by Rachel Lee
Lucinda drove them in a huge black SUV. “I thought we didn’t own cars,” Dani remarked.
“We don’t. We judged one might be necessary this time and we can afford it. It’s been very useful, actually.”
Of course her pack could afford it. That had never been the question. Because they were shape-shifters, they couldn’t live entirely without money; they had human needs to meet, as well. A number of the pack had found human jobs to bring home money and worked them as long as they could.
“Is Derek still running our investments?”
“Who else would have the patience?”
Dani might have giggled if uneasiness hadn’t been growing with each block they drove. Luc would be appalled by what she was doing, and come to think of it, so was she. Had she become so stubborn about proving something that it had led her to folly? And what was it that she was trying to prove again? That she could get along on her own? That she didn’t need the pack’s protection? Or was this all about a hurt little girl who simply had never been able to do what everyone around her could do?
But her inner demons kept pushing her on into more and more precarious situations. Being helpful to the pack, being helpful to the vampires, being helpful to humans…it didn’t matter anymore which she did, she just had to do something.
Unfortunately, that was probably the most dangerous state of mind to be in.
“Don’t get out of the car until I tell you,” Lucinda warned as they pulled into a deserted alley. Trash was blowing around over the fresh snowfall that appeared utterly undisturbed. The enclosing buildings showed blank facades of brick, and the few windows there once had been were filled in with more bricks.
One of the unfortunate parts of town, she thought.
Not the kind of place her pack usually liked to be. There was an open end down the way, but the pack was nearly claustrophobic except inside their own dens and dwellings. With good reason.
Lucinda put the car in Park and tooted the horn once, briefly.
The gathering began, one and two at a time. Apparently they had been nearby. They came from both ends of the alley, leaving paw prints, stirring up the snow. Soon there were a dozen swirling around the car.
Dani might have smiled at the sight of them if she hadn’t been so nervous. She had seen the pack hunt and kill, and as a normal she wouldn’t stand a chance. Their restless rovings, however, were so familiar that the sight warmed her, anyway. In wolf form they seldom held still. The urge to keep moving was powerful, only occasionally giving way as they got older to the need for something like sitting by a warm fire. And that was something they usually did in human form.
Lucinda climbed out, gave a whistle and led the pack away from the car. Dani watched, wishing she could hear her mother, but for now she obeyed as she was always supposed to obey and all too often hadn’t. The alpha had told her to stay. No matter how anxious she grew, no matter how much she just wanted to get this over with, this was one time she must behave.
Finally Lucinda came back to the car, opened the door and leaned in. “They’ve found some more. Worse, your father thinks that the most we can burn today will be four or five. That means we may well meet a dozen or more of your bloodsucker friends....”
“They’re not my friends. They’re rogues.” Unfortunately, that slip of her mother’s tongue told her a lot and made her heart sink.
“The rogues,” Lucinda corrected herself. “We’re going to have our hands full tonight. But at least we can cut their numbers. Are you ready?”
Dani didn’t answer. She simply opened the car door and walked toward the waiting pack.
As she got closer, fangs were bared, and growls emanated from deep, huge chests. She kept walking, anyway. This was her family. If they couldn’t accept her any longer, then they would do what they had to. Her heart hammered nervously, as she expected death to strike at any moment.
But with each step, she noted a change. First one and then another of her cousins stopped growling. Fangs disappeared. Heads cocked questioningly.
Smell or not, they were facing her change in odor. Dealing with it.
At last she stood only a foot away. For an eternity nothing seemed to move, then the pack swirled around her, smelling her, nudging her with their noses. She took the buffeting, recognizing it for what it was. They intended her no harm. They were simply absorbing her difference.
Finally, the youngest of them, her brother Max, stood on his hind legs, rested his forepaws on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. The pack seemed to freeze and hold its breath.
“Hi, Max,” she said. Ordinarily she would have dug her fingers into his ruff and given him a good scratch. She didn’t dare do that yet.
He held her gaze, his own blue eyes piercing. Then he gave her a sloppy lick on her cheek. With that, the decision was made. The pack surrounded her again, this time with high tails and grins. Thrilled at her reception, she scratched every neck she could reach.
“All right,” Lucinda said, her tone conveying more relief than she probably realized. “We’ve got work to do.”
But of course it was not over. At that moment Jerrod came loping up the alley, transforming over his last few strides until he towered over her, fur clad but human.
“What have you done?” he asked. For once he didn’t thunder. The question sounded almost sorrowful.
“What I had to, Dad,” she said with as much firmness as she could muster.
“I may kill that bloodsucker.”
“Don’t you dare lay a hand on him. I’ve always disappointed you, so why should you care now?”
The pack froze. Back talking the alpha male was dangerous.
“Disappointed me? When have I ever said that?”
“You never had to say it. Now we have to live with what is. I am not fully pack. I am not fully human. But neither am I vampire. You’re just going to have to learn to live with it, Dad. I can’t be something I’m not. I have to find my own way.”
Tension crackled on the air. Max was the one who broke it, edging in between the two of them and nudging each of them with his nose.
