She’d remember none of this—if she had a vague memory,
she’d think it was a hot dream.
He’d remember everything and it would haunt him for a
hell of a long time.
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CHAPTER 3
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Vice slammed into the bar, intent on finding the assholes who
called themselves the outlaws and decided they could take
over this town and fuck up the wolf thing. Stray was by his
side, primed and ready for a beat-down.
Separately, they were terror— together, fearsome, shitkicking Dire wolves whose existence was a mix of myth and
truth. The full moon tugged at them, a terrible, awesome
pull, and they were more than ready to shift. Overdue.
But the call had come in less then twenty minutes earlier,
one of the local Were bartenders telling them about rumors
of a fight brewing between two different werepacks. The weretrappers were circling, and it was up to the Dires, the fucking police of the Were world by default, to stop the trappers
without getting themselves captured.
The Dires, especially Vice and Stray, had been hunting
down the outlaw wolf pack for days. The Dires tried not to
get too involved in the werepack wars, but when Linus, the
king alpha of the New York City pack, called them back from
Europe six months earlier, the Dires willingly came to help
advise Linus and, if necessary, help quell the rebellion.
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Of course, that’s when Rifter and Rogue ran into their
own trouble with the weretrappers.
Linus had been able to quiet things down since the Dires
returned, but obviously not enough. The king had been murdered by his own once loyal wolves days earlier, and now
chaos ensued. Manhattan was in an uproar and Linus’s son
was missing, rumored to have died at the hands of the same
outlaw wolves.
But as far as Vice could see, there were no outlaws in the
bar and everyone appeared to be at peace.
Well good for fucking them.
“There are twenty weretrappers out back,” Stray reported
as he stopped to smell the air, then muttered, “Suicide
mission.”
“I wish,” Vice muttered, stomping ahead. “Just gonna
hurt like hell, and in the end, we’ll all still be alive.”
“We’ve been wanted since what feels like the dawn of
time—you’d think we’d be used to it by now,” Stray grumbled.
Vice’s eyes glowed. “Let me take care of them once and
for all.”
“Rifter’ll kill you—just do what we came to do and let’s
get the hell out.”
Stray was never any goddamned fun.
Then again, neither were the weretrappers, who were
humans, armed to the hilt with all kinds of silver shit, which
was deadly in large quantities to regular Weres but could do
nothing but cause extreme pain to the Dires. They could fight
through the pain— and would—but it would be far easier to
avoid contact with the stuff to begin with.
The weretrappers targeted all wolves— especially the
Dires lately—not to kill them, but to hold them for experimentation. The horrors they inflicted on wolves, the majority
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of whom stayed as far away from humans as they possibly
could, were unspeakable.
Vice had seen some of them fi rsthand on both Rifter’s and
Rogue’s bodies, and his gut twisted at the thought of what
they’d gone through.
He just wanted Rogue to wake up, no matter what state
he was in. Slept on the floor next to the man just in case. So
it was for Rogue that Vice was on the rampage, out to destroy
as many weretrappers as he could without getting himself
caught or drawing too much human attention to the packs.
Howlers was packed to the damned rafters, just the way
he liked it, with wine and women and various other vices that
would for sure lead a man astray.
Vice really liked astray, so much so that his entire life had
been molded around it. The music slammed through him—
the smells of Were and sex and smoke and whiskey washed
through his senses. When Stray turned back to him, his eyes
had already changed.
Vice knew his had too. It was controllable, but here, where
there was no need to control, he let something be goddamned
easy. And when a stripper—Were— slid by him, tits against
his chest, and he smelled her want, immediate and strong, he
wanted nothing more than to pick her up, carry her to the
back as she wrapped around him, telling him he’d be so
amazingly good.
He would be too. Fact of life and breeding and many,
many years of practice.
But Stray the killjoy simply shook his head, reminding
Vice they were just cutting through the bar and not supposed
to be enjoying themselves. But hell, turning it off was never
that simple.
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Misconduct, misbehaving and sin—yeah, those were a
few of his favorite fucking things . . .
Vice made it his life’s work that all the people he’d come
in contact with found their favorites too, because what the
hell was more fun than that? He was born to lead people
astray, take them off the beaten path, travel the road not
taken.
Den of iniquity was tattooed across his back because his
entire being was one, along with the words mayhem and
deviant. They didn’t stop the women— and the men—from
wanting him. The wolves all knew better and gave him a
wide-as-hell berth. They didn’t want to be pulled into his
world of sin, and Vice knew it was better they weren’t all in
the damned gutter with him.
“According to Facebook, Rifter left the bar with a human.”
Stray was checking his iPhone as they pushed through the
crowds. “Twitter confirms.”
“I fucking hate social media.” Vice lit another rolled cigarette, the wafting of the special amber smoke hovering around
both of them like a heavy embrace. “No one can just fuck in
private anymore.”
“Rifter went home with a human and that’s what you’re
worried about?”
“Ah, Stray, come on. Probably just a rumor.” He stared up
at the full moon, the pull that much stronger because of this
time of year. Mating season made them all edgy and way too
unfulfilled, even after hours of mind-blowing sex. They
couldn’t get everything they needed, and neither could their
wolves, and that made for some very unhappy dual-natured
creatures.
If Rifter had taken a human home, she was in big godN
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damned trouble. That made Vice smile. “Let’s get this shit
over with.”
He looked through the small window on the heavy back
door and saw the open, tree-covered field behind the bar.
When he opened it, the smell of snow— and human—would
be unmistakable. “They’re out there.”
“Shift?” Stray asked, sniffed the air himself, and, yes, that
was certainly the best option. Much easier to let their wolves
run wild and leave their human faces a complete mystery.
They eased out the side door so as not to be spotted, and
in the small alleyway, they stripped, left their clothes behind
as they let the change take over their bodies.
There was the familiar creak of bones and stretch of skin
as Vice allowed his Brother Wolf to take over, pushing him to
all fours as he shifted from man to beast.
It wasn’t pleasant, to say the least, but as his old Marine
sergeant used to say, Pain is just weakness leaving the body.
Vice really liked the Marines.
And when the shift was complete, their wolves were far
bigger than most Weres and regular wolves. When you looked
at a Dire in any form, you knew you were looking at something that wasn’t entirely of this world. It was the height, the
build, but especially the eyes—Vice knew his looked silver
when he changed, and they were nearly silver in human form.
Time to kick some ass.
But as their Brother Wolves bounded for the hills, their
wolf vision sharper now, their huge paws punching silently
through the snow, something other than the cold made their
hackles rise. The scent of death hit Vice hard. Human. Lots
of blood. His mouth watered, his lips peeling back from
sharp teeth, but no, eating humans was not cool.
They both slowed to a trot, crouching in the underbrush,
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which caught on Vice’s pure white fur— and yes, he understood the irony of that color being on him— and left burrs in
Stray’s shaggy black coat. Vice’s sensitive ears twitched as he
listened for movement, and when he heard nothing but the
icy wind cutting through the pines, he rose slowly to his
seven-foot height on two strong legs, and Stray joined him.
At the sight ahead, neither wolf could stop from howling desolately into the night— a cry of both victory and frustration,
because they knew they had to shift to human form now,
even though the moon’s hold was fierce.
And they did, the change back just as painful as the wolf
retreated and the man returned, Vice fi nding himself still on
all fours, shaking his head to stop the ringing that always
remained for a minute or so after the change.
Finally, he got off his knees and stood next to Stray.
“This was a trap . . . and it wasn’t for us,” Stray said.
The men stood there naked, surveying the carnage. The
weretrappers were dead— twenty humans, scattered along
the ground— and there was an eerie silence along with the
metallic scent of blood drifting through the air. “Gotta bury
them.”
“Before anyone sees,” Stray finished his thoughts. “Call
the twins.”
But Stray was already doing so, calling forth the young
Weres who’d gotten kicked out of their own pack for being
moon crazed. Jinx had taken them under his wing, and subsequently they’d moved into the Dire house. They’d gained
some semblance of control, but they were still both like lanky
teenagers, their wolves barely contained.
Within minutes the young Weres came bounding up, identical to each other in both human and wolf form except for
the color of their eyes— Cyd’s green and Cain’s amber, closer
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to yellow than brown, their dark hair short and messy,
dressed like they’d walked out of Abercrombie & Fitch.
Tonight, they were thankfully still in human form,
although they were restless. These young Weres would have a
hard time keeping it together unshifted with the scent of violence so pungent. For Weres, the scent of blood was enough
to drive them to shift, thanks to their prey instinct.
“Jinx is coming . . . whoa, what did you do?” Cain asked,
staring up at the full moon like she was calling to him—
which, of course, she was, while his brother, Cyd, remained
characteristically silent and just went to work hauling the
bodies into the woods.
“Defi nitely the work of a wolf,” Vice said as he studied a
body and then pulled up short because he smelled . . . a Dire,
and it wasn’t Stray. No fucking way. “Is the outlaw pack stupid enough to do this out in the open?”
“None that I’ve heard of,” Stray said, and then they both
stopped short when they heard a rustle behind them. One of
the bodies was moving, the man attempting to get up.
“He’s mine.” The smell of the unknown Dire got stronger,
and Vice could still feel Brother Wolf’s incisors, and he bared
them viciously as he went over to the man who’d just shifted
from wolf, prepared to do lots of harm.
But when he caught sight of the face, everything changed,
and he wasn’t sure it was for the better.
Harm.
All the Dires had been hunting this particular Dire wolf
for years— and for good damned reason.
Harm mumbled something. The silver had done a number
on his ass and they’d have to get him back to the house before
they could get anything resembling an explanation as to why
he’d taken on the weretrappers himself—why he’d led them
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into this homemade trap to begin with . . . why he’d let his
fellow wolves down.
Harm was the reason Rogue had gotten captured.
Stray was next to Vice, a blur, half changed and howling,
and Vice had never seen him so worked up, not while awake,
anyway. The nightmares did a number on him, but Vice and
the others were always quick to wake him, mainly to stop his
screaming.
Vice heard his own Brother Wolf growl and knew he was
in real danger of losing it, found his hand wrapped around
the back of Harm’s neck as he brought his face forward to rip
out his goddamned throat . . .
“He’s mine.” It was Jinx, yanking Vice out of the way and
baring his own teeth to Harm as the man struggled to stay on
his feet. “When you’re healed, brother, we’re going to fight
and you’re going to be the fi rst fucking Dire wolf to die and
stay dead. And that’s a motherfucking promise.”
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WICKED EDGE
A Castle of Dark Dreams Novel
by Nina Bangs
Available now in paperback from Berkley Sensation
As an angel, Passion prides herself on perfection. But some
mischievous part of her always goes against the godly
grain. After one too many attempts to enliven the heavenly
halls, she’s sent to earth to tame her naughty nature. While
human, she has to bring goodness and light to the most
sinful of places, the Castle of Dark Dreams. Once there,
she fi nds herself in the role of a virgin used as bait to trap
a marauding demon. Passion thinks the game is harmless
until she sees the man playing the demon. His name is
Edge, and Passion senses darkness in him beyond any she’s
ever dreamed.
Edge may play a demon, but he is something much
worse. His past is littered with pain and destruction and
that’s the way he likes it. Now he must prove to himself
and others that he is what he’s always been: cold and
emotionless. But as danger threatens and his need for Passion heats up, he finds himself balanced on love’s wicked
edge.
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“Nina Bangs delivers!”
—#1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan
“Sinfully delicious.”
—Christina Dodd
N
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PROLOGUE
He’d needed this down time away from the Castle of Dark
Dreams. Two weeks to just kick back, waste a few losers, and
relax with a drink.
He leaned against the oak’s trunk and savored his scotch
and water as he watched the dumbass crouched beside the
reservoir. Edge had followed the guy’s progress from the
moment he’d come up with the idea to poison the city’s water
supply until now. Homegrown terrorists, had to love them.
Not that Edge didn’t sort of admire the guy. He’d whipped
up a poison no amount of testing would detect until it was
too late. The death toll could reach into the millions. Now
the formula would die with him. Too bad. Another great scientific mind pissed away by an idiot.
There was a time when Edge would’ve applauded that
kind of grand gesture. But then the Big Boss had reined him
in, forced him to change his methods. Edge downed the rest
of his drink. Let’s hear it for the good old days. Nowadays he
was reduced to one kill at a time. Hey, you took your fun
where you could.
Edge narrowed his gaze as the man . . . No, as Mark—
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NINA BANGS
didn’t want to ever depersonalize his victims—pulled vials of
the poison from his backpack and set them on the ground.
Now was the time to act. Edge chose an image from his
mind, focused on the reservoir, and changed thought to
reality.
A giant squid rose from the water’s depths, big enough to
swallow Chicago if Chicago had been on the menu. It wasn’t,
so the squid settled for Mark. One massive tentacle reached
out to wrap around his body. It lifted the man into the air and
then dragged him beneath the water. The squid disappeared,
leaving only a few ripples on the surface. Mark’s body would
be found, a victim of drowning. But they’d never find the
squid. It was once more only an image in Edge’s mind.
Edge shook his head. He’d made it happen too fast. Mark
didn’t even have a chance to scream. He’d just stood there
bug-eyed. What fun was that? But at least the guy died in a
unique and interesting way. See, death didn’t have to be
boring.
Edge wandered down to collect the vials. He stashed them
in Mark’s backpack. He’d dispose of them later. Then he
headed back to his car.
That was his last kill for now. Vacation over. Time to
return to his crappy role-playing-slash-managerial job.
He took a last look at the reservoir before driving away.
How did he really feel about Mark’s death and all the ones
that had come before his? The truth? Edge closed his eyes. He
felt freaking tired.
N
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CHAPTER 1
“How ugly and horrible are they? Do they coat your skin
with slime? Does their stench make you nauseous? Do you
feel like you’re walking into the bowels of hell?”
Passion sighed. Of all the heavenly contacts they could’ve
assigned to her, why Hope? Once a day she’d have to listen to
this idiocy in her head.
She could picture Hope sitting in her little cubicle surrounded by the neutral colors Archangel Ted loved. Ted,
along with everything else in heaven, was bland and boring.
Okay, so Passion could include herself in the bland and boring category. She accepted the reality of her existence. But
she’d looked into enough human minds to know their vision
of heaven was a fantasy.
Humans. Sure, they could get sick and die. Fine, so they
suffered heartbreak and other emotional traumas. But from
Passion’s viewpoint, things were a lot more exciting on the
mortal plane. Could anyone blame her for trying to spice up
her own world? Guess that was a resounding yes.
She supposed the fi nal straw for Ted was when she talked
the other angels in her department into painting their cubi-
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cles lime green. In her opinion, Ted had some serious control
issues.
So here she was, on the outside looking in.
