by PM Drummond
“Hey, trouble,” he said to me, his toothy grin splitting his bushy beard and mustache.
“Griss,” I said, holding my chest where Zamora’s old mark pulsed. “Can you yell ‘incoming’ or something before you just pop up like that?”
His earthy, deep chuckle comforted me with an odd sense of camaraderie. My mother steadied herself against his chest.
“Don’t I know you?” she asked him.
He grinned down at her. “Why yes, ma’am. We’ve met before, but it was a while back, so you might not remember clearly.”
More like he vamped her and blocked the memory, but she wasn’t ready to hear that. Three large wolves strode from the trees to the left of the tunnel entrance on the other side of the gulch. I waved them back and pointed at my mother. She was safe now. I didn’t need her to have a heart attack from fright. Two of them walked as indignantly as a wolf could back into the trees, but one crouched and shifted back to human form. Bader stood up in all his naked glory.
Oh, like that’s so much better than Mom seeing a wolf.
Satisfied with the caring china-doll way Griss was handling my mother, I made my way down the gulch. As I started to climb the other side, I was whooshed off my feet, and carried to the top and away into the treed area to the right.
After the world stopped moving, I stood in Rune’s arms, his hug so fierce it robbed me of breath. When spots appeared in my vision due to lack of oxygen, I groaned and pulled away. His grip eased, but he didn’t release me. His forehead to mine, he closed his eyes and sighed.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he said.
“I didn’t think you wanted me after—”
“What happened was my fault. It was too soon. I should have known.”
I smoothed my hands up the cool muscled wall of his chest, reveling in the rightness of it. The feeling of home. His hands traveled up my back as if proving to himself that I was real, and ended cradling my face and tilting it so I looked up at him.
“Never leave me again,” he said.
Our lips met, and I was swept away on a cloud of feelings and memories. Some mine, some his. I saw myself through his eyes when we met, as I lay unconscious on his bed, and in the enclosure at Bader’s camp. His feelings made me beautiful. My long black hair shinier than I thought it, green eyes more vivid, lips fuller. His love and need filled me, making my heart ache and eyes sting with unshed tears.
The spot in my chest burned again, and I pulled away with a grimace to rub it.
“You okay?” a voice said, and Zamora stepped from behind a tree. He held a nasty looking crossbow pointed forward instead of down at the ground.
I looked at the spot on my chest and then back to him.
“Your mark,” I said. “It came back.”
With all that’d been going on, it hadn’t hit me until just then that I’d still been feeling his mark.
“Good thing, too,” Zamora said. “It’s how we found you.”
He took a step forward.
“I’ll ask again. Are you okay?” From his rigid stance, I realized he wasn’t asking about Sarkis. Rune stilled in that creepy way of vampires.
“You want to replay our truck stop encounter among the trees?” I asked, but he stood poised, waiting for my answer.
I pulled out of Rune’s embrace.
“Oh for goodness’ sake. I’m fine. Really.”
He lowered his weapon, and Rune was on him in an instant, throwing the crossbow into the night and bending him backward.
“Stop it,” I shouted and was shocked when Rune obeyed, releasing Zamora to drop to the ground and returning to my side in an instant.
Zamora picked himself back up as three of his men emerged from behind tree trunks with an assortment of weapons pulled.
I stepped in front of Rune. He tried to move me, but I jerked my arms out of his grasp.
“Stop it, right now, all of you.”
A small movement of Zamora’s hand, and his men lowered their weapons a few inches.
“Can I assume, since you all showed up at the same time, that you and the vampires and the werewolves worked together to find me?”
Zamora nodded.
“Then what is all this leg-lifting, macho crap for now?”
“Vampires hypnotize people. You are under—”
“For Pete’s sake. He can’t spell me. I’m immune.”
Rune moved behind me, and one of Zamora’s men raised his weapon. I raised my hand, and all the men’s weapons flew out of their hands and into the darkness. They immediately moved to pull other weapons.
“Don’t do it, or you’ll all be picking yourselves out of the trees,” I said.
The panther walked into our small clearing with a low growl and leaped toward Zamora. I raised my hand and the big cat froze in midair.
“You, too, Luke,” I said. “Can’t we all just get along?”
Zamora and his men stood slack jawed, their gazes shifting from me to the midair panther.
“Please?” Frustration and exhaustion made my voice crack. “I’ve really had just about enough shooting, biting, head-pulling-off fun and games today.”
