Stain of Midnight

by Cassandra Moore

  Using his momentary advantage, Curtis charged. His injured arm hung limp to one side, but he led with the good one to try to knock Cameron off balance. The larger wolf staggered. He lashed out with one hand to catch a nearby tree to steady himself, but left claw lines in the bark as Curtis shoved him back too hard to keep himself upright. Thorns dug into Cameron’s back as he fell into the scrubby bushes. As Curtis’s weight hit, Cameron rolled toward the downward slope. The two wolves tumbled over each other until they collided with a rock.

  Cameron pummeled Curtis all the way down. The impact with the small boulder stunned Cameron for a moment. Not long enough for Curtis to steal the advantage. Cameron dug claws into his opponent’s chest, curling fingers over the collarbone to burrow into softer flesh. With the other hand, Cameron took hold of Curtis’s hip, not careful about where he jammed sharp claws for purchase.

  Muscles bunched. With a grunt of exertion, Cameron bashed Curtis bodily into the rocks. His spine broke with a sickening crack.

  Curtis tried to howl, but all he could manage was an anemic wheeze. Cameron watched the pain blossom behind Curtis’s eyes. Not just pain. Powerlessness. Rage against the hopelessness that crept in through the agony of broken bones and torn flesh. A shift tried to take him, as his inner wolf failed him, but that brought out a shriek unlike any Cameron had heard before. Too many bones had broken. Curtis would die halfway between wolf and man, just as he had lived his life. Not a beast. Not a man. Just a pathetic imitation of both.

  Cameron crouched down to put his muzzle in Curtis’s blood-flecked face. “Were you there?” Cameron growled. “Were you there when Teresa killed my friend?”

  Curtis choked out a laugh. “I...held him...while she pulled out...his heart. He...was...pitiful.”

  Cameron remembered the scene. Glenn on the ground, arm pointed toward Rainier. A warning of what Teresa and her thugs wanted to achieve. The prize of the entire scheme. Glenn could have fought more in his last moments, even though it would never have worked. Instead, he’d mustered his last strength to send his pack what little warning he could. He’d trusted they would come. Trusted they would protect their territory. Even if we couldn’t protect him.

  That was why Cameron had to risk himself, and Sonja, to come up here. To fulfill the vow he’d made to a friend who’d left to join the eternal pack.

  “He died a wolf,” Cameron said. “That’s more than I can say for you.”

  Cameron wrapped his fingers around Curtis’s neck. Claws sank into either side. Blood welled around his fingertips. Curtis’s eyes widened in sudden fear just before Cameron ripped out his throat.

  He could hear wolves in the woods. Howls rose from nearby, coordinating positions, asking for information. They were looking for him, Cameron realized, as sense filtered back into his mind like runoff from a spring thaw. He shifted shape, to the smaller and lighter wolf, then lifted his head to howl himself. They could find him as he ran back to the cave.

  A dark grey-brown wolf fell in beside him as he loped up the mountainside. Beautiful, agile, with keen eyes and sharp teeth and sure, swift steps. He knew her scent, even if he had never seen her in this shape before. There was no mistaking his mate, no matter her form.

  Together as wolves, they ran up the mountain to the Heart of Darkness.

  Teresa Espina still fought against her demon when they arrived. She’d hauled herself to her feet, though not without apparent struggle. Globs of swiftly rotting flesh painted the inside of the shallow cave, spatter patterns showing she had thrown – or hit – them there with great force. Cameron had expected Malgerius would have lost the ability to keep his stolen body coherent. Yet the demon had mustered enough power to lunge for the vampire who tried so desperately to keep him at bay.

  One tendril of flesh shot out. With inhuman speed, Teresa dodged, but found another tendril waiting. Her right arm, strong and undamaged, clutched the Heart of Darkness tight against her to protect it.

  He will take the Heart of Darkness back into himself and render himself whole again. Cameron recalled Teresa’s words as he had hidden outside the cave. Malgerius’s designs on a body to wear and a true return to the mortal realm rested with Teresa Espina, but the demon’s power, his very essence, sat within that artifact of its former life. All her hope for bargaining with the infernal being depended on her retaining control over at rotted lump of muscle.

