Dark: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Blood Moon, Texas Shifters Book 1)

by Kat Kinney

  I bared my teeth. “You’re not taking my sister.”

  Lacey snorted. “Are you for real?”

  “Um, hello?” Ellie leaned around the cupcake killer, cementing my theory that vegans made the worst hostages. “Has everyone forgotten the labradoodles?”

  “She’s been behind this all along,” I snarled.

  Lacey threw her hands up. “Oh. My. God. You just can’t get over yourself—”

  “Hayden,” Ellie said urgently. “You don’t understand.” And then my sister, my sweet, rabbit-adopting, spider-saving, tofu-eating sister, inserted herself between me and Murder-Barbie. As if I were the delusional one in this Shakespearean werewolf-drama.

  “—I give zero fucks that you and Emo are together. I already told my aunt that Dark is going to have to start getting someone else to handle their daily pastry order. You can lead him around on a leash and get your name tattooed on his—”

  Ellie grimaced. “Um, overshare?"

  “—I don’t care anymore. I’m out.” Eyes widening, Murder-by-Frosting whipped around. “Shit. Get down.”

  A second later, a knife was scything past my ear. Diving to the left, I collided with Ellie, knocking her free from Lacey’s grip. We collided with a thud, going down hard in the mud, my sister’s screams echoing in my ears as the sound of snarling rose over the rumble of thunder.

  “Stay back!” I shouted, limbs shaking from the adrenaline, now seeing the two werewolves snarling and snapping only a few feet away. “Get behind me.”

  I felt my skin prickle, my head spinning, the change fighting to take hold. Distantly, I heard Ellie calling me. A scream tore from my throat just as the muddy earth rushed up to meet me. I sucked in a sharp breath, snapping around in time to hear Ellie gasp. The other wolf was white with pale silver eyes. It lunged, Lacey slamming it in the side of the head to keep it back.

  Snarling, I moved in from the other side. White Wolf bared her teeth, steam puffing up in the damp night air. I charged, feinting to the left, then snapping for her back leg when she was forced to defend her flank from Lacey on the right. Blood flooded my tongue. She howled, clawing at me. Pain seared up my side.

  I released her with a bark of pain. Teeth bared, we circled. Her eyes flicked my way. I was smaller. Clearly she thought I was the easier target. With a growl, she lunged. My sister whimpered as she took me to the ground, the two of us snarling, her teeth nearly closing around my neck. But that was the thing about being small. It equaled light and quick. Slithering out of her grip, I raked my claws over her snout just as Lacey seized her throat, shaking her viciously. Yelping, White Wolf broke free, and ducked low in a submissive posture. When she disappeared off into the raging storm, Lacey didn’t pursue.

  When I finally managed to shift back, I was flat on my back in the mud, Lacey Blair looming over me in yoga pants and a Starburst-pink hoodie.

  “How stupid are you? Or is it actually your life goal to be drained by one of the undead?”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “Hayden!” Ellie appeared in my line of vision, dripping herbal-scented rainwater on my cheeks.

  “Get back. I could bite you.”

  “Like I couldn’t take you.” Lacey waved a dismissive hand. “But if we don’t get moving, the next thing that comes along will probably eat all of us.”

  Glowering, I staggered upright.

  1) Lacey Blair and I were clearly not going to be besties. 2) I was going to have to find somewhere new to get my chocolate cupcakes. Which sucked. Because she made amazing cupcakes. 3) She’d saved my sister. Which meant there was a pretty good chance she hadn’t been the one stalking me.

  My mouth came open. “Look—"

  “Save it,” snapped Lacey. “We’ve got bigger problems. Brody’s missing. And Ethan—”

  "He’s still alive. I would know if something… if he—” Thunder rumbled in the distance. “We have to find him.”

  Lacey slapped the knife into my hand. “I’ll take point. If you shoot me in the back—”

  I flipped her off.

  “Now that we’re all getting along,” my sister muttered.

  Glaring, Lacey shifted into a sleek cinnamon-brown wolf. Ellie and I fell into step as we began to pick our way through the maze. There were entire sections where the corn had been flattened by the wind. The rain began to let up, mist shrouding the ruined field in a dense fog. We cut across the furrows at a slow jog.

