Way of the Wolf: Shifter Legacies 1

by Mark E. Cooper

  Gavin took a single fluid step forward to meet the charge and lunged. The movement came smoothly and without fault, but it didn’t have the desired effect. The ancient blade punched through O’Neal’s chest and erupted out his back, but he didn’t fall. He screeched in agony and pulled himself up the blade in his attempt to get at his tormentor.

  Gavin expertly twisted the blade hoping to cause an even more grievous wound, stepped back withdrawing the weapon smoothly, and struck O’Neal’s head from his body in a fountain of gore. The body fell aside still reaching for him and the head landed at Gavin’s feet. He kicked it into the shadows not wanting it to look at him while it died. It would take a few minutes.

  A panting gasp had him spinning on the defensive, but it was simply the woman coming awake now that her captor’s hold over her was broken. She drew breath to scream, but his power reached out and enveloped her fear snuffing it out like a candle flame. He raised glamour over his features in case his eyes should still cause her concern and bent to clean his sword on O’Neal’s body. He hid the weapon under his coat and went to tend to her wounds.

  She was bleeding badly and was glassy eyed. The confusion was as much his fault as the blood loss. Removing her fear in such a gross and ham-fisted manner had the effect of wrapping her thoughts in cotton wool like a drug. His touch was usually more subtle than this, but he had been in a hurry. He doubted she was even aware of him in her current state. He turned her head to the side and she flinched at the pain. The bite looked messy. O’Neal had been determined to feed and hadn’t worried about neatness. The carotid was thankfully still intact. Of course, she would have bled out before now if it hadn’t been.

  “Oh my goddess… oh goddess… what in the nine hells did he do to me?” she gasped covering the wound with a hand. Sweat poured from her and she was shaking in reaction. She was going into shock.

  Gavin caught her as she swayed. He eased her to the ground.

  “Freeze arsehole!” a man shouted, taking a stance in the mouth of the alley. “Get the hell away from her!”

  Gavin stepped back into the shadows already gauging his chances of getting by this new annoyance without bloodshed. “She needs medical attention. Call the police.”

  “Get down on your knees, right now!”

  “This has nothing to do with me. I’ll leave her with you,” he said edging carefully toward the mouth of the alley. He need only get within a few feet and he could charm his way out of this. He stopped when another two men appeared and pulled weapons. He couldn’t influence all three at once, not with their fingers already on triggers. “You are police?”

  “That’s right arsehole, and so is she. You picked the wrong chicky to mess with this time, believe me.”

  “I have nothing to do with this.”

  “Yeah right. Cover him Raz. Matt, check Chris.”

  The youngest of the three eased into the alley to check on the woman—on Chris—but he was careful not to block his friend’s line of fire. “She’s unconscious!” he yelled. “The bastard nearly tore her throat out! We need an ambulance here.”

  “Baxter is calling one now,” John said and turned his attention back to Gavin. “Now then mister hard-of-hearing. On your knees, do you want to get shot?”

  He didn’t relish the thought of getting shot. That kind of thing hurt, but he couldn’t allow himself to be taken either. They would chain him with silver and runes. They would cage him like an animal. He would not be a prisoner; death would be preferable to him.

  The one called Matt had remained beside the girl while Gavin was thinking over his options, peering into the dark trying to make out what he was seeing. It was the headless corpse of O’Neal. In the time it took Matt to turn to his friends with a warning upon his lips, Gavin moved.

  The one named Raz fired first, at least he thought so. The bullet punched through him high in the chest, almost at the base of the throat. Blood erupted into his mouth and he folded forward choking on it. The searing agony of the bullet’s passage was accompanied by a silence so acute that he feared himself deafened or dead. He wasn’t sure if he was falling, running, or what, but then the world rushed back and he was committed.

  The roar of the gunshot was still echoing down the alley when the other one fired but missed. They were using slug throwing boomers loaded with silver ammunition that burned like fire through him, not their standard police issue stunners. They knew what he was, that must be it, or they had guessed what O’Neal had been and had armed themselves accordingly. That was bad. They wouldn’t let him close enough to use his power and disable them without bloodshed. He couldn’t erase himself from their memories, not now.