  The tendril made a grab for her. Unable to release the artifact she guarded, she swatted the tentacle of soggy meat away with her left arm – the arm Sonja had shot with a crossbow bolt, still weak two days later. That weakness cost Teresa as the demon’s limb caught, entangled and pulled her with all its infernal might.

  Cameron’s stomach lurched. Animate meat and blood wrapped around Teresa Espina like a gory, sanguinary snake. Tendrils of muscle branched out from the whole to hold her still as she fought and thrashed in its grip. The ropy body of the demon’s form flared as it reached Teresa’s shoulder, enveloping half her head and her torso in nightmarish raw meat. Fear and undisguised dread contorted the portion of her face visible beneath the blanket of the demon’s form.

  One tentacle of revolting flesh curled around in front of her. Part of it pulsed in time with speech that seemed to come from everywhere. “Long have I waited for this day, you pathetic mortal corpse. Midnight has come to this new world at last. You have spread the corruption of the shadow through the energies here, a corruption not felt for more than a thousand of your years. With your wretched human shell, and the remnants of these sacrifices you have made in my name, I shall complete my form. Through your work, I will batter down the barrier to the shadow lands, and those who await in the Umbra will hail me as their king.”

  The tentacle reached for the blackened, withered heart clutched in Teresa’s hand. Cameron saw her expression change from fear to fierce determination. “The shadow is yours, but the power is mine. It is not you they will crown, Malgerius.”

  We should stop this. We should stop this now. We need to stop this, we need to kill it. Cameron tried to move, but his body refused to obey. Perhaps the shock of what he witnessed stopped him. Perhaps the demon’s will had pervaded the area too thickly for a mortal to fight against. Beside him, Sonja growled, but she didn’t seem able to move, either. They could only watch the dreadful tableau before them.

  Teresa screamed with purest rage and dug her nails into the Heart of Darkness. The demon bellowed and recoiled for a bare breath in time, but it was enough. She drove her hands down to bury her fingers in her own sternum and tear her torso open.

  Her internal organs had long since halted, and remained as useless decorations in her body. Still screaming her anger, she reached in to pull her dead heart out from its nest of arteries and veins. It splattered wetly where she threw it against the wall.

  Malgerius’s howl joined hers. Runners of flesh scuttled down from the demon’s horrid shape to squirm into her flayed-open chest. She moved faster, however, speed enhanced by her tenacious refusal to surrender. The Heart of Darkness disappeared into the cavity once occupied by her own blackened heart.

  The demon shrieked. The vampire turned her head to sink her fangs into the flesh that threatened to engulf her head.

  Vampire bodies seek always to mend what has been harmed. Given the fuel of blood and energy, they can rebuild after great trauma. As Teresa sucked the sludgy ichor from the demon’s incoherent form, her veins reconnected themselves, arteries twisted their way into the newly placed Heart.

  The cave echoed with a sound of thunder. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

  Not thunder. As the mass of meat fell away from the woman’s form, and the last dribbles of old blood trickled down her chin, Cameron could see the Heart of Darkness beat within her chest. Her face had fallen slack, from anger to a foreboding blackness. When an expression crept over her, it twisted her features into a cruel grin that would live in Cameron’s nightmares for the rest of his days.

  “You cannot contain me.” The voice sounded like Teresa’s i
n the most superficial way. Not even a vampire who had sacrificed thousands in her quest for power could muster the malice Cameron heard in the tone. “You cannot possess—”

  Her expression twisted again to become a mask of stubborn resolve as Teresa reclaimed control of her body. “I can become you. And you me. For now, my beating heart, we have other matters to attend. The power of the mountain waits for us just within our grasp.”

  Then all attention was on the wolves. Cameron could feel the unholy amalgamation of vampire and demon reach into the power well beneath the mountain. Teresa had done her work to pollute the area’s ley lines well. Out on Glenn’s property, and in the remote place where she had performed her final ritual, the corrupting influences remained, and they fouled the area’s power with terrible efficiency.

