“Keep running,” he told her, and he stopped. She continued on a few feet but turned and stopped as well, couldn’t leave him behind in danger. Cordelia was gaining, and Gwen doubled back toward him in time to see him circling Cordelia’s prone body. The needle was sticking out of her thigh and she was still alive—for now.
Gwen’s phone was buried in the bag she’d left by her car, her keys still clutched in her hand.
“I’ll stay with her; you get the police,” Gwen told him, because she couldn’t let a woman die in front of her. She had no idea what was in the syringe.
But Liam wasn’t listening; he looked at her and panted, “Get far away from me.”
He shifted from foot to foot, fisted his hands. His skin was covered in a fine sheen of sweat, his lips stretched in a grimace.
She should be scared, but facing death obviously took away her fears. Looking back, she’d never really been afraid of much anyway. She’d lost those closest to her, and after that, she refused to get close to anyone. And when you didn’t have anything to lose, you had nothing to fear. “I can’t. You need help.”
“You need help.”
Why was everyone telling her that? “This was self-defense—you won’t be in trouble, but if you do anything else to her—”
“Get back—keep far away from me.”
It happened like a flash; she’d been too close and got thrown to the ground in his frenzy. The man was gone, and she caught a blur of brown fur and harsh breaths like she’d never heard before. She lay where she’d landed, several feet from him, momentarily stunned, and then pushed up on her hands and knees and saw the actual four-legged creature in front of her.
And he was growling.
This wasn’t the wolf from last night’s dream. This one looked darker, and it was angry and scared.
And now you’re comparing dream wolves to real ones.
“Whoa, boy, calm down.” And now she was an animal whisperer.
She’d pretend to be anything if it kept her alive.
The wolf growled, low but somehow nonthreatening. It was looking around and then gazing back at her.
Is that what he was doing? Protecting her?
God, she was losing it. The strange, floaty prodrome of the seizure started to take her. The wolf whined and then jumped toward her as she fell back on the ground.
When she looked up, she saw the wolf—the wolf—on top of Cordelia, his teeth gleaming as he howled toward the sky.
This isn’t happening.
She ducked her head before he tore into Cordelia’s throat, curled herself into a ball, the strength and non-fear from seconds earlier totally dissipating. But when he turned back in her direction, she sensed it and knew she’d have no choice but to fight for her life.
Rifter was out of the truck and halfway across the parking lot, looking for Gwen’s car, when he caught the scent of Were.
Young. Uncontrolled.
“Brother, I need you,” he said quietly, and a low growl hummed in his ears.
Brother Wolf helped him catch the other scent in the air. Gwen.
Rifter wasted no time getting to the woods and shifted without bothering to strip. This time, he didn’t care about ruining the leather he wore.
He heard Vice and Jinx behind him—they hadn’t shifted and were discussing finding Gwen’s bag abandoned by her car—and he raced ahead, the scent of blood calling to him.
When he reached the clearing in the woods he rarely ran through, thanks to the close proximity to the hospital and the lack of tree coverage from the road during winter, he saw a young woman dead on the ground.
His heart lurched, but it took him only a moment to scent that it wasn’t Gwen, but rather, the witch who’d attacked him earlier.
No doubt her death was the work of the young wolf he’d scented and possibly done in front of Gwen.
He stopped and listened, heard her voice, soft and steady, and he stealthily threaded through the trees to find her. When he broke through a thick bramble of bushes that ran along the partially frozen lake, he found her.
She and the young wolf were circling each other—Gwen was holding her hands out in front of her and talking, as if she could reason with the wolf. And she wasn’t doing a bad job, because the wolf seemed… confused.
Most humans would be running away, screaming by now.
Most humans would be dead by now too. A moon-crazed wolf attacked first and never asked questions, bore the brunt of the consequences later, depending on his or her pack. With this wolf, something was off.
Brother Wolf agreed and jumped in between Gwen and the young Were. Gwen started and Rifter hoped she recognized his wolf from last night.
No doubt she’d think she was having another medication hallucination. But this situation was far more serious than that. And as though Gwen read his mind, she ran.
Leave her—you’ll scare her, Brother Wolf communicated with his brothers, who were ready and waiting. Not that his wolf presence had smoothed shit over, but she was his to calm.
His. There was no doubt. She was a part of him as much as Brother Wolf, and the thought flooded his body with both elation and complete fucking fear.
He left Vice and Jinx to deal with the moon-crazed wolf, and he went after Gwen, who was running disturbingly fast for a human. Fear laced with adrenaline was no doubt whipping through her veins, and the last thing he wanted to do was have her hurt herself. He dialed it back a little to let her think she was losing him, wanted her to get to her house safely. He ran parallel to her and ended up arriving at the edge of the woods facing her house first.
She burst through the clearing at top speed, obviously not hurt, which was good.
Not so good was the Crown Vic parked in her driveway.
He hadn’t heard sirens behind him, and hopefully Vice and Jinx would take care of the mess at the park before the law found out about it. Gwen could be implicated, because they couldn’t let a wolf take the blame, no matter how much he cared about this human.
