A Low Down Dirty Shane

by Sierra Dean

  Just like the goblin had gotten Percy, she too had been undone by putting her guard down too soon, by trying not to kill something instead of doing what she’d been trained to do.

  The banishing was complete and the clearing was left empty. Siobhan took one look at Shane, then down to her seeping stomach wounds.

  “I…” She was able to speak but found herself without words.

  The lights of the city she’d learned to love blotted out one by one. Her last thought as she crumpled to the ground was, At least I completed the circle.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Shane wasn’t good at giving a shit about people.

  Not since his real family had shown him love was a fool’s errand. Not since Wanda died and showed him people who care about you will always leave. So his first instinct was to take Siobhan’s body to a hospital and bail.

  He got to the hospital entrance and froze.

  It wasn’t that he thought he loved Siobhan. It had been such a long time since he’d allowed for the possibility, he didn’t know if he could feel that way about someone again. He wasn’t sure he’d ever loved his wife, which was a big part of the reason they weren’t married now.

  But Siobhan was different.

  She’d asked for his help, even needed it. But she’d never been dependent on him. He wasn’t her reason for getting out of bed in the morning. She was strong, and she was independent, and God help him, he couldn’t just leave her.

  He needed to be there for her, especially now that she couldn’t ask him for his help.

  He wanted to be there for her.

  A doctor came running out of the hospital doors, shouting instructions at a nurse while asking Shane to explain what had happened to her.

  “Something in the park,” Shane muttered, as they pulled Siobhan’s limp form out of his arms. “Looked like a fucking lion.”

  Hours later—when Siobhan came to—she wasn’t expecting to be alive.

  First she assumed she’d moved into the Afterlands to be scolded by her ancestors for eternity about what a bad little druid she’d been. After a moment of consciousness, she figured she must be in Hell. Why else would her stomach be filled with stinging scorpions and everything be bathed in fluorescent light? Surely Hell was solely illuminated by fluorescent bulbs.

  Then she saw Shane.

  He was fast asleep with his head on her mattress, his lanky frame folded in half and crammed into an uncomfortable-looking chair. There was an orange sucker half-hanging out of his mouth, and he had one hand protectively clamped on her leg.

  He was snoring.

  “Shane?” Her voice was rough, and she found it difficult to speak. She wanted water.

  “Unh?”

  “Shane, wake up.”

  Finally processing what was happening, Shane snapped his head up, the sucker falling from his mouth and onto the floor. “Red?”

  “Hey,” she said, still groggy. “What happened?”

  “You almost died.”

  “Did I…? Did the…?” Seeing a plastic pitcher next to her bedside, she nodded towards it, unable to raise her arms easily. He got to his feet and poured water into a paper cup, holding it to her lips so she could drink. The room-temperature water tasted better than anything she’d ever had. Once her throat no longer felt like it was coated in sandpaper, she spoke again. “The banishment?”

  “It’s gone. You did it.”

  Siobhan heaved a sigh of relief. When she placed a hand on her stomach, she gasped from the sudden shock of the pain. The scorpions swirled and jabbed at her.

  “Hey, hey…gentle.” Shane lifted her hand and set it by her side, keeping it cupped in his own. “You’re lucky, you know. It didn’t get anything serious, but you lost a lot of blood. And I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who got that many stitches at one time. They even took care of the bump on your noggin you got the first time it hit you.”

  She smiled weakly. The reminder of her head wound made the pain flare up anew. “Can you turn off the light?”

  She remembered the first night she’d had him in her bed, when she’d tortured him with her lamp. This would have been the perfect moment for revenge, but Shane didn’t seem to have any interest in tormenting her.

  “Sure.” He released her hand and flipped a switch on the wall. The overhead lights went out, but there were recessed lights that remained on, casting a cold blue glow over the room.

  After a long pause, Siobhan said, “You sticking around?”

  Shane took her hand again. “You want me to?”

  She closed her eyes, trying to block out the searing pain the small lights caused her. “I don’t have much left. My people—well, what’s left of them—won’t want anything to do with me after this.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “I still need to defend the gate. The fae won’t stop coming. And I have to make sure something like that monster never gets out again.”

  “You don’t need to justify yourself, Red. I kill vampires, remember?”

  “Think you can deal with having a has-been druid tagging along?”

  He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “I guess we’re going to find out. But if you turn out to be dead weight, I’m kicking you to the curb.”

  Siobhan smiled and ran her free hand over his rough, stubbly cheek. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a stone-cold romantic, Shane Hewitt?”

  He leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on her lips, one so sweet it made her wonder if he was the same man she’d asked to sully her virtue.

  Shane’s mouth brushed against her ear, and he whispered, “There’s a first time for everything.”

  About the Author

  Sierra Dean is a reformed historian. She was born and raised in the Canadian prairies and is allowed annual exit visas in order to continue her quest of steadily conquering the world one city at a time. Making the best of the cold Canadian winters, Sierra indulges in her less global interests: drinking too much tea and writing urban fantasy.