And you have only yourself to blame. If Passion had been
a better angel, she wouldn’t have drawn this punishment— a
still-to-be-determined amount of time spent living on earth
as a human. No powers, no friends, forced to check in once a
day with Hope-the-heavenly-drama-queen. The only good
thing? The Council of Justice had at least given her some privacy. Hope couldn’t read her thoughts; she could only hear
what Passion spoke out loud.
“They’re . . .” Way too beautiful. Evil should appear in
shades of muddy brown or black. But no, just look at them.
The Seven Deadly Sins shimmered and flowed around the
Castle of Dark Dreams in vibrant jewel tones. Totally gorgeous. Totally tempting.
Oops. Wrong reaction. “They’re . . . awful, disgusting,
but sort of exciting.” Hmm, maybe she should explain that
last word just in case Hope got the wrong impression. “I
mean, it’s exciting to think about all the peace, harmony, and
massive heavenly vibes I’m going to bring to this place.”
There, that was better. Didn’t want anyone taking away the
only thing she had left, her ability to see the colors of sin.
“Oh.” Hope sounded disappointed. “Well, keep in touch.”
She broke the connection.
“Absolutely.” Passion knew her smile wasn’t kind. Note to
self: work on sweet and sincere smile. Hope and the other
angels had gotten used to her supplying their daily entertainment. Too bad. Passion wouldn’t be there to amuse them for a
while because she’d be busy earning her way back into heaven.
She had to be the perfect angel. Sure, she’d always longed
for more . . . variety in her existence, but she sure hadn’t
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73
planned on getting that variety as a powerless and frighteningly vulnerable mortal. She could actually die, like in nevercoming-back die. She shuddered.
Passion crossed the drawbridge, avoiding glancing down
at the moat’s black water in favor of staring up at the castle—
a keep with four square towers complete with a curtain wall.
The whole thing gleamed white, a color symbolizing goodness and light. Fake. Goodness and light didn’t live here.
She’d take care of that by the time she left. She narrowed
her eyes as she strode through the open gate and across the
courtyard, headed for the doors leading into the great hall.
Spotlights lit up the night around the castle. No threatening
shadows warned the innocent about what waited inside.
Righteous anger drove her as she reached for the door. She’d
smite the wicked and save all those poor souls inside who . . .
She paused. No powers, so no smiting. Damn. Passion
closed her eyes. No cursing. Ted hated cursing. So many
things to remember. But she could do this. Opening her eyes,
she pulled the door open and stepped inside.
Someone spoke. “Ah, another person who didn’t bother
to check the schedule and has chosen instead to annoy the
hell out of me by showing up at the last moment.” Dramatic
sigh. “But I live to serve, so I’ll probably be able to stick you
in somewhere. All the choice parts are gone. How do you feel
about playing the lowly maiden who serves the queen? Not a
virgin. The virgin part was taken by a woman who obviously
has only a faint memory of that particular condition.”
“Virgin?” Startled, she looked at the speaker. A wizard?
A short one. Gold-trimmed blue robe, tall conical hat that
added at least a foot, and all of it decorated with gold suns,
moons, and stars. He’d topped everything off with a long,
pointy gray beard that matched his narrowed gray eyes.
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“Yes. The part is gone.” The wizard looked down his nose
at her, which was tough to do when she was taller than he
was. “If it’s any comfort, you’d fit the part better. Pale hair,
pale skin, pale eyes, and uninspired pale clothing. You, my
dear, are the defi nition of unawakened. Avoid Sparkle Stardust at all cost. Now, do you want the lowly maiden part?”
“No.” What was he talking about? She glanced around.
People in medieval-type costumes wandered the large hall.
Too bad the Council of Justice had kicked her down here
without full disclosure. All they’d said was that the castle
needed help. This place was her ticket back home.
“You look confused.” The wizard glanced at his watch.
“As much as I’d love to waste more time explaining the obvious, I have a fantasy to direct. Feel free to gawk. If you care
to wait until this fantasy concludes, you may buy a ticket to
the next one over there.” He pointed to a small table by the
door with a tickets sign taped to the front of it. “And you
might want to read that.” He gestured toward a sign on the
wall above the ticket table.
Bemused, she watched him turn to walk away. Violet, the
color of pride, swirled around him. No kidding. Too bad
there wasn’t a color for bad-tempered old farts. She took a
deep breath. Get rid of unkind thoughts.
Passion didn’t know how other angels did it. They wore
their perfection like a pair of comfortable old shoes. Her
shoes pinched her toes and left blisters on her heels. She constantly wanted to kick them off. Well, she’d kicked them off
a few times too many.
She looked at the sign. Fine, so she was in an adult theme
park called Live the Fantasy. The Castle of Dark Dreams was
one of the park’s attractions. It was a hotel as well as a place
where nightly fantasies were played out. The fi rst fantasy
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began at seven p.m. That would be right about now. She
should get out of here and find the registration desk for the
hotel part of the castle, but she couldn’t resist taking a peek
at the fantasy.
A long table with people in costumes seated around it
rested on a raised platform at one end of the great hall. Passion assumed the major parts like the queen were played by
the castle staff. They’d guide the fantasy. The public could
buy tickets to play lesser parts. Made sense.
It only took moments for the fantasy to capture her. What
could she say, heaven didn’t get cable, and she was easily
amused.
Mesmerized, she followed the tale. A demon was killing
the castle’s people. The queen’s greatest hunters couldn’t
catch him. So the virgin offered to sacrifice herself for the
good of all. She’d lure him into their clutches with her virginal beauty and purity. Hah. Passion was seeing lots of blue
swirling around Ms. Untouched. Lust. Passion couldn’t read
her mind, but she’d bet there weren’t a lot of chaste thoughts
bouncing around in that head.
The wizard had been right about the virgin. If the demon
was smart, he’d run like crazy. She’d eat him alive.
Of course, the dumb demon fell for the trick. She heard
the virgin’s not-overly-convincing screams coming from one
of the darkened hallways along with the demon’s snarls and
the shouts of the hunters. A few minutes later the virgin led
the parade back into the great hall followed by the triumphant hunters surrounding the cage of the captured demon.
The queen called the virgin and her hunters forward to praise
them, and Passion got her first look at the demon.
A voluminous cape and hood covered him from head to
toe. All she could see of him were his hands clenched around
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the cage’s bars. Well, that was disappointing. She was all
ready to be awed by the pure evil carved into his face, the
demonic gleam in his eyes. Passion felt cheated.
Then he turned his head toward her. She sucked in her
breath. Wow, just wow. The hood shadowed his face, but that
didn’t lessen the impact. Nothing said savage predator like
strong slashing brows, a full mobile mouth drawn into a
snarl, and amber eyes that shone with every wickedness she’d
ever imagined and some she hadn’t dared.
And he’d fi xed his gaze on her. Passion looked away fi rst.
She realized her hands were shaking as she pushed a strand of
hair from her face. Time to get out of here.
But even as she started to move toward the door, Passion
realized something. She’d been so focused on his eyes that
she’d barely noticed the color swirling around him.
Oh, no. It spread horror in a slick coat of ice over her
soul. Black. Not one of the Deadly Sins. This went beyond
those. It was rage, greed, and all the others taken to the fi nal
act. Death. This man was beyond redemption. She shuddered. What could she do to yank the castle from the brink
with him dragging it down? Passion didn’t know.
She pushed the door open but couldn’t resist one look
back. A thin band of blue had joined the black. Lust. Males
thought about sex a lot. She wondered if he had a specific
target for all that hunger, or if it was simply his normal state
of being. Passion had no experience with lust. Didn’t want
any experience. She sighed. Yeah, lying was a sin too.
Once outside, she drew in a deep breath of clean night air.
She’d escaped. And that’s exactly how she felt even though he
was the one in the cage. She’d have to toughen up if she
wanted to do any good here.
But she would need some time to get used to everything.
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The only experience she had of the mortal plane was what
she’d seen and heard in the minds of the souls she’d visited.
Even though she’d been focused on easing their worries and
nudging them down the path of goodness and light, she’d
absorbed enough knowledge to blend in.
Blending wasn’t the problem, though. Heaven didn’t generate much emotion, nothing even close to what she’d felt as
she stared at the demon. She’d better get a handle on her feelings fast. Ted always said that logic was what made angels
superior beings, and that humans were beneath them because
they were slaves to their emotions. So, no more out-of-control
emotions.
Passion scanned the courtyard. People who must be arriving for the next fantasy stepped around her to reach the door.
She moved out of their way. She was sure if she went back
into the great hall she could find a door leading to the hotel
lobby. Did she want to do that? And take the chance of locking eyes with the demon again?
She walked around the outside of the castle. And as she
walked, she worked on her story. No luggage because the
airline had lost it all. Passion was glad that at least the Council had given her a credit card and some cash. She’d have to go
shopping tomorrow. Maybe buy some clothes in brighter colors. Not that she was letting the fake wizard get to her. What
she looked like didn’t matter as long as she did her job.
She thought again about the demon with his amber eyes
and his lust and . . . Maybe she’d buy herself a few sexy
things. She had to fit in here, not draw attention to herself.
And she couldn’t change evil if she couldn’t get near it. Those
who embraced all that was wicked would be more willing to
accept her message if she dressed like them. Not that she’d
enjoy dressing like a slut. Hello, your conscience here. Run
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that thought past me again. Okay, so maybe she’d enjoy it a
little. There were times when Passion despaired of ever living
up to heavenly standards.
Edge went up in flames for about the five hundredth time this
year, or at least it felt that way. As the fake flames rose around
him, he thought about the woman.
He’d felt her stare, different from the others in the hall—
tentative, intrigued, with no sexual response at all. Amazing.
Edge had no illusions about his effect on women. They might
not know what he was, but they all reacted to the power they
sensed. They always claimed his face or body or— God
forbid— his mind attracted them, but it went beyond that. No
matter what humans wanted to believe about themselves, the
promise of violence drew them. Just look at the top-rated TV
shows. Lots of blood and death. Not that he was complaining.
The women never stayed long, though. Eventually their
primal instincts kicked in, the ones that recognized him as a
predator. And they ran. Smart ladies.
The flames roared around him, hiding him from the celebrating queen, virgin, and assorted other idiots. With a casual
flick of power, he dematerialized.
He reappeared in the dressing room. Stripping off his cape
and hood, he returned to thinking about the woman. Colorless, but with the promise of beauty if someone took the time
to nurture it— tall and slender with long, pale blond hair that
would flow over his body like cool spring water. And she’d
gazed at him from light green eyes that hid nothing. Those
incredible eyes said that he was the most amazing thing she’d
ever seen. How could any man resist that message?
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She wasn’t taking part in a fantasy. Was she staying at the
hotel? He hoped she wasn’t just making the rounds of the
park’s attractions and then going home. Time to talk with
Holgarth.
Edge found the wizard being his usual snarky self with
customers waiting for the next fantasy to begin. “Have a
minute, Holgarth?”
The wizard turned to glare at him. Edge didn’t miss the
customers’ relieved expressions.
“Why wouldn’t I have a minute? I have nothing to do but
make sure the lifeblood of this castle, its fantasies, keeps running like the well-oiled machine I’ve made it after years of
endless toil, sacrifice, and—”
“Oh, shit.” Edge started to turn away.
“But I suppose a minute won’t disturb my schedule too
much. What do you need?”
Edge thought about the giant squid, even now peeking
over the edge of his consciousness. Nah. If he offed the wizard, they’d try to kick him out of the castle, and he wasn’t
ready to leave. Bad stuff would happen.
“There was a woman watching the fantasy. Tall, long
blond hair—”
“I offered her the part of the lowly maiden, but she wasn’t
interested.” Holgarth’s expression turned sly. “It was too far
beneath her, I think. She’s more than she appears.”
“Explain.” Edge never underestimated the wizard’s shrewdness.
“Just a feeling.” He shrugged. “She seemed confused by
everything that was going on, but I sensed a purpose in her. I
don’t think she was a casual visitor to the castle.” Holgarth
looked thoughtful. “There was something about the way she
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looked at you, as though she’d never seen anything like you in
her life.” The tiny twitch of his lips was his version of a wide
grin. “And of course she hadn’t.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“No.” Holgarth was already turning back to his cowed
customers. “You’ve had your minute. I now have to choose
the shining hero who will slay the dragon in the next fantasy.” He swept his possible hero candidates with a contemptuous stare. “Where is St. George, or even Harry Potter when
you need them?”
Edge snorted his disgust at Holgarth’s lack of helpful
information and headed for the door leading to the hotel
lobby. Once in the lobby, he glanced around. She wasn’t
there, so he walked to the registration desk.
“Who checked in today?” This was a long shot. If she was
a guest, she could’ve checked in days ago. The only thing he
had going for him was the size of the hotel. The castle didn’t
have as many rooms as a normal hotel, so there wouldn’t be
that many guests arriving on any given day. But she might not
even be staying in the hotel, in which case he was screwed.
And when did she become so important? Not important,
just an interesting side trip. He needed something to break up
his routine, and women didn’t usually catch his interest. It
had been so many years . . . He shook the thought away to
concentrate on Bill’s answer.
“Only a few new guests. A middle-aged couple, a guy here
for the fishing tournament, and a woman who checked in a
little while ago.”
“The woman. How old?”
“Twenties, long blond hair—”
“What room?” The hunter in him stirred.
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“One-ten. No luggage. She said the airline lost her bags.”
“Name?”
The clerk grinned. “Passion McBride.”
Edge returned his grin before moving away. More and
more fascinating. Who named their kid Passion? No luggage.
He checked his watch. Still early enough for her to be up. He
stopped in the lobby store that carried clothing and bought a
few things. Then he headed for the elevator, faster but not as
authentic as the winding stone staircase in the great hall.
Once in front of her door, he knocked and waited.
She opened the door and began speaking before she even
looked at him. “I didn’t call for . . .” Then she saw him.
Edge watched her eyes widen and her lips part as she
stared. Shock became her. She looked beautiful, vulnerable,
and tempting all at once. If he leaned forward and put his
mouth over those full lips, she’d really have something to be
stunned about.
He controlled himself. First he’d slip into her mind to see
if there was anything he needed to know. But as he reached
for her thoughts, he slammed into a solid wall of no. What
the . . . ? Humans couldn’t deny him, even when they tried.
And she was human.
Edge narrowed his gaze on her face. Nothing in her
expression hinted she was actively trying to keep him out.
Strange.
“You’re . . .” She spoke the word on a soft exhalation of
wonder and maybe a little fear.
“Not a demon.” I’m much, much worse. He smiled his
most reassuring smile.
She didn’t look reassured. “I know that.” Her gaze
dropped to the bag he held.
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“I’m Edge. I help manage the Castle of Dark Dreams
when I’m not bringing death and destruction to the locals.”
