by Alyssa Day
Tiernan had had just about enough of his cryptic riddles. “Who are you? I’ve had confidential sources before and never yet revealed a single one. You can trust me, if you really are on my side.” Everything in her was telling her that he wasn’t lying, but her senses didn’t always work with vampires. Truth and falsehood had different meaning to the undead, apparently, so vampire lies didn’t always resonate in her soul. Didn’t cause her highly calibrated senses to jangle with the discordant sound of dishonesty.
He laughed, but the sound was wrong, somehow, as if he hadn’t used his voice for laughter for more years than she’d been alive. “I’ve trusted human women before. Twice. The first died, and the second paid a terrible price and despises me. Never, ever again.”
“But—”
“I have to leave you now. Don’t forget,” her captor whispered, his voice merely a darker shadow in the night.
“Wait! How do I get out of here?” Tiernan pointed to the impenetrable greenery, but before she could say another word, his hand shot out and wrenched a handful of leaves and branches, and a gaping hole appeared in the hedge.
She whistled. “Well, if you give up the mysterious kidnapper thing, you could try gardener, I suppose.”
When he didn’t respond, she glanced over her shoulder and wasn’t really surprised to see him gone. “Bond, James Vampire Bond,” she murmured, before she leaned down and moved sideways through the gap in the hedge, toward the light.
“Miss?” The long-missing valet rushed down the sidewalk toward her. “What happened to you? Are you all right?”
He took her arm and she stood up, scanning the area to see how many people had seen her climbing out of the hedge. But luckily the driveway was momentarily clear. Or maybe it wasn’t “luckily” at all. Maybe the vamp had waited for privacy before he let her go. Vampires did have better than average hearing, or so the rumor went.
“Miss? Talk to me. Are you okay? Your neck is bleeding,” the man said, pulling her toward the hotel in a fast walk, almost as if he were afraid to be out after dark.
She clapped her hand over the bite mark and managed a smile. “Oh, if you only knew me. Just clumsy, clumsy, clumsy. I fell through those bushes in these terrible shoes. Can you grab my bag for me, please?”
He started to protest, but she narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin. He recognized defeat and moved to lift her case from the sidewalk, where she’d dropped it when she’d been snatched by Captain Mysterious. She took advantage of the moment and grabbed a tissue from the front pocket of her backpack and wiped her neck with it, wincing at the sight of the fresh blood. She wadded it up and stuffed it in the pocket of her jeans as the valet turned around.
“Ready to get checked in and get a good night’s sleep?” he asked, pasting a strained smile on his face. “Meetings start tomorrow morning at eight A.M. It looks like it will be an interesting conference.”
She handed him her keys and indicated her car, then took a slow, deep breath as she stared at the empty space where the Lamborghini had been parked. “You know, somehow I don’t doubt that at all.”
Chapter 3
Yellowstone National Park, southeast section, official wolf shifter Pack territory
Brennan stepped through the portal from Atlantis and took a deep breath of the crisp air. He had always appreciated the scents of the park, so different from those of the more delicate and flowered trees of Atlantis. The spruce and pine trees scented the air with an aroma that smelled exotic to him, even after so many visits over the centuries. He wished he could fully savor the experience, but there was nothing left to him of pleasure or appreciation. Nothing of joy.
He wondered again, as he had so often before, when he would surrender to the bleakness of his destiny—and end it. Soon, perhaps. But not today. Not until his curiosity about the woman Tiernan had been satisfied.
He turned to face the portal. A cluster of soaring lodge-pole pines stood sentinel on a nearby ridge, casting shadows over the portal as Alexios and Grace crossed through. Grace had one hand on the hilt of the dagger sheathed at her hip and her other hand on her ever-present bow.
“You weren’t kidding about wilderness,” she said, looking around. “And what the heck is that?” In a single, smooth motion, she pulled her bow off her shoulder and had an arrow ready to let fly at a group of large shadows moving at the base of the trees.
