Midnight Wolf

by Jennifer Ashley

  Tamsin swallowed and forced the vision from her head. She had no business thinking about him like that. She was hurt, which was making her groggy, and he was the enemy.

  The Lupine walked her back to the gas station parking lot and the ugly station wagon with the wooden sides. What did humans call it? Oh yeah, a woody. Great name for a car.

  The wolf-man opened one of the back doors without unlocking it—but really, who was going to steal this thing?

  Tamsin’s clothes and boots lay inside, along with her money. She smothered her sigh of relief.

  The Lupine stood Tamsin against the cold side of the car and tossed her shirt, underwear, and jeans to her. “Get dressed. Then we’ll see to your hand.”

  He rummaged inside again, showing her his tight backside, and brought out a T-shirt and jeans for himself.

  Once they were both clothed, the wolf-man examined her arm, his touch surprisingly gentle. “Lucky, like I said. We can probably save it.” He towed her to the passenger side of the car and opened the door. “Sit there and don’t move.”

  Tamsin plopped down into the seat, in too much pain to argue. Her blood had ceased gushing, but it still flowed, and she held her arm away from her body to keep from dripping on her clothes.

  Wolf-man shut the door for her. Tamsin noticed immediately that the handle on the inside of the passenger door had been broken off. Must violate all kinds of safety regulations these days.

  The wolf-man slid himself over the long hood of the car to get to the other side quickly, probably fearing Tamsin would lock the doors, hot-wire the station wagon, and take off. Which she would if (a) her hand worked, and (b) she knew how to hot-wire a car.

  He slammed himself into the driver’s seat, gave Tamsin a warning look, took the key from under the visor above him, and cranked the car to life. He then reached into the back seat and brought out a clean towel, handing it to her in silence.

  “Where are we going?” Tamsin asked in an eager tone, as though he’d asked her out on a date. She wrapped the towel around her arm. “Someplace nice?”

  “To get you fixed up,” the man growled. “All you need to know.” He put the car in gear.

  “Wait!” Tamsin thrust her good hand out in panic. “My motorcycle. I can’t leave it. You know someone will steal it. It’s over there, in the trees.”

  Wolf-man shot her an angry look. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  “I don’t know. Put it in the back. This car’s a gunboat. There’s room.”

  Another scowl. He was sure cranky. “I’m not bringing along a getaway ride for you. Tell you what.” He retrieved a cell phone from a compartment in the dash. “I’ll call a friend and have him look after it.”

  His cell was an old flip phone—no latest tech stuff for Collared Shifters.

  “Reg,” he said abruptly into it after he’d punched a few buttons. “Look for a motorcycle hidden near the gas station at the crossroads. Get it to my house for me, would you? Oh, and grab my clothes. I had to shift in the woods, and didn’t have time to go back for them.”

  Tamsin heard the Shifter on the other end clearly—no mistaking the gruff tone for anything but Shifter. “Sure. Everything all right?”

  “Fine. Mission accomplished. Thanks, man.”

  “Great. Catch up with you later,” the other Shifter said.

  “Yep. Tomorrow.”

  They both hung up without saying good-bye. Typical male Shifters.

  “Who was that?” Tamsin asked. “Boyfriend? Bromance?”

  Wolf-man briefly rolled his eyes, then backed out the station wagon and pulled onto the road. He drove carefully, as though unused to handling giant metal cars manufactured before Tamsin had been born.

  “Where do you even gas this thing up?” she asked curiously.

  He grunted. “Engine’s been converted. Runs on unleaded. So they tell me.”

  “Not your car, I take it.”

  “No,” he snapped. He seemed more worried she’d think this car belonged to him than that she’d believe he worked for Shifter Bureau.

  He said nothing more, only headed along the dark road. Going north, Tamsin noted.

  She tamped down the fluttery fear in her stomach. She tried to reassure herself that she’d squirmed out of tighter situations in her life, and she could squirm out of this one. Wolfie wasn’t wrong that she needed her arm seen to, and once she felt better, she’d get herself away from him. She’d been unlucky in the woods, in spite of him declaring the opposite. If the stupid gator hadn’t lunged at her, she’d be free now, heading out of state on her motorcycle at a rapid pace.

  Tamsin cradled her arm against her chest, leaned back, and propped her booted feet on the dashboard.

  “Something to be said for giant cars. Roomy. I’m Tamsin, by the way. Tamsin Calloway. But you knew that already. And you are . . . ?”

  Another growl. “Angus.”

  She waited but he said nothing more. “That’s it? Just Angus? I thought only bears didn’t have last names.”

  A sideways look. “You don’t need to know it.”

  “Hmm. Sounds like someone has issues.” Tamsin crossed her ankles. “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Angus. That’s Scots, isn’t it? A lot of Shifters spilled into Scotland from Faerie, didn’t they? Back in the day?”

  “I don’t know.” Angus hunched over the steering wheel, the tattoos playing as his muscled arms moved. “I’m not that old.”

  Tamsin let out a laugh. “What, you don’t remember the Shifter-Fae war? That was what, thirteen hundred something? Or twelve hundred? I’m not good at history. I’m exactly forty-seven Shifter years old. What about you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Oh, come on. I’m only trying to get to know you. It’s a bit of a drive back to the New Orleans Shiftertown.”

  “We’re not going there.”

  Ah. Interesting. “Or Shifter Bureau’s office in the city.”

  “Stop fishing. Not going there either.”

  Tamsin looked at him in true surprise. “No? Where, then? Aren’t you capturing me for the Bureau?”

  “Maybe. But first, like I said, we’re getting your arm fixed. All you need to know.”

  Tamsin fell silent but she couldn’t let him think he had her cowed, no matter how terrified she truly was. Shifter Bureau wanted to know what was in her head, and they weren’t going to be nice to get it. Their interrogation methods for rogue Shifters weren’t exactly full of sugar and sweetness.

  She began to hum, then sing. Singing always helped keep down fear. When words ran out, Tamsin scatted guitar parts, drumming her good hand in time to the beat in her head, as though she didn’t have a care in the world.

  Angus said nothing, though he shot her frowns from time to time. She could feel the growls from him even though he kept them stuffed inside.

  He drove to the river and turned onto a highway that ran alongside it. They weren’t far from New Orleans now, which meant not far from Shifter Bureau. Tamsin would have to act soon.

  The alligator’s teeth had gone right into her wrist, tearing flesh, muscle, and tendons down to the bone. Tamsin couldn’t move anything from the elbow down, so who knew what had been shattered. The blood continued to seep out, turning the towel bright red.

  She knew she needed more help than a bandage and a Shifter’s natural ability to heal quickly, but she hid the pain and kept singing, tapping her foot to a rocking beat.

  Angus remained quiet. Every line of him was tight with rage, but Tamsin sensed the fear behind it. Shifter Bureau must have some kind of mighty hold on him. She could work with that.

  She started screeching lead guitar, but got no response from Angus other than more irritated looks. He left the main highway and drove down a winding road past warehouses and river dockyar
ds. After about five miles—Tamsin kept careful track of where they were—he turned through an open gate of rusting wrought iron and went slowly along a lane under an arch of ancient-looking giant oaks.

  Tamsin peered around in surprise, her singing trailing off. The darkness parted as they reached the end of the drive, and moonlight illuminated a house towering above them. Big. Old, with trees around it, vines fluