Crave: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (Blood Moon, Texas Shifters Series Book 2)
Page 10
“Hey.” August’s voice cut out. “What’d you find?”
He sounded worn down. Part of me wanted to ask if it had been a bad night, but the only thing my brother hated worse than anyone fussing over him was two people doing it. There was no name for the chronic condition he suffered from, and just as few answers. His specialists had determined it was some sort of autoimmune disorder brought on by his body’s response to the lycan virus. When August’s disease flared, the attacks caused nerve damage, seizures, crippling pain and disorientation. Since he was a shifter, he healed in between episodes, only for his immune system to flare again the moment he was better and send him crashing back down. Hell of a catch-22. To make matters worse, for the past year, the interval between flare-ups had been shrinking, and no one could figure out why.
“Could be hail damage,” Lacey said. “Best guess, that big storm the last night of the Harvest Moon Festival cracked the camera’s exterior casing, then with the freezes we’ve been having the past week, moisture got in there and shorted something out.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“That would be your mother’s influence.”
August barked out a laugh.
I tapped my thumb against the steering wheel, the back of my neck tingling, every sense on high alert. “August, what are the odds we lose two cameras within an hour of each other?”
Lightning lit up the sky, causing the call to drop.
“Effing great,” I muttered, punching redial.
“I don’t like this. None of it adds up. Too many coincidences. But then if the vamps were planning to hit us tonight, why sound the alarm and tell us they’re coming?”
“Unless this was never the way they planned to come at all.”
“You’re thinking a diversion?”
“Maybe,” I said. “August, what’s your read?”
Keys clacked in the background. “I’m here. Looks like we might have just lost a third camera, but with the weather, they’ve been blinking on and off all night.”
Lacey cursed.
“Okay.” I rubbed my forehead. “Where is it?”
“Five miles west of your current position. I’ll send you the coordinates. But, Dally, I want to call this in, get Brody’s read.”
“Do it. We’ll start heading out that way. May be a while before we can get to it, now that the lightning’s started back up.”
I pulled out onto the highway. Rain lashed the windshield, heavy gusts rocking the SUV from side to side as I carefully wove us around curves back towards town.
“You want to tell me what you’re thinking?”
“We talk about the vampires as if they’re stupid. Subhuman. Wasted. Meth-heads. They’re not. They’re as good at this as we are.” Lightning flashed, causing Lacey’s silver eyes to reflect eerily in the dark. “Only two possibilities. Either this is a random equipment malfunction because of the storm, or they’ve coordinated this. What are we missing?”
“That’s the question.”
Suddenly, Lacey gripped my arm. “Stop the car.”
Cursing, I practically swerved off the road. The wipers slapped against the windshield, sluicing away silver sheets of rain. Lightning branched across the sky, illuminating a massive tree two hundred yards ahead in the distance. Ancient and gnarled, its thick black branches twisted up towards an angry sky. Inside the Escalade, the roar of the heater suddenly felt deafening, the headlights illuminating miles of desolate road.
“You think that’s it?”
“Has to be. Coordinates match up.”
“So why did you want me to—”
“I don’t know. I swear I saw something.”
I pulled out my phone. “Okay. I’m calling it in.”
Which of course, was when she jumped out of my SUV. I cursed. By then she was making her way along the side of the highway, Glock drawn. Growling, I stalked after her.
Lightning streaked down, igniting the sky off to the west. “Okay, Agent Danger, and we’re chasing, what exactly?”
“Because, talking. Totally helpful in every stakeout?”
“Nice deflection.”
She shot me death eyes. “Like I said, it was dark, but I thought I saw something scuttle off into the weeds.”
“You think it could have been—”
“Maybe. Whatever it was, we need to check it out.” Suddenly, Lacey froze. “Do you smell that?”
And then it hit me. Accelerant. C4. My blood ran cold.
“Dallas?” she whispered, the question poised on the edge of a knife.
The breath froze in my lungs. I lifted my phone. Lacey made a sound in the back of her throat.
“Don’t. If it’s a bomb—”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Cursing this fanged clusterfuck of a night, I lowered my phone. We were probably thirty miles out from town. Too far.
I thought of the day my dad’s cruiser had been found out along this same stretch of road, the scream we’d all felt through the pack bond. Except—not all of us. That summer, River and August had been enrolled in classes down at the University of Texas, August for mechanical engineering, River for computer science. When August’s autoimmune condition had flared, River had driven him home so Naomi could give him a series of infusions. River had been back in Austin the following day taking an exam when the rest of us felt our dad’s scream through the bond, the only one not home when it happened.
Maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference, had he been there, too. Maybe sometimes we can’t understand all the reasons things happen the way they do until we look back on them with the wisdom of time and space. What I knew was that something changed in my youngest brother that day. He grew colder, slowly withdrawing from the rest of us. And a month later, dropped out of school to become a Tracer.
“It’s a risk either way, but we’re out of time. The vamps could have this whole stretch of road rigged to blow. We could be looking at dozens of casualties. We have to get word to Brody, have him shut down the highway until we can clear it.”
Lacey cursed. “I’ll call August.”
I tossed her my phone and keys. She couldn’t shift. And if we didn’t act now, before someone came down the highway, lives could be lost. With a roar, I let the change rip me from my human skin. The darkness seemed to explode around me, my night vision instantly sharpening as the wolf’s eyes took over. I sniffed, picking up the acrid scent of asphalt, sweet, sickly diesel, the clean wet smell of rain falling on cedar, and the sharp chemical markers of an incendiary device.
The car door slammed behind me. And then Lacey appeared at my side, phone tucked in the crook of her shoulder, gun drawn. Ears cocked, I backtracked the way we’d come. Rain drummed on the icy pavement, the howl of the wind whistling in my ears. I let my wolf senses guide me, honing in on the faint traces of scent that didn’t belong. Twenty yards. Thirty. The air cleared. I stopped. Behind me, Lacey froze, scanning the empty fields around us.
I turned back towards town. Over the sound of Lacey’s footfalls, I heard her dialing. The call dropped. She cursed. The scent of accelerant grew stronger. I growled. We both stopped, scanning the dark, empty highway. Lightning split the sky, reflecting off the rain-soaked road. The next fifty feet, at least, were clear of trip wires.
Why sound the alarm and tell us they’re coming?
“Something’s wrong. The call’s going through, but August isn’t picking up.”
I was just pushing the image of Brody into her mind when another wicked branch of lightning tore across the sky, silhouetting the massive tree standing one hundred yards off the road. The sharp scent of ozone permeated the air. My hackles rose.
Why sound the alarm and tell us they’re coming?
Why… unless they’d wanted to draw us here in the first place.
The phone exploded in Lacey’s hand. Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. Thunder slammed into us, a massive concussive wave that made my fangs rattle in my skull like a bomb had gone off. And beneath it, a high-pitched whine—
Instantly the tree was engulfed in a massive fireball. Flames ballooned heavenward in a mushroom cloud, twisted tongues of fiery debris snaking back to Earth as the ancient oak began to burn. Rain pooled on the asphalt, shimmering silver and translucent, gray ash fluttering down like flakes of snow.
Blinking rain from her eyes, Lacey stared up at me. Sirens sounded far off in the distance—which made no sense. We were miles from anywhere. First responders couldn’t know what had happened this fast—
Unless they’d been tipped off.
Lacey’s phone fell silent. A second later, Kashmir exploded across the wet pavement. Scrabbling for it, she swiped to answer. “August?”
“Get out of there—”
I grabbed her phone. “What’s happening?”
Lacey shot me the finger. Whatever. Like we didn’t both know if vamps were about to start materializing out in the middle of the road, she was the better shot.
“They hit the ranch.” My brother sounded out of breath, like he’d been running. “Pretty sure they were looking for Topher. Maybe Lacey, too, if they weren’t expecting her to have recovered this fast. We don’t know anything right now.”
“Is anyone hurt?"
“Everyone’s fine. But Brody says they’re shutting down all the highways for two hundred miles outside of Blood Moon as a precaution, setting up random checkpoints.”
Which meant we had to hurry.
“How’d you know it detonated?”
“Caught the flash on another camera.”
“You had two cameras that close together all the way out here?”
“Yeah. Weird coincidence. Anyway,” my brother continued, “Brody says they’re talking about blood draws. No refusal.”
“That’s illegal.”
Lacey’s blood probably wouldn’t show anything. Females carried lower viral loads in their blood than male shifters, and didn’t even carry high enough levels of the lycan virus in their saliva to infect a human through biting. To date, there had never been a recorded case of accidental female transmission. But so close to the full moon, my blood would register an increased viral load. Which meant getting pulled over could be a death sentence.
“Well sure. And how much you want to bet this will be the catalyst supporters of the Nationwide Database Act need to push it through Congress?”
I cursed.
Three years ago, after #DashCamVlad outed supernaturals to the human world by dematerializing just before dawn during that fateful traffic stop, it spurred calls to screen the blood of every man, woman and child, searching for supernaturals hidden among us. So far, watchdog groups had kept the bill from passing. But how long would that last in the wake of a terrorist attack?
Yeah. This was not good on so many levels.
“—the news has cameras swarming all over town. No way does this get covered up.” He paused. “Brody just texted. He says head east and find some place to hole up until things die down.”
“Will do.” I reversed out onto the highway, gunning the engine.
There was the sound of a keyboard clacking in the background. “So about all the equipment malfunctions out there tonight. The three cameras you two checked out? Last summer when Brody had me and River upgrade our early detection systems, we got all the bells and whistles. State of the art equipment. Better monitoring software. The works. You know we’re required to keep all security plans filed with the Council—”
“Yeah, I remember there was that one pack that mounted chain guns on the roof of their pack house, was shooting at every pigeon that flew by.”
The typing stopped. “Always the geniuses. Anyway, River never said anything to me directly, but we went out for beers before his leave was up, and he may have hinted there had been raids in other territories they couldn’t explain. Vamp raids. That we should watch our backs.”
My blood ran cold. In the rearview mirror, I saw Lacey had stopped breathing.
“August, what are you saying?”