  The second bullet spun him around and he used the motion. Kicking against the wall above Matt’s head, he launched himself toward the dumpster. The third bullet took him in the leg and it collapsed under him as he landed on the lid. He was up and snarling at the pain almost immediately. He jumped up and caught the ladder of the fire escape.

  “Get him! Get him Raz!”

  “I’m trying! Damn he’s fast!”

  “Baxter! Over here! Fire dammit fire!”

  A fourth bullet punched into Gavin’s back as he swarmed up the ladder, but by this time he was so lost in the burning agony of silver he hardly noticed. He kept moving upward though instinct urged otherwise. It insisted he go back and fight, but he wasn’t an animal. Instinct didn’t rule him.

  He kept moving.

  He climbed on with bullets ricocheting off the metal of the fire escape. He was hit once more just as he reached the roof; one of them had gotten lucky and had seen him silhouetted against the night sky. He ignored the added irritation and ran across the roof. He leapt to the next building and the next no longer worried about being observed, simply intent on getting back to Angelina and safety.

  * * *

  18 ~ Feeding Time

  “Will he be all right?” Angel said watching Spence work.

  “Probably,” Spence said with a grunt as he forced the long-nosed pliers deeper into the wound in Gavin’s back, wincing in sympathy as he pushed. “Damn thing would have saved me a lot of trouble if it had gone right through.”

  Gavin was motionless and whiter than she had ever seen him. His cheeks were sunken and the hollows made his face seem alien. His eyes were not quite closed and when she bent to look, she could see just a hint of red. She had only seen that once before, on the night she and Flex had tried to rob him. It happened when he was angry, or needed to feed. He wasn’t aware of her, of anything really. He had gone away to a place free of pain.

  “He needs blood.”

  “What he needs right now, my girl, is not to have holes in him. I can’t let him feed until this is done. You know it makes him heal faster.”

  “Yeah, but still… have you got any for later?”

  “He can have some of mine. Now shut the hell up and let me get these damn things out! If you want to help, go make me some coffee.”

  She wasn’t some kind of servant! Angel opened her mouth to argue, snapped it closed again, and went to the kitchen to make coffee. When she came back, the massive hole in Gavin’s back was hidden beneath bandaging and tape. Spence was probing the wound in Gavin’s thigh.

  “The bullet travelled on through,” he said sipping his coffee before putting it aside. “But it needed cleaning. He wouldn’t thank me for leaving it alone.”

  Angel nodded. Although he would heal with or without their help, anything left in the wound like a bullet or pieces of cloth from his pants would stay in there. Being sort of dead already—sort of anyway—she didn’t think he could get an infection, but it wouldn’t be comfortable for him.

  “Need any help?”

  “You feeling calmer now?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. The wound keeps trying to close up on me. Take the spreaders,” he handed her a shiny tool that looked similar to pliers but worked in reverse. “Hold this open for me.”

  Angel winced at the thought, but she di
d as he asked and in no time at all, he had thoroughly cleaned and bandaged the wound. It took both of them together to turn Gavin over; he was heavier than he looked. There was barely a scar showing where he had been hit in the throat. Spence decided to leave it alone explaining that Gavin’s shirt had not intercepted the bullet. The wound was probably free of contaminants and it should heal without problems.

  Spencer thumbed an eyelid open and leaned forward so that Gavin might see him better. “I don’t know if you’re in there, Gavin, but I’m going to assume you can understand me. You’ve lost a lot of blood—I’m going to give you some of mine.”

  “No...” Gavin whispered almost like a sigh.

  “Yes,” Spence said and before Angel could blink, he had slashed his wrist with a scalpel.

  Blood spurted and he clamped his other hand over the injured wrist. Gavin’s fangs budded at the first scent of the fresh blood. He was too weak to control the craving and as soon as the arm came within reach, his mouth sought and found the wound.