Finally Jerrod reached out and embraced his daughter. “Just don’t become one of them.”
He didn’t wait for her answer before he melted back into wolf form.
“All right,” Lucinda said firmly, “we have no time to waste. Dani and I will transport the mirrors to our first target. We’ll see you there.”
The pack took off again while Dani and Lucinda climbed back into the car. It was a moment before Lucinda turned over the ignition.
“Whew,” she said.
Dani looked at her. “It went well.”
“Your father was the one I was worried about. He’s so damn hardheaded. I was fairly certain the others would come around as long as Jerrod didn’t become stupid with rage. And you know Max adores you. You practically raised him for me.”
Along with quite a few other pups who still weren’t full grown. Dani missed them desperately and hoped that as soon as this was over she would be allowed to go home and see them. At this point, though, she wasn’t sure their acceptance of her would last past the immediate crisis. She could only hope.
“Why did you elect to use mirrors?” she asked. “I know if the entire pack attacked them one at a time, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“We don’t want any avoidable injuries, but most important, we don’t want them to guess we’re involved. It would ruin tonight’s surprise.”
By the light of a flashlight and the pack’s excellent noses, they found the first vampire in a basement without windows, at the back of a long corridor. He slept against a wall, behind a closed door, looking like a derelict. Only his smell gave him away.
The pack transformed. A chain of mirrors was set up down the hallway with one reflecting light right into the room. Before they focused the beam, Dani told them to wait.
Figuring the vampire wouldn’t recognize her as a threat, she gathered her courage and stole into the basement room to pull away the r
ags that kept him half-buried, as if he wanted to look like part of a trash heap. With every step, she remembered all too vividly how a vampire could overpower her and rip into her. Her mouth turned as dry as dust, and each step was an internal battle. To her relief, he didn’t even stir.
Then she stepped back into the hallway. It took the pack less than ten seconds to focus an intense beam of sunlight on the sleeping vampire.
He woke at once, screaming, and tried to dodge the light. Jerrod, who held the mirror nearest the door, shifted enough to keep him in its beam.
It happened so fast it was hard to believe. One second he was screaming, the next he was flaming. And then he was ash. It horrified Dani.
“Wow,” she whispered, closing her eyes. She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to Luc. Yet it might have this very morning as he fought that newborn. Hadn’t he come back looking a bit singed?
She turned quickly away and headed past her pack back to the car. She needed to stop seeing Luc in this, she thought as she squared her shoulders. No weakening now. She had demanded to be part of this.
But now she had to cope with it.
Chapter 13
“You killed how many?” Luc asked. He had just emerged from the inner sanctum and received the news from Dani and her mother. Jude followed on his heels.
“Four,” Dani said.
“It’s all we had time for,” Lucinda said regretfully. “The sun got too low and the mirrors wouldn’t send a strong enough beam, as we discovered with the fifth. But there are still approximately a dozen left.”
“And perhaps some newborns who’ll awake tonight,” Luc said. He looked at Dani. “And you helped with this?”
“She most certainly did,” Lucinda said a bit sharply. “My daughter has become quite stubborn. I don’t suppose you can talk her out of going along tonight. I can’t imagine what earthly use she can be when vampires and lycans face vampires.”
Dani’s cheeks grew hot with anger. “Why not just say it, Mom? I’m useless because I can’t shift.”
“Dani…”
“No, I don’t want to hear it. You can all pretend it doesn’t matter, but I know it does. I’ve known it since I failed to shift.”
Lucinda sighed. “I just worry about you. You’re my daughter.”
But Luc’s eyes had crinkled at the corners and he smiled at Dani. “Feel better, my Valkyrie?”
“Much. And I’m not staying home tonight.” She turned to her mother. “You said it yourself. If blood lust overcomes the pack once the fight begins, they might not distinguish between vampires, but they’ll distinguish me. I might be the only control you have.”
Lucinda frowned, but didn’t deny it. “You can’t keep up with us.”
Another reminder. Boy, those reminders were being poured all over her today. But this time she didn’t cringe. She just gave her mother a steady stare. Just as she was about to mention that she could drive, Luc spoke.
“It will be my honor to carry her. She won’t slow me down.”
Lucinda rounded on him. “What kind of being do you claim to be, fighting to protect yourself and humans, but unwilling to protect my daughter?”
“I would give my life to protect your daughter, Madam Wolf, but I will not wound her by suggesting she is useless. She is not and never has been useless. Despite her severe injuries, she managed to fight off four vampires before they killed her. How do you think it is that I found her alive? Because she fought. And why is it that one of them came back to kill her later? Because they never intended to leave her alive, they simply waited until they felt she would be weakened by her injuries.”
Lucinda continued to glare at him.
“Did you not see her courage today?” Luc asked quietly.
After several beats, Lucinda sighed. “She has great courage.”
“Indeed. So unless you wish this to turn into a fight right here and now, I will carry Dani with me into the battle.”
“You will protect her?”
“Haven’t I said so? In the end, however, it may be Dani who protects me…or someone else.”
