Fangs for Sharing (Supernatural in Seattle #1)

by Bella Jacobs

  “And then you ran away with our boys,” Jamal said with a sigh. “And played house with them and fell in love with them, and for a while, we thought things might work out, after all. Even me.” He motions to his forehead with two fingers. “Judging from everything I’d seen of the future, it looked like you three would tie the knot and the curse would be broken. And then Eugene showed up on our doorstep.”

  “The new code isn’t stable, Eliza,” Eugene explains, again with seemingly sincere regret. “All of my test subjects, every single one, is suffering reversion symptoms.”

  Jamal circles his hand, motioning him to keep going. “And? Tell her the rest, sunshine.”

  “And some of them are…dying,” Eugene says, his contrition suddenly making more sense. “But not if I step in to rewrite the genetic code myself, first,” he adds in a rush. “If I put your DNA back the way it was before you start glitching too hard, you’ll be fine. It’s only if we let the code degrade on its own that it becomes a problem.”

  “Yeah, I’d call dying a problem,” I say, my pulse twitching in my throat.

  “That’s why I arranged the meet-up tomorrow.” Eugene’s focus slides Jamal’s way. “But then Jamal called and said we should move it up. That we might already be on borrowed time.”

  “The partial shift in the bathtub,” Jamal explains. “It’s one of the first signs of a collapse in your code.”

  My cheeks heat and my skin crawls beneath Leo’s soft robe. “You saw…” I shake my head, swallowing hard. “You were watching me? Us? The whole time?”

  “I wanted to give Leo and Rourke a second chance,” Gloria says, crossing to stand in front of me, her jaunty galoshes squeaking. “They seemed to care for you and you for them. I was willing to give it a little time, see if a connection would develop. And it did…” She sighs as she leans down, bringing her face even with mine, her eyes filled with a resigned sadness. “And then this shit had to happen. I’m sorry, Eliza. I was happy for you, kid, but you can’t survive as a shifter, and as a human woman you’re of no use to me.”

  “So what now?” Terror and misery electrify my nerves. “You kill me?”

  She smiles, a hard, no-nonsense smile that makes my heart skip a beat. “No, doll. I’m not that ruthless. No matter what you’ve heard.” She stands, nodding toward Eugene. “First, the doc will fix your genetic code. Then Jamal will see you settled in another city under another name. You’ll have a home, a monthly income, everything you need, so long as you don’t attempt to contact Leo or Rourke. It’ll be easier for them to move on if they think you left of your own free will.”

  “They won’t believe it,” I say, tears pressing at the backs of my eyes. “They’ll look for me. They won’t let me go that easily, not without at least saying goodbye.”

  I know I’m being crazy—arguing the case for Gloria to kill me—but I can’t help it. I don’t want the life she’s offering, a life without love. I’ve only just found Leo and Rourke, just barely begun to discover what this kind of happiness feels like. The thought of living the rest of my life without it feels like a knife carving my heart, still beating, from my chest.

  “Maybe,” Gloria says, her gaze going cold. “But I’ve already found that death makes Leo less likely to move on. So we’ll just have to see what a Dear John letter will do.”

  The meaning of her words hits, and my internal organs shrivel inside me like grapes left too long in the cruel heat of the sun. “How could you? How could you do that to him? To her? They were innocent. In love. They were going to start a family.”

  “And Leo was next in line to rule after Prince Thomas got caught out in the sun,” Gloria says, unflinching. “And he refused to consider keeping Eleanor as a mistress while he found a new mate with the Famine shiver’s prince. It was either kill her, and get him on track to fulfilling his destiny, or kill him and lose another member of my rapidly dwindling shiver. So I did what I thought best. He gave me no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.” Tears fill my eyes. “You’re so powerful and clearly no dummy. You could have figured out another way to get what you wanted besides murdering a woman and leaving her husband shattered for the rest of his life.”