  Angel watched Gavin’s throat work as he swallowed the life giving essence of a shifter. They were both creatures of magic and that’s what Gavin needed most, not so much the blood itself. She knew quite a bit about it. Vamps needed blood to survive, but it was the mystical connection between that blood and the donor that really fed them. It was the channel through which they syphoned the magic, or the life force, they needed. Older heads like Gavin probably called it essence, but the term was outdated now.

  Vampires really were dead, though they disputed that and argued it amongst themselves all the time. Angel had no doubts though. Her gifts leaned toward necromancy more than she was really comfortable with admitting, and although she had never been strong in that aspect of her power, it did give her an insight into the subject few without it could match. Vampires were corpses animated by magic, and it was the magic not the blood that fuelled them. Their souls now, they were a problem of another sort, one only the clerics seemed fit to answer. Gavin was a person not a zombie, which was another sort of magically animated corpse, and no one doubted that zombies had nothing between their ears but rotting mush. And what about ghouls? She wasn’t qualified to say whether vamps had souls or not, but they had something.

  Where Gavin’s blood cursed him to an undying half life in his own words, shifter blood lent him power. Spence was alpha, a strong shifter meant to lead, but he preferred not to get involved in pack politics. That was unusual in any alpha, but he was weird in a lot of ways. Not many shifters were friends with witches like her or vamps like Gavin either. Angel marvelled again that she could actually stand in the presence of these two men and think it perfectly normal. As she had said to Gavin earlier, she really did know stuff that most people wouldn’t believe. She had seen Spence wearing his other forms many times and watched him change back. She had even seen him grow claws on an otherwise perfectly human hand—he had that much control over the change.

  Spence was as strong in his way as Gavin was in his. The effect of his blood was immediately apparent. Gavin’s eyes blazed with hunger. If anything, the blood had made his craving worse. He clamped restraining hands upon his friend’s arm as if to prevent his escape. Spence had no such intention. He looked ecstatic as if Gavin’s touch was an exquisite pleasure. Angel shifted uncomfortably at the sight. It was somehow an intensely personal moment for the two men—there was no denying it was sexual. She wished that she, and not Spence, was feeding him.

  Gavin’s face had filled out now. The shrunken and ghastly white visage of moments ago was gone replaced with one full of health and vigour. The gaunt alien was gone, and the man she had come to know these last few years was back, but still his throat worked rhythmically and his lips remained sealed to Spence’s wrist.

  “Mister Gavin?” she said edging forward, but there was no response. She grabbed Spence and shook him, but his eyes were rolled up and his jaw hung slack. She pulled on his arm trying to free it from Gavin’s grasp, but it was like pulling on an iron bar. “Mister Gavin stop!”

  He snarled and continued feeding.

  Frantically she pulled on Spence’s arm, but to no effect. In desperation, she grabbed Gavin by the hair and wrenched at him. He snarled again and his eyes locked upon her face. In his eyes, she saw rage and madness and a promise of retribution.

  “You’re killing him!” she screamed into his face and the eyes flickered. “Let go! Let him go you’re killing him!”

  Understanding flashed into Gavin’s eyes, and with a howl of rage he threw Spence bodily away from him to land in a dazed and panting heap across the room. Gavin was up and leaning against the far wall, and Angel hadn’t seen him move. He was magnificent in his power! She shook with fear and lust, more lust than fear she realised and was disgusted with herself. She went to check on Spence who was trying but failing to stand. She helped him up, but he staggered sideways and fell to hands and knees again.

  “Stay there. Let me see it,” Angel said and crouched to take his wrist, but his nature was standing him in good stead. The wound was barely seeping. It closed and faded as she watched. “Okay,” she breathed. “You’re okay. Stay there for a minute.”

  “Is he?” Gavin said from across the room. “Did I…?”

  “No, he’s all right. He’ll be all right in a while,” she said to his back, and he finally turned to look at her.

  She gasped and stumbled back in shock at what she saw. He was… he was glowing! A cold white glow radiated from his skin as if he were filled with so much light he couldn’t contain it. His eyes shone with power—Spence’s power. He would have turned away and hidden it from her, but she mastered her reaction and closed the distance between them.

