Dead After Dark

by Sherrilyn Kenyon

  He barked at Mama Peltier, who moved to stand between them. But he knew from experience that it wasn't her powers he felt. The trouble was, he didn't know who they belonged to.

  "No one comes into my house and does this," she snarled. "All three of you are banned from here, and if I ever catch you inside Sanctuary again, you won't live long enough to regret it."

  "He attacked us," Dare said. "Why should we be banned?"

  Dev hauled him up from the floor. "Anyone who participates in a fight is thrown out. Those are the laws."

  Colt was far more gentle picking Angelia up.

  "There was no bloodshed," Angelia argued.

  Mama curled her lip. "Doesn't matter. You almost exposed us to the humans. Lucky for you, they evacuated quickly. Now get out."

  Fury tried to turn human again to tell them what was going on, but his magick wasn't cooperating. Not even his mental powers were working. It most likely had to do with the fact that someone else's powers were holding him down.

  Damn it!

  Dare glared at him and made a gesture to let him know it wasn't over. Then, he and Angelia left.

  "That means you, too, Wolf," Dev growled. "Max, let him go."

  The forcefield dropped.

  Finally he was able to turn back into a human. Though he could have done without the public nudity. Unlike other Were-Hunters, he couldn't manifest clothes at the same time as he shapeshifted. I really hate my powers . . .

  As he reached to scoop up his clothes, they were put on his body. Confused, he looked around and caught Aimee's gaze. She inclined her head to let him know that she was the one who'd helped him. No doubt Fang had told her about his weakness.

  Dev stepped forward.

  "I'm going," Fury said. "But before I do, let me congratulate all of you on your stupidity. Those two assholes who just left were the ones who screwed the lions upstairs. I was trying to get the information out of them."

  Dev cursed. "Why didn't you tell us?"

  "I was trying. Next time you forcefield someone to the ground, you might not want to stifle their ability to talk, too."

  The dragon, Max, shook his head. "I thought you were just going to insult me for holding you down. It's what you normally do whenever you speak to me."

  "I probably would have had I not had something more important to tell you."

  Dev cleared his throat to get their attention. "Are they from this time period?"

  "No."

  Mama nodded. "Then they have to be in town somewhere. There's no full moon for them to use to time jump."

  Fury wished, but there was another truth about his old friend. "The woman was Aristos. She's not bound by the moon. They could be anywhere, in any time."

  Dev sighed. "Well, at least we got the humans out before they saw anything unnatural happen."

  "Bully that." Fury zipped his jacket up. "Now if you'll excuse me--"

  "Hey."

  He looked at Dev.

  "You're still banned from here."

  "Like I care." He'd been banned from much nicer places than this, and at least there he'd had people who'd actually cared for him . . . at least for a few years.

  Without a backward glance, he left them and headed back to Ursulines. The street was strangely quiet, especially given the fact that a large number of humans had gone screaming into the night only a few minutes before. The threat of violence must have really gotten under their skin.

  But that didn't change the fact that he still had a wolf to track. Two of them to be precise. Common sense told him to return to his pack and tell Vane what was happening.

  Fury scoffed. "Lived my whole life without any sense. Why should I start having some now?"

  As he reached his bike, a strange fissure of power went down his spine.

  He turned in expectation of a fight, but before he could even move, he was hit with a fierce shock. Cursing, he hit the ground hard. Pain exploded through him as he changed into his wolf form, then human, then wolf again. He was completely immobilized as his body struggled to hold onto one form and was incapable of it.

  Dare walked up to him slowly, then kicked him hard in the ribs. "You should have died, Fury. Now you're going to wish you had."

  Fury lunged at him, but his muscles wouldn't cooperate. If he could lay hand or paw on the bastard, he'd rip his throat out.

  He looked up at Angelia to see sympathy on her face an instant before Dare shot him again. Unbelievable pain ripped through him as he struggled to stay conscious.

  It was a losing battle. In one heartbeat, everything went black.