  “Not for the rest of his life,” Gloria says, satisfaction firming up her features. “Leo learned to love you. He’ll learn to love another after you’re gone. I’ve already found someone who might do, another curvy blonde to make him forget the one who broke his heart and ran away.” She steps back with a tip of her head. “But this one was born incomparable. We can’t afford to waste any more time on lab rat mistakes.” She lifts a hand to Eugene, holding up two fingers. “You have two hours before her flight leaves. Jamal will supervise. If you’d like your bonus, and for your ex-girlfriend to remain among the living, I suggest you get to work.”

  Without another word, or another glance spared for me, Gloria turns to leave, galoshes squeaking.

  “They’ll see you for what you are,” I call after her, vision blurring as tears spill down my cheeks. “Leo and Rourke will see the truth, and they’ll make you pay for what you’ve done.”

  Gloria pauses but doesn’t look back as she speaks. “Could be right. But by then you will be a distant memory, Eliza. Or a dead girl. The choice is yours. I hope you choose wisely. I’d hate to snuff out your light, crackerjack, but I will. In a heartbeat.”

  I lift my chin, jaw clenched, trying to look tough. But I’m not tough, and tears still trail softly down my face. Obviously, I’m not a threat to anyone. I’m just a normal girl whose brief moment of being big and strong enough to take on the bad guys is almost over.

  Gloria knows it, and I know it, and no amount of stiff-upper-lipping will stop what’s about to happen. So I cry.

  Why not? There’s no shame in having feelings. There’s shame in kidnapping people and tying them up and taking away their choices, but not in a few tears and a bucketful of regret. Still, I can’t help thinking—if only I’d trained harder, fought harder, loved harder while I had the chance.

  If I had, I might still be with Leo and Rourke.

  But now, I’ll never see them again. I will live the rest of my life in hiding from the men I love or die trying to contact them. It’s no choice. No life. It would be more merciful to kill me now and put me out of my misery.

  And I suspect Gloria knows that, too.

  Without another word, she turns and walks away, squeaking across the floor and out through the door I can’t see.

  And then Jamal is standing beside me, gently brushing the tangles from my hair before winding it into a bun on my head, reminding me of when Leo cut my hair, and the tears fall even faster. “It’s okay, girl. You’re going to be fine. Men are more trouble than they’re worth, anyway, especially vampires. I’m telling you, you’re dodging a bullet, no matter how much it hurts right now.”

  I don’t respond, biting the inside of my cheek as Eugene swabs my wrist with alcohol, apologizing again and again as he hooks me up to an IV drip that will put me back the way I was before. Soon I will be just an ordinary girl, a not-at-all-incomparable person. I won’t be ending any curses. I won’t be changing history or the course of two men’s lives.

  And eventually, they will forget me. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but in a year or two, a decade at most, Leo and Rourke will have moved on so thoroughly that they’ll be able to hear the name “Eliza” and not think of me. I’ll just be someone they spent a hot night with by the sea, the woman they thought they could love until she wrote them a double-Dear-John letter and ran away.

  As the medicine burns through my veins, unscrambling my cells, I cry out, but it’s not the physical pain that makes my voice raw and ragged.

  It’s my heart. My breaking, shattering, splintering heart.

  The heart that is so filled with despair that, at first, it doesn’t know how to respond when two dark shadows holding matching baseball bats stride into view across the parking lot outside, silhouetted against the murky-gold of impending dawn.
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br />   Shadows with Rourke’s wild hair and Leo’s broad shoulders…

  Chapter 24

  My pulse stutters, and the air rushes from my lungs with a suddenness that leaves me breathless.

  I’ve been body slammed by hope, and before I can remember how to inhale, Leo and Rourke are leaping up to the windows, swinging their weapons around to strike the glass with supernatural force. There’s a flash of light and a sonic boom, and then the window collapses in slow motion, shards cascading to the floor where they skitter and surge, swirling around the ankles of the men standing slack-jawed on either side of my chair.

  Eugene cringes, arms flying up to cover his face long after it’s too late to do any good. A hot second later, he drops the blood pressure monitor in his hand and bolts.

  “Wait! Unhook me!” I shout after him, craning my head over my shoulder. “Eugene! Pull the needle out before you run away, you asshole!”

