Angelic Blood (#5): Alpha Warriors of the Blood (The Blood Series)

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  Jac's right. And he won't like what I tell him. “The colony of Mutables?”

  Jac's black eyebrows sink low over his eyes. “What of it?”

  “It's gone. Burned to the ground.”

  “Drake,” Jacob inserts decisively.

  I can't dispute it so I don't. “Probably.” My eyes meet his. “The human firefighters said some of the wreckage was burned to beyond three thousand degrees. They'd never seen anything so thoroughly incinerated.”

  Jac grunts. “They've seen nothing—they know—nothing.”

  I meet his eyes. “And I'd like to keep it that way, Jac.”

  He nods. “I got you.”

  “If—and that's a big if. If Drake has somehow stumbled on a female with prehistoric blood, she might know of others. You understand the rule of the circle?”

  “How could I forget?” Jac asks with derision. “If any female is found to have prehistoric blood, females of like blood habitate together.”

  “Correct. So even if Drake has found a compatible female, it gives the prehistorics hope.”

  “That's in short supply,” Jac mutters.

  I agree. “It's the same for all the shifters. Just doubly for us. We've been hunted by our own kind—humans that were threatened with what they didn't understand. At least our births are smooth.”

  Jac laugh is hollow. “When there is a birth.”

  True.

  “So what do you want me to do? It's dangerous for me to be out alone. I'm fair game as a nomad shifter.”

  “Go mammoth, brother.”

  His lips twitch. “Might get noticed.”

  I chuckle. “Yeah. But you can just pancake anyone who gives you trouble. Even your half-form is pretty impressive.”

  “But it's like Drake says, it's only impressive if the ratio is alright. If there's ten to one, I'm screwed. If I go full mammoth, the humans will gun me down like an elephant whose cheese has slid off its cracker.”

  We stare at each other, a grim smile affixed to my face. “I don't have anyone else. We can't spare a single male who has a female. They have to hump to death if she's in heat. That's the priority.”

  Jac smirks, clasping his hands behind his broad back. “Nice.”

  I shrug. It's the truth. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say. “Find Drake. Help him with the female, if there's one in the picture. If he torched the colony's holding, he was desperate. Not only does it get us noticed by humans, but it gets other Mutables suspicious. How can we pass as Mutable when our dragons are torching houses?”

  “I'm going to put my tusks up Drake's ass,” Jac mutters.

  My lips thin. “If he has a female, if by some roll of the lucky dice—try to resist. If not, go ahead.”

  Jac grunts a reply, walking to the pulse map.

  He presses his thumb to the security pad and it comes to life. A single red LED dot blinks like a heartbeat. “He there?”

  I nod. “Phillips Street, downtown.”

  “Real inconspicuous, Drake.” His voice is disgusted, but layered underneath, is worry.

  “Probably didn't have a choice. If the female's in danger, she might have gone wherever she could.”

  Jac looks at me. “Or maybe she's in that mecca of shifters who soldier up together. We've got Turners, Changers and other warriors who are hard chargers. Going after females with one glaring goal. Find and acquire.”

  I lift my shoulders. “Well yeah. No different than us.”

  Jac scowls. “The moderns are way different than us, and you know it.”

  My eyes slim down at him. “I can't afford to be elitist about this, Jac. We're only as powerful as we are able to perpetuate our species. If there are no females to claim, we die out. That's why our cousins are gone.” My fingers fling out, miming dust particles floating away to nothing.

  “You have a way of hope-sucking, Noah.”

  I nod, I'm a half-empty glass kind of guy. “I want to offer encouragement, but I'm never going to lie to a brother.”

  “I know.”

  I clap him on the shoulder, giving him eyes as troubled as his own. “Go.”

  Jacob nods, heading for the door of our clan.

  I stare after him for minutes after he's gone, lost in the thoughts of my species.

  Or its demise.

  5

  Talyn

  I stand, the water rolling off my skin like rain.

  “I know you gentleman have seen me naked.” I throw a look at Merck. “You certainly have, and Drake here...”

  My eyes dip. This is so awkward.

  I thrust my hand out, cooling water dripping from my wrist to plop, plop, plop back into the tub. “I'd like a towel. I'm not listening to any grand plan without a little coverage.”

  Merck silently stands, walking to a tall slim linen cabinet and plucks a fluffy cream-colored towel from its depths.

  I turn bright red as Drake's eyes travel my body. I remind myself I wasn't embarrassed when his tongue was shoved up inside me.

  “Do not be ashamed, Talyn.”

  “I thought you were just like one of the Mutables,” I say, giving a small smile to Merck in thanks as I take the towel, wrapping it around my body.

  Drake shrugs. “I had to play the role, Talyn. Even when no one was around. I have to protect all prehistorics.”

  Merck's brow draws together. “What do you mean?”

  Drake points at Merck. “I don't owe you any explanations, Lycan.”

  Merck grabs the finger and yanks them together, their chests almost touching.

  “What you do owe me are assurances about Talyn's safety. If you hadn't come here, she wouldn't have dragon's blood poisoning.”

  “And I wouldn't have found her.”

  “You haven't found her, dragon!” Merck shouts.

  I cover my ears. “Stop,” I say urgently.

  Merck releases Drake's finger in disgust.

  “I won't share, sorry Talyn,” Merck says.

  “That's what you told Arden,” I reply, proud that I don't burst into tears at the mention of him. “You also said your job was to change me. And here I am, a Lycan, Lanarre—whatever I am. Now you can go, leave me. I'll get back to my life as a therapist and you can go make some other woman wolfy.”

  I clutch the towel more firmly above my breasts and glare at Merck. His beautiful blue eyes are remote. I can't read his thoughts, his anger toward Drake seems somewhat justified. After all, if he bothered changing me only to have me die because a dragon shifter bled all over me, how does that get his precious job done?

  Suddenly, I'm tired. Tired of these dumbasses. Shifters. The entire thing.

  I perch on the edge of the tub. Despondent. Fat tears brim and roll down my face. I don't have a place to put all my broken thoughts and emotions, they float around inside my head like shredded styrofoam on water.

  Drake's hand lands on my shoulder. “I think the Lycan had better come clean with what's really happening here.”

  My chin hikes, and I spare a glare for him too. “What's really happening? The part where you went down on me to save me from acid blood? Or the fact that Merck just loves ʼem and leaves ʼem?”

  Drake's thumb traces a tear along my cheek, sucking the salt from his digit, he smooths the damp tendrils of hair from my temple behind my ear. “The reality of him claiming you.”

  My face whips to Merck's. “What's he talking about?”

  Merck gives the dirtiest look I've ever seen in Drake's direction. “Hate me if you will, Lycan, but she deserves to know.”

  “Know what?” I stand again, my heart thumping. I think I'll keel over if I get one more dumb revelation.

  “He's mated to you now.”

  I face Merck. Actually, my eyes face his heavily muscled pecs. “What is he saying?”

  Merck sighs, taking me by the shoulders. “What the dragon says is true. I have claimed you.”

  This is an improvement. This sounds entirely better than him just screwing me into being a werewolf
then handing me off to some Lycan I don't know.

  And what the hell am I reduced to now? What happened to the intellectual Talyn? The one with a career and a beloved cat—a home without a man in it? I'll tell you what—this. But my mind is taking in all that he's said. “Wait a minute. You just failed in your job. You were supposed to transition me and hand me over to the Lycan den and be done with me. Move on to the next female. Now Drake is saying that I've been claimed.”

  “Tell her.”

  Merck glares at Drake.

  “Don't get angry with him. If it weren't for him, I don't know when I'd ever hear the truth.”

  Merck says from between his teeth, “I was planning to tell you after supper.”