  "What are you doing?" Angelia asked Dare.

  "We need to know what he knows about our experiment. More to the point, we need to know who he's been talking to. We can't afford for our secret to get out."

  She cringed as she watched Fury's body continue to shift from human to white wolf and back again. At least until Dare wrapped the collar around his throat that kept him as human. Since Fury's natural form was a wolf, keeping him as a human, especially in daylight, would weaken him.

  And it would hurt.

  She shook her head at his actions. "You know he's not going to tell us anything."

  "I wouldn't be so sure."

  The Fury she remembered would never tell secrets. He'd die before he did, and he could take a lot of pain. Even as a child, he'd been stronger than any other. "How can you be so certain?"

  "Because I'm going to turn him over to our Jackal."

  Angelia sucked her breath in sharply at the threat. Oscar was a jackal whose heart was so black, he was more animal than man. "He's your brother, Dare."

  "I have no brother. You know what the Katagaria did to my family. To our patria."

  It was true. She'd been there the night Dare's Katagari father had led the attack on their Arcadian camp. Just a child, she'd been hidden as the attacks began. Her mother had smeared her with earth to mask her scent before she'd placed her in the cellar.

  Even now, she could see the wolves as they attacked her mother and killed her while she'd watched in horror through the slats in the floor.

  Dare was right. They had to protect their people. The animals needed to be stripped of their powers and put down like the rabid creatures they were.

  Even Fury.

  "Are you with me?" he asked.

  She nodded. "I won't see another child suffer my fate. We have to protect ourselves. Whatever it takes."

  3

  Angelia paced the small camp they'd made as she listened to Fury insulting Oscar while he and Dare tortured Fury for information. Honestly, she didn't have the stomach for it. She never had.

  Maybe Dare was right. Maybe she shouldn't be on a tessera after all.

  Then again, she was a warrior of unparalleled skill. In battle, she didn't hesitate to kill or to wound. It was just the idea of beating someone who couldn't fight back that sickened her.

  He's an animal.

  No doubt he'd kill her in a heartbeat. She knew that with every part of herself and yet . . .

  She cringed as Fury howled in pain.

  An instant later, Oscar came outside toward her and the fire they'd made. Without a word, he walked past her and manifested an iron pole.

  Frowning, she watched as he placed it in the fire. "What are you doing?"

  "I thought a little branding might loosen his tongue."

  A wave of nausea went through her.

  Dare came outside the tent with the same look of disgust on his face. "I say you should ram it up his ass until he talks."

  Oscar laughed.

  Horrified, she didn't move until they started back with the poker in hand. "No!" she said sternly.

  Oscar angled it at her. "Get out of the way."

  "No," she repeated. "This is wrong. You're acting like one of them."

  Dare's expression was stern and cruel. "We're protecting our people."

  But this wasn't protection. This was all-out cruelty. Unable to bear it, she tried another tactic. "Let me question
him."

  Dare frowned. "Why? Like you said, he won't say anything."

  She gestured toward the tent as she tried to keep her anger under control. "You've been beating on him for hours, and it's gotten us nowhere. Let me try another approach. What will it hurt?"

  Oscar put the poker back into the fire. "I need to eat anyway. You have until I finish, and then I'm going to try my way again."

  Repulsed by them both, Angelia turned around and headed into the tent. The sight of Fury on the floor stopped her dead in her tracks. Still in human form, he was naked with his hands tied at an awkward angle behind his back. Another rope held his legs tied together. He was covered with bruises and cuts to the point that she could barely recognize him.

  The fact that he was this wounded and in human form had to be excruciating for him. Anytime they were wounded, they reverted to their natural form. For her it was human. For Fury . . .

  He was a wolf.

  Trying to keep that in mind, she knelt by his side.

  He growled threateningly until he looked up and met her gaze. The pain and torment in those dark turquoise eyes made her wince. And as she dropped her gaze, she saw the scar on his chest. The wound where she'd stabbed him.

  Guilt tore through her over what she should never have done.

