by Raand, L. L.
Tamara snorted. “Your imperator made it pretty clear she planned to kill me.”
“Did she use those words?”
Tamara shrugged. “She didn’t have to. You already murdered my brother and my uncle.”
“You attacked us first. Retaliation is justice—not murder.”
“We retaliated,” Tamara snarled, and her wolf, weakened from her wounds but proud and strong, showed in her eyes. Amber sparked deep beneath the green, and her angular face took on a fierce warrior glow. She was a dominant, young but, even injured and weak, powerful.
“You’re wrong,” Gray said. “Our patrols were within our perimeter when you attacked without provocation. The Alpha has every right to execute intruders.”
Tamara folded her arms over her small, tight breasts and stared hard at Gray. Her canines gleamed against her full lower lip. “You lie, just like your imperator.”
Gray growled, and red-gold pelt flared down the center of Tamara’s hollow abdomen as she rose to the challenge. In her weakened state she couldn’t possibly fight, but her wolf refused to belly down.
“That is not wise.” Gray rose, shouldered her rifle, and stalked to the far end of the room. She opened a narrow closet set into one corner and pulled out a set of plain gray cotton clothes. Returning, she pushed them through the bars and tossed them to the center of the cell. “Get dressed.”
“Why?”
“Because I told you to.” Gray moved away from the cell until her back was against the far wall. Tamara’s wolf, even injured, was strong enough to interest Gray’s. Had the bars not stood between them, they would have circled one another, scenting, testing, challenging. Under other circumstances, they might have tussled, and imagining it, Gray’s skin misted with sex pheromones.
Tamara started to push herself up and lost her balance. Breathing hard, she sat back down heavily. The shadows beneath her eyes darkened as her skin grew paler. In the few seconds she’d been nearly upright, Gray had glimpsed the wall behind her, dark and slick with blood.
“What’s wrong with your back?”
“Nothing,” Tamara gasped.
“Now who lies? Did the imperator know you were that badly wounded?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure she wouldn’t care.”
“I’m coming in.” Gray put her rifle down against the far wall and took the key from the hook. She unlocked the bolt, pocketed the key, and stepped inside. The door clicked closed behind her, and they were alone in the cell together. Amber glowed in Tamara’s eyes again, and Gray smiled thinly. “If you try, you will lose.”
“Maybe,” Tamara whispered, and Gray could see her wolf preparing to spring.
“If you hold your wolf, you might have a chance to live. If you attack, you will either die now or later.”
Tamara trembled, her pelt thickening as her wolf struggled to ascend.
“I won’t show mercy.”
“I would ask for none.” Tamara gasped. She held her wolf in check, too weak to shift, or maybe wise enough not to provoke a fight she couldn’t win.
Gray approached slowly, her arms loose at her side, her gaze holding Tamara’s without challenge.
“What are you doing?” Tamara asked.
“Turn around.”
Tamara hesitated.
“Truce,” Gray murmured.
“Truce.” Tamara awkwardly shifted on her knees, giving Gray her back. It was a position no wolf, dominant or submissive, would willingly assume, and the fact that she did only spoke of how weak she was. Or perhaps, that she trusted Gray not to snap her spine.
A surge of anger caught Gray by surprise. Deep bite marks scored Tamara’s right shoulder down to bone, and a steady stream of bright red blood trickled down the center of her back. She’d been bleeding for hours. No wonder she was too weak to shift. “I’m going to get a medic.”
“I heard your Alpha say I wasn’t to receive any treatment.”
“Why did you do this? You must have known you would lose.”
Tamara slumped against the wall, her face not even registering the agony she must be feeling from the pressure against her damaged back. “What I had to do. What any wolf would do. Why did you take our pregnant females?”
Gray jerked. “What? That’s not possible.”
“Ask your imperator. Ask your Alpha.”
“Just stay quiet. You’ll bleed less.” Gray reached through the bars to unlock the bolt, slipped out, and locked the cell again. “We would never harm a pregnant female. You’re a wolf. Don’t you know that?”