Truer than she’d ever know.
“Oh.” She looked surprised.
“When I checked in at the registration desk, Bill told me
you’d lost your luggage. We always want our guests to have a
comfortable stay, so I picked up a few things you might need
tonight.” He held out the bag.
“Thank you.” She smiled as she accepted his offering.
There were smiles, and then there were smiles. Edge had
seen some of the best over thousands of years— sexy, innocent, calculating, and his very favorite, the you’ll-die-happy
ones. Passion McBride’s smile was the best. It was innocence
wedded to knowing, sensuality wrapped in unlimited possibilities.
He wanted everything that went with that smile. Just for
a night. Because that’s how long his interest usually lasted.
Besides, the few times he had hung around for more than a
night, things had ended badly. He’d learned his lesson.
She glanced into the bag. “A nightgown, robe, slippers,
and toiletries. You’re a lifesaver.”
When she looked up, her smile had warmed and some of
the shock had left her eyes. But not all of it.
“I have about an hour before I do my second fantasy. I’m
hungry. Bet you are too. Let’s go down to the restaurant, and
I’ll buy us dinner.” He tried to look nonthreatening, a lot
tougher than looking demonic.
Now would be when she’d say she was married, or that
she didn’t go anywhere with men who scared her witless.
Because he was frightening her. He could see the fear resting
right beneath the shock. Interesting. Women never sensed his
threat until further into a relationship. Not that a marriage
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or her terror meant anything to him. Nothing much had mattered to him for a very long time.
“Why?” Her question was straightforward.
He studied her before answering. No guile in her eyes. She
wasn’t fishing for a compliment. Edge thought about lying,
but for whatever reason told her the truth. “You interested
me when I saw you watching the fantasy. There was something different about you. I like different.”
She looked horrified. “No, I’m not different. I’m just like
everyone else. Do you really think I look different?”
Okay, this was weird. “Hey, if you say you’re ordinary,
then you’re ordinary. I’d still like to buy you dinner.”
She seemed to relax a little. “I guess I could eat something.” She nodded. “I’m Passion. You can tell me about your
job at the castle over dinner.”
He’d rather impress her with his real job, but he had a feeling her “ordinary” human mind would explode from that
particular disclosure. He didn’t want to lose her that quickly.
A few minutes later, they were seated in the restaurant.
He waited impatiently while the waitress took their orders
before asking his fi rst question. “So what brings you to
Galveston and the Castle of Dark Dreams?”
She glanced past him out the window with its view of the
Gulf of Mexico. “I’ve had lots of stress in my life lately. I
wanted to spend a few weeks relaxing someplace with a water
view. And castles fascinate me. So this is perfect.” She offered
him a quick smile before looking away again.
A lie. She really needed to work on her technique. Avoiding eye contact was a dead giveaway. He was immediately
intrigued again. Why would she want to keep her real reason
for being here secret? Cheating on her husband? Somehow he
didn’t think so.
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As though she knew what he was thinking, she looked
directly at him. “My turn to ask a question. Why have you
allowed darkness to take you?”
N
Uh-oh. Passion watched Edge’s gaze sharpen. Her question
had just popped out. She was too impulsive. Thoughts became
words with no waiting period between them. Not smart in a
place where evil walked. She was human, and she could die.
As for the evil . . . Passion knew it stared across the table
at her. She didn’t need any color coding to tell her that. It was
there in the wicked slant of his lips and the layered secrets
hidden in those amber eyes. And it fascinated her more than
was safe if she ever intended to return home.
“Why would you think darkness has taken me?” He
leaned forward, and a few strands of his tawny hair fell
across his eye.
Impatiently, he raked them back with fingers that seemed
too long and elegant to belong to a man as dangerous as she
suspected he was. All the better to wrap around your neck.
His smile mocked even the idea that he was wicked, but his
eyes looked wary.
And that wasn’t good. Passion needed everyone in the
castle to see her as clueless and nonthreatening. “Nothing,
really. Just a feeling. I guess seeing you as a demon affected
me more than I realized.” She shrugged. “But feelings don’t
mean much, do they?”
He seemed to relax. “Glad you don’t take them too seriously, because I’m a pretty laid-back and happy guy. A
good guy.”
Right. He was also a big fat liar. She could sense the tension and need for violence surging just below the surface.
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What was he? Because he sure wasn’t human. She might be
missing her usual powers, but her instincts never failed her.
Everything about him was just more. He wore a touchand-you-will-get-burned warning any woman would recognize. The blond strands in his hair shone beneath the restaurant’s
dim lighting. Thick, and looking so soft she wanted to reach
out and . . . No, definitely wasn’t going there. Anyway, his hair
almost brushed his shoulders and framed a face that hadn’t lost
any of its savage beauty since she first saw it.
And his eyes shouted other. She sensed too many years
filled with too many experiences for any human lifetime.
She would’ve gone on to catalogue the high points of his
body, but the tattoo on one powerful bicep snagged her attention. The sleeve of his T-shirt revealed half of what looked
like . . . “Is that the grim reaper on your arm?”
Edge pulled up his sleeve so she could see the whole thing.
“I like the symbolism—hooded, scary guy coming to cut
your life short with that crazy scythe. I know most images of
him show a skull inside the hood. But I like this better. You
can’t see a face, just a black hole. The unknown terrifies people. What do you think? Would you want to stare into death’s
eyes?” He seemed serious.
“Not particularly.” Weird question. She’d swear he looked
disappointed by her answer. Probably liked adventurous
women, the ones who jumped out of planes or climbed mountains. Too bad she couldn’t tell him exactly how adventurous
she was.
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CHAOS BURNING
A Bound by Magick Novel
by Lauren Dane
A June 2012 paperback from Berkley Sensation
The life of Lark Jaansen, hunter in Clan Gennessee, has
been shaped by violence and unrest— and it defines her
future. Well-trained and resilient, she’s met her militaristic
match in Simon Leviathan, a warrior not of this world.
Locked in mutual admiration, and a desire so hot it burns,
Lark and Simon have something else in common: they love
the dark. And as a shadow is cast over their world, they’re
each coming into their own.
A mysterious war has been waged among the Others.
As witches and humans turn against each other, as faes
retreat in fear, and as vampires rise, Lark and Simon discover that an unseen force is behind it. A single, hungry
entity older than recorded history has returned to gorge on
the magick of its victims. It is the Magister, nothing less
than the end of time. Finding it is Lark and Simon’s first
hope. Surviving it is their last.
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“A witchy new series.”
—New York Times bestselling author Lara Adrian
“Dane always delivers a steamy, exciting ride.”
—New York Times bestselling author Larissa Ione
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CHAPTER 1
Lark shouldered her duffel and headed down the Jetway,
hoping to avoid the cute and nice-smelling hipster college student who’d been trying to pick her up since they took off.
She really should have undone the spell she used to hide
the bloom of purple, green, and yellow that bruised up her
neck and onto her jaw. That sort of thing tended to lead
women to take her aside to ask in concerned tones if someone
was hurting her at home.
The answer was yes, of course, just not the way they
thought. As it was against the rules to tell them a feral werewolf jumped her in MacArthur Park two days before, it was
best left hidden to most eyes and avoid scenes with wellmeaning humans.
It was nice to know people didn’t just turn a blind eye
when they thought someone was being beaten up at home
and it was a good reminder to use the obscura spell to hide
evidence of her unconventional life.
By the time she caught sight of the escalators down to baggage claim, he’d caught up with her because he was all legs.
“Hey, do you need a ride or anything?”
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“No, thanks. Someone’s meeting me here.”
“Do you want to get together? You know, while you’re in
town?”
If she was just a regular old human woman, she’d be all
over this cutie pie like icing on cake. She’d broken up with
someone two months before and it’d been a dry spell since.
But she wasn’t regular anything and she’d only break him. It
was inevitable with humans, which is why she never allowed
herself to partake in anything they had to offer.
Her life was filled with weapons and other not-human
beings with weapons, or those she had to use her weapons
on. They never understood it, the life she led. She had to hide
her true nature from human men, and that was never a good
way to have a relationship.
“I appreciate the offer. But I’m here for work and my time
is pretty much booked until I go back home.”
He frowned, apparently unused to his charms failing.
“Oh. Well.” He continued to walk alongside her as they
approached their carousel. And that’s when she saw the giant,
beautiful man holding the sign with her name on it and she
forgot tall college boy even existed.
Mentally, she wiped her brow and fanned her face. So
masculine the heat and power of him radiated outward. His
hair was thick and dark, cut perfectly. A tousle that made her
instantly think about what he’d look like right after a long,
slow kiss. His facial hair only drew the attention to that
mouth. Full, gorgeous lips that were currently drawn into a
wary, yet casual line as he scanned the area.
Denim covered unmistakably powerful thighs and long
legs right down to a pair of boots she had no doubt were
handmade by someone somewhere.
Lark had always tended toward men who were of the cute,
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college-hipster type currently walking at her side. Scruffy
beards, lanky, sexy glasses. The kind of man who not only
wore scarves but looked totally adorable in them.
Sign guy was not one of those men. At all. He was one of
those capital-M Men. Huge. Broad shoulders and narrow
waist. The kind she enjoyed working with because they were
smart, strong, nearly fearless, independent and yet controlled.
And without a doubt totally and utterly fuckable. She imagined though, a man like him would be a hell of a lot of work
to have a relationship with.
His eyes were dark, fringed by thick lashes. Those were
fuck me eyes. Though, she noted, he looked around the room
just like she did. An Other. Her heart kicked and her attention honed on him in a new way.
“Well, have a great quarter. Nice chatting with you.” She
said it offhand as she wandered toward Sign Guy.
She paused, cocking her head and opening up her
othersight—the second sight she’d been trained to use since she
could walk. Othersight was a way of viewing the world all
around her through her magick, allowing her to see another
layer of existence layered against what most people saw every
day. Energy had a signature and every living thing had pattern
unique to them, but within that were other indicators such as
their make up—human, vampire, witch, whatever—and this
one was a shifter. No, not quite. The same, but slightly different. Not Fae, though his magickal signature was similar.
His nostrils flared, as if he sensed her magick. And then
he focused his attention on her as she approached. Like a
predator, he went very still and there was no mistaking the
way he took in every detail.
“I’m Lark.” Still fascinated, she held her hand out for him
to shake.
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He smiled, a slow, sexy smile designed to part women
from their underpants. The hand that took hers easily
engulfed her fingers.
“Simon Leviathan. Meriel sent me.”
Lark nodded. “She said she was sending a friend of the
Clan. Thanks. I appreciate the ride.” Her suitcase hit the conveyor belt. “Can I leave this with you while I grab my bag?”
“Which one is it?” He took the bag she’d been holding.
“The red one.”
But before she could move, he’d already taken three steps
to the carousel and had grabbed her bag.
“That all?”
“Yes, thanks. I can get those.” She reached for the duffel
but he just sent her a raised eyebrow and turned slightly to
continue holding the bag.
“I’m sure you can.” He squeezed her upper arm with his
free hand and then paused. “I’m really sure now. But I can
hold them just as easily. We need to go upstairs to head to the
parking garage.”
And then he sort of ushered her exactly where she wanted
to go.
She was still mildly annoyed at how he just sort of took
over. And yet interested enough that she let him get away
with it. She ruminated on that as she snapped her seat belt.
While she remembered, she sent a quick text to Meriel letting
her know Simon had met her and was taking her to her hotel.
He slid in on the driver’s side and though the car was
pretty large— she hadn’t been surprised by the big, black
Cadillac— he seemed to fill every inch. Tinted windows.
Swank interior. Smelled good too. Him and the car.
He paused before he turned the engine over. He didn’t
glance at her, he examined her. “You look tired. Would you
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like to go to Meriel’s? Or straight to sleep? I know you’ve got
the meeting with Clan Owen’s governance council tomorrow.”
Surprising how easily she found herself responding to him.
A near stranger, she’d heard Meriel refer to Simon, knew he
co-owned a nightclub with Meriel’s man, Dominic. That Meriel had sent him to pick Lark up told her that he was to be
trusted, even if her gut hadn’t already told her the same thing.
“It’s already nine. I’ve gone over my presentation several
times.” Including once with her sister and father, and really
she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to talk about less
right then than mages and death magic. “I’ve eaten and slept
this stuff for the last few months. I’m as prepared as I’m going
to be. I think.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Um. I figured I’d get room service when I got the hotel.”
She’d been in such a hurry after her last meeting with her
sister, Helena, she’d missed dinner though she did eat a giant
bag of M&M’s on the plane.
“Do you like steak or are you a vegetarian?”
He said vegetarian as if it were a suspect class.
“I like steak. Vegetables too.”
He hmmed but it was laced with suspicion. “You’ll be
staying in Meriel and Dominic’s old apartment.”
“I don’t want to intrude on them.” She liked Meriel but that
didn’t mean she wanted to stay with her. A hotel meant she
could walk around in her underwear and eat ice cream from
the carton. Being around people took work. She had to be nice
and polite and make small talk if she stayed with people.
“They don’t live there. They recently bought a house and
had two months left on the lease.”
Well, that was nice actually. An apartment meant she’d
have a kitchen and some room. Of course that meant she’d
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have to go grocery shopping. Though if she knew Meriel as
well as she thought, that fridge was most likely well stocked
already.
“Good to know. Thanks for the ride. You’re not a shifter.”
He continued to look at the road but one of his brows rose.
“I’m sorry. I have a hard time telling the difference
between blunt and rude.”
His mouth twitched.
“I’m Lycian.”
She leaned closer and breathed him in, so excited she forgot it was rude to get up in someone’s business and start sniffing. “Oh! I’ve never met anyone from the other side of the
Veil but a Fae warrior.”
Simon had no idea what to make of this woman. His wolf
liked the way she smelled. Sharp like he did. Like a warrior
did. But she had blue streaks in her hair. Hair she most likely
cut herself. Maybe not even in front of a mirror.
She most likely listened to bands no one ever heard of and
went to shows in clubs with sticky floors. Clearly she liked
shopping in thrift stores and probably had gloves that were
once someone’s sweater.
The smudge of her energy was bright and clear blue. Blue
like her eyes. Earnest eyes, but the shadow of a warrior lived
there. Even as she rattled on at random, her gaze roamed,
keeping track of where they were and who was near.
“How long have you been here? And by the way, if I, you
know, fall over the line into rude, please just poke me and say
so. That’s what my family does.”
“I’ve been here for ten of your years.”
“I bet your house has very clean lines. Nothing fussy. You
don’t have knickknacks and I bet you fold your shorts.”
“I don’t follow.”
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She sighed. “You’re a very spare guy. I mean you don’t
have any fuss about you. You don’t use four words when
three will do. It’s an admirable trait. One I do not possess. I
bet you don’t leave your clothes on your bedroom floor or
have stacks of magazines anywhere.”