  "Why don't you just finish the job," he said, his tone hostile and deadly.

  "We don't want to hurt you."

  He laughed bitterly. "My wounds and the glee they had in their eyes when they gave them to me tells me a different story."

  She brushed the hair back from his forehead to see a vicious cut that ran along his brow. Blood poured from his nose and lips. "I'm sorry."

  "We're all sorry for something. Why don't you be an animal for once and just kill me?" He glared at her. "You might as well. I'm not going to tell you shit."

  "We need to know what happened to the lion."

  "Go to hell."

  "Fury--"

  "Don't you fucking dare use my name. I'm nothing but an animal to all of you. Believe me, all of you made it more than clear to me four hundred years ago when you beat me close to death and then dumped me out to die."

  "Fury--"

  He barked at her like a wolf.

  "Would you stop?"

  He continued making wolf noises.

  Sighing, Angelia shook her head. "No wonder they beat you."

  Baring his teeth in true canine fashion, he growled, then woofed. There was nothing human in the sound or his demeanor.

  Angelia stepped back.

  The moment she was away from him, Fury slumped on the ground and stopped making any sounds at all. He lay completely still.

  Was he dead?

  No, his chest was still moving. She could also hear his faint breathing. As she watched him, her thoughts turned to the past. To the young man she'd once been friends with. Even though he was younger than her by four years, there had been something about him that had touched her.

  Where Dare had always been arrogant and bossy, Fury had held a vulnerability that had made her protective of him. More than that, he'd never treated her as inferior. He'd seen her as a partner and confidant.

  "I'll be your family, Lia." Those words haunted her. It had been Fury's vow to her once he'd learned that her family had been killed by the Katagaria--by his own father's pack. "I won't ever let the wolves hurt you. I swear it."

  Yet she'd stood by this morning while they'd tortured him relentlessly.

  It's nothing compared to what you did the last time you saw him.

  It was true. She hadn't stood by him then either, and he'd been beaten a lot worse than this.

  "Fury," she tried again. "Tell me what we need to know, and I promise you this will stop."

  He lifted his head up to pin her with a furious glare. "I don't betray my friends."

  "Don't you dare say that to me. I was protecting my people when I attacked you."

  He let out a disbelieving snort. "From me? They were my people, too."

  She shook her head in denial. "You don't have people. You're an animal."

  He twisted his lips into a vicious snarl. "Baby, you untie me, and I'll show you just how much of an animal the man in me really is. Trust me. He's a lot crueler than the wolf is."

  "Told you," Oscar said as he joined them in the tent. He angled the red-hot poker toward the flap. "You should leave. The stench of burning flesh is going to be hard on your nose."

  She saw the panic in Fury's eyes as he tried to scoot away from them.

  Oscar grabbed him by the hair and rolled him over. Fury kicked at him, but there wasn't much he could do given how tied up he was. Still he fought with a courage that was admirable.

  "Get out," Dare said as he entered the tent.

  As she started for the flap, Fury let out a howl so fierce and pain-filled that it shattered her soul. Turning, she saw that Oscar had dropped the poker across his left hip where it burned in a foul stench.

  Right or wrong, she couldn't let them do this to him anymore.

  She shoved Dare out of her way, then kicked Oscar back from Fury. Before they could recover themselves, she knelt by Fury's side and placed her hand on his shoulder. Using her powers, she took them out of the tent and moved them farther into the marsh where they'd been camped. Since she didn't know the area all that well, it was the safest place she could take him.

  When he met her gaze, there was no gratitude there. Only rage and a hatred so sharp it was piercing. "What are you going to do now? Leave me here for the gators to eat?"

  "I should." Instead, she manifested a knife to cut through the ropes that held his hands.

  Fury was stunned by her actions. "Why are you helping me?"

  "I don't know. Apparently I'm having a moment of extreme stupidity."

  He wiped at the blood on his face as she cut the ropes on his feet. "I wish your stupidity had kicked in sooner."