Zamora held his palms up to me. “Okay. I’m sorry. We’ll stand down.”
“Now and forever,” I said.
“What?” Suspicion warred with confusion on his face.
I shifted my gaze from Zamora to Rune and back.
“You two swear that you will never hurt each other or cause each other harm.”
Zamora stiffened. “I can’t do that. I have an obligation to—”
“All right. That’s enough.” I let my power flow through my words. “You’ve gone this long without killing him. He’s not a bad man. If he gets out of hand, I’ll deal with it.”
Zamora’s face was again a battlefield of conflicting emotions, but my unflinching glare finally won the war. He blew out a breath.
“Okay, I swear, but I’ll hold you to your promise.”
I caught a satisfied smirk on Rune’s mouth as I turned my glare on him. The smirk faltered as he realized he was on the hot seat.
“Swear to me,” I said.
His face calmed, and he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it.
“I swear,” he said, but the way his eyes seemed to look into my soul and the solemn tone his words carried more of a marriage vow feeling than a promise not to tear another man apart.
I hesitated, trying to fathom his hidden meaning, but a mid-air growl broke my concentration.
Oh poo, poor Luke.
I eased the panther to the ground, but held him there.
“Change back, Luke, or I won’t release you. These are my friends. As pig-headed as they are and as much trouble as they have playing nice, they won’t hurt you. Will you, boys?”
Zamora and his men and even Rune mumbled compliance. Gold eyes glared at me for a moment, then the sleek, black cat body shifted and morphed into a sleek, black human form. When the rage leaked out of his eyes, I released him and he stood. In what I was coming to realize was typical were-animal fashion, Luke had no compunction about being naked in front of everyone. It made me wonder, in one of my awkward thought moments, if nudist colonies were all were-animal camps.
The danger and tension evaporated from the air, taking my adrenaline with it. The guns dropped from the trees. Tremors started in my knees and worked their way up my body as shock and exhaustion fought for dominance. Rune wrapped his arms around me, and I leaned my back into him, reveling in his support.
My mother called my name. Crud. I’d almost forgotten about her.
I had to give her credit, her eyes only widened slightly as I led my merry little band from the trees, complete with a naked man in tow. Bader and his two were-buddies had dressed in jeans and black T-shirts sometime in the last few minutes. They prowled the tunnel, checking the fallen men for pulses, zip-tying the hands of the ones that were still alive.
Oh goody, more dead people to be guilty about when the shock wore off. I tried to keep m
y gaze off the tunnel, but like any disaster, it was hard to turn my attention away.
A dozen more leather-clad biker-types joined Zamora, and they filed into the tunnel. I turned to Rune.
“Where are they going?”
“They will clear the facility and destroy it.”
“There’s a brain-dead woman and a mentally damaged man inside along with a bunch of innocent animals.”
“They will bring them out before they set the explosives.”
“Marlee?” Mom’s eyes still held that reserved untrusting edge. I took a step toward her and my heart plummeted at her flinch.
“Go with Griss, Mom. He’ll keep you safe and get you home.”
She hesitated, her face showing her parental instincts butting heads with her fear of me.
“It’s okay. These are my friends. I belong with them now.”
A smile twitched one side of her mouth and tears glistened in her eyes as she nodded and let Griss lead her away. I smiled at the way he still treated her as precious cargo.
“Parents are sacred to Griss,” Rune murmured into my ear. “After two thousand years, he still misses his as I do mine.”
“Stay out of my head,” I said without any heat as I turned into his embrace.
“Stay in my life.” He scooped me up and carried me to Tony and the waiting van.
As he lowered me to my feet, the left sleeve of the blue scrubs Sarkis’s men had put me in edged up. Rune’s gaze fixed on my upper bicep, and I lifted my arm to see a green tattoo of a moth with eyes on its wings, and a black horse. The images were tribal fashioned art and only took up a few inches on the top of my arm.
“Huh,” I said, trying to pull the skin around to see the whole thing.
Rune ran his fingers down the image, sending a sizzling chill up my neck.
“You did not have this when I saw you last,” he said.
“No I didn’t.” I licked my fingers and rubbed at the marks, knowing before I did, it was useless.
“Did Sarkis do this to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You do not remember how this got here?”
I looked him square in the face. “I have no idea.”
Well, that was the truth at least.
“What does it mean?” Again, he ran his fingers over my arm, a perplexed look on his handsome face.