Lucinda turned back to Dani, her eyes dimmed and troubled. “I never wanted you to feel this way about yourself, Dani. Never. We love you. But you have stepped out of the hierarchy.”
Dani swallowed hard as her throat tightened. She had just been told that in the most important way possible she was no longer part of the pack. They might still love her, but she no longer had a place. She blinked hard, keeping back the tears.
Luc surprised her. He slipped swiftly to her side and put his arm around her. “Damn your hierarchy,” he said, his voice tight with anger. “No wonder she felt compelled to leave you.”
“Luc, please,” Dani said, her voice thickened by the tightness in her throat. “This has to wait. Everything has to wait except the rogues. They must be out there moving even now.” She looked at her mother from eyes as hot as coals. “They’re being followed?”
Lucinda nodded, her expression stony.
“Then let’s get on with the plan. Now.”
Lucinda hesitated only a moment before heading out the door.
“My goodness,” Jude drawled. “Dani just gave an order to her alpha. And the alpha obeyed.”
A tear escaped Dani’s eye and she managed a weak laugh. “I guess I did.”
Luc wiped the tear tenderly away with a forefinger. “Bundle up, little wolf. It’s time.”
He wasn’t too thrilled with her wolfskin coat and mukluks, though. He wrinkled his nose. “Must you?”
“They’re what I have. Get used to it.”
He sighed. “So very difficult. You are becoming quite the alpha yourself.” But then he winked, taking the sting out of the words.
The night was clear and cold, with a breeze blowing toward the southeast. “That’ll make it easier to track them,” Luc remarked to Jude.
“Much, for the lycans at least.”
The vampires had decided to backtrack the path Luc had laid last night while the lycans would follow the vamps out of town, thus bringing them at the rogues from opposing directions.
Dani, clinging to Luc’s back, asked, “Will they still be able to smell the track? It’s been hours since you left it and we’ve had four more inches of snow.”
“They can,” Luc assured her. “In one way we are like your pack. Our sense of smell.”
“They’re not my pack anymore.”
“Don’t lose hope, Dani. There will be time to work this all out later.”
If they survived.
With Luc carrying her, Dani had too much time to think. She couldn’t see the sights whizzing by and could barely tell the difference when he leaped or when he ran, it all happened so fast.
The pain of what her mother had said remained like a knife in her heart. Even knowing it was true, knowing she had chosen a path away from her pack, it hurt to hear it stated so baldly.
Being broken, as Luc had called her, was a fact she hadn’t been able to ignore or escape. So she had come to this place to live as a normal, even though she would never exactly be one of them, either, not given what she knew and how she had been raised.
She hadn’t even allowed herself to date, though she had been asked out a couple of times, because her lycan heritage loomed over everything. How could she explain it to a human? Would he even accept it? And what if she said nothing, married and had a fully lycan child?
Even as she had struck out to make a new life, she had been trapped in the cage of what she was. Still.
Until Luc. It really didn’t seem to trouble him that she was a broken wolf, part lycan, part human. He knew enough that she hadn’t had to offer any awkward explanations, and he’d known it from the start.
Yet still he had made love to her. Held her close. Drunk of her. It would probably never be more than that, but it had given her a taste of being truly accepted, a sense of belonging, however brief.
That might all end tonight. She might be left with something very much li
ke the longing and anguish Luc had said he had felt over the loss of Natasha. It might even stop her from ever making another connection for fear of being left alone and lonely again.
But as she pressed her face to Luc’s back, she knew one thing for certain: she wouldn’t have missed this experience for the world, even if she didn’t survive the night.
She realized they were out of the city only because the world grew brighter. The blur became mostly white and the smells changed from the crowded odors of cars and people to the fresh odor of a world wearing snow. Overhead the moon still seemed almost full when she could manage to focus on it long enough.
But mostly she kept her face buried against Luc. He was moving so fast that the wind cut almost like a knife, as if she were riding a rocket-propelled sled.
When they halted, they were far out into the country, pausing along a line of trees that edged an open field. Luc set her down in snow that nearly reached her knees.
“Okay,” he said. “Do you want me to call Lucinda or do you want to do it?”
“I’ll do it,” Dani said. No way was she going to let her mother’s harsh statement cow her. She was independent now, that had been made perfectly clear. No longer part of the hierarchy also meant something else: she was no longer pack but she could now claim equality. A lone wolf, maybe, but bowing to no alpha.
Lucinda answered swiftly. “They’re turning off the road, eleven of them together. We suspect some may have remained in town, but these eleven are following the trail. The wind still favors us.”
Then, without another word, Lucinda disconnected. Words unspoken seemed to tear Dani’s heart. No I love you. No wish for good luck. Nothing.
She drew a steadying breath and passed the report along.
“It won’t be long now,” Jude remarked. “We need to choose our spot quickly.”
Luc swung her up again, the world blurred, then she found herself in a copse of trees.
“This looks good enough,” Luc said. “I only hope the wind continues to favor us or they’ll smell the freshening of our scent.”
“Not until they get here,” Jude said. “Not with the wind blowing our scent away.”