He paused as he processed her stream of words. It’d been
a while since he’d met anyone as interesting as this one. Plus
she was small and most likely hungry. He wanted to feed her.
And maybe show her his house since she thought he lived in
a monk’s cell or something like that.
“Tell you what. I’ll make you a steak at my house. You
can see for yourself.”
He caught her grin.
There was an odd sound and they both looked around.
And then she cursed and dug into her coat pocket. Hubba
hubba, hubba hubba. That’s what it kept saying.
“Clever. Oh yes, I’ll totally take you back now. What do
you want?”
Much like a shifter, he had excellent hearing so the other
end of the call was audible.
“Why you gotta give me such a hard time?”
“I’m working. And hanging up now.”
“I forgot to tell you. I put a new grip on your Sig. I think
the balance should be better. And you should take me back.”
“Thanks for the tip on the Sig.” She disconnected.
“What did he do?”
She laughed. “You assume he’s the one who messed up.”
“If it had been you, he wouldn’t be the one begging to be
taken back.” He had enough experience with such events.
Enough that he’d ceased having anything more than flings.
“I’ll tell you, but only if you have some vodka at your
house to go with the steak.”
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“I have whiskey and some tequila. Will that do? I own a
bar, it’s not as if I can’t stop to get vodka.”
“You’re very accommodating for a guy who just met me
less than an hour ago.”
He liked taking care of people. And he was intrigued by
Lark Jaansen and her colorful contradictions. She pleased his
senses. In an entirely platonic way, of course. He sure as hell
wasn’t going to be nailing her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t
interesting to man and wolf.
“You’re one of Meriel’s. She’s the woman of a man who is
like my own brother.” He was raised to honor family and
your connections to people. She was important to his family
and so she was someone he would protect.
He got off the freeway.
“Whiskey is fi ne. Or tequila. Thank you.”
His phone rang this time and when he answered, Meriel’s
voice sounded over the speaker.
“Is Lark with you?”
“Yes, of course.” He turned his attention to Lark as he
took the steep turn on the drive up to his house. “I thought
you said you called Meriel?”
“I texted her to say I had arrived and was with you.”
“Texting is not calling.” Meriel’s voice underlined this
point.
He hoped Meriel wouldn’t hear the smile in his voice.
“She’s here with me. I’m going to feed her. She’s a little thin.
And give her a drink. I’ll be sure she gets back safely. Tomorrow
all you witchy types will have your war talks and all that jazz.
Let the girl have a good steak and a decent night’s sleep.”
“Gage is going to pick you up fi rst thing. We’ll get you a
car as well. Our old place is warded up tight. No worries at
all on that front. No one will breach your security there.”
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“Good to know about the warding. I expected nothing less.
As for Gage, yes, I spoke with him before I left L.A. I’m good.
I promise I can take care of myself, Meriel. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon. Appreciate the use of your place, by the way.”
“We’re climbing the hill to my place. Cell service is going
to get sketchy. Talk to you later.” He hung up and Lark
laughed again.
“World-class skills, Meriel Owen. I’ve yet to meet a cannier witch when it comes to politics. She constantly pisses
people off and yet they always listen to her. Take her seriously. Clearly you’re like she is. Just because I’ve never met a
Lycian before doesn’t mean I can’t see you’re clearly a superior specimen. I mean, top of the food chain in Lycian speak
or whatever. Why aren’t you back home ruling the pack?”
The blunt thing was refreshing. Witches weren’t usually
so plainspoken. He liked it. “I’m the third son. My oldest
brother already leads the pack in my father’s name. My next
youngest brother is his right-hand man.”
“Ah, so like you have the heir, and then the spare and
what about you?”
“There are corollaries. I’ve got eleven brothers and four
sisters. We each fi nd our place and path. Mine led me here.”
She leaned forward, gripping the dashboard, getting her
fingerprints everywhere he was sure. “Holy crap. Simon, is
that your house?”
Pride warmed him as she gawked at the grounds and the
edifice of the house through the windshield.
“They’ve been building it for a year. Just fi nished everything a month ago.”
“You could totally play basketball in here.” She got out
once he’d closed the garage door.
“I have a basketball court. Do you play?” He motioned
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toward the doors that led to the breezeway between the house
and garage.
“Of course you do. My weapons are in my suitcase. I
shouldn’t leave them out here. They’re kitted for taking down
things far worse than a deer.”
The wolf inside him responded with pleasure.
“We can talk weapons while I get the steaks started.” He
grabbed her bags from the trunk. “Come on.” He indicated
the door to the breezeway. “Rest assured that this ground is
safe.” He bowed his head and she realized he meant it. He took
it as a matter of pride and responsibility that anyone on his
land would receive safe passage. It was old-school honor.
“Thank you. This place is amazing. I hope you won’t be
offended if I said I’d like to be outside for a little while. Would
you mind?”
She’d spent a few hours in a plane and in cars and she
wanted to clear all that from her system and get her magick
centered again.
“Not at all. Let’s drop this in the house and I’ll take you
to the gardens.”
As she let him lead her to the main house, she couldn’t
help but admire everything she saw. The house sat on a large
lot with a view from every window.
He took her to the heart of his house and she felt the deep
well of his connection to the land beneath them. It was so
clear, this harmony between Simon and the earth, it seemed
to sing through the air at times.
He put her bags down in an entry.
“She likes you here.” Lark followed her senses through his
house, looking up at the soaring ceilings and walls of glass. It
was just as clean and elegant as she’d imagined it would be.
But with a surprising warmth and masculinity.
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“The earth I mean. Just in case you were following along
at home.” She liked the confusion on his face, followed by
understanding that she was referring to her earlier comment
about the earth liking him.
“Meriel says this too. It’s reassuring to hear it from
another person I suppose. Welcome to my home, Lark Jaansen.” He bowed, courtly.
“Thank you for having me here. This is beautiful.” She
turned in a circle when he took her to his living space. “I was
right.” She smiled at him.
“Should I be flattered?” He flipped a switch and the walls
of windows opened up to a deck with a view that had her
moving outside before she’d known to do it.
“Yes. It’s not serial-killer-scary neat. It’s clean and simple.
You’ve created a place where nature is totally inherent to the
overall design of the house.”
Three levels of decking and entertainment areas sprawled
down the slope of the land.
“I wanted to occupy the land and still respect the shape
and sense of wildness.”
He’d certainly succeeded. Her breath caught as she stepped
from her shoes and pulled her socks off. The intensity of connection to the well of magick at her feet shocked through her
system. The font clicked into place as it accepted her, as the
land at her feet recognized her as Owen through her connection to Gennessee. Their foremothers were the same and their
magick still flowed strong here.
She breathed in deep, simply letting the energy hum
through her system, filling her up and washing away the
exhaustion and agitation of the day. “This is stunning, Simon.
Truly.” She continued to meander and he steered her around
one path and directed her back up toward the house.
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“You’re not wearing shoes, that path is for shoes and I
don’t want you to get hurt. Would you like a drink? If you’re
ready to go inside?”
“Yes, thank you.” She looked out over the mountainside
and to the world below. “Such a riot of nature here. Every
time I visit, it strikes me, the thin veil between nature and
humanity. So much natural beauty here and yet just ten minutes down this mountain and you’re back into the buttoned-up
control of a city. At home it’s different. My magick isn’t stronger or weaker really, it’s just that the ways I access my magick
are different. So much light, the salt of the ocean, the energy
of all that humanity hums through the concrete.”
She followed him back inside and toward the large, open
kitchen that shared the heart of the house.
“And here it’s as if I breathe the magick in through my pores.”
Simon watched her through his careful, assessing eyes and
it felt as if she passed muster when he nodded. “Would you
permit me to choose the drink?”
She shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
He went to a bar and studied it for long moments before
he pulled a bottle out. She leaned against the counter and
watched as he pulled two black stones from the freezer and
put them in glasses. He poured the amber liquid— scotch, she
could scent the oak of it— over the stones and then once again
with the second glass.
“One of my brothers has a boutique whiskey distillery. Try.”
She breathed the scent of the whiskey in before she took a
sip. The smoke of it danced across her tongue.
He didn’t pester her to ask what she thought. Instead he
moved to the sink to roll up his sleeves and wash his hands.
“I like it. I’m not normally a whiskey drinker. But for this
I’d make an exception. Can I help?”
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He paused to look her over. “There are tomatoes over
there on the counter. Fresh mozzarella in the fridge.”
She moved to wash her hands the way she’d seen him do
it. “Do you have balsamic and olive oil?”
He snorted at her audacity. “Do I look like a man who
wouldn’t have olive oil and balsamic?”
“I’m not sure most men do. Though it’s pretty cute you
assume that.” She shrugged and sipped the whiskey again. “I
notice you’re less terse. Is it the whiskey?”
He laughed, putting the steaks on the grill on his center
island as she cored and seeded tomatoes.
“I’ll let you know after the next glass. For now, tell me
about the bruise on your neck.”
Surprised, she reached up to touch. “You can see it?”
“I assume you used some sort of glamour on it? To hide it
from humans?”
“People always think I have a boyfriend with big fists and
it’s not like I can tell them a rogue werewolf tried to twist my
head off or whatever. But you can see it?”
“Glamour spells don’t work on me.”
“Handy. Though I suppose I’ll have to keep that in mind.
I’m pretty good at glamours. Good thing I’m so charming
otherwise.”
He struggled against a smile and she realized it was sort
of fun to poke at his careful reserve.
“I’ll keep that in mind. As for it being handy? Sometimes,
yes. What happened to that werewolf?”
She shrugged as she washed some basil to go with the
tomatoes she’d just sliced. “He’s no longer a problem.”
“Is that an issue? Rogue wolves? And if so, why doesn’t
the local pack take care of it?”
“It’s a big problem this year. The population of feral
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wolves has tripled. Things have gotten worse in many ways
over the last year or two. The local pack is pretty good,
though they prefer to pretend rogue wolves aren’t an issue.
Since they can infect others and seem to do it without a lot of
thought or care, I happen to disagree. Annoying that I have
to play police to a wolf issue. But it helps me if I’m having a
bad day. It’s always a good work out to kick some shifter ass.”
He seemed to think that was hilarious and she gave him a
raised brow as she sliced the basil into ribbons.
“Sorry. I’m not mocking. I’m just imagining what the
Alpha must think of you.”
She shrugged. “It’s not the Alpha so much as their
Enforcer, who frowns on it. Though you all do like to frown.
Still, she knows it’s a problem and in the end, we’ve achieved
some level of détente. I get to be the scary monster out to
kill them if they get out of line. It’s sort of fun to be the
boogeyman.”
He nodded, moving about with that grace she’d always
associated with shifters. “If they won’t take care of it, you
have to. Of all Others, shifters should know this.”
“I know it’s not as crazy here. I’ve been reminded a hundred times that Seattle is so much calmer. Truth be told, I’m
sort of excited.”
“It used to be true, yes. Peaceful territory. Clan Owen has
been in charge for a long time. But lately . . . well, lately
things haven’t been so calm and quiet. You might have to
show them how to throw some more punches.”
“I’m good at that too.”
He looked her up and down. “I can believe that. Now, tell
me about the ex.”
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DARKNESS DEVOURS
A Dark Angels Novel
by Keri Arthur
A July 2012 Signet Select Paperback
New York Times bestselling author Keri Arthur has been
hailed for her “smart, sexy”* urban fantasy novels.
Now she continues her Dark Angels series,
set in the realm of danger and desire known as
the Guardian World. . . .
Half-werewolf, half-Aedh Risa Jones can enter the realm
between life and death, and she can see the Reapers who
collect the souls of the dead. Now she is using her gifts—
and the investigative know-how of a man who broke her
heart— to find a cabal searching for the power to control
time, reality, and fate. This is in addition to her work for
the Vampire Council, half of whom want her dead.
But for the time being the Council needs her alive.
Someone is killing blood whore– addicted vampires, and
Risa must find the guilty party. If she succeeds, she may
N
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finally convince the Council to lift the execution order on
her life. But before she succeeds, she must fi rst survive. . . .
“Keri Arthur’s imagination and energy infuse everything
—Charlaine Harris
she writes with zest.”
*Kim Harrison
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CHAPTER 1
We do what we have to do—we track these people down by
whatever means necessary.
The words weren’t mine, but they ran through my brain
nevertheless, going around and around, chased by echoes of
pain and heartbreak as I stood on the footpath and stared up
at the multi-story building in Southbank.
I’d never been inside but I’d driven past it many a time.
And, more than once, I’d stopped here at the curbside, sharing a lingering kiss, reluctant to let what we’d experienced the
night before come to an end.
I’d been so in love. Stupidly, foolishly in love. And it had
all been a lie. Not on my part, but his.
Jak Talbott— the werewolf I thought I’d spend the rest of
my life with—had wanted nothing more than a good story.
And he’d got that, mixing lies with reality so deftly it was
hard to pick them apart. Mom had sued both him and the
paper over the story, but in the end, had settled out of court
rather than have her name— and possibly mine— dragged
endlessly through the gossip mags while the court case was
ongoing. But mud tends to stick, even if it isn’t true, and she
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lost several lucrative TV spots because of it. Not that that had
particularly worried her. She’d been more concerned about
the effect of Jak’s actions on me.
And my reaction had been fairly intense. Even now, two
years later, I avoided anything resembling a deep or lasting
relationship, preferring the fun but emotionally sterile liaison
with my Aedh lover, Lucian.
Meeting Jak Talbott again was the last thing I ever wanted
to do.
I crossed my arms and rubbed them lightly. The midday
sun held plenty of warmth, but it didn’t chase the chill away
from my flesh.
We do what we have to do—we track these people down
by whatever means necessary.
Fine words, but did I have the courage to actually follow
them through? After standing here in front of this building
for the last five minutes, I wasn’t so sure that I did.
I glanced at my watch and saw it was a few minutes past
twelve. If I was going to run, I’d better do it now . . .
Awareness tingled across my senses and I looked up the
steps to the building’s entrance— straight into the intense
black gaze of Jak Talbott.
I can’t do this, I thought, as all the old pain and hurt rose,
threatening to drown me all over again. I just can’t.
But even as that thought crossed my mind, the inherently
stubborn part of my nature rose. I straightened my spine.
Clenched my fists. I could do this. I needed to do this.
Not only for the sake of my heart and any future relationships I might have, but also because saving the world from
the hordes of hell might well depend on what happened here
with Jak.
I watched him walk towards me, his strides long and lithe,
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graceful in an almost feline sort of way. He wasn’t a classically handsome man, but his rough hewn features were easy
on the eye and his body was well toned without being too
muscular. His hair, like his skin, was a rich black, although
these days there seemed to be a fair amount of silver glinting
through the shaggy thickness of it.