Brother Wolf was ready to howl at the moon, which would make her appearance within the hour. Gwen’s slim figure raced onto her porch as he waited, hidden. Sniffed the air and caught the scent of fear—of treason.
These men weren’t cops.
Chapter 10
Gwen could barely believe what she’d seen. All she could do was run. The woods were a blur as her muscles stretched, her blood churned and her feet flew across the ground.
She heard voices behind her and she picked up speed, frantic to get away, get home, wake up…
Hallucinating.
Maybe… or maybe she killed Cordelia. Or maybe Liam did.
What about the wolves?
She was at her front door in what seemed like minutes, but she wasn’t alone. What looked like an unmarked police car sat in her driveway, and there were three plainclothes cops next to her on the porch. Before she could say anything, they flashed their badges and she bent forward, palms on her thighs, to catch her breath.
She smelled Rifter.
She looked up but didn’t see him anywhere. Scrubbed her hands over her eyes, hoping to find herself still in the hospital bed, hooked up to meds.
“Ma’am?” One of the officers touched her arm and sounded genuinely concerned.
The rustling sound from earlier began again in her ears, like someone was balling up tissue paper, and then it stopped.
Don’t trust them.
She stood and pushed the man’s hand off her.
She was losing touch with reality very quickly, and she couldn’t tell them what she had seen because she couldn’t be sure herself. “I’m fine.”
“Do you always run like you’re being chased when you’re fine?” the second officer asked.
She backed toward her door. “You can go now.”
“No, we can’t. We need to know about Cordelia Smith,” the third said firmly.
She blanched, thought about how she’d left the woman back in the woods. “She attacked me.”
How would they know about the attack so fast? And why were they here, instead of scouring the woods. “I don’t know.”
“You’ll have to come to the station with us.”
She realized then that she didn’t recognize them at all—and they hadn’t shown her ID. The town wasn’t that small, and even so, she’d met most of the force, and some from the neighboring towns, in the ER. She had two officers’ cell numbers on speed dial—they’d given them to her more for social purposes than for business—but her cell phone was back in the hospital lot and wouldn’t help, damn it.
The keys still clutched in her palm might.
It was then she noticed that the second man held Rifter’s leather jacket in his hands. “Why were you in my house?” she demanded, then reached out and ripped the jacket from his grasp.
He grabbed at her wrist in retaliation, and she was tired of people grabbing at her, stopping her. Scaring her.
“Let’s go,” he told her.
“Fuck you,” she said. She was angry and she’d lost her job and she was about to literally lose everything.
Which meant that she had nothing to lose.
She realized that, in some form or another, she’d been fighting her whole life. First there was the illness, and then she’d been fighting for her career in spite of the illness.
Fighting to live.
Giving up was not in her—even as she did so, she knew she was prolonging the inevitable, but she had too much to do in a short time. It was as if something inside of her had decided to revolt.
“Get off me,” she heard herself snarl as the anger throbbed between her ears, white and hot, and she dropped the jacket and backhanded the man who refused to release her.
He fell back, harder than he should have, but pulled a gun on her from his position on the ground. That only increased her ire, especially when one of the other men tried to subdue her from behind.
Without worrying about being shot, she jabbed an elbow into his ribs and turned in his grasp, shoving the base of her palm up toward his nose; she heard a satisfying crunch when she made contact.
He let her go, and as she dropped to her knees, she was vaguely aware that the other officer had fired his gun several times. But at what?
The weakness was gone, and she was too busy taking out her aggression on this man to care.
“Don’t kill her,” the downed one with the bloody nose cried out. She almost laughed that he was worried about her when the only thought in her mind was killing him.
She jumped up after the firing ended and dropped him to the ground after her key hit his carotid. She still had two more men to contend with, and she wasn’t going to be able to stop—doing this felt natural and right, and she was so strong…
“Get her in the van and call Mars.”
She growled as they circled her, and then she realized she wasn’t the only one growling.
The beautiful wolf from last night was next to her, looking a lot more deadly. When it leapt toward the men, there were screams and they scattered.
She swore she still smelled Rifter, heard the rustling in her ears again. She remained behind the wolf because, like the one in the woods, he was protecting her. And when she saw one of the men come up behind the magnificent wolf with a knife, she charged his back without thinking, clawing and kicking, even as she prayed this was all a dream.
Vice shifted, tearing the shit out of his clothes, and his Brother Wolf roared, catching the young wolf’s attention and stopping him from following Rifter.
Either way, the young wolf was a dead man. It was never good to see a wolf lose control without the lure of the moon, like a rabid dog, and there was a body to prove he’d done so.
The young Were backed off farther, as though he would run as well in the opposite direction, and then the bastard turned and charged at Vice, attempting to grab his wolf by the throat.
Stupid, stupid Were.
Vice’s wolf rose on his hind legs and let out a howl so fierce it rang his ears. He lunged and pawed, and in one hard, fell swoop, Brother took down the wolf like the pup he was.