  Ever since she was a young girl she has loved the idea of the supernatural coexisting with the mundane. As an adult, however, the idea evolved from the notion of fairies in flower beds, to imagining that the rugged-looking guy at the garage might secretly be a werewolf. She has used her overactive imagination to create her own version of the world, where vampire, werewolves, fairies, gods and monsters all walk among us, and she’ll continue to travel as much as possible until she finds it for real.

  Sierra can be reached all over the place, as she’s a little addicted to social networking. Find her on:

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/sierradeanbooks

  Website: www.sierradean.com

  E-mail: sierra@sierradean.com

  Twitter: @sierradean

  Look for these titles by Sierra Dean

  Now Available:

  Secret McQueen

  Something Secret This Way Comes

  The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters

  A Bloody Good Secret

  Secret Santa

  Deep Dark Secret

  Keeping Secret

  Some secrets are dangerous. This Secret is deadly.

  Something Secret This Way Comes

  © 2011 Sierra Dean

  Secret McQueen, Book 1

  For Secret McQueen, her life feels like the punch line for a terrible joke. Abandoned at birth by her werewolf mother, hired as a teen by the vampire council of New York City to kill rogues, Secret is a part of both worlds, but belongs to neither. At twenty-two, she has carved out as close to a normal life as a bounty hunter can.

  When an enemy from her past returns with her death on his mind, she is forced to call on every ounce of her mixed heritage to save herself—and everyone else in the city she calls home. As if the fate of the world wasn’t enough to deal with, there’s Lucas Rain, King of the East Coast werewolves, who seems to believe he and Secret are fated to be together. Too bad Secret also feels a connection with Desmond, Lucas’s second
-in-command…

  Warning: This book contains a sarcastic, kick-ass bounty hunter; a metaphysical love triangle with two sexy werewolves; a demanding vampire council; and a spicy seasoning of sex and violence.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Something Secret This Way Comes:

  I recapped the events of the evening as best I could over the limitations of voicemail. “Hey, Holden, it’s Secret. I killed an unsanctioned rogue in the park tonight. He had it coming. Send the Tribunal my love.”

  I was in an all-night café near Keaty’s, waiting for my nonfat no-foam latte while I left the message. The barista behind the counter, who appeared to be about fourteen, gave me a concerned look.

  I flashed him my well-practiced innocent smile and said, “My dungeon master.” A spark of revelation lit upon his zitty face. “I just needed him to know the outcome of a campaign he missed.” I winked and took my drink out of his hand while he muttered something about rolling twenties.

  It was late spring, and there was still a chill in the air, but the café had seen fit to set up its sidewalk patio a week or so after the snow melted. I pulled my jacket around me, though the cold didn’t really bother me, and sat on one of the wrought-iron chairs. My cell phone was securely in my pocket in case Holden called, but I expected I wouldn’t hear from him right away. I was also in no hurry to go back to the office and talk to Keaty about the state of affairs I now found myself in. I’d told him I was getting a coffee and then calling it a night.

  Dawn was only an hour or two away, and there was nothing I could do to change what I’d done tonight. I would have to face the consequences when they came.

  I tried to enjoy the hot, bitter sweetness of the latte, in sharp contrast to the coolness of the night, but my mind was reeling from what had happened. It took a lot to scare me, mostly because almost anything that went bump in the night I had killed at some point, but my encounter with Henry Davies had really shaken me.

  The unshakeable, calm and centered Secret McQueen had been knocked on her proverbial ass by the impression of a bite mark. Maybe I had been mistaken. There was a chance part of the bite had healed faster or maybe I had been anticipating it so much I had imagined the missing tooth mark.

  I prayed that I was wrong. In the six years I had been doing this, the closest anyone had ever come to truly killing me was Alexandre Peyton, and he had promised me that next time we met he wouldn’t fail. If I was right about it being his mark, I was going to need to be on my guard more than usual until things either came to a head or blew over.

  As I sipped my coffee I was overcome by an unexpected warmth which had nothing to do with the drink. It was like a humid summer breeze was blowing down 81st Street, only it crawled over my body and into my pores. My mouth felt thick with musky, dense flavor. The sensation was invasive and overwhelming, and what scared me the most was how comfortable I felt with it. I licked my lips and tasted cinnamon.

  My latte was vanilla.

  It was then, with a ripple of electric pinpricks up my spine, I felt a man pass. He approached from behind me and seemed to be wholly unaware of my presence until he turned towards the café door. He paused before entering, his close-cropped ash-colored hair tousled by the cool night air, and fixed his radiant azure eyes on me. There were two men with him, one on either side—a brunet who was the same height, just over six feet, and another who was my height and blond. The one who was watching me looked as puzzled as I felt, but he snapped out of it after a brief period of stunned silence and took a step in my direction.

  “Hello?” he said, the way people do when they believe they already know you and simply cannot place the who and how.

  If I’d been on my game, I’d have a snappy shoot-down or roll my eyes and tell him to get lost. I might have ignored him under any normal circumstances, because as a general rule I try to avoid men who might try to flirt with me. I did not date, although I had tried once or twice in the past. I had no time or patience for it, not to mention there were certain aspects of my life I could never explain to a human boyfriend.