Tamara’s lids closed, and she struggled to open them. She was weakening by the minute. “I’ve seen crueler things done to wolves by other wolves.”
“Then I’m sorry for you. I’ll be back with help.”
Tamara’s gaze found hers and held. “Why?”
Gray gripped the bars, the silver searing her flesh. “Because we are not like them.”
Tamara’s eyes widened. “Like who?”
“I only wish I knew,” Gray whispered.
Chapter Seventeen
Francesca tracked Luce on the monitor as she wended her way though the club’s hidden passages down to the lair, a lean shadow slipping between the feeding Vampires and their lust-ridden hosts. When the knock sounded on her office door, Francesca set aside the accounts she’d been reviewing and bade her enter.
“Mistress,” Luce said, bowing her head. As usual she was in black—a body-hugging silk shirt, leather pants, and low boots. The glow from the wall sconces on either side of the door haloed her thick black hair and gave her the illusion of an unholy angel.
“I didn’t expect to see you tonight,” Francesca said. “Something important to report?”
“I believe so, Mistress. I thought it best to tell you in person.”
Francesca smiled. “In person and in private.”
Luce nodded ever so slightly.
Ordinarily, Francesca would have sent for Michel to sit in on Luce’s report, but instead she pushed away from her desk and came around to take Luce’s arm. She slid hers through the crook of Luce’s elbow and drew her down the connecting hallway to her sitting room. She guided her to the sofa and sat beside her, resting one hand on Luce’s leather-clad thigh. “News of Dr. Standish?”
“Her lab’s up and running again, and from what I can tell, she is close to resuming full operations.”
“Nicholas has influence with those with funds and power, and he obviously used his connections to restore Dr. Standish’s facilities.” Francesca hadn’t heard from Nicholas since the unfortunate events of the governor’s gala. Although he publicly denied any involvement in the attempt on Sylvan, she had no doubt he was behind the attack. He hated the Weres for some private reason and pursued his own agenda, which made him not only a useless ally, but a dangerous one. “So tell me, what is the doctor doing?”
“She’s very careful to keep some sections of the lab secluded from almost everyone, but she received an interesting delivery last night. When she left to oversee the details, I slipped outside. Two wolf Weres had delivered something by barge. Something requiring cages.”
“Living specimens,” Francesca mused. “Yes, that seems to be Veronica’s pleasure. But why would wolves be involved? Surely not Sylvan’s?”
“Doubtful,” Luce said immediately. “I’m not certain, but I think they were Bernardo’s. I heard one of them object when a security guard told them to wait for paperwork from the lab. They said they wanted to get back to New Hampshire before dawn.”
Francesca’s incisors gleamed as she hissed. “Bernardo. He is as stupid as he is untrustworthy. Now he seeks to forge a secret alliance with the humans, and he has no idea that Nicholas’s only goal is to destroy him and every other Were on the planet.”
“Veronica seeks no alliance,” Luce said darkly. “A squad of cat Weres murdered the wolves before they could leave. That must have been on her order.”
“She thinks to eliminate witnesses, but she is not reasoning clearly
,” Francesca mused. “Bernardo overestimates his own power, but he will know she is responsible for their deaths.”
Luce flashed her incisors with a satisfied smile. “She thinks only of blood pleasures but deludes herself she is in control.”
Francesca stroked Luce’s cheek. “She doesn’t know you observed the execution of the wolf couriers?”
Luce shrugged. “I had no reason to stop it, so I watched unseen from the shadows.”
“Veronica, leaving no trail.” Francesca smiled. “She is admirable, for a human.”
“What would you have me do next?”
Francesca leaned over and kissed Luce. “We must know what experiments she is planning. I’m sure you can think of a way to find out.”
“And Bernardo?”
“Leave him to me.” Francesca opened Luce’s shirt and cupped her breast. “You have done well. I am pleased.”
Luce’s eyes blazed scarlet and she tilted her head back, allowing Francesca to drink from her throat. She shuddered as her pleasure escaped on a whisper. “Yes, Mistress.”