He stopped several feet in front of me, his gaze briefly
skimming me before resting on the fists clenched by my side.
“I hope you’re not going to aim those at me, Risa.”
“You’ve already had one good story out of my family,” I
said, amazed my voice actually sounded civil. “I’m not about
to give you another one.”
“Really?” His gaze rose to mine, the black depths wary,
watchful. “Then what do you want?”
“Coffee.” Although in all honesty, several large bottles of
alcohol— the stronger the better—would probably have been
more suitable right then. I might have the constitution of a
werewolf, which meant it was damnably hard for me to get
drunk, but several bottles would at least soften the haunting
sense of loss.
Jak raised an eyebrow, but waved a hand to the small café
not far up the road. “They make fairly good coffee.”
“Then let’s go.”
I strode forward, the heels of my sandals clicking on the
concrete, a tattoo of sound as fast as my heart. He walked
beside me, his familiar, wood-smoke scent washing over me,
raising memories of lazy evenings spent in front of the old log
fi re in his house, our bodies entwined . . .
Damn it, he used you, I reminded myself fiercely. Remember that, and only that.
The automatic fly-screen door swished open as we neared
the café. Inside was cool and shadowed, the air a mix of rich
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coffee, fried food, and sweaty humanity. The air conditioning obviously wasn’t doing a great job at this end of the room.
I wove through the tables, heading for one near the rear of
the room, close to the overhead vent. The rush of cold air had
goose bumps racing across my bare arms, but at least it was
free of the more unpleasant smells in the room.
“So,” Jak said, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite me. “What is this all about?”
Instead of immediately answering, I asked, “What would
you like to drink?”
His smile held a wry edge. “Forgotten already?”
“It’s been a few years, Jak. People and tastes change.”
And I wish my tastes had changed. Wished I could honestly
say I no longer found him so damnably attractive.
“I haven’t changed. Not when it comes to coffee, anyway.”
Meaning he’d changed in other ways? Somehow, I doubted
it. I punched in an order of coffee and cake for us both, then
swiped my credit card through the slot to pay for it. Then I
faced him again. “I want a favor.”
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I would
have thought I’d be the last person on earth you’d ask a
favor of.”
“You are,” I snapped, then mentally clawed back the
escaping anger. “But you’re the only reporter I know, and you
happen to specialize in paranormal and occult news and
investigations.”
“I do.” He studied me for several minutes, his gaze still
wary. As if he’d been the injured party in the whole sordid
mess. “And what do I get in return for granting this favor?”
“A story that could blow anything else you’ve written out
of the water.”
Excitement flared briefly in his dark eyes before he man-
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aged to control it. But I’d expected nothing less. For a man
like Jak, the story was all.
“Does this favor involve doing anything illegal?”
“I doubt it.” I paused, but couldn’t help adding, “Although
we both know that wouldn’t exactly faze you.”
Amusement teased his lips and an ache stuttered through
my heart. Not over him. Not by a long shot. Or rather, not
over the memory of what we’d once shared. Even the hurt of
his deception couldn’t erase all that had once been good. And
that sucked.
“You and I both know the childhood your mother presented to the world was a lie,” he said evenly. “I had sworn
statements that proved it, and your mother never did refute
them.”
I gave him a somewhat bitter smile. “The people who
mattered knew the truth about my mother’s past. No one else
needed to. Not then, not now.”
“What about the public she was defrauding?”
A waitress approached with our coffees and cakes. I gave
her a smile of thanks, waiting until she left before saying,
“My mother’s psychic powers were real, and they helped a lot
of people. Shame you didn’t do a story about that rather than
besmirching her name.”
He shrugged and reached for his coffee. “I don’t do good
news stories. I prefer the dark and dirty underbelly of things.”
“Which is exactly why I’m here.” I wrapped my hands
around my coffee and hoped like hell I was making the right
decision to confide in him. But even if I wasn’t, I still had to
chance it. It wasn’t like we had a whole lot of options right
now. “How much do you know about witchcraft and ley
lines?”
He frowned. “I know some people think the lines and their
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intersections resonate a special psychic or mystical energy, but
the jury is out as to whether there’s any truth in it or not.”
“What if I told you they’re not only more powerful than
you could ever imagine, but there’s a major ley-line intersection here in Melbourne.”
“I’d have to say, so?”
“So, a consortium has used extreme force in an effort to
gain control of the area around that intersection.”
His gaze searched mine for a moment. “Why say ‘has
used’ rather than ‘are using.’ No one is interested in old
news.”
“It’s not old news if only two of the three men have been
captured. The Directorate is pushing resources behind the
hunt for the third man, but so far they have been unable to
locate him. The man is a ghost, existing only on paper.”
Of course, the Directorate— or Directorate of Other
Races as it was officially known— also had bigger problems
on their hands. They were, after all, responsible for going
after all non-humans who crossed the line and killed.
He studied me for a moment, one finger tapping the table
lightly. A sure sign I’d snagged his interest. “For the Directorate to be pushing all resources behind such a hunt, these men
had to have done something pretty bad.”
“They raised a soul stealer and set it after the relatives or
friends of anyone who wouldn’t sell them the properties that
surrounded the intersection. One of those who died was a
little girl.” A little girl whose soul would never move on,
never be reborn. Hers was a life lost to the world forever.
“You always were a sucker when it came to children.” His
voice hinted at the warmth of old. “Is that what this is about?
Revenge for a little girl?”
“Both the thing responsible for the little girl’s death and
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the witch who raised it have been dealt with.” And both of
them were dead, sent to the fiery realms of hell itself—
although who actually knew if hell was fiery. “This is about
finding the third member of that consortium.”
He sipped his coffee for several moments, his expression
giving little away. But I knew from past experience that
behind the neutral expression there was a clever mind working full tilt, chewing over information, working out possible
angles. “Why does this consortium controlling the intersection worry you so much? You’re not a witch. You aren’t even
as psychically powerful as your mother.”
“I have different gifts from my mom, but that doesn’t
make them any less powerful.” Although admittedly, being
able to walk the grey fields— the unseen lands that divide
this world from the next— talk to souls, and see the reapers
who guided the souls on to the next life weren’t exactly the
most useable psychic gifts in a normal, everyday life. But
my life of late was as far from normal and everyday as you
could get.
And they were far from the only gifts I had.
Jak raised an eyebrow. “Meaning you can use the ley
lines?”
“I can’t even see them.”
“So why is it so important to you that the consortium is
stopped?”
I picked up a spoon and scooped up some chocolate cake.
It was a little dry, but I needed the sugary energy right then.
The air conditioning might be blasting every other scent
away, but it didn’t seem to be doing a whole lot to erase his.
And every intake of breath had the past stirring within me.
“These people attacked friends of mine. I want to find
them.”
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His gaze scanned mine again and a smile tugged his lips.
“The truth, but not the whole truth.”
I acknowledged that with a slight nod. “But the whole
truth is a little out there.”
“I’m a reporter who investigates all things paranormal
and occult, remember?” Sarcasm edged his voice. “You’d be
surprised at just how ‘out there’ I’m willing to go.”
I was betting even he wouldn’t believe the real truth— that
the intersection might well be tied up in a desperate scramble
by at least four different parties to find the keys that would
unlock the portals of heaven and hell. That one of those keys
had not only been recently found, but used to open the fi rst
of the portals that protected our world from the hordes of
hell.
I’d held that key in my hand. Held it, and lost it.
I didn’t want that to happen with the next key, and that
meant finding out as much as we could about all the players
involved in this race. Which meant digging up as much information about John Nadler— the consortium’s elusive third
man— as we could get.
But computers could only go so far. Sometimes the only
way to find anything useful was to hit the streets. But the sort
of people who’d hold the information we needed weren’t
likely to talk to someone like me, even if I could find them.
But they’d talk to Jak. They always had. He had a talent for
putting you at ease.
Or at least he did when he wasn’t sitting opposite the
woman whose heart he’d shattered.
“An intersection as powerful as this one,” I said, “can be
used to manipulate time, reality, or fate. If someone succeeds
in controlling such a intersection, he could wreak havoc on
the very fabric of our world.”
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He briefly looked surprised. “The intersection is really
that powerful?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, I guess fi nding the third man is something of
a priority.” He leaned forward a little. “But why are you
involved? And why come to me? Why not just leave it all to
the Directorate? It seems to be more their line of business
than yours or mine.”
“I’d leave it to the Directorate if I could, but that’s not an
option.”
“Leading me to the next obvious question—why not?”
“Because I’m being blackmailed into the hunt.” Which was
the truth, just one that didn’t actually apply to the intersection.
Amusement flirted briefly with his mouth and something
deep inside me twisted. It was a stupid and illogical response,
and it made me want to scream at my inability to just forget
what might have been.
“Did someone dig up some more dirty laundry on you or
your family?” he said.
His article had been more than dirty laundry—he’d
accused her of lying about her past. Which she had, but not
for the reasons he’d suggested. There was no nefarious crimes
or shady dealings, just her creation in a madman’s laboratory—
a fact she kept well guarded, and for good reason. Her
extraordinary abilities had caused many to treat her as a
freak—it would have been far worse if they’d learned the true
nature of her birth. “No, they didn’t. They’re threatening my
friends.”
That the man behind the threats was both an Aedh—who
were creatures of light and shadows, an energy so fierce their
mere presence burned the very air around them— and my
father was something I wasn’t about to explain.
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Jak frowned. “If that’s the case, involving the Directorate
seems even more logical.”
“They are involved, but their investigation is going nowhere and they can’t protect my friends forever.” They
weren’t even trying, in fact, simply because they didn’t know
about the threats. There was no point telling them when they
could never, ever protect us from the force that was my
father.
“So why do you think I’ll succeed where the Directorate is
failing?” Jak asked.
“Because you not only have a knack for getting people to
talk to you, you seem able to uncover those who would rather
remain hidden.”
The half smile appeared again. “That was almost a compliment.”
“It’s the truth,” I said flatly. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Huh.” He finished his coffee then leaned back in his
chair again. “How do you expect me to find someone the
Directorate—with all its resources— can not? They have
some of the strongest telepaths in Melbourne in their employ.
What could I get that they can’t?”
“They’re tackling the situation from a criminal angle. I
have people tackling it from a computer angle. What we need
is someone on the street.” I paused, and my smile held only
the slightest trace of bitterness. “And we both know just how
much you love digging the dirt in the street.”
“You should do that more often,” he said. “It suits you.”
I stared at him for a heartbeat, totally confused. “Do
what?”
“Smile.”
Something twisted inside again. Old pain, old love, churnN
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ing together, one fighting the other. Bastard, I thought. It was
hard enough fighting the memories without him muddying
the water by throwing compliments.
“I may want your help, Jak, but I don’t want anything else
from you. I don’t like the way you treat your lovers.”
He shrugged. “It was only a comment, not a flirtation.”
“Well, keep such comments to yourself. I don’t need them.
I just need your help.”
“Which I can’t give if I don’t actually have a starting
point— other than the name of a man no one can find.”
I reached down into my purse and pulled out my phone.
“You still have the same number?” When he nodded, I
attached a fi le and sent it to him. His phone beeped from the
depths of his pockets. “That’s all the information we have,
both on the consortium and the three men.”
“What about the people they were threatening?”
“Also there.” I hesitated. “If you talk to Fay and Steven
Kingston— the parents of the little girl— don’t mention the
soul stealer. They don’t know the truth about their daughter’s
death. They don’t know the threats and Hanna’s death are
connected.”
“Really?”
His gaze seemed to intensify, as if he were trying to get
inside my head. Which he had no chance of thanks to the
super strong nano microcells that had been inserted into my
earlobe and heel. Nanowires— the predecessor of the
microcells—were powered by body heat, but for the wires to
be active, both ends had to be connected so that a circuit was
formed. Microcells were also powered by body heat, but they
were contradictory forces that didn’t need a physical connection. Once fully activated, the push-pull of their interaction
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provided a shield that was ten times stronger than any wire
yet created.
With them in place, no one was getting inside my head.
Well, almost no one. The reaper who’d been assigned by the
powers above him—powers he refused to name— to follow
me around seemed to have no problem, and neither did
Lucian— although at least Lucian was hit and miss when it
came to knowing what was going on in my mind.
The one test the microcells hadn’t yet passed was Madeline Hunter, who was not only one of the strongest vampire
telepaths around and the woman in charge of the Directorate, but also— technically—my boss. Which wasn’t a situation I was happy about, but then, that’s what I got for agreeing
to work for the high vampire council.
Of course, working for them and actually helping them
find the keys—which they wanted not only to maintain
power, but to use hell itself as some sort of prison—were two
entirely different things. But it was a precarious balancing
act, simply because half of the high council thought it would
be better to kill me than use me. All that stood between me
and them was Hunter herself. Which meant, like it or not, I’d
do what I had to do to keep her happy.
Jak blinked, suggesting he’d given up attempting to squirrel into my thoughts. “So why didn’t you tell them the truth
about their daughter’s death?”
“It was bad enough that their little girl died. They didn’t
need to know that it wasn’t just her flesh that had passed.” I eyed
him warily. “And if you tell them, I shall beat you to a pulp.”
He laughed softly. The sound shivered down my spine,
warm and tingly. “You’ve gotten a little aggressive since we
parted. Hope it’s not my fault.”
I snorted. “Don’t give yourself any credit, Jak. I’ve had far
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worse traumas in my life than you using me to get a story on
my mother.”
And given she’d been torn apart by an unknown assailant,
that was the understatement of the year, to say the least.
Jak didn’t say the obvious— sorry about your mother’s
death— and I was glad. I might just have given in to the temptation to hit him if he had.
“So, I track down any and all information about this
consortium and the man no one else can find, then what?”
“You give me progress reports, and you let me see everything you have before you print said story.”
“Since this story looms so large on the Directorate’s
radar, will I actually be allowed to print it?”
“They can’t stop it if they don’t know about it,” I said.
“All you need to do is keep your nose down.”
“Yeah, that’s going to be easy given what I’m investigating.” His gaze moved down again, narrowing slightly when it
came to rest on my left arm. “Interesting tat.”
“Yeah,” I said dismissively, not even glancing down at the
wingless lilac dragon that twined its way up my arm from my
fingertips. I certainly wasn’t about to explain that it wasn’t
actually a tattoo, but something far more deadly— a Dušan,
a spirit guardian that came to life on the grey fields to protect
me. “Have we got a deal?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Let me dig around a little, just to
see if there really is a worthwhile story in all this.”
“Just don’t take too long to decide, because we haven’t got
a whole lot of time left.”
He nodded, finished his coffee in one long gulp, then rose.
“I’ll let you know, one way or another, by tomorrow.”