Alexios smiled and, with one finger, gently pushed her arrow down. “That’s a bunch of bison, city girl.”
Grace lowered her bow and stood staring, her mouth falling open a little. “Bison? I’m standing in the wilderness, surrounded by buffalo?”
“‘Surrounded’ is not accurate,” Brennan pointed out. “They are in a single group, more than thirty feet away from us. If they were behind us, as well, perhaps, but—”
A calm voice cut him off. “Surrounded by wolves is a little more to the point.”
The first word had Brennan whirling around, daggers drawn, but as soon as he saw Lucas’s familiar face, he relaxed and slid the blades back into their sheaths. The alpha wolf shifter stood a good ten paces away, surrounded by a half dozen of his Pack in their wolf shapes.
Alexios strode forward to meet his old friend, and the two clasped arms. “Well met, Lucas.”
“Welcome to my home,” Lucas replied, inclining his head. Then his gaze arrowed in on Grace, and a slow smile spread across his face. “This is a surprise. How did you get a woman that lovely to have anything to do with you?”
The honey-colored wolf sitting at Lucas’s right side bared her teeth and snapped at his leg. Lucas threw back his head and laughed.
“Perhaps your mate does not care for your compliments to another man’s woman,” Alexios said, bowing deeply to the wolf.
A shimmering glow surrounded the animal for several seconds, and then a woman stood where the wolf had been. Her long wavy hair was the same shade of gold as the wolf’s fur. She wore simple clothes—an unremarkable dark shirt over blue jeans—but her beauty glowed like a fine Atlantean gemstone in the moonlit night.
Grace stepped forward, next to Alexios, and elbowed him in the side. From the “oof” noise he made, Brennan assumed the gesture had not been gentle.
“Remember, we talked about this ‘my woman’ stuff?” she muttered. Then she looked at Lucas and his mate and inclined her head. “Thank you for the welcome. I’m Grace, and he’s still learning.”
The female shifter laughed. “I’m Honey, and good luck with that. Starting the day he found out I was pregnant, Lucas tried to treat me like I was a fragile, delicate little thing. Now that the babies are here, he still hasn’t let up.” She started to take a step forward, but Lucas stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“Maybe we should be sure that this really is Alexios and Brennan before we go any further,” Lucas said, his dark brows drawing together.
A wave of understanding washed over Brennan. “The chameleon shifters. Yes, we have heard of that phenomenon. Perhaps you might ask us something that only we would know?”
Lucas was obviously ready for the prompt, because he spoke with no hesitation. “What kind of dance did Christophe tell us he hated?”
Brennan simply stared at the alpha, having absolutely no idea to what he was referring, but Alexios started laughing. “He’s no fan of line dancing, if I remember rightly.”
The memory of another meeting with Lucas, that one marred by a vicious attack from enthralled wolves, flashed into Brennan’s mind, and he curved his lips in a perfunctory smile. Though he could not feel pleasure or amusement, he’d long since learned that it made others more comfortable around him if he at least made an attempt to mimic the appearance of emotion. “I mentioned my fondness for a good waltz, I believe.”
Lucas grinned. “Only you, Brennan. Only you would go all nostalgic for a waltz. I bet you and Johann Strauss were buddies.”
“I never had the privilege of meeting Johann, the elder. But I did, on occasion, take a meal with the younger, and offered my
sincere admiration at his progress on ‘An der schönen blauen Donau.’”
Honey smiled. “‘The Blue Danube’? We played that at our wedding reception for our first waltz.”
Brennan glanced at Lucas. “You, too, waltz?”
Lucas put a proprietary arm around his mate and shrugged. “Honey wanted me to waltz, I waltzed. You just wait, Brennan. Someday a woman will bulldoze right over that walled-off heart of yours, and you’ll be doing the tango, the waltz, or the freaking Macarena if she asks you.”
That was impossible, of course, given the curse, but something dark and dangerous in Brennan’s soul twisted at the idea. Tiernan. If she were the one, if only she could break through . . . But if and when she did, his returning emotions were cursed to destroy him, or—worse, far worse—her.