“Go now,” Francesca murmured after a moment. Her need was unsatisfied, but she had business to attend to first. Then she would find Michel—it was time Michel returned to her place and proved herself worthy of her Regent’s trust.
*
Misha’s heart pounded like thunder, and the breath rasped from her lungs in staccato bursts. The kiss was like running with the Alpha on a midnight hunt, the excitement driving Misha’s wolf in a headlong rush through virgin forests over trails thick with fallen leaves. Not wanting the chase to end, she pulled back, and Torren’s pale perfect features slowly came into focus. They were still lying face-to-face on the narrow cot beneath the open window. Her shirt was on the floor next to them, Torren’s torn open down the center. She didn’t remember how they got that way. All she remembered was falling into the heat of Torren’s mouth and drowning in the intoxicating taste of her. She hadn’t released, neither had Torren, and she should have been wild to by now. Her body was primed, pulsing and full, but all she wanted was to bask in the silvery glow that surrounded Torren, content just to touch and taste, seduced by her mystical allure. She pressed her palm between Torren’s breasts, captivated by the cool beauty of her luminous skin.
“Is it true you can do magic?” Misha asked.
Leaning on one arm, Torren traced the sharp angle of Misha’s jaw, marveling at the strength beneath the soft, smooth skin. The wolf was so close to the surface, Misha’s face burned with power and a magic all her own. “Yes, but probably not the way you think of it.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Misha frowned, distracted by the electricity spreading through her from the light caress and the scent of Torren’s nearness. She nipped at Torren’s finger, gave it a shake. “Magic is magic, isn’t it?”
“What is magic to one might be ordinary to another.”
Misha laughed. “Do you know you talk in circles?”
“Circles are only an infinite series of straight lines joined together.”
Growling, Misha bit Torren’s throat gently. “More riddles. I know only the earth beneath me, and the scent of prey, and the thrill of the chase.”
“Then we are not so different,” Torren murmured, easing her fingers through Misha’s dark silky hair. “I too am of the earth and the moon, and my soul thrills to the hunt.”
Misha’s wolf perked up her ears, her gold eyes glittering. “You’re a hunter.”
“Yes.”
“And you can shift. That’s why I thought you were a wolf at first.”
“I was.”
“Not an illusion—not magic?”
“Magic, yes, but real.” Torren settled along Misha’s length, her thigh between Misha’s, her arms caging Misha’s shoulders. “As real as this.”
Torren pushed the fingers of both hands into Misha’s hair and lightly held her head. She kissed her, and moonlight streamed through Misha’s blood. Misha rumbled deep in her chest, unused to the unfamiliar position, unused to being comfortable with anyone above her. Torren was unlike any dominant she’d ever been with—her power was as strong as, stronger even than, the dominant wolves’, but as elusive as the shimmering shafts of moonlight splintering over them. A wolf’s power was of sinew and muscle and primal force—Torren’s was of the wind holding the clouds aloft and the moonlit glades where time stretched to eternity. She broke the kiss, wanting, needing, to know more. “What do you hunt?”
Torren grew still, her mouth a whisper above Misha’s. Her eyes were the midnight blue of a night sky, deep and fathomless and filled with diamond pinpoints of starlight. “Souls.”
“Of the dead?” Misha’s heart stuttered, but she didn’t pull away, even though a chill threatened to freeze her breath in her chest. She was of the earth, of the flesh of her Packmates, of the blood of her prey. Of sex and passion and instinct. Her world was life.
Torren shook her head, staring into Misha’s eyes as if trying to read her soul. “Not the dead, the living. I return the lost and the missing, and sentence the unruly, to Faerie.”
“You’re like the imperator.”
“Somewhat.” Torren smiled. “I am called the Master of the Hunt. I serve the Queen, as your imperator serves your Alpha.”
“Why did the Vampires imprison you?” Misha’s canines bulged when she thought about Torren in captivity, being bled for pleasure or punishment.
“I violated the Vampire Code. The Vampire Regent extracted her punishment.”
“And your Queen didn’t come to rescue you?”
“Would your Alpha?”