He walked out. I tried to resist the urge to watch, but my
gaze still flicked that way. The man sure could move nicely . . .
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something fluttered at the outer reaches of my vision. It was
almost ghostlike, a wisp of silver that was quickly shredded
by the sunlight streaming in through the window. I frowned,
scanning the front of the shop, intuition tingling. Whatever it
was, it didn’t reappear.
Jak left the café and the door whooshed shut behind him.
I sighed in relief and ordered a second cup of coffee. My
damn hands were shaking so bad it took several attempts to
swipe the credit card through.
“You should not have met him if his presence effects
you so.”
The words came out of the emptiness behind Jak’s chair
even as the heat of Azriel’s presence caressed my skin. Reapers, like the Aedh, were beings of energy rather than true
flesh and blood, but they could attain that form if they
wished to.
Which is how I’d come about. My father had spent one
night in flesh form with my mother and, in the process, had
given life to me— a half-breed mix of werewolf and Aedh
who was lucky enough to get most of the best bits of each and
few of the downsides.
“You’re the one that said we had to do everything possible
to stop the remaining portals being opened. No matter what
I might think or feel about Jak, he is good at digging up forgotten information.” I stabbed my spoon into my cake,
scooping some up. “If it’s out there to be found, he’ll find it.”
Azriel formed substance on the other side of the table and
sat down in Jak’s recently vacated chair. While reapers were
basically shapeshifters, able to take on any form that would
comfort the dying on their final journey, they did possess one
‘true’ shape. Usually I just saw whatever form they used to
claim the soul they were meant to escort, but for some weird
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reason, I always saw Azriel’s real form rather than the shape
he decided to take on. Even he had no idea why this
happened— or if he did, he wasn’t telling me.
Which wasn’t exactly a bad thing given his real form was
rather stunning. His face was chiseled, almost classical in its
beauty and yet possessing the hard edge of a man who’d won
more than his fair share of battles. He was shirtless, his skin
a warm, suntanned brown and his abs well defi ned. The
worn leather strap that held his sword in place seemed to
emphasize the width of his shoulders, just as the dark jeans
that clung to his legs hinted at the lean strength of them. Stylized black tats that resembled the left half of a wing swept
around his ribs from underneath his arm, the tips brushing
across the left side of his neck.
Only it wasn’t a tat. It was a Dušan— a darker, more stylized brother to the one that now resided on my left arm.
Azriel’s gaze met mine, and his blue eyes— one as vivid
and as bright as a sapphire, the other the color of a storm held
sea—hinted at sympathy.
“Couldn’t you have just asked him all this on the phone?”
I grimaced. “Jak’s the sort of person who prefers face to
face meetings.”
“Because of his gifts.”
“Yes.” I gave the waitress another smile of thanks as she
delivered my second cup of coffee. She didn’t even blink at the
half-naked sword carrying man sitting opposite me.
But that wasn’t entirely surprising. The same ability that
allowed reapers to see what form a soul would most likely
accept in their guide allowed Azriel to take on an outer skin
that would raise no eyebrows, no matter where he was. The
waitress probably saw him as just another man in a suit.
“Actually,” he said, “she still thinks Jak sits at the table.”
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“Well, I’m glad he isn’t,” I muttered around a mouthful of
cake.
“Odd words, since your thoughts suggest otherwise.”
“As you have previously noted, human thoughts are not
always rational.”
“But you are not human.”
“And right now, I’m not exactly rational.” I finished the
last of my cake, then pushed the plate away and reached for
Jak’s. Never let it be said that I let a chocolate cake go to
waste, even if it wasn’t the best I’d ever tasted. “So, what’s
next?”
He shrugged. “Until your father contacts us with details
of the next key’s location, we are basically at a stand still.”
“Well, if he wasn’t the one who stole the key from us,
maybe he won’t.” And if he wasn’t the one who’d stolen it,
then I was more than happy for him to remain far, far away.
If only because I’d seen him angry— and, part werewolf or
not, the bruises had taken days to fade. “Maybe he’ll consider
us too great a risk to use again.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you honestly believe that?”
He knew I didn’t. He could read every thought after all. I
threw the spoon onto the plate, but it bounced and clattered
over the edge of the table. Azriel caught it casually in one
hand and gave it back to me.
“Finish the cake,” he said softly. “You need the sustenance.”
I scowled at him. “Stop mothering me. Besides, cake isn’t
sustenance.”
“It is impossible for me to mother you when I am male,”
he replied evenly, but there was a hint of humor glinting in
the depths of his eyes, and, as usual, it did strange things to
my pulse rate—which only emphasized just how irrational I
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really was. He added, “And is not chocolate one of the five
essential food groups?”
I rolled my eyes. “You, reaper, need to stop believing
everything you read in my thoughts.”
He merely raised an eyebrow. “If it is not essential, why
do you have it so often?”
I studied him for a moment, wondering if he was still teasing me or not. “Because it’s like love and sex—it’s just something a woman has to have.” I paused, but couldn’t resist
asking, “What about you? Is there anything in your life that
you’d consider essential?”
“Valdis,” he said immediately.
“Valdis is your sword.” A demon forged sword with a
whole lot of power and a voice and mind of her own, granted,
but still a sword. I had a similar one sitting at my back, only
Amaya was shadow-wreathed, and no one would ever see
her—not until her black blade pierced their flesh, anyway.
“Swords don’t count.”
“Then it would be duty,” he said evenly.
I snorted. “It’s a sad statement about the reaper community that duty is considered a far higher priority than love and
laughter.”
“It is natural our priorities are different considering our
beings are completely different in design.”
I frowned. “Aren’t you even curious as to why we humans
consider love, sex, and chocolate so vital to our existence?”
“No.” He paused. “Which does not preclude the possibility that I have experienced at least one of those options.”
“I wasn’t talking about the reaper version of love and sex.”
“Neither was I,” he said, amusement teasing his lips.
I stared at him for several seconds, completely dumbstruck. No, he surely couldn’t mean . . .
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He’d shown no interest in eating in the time I’d known
him, so I had to think chocolate was out. And it was hard to
imagine him falling in love with a human given his often
harsh opinions of humanity as a whole. But that only left sex
and I really couldn’t imagine . . .
“Why not?” he asked softly. “If I can find death in this
form, why would you think me incapable of fi nding other
emotions?”
“Death isn’t an emotion. Neither is sex.” I said this in
total disbelief. I was still trying to get my head around the
fact that Azriel had had sex. In human form.
“On the contrary, death is a time of great sadness. And
does not sex bring joy and completeness?”
“Yeah, for us. You’re not us.”
“Why can you believe it possible for the Aedh to enjoy the
benefits of flesh, but not a reaper?”
The Aedh he was referring to was Lucian. Despite all the
help Lucian had given to us recently, Azriel both disliked and
distrusted him, to the point where he refused to call him by
name— even if he was in the same room as him.
“I believe it because I’ve seen the joy Lucian gets out of
sex. Besides, reapers are soul guides and it seems to me that
you all treat that role with great respect and uttermost devotion. I would have thought fraternizing with us would be
banned.” Hell, there seemed to be rules forbidding almost
everything else in the reaper world.
“Ah, but it is,” he said, and there was an almost bitter
twist in his brief smile.
I blinked. “Okay, now you’re just confusing me.”
He studied me for a few minutes, his gaze more intense
than usual, as if he were judging me. Which was odd, because
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he was connected to my Chi and probably knew me better
than I knew myself.
“You remember I mentioned the friend that died?”
“Yes.”
“He was sent to retrieve a soul, but found a trap instead.
Ten more reapers found their deaths before I tracked down
the person responsible.” Azriel paused, and regret touched
the air. But over what it had cost him, I thought, not what
he’d done. “I was not Mijai at the time, but I did what I had
to do to uncover the killer.”
Which was what he’d advised me to do not so long ago,
and the only reason I’d come here to see Jak today. “And
doing what you had to do involved sex with a human?”
“Yes. Seducing the killer’s former mistress was the only
way I could uncover his location.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Why couldn’t you have simply
read her mind, or even waited until he came to see her again?”
“As I said, she was his former mistress. Apparently he
stopped seeing her just before the killings began. And though
it is extremely rare, there are minds reapers cannot read—
that is why you sometimes see the classic grey shroud form of
reaper.” He shrugged. “Violence was out— I would not desecrate my position as a soul guide that badly— so my only
option was seduction. It took two weeks to gain her trust and
get the information. That time was . . . enlightening.”
I bet. “So you became a Mijai because you seduced a
woman?”
“And scattered the soul of my friend’s killer to the four
winds, never to be reborn.”
Holy shit . . . he really had got his vengeance. “How the
hell are you even still alive?”
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I mightn’t know a whole lot about the reaper world, but I
did know that sort of action was out of bounds unless it was
ordered by whoever was in charge of the Mijai. Or dark
angels, as they sometimes called themselves.
“It was a close decision,” he said softly. “And I am still
paying for my actions, even as a Mijai.”
“So, you becoming a Mijai, and then being assigned to
follow me is part of that punishment?”
“Yes.”
No wonder he’d been so hostile at the beginning of all
this. “So when this assignment is over, will you be forgiven?”
“I doubt it. My sin was great. My penance will be a
long one.”
I eyed him for a moment, suspecting there was more to his
punishment than what he was admitting, then said, “And you
don’t care, do you?”
“I care that I will never again be a guide. Beyond that, no.”
Because he’d avenged his friend. And to think I’d once
thought this reaper wasn’t capable of emotion.
I lifted my cup, then paused, the coffee washing warmth
across my lips. There was another odd glimmer in the shadows behind Azriel. It definitely wasn’t smoke from the deepfryers or anything like that, because it was stationary under
the vents. Steam would have been sucked out.
What? His voice slipped into my mind as smoothly as
dark silk.
I think we have company.
Where? He didn’t move, but blue fi re began to flicker
across Valdis’s sharp edges, a sure sign that sword and master
were ready for action.
It’s behind you.
His eyes narrowed a little, and power slithered through
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the air. His, not whatever it was behind him. It is neither a
ghost nor a day walker—although there is one in the room.
I raised my eyebrows. Day walker?
The spirit of one who has left his living body to roam this
world.
Ah. An astral traveler. So what about those shimmers of
silver I keep seeing?
Those, he said, his mind voice flat. Are Ania.
I had no idea what that was— other than the fact it wasn’t
of this world—but right now, there was a more important
question. Why didn’t you sense them before me?
He hesitated. My concentration was wholly on you rather
than our surrounds. It is a mistake I shall endeavor not to
repeat.
Given all the mistakes I’d made over the last few weeks, I
could hardly grumble at his one brief lapse in concentration—
and it was oddly gratifying that I was the cause of it. I frowned
at the shimmer still standing in the shadows behind him.
What is an Ania?
The ancient Greeks gave them the name—it means, literally, the female personification of trouble.
Which doesn’t exactly tell me what they are. Or why
they’d be here in this café closing in on us.
Ania are demons. They can be summoned to perform a
number of tasks, including harassment, assault, and murder.
He paused. It is unusual to see them in great numbers. They
are normally solitary beings.
Two is hardly what I’d term great numbers. And given the
size of the shimmers I’d seen, as demons went, they seemed to
be on the small side.
There are at least six here, and size is not an indicator of
dangerousness when it comes to demons, he chided softly.
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Ania are rarely seen outside the dark realm. They are both
hard to summon, and harder to control.
So they’re not the type of demon who breaks through the
portals of their own accord?
No. His expression was grim as it met mine. Whoever
summoned them has been able to do so simply because the
strength of the portals has been weakened.
Because there were now only two portals protecting us
from the hordes of hell rather than three. And that was
entirely my fault.
It is a blame that lies on us both.
Given he’d been busy protecting me, and all I’d had to do
was hold on to the key, that wasn’t exactly true. But it was
pointless getting into an argument over it—no amount of
arguing or remorse was going to change what had happened.
So the Ania are here to kill us?
If killing was their intent, they would have attacked
immediately.
Then what the hell do they want?
That I cannot say until they actually act. He hesitated.
But Amaya and Valdis are well equipped to handle Ania.
That I knew. Valdis practically glowed with the blue of
her fi re and Amaya’s hissing rolled across the edges of my
mind, filled with eagerness and the need to rent and tear.
It wasn’t the swords I was worried about. Or Azriel. It was
me. I’d proven woefully inadequate when it came to protecting myself against the more dangerous elements that kept
coming at us.
You are alive, Risa. Given what we have been through,
that in itself speaks volumes about your ability to survive.
Surviving and fighting were two entirely different things.
So what do we do?
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We attack.
I glanced around the café. There were at least half a dozen
people eating and drinking in the café, not to mention the five
staff members. Not with all these people in here we won’t.
He glanced at the people around us. As one, they got up
and walked out.
I blinked. I guess that solved one problem.
But it caused an even bigger one.
Because the minute the people left, the Ania attacked.
N
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LIQUID LIES
by Hanna Martine
A July 2012 paperback from Berkley Sensation
Gwen possesses the unique ability to pick up any language
in an instant— a power that will globally expand the profitable family business. As dutiful future leader of her race
of water elementals, she’ll do anything to protect her people’s secrets and bloodlines—including enter an arranged
marriage. Inside, however, she yearns for the forbidden—
human men.
Reed is a mercenary addicted to the money and adrenaline rush of his work. After he saves Gwen’s life, he ignites
her taboo desire for men without magic— and with bodies
of gods. Just as things heat up, Reed discovers that Gwen
is exactly who he’s been hired to kidnap. He resolves to put
work before lust, yet her luscious beauty and fiery spirit
unravel him . . .
But there is a terrible truth behind Gwen’s family
business— and now, caught between the kinsmen she no
longer trusts and an enemy bent on vengeance, the only
ally she has is her abductor . . .
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CHAPTER 1
Deals always went down near water.
At three a.m. Gwen Carroway and the chairman of the
Company waited in an idling limo on the Embarcadero. To
the left, the bay curled around a sparkling San Francisco. To
the right, water poured incessantly from Vaillancourt Fountain’s hulking mess of squared concrete tubes. Water
everywhere— soothing her, whispering to her, offering her
protection.
She peered through the tinted windows. On the opposite
side of the fountain, two male figures in dark suits appeared
between a line of palm trees. Their steps slowed as they
started across the angular half-moon of the plaza.
“They’re here.”
Her father, Chairman Ian Carroway, stopped poking at
his phone and set it on the seat next to his thigh. “You sound
a little nervous. Are you?”
She sucked in air through her teeth. “Maybe a little. New
client jitters, I guess. It’ll pass.”
His sharp, brown eyes warmed as he patted her knee.
N
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“You’ve done this a dozen times. The Company trusts you. I
trust you.”
She blew out a breath and tilted her face to the jagged line
of city buildings cutting into the night sky. “I know, I know.