  “How far do you think you went before finding me?”

  “I don’t know, maybe a quarter mile?” Ellie chewed her lip, scanning the ground with her phone. “What’s that?”

  I picked up the wooden stake, its end tipped with blood. Lacey circled back. Growled. An image forced itself into my head of a vampire materializing out of nowhere, knife in hand.

  “Okay, okay.” Sticking my tongue out at her back, I handed the stake to Ellie.

  We emerged into a clearing just as a gust of wind brought the unmistakable scent of more blood.

  I gripped Ellie’s arm. “Stay close to me.”

  Ethan’s scent lingered faintly in the air, laced with the smell of rain. I started forward, trying to count how many others. Three. Four, maybe—

  —only to choke as if I’d inhaled straight chili powder.

  Lacey shifted immediately, gagging.

  “Wolfsbane.” Grabbing the collar of her shirt, she pulled it up over her face. “Powerful paralytic. Don’t touch anything.”

  There were ghostly echoes of a fight. Streaks of blood, growing ever fainter in the misting rain. Torn scraps of clothing. A cell phone. A pair of men’s black-framed glasses—

  A scream choked in my throat. I lunged for Ethan’s glasses. Lacey caught my arm, spinning me around.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “What—?” But then the sound came again, a shout, barely audible over the hum of the highway in the distance.

  I bolted.

  “Wait,” Lacey hissed. “Don’t be an idiot.”

  “He could be hurt. We can’t just—"

  She cut me off, the two of us skidding to a stop in the mud. Ellie caught up, panting. “You don’t get it. The wolfsbane—”

  “What? What does it mean?”

  “It’s highly restricted. Legally, only Tracers are allowed to carry it. Its black-market value—”

  “Why would they want him?”

  “I have no idea. But it means whoever we’re dealing with is dangerous.”

  We emerged from the field out onto a dirt driveway. The peppery scent of wolfsbane lingered here, too. Cursing, Lacey jumped the last irrigation ditch. I gasped, seeing the figure slumped on the far side.

  Brody grunted as we dragged him out of the water. One of his sleeves had been torn, a wicked gothic G branded onto his forearm.

  “What is that?”

  Lacey took the knife back, tucking it into her waistband.

  “A summons.”

  14

  Ethan

  HAD TO GIVE THESE GUYS CREDIT. They didn’t mess around. Forget silver cuffs. I woke to the screech of tires on wet cement, brake lights glowing an inch from my nose, and a carpet that smelled like wet dog. Trunk, then. I clawed for the emergency release, and found my arms shackled behind me from wrist to elbow. No chance of shifting, then, without dislocating a shoulder.

  The trunk popped open. Over a killer beam of light, I thought I saw ski masks. And then they hit me with another blast of wolfsbane. I gagged, blacking out as they hauled me away.

  The next time I came to, it was face down in the dark, wet and shivering on the floor of a cell. The silver restraints were gone, but throbbing ligature marks snaked up the length of my arms. Judging from the swelling, I’d been out for four hours, maybe five. That could have put us anywhere from Brownsville to Oklahoma, farther, if they’d loaded me onto a plane.

  Closing my eyes, I gripped the mark on my arm, clawing out into the vast nothingness surrounding me, only to come up with an empty void where nothing existed but the poundi
ng of my own heart.

  We’d all heard the rumors, that there were ways to wipe someone off the map, erase them so completely that they couldn’t be found even through pack magic. Low doses of wolfsbane delivered by IV infusion around the clock. Secret cells with silver-lined walls. My pulse picked up. A year and a half. That was how long it had been since anyone had heard from Ben. Was it possible he was trapped somewhere far underground, locked in the dark, convinced he was beyond rescue?

  Feeling around the eight by ten space, I came to a prison-style cot and a steel toilet bolted to the floor. Nothing that could be used as a weapon. I closed my eyes, buzzed from the hum of silver arcing through the air, wolf clawing, fighting, desperate to shift, muzzled by the chemical effect of the poison swirling through my blood.

  It was another hour before I heard footsteps. With a groan, the heavy iron door swung open.