  Yet small, distant points of magic could not stain all the magic in this place. That would have taken success in Teresa’s rites here, with Curtis to back her as the area’s Guardian, to complete. Clean power seethed deep below, smothered by the taint but not dead, and not quiescent. As the demon reached for the power Teresa had left in its control, Cameron reached, too, deeper into the well of energy he knew belonged to him alone.

  Weaker than it had once been. Dampened by the darkness. But very, very much alive. It burned through whatever magic their enemy used to keep Cameron immobile. He waited and held very still.

  Teresa stalked forward. The bloody rift in her torso had started to close over, he ragged edges pulsing and stretching out worm-like feelers to reach the other half of the chest. “You have not stopped me, pathetic dogs. I have worked towards this night for too many years to walk away without the power I have sought. Give it to me, and there will be no more violence.”

  Cameron’s nerves burned with the need to move. To flee, or attack, anything but wait. Closer and closer the enemy walked, until—

  Empowered by the mountain, Cameron shifted shape. His eyes seemed to burn in his skull, a fire that should have hurt but instead warmed him throughout. Silver-blue light illuminated the woman’s twisted form and the Heart that beat in her chest. She flinched back, startled.

  “I’ll give it to you, all right,” Cameron growled. His hand shot out to grab Teresa by the arm and bash her against the rocks at the entrance of the cave.

  She staggered. Sonja shifted her shape as well, freed by Cameron’s attack on the vampire. Sonja grabbed Teresa’s other arm and yanked. “Cameron, the Heart! Don’t let her leave with it!”

  “If I have my way, she’s not leaving here at all,” Cameron growled. “Hold her. I hear the rest of the pack on the way.”

  Bones creaked as the werewolves tried to pull the woman bodily apart. Teresa tried to draw in her arms, or sling the wolves away, but could not manage. Not with Cameron strengthened by the mountain, and the light of the full moon in the sky.

  As they struggled with their thrashing wishbone, the rest of the pack arrived. Wolves dashed up the hill, out of the trees, one then three then more than a dozen as everyone caught up. Cameron heard Teresa hiss.

  He felt the draw of power too late. Assisted by the demon within, the vampire pulled as much energy as she could handle then detonated it, raw and unshaped, in a burst around herself. Cameron flew backward, thrown by the force of the eruption. He landed hard, half blinded by the burn of raw energy. As his vision faded back in, he could see Sonja dragging herself off the ground on the other side of the cave. Even the wolf pack had been bowled over by the blast.

  There was no sign of Teresa. Nothing but a scorched circle at the mouth of the cave.

  Cameron’s wolf shape melted away. A man again, he jogged over to where Sonja glanced around in search of the demon. “You okay?”

  “Pissed, but okay,” she said. Her gaze darted over him. “You? You look a little worse for the wear.”

  “So much for my pride,” he muttered with a chuckle. “I’m okay. Had a little discussion with Curtis before the whole exploding demon thing.”

  “Curtis feeling any more sociable now?”

  “Maybe after a nap.” Cameron paused. “A long nap. Of the dirt variety.”

  “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” Sonja huffed a long, frustrated sigh. “Not quite the outcome I was hoping for when I planned this outing.”

  He needed to feel her. Needed her strength, as well as the comfort of having her against him, safe and whole. He drew her to him, arms firm around her, and set his forehead against hers. “That’s okay, Sunny. You told me right up front that you’re a shitty date.”

  With a laugh, she relaxed against him so they could stand in the moonlight and revel in being alive.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Did we win?”

  Noah’s face filled Cameron’s phone screen. The former alpha looked tired and drawn, but conscious. Far better than he’d looked the last time Sonja had seen him.

  “That depends on your win conditions,” Cameron answered. He kicked back on Sonja’s couch next to her so they could both look at the screen. “We’re alive. Teresa Espina won’t be performing any more of her rituals, though fuck knows what she will do next. Sonja and I destroyed the remaining canopic jars so no one else can use them. No more collecting hearts for arts and crafts. Peter says you and the others look better. Some folks would call all that a win.”