Only when she is dead—her heart stopped and her soul flown . . .
The hated words of the curse echoed through his mind, yet again, and the image of Tiernan’s face in that newspaper photograph appeared in his memory. If only he could remember the way she’d looked as he’d held her in his arms. He closed his eyes and shook his head to clear it. When he opened his eyes again, an awkward silence had fallen.
“Lucas’s feet are really way too big to go in his mouth so often,” Honey said gently, stepping forward to put a hand on Brennan’s arm.
Brennan found it took quite a great deal of forbearance to refrain from jerking away from her. “I have taken no offense,” he said, again forcing that artificial smile. “But perhaps we could adjourn to your home and discuss our strategy for infiltrating the IAPN conference?”
“Right,” Lucas said, clearly relieved to be moving on. “We’ve heard from our contacts. Tracy Baum should be arriving at the hotel soon.”
“I thought we were meeting Tiernan?” Grace said, glancing back over her shoulder at the buffalo and then at the wolves surrounding Lucas and Honey. “Also, no offense, but is there a reason your Pack members are staying in wolf form?”
Lucas’s eyes narrowed, but his voice remained calm. “Tiernan is operating under an alias. And it is very close to the full moon, so many of my Pack brothers and sisters prefer to run as wolf during this time. Is there a problem?”
Alexios almost casually moved so that he was standing partially between Grace and Lucas. “No problem. She’s a city girl, that’s all. All this wildlife is making her twitchy for a cappuccino or something.”
Grace bristled, but Alexios grinned at her and she laughed, her usual good nature surfacing. “I’m sorry, I certainly didn’t mean any offense,” she told Lucas and Honey. “But maybe we could go someplace with four walls and electricity or at least a fire? I may be a descendant of Diana, but I’m one with a healthy regard for modern conveniences, and it’s much colder than I’d expected.”
Honey whistled. “Descendant of Diana, huh? Been a long time since we saw one of those.”
Lucas bowed deeply, and Brennan noticed a strange thing. The wolves arrayed around their alpha and his mate all bowed as well, their elegant heads dipping low. The motion was a study in grace in each of them, far more the action of a predator giving honor than that of an animal performing a trick.
Grace bowed to them all in return, but Brennan heard Alexios muttering, “Here we freaking go again.”
“The wolf is not Diana’s animal,” Alexios said, biting off the words. “The panther is. So I don’t want to hear any blather about consorts, honorary or otherwise, or I’m so going to kick your ass.”
Honey’s smile was suddenly sharp and full of teeth. “Trust me, you’d not be the only one doing the ass kicking.”
Lucas threw up his hands in protest, shaking his head. “Hey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What consort? Also, who even says ‘consort’ these days?”
“Yeah, you’re the one who’s going to be getting your ass kicked if you don’t stop that,” Grace said, poking Alexios in the side, her embarrassment tangible. “It’s a long story and certainly one we don’t need to bring up again now. Or, you know, ever.”
Brennan decided the moment had come to rescue Grace, and perhaps they could dispense with the small talk and move on to the focus of this mission. He stepped forward to state that very premise, but before he could open his mouth to speak, a searing, slashing pain cut through the side of his throat, dropping him to his knees where he stood. “Pain,” he managed, gasping out the words. “Fear. Darkness.”
A tidal wave of fire and pain raged through his body, twisting him into an impossible contortion until his head slammed down onto the ground so hard it bounced. “He’s hurting her. Hurting her. Biting . . . blood . . . no. No!”
Alexios crouched into a squat beside him, grabbing his shoulders and lifting him. “Brennan, what is it? What in the nine hells is going on with you? Hurting who? Who’s doing the hurting?”
Brennan tried to answer, but a snarling roar was all he managed as the rage ripped at his insides until he was sure his ribs would explode out through his skin. Lust. He could feel the echoes of the vampire’s lust as his bite caught at the woman, threatening to pull her under. He caught Alexios by the arm and stared up into his fellow warrior’s shocked face.