  Two Tracers entered. The sides of their heads had been shaved to expose extensive tattoo work. Tribal designs. Gothic lettering in a language I couldn’t read. Daggers. Skulls. Flames. Once, August had asked Sofia what hers meant.

  “I fight so that those who cannot will never have to live in fear.”

  Which I’d found out much later was the first line of the Tracer code.

  Eyebrow Piercing leered. “Your brother says hello.”

  Ten minutes and one black eye later, I was shackled and being dragged down a series of corridors, the floor shifting underfoot to a swirling mosaic of polished stone in midnight blue, obsidian, silver and white, all the colors of the night sky. Eyebrow Piercing shoved me through a foyer filled with rich leather furnishings and custom woodwork, its alcoves decorated with fine mahogany tables and stained-glass Tiffany lamps like there wasn’t a freaking dungeon just down the hall.

  Massive oak doors swung open to reveal the audience room that according to Sofia, doubled as a dueling chamber and banquet hall, often on the same night, a cavernous space easily the size of a ballroom. At the center of the floor, an intricate celestial design rotated around a glittering crescent moon, flecks of gold inlay catching the starlight streaming in through the open atrium ceiling some thirty feet up. Fat potted palms stood in clusters around white marble columns. A dark granite water feature built into the south wall gave the air a heavy, tropical feel.

  Lounging in leather chairs on a raised dais at the center of the room sat a council of quite possibly the most dangerous werewolves in North America.

  Three, I knew by name.

  Aleksandr, by all appearances, could have passed for a man in his twenties despite having been one of the original humans infected during the Yukon gold rush. Cool and sharp-featured, he was a powerful truth mage, which had kept him alive through several coup attempts on the Council.

  At the tip of the crescent moon sat a young Tracer with a wicked scar running the length of his jaw. He was as tall as Dallas now, but with a build closer to Brody’s. With his hair grown out and those angular cheekbones? Dude looked like one mean motherfucker.

  “River,” I said through my teeth.

  In answer, my youngest brother flipped me off.

  A chuckle sounded. “Ethan, you haven’t changed a bit. Come now. We’re all family.”

  Yeah. So about that. In a pale button-down shirt and linen slacks, Guillermo Montemayor was the picture of cool sophistication right down to the handmade Italian loafers I wanted to shove down his throat. I hadn’t seen our uncle in almost ten years, since the Thanksgiving Sofia grabbed the carving knife off the turkey platter and chased her brother from the house for something he’d said to River.

  Given the way things had turned out, maybe she should have done it sooner.

  Visibly on edge, Brody and West didn’t look up as I was frog-marched past. Beside them, Ellie and Hayden stood flanked by a pair of Tracers.

  Hays? I thought silently, sending an image of a chocolate muffin.

  A soot-black wolf snapped it out of the air. Then gave me a total WTF look.

  She was fine.

  Chains clinked against the stone floor as Tracers dragged a bound and struggling Topher suspended by a shock collar between steel restraining poles. And behind him—

  Jake, Hayden’s former booking agent, glared as he passed me. Understanding formed in a rush, rage clouding my vision. And suddenly it was all I could do to keep from lunging for his throat, consequences be damned.

  Guillermo flicked back his hair. “Now that we’re all here…”

  Topher shivered as the guards forced him up to the dais, expression twisting between ecstasy and despair. I gritted my teeth. He’d been drugged, forced into submission, most likely some combination of sedatives and neural manipulation. He would talk, willed to do so, even as some part of his consciousness silently screamed in the background, aware every second he was being violated. I glanced over at my brothers. A muscle ticked in Brody’s jaw. West studied the pattern on the floor. River just smirked. He’d probably watched his asshole friends do this a hundred times by now.

  “Tell us everything you revealed to my guards.”

  Topher spoke in a slurred voice, powerless to refuse. “I woke up chained in a shipping container. They moved us around. Safe houses. Salvage yards. We all had trackers implanted. A few tried to run. They were caught. Destroyed. Eventually most of us stopped trying to escape.”

  Guillermo leaned forward. “Who was holding you?”

  “Our handlers were shifters. But the ones who brought the girls every four weeks and forced us to change them were vampires.”