  But I could not look away, and nothing about this felt normal.

  Not only could I not tear my eyes from him, something inside me pulled closer, dragging me nearer like a leash being tugged. There was a piece of me that wanted nothing more than to go to him. He was beautiful, I couldn’t deny that, but he was a stranger, and this reaction was strange to say the least. This was more than magnetism; it was practically a law of attraction. The pull knotted inside me, fluttering in my stomach with the feeling of a thousand desperate moths crowding together to seek the light of a single bare bulb. My body demanded I go to him, and I realized I was now standing. My chair was several inches behind me, and I held my drink in trembling hands. When had I stood?

  His friends were watching me too, like they knew what was happening between us. They were both interested and unconcerned by my reaction. I bet none of them had to make much of an effort to attract the ladies, considering all three were picture-perfect male specimens. The man in the middle smiled, a flash of white canines, and it dawned on me what I was smelling below the cinnamon and electricity. It stopped me dead in my tracks.

  “Wolf,” I said. It was almost a hiss, the sound an animal makes when threatened.

  My stupid werewolf half was being lured by him, and I wasn’t about to have any part of it. I had no intention of letting some animal dupe me with werewolf lust. I’d heard about this, weres using their powers to overwhelm newer or lesser wolves. I’d been dealing with my lycanthrope half since birth, which was a lot longer than most adults with the affliction. Just because I’d never shifted as an adult didn’t mean some twenty-something who’d probably been turned last week was going to get the best of me.

  I tended to shut out my werewolf half far more than my vampire half. Vampires, for all their flaws, were still primarily human in their behavior. I could accept that and relate to it. Their society had laws, structure and regulation. They were very political in their hierarchical organization.

  Werewolves left me feeling more unsettled. They were animals. Primal beings. They were willing to abandon the human aspects of themselves to embrace something wild and reckless. I’d never tried to learn about their world because I didn’t want to be a part of something that catered to such careless freedom. I did not have the luxury to let myself lose control in that way. If I did, I risked releasing much more than my inner wolf.

  I turned away from him, and his face fogged with confusion again. I was not going to play his games. Heading towards the back entrance of the patio, I made a break for it. I was almost at the corner of the block before I hazarded a glance back. They were gone.

  I stopped walking, still clutching my latte. Maybe he’d been willing to let it go when he saw I clearly wasn’t interested. I breathed a sigh of relief. One less thing to worry about for the night. My plate was already overburdened as it was. The last thing I needed was to fend off some pushy frat boy’s puppy love.

  Turning back to the corner, I walked smack into the tall brunet who had been with the man. A small sound of surprise escaped my lips.

  “What the—?”

  “I’d like you to come with me, miss.”

  “Like hell.” I dropped my drink and was reaching for the gun at the small of my back, but he grabbed my arm first.

  “That won’t be necessary. We only want to have a quick word with you about what just happened at the café.”

  Before I could find the proper string of profanities to explain I had no intention of going anywhere with him, he was dragging me none too gently towards a waiting car. He pushed me into the backseat as the door opened, pulling the gun from the back of my belt as he did.

  And I thought my night couldn’t get any worse.

  The shadows of her past could destroy their future.

  Haunted Sanctuary

  © 2013 Moira Rogers

  Green Pines, Book 1

  Eden Green can’t remember a time she didn’t believe in mons
ters—her cousin was born one. Her family’s dark past casts a long shadow, making it hard to make friends and harder to commit to a lover. She lives a quiet life in small-town Clover, Tennessee, but she’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Tired of the city packs’ corruption, yet too alpha to be a subordinate in a sanctuary town, Jay Ancheta satisfies his need to protect by serving as Clover’s Chief of Police. As much as he’s drawn to Eden, he can’t offer forever to a woman who doesn’t know what he is—or trust himself to let her go after one taste.

  When Eden’s cousin and his battered pack stagger into town, their tormentors hard on their heels, Eden is bitten in the chaos. Now Jay not only has a traumatized pack to deal with, but a newly turned wolf with enough hungry alpha power to consume them both.

  With their combined strength, they can create a new sanctuary—if their passion can survive the ghosts of the Green family’s legacy.

  Warning: Contains a newly turned werewolf heroine who enjoys a little rough dominance in bed and a badass alpha wolf hero who’ll fight bad guys, ghosts and even the past to protect what’s his. Be prepared for violence, death and heartbreak on the way to a happily ever after.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Haunted Sanctuary:

  He pulled onto the narrow street behind the library and braked hard, his truck coming to a halt with a shuddering screech. He couldn’t go up the side stairs without someone seeing, so he jumped up, grabbed hold of the ladder to the fire escape and pulled it down.

  The noise must have roused Eden. By the time he reached her window, she was struggling to open it, her teeth cutting into her lower lip as she concentrated on turning the locks like it was the hardest task she’d ever set for herself. “I broke the phone,” she said as she eased the sash up with shaking hands. “I’m afraid to touch anything.”