  But Eugene’s footsteps continue to fade to thuds in the distance, proving he’s as gutless and awful as ever.

  Unfortunately, Jamal isn’t as easily frightened away.

  I turn back to the battle breaking out in front of me, fighting to focus as the burning sensation in my veins gets hotter, sharper, feeling like a thousand tiny fire-breathing dragons have been set loose beneath my skin. Jamal is coming out blazing, shooting fire from his third eye, but Leo and Rourke are dodging and deflecting with two seriously badass aluminum bats.

  But of course, they aren’t normal bats, a fact made clear as Leo knocks a thunderbolt of flame back Jamal’s way with a thwack that would make any major league player proud.

  “They brought your big brothers, Pearl.” I blink against the sweat running down my forehead to drip into my eyes. “We’re going to be free in no time.”

  I suck in a shallow breath and let it out as slowly as I can, fighting to calm my racing pulse, but I’m no Zen master. My mind isn’t strong enough to stop the madness surging through my body, unraveling me at the cellular level.

  As Leo and Rourke fight for their lives—and mine—I clench my jaw and struggle to hold back the scream clawing its way up my throat, but it’s a battle I can’t win. The pain is wild, unrelenting, reason-eclipsing. I cling to my sanity long enough to fear that this agonizing pain is a sign that things are going hideously awry in my genome, and then I become the scream.

  I’m pure pain and rage.

  An exposed nerve howling in the cold.

  The ravaged remains of a body torn apart and scattered to the four corners of the earth. There is no center. I cannot hold, cannot survive, cannot endure another moment of—

  I gasp, emerging from the nightmare like breaking the surface of the water—one moment I’m drowning, the next all is as it should be.

  I’m back. I’m myself, the old Eliza who couldn’t smell danger or fear, who had one body, one skin, one reliable, human-sized heart she could count on not to fall in love too hard or too fast.

  Two weeks ago, I would have given almost anything to be this Eliza again.

  But now…as Jamal falls to the ground, clutching a nasty wound to his fire-hurling forehead, and Leo and Rourke sprint toward me, I can’t stop crying.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, throat going tight as Rourke sets to work freeing me from the ropes.

  “Don’t you dare apologize.” Leo gently pulls the IV needle from my vein, pressing the hem of his flannel shirt against the wound with fear in his eyes. “This isn’t your fault, Eliza.”

  “We should have been watching you more closely, love,” Rourke says, tearing at a knot with a force that rends the thick rope in two. “We won’t make the same mistake again. I swear it on my life.”

  “And on mine.” Leo presses a kiss to my forehead as he wipes the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs. “Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right. We’re going to get you to a hospital. One of ours, where they know—”

  “It’s too late,” I cut in, trembling so hard I send Pearl clattering to the floor as the ropes fall away. “He changed me back. Eugene. I’m just me again.”

  Leo blinks, but barely a second passes before he says, “But you’re okay? You’re not in pain anymore?”

  I shake my head, sending more tears streaming onto my hot face. “No, but I’m human. Just a normal person. I c-can’t break the curse.”

  “Fuck the fucking curse,” Rourke says, his voice as rough as the arm he slips around my shoulders is tender. “Let the curse take our shivers and good fucking riddance to the both of them.”

  Leo wipes my cheeks with his sleeve, his eyes never leaving mine as he nods. “Agreed. I’m stepping down as second in line to the master throne tomorrow. And if Gloria tries to stop me, I’ll give her the war she asked for tonight when she sent her man to kidnap you.”

  “Oh, Leo.” Fresh pain floods into me as I remember the terrible truth. “She killed your wife. Gloria did. She told me so herself, right before she left. I’m so sorry.”

  Misery ripples across Leo’s face, followed closely by rage and then a cold, razor-sharp determination that banishes my tears in a way his kindness and compassion could not.

  This is what I needed to see, I realize—Leo strong and ready to take vengeance—to know that Gloria hasn’t destroyed him.