  As if on cue, my stomach growls.

  Drake chuckles, squeezing my shoulder. I look between the two males. “Well?”

  “Claiming you means I won't be a Changer anymore. I just forfeited by position.”

  “It's more than that—he'll be excommunicated.”

  I gasp, touching his hard chest. “You will?”

  Merck gives a curt nod.

  My head's spinning. “Then why did you do it?”

  Merck just softly shakes his head. “It was right. You were right—with me,” he answers, pressing his thumb to his chest.

  I slowly look at Drake as he quietly stands there. “What's your story? I mean—thanks for saving me but Merck's right—if you hadn't crashed in here....”

  “I have partially claimed you.”

  I step back, where I can keep Merck and Drake in sight. “When?” I whisper.

  A vague smile touches his lips and is gone.

  The smell... that wonderful, delicious male-odor. “Your scent—I remember.” It'd made me feel drunk. In a great way.

  I frown. I'm not thinking straight.

  “I did it to begin the process, and also scent-mark you in case we became separated.”

  I try three times to ask then finally spit it out, “And now?”

  “I finish what I began.”

  “Over my dead body,” Merck growls.

  Drake says in a menacing voice, “That works.”

  I step between them, hitting them both in the chest.

  “Nobody's killing anyone.”

  They're not looking at my face at the moment.

  My towel dropped, and I'm naked.

  Again.

  6

  Jac

  This fucking reeks.

  I kick a crumbling bit of cinderblock out of the way and sink to my haunches. I pick it up, sniffing delicately.

  Mammoths aren't known for their great nose but I still scent track about five times better than a dog. Just a benny of being a prehistoric.

  Our boy's been here. Drake had a lot to do with the pile of scorched rubble that was a colony hideaway for Mutables.

  The scent of a female still lingers. If she were human, or a modern shifter, I'd not scent a thing.

  But she's not.

  She's some kind of mix. Lycan for sure... but dragon? Not sure.

  I briefly entertain the fantasy of a female mammoth. There hasn't been a known female in twenty years. They're delicious in human form. It's what the humans call plus-sized. Whatever that means. As far as I'm concerned, a female where the bones are countable, is not sexy in my book. I want hips, ass and thighs I have to plow between like the bow of a wayward ship finding the perfect wet slip within a port.

  I stand, tossing my thoughts aside. This isn't getting Drake found—helping him with his female. Because nothing else explains this.

  My eyes scan the other slipshod hasty construction of the surrounding houses, the yellow crime scene tape that identifies this as a place where something criminal took place.

  It sure did. Now we have to send out another prehistoric to infiltrate a Mutable colony. And they're a cruel shifter group. Baiting and tackling females to force-breed. If the prehistorics could gain a foothold and get to a level of healthier numbers, we could begin to met out some deserving lessons to shifters who devolve to misogynistic behavior.

  I sigh. Another unfulfilled fantasy.

  Tipping my head back, I move my palm back and forth underneath my nose. I take breaths evenly spaced, closing my eyes and listening to nothing, thinking of nothing.

  The scent finally comes.

  I lower my chin, eyes open. I will not rush to Philips Street where the pulse disc that every prehistoric has embedded behind their left ear marks their location.

  Because the mix of scents tells me Drake's not alone. There is another besides the female.

  My gaze narrows, and I charge out of the lonely, dead-quiet street. Using the night as cover, I move toward the city, thankful I took the time to come by the last place Drake stayed.

  If I hadn't, I wouldn't know what was waiting for me.

  *

  I arrive at the cross section of 14th street and Minnesota hardly out of breath.

  I long to be in mammoth form and lament when I can only partially shift. But I can't take the chance.

  Even my half-form is huge, standing at almost eight feet tall and weighing in at over four hundred pounds. The partial tusks make talking impossible, but breathing is facilitated. Even if I could breed with a mixed female, none would think I was remotely good looking. Mammoths are an ugly beast.