  Noah nodded. “Everyone’s awake and sane again. The corruption is lingering, but we hope time away from the source will fix that. We’re kind of playing that by ear. Not like any of us have ever dealt with this before. I’m not sure anyone has. It’s not cold out here, though. Most of us are sitting in the warm sun during the day and enjoying authentic margaritas at night.”

  Cameron snorted. “Who prescribed you guys tequila?”

  “Blame Doctor Dani. She’s been trying to convince us that salt-rimmed glasses filled with lime juice and liquor are components for purification magic.”

  They all laughed. Sonja hated to kill the buoyant mood, but their victory didn’t come without qualifications. “On the other hand, Teresa and her pet demon – or the demon and his pet Teresa, we aren’t sure – are fuck knows where, doing fuck knows what. Our local biter population is in the middle of a revolt. Maybe worst of all, the energy in Tacoma is still a mess, and we’re not sure what to do about it yet. We’re in unknown magical territory on this, and information on how to solve it is thin on the ground. I’m working on that.”

  “And the pack?”

  She could have blamed the audible tension on a bad connection, but Sonja knew better. Noah had lost his position as alpha. Many of his pack had ended up in the desert with him to recover, but some had still fled town. Sonja hadn’t heard that any had come back. “A little uneasy. The Seattle and Tacoma territories remain combined for the moment. When this is all done, we can look at splitting them up again.”

  “You going to keep my job?”

  Sonja smiled. “Doubtful. I don’t want to be the alpha. Just another member of the pack. Maybe we could talk about an enforcer pair situation.”

  She could feel Cameron straighten in surprise next to her. Before this call, she hadn’t told him she intended to join the pack in a more formal manner once they’d straightened all the trouble out, and he hadn’t assumed. He would accept her however she chose to be, she knew.

  But she’d spent too much time alone already. Too much time pushing people away, with just her and her dog against the world. Things had changed. She had changed with them. And for once, she looked forward to having people to care about.

  One in particular. She set her head against his shoulder.

  Noah’s face split in a joyful grin. “Absolutely. Until then, I know the area’s in good hands. And Sonja? Thanks. For everything.”

  Cameron feigned indignation. “What am I? Chopped fucking liver?”

  “You’re the alpha’s mate, Cam. We don’t have to thank you. You’re just supposed to sit there and look handsome while the boss wolf handles everything.” Noah looked fit to burst with smothered mirth.r />
  Sonja covered her mouth to hide her own snickers. “Mm. Cameron might have done a little bit to help. We can give him a cookie.”

  “I hate both of you,” Cameron said. “You guys know that, right? You both suck ass. I’m hanging up now.”

  The call disconnected to the sound of Noah’s laughter.

  Sonja gave Cameron a look of entirely feigned innocence. “You don’t want a cookie?”

  He pitched the phone onto the end table. “Cookie wasn’t what I was thinking about, no,” he said, and shoved her over onto the couch. His strong body followed her down, broad chest looming over her as he leaned down for a heated kiss. It lingered, and threatened to become more than just a caress of lips and bodies.

  They came up for air several minutes later. Sonja could feel the telltale bulge of his cock through his jeans as it rested against her thigh. But his expression turned pensive as his gaze met hers. “Did we win?” he asked.

  She knew what he had to be thinking about. So much undone. So many dead. His pack, the center of his life, a shambles. There was a demon on the loose. And yet...

  Tenderly, she reached up to wrap her arms around the back of his neck. “We have each other, love. We won.”

  His lips tightened in a smile as they pressed against hers. “We won,” he murmured. And then, there were no more words. Not for some time.

  Does the Dog Die? A Spoiler for Animal Lovers

  No. The dog does not die. He lives and remains healthy throughout the entire book. Feel free to enjoy Charlie’s presence and antics without worrying he’ll get hurt.

  Acknowledgments