  “Then it’s too late for stepping down,” Rourke says, fire burning in his eyes. “We have to cut her out like the cancer she is. Now. Before she hurts anyone else. My master will help. As soon as Hamish learns what happened, we’ll have all the resources of the Famine shiver at our disposal.”

  “But Hamish will still try to stop this.” Leo helps me to my feet, bracing me against his side when my tingling legs threaten to give way. “He won’t want us to choose Eliza. Not if she can’t break the curse.”

  “We could go get Eugene.” I motion toward the back of the large room, where I can now make out a pair of heavy double doors. “He just left, and he’s not very fast. We can catch him, head to his lab, and make him change me back again.”

  Rourke shakes his head. “Not a chance, love. It’s too risky.”

  “No, it’s not, I made it through the change the first time, no problem. And he said there have been complications with his other subjects, but I wouldn’t have to stay a rhino forever. I could just go shifter long enough to break the curse and then—”

  “It’s not an option, Eliza,” Leo cuts in firmly. “The chances that you’d survive more DNA revisions without major damage and long-lasting consequences are slim to none.”

  “But I—”

  He silences me with a finger pressed to my lips. “No. We won’t risk you. You’re too important.”

  “But I’m not,” I say, my eyes stinging again. “Not anymore. I’m just an ordinary person.”

  “Not to me.” Rourke moves closer, cupping my face in his hands. “To me, you’re still the sun.”

  “And to me,” Leo says. “I don’t care what you are, Eliza Frank. Rhino or woman or something in between, I would love you.”

  “You mean…” I swallow hard, too overcome to believe what I’m hearing. “You still want me? Just…me?”

  “Just you,” Leo confirms. “Wonderful, sweet, frustrating, adorable you.”

  “Ditto,” Rourke says. “Except for the frustrating part. I don’t find you frustrating, love. That’s why I’m going to be your favorite husband. Wait and see. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but eventually you’re going to realize I’m the best.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, friend,” Leo says. “It’ll make the sting of solitude easier to bear when Eliza’s sleeping in my bed to escape your snoring.”

  “I do not snore,” Rourke protests.

  “Beg to differ.” Leo leans down, adding in a whisper for my ears only, “It’s loud enough to wake the undead. If you ever want to sleep the night through again, you’ll have to send him to his room before lights-out.”

  My lips tremble into a smile. “Or I could invest in some earplugs.”

  “All right, so I snore,
” Rourke says, his expression softening. “But this talk about earplugs is encouraging…”

  “Be ours, Eliza,” Leo says, brushing back the hair escaping from my bun as I tilt my head to look up into his dear face. “Let us love you. Give us a reason to fight for the future.”

  I nod, throat tight and eyes filling for what feels like the hundredth time. “Yes. I will, and I’ll love you right back, with all of my heart.”

  “Then what do you say about taking our vows now, love? Preferably before Leo and I burst into flames?” Rourke peers warily at the horizon, now fully aglow and promising the arrival of the sun sooner than any of us would like.

  “The car’s outside, Rourke and I will be safe in the trunk,” Leo assures me before my pulse can start racing again. “But Rourke’s right. If we take the vows now, before we meet with his master tonight, it will be too late for anyone to try to talk us into putting shiver concerns first.”

  “Or to try to kill you to keep us from choosing love over curse-breaking,” Rourke says with an apologetic shrug. “I’d like to say my master is above that sort of thing—I truly think he is—but probably best not to take any chances.”

  I nod. “All right. Let’s do it.” I step away from Leo, wiping my damp palms on my robe, hesitating as a thought zips through my mind. “But if I’m a vampire, too, who’s going to drive the getaway car?”

  “You won’t be a vampire,” Leo says. “We couldn’t change you now, even if you wanted the Blood Kiss. We’re still cursed and likely to remain that way for the near future.”

  I shake my head as I wince. “Right. Sorry. It’s been a long night.”

  “It’s fine, Princess Pea. And the vows will change you, binding your life force inextricably to ours,” Rourke adds. “A three-way bond is special, different than the usual vows. As long as we’re living, you’ll remain alive, too, not appearing to age a day from the moment we form our bond.”