“Yes,” Misha said instantly. “The Alpha would never abandon us.”
Torren kissed her. “Then you are lucky indeed.”
“Could you take me?” Misha eased one leg around Torren’s calf, anchoring Torren to her. She had told the Alpha she might be able to learn why Torren had been imprisoned and why she was on their land, but she didn’t see how that mattered any longer. Torren had willingly accepted the Alpha’s decision to detain her, and she could have escaped. Her power was greater than anyone knew. She was no threat, but she might be in danger, and Misha would not let her be hurt.
“Take you where, my adventurous wolf?”
Misha tugged at Torren’s lower lip hard enough to draw a tiny drop of blood. She licked it away and nectar flooded her throat. She growled in pleasure. “On a hunt.”
Torren smiled and her smile was sad. “Yes, but if I did, I might not want to bring you back, and you would not be happy in Faerie unless I made you Faerie-kissed.”
“I’m not afraid of your kisses.”
“Not these, perhaps.” Torren kissed her, a slow slide of breath and flesh that brought their hearts beating as one. When she drew back, she shook her head again. “But the kiss of Faerie would make you forget this world, and all you have known here.”
“Like Vampires can make you forget.” Again Misha felt an instinctive rush of cold fear, but her wolf did not retreat. Her wolf did not see Torren as the enemy, and she trusted her wolf.
“A Vampire can blur the mind, steal the memory of pleasure or pain. But in Faerie, time has no meaning, and once Faerie-kissed, you would long only for the scent of spring flowers and the taste of moonlight.” Torren stroked Misha’s face. “You would be lost to this world.”
Misha traced the delicate arch of Torren’s cheek where shadows played with her fingertips. Her wolf was wise. Torren would never hurt her. “Do you miss it?”
“Sometimes. Not tonight.”
Growling, Misha wrapped both legs around Torren’s hips, the clothes between them suddenly an unbearable barrier. “My wolf knows you—recognized you from the first. Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” Torren murmured, “but I know you too.”
“When you hunt, how do you do it?”
Torren sighed. “You ask me to share secrets I have kept for centuries.”
“I can keep a secret.”
Laughing, Torren
lowered her head and kissed the hollow at the base of Misha’s throat. “You taste of moonlight and desire.”
“I taste of you.” Misha gripped Torren’s hair, pulled her head back, bit lightly at her neck. “You hunt as a wolf?”
Torren gasped. “No.”
“As a hawk?”
“I search as a hawk, I hunt”—Torren gazed down, her pupils wide and black, eclipsing the blue—“as a Hound.”
Misha stilled but her wolf sat up, instantly alert. “Can you show me?”
“No one has ever dared ask of me. Why do you?”
“I want to see what lives inside you.”
“And I, I…” Torren shuddered and rested her forehead on Misha’s. “I want to taste what lives inside you.”
“Yes, I want you to.”
Torren’s weight was gone even before Misha’s wolf sensed her move. Misha knelt on the cot and stared as the room filled with mist, curling from the floor in swirling silver clouds that dazzled her eyes. And then she was pushing back against the wall, her heart hammering wildly. A beast twice as big as the Alpha crouched on the floor, regarding her with cold eyes darker than midnight. The orbs would have appeared empty of life except for the fire raging in their depths. Not a dog, not a wolf, but a beast with four legs, massive paws tipped with talon-like claws, and a huge head with a broad muzzle harboring teeth long enough to sever a limb in a single bite. The leathery brown head was capped with short sharp ears and a wide snout. The heavy shoulders and lean haunches were designed for running long distances, leaping over obstacles, hunting down prey. The long tapering body was a machine made of power, to chase and capture and drag quarry back to the Otherworld—or to kill.
Inside, Misha’s wolf stilled, regarding the great beast with curiosity and interest. She had no urge to challenge, even with a massive predator within her territory, only inches away. The Hound crouched, its great ribs rising and falling evenly as it watched Misha.
Misha eased forward, held out a hand. Her heart swelled, and the cry of the hawk filled her with joy. “You are magnificent.”