I just wish it wasn’t so out in the open.”
The phone buzzed and her father reached for it again,
thumbs dancing across its face, as he typed one thing and
said another. “The location is for their comfort, not ours.
You’ll be fine, kiddo.”
Still “kiddo” to him, and she was closing in on thirty.
When he finished typing he didn’t put the phone down,
just held it loosely in one palm. Did he sleep with that thing?
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
She waved him off. “Yes. I want to do this myself. But
thanks.”
Maybe if the Board saw how ambitious she was—how
devoted and beneficial to the Company— they would vote her
into their ranks before her next birthday. And wouldn’t that
be an accomplishment? Wouldn’t that prove to her people
that she’d do anything for them, including committing her
life to better theirs?
Because of her gift, she was the only person in the Company capable of making international deals, but she wanted
to be so much more. She wanted to lead. She wanted to take
what her father had grown and make it even stronger.
Gwen patted the bulge in the pocket of her black blazer
and opened the limo door. The dome light illuminated her
father, who nodded confidently and shooed her off with a
grin. His belief in her gave her strength. She would not let
him down. She would not let her people down.
A beige Subaru slowed behind the limo, honked, then
swerved around. Gwen hopped onto the curb, suddenly and
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frighteningly conscious of the way the limo’s interior light
cast a spotlight on the important man inside. Secrecy was
paramount. She slammed the door, extinguishing the light,
and the limo pulled away on silent wheels, leaving her alone
in the plaza.
She closed her eyes and breathed, absorbing the combined
sounds of the bay’s lapping waves and the roar of the fountain. Opening her eyes, she channeled her father’s panache
and squared her shoulders. She walked steadily around the
fountain, resisting the urge to tug at the yellow strands of her
hair that swirled in the unpredictable breeze.
The new client was Japanese, the Company’s fi rst from
that country. The actual buyer was too important to retrieve
the product himself, rich enough to send others to do his
business, and obsessed with anonymity. Just like everyone
else willing to pay the Company’s high price of vanity.
The lead Japanese man approached Gwen with shallow
steps. A lock of inky black hair bounced across his forehead
and he used a palm to slick it back. Per the Company’s
instructions, he clutched a cheap, nondescript briefcase. His
companion, striding with purpose at his heels, stood a full
head taller and weighed double.
She walked among Primaries every day. She lived in their
city without self-consciousness or worry that they could differentiate her from anyone else on the street. But when deals
went down and the Company cracked open the door to their
private little world, it was impossible for her to not feel vulnerable. Like she was opening the drawbridge and inviting
the enemy inside the castle.
That was the source of her nerves, she realized. She didn’t
fear for her own safety or that she couldn’t close the sale.
Despite monstrous confidentiality agreements, every deal the
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Company made threatened to reveal more of themselves to
the Primaries, and that scared her more than anything.
There were reasons humans were called Primaries: they
were here first and there were far, far more of them.
Even though the wealthiest of the Primaries craved what
her people had to offer, they regarded the Company with caution and a measure of disdain. After all, Gwen’s people, the
Ofarians, were special. No matter how much money the Primaries threw at the Company, they could never physically
possess Ofarian magic.
But the Company could sell it to them in a bottle.
Gwen stopped near the lip of the fountain, where the tangle of concrete and rushing water guarded her from the intermittent headlights on the Embarcadero. She let the clients
come to her. The smaller Japanese man walked determinedly,
with a laser-like focus. His bodyguard made sweeping assessments of the surroundings with his eyes.
Go ahead, she thought. You won’t find anyone but me.
The men pulled up a few feet away. The shorter man
passed the briefcase to his bodyguard and retrieved a business card from his pocket. Presenting it with both hands, he
bowed and spoke in quick Japanese. “I am Yoshi. Mikatani
regrets being unable to come personally.”
“Yoshi.” She handed him her own card in the same way
and bowed deeper. Japanese spilled off her tongue, coming as
easily as her native language. “We spoke on the phone.”
As Yoshi straightened, he looked pointedly over her shoulder. “Your chairman could not make it?”
She dipped her head. “It seems both our employers are
busy. I assure you your business is safe with me.”
“Gwen Carroway. Vice President International Relations.”
He smiled as he read her card aloud, though the smile was oily
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and unforthcoming. She didn’t like him at all. When he looked
up, the gush of the fountain reflected in his night-dark eyes.
“Your Japanese is excellent.”
“So is my Greek. And twenty-two other languages.”
Another smile, this one wider and slimier. His teeth
looked like they’d been knocked out and shoved back in by a
third grader. She understood very well that she was in the
business of lies, but she was supposed to sell them, not buy
them. She desperately wanted out from under his stare; she
wanted this deal done.
“Do you have the remainder of the payment?”
Yoshi gestured to the briefcase. “Do you have the product?”
“Of course.” The subtle lift of her shoulders, the overly
casual demeanor— she’d stolen them both directly from her
father.
Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew a shiny, graphitecolored box the size of a cigarette pack tied with a red silk
bow. The name Mendacia wrapped around the package in
silvery embossed script.
Yoshi’s eyes clamped onto it. He licked his lips. “Does it
really work?”
They’d been out in the open for a while now and the covetousness in his expression set her on edge. Her knees locked
and she prayed he wouldn’t notice her legs shaking. Maybe
she should just walk away from the deal . . . except that the
Ofarians depended on her and her sales, not only for the
money Mendacia brought in, but also for the jobs and security it provided.
“After Mikatani-san’s foot is amputated, use this potion as
directed and no one will be able to tell. His body will seem
whole. To anyone watching, he will walk without a limp.” She
tilted her head, another trust me gestured borrowed from Dad,
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the king of sales, the master of persuasion. She couldn’t resist
needling Yoshi; he rubbed her wrong in so many ways. “But I
have already convinced Mikatani. I don’t need to sell it to you.”
Another swipe of Yoshi’s palm across his forehead. At last
he ripped his gaze from the box. “No, of course not. I just
find it hard to believe. A potion to cure what the most
advanced diabetes doctors cannot?”
She jiggled the box, the bow flopping from side to side.
“Not cure. Appear to cure. To hide.”
She anticipated his reaction. Expected to see disbelief cloud
his expression. That usually happened with first-time clients.
Only Yoshi didn’t indulge. His black eyes narrowed in a way
that suggested pleasure, not doubt. “Is that all it can do? Make
ailing octogenarians save face in front of their investors?”
Mendacia was far more than that. It was the Ofarians’
honor. Only the most gifted of her people were selected to
learn the craft, and it was the hard work of those chosen ones
who supported the entire race.
The Primaries would never know that. They’d get what
they paid for. Nothing more.
“It’s glamour,” she said, taking care not to look away
from Yoshi’s eyes. “It can do almost anything.” Related to
the user’s personal appearance, that is.
She raised the box and made an obvious glance at the
briefcase. “The instructions to activate the spell are inside the
box. I personally translated them and wrote out the words
phonetically using Japanese pronunciation. If Mikatani-san
has any questions or concerns, please call me directly.”
The errant lock of hair fell over Yoshi’s forehead again.
This time he didn’t shove it away. “That’s exactly what I
wanted to hear. I’ll take the Mendacia now.”
She extended the box, the red bow a splash of color in the
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dimly lit, deserted plaza. Yoshi hurried forward and snatched
it a little too greedily. Sweat beaded on his skin underneath
the flap of hair.
A chill raced over her. The air around them screamed in
alarm.
Yoshi grinned, slick and crooked. “And I’ll take you too,
Gwen.”
The goon behind him whipped out a gun—metal flashing
like fi re, barrel aimed straight at her. Think, Gwen. Think.
How can you turn this asshole’s hubris to our benefit?
She took too long. Griffi n burst like a kraken from Vaillancourt Fountain.
Water gushed upwards from the low pool, assuming the
strong, lean shape of Griffin’s human body. Translucent waves
flowed over the valleys of his stomach muscles. White froth
cascaded over his square jaw and the hard cut of his arms. His
torso darkened, solidified. Water droplets skittered across his
skin, soaking in. From the waist down he remained a brilliant, shimmering waterfall balancing on the fountain’s bubbling surface. Frightening beautiful, unmovable as rock.
Time slowed as Griffin’s furious dark eyes met Gwen’s.
They spoke paragraphs in that moment. She had no time to
be pissed off he’d interfered before she’d called for backup.
Together they silently assessed the danger. Made plans. Then
time caught up, resumed normal speed.
One of Griffin’s arms went liquid and shot out, fast as a
bullet, to wrap around the stunned bodyguard and yank him
forward into the fountain. Griffin’s watery legs flowed over
the Japanese goon, holding him under the surface. His chest
and shoulders heaved with channeled fury.
Griffin, Gwen’s personal protector. Griffin, the man the
Board wanted her to marry.
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The bodyguard thrashed face down in the shallow pool.
Griffin allowed him to break the surface and breathe. Just
long enough for him to plead for his life in Japanese. Gwen
didn’t translate.
She transformed her own arm into a liquid whip and
snapped it at the Mendacia box sagging in Yoshi’s fi ngers.
Reversing the suction, she peeled it from his grasp and flung
it back into her own hands. As her arm returned to solid, she
felt the familiar, cool tingle of ebbing waters.
Yoshi made a strangled, squeaking, unmanly sound in the
back of this throat. His empty hands shook.
She walked to the edge of the fountain where the briefcase
of money floated. Under Yoshi’s bug-eyed stare, she plucked
it from the water and spoke the Ofarian words to dissolve
every molecule of water from its surface and the stacks of
money inside.
“Something tells me,” she swiveled back to Yoshi, “that
Mikatani isn’t aware of your actions tonight.” No response.
“Let me guess. You had a better offer? Thought to take me
along with the Mendacia? Force me to change the command
words to make it do whatever your new clients wanted?”
Yoshi gulped, defeated. “You do realize that by violating our
contract you’ve just single-handedly forfeited fifty-one percent of Mikatani’s holdings to the Company?”
Yoshi sagged as though his own body were made of water.
“Please. I beg you. He’ll kill me . . .”
She set the briefcase on the fountain’s lip and ran her fingers along its edges. A great surge of anger and confidence
bubbled inside her. She wondered if that was what drove her
father and the rest of the Board day in and day out. That feeling of secret superiority and advantage. How dare a Primary
think he could pull one over on the Company?
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She knew what she had to do.
She looked to Griffi n, whose eyes were almost as tortured
as their captives’. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Gwen,” he
said through clenched teeth. “Just give the order.”
Usually the Board collectively passed down the sentence.
She’d been in the boardroom in the past, when they’d decided
a Primary should die for knowing too much, but she’d never
been the one to slam the gavel.
It was Ofarian law and it was necessary, but that didn’t
mean she had to enjoy it.
Plus, there were two offenders. Griffin couldn’t handle
both of them at the same time and she . . . well, maybe here
was where her cowardice finally showed its ugly face.
She faced Yoshi. “I’m sure the death Mikatani will give
you will include pain. Humiliation. I understand saving face
is very important to your people. It’s why you’re here in the
fi rst place, isn’t it?”
“Please . . .” Yoshi begged.
“I’m willing to give you a choice, Yoshi. I can let you go
and you can try to run from your boss—which I’m sure will
be impossible— or you can die right here.” She glanced at
the bodyguard still gasping in the water. “If you go now,
your man dies. I’ll trade your life for his. Who’s it going to
be?”
Yoshi, made all the more tiny by his round-shouldered
fear, pointed one shaking fi nger at the goon gurgling beneath
Griffin’s liquid legs. “Him.” Then he turned and ran.
Yoshi sprinted across the plaza and disappeared into the city,
his black hair and suit blending in with the shadows. The
sharp beat of his loafers on pavement faded to nothing. Gwen
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fumbled for the signal switch clipped inside her lapel that
would call the limo back.
“Gwen.” Leashed panic lifted Griffi n’s voice over the
rushing water. “What the hell are you doing? You let him go?”
She had, hadn’t she.
She stuffed the Mendacia box back in her pocket and
scooped up the briefcase. “You can’t take care of them both
at the same time, Griffi n.”
“Don’t tell me what I am and am not capable of.”
She glared in the direction where Yoshi had run. “I could
say the same thing to you.” His nostrils flared. “I can’t take a
life. I’m not trained, physically or emotionally.” No, she was
corporate, through and through.
“He’ll talk.”
“Dad will call Mikatani the second the limo comes.
Yoshi’s as good as dead.”
Griffin was still half water, towering above her. “I hope
you know what you’re doing.”
She did too. Leaders had to own their decisions and she’d
stand by hers.
The limo screeched around the bend and braked where it
had dropped her off earlier.
“Get in the car.” Trouble darkened his eyes and the slant
of his mouth turned grim.
She understood. He didn’t want her around when he
drowned Yoshi’s henchman.
The past fifteen minutes settled like ice in her bones and
she stumbled to the limo without remembering the walk. She
fell into the seat, unclipped the signal switch and tossed it in
the corner.
“Kiddo? Gwennie?” Her father scooted closer. “You’re
shaking. What happened?”
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When she removed the Mendacia box from her pocket
and couldn’t read the name for the quivering of her hand, she
knew it to be true. His hand squeezed her shoulder, forcing
her to look at him.
She swallowed hard. “Call Mikatani. Tell him to come
pick up his trash.”
“What do you—”
The door flew open and in tumbled a naked Griffin. “Go,”
he yelled at the driver, then turned to scan the windows for
witnesses. The limo lurched away from the curb and sailed
down the Embarcadero.
Her father shifted seats so Griffi n could sidle next to
Gwen. She fought the urge to scramble away.
She’d seen Griffi n naked once or twice before, but only
during transformation. Ofarians didn’t need to be naked to
change, but it took extra effort to maintain outside objects as
liquid, and he’d been waiting in that fountain for a good
thirty minutes before Yoshi showed up.
Though she averted her gaze, she was still acutely aware
of Griffin tugging the black pants of his security uniform up
his bare legs. He’d stashed his clothes next to the whiskey
carafe, and when he stretched forward for his black shirt, the
lean, strong muscles in his shoulders and back bunched.
Any woman in the world would pant at the sight of him.
Any woman except Gwen.
She turned to her dad. “Call Mikatani. Let his people deal
with the translation on their end. I’ll talk if I have to, just
can’t promise what I’ll say. I think you’ll be better with diplomatic relations right about now.”
“What happened?”
She told him, Griffin silent beside her. Before she was even
finished, her father had gone fire red in the face.
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“Forget Mikatani,” the Chairman blurted. “We’re hunting that son of a bitch right now. Griffin, get on it.”
Griffin opened his phone and mumbled orders to his security team. In minutes tens of plain-clothes Ofarian soldiers
would be scouring the city for Yoshi. Come sunrise, SFPD
would be saddled with not one, but two mysterious deaths of
Japanese nationals.