“That after that conversation I went back in with Ethan a week later and installed another ten cameras that I never reported to the Council. I never told River about them either. I got the feeling he didn’t want me to. You know how that place is a nest of snakes.” August paused. “Whoever was taking out cameras tonight seemed to know right where to find them. Just not the ones we kept off the map.”
The Escalade’s high beams cut a path across the empty road, sirens growing ever louder in the distance. And somehow, I already knew what my brother was going to say next.
“I think we have a mole.”
6
Lacey
“THEY’RE SAYING THIS COULD BE just the beginning.”
As one, everyone in the soup kitchen turned to the TV in the corner of the room. The sixty second clip the networks had been replaying non-stop for the last forty-eight hours was on again.
“Once the virus that causes lycanthropy is in your blood, there is no stopping the transformation. There is no cure. No treatment. Early symptoms include fever, body aches, dehydration and blackouts. Your doctor may dismiss it as the flu. But by the next full moon, you will be one of us, able to infect others.”
The girl, about my age, paused, giving us all time to take in her delicate features and heart-shaped face. There was speculation her image had been digitally altered. Though why the undeads would bother protecting the identity of someone they’d undoubtedly executed seconds after taping concluded was anyone’s guess.
“We are among you. In your schools. In your neighborhoods. In your military and police force. We are in your blood supply. Your human government is trying to hunt us down. And we will not be silenced—"
The room sucked in a collective breath. I kept my eyes on the screen, knowing disinterest would attract attention. Who in the country wasn’t riveted by images of Athena, the shapeshifter terrorist claiming responsibility for the bombing that had consumed the last forty-eight hours of news cycles? Particularly in the moment she shifted into a sleek black wolf right there on camera.
As if this week could get any worse.
I gritted my teeth, barely resisting the urge to throw a pumpkin pie at the screen.
Every Thanksgiving, my mother and I volunteered serving meals at a shelter, then got takeout and gorged ourselves while watching House Hunters. Now Blood Moon was swarming with military types and ghost hunters alike, which, okay, was excellent for my cupcake sales—even werewolf-haters needed to eat, the pundits couldn’t seem to lay off the doomsday predictions, and all I wanted was one cat-friendly show to lure Godiva out from her bunker behind the washing machine. Supernatural hate-fest? So over it.
“Can’t they turn something else on?” I reached across my mother to load up a row of trays with mashed potatoes and gravy.
“This could be important. It’s the first time we’ve seen one of them in almost two years.”
I’d rolled my eyes at the high-powered bear mace. At the voice activated UV lights she wanted to mount strategically around my apartment. I shrugged it off when we went to the shooting range and she chose targets that looked like I did every twenty-eight days at the full moon. Not gonna lie, though. Hearing my mother refer to me as one of them kind of made me wish I’d sprayed myself down with the bear mace and claimed a freak poison ivy attack rather than show up this morning.
“Okay, but I’m not sure how watching that video over and over is helping. Pretty sure it’s causing us all to grow fur on the brain.”
News anchors and so-called paranormal experts had breathlessly torn apart every detail of Athena’s appearance. Couldn’t we all see the savagery in her eyes as she spoke? That feral bend in her knuckle at thirty-two seconds into the clip? Because werewolves never needed to scratch their nos
es, y’all.
What I saw were cheeks that were far too thin. Makeup that couldn’t hide the dark circles beneath her eyes. The tremble in her hands when she swiped a strand of hair behind one ear. And the way her gaze kept flitting off to the left, seeking out something or someone off-camera none of us could see.
My mom looked up from her pan of green bean casserole. “If the werewolves decide to wipe us all out—”
“I’m sure they have, like, a thousand better things to do. You know, like posting cat memes on Twitter, making avocado toast, and going over all their furniture with a lint roller.” Which, I so needed to do.
“They could be living among us.” Ignoring the WTF look I shot her over the cranberry sauce, my mother began loading trays onto an empty serving platter. “With vampires, supposedly you can tell.”
“Pretty sure if that were true, dentists everywhere would have sounded the alarm.” And still, I checked to make sure my sleeve hadn’t ridden up, exposing the telltale pink scars scoring my wrist. The bruising at my face and neck had faded. I no longer felt dizzy every time I stood up. But no matter how hard I tried to call to my wolf, I still couldn’t shift.
On the TV, the news switched over to three-year-old footage of #DashCamVlad. The image was grainy, but what you couldn’t easily make out, digital enhancement and teams of FBI specialists had analyzed down to the last blade of grass in the shot. The expensive German sports car. Did all vampires favor that brand of jeans? Didn’t matter. They sold out all over the world within hours anyway. Perfectly cut blazer. Preppy Italian sneakers. Blond hair that was stylishly mussed and spiked with gel, which let’s face it, did nothing to hurt Vlad’s social media following.
My phone chimed in my pocket. Pulling it out, I checked the screen.
Thor: Your proof of life, milady.
Attached was an image of ghostly green eyes peering out from an Amazon delivery box.
Thor: Fancy says to tell you I’m fine, btw.
Me: 1. The text is your proof of life (obviously.) 2. You are not renaming my cat. 3. Why am I getting delivery notifications?