  Murmurs broke out. Guillermo held up a hand to silence them.

  “Always females?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “Five to seven each time. Sometimes more. They fed from us, too, but the females they took away immediately. They were holding them somewhere else. I’m not sure why.”

  “And you know any of this because?” Aleksandr interrupted.

  “One night I overheard our handlers demanding higher payment. Somehow they’d learned what we were being used for and wanted in on the cut. It was how I found out the next set of targets. Knew they were coming after her.” He jerked his chin towards Hayden, whose breathing had picked up. “We… used to cut ourselves, trying to locate the trackers. It took months, but when I finally dug mine out, I ran.”

  He’d been trying to warn her she was next. Instead, she’d become his next victim.

  Brody gave our uncle a hard look. “This doesn’t fit the typical pattern we’ve seen before. Usually with blood slavery, covens have a few victims they keep well hidden. They can be used for years. Decades, even. It’s like whoever’s doing this is begging to be caught.”

  “And why only females?” I added.

  “I’m waiting, Miss Blake.” Guillermo didn’t look up. “By now you’re no doubt aware we raided your feral compound two hours ago. Would you like to know what was found?”

  River punched something in on his phone and a screen off to one side of the dais flashed to life, displaying a young woman with platinum hair wearing fitted black pants, ankle boots and an off-the-shoulder silk top. London Blake, who’d recently taken over the North Austin pack in her father’s place at barely twenty-five.

  She bared her teeth. “I’m sure we can all imagine. Why don’t we spare everyone this bit of theatre?”

  River smiled, the effect chilling. On screen, London tensed. “Burner phones. High-end computer equipment—”

  “We were trying to set up access so our population in recovery could work remotely.”

  “—meth. Heroin. Someone got tipped off their operation was blown. We got there just before the vamps.”

  I growled, turning to the screen. “Let me get this straight. You’ve been using Ferals to kidnap girls off the street, no doubt sending them into neighboring territories like ours to hunt where you thought you wouldn’t get caught, then trafficking them over to the vamps. What’s the angle? What are they being used for?”

  London shot me a glare. �
��I’m telling you I have no idea. This was all a setup. I’ve been pushing for reform, cleaning out the rot within our pack structure, and the old guard wants me gone. There have been three attempts on my life in the last month alone.”

  Brody barked out a laugh. “Try the innocent angel act on someone else. You knew too many disappearances in a short period would get picked up by the cops, and that any hint of trouble within your own feral population would land you in it with the Council. So you got in league with the vamps. How are they paying you off? Money? Drugs?”

  “The fang-head you used today at the festival was sloppy as hell.” West’s wet sneakers squelched on the cold tile. “Ghosting out in front of a crowd that size? You’re lucky I got to him before he could do any real damage. Better pray no one got that on video.”

  “Wouldn’t count on it.” Brody stabbed a finger at Jake. “And what’s this loser’s connection in all this?”

  “It’s like they don’t even need me,” Guillermo mused.

  Cokehead’s heartrate jackknifed. “Look, man, I don’t know what’s going on here and I don’t care. You don’t have to worry about me going to the cops—”

  “Lie,” Aleksandr murmured in a bored tone.

  “It was just a gig. Easy cash. Pick out girls no one would miss and text my contact when I had them somewhere alone.”

  “So why keep coming after Hayden?” I said through my teeth.

  “She was never supposed to get hurt. I swear it. That night, I was going to be out there. Stop things before—” He glared at Hays. “But you had to go and be a bitch.”

  Hayden whipped around, eyes glowing wolf-gold. “Can I kill him? Please? My wolf is still teething.”

  Suddenly it all made sense. We’d been so focused on protecting Hayden that we’d missed she wasn’t the primary target. Topher’s attempts to make contact. Cutting the fuel line to Ellie’s car. Setting their trailer on fire. He’d been trying to scare her, hoping she’d leave town. Jake had been the one behind the messages. But the Ferals and vamps who’d shown up at the Harvest Moon Festival had no interest in Hayden. What was another girl when you picked up half a dozen off the street each month? No, it was Topher who knew the ins and outs of their operation. Topher, who could expose them to the Council.