“And you,” her father said, “you shouldn’t have let him go.”
One awful lesson learned. The Board position slipped a
little farther away. She’d have to make up for that.
Adrenaline seeped from her body in stuttering waves, and
she sank deeper into the seat. From underneath it all floated
the tap tap tap of her father’s fingers, back on his phone
again.
She let the rock and jerk of the limo carry her farther and
farther away from what had just happened. How could she
remedy this? How could she save face in front of the Board?
“Sir, if I may,” came Griffi n’s quiet interjection. The
Chairman nodded for him to continue, but he was looking
out the window, his expression clouded.
“The international deals,” Griffin said, “they’re getting
riskier.”
Gwen sat up straighter, not liking at all where this conversation was about to go.
The Chairman pinched his lips between his fingers and
sighed. “You’re right. They are. Because foreigners aren’t
scared of us yet. The Americans are because we’ve been doing
business with them for almost a century. Our existence is
protected here. Fear breeds secrecy.”
Griffin nodded vehemently. “And is this a new threat?
Assholes like Yoshi wanting to grab Gwen? Get her to reconfigure the potion? I don’t like it. Not at all.”
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“Gwen,” her father said, “is your safety really worth
this?”
He turned sad eyes to her, and the emotion behind them
struck a deep, bitter chord.
Ofarians weren’t immune to vanity. Though her father
was closing in on sixty years old, tonight he looked barely
forty. She didn’t like facing him when he did Mendacia and
the glamour made him look like the photo above his mantel
in which she was a little girl on his knee. Seeing him young
was like looking into the past, and she wanted more important things— things other than his wrinkles and softening
gut— to change instead.
She wanted her mom back. She wanted her sister to have
been smarter, more loyal.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” She spread her arms between the
two men. “Going global was my idea. Think about everything my division has done for Ofarians in the past seven
years. Because of me, we’ve tripled Mendacia production and
our earnings. We have everything we could possibly need.
More, even. Our people are the happiest they’ve ever been.”
“Right,” the Chairman said, clamping a loving hand on
her knee. “So maybe we should scale back. Be more selective
in our international clientele. Try instead to expand our
American base.”
“I have Griffin,” she argued. “It’s his job to keep me safe.
The whole race trusts him. His security team is impenetrable.”
She risked a look at her protector, but he was staring at his
lap, his mouth a straight, white line. He hadn’t had much say
in his role when the Board handed it to him when he was
sixteen. He didn’t have much say about it now.
She couldn’t help but wonder if part of the reason he was
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so amenable to a marriage with her was to improve his station in their society.
“Please.” She held her father’s hands now. Though they
looked smooth, they felt dry and wrinkled. “This is what I
have. What I was born to do. I’ll do what I can to keep Mendacia viable overseas, then campaign to be admitted to the
Board. I have so many ideas, Dad . . .”
He tugged his hand out. “You understand why I worry,
don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“We’re on the same side, Gwennie. We both want what’s
best for our people.”
“And I can do things for them that no one else can. I’m the
fi rst Translator born since we came here. Don’t shut me
down.”
She’d been hearing she was special since she hit puberty
and learned Spanish accidentally over chicken flautas and
virgin strawberry margaritas in a Mexican restaurant. The
Board had gone into a tizzy and the very next day she’d been
assigned a protector, the same man who would eventually
hand-pick and train Griffin before retiring.
“Mendacia is a gift to our race,” she went on, and her
father nodded with pride. “It’s let us figure out how to live as
Secondaries in a Primary world. Besides,” she sat back with a
grin, “you know I’m dying to know how it’s made.”
The Chairman wagged a playful fi nger. “When the Board
votes you in, my dear. Not a moment sooner.”
She couldn’t wait.
“So I can scout the job in Moscow next week?”
She’d already booked her and Griffin’s flight, giving herself five days to learn the language and study the culture and
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potential client. This time it was an heir possibly linked to
crooked money.
“I want extra guys,” Griffin said, and her father acquiesced.
As they pulled up in front of her apartment building, the
limo slanted at a steep San Francisco angle, a text came
through Griffin’s phone.
“Got ‘im,” he said. Wow, that was fast. “They’ll detain
him at a neutral location until I get there. If you don’t mind,
sir, I’d like to wait until after we’ve met with the Board.”
Gwen threw a look of relief at her dad, who was watching
Griffin like a proud father-in-law to be. She lunged for the
door, eager to get away. “Good night. Or good morning,
rather.”
She stumbled out to the sidewalk, her vision a little blurry,
her legs a little shaky from the adrenaline crash.
“Gwen. Wait.” Griffin climbed out after her. He leaned
back inside to apologize to the Chairman, who was already
back tapping at his phone.
Griffin jogged the few steps to her, then stood with his
legs planted wide, arms crossed over his chest, like he was
trying to root himself to the spot. Or keep himself from
touching her.
“You got a gun pulled on you tonight.” His expression
was as dark as his hair and clothing. “You can try to act
tough, but I really need to know if you’re all right.”
She blinked up at him, so ready to say Yeah, of course!
Fabulous! “I will be,” she replied, because this was Griffin
and not a Board member. With him, she didn’t have to
pretend.
His brow creased and his eyes dipped to the sidewalk.
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There was more. He wasn’t moving from that spot until he’d
said it, so she stayed put.
“What the hell were you thinking, not calling for me? I
heard everything that was happening with Yoshi. I heard
how shit was going south fast. Why didn’t you?”
“Because I thought I could handle it.”
“Gwen . . .”
“All right. Because I knew you had my back and I was trying to figure out what he wanted and what more he knew. If
this was a bigger threat than it seemed.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. There were too many emotions on Griffin’s face—none of them bending in her favor.
“Don’t do that again,” he said.
“How about, don’t make a move unless I say?” Big, awkward moment. She’d never pulled rank like that before and it
made his jaw clench, though he didn’t respond. At considerable length she asked, “Are you okay? With what I had
you do?”
“Yeah. Fine.” It was the most she’d ever get out of him on
the subject of acting executioner.
His arms dropped to his sides. He wasn’t much taller than
her when she wore heels, and his every movement had a careful grace, as though he planned it moments ahead of time.
“Want me to walk you up?” A casual question, but his
eyes begged: Please, please can I walk you up?
She looked away. “It’s late. Or early, however you want to
look at it.”
He cupped his jaw in the crook of his hand between
thumb and forefinger and gazed down the street. They’d
known each other so long that she recognized the sign of his
barely controlled frustration. He said, “We haven’t hung out
at your place in a long time.”
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Not since she’d fi rst heard the rumblings from the Board
about their impending marriage match.
She shrugged. “Still looks the same.”
“That’s not the point and you know it. We haven’t stopped
being friends, have we?”
Her head dropped back on her neck, heavy as a sack of
flour. “Of course not.”
It had taken a while to get to this place, to friendship. All
through junior high, Griffin had picked on her so much she’d
spent a lunch or two crying in a bathroom stall. He hadn’t
cared that she was a Translator or a Board member’s daughter. Then her assigned protector wanted to retire when Gwen
finished high school; he tested every boy her age and guess
who came out on top?
She and Griffin had resented the new relationship, but
duty to the Ofarians rose above all. By the time they graduated high school, they fell into friendship. The best kind.
Until the Board shook up eleven years of closeness by
wanting the only known Translator and the man sworn to
protect her to procreate. They’d never say as much, but they
were hoping she’d birth a child with her gift. The official
engagement announcement hadn’t come yet, but it would.
And then they’d be married. Sleeping together.
Griffin rolled his eyes, reading her panic. “I’m not talking
about sex, Gwen. I’m talking about talking.”
He made perfect sense. She couldn’t throw away their
relationship over a bit of discomfort. It was how the Ofarian
marriage system worked. Every man and woman suffered
initial panic. In this regard, she wasn’t remotely special.
And this was Griffin. Brave, beautiful Griffin who’d
always be there for her. She opened her arms.
He swept across the sidewalk as silkily as if he were still
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in water form. They embraced hard. She couldn’t deny it; he
felt like home. The cologne he’d worn forever, the lean, athletic build of his body, the caring circle of his arms. That
moment reminded her of the fi rst time they’d hugged when
she was seventeen. When the Ofarian doctors had told her
family their race wasn’t immune to cancer and that her mom
didn’t have long to live.
“Gwen.” He drew a deep breath and blew it out, warm,
into her hair. “The way I feel about you has . . . changed in
the past few weeks. It may have even changed before that.”
She fell perfectly still. “I have no idea what to say to that.”
“You don’t love me. I know.”
She stepped back, trying not to make it seem like she was
pushing him away. “Of course I love you.”
The wry grin he gave her restored some of their longstanding camaraderie. “But not in that way.”
Primary and Secondary women lusted after this man.
She’d seen it happen plenty of times. She shouldn’t have him.
He deserved a woman who looked at him with heat that
rivaled a Napa Valley afternoon.
She picked her next words carefully. “It’ll change for me.
I have no doubt in my mind. Look at all the great Ofarian
marriages. Look at all the terrific kids and families. And look
how our work is setting up such incredible futures for all of
them. We’ll get there. I know it.”
Maybe if she kept repeating that, she’d believe it.
He raised his thick black eyebrows and took her face in
his hands. For a second she thought he’d kiss her and she
tensed. But he didn’t.
“We will,” he said, and backed toward the limo. “Call
you later?”
“Absolutely.”
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The limo pulled away, heading for the Chairman’s manor
in Pacific Heights. She turned for her door . . . and realized
she’d left her purse, with her cell phone and apartment keys,
back at the office. She reached for the signal switch to call
back the limo, but she’d pulled it off on the Embarcadero. In
the chilly pre-dawn it was way too early to knock on her
neighbor Martha’s fi rst-floor window and ask for her spare.
The idea was to avoid attention and suspicion.
Company HQ was only three blocks up and two blocks
over, uphill. Even though Yoshi was in custody, Griffi n and
Dad and probably the whole Board would likely have a heart
attack if they knew she was out on the streets alone. She
weighed her options. Sit out in the open on the front steps for
another few hours, or be at HQ in ten minutes.
Settled. She’d call Griffi n from her office.
So she walked, high heels gouging into her feet and the
suit she’d been wearing for going on twenty-four hours feeling itchy and dirty.
Later, after grabbing said purse from her bottom desk
drawer, she called Griffi n, who apparently had fallen asleep
just inside his apartment door.
“Be there in two,” he slurred, sparing her a lecture.
“Mind if I go around the corner to grab a coffee? Don’t
think I’ll be sleeping now anyway.”
A big pause. “Okay. But stay in the restaurant until I get
there.”
HQ was in the middle of the block, the all-night diner just
south around the corner. She started for the restaurant,
mouth stretched wide in a yawn and the sky beginning to
pale low over the Berkeley hills.
Then she wasn’t on the sidewalk anymore.
Hands ripped her off her path and threw her against a
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wall. Her skull rattled. Her vision winked out. A great blossom of pain exploded on her crown and tore its way down
her spine, detonating a bomb of fear.
When she came to, Yoshi’s bared and crooked teeth filled
her terrified sight. He held her immobile, forearm like iron
across her chest.
N
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COMING SEPTEMBER 2012 FROM
Katie Reus
Primal Possession
A Moon Shifter Novel
As second-in-command for his pack, lupine shifter Liam Armstrong is
used to giving orders and not taking them. That all works fine until he
meets red-headed, blue-eyed December McIntyre. Liam knows the
human is his intended mate the moment he sees her, but December is
too stubborn to accept his protection.
December, whose brother is the sheriff in town, has every reason to
mistrust shifters after one killed her youngest sibling. Yet Liam has
gotten under her skin in a way she hadn’t thought possible—and the
desire she feels for him is white hot.
Things get even more complicated when a radical hate group targets
all humans known to sympathize with paranormal beings. When
December is attacked in the bookstore she owns, she reluctantly
turns to the only person who can help her: Liam.
“Sexy alphas, kick ass heroines and twisted villains will keep
you turning the pages in this new shifter series.”
—Caridad Piñeiro, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost
Available September 4, 2012, wherever books are sold or at
penguin.com
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Stephanie Tyler
Dire Wants
A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan
The supernatural world is rising up against the human one. The
weretrappers want to control the humans, and only the immortal
Dire Wolves stand in the way of total destruction. Stray, a Dire, and
his long-lost brother, Killian, emerge as the leaders of their pack. To
keep themselves and the humans safe, the Dires must find a witch as
powerful as the one who has been helping the weretrappers.
They find what they are looking for in Kate, a human who survived a
horrible car accident that left her back scarred with a handprint no one
else is able to see. Stray senses in Kate the powers of a witch and recruits
her to help the Dires—all the while knowing that she is so powerful
that they will need to kill her once she helps defeat the weretrappers.
Stray doesn’t expect the powerful connection that he feels with Kate,
or his irresistible need to protect her. They cannot hide their feelings
for each other, and what once was taboo now seems inevitable...
And don’t miss Dire Warning, An Eternal Wolf Clan Novella
available now as an eSpecial!
“With breathtaking danger, sizzling romance, and unexpected
twists these Dire Wolves are going to rock the paranormal world.”
—New York Times bestselling author Alexandra Ivy
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Available November 6, 2012, wherever books are sold or at
penguin.com
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Also Available from
Nina Bangs
The Castle of Dark Dreams Novels
In an adult theme park, the Castle of Dark Dreams is home
to three powerful brothers—each with a special gift for the
woman bold enough to live out her secret fantasies.
ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES
WICKED NIGHTS
WICKED PLEASURE
WICKED FANTASY
COLOR ME WICKED: A Castle of Dark Dreams Novella,
available now as an eSpecial!
Available wherever books are sold or at
penguin.com
N
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New York Times bestselling author
Keri Arthur
Darkness Hunts
A Dark Angels Novel
Risa Jones can enter the twilight realms between life and death, and
can speak to the souls of the dying and the dead. She can also see the
Reapers, supernatural beings who collect the souls of the dead. When
a mysterious faceless man starts murdering women and draining them
of their blood, Risa must use all her gifts to track him down, even
when it puts her life in danger.
The killer tells Risa that his victims are infected by darkness, and that
it is his destiny to kill them. But he finds Risa fascinating, and offers
her the chance to save his next victims, if she can decipher the clues
that he leaves for her. In a race against time, Risa works with the Aedh
Reaper Azriel to uncover the truth behind the murders. Slowly, the two
get closer to this strange man, who may be part of an even larger and
more dangerous consortium, as they become closer to each other.
Praise for Keri Arthur:
“Keri Arthur skillfully mixes her suspenseful plot with heady
romance...Smart, sexy, and well-conceived.”
—New York Times bestselling author Kim Harrison
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Available November 6, 2012, wherever books are sold or at
penguin.com
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