The world swam red before his eyes, but he finally managed to form coherent words. “He bit her. He bit her, Alexios. He touched her skin with his godsdamned bloodsucking teeth, and now he’s going to die.”
“Bit who? Brennan, you’re not making any sense.”
Brennan stared at Alexios, looking right through him as the image of a woman in life-threatening danger seared his mind. “I don’t know who. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” he shouted, dragging himself up off the ground.
Before Alexios could answer, Brennan shoved him out of the way, launched himself into the air, and transformed into mist, shooting through the air in an unerring straight path toward his woman.
Must find the woman. Must find her now.
Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel
Tiernan closed the door and leaned back against it. Her room was standard-issue hotel: plaid bedspread on the king bed, phone, lamp, and Internet connection on the desk, and the room service breakfast menu propped up on her pillows. Clean, bright, and bland, but after all, nobody came to Yellowstone for the hotel décor. She crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed, dropped her bag, and kicked off the stupid shoes, tossing them at the too-small wastebasket over by the desk. One crisis solved: she’d never wear the damn things again.
Now all she had to do was solve the mystery of the vamp who’d bitten her, the vamps who were enthralling shape-shifters, and the scientists who were helping them. With or without Atlantean help, she decided, as she checked her phone for nonexistent messages from what she’d come to think of as the underwater contingent. They weren’t much for modern technology.
The single window drew her across the room, and she checked and double-checked that it was locked, even though she was on the third floor. Everything she knew about vampires said that they couldn’t enter a home uninvited, but nobody knew for sure what the outer limits of that rule were. Nobody but the vamps, and they weren’t talking. Did a hotel room count as a home? She rather doubted it.
Worse, did the blood he’d taken from her allow him special privileges with her—to her? Would she become his Renfield?
She rolled her eyes, impatient with her own stupidity. Renfield. Please.
She took her toiletries bag to the bathroom and starting unpacking the little bit of makeup she’d brought with her. Sparkly eye shadow and glossy lips would help the scientists underestimate her. Fluffy reporters were nothing to worry about, after all. She’d already prepared the way through e-mails and phone calls so they thought she was there for a few sound bites on the wonderful medical breakthroughs humans and shape-shifters were making in the spirit of joint cooperation.
Yeah. Right. Maybe that was happening somewhere, but not with this group. They had a deeper, darker purpose, and it was up to her to find out exactly who, what, where, when,
and why. She set the gleaming tube of mascara on the counter and made the mistake of looking into the mirror. The smear of blood on her neck highlighted the two small puncture holes, and the black circles under her eyes from weeks of restless nights made her look like she was half-vamp herself.
She wet a washcloth and poured half of the travel-sized bottle of antibacterial gel on it, then gritted her teeth and cleaned her neck. Once the blood was gone, the punctures were barely visible. A little makeup would cover up the evidence, so nobody at the conference would be able to tell she’d served as the equivalent of vampire Cheetos.
A little snack.
Bastard.
Something scraped against glass, and she dropped the washcloth. The noise had been so subtle that she might not have heard it if her nerves hadn’t shot straight to hyper-alert during the encounter with the vamp.
He was back. He was back, and unfortunately, there were no wooden stakes in the dish with the complimentary soap and shampoo. Calling for backup would only get someone else killed with her; she knew the speed and strength of vampires very, very well. She grabbed the small glass tumbler and filled it with water, then whipped around and faced the window, ready to bluff.
Ready to lie. She was so very good at lying.
“I’m not an easy target now,” she called out, pleased that her voice remained so steady. “This is a glass filled with holy water, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
But it wasn’t the vampire’s face at the window. It wasn’t any face at all, but a strange fog that was almost corporeal, almost sentient, the way it moved back and forth across the outside of her window, as if it sought a way to enter.
She knew some vamps could fly, but could they turn into fog? Or was she hallucinating from blood loss?