  She reached up to stroke his cheek. It was warm. “There’s no need to hide it from me. I know what you are.”

  The choked laugh was more like a sob. “You think this is me?” He raised a hand and gestured at his face. “It’s not. What you saw on the roof is me—a corpse that won’t lie down. This,” he said making a fist of his glowing hand, “I stole.”

  Angel shook her head. “Not this time. Spence gave it to you.” Gavin looked up at the reminder and was beside the shifter in the blink of an eye. Angel shook her head and muttered, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Here old friend, let me help you up.”

  Spence waved him off. “Don’t fuss, Gavin. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

  “About that,” Angel said. “He won’t make it home before light.”

  “No problem,” Spence said finally managing to stay upon his feet, though swaying a little. “I have a spare room in the back. Nice and shady.”

  Gavin snorted. It had to be more than shady or he would burn. He left the room to investigate and Angel took the opportunity to have a private word.

  “You know what went down?”

  “Gavin told me it would be tonight.”

  Angel watched the door for Gavin’s return. “He killed the sonofabitch, but he didn’t have time to hide the body before the cops showed up.”

  Spence frowned.

  “Don’t you see? O’Neal was a newborn. Gavin needs the corpse to find his maker before the bastard makes more of him.”

  “He might not—”

  Just then Gavin came back in, “I’ll need more blankets to hang at the windows… what?”

  “Nothing,” Angel said and reached for her coat where it lay over the back of a chair. “I gotta go, Mister Gavin.”

  Gavin sighed. “When will you stop calling me that?”

  “I already told you,” she said heading for the door.

  “I’ll see you out,” Spence said following Angel into the hall. “About that… matter we were discussing,” he said very quietly so that Gavin would not overhear.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Be careful.”

  Angel grinned. “I’m always careful.”

  * * *

  “She’s in shock…”

  “Let’s get a line into her Angie,
whole blood.”

  “Bp’s dropping!”

  “Let me see here… nasty… bleeding heavily… might have nicked the artery… hand me the…”

  Chris groaned and shook. Red eyes… red eyes staring and burning into her. There was a voice whispering in her head. The words. Listen to the words the voice insisted but she didn’t want to. They made her feel like she was drowning. She groaned. Red eyes hovering before her. She screamed shrilly and struck out with fingers hooked like talons for those eyes.

  “AEiii! Hold her! Hold her down damn it!”

  The eyes went away and Chris tried to struggle to her feet. Someone grabbed her and she screamed thinking it was him again, but there was more than one person piling onto her. She yelled and kicked but her brief surge of strength was fading quickly. She was panting with the effort to move and sweat was pouring into her eyes making her blink madly at her surroundings.

  “Chris! Oh goddess, what did he do to her?”

  “You’re not helping her. Wait outside!”

  “She needs me!”

  “John!” she screamed. “Goddess help me, he’s got me!”

  “Chris!”

  “Wait outside I said!” someone yelled from close by. “Someone… anyone… give me the damn strap! Let’s get her locked down people. Someone kick that idiot out of here! Angie, get that line in! We might have to sedate her.”

  “But the anaesthetic.”

  “If we don’t stabilise the bleeding she won’t live long enough to reach the theatre!”

  “Right.”

  Listen to the words… Listen to the words…

  No, she mustn’t listen! She struggled humping her back off the ground in a spastic effort to get free, but with her arms pinned all she managed to do was wave her butt in the air. The thought would have been funny if not for the terror her captivity caused her. Jenny Lovett and Leila Newell… she couldn’t let him do that to her! She struggled harder but it was no good. The voice in her head wanted her to be calm. Let go, it soothed. Let the fear go and float free of pain. No! Pain was life; if it hurt it meant she still had a chance. John would come. He wouldn’t let O’Neal have her. She hammered her head against the ground in an effort to make the voice let her go but there was no pain. Why didn’t it hurt? She slammed her head back again and felt a yielding surface like a pillow under her head. She glared around not understanding and flinched.