A soft whimper rose from the dark brown wolf. Magnificent coat, stately animal. He stared into Brother Wolf’s eyes with chocolate brown ones of his own.
Intelligent. Not moon crazed. But he’d been hurt recently. Drugged. And his chest was bleeding.
Vice’s wolf nosed him, an order to shift. And even though the younger wolf hadn’t bared his throat in submission to the Dire, something that would’ve normally found him flayed, Vice’s wolf wasn’t insulted.
The shift happened fast—the young man lying pinned under him. He was sweating and pale, and under different circumstances, Vice would’ve let him stay in wolf form to heal. But they couldn’t risk anything—who knew if the trappers had alerted the police anonymously about the murder?
“Is she okay? I tried to save her—,” the young guy croaked out. “She was in danger.”
He was talking about Gwen. About saving humans. But he’d killed a weretrapper, and Vice couldn’t fault him for that.
Vice told his Brother Wolf to take a backseat, and the wolf reluctantly allowed him to shift back, without moving off the boy first. The young man, who was probably close to twenty, stared at Vice, who now lay squarely on top of him, demanding, “Who’s the dead girl?”
“Witch. She was working with the humans—the weretrappers. You’re a Dire.”
“No shit. What was your first clue?” Vice drawled, watching the young man squirm nervously beneath him. Jinx was taking care of the body and checking out the area to see if they were still safe or if the chick had a team behind her.
“Why were you protecting a human from a weretrapper?” Vice demanded of the boy, who started but didn’t back down.
“I don’t know. I just sensed… no, smelled that she was in trouble. I think I hurt her instead of helping.”
“We stopped you before you could. Actually, you saved her.” Vice stared at him. “Now, who are you?”
“I’m part of the NYC pack.”
“You’re an outlaw?”
He blinked. “The outlaws tried to kill me because I’m Linus’s son.”
Vice didn’t say anything, the enormity of the situation too much to handle, with the naked young man who would be king wounded in the middle of the woods.
This was Liam, next in line to take over the Weres, at least before the pack wars had started. “Who’s the witch?”
“I don’t know. But the outlaws are still after me. And I have to survive for the sake of my pack,” Liam whispered, and for the first time since encountering the young wolf, Vice scented his fear.
Vice didn’t know whether Liam was talking about the weretrappers or the outlaw pack, but it didn’t matter. He stroked a hand through the boy’s hair. “’S okay. I’ll get you someplace safe.”
Vice got off him and helped him to his feet, ended up carrying him to the truck and leaning him there while Jinx tied the witch’s body to the roof rack.
“What’s the deal? We gonna perform funeral services?” Vice asked him.
“It’s Seb’s sister.”
Liam paled even further, and Vice whistled and shook his head. “Brother, we’ve got more trouble than we can handle. I’m probably the only one looking forward to it.”
Vice dressed quickly—there were always extra clothes inside the trucks, for obvious reasons—and he took the driver’s seat so Jinx could fix up Liam as best he could.
He’d called Cyd on the way to pick up Rifter’s Harley from the woods, if the trappers hadn’t taken it already. He found a text now from the twin saying it was safe and sound, and being checked out for bugs and explosives before being brought back to the mansion.
Now he barreled toward the human’s address, then slowed with the lights off as he got close and saw the car in the driveway. Muttered, “Fuck me,” as he caught sight of Rifter’s Brother Wolf taking out some weretrappers.
Wha
t he hadn’t expected was the human woman fighting alongside the wolf. Hadn’t expected the goddamned house to explode either, but that’s exactly what it did while he and Jinx watched helplessly and Liam slipped into unconsciousness.
The fiery blast blew Gwen off the front porch and into the yard, her body’s fall cushioned by fur. It slammed just the same, though, rattling her enough that she couldn’t catch her breath.
The smoke from the fire didn’t help, and she crawled away with the wolf urging her onward—half dragging, half pushing her—and she felt the sticky blood as her hand touched its hind leg. And then just as suddenly she was alone and there was a truck barreling toward her, stopping less than a foot away, causing her to jump to her feet.
She felt like running again—but where?
There was no one left to trust.
Trust the wolf, the rustling seemed to say. Her heart pounded and she felt the familiar aura of the seizure. In seconds, she’d be helpless.
He won’t hurt you. But she couldn’t be sure of anything, even her own mental health. Besides, the wolf was gone.
Oddly, the seizure never materialized, but she was still light-headed. She was picked up gently, but as with Liam earlier, the strength of this grip was something she couldn’t break. A strange combo.
Still, she turned to try to see the face of the man carrying her.
“Don’t bother fighting, sweetheart. Besides, I’m on your side,” the husky voice told her, and she smelled chocolate and whiskey and sin. The man’s eyes were piercing—black-ringed silver framed by spiky white-blond hair, tattoos covering his entire neck that she could see, and his smile was wicked, rounding out the look.
Trust it.
“I’m Rifter’s family,” he continued as he walked her calmly away from what was left of her burning house. He was certainly of the same giant ilk as Rifter, so she could believe it.
Dire Needs: A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan Page 7