  And that female that I'll never meet is the beauty.

  I stomp forward, the ground subtly shaking beneath my huge feet. My shoes are long gone, a joke in the half-form for all prehistorics. Our forms will always be too large to blend or wear traditional clothing.

  But at three in the morning, all's well.

  I move with unerring accuracy to the funeral home one block over. A huge cement building in an ironic shade of white that resembles bleached bones, hovering above gray concrete sidewalks and trimmed in blood red paint.

  I always felt the imagery was gruesome.

  I depress my thumb on the security pad for the building, and the tumblers clank into position. The pulse-activated door whispers apart, and I step inside, moving toward the crematorium portion of the building. The smell here is reminiscent of the torched Mutable colony. But death clings more tightly to this space.

  I don't flinch, cover my nose or blink. I am a prehistoric. We kill and live day to day. Death is real and will not be feared. However, I'm here to deliver death to the Lycan whose scent is tied to that of Drake and the female.

  The concrete foundation of the incinerator has a drawer with a copper handle. Installed a hundred years before, at the same time that the building was constructed.

  An early ally to the prehistoric.

  My fingers wrap the cool metal, and I pull it open. Weapons are arranged neatly in a row. My hand hovers over the high content sterling.

  I choose two daggers. One is stubbed and wide with one side curved, in true Arabic style. The other dagger fights with being a sword but falling short. I lift the straight blade.

  Perfect for stabbing.

  I roll the weapons up in a loose velvet cloth with ties. I move through the tomb-like structure and stand before the exit.

  I have four blocks to traverse with the wind buffeting me straight on. Even a Lycan will have difficulty scenting my arrival. Maybe, just maybe, I can avoid warning the Lycan—Drake certainly won't give me away.

  I grin, feeling more confident. I depress the security lock, my thumbprint lighting up the keypad.

  The door slides closed behind me after I move through.

  I make my way to Philips Avenue, armed and with a sharpened focus. Ready.

  I can't contain my excitement. The thought of one of my brothers being able to have a prehistoric mate is phenomenal—a cause for celebration. I don't bother with thoughts about my own situation.

  So many of us are in the same boat.

  7

  Alex

  I can smell that bitch from a hundred miles away. My Lycan form is weak, which pisses me off because really—what the fuck makes a donkey worth anything?
r />   Oh yeah, I'm more stubborn than any shifter around. And I can kick like a sonofabitch. But that doesn't help me. If I can get to Talyn Phisher before she fucks another shifter, she can be mine. I need a Lanarre. She'll be the key to make all my forms equal. All it takes is one encounter with a Lanarre—one good fucking, and donkey would be just another form. After having her, I could use any form as my default.

  I can hardly wait.

  My long ears twitch at an oncoming noise. It's not that the noise is loud. It's the quality of the noise.

  Purposeful.

  I stand, not bothering to hide myself as I watch the action going on behind the glass in the penthouse apartment inside the old Foundry building.

  There was a helluva tussle just a half hour ago.

  Surprised one of the dumb humans didn't call that shit in. I grunt. Too scared to get involved, probably.

  I roll my shoulders, revolving my head in a slow circle, trying to loosen the kinks before my homeboys show. We're going to have ourselves some Lycan ass with a helping of dragon on the side. That prick Drake's gonna pay. We know what he is now.

  Those of us that survived.

  I got torched, courtesy of coals-for-breath, Drake. I smirk. We'll show that numbnuts what it feels like to get your junk cooked. I grab ahold of my own sack to make sure I still have it. Healing that sucked ass. It'd been a close call. That enforcer bitch throwing her blade.

  About a millimeter from my dick.

  She's next. I don't care if she is a proficient ten. Or she's on the good side of the law, a hybrid vamp—and definitely her female status doesn't mean dick.

  I keep my eyes peeled, and when I see what comes around the corner I almost laugh.

  Almost.