“Sarkis is—was crazy. No telling why he did anything.”
Not a lie. Not the truth. Until I figured it all out, it was all he was getting on the subject.
Rune’s thoughts pressed on mine but didn’t gain entry. After a moment, he seemed to come to some conclusion, or maybe he just decided to let it slide, and his features relaxed. He pulled me into his arms and tucked my head under his chin, drawing in a breath and letting it out while he stroked my hair.
“As long as you are safe and with me,” he said. “Nothing else matters.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
HOME AGAIN
I exited the back of Perdition and walked around the panel van to where the Jesus Chrysler was parked. I drank in a full breath of the ocean-scented morning air and lifted my face to the rising sun. Weariness pulled at my brain, trying to convince me to return to the soft bed downstairs to continue the few hours of sleep I’d enjoyed.
I opened the creaky car door and plopped down into the driver seat. Vampire-lag. That’s what I was suffering. Going from a night existence back to daytime living. I slammed the door and cranked the JC to life.
Rune had offered, then coerced me, trying to convince me to work for him at the club and quit my university job, but some part of me still needed my normal world. I wasn’t ready to give up my pseudo-humanity yet.
The drive was grueling, California freeways during morning rush hour being anything but a relaxing drive. Freeway was a one-word oxymoron. I mentally kicked myself for not sticking to my plan of sleeping at my own house last night. Rune had kept me close for the last two weeks, obsessing over my safety. It was all I could do to get away every other day to visit my house and play with BooBoo Kitty.
Escape this morning felt good. Although that thought poured guilt into an already-filled pool in my psyche, I couldn’t help but feel it was true. I knew now that I loved him, even though we still hadn’t worked out the physical part of it. He couldn’t even sleep with me since he had to return to his chamber hidden somewhere in his weapons room to sleep during daylight hours.
Despite that love or maybe because of it, I needed my own life. I was done with living the way other people wanted me to. I couldn’t let love dictate who I was ever again. My job was for me. My work was part of who I was. For the time being, at least.
I still hadn’t told him about my Shaman gifts. I hadn’t told anyone. I didn’t want people to think me more of a freak than I already was. Then there was the fear that Rune loved me because of my power instead of for the real me. That was as bad a man loving a woman for her looks or money alone. If I gained more power and he seemed more interested in me or more in love, that would prove true. I’m not sure how I’d handle that, and I just didn’t want to find out right now. I’d had enough revelations and grief for a while.
My reflections kept me calm in a sea of anxious motorists during my long commute. Even fighting for parking was comforting in its familiarity and normalcy, and I finally maneuvered my lumbering beast of a car into a parking slot near the outskirts of campus.
I grabbed my backpack and checked for the note that an unknown doctor had written me for stress induced by the classroom accident. I smiled when I found it, still amazed at Rune’s influence and contacts who could get anything at anytime with just a phone call.
I felt Carl’s jagged energy before I opened the door to the office. It sizzled along my skin and felt oddly like home. Although the feel of it tickled a memory in the back of my mind, I couldn’t quite place what it reminded me of, and I was too tired to pursue it.
He was at the file cabinet shuffling through papers when I walked in. Mumbling, he slammed one drawer and opened another. My life had come full circle.
I shoved my purse into the bottom desk drawer and sat in my chair. A new computer and monitor waited for me on my desk.
“I re-taped your pictures on the new monitor,” Carl groused, his back still to me. “Those idiot technicians almost took them with the old one. The Safety Department replaced almost every electric gadget in the office.”
“Thanks.”
He turned to me. His scruffy beard was grayer than last time I saw him, and the lines around his eyes etched deeper.
“How are you, kid?”
“Good. I have my note.” I held up the paper.
“Yeah, there’ll be a stack of useless bureaucratic forms we’ll need to fill out.”
The little embers his anger threw into the air burned my exposed arms.
His phone rang, and he answered it. After a short conversation, he slammed it back into the cradle. His energy flayed my skin, the wildness of it shooting through me, like . . .
I realized where I’d felt it before. My palms found the desktop, and I steadied myself.
“Stupid, stupid, idiotic—” His tirade halted when he saw my open-mouthed stare.
“What?”
He smoothed his beard, checking for food cling-ons, then looked down at his fly.
Despite the irony of it all, I grinned. My life had been headed down its current path all along.
Destiny is a sneaky tramp.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head.
“Nothing wrong,” I said, “I just realized you’re a werewolf.”
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