  She paused at the sight of the raw blister on his hip where the jackal had laid the poker. It had to be killing him. "I'm so sorry."

  Fury snatched at the collar on his throat and jerked it free.

  Angelia gasped at the action. No one should be able to remove their collar.

  No one.

  "How did you do that?"

  He curled his lip at her. "I can do a lot of things when I'm not being shocked."

  She started to leave, but before she could, he snapped the collar around her throat. Shrieking, she tried to use her powers to either attack him or remove it.

  It was useless.

  "I saved you!"

  "Fuck you," he snarled. "I wouldn't have been there had the two of you not jumped me last night. You're lucky I don't return the favor you did for me."

  Raw panic tore through her as she realized he could do anything to her and she'd be powerless to stop him. "What are you going to do?"

  There was no mercy in his expression. No reprieve. "I ought to rip your throat out. But lucky for you, I'm just a dumb animal and killing for revenge isn't in my nature." He tightened his grip on her arm. "Killing to protect myself and those in my pack is another story. You'd do well to remember that."

  As she opened her mouth to respond, Fury flashed them out of the marsh and into his brother Vane's large Victorian house.

  Vane's mate was in the living room, standing by the couch where their son was napping. Tall and curvaceous with short, dark auburn hair, Bride was one of the few people Fury actually trusted. She let out an almost wolf-sounding yelp before she spun about and gave them her back. "Good grief, Fury, warn me if you're going to jump in here naked."

  "Sorry, Bride," he said, trying to keep his focus. But it was getting hard given his wounds.

  "What happened to you?"

  He looked over his shoulder to find Vane standing in the doorway. He wanted to answer, but the drain on his powers combined with the wounds was more than he could take. His ears were buzzing. The next thing he knew, he was a wolf again and exhaustion was overtaking him.

  "Don't
let her escape and don't take that collar off," he projected to Vane before he let the darkness take him under again.

  Angelia jumped away from Fury in his wolf form. Realizing he was unconscious, she started for the door only to find a man there who bore a scary resemblance to Dare. This guy, however, was a lot more intimidating and even more handsome. "I need to leave."

  He looked past her to the woman by the couch. "Bride, take the baby and get upstairs." Though his tone was commanding, it was also gentle and protective.

  She heard the woman leave without questioning him.

  As soon as she was gone, he narrowed those eerie hazel eyes on her that were more wolf than human. "What are you doing here and what happened to my brother?"

  She tilted her head at his question. His scent . . . it was unmistakable. "You're Arcadian. A Sentinel like me." But unlike her, he chose to hide the marks on his face that designated him as one of their rare and sacred breed.

  He curled his lips. "I'm nothing like you. My allegiance is to the Katagaria and it's to my brother. He told me to keep you here and so I shall."

  Anger ripped through her. She had no intention of staying here. "I have to get back to my patria."

  He shook his head, his face set by determination. "You're part of my mother's patria which makes you my mortal enemy. You're not leaving here until Fury allows it." He stepped past her to where Fury lay on the floor.

  She was aghast at his actions. "You're kidnapping me?"

  Effortlessly, he picked Fury up from the floor. No small feat given the size of the wolf. "My mother kidnapped my mate and took her back to medieval England where the male members of your patria then attempted to rape her. Be grateful I don't return that favor to you."

  Those words were so eerily similar to Fury's that it sent a chill over her. "I just want to go home."

  "You're safe here. No one's going to hurt you . . . unless you try to leave." He turned and carried Fury up the same stairs the woman had taken just a few minutes before.

  Angelia watched him until he was out of sight. Then she ran for the front door. She'd only made it three steps before four wolves appeared in front of her. Baring their teeth and snapping, they blocked her way.

  Katagaria.

  She could tell from the smell of them. That scent of wolf mingled with human and magick. It was daylight which meant it was hard for them to appear human. Not impossible, but difficult, especially if they were young or inexperienced.

  She tried to press forward, but the animals prevented it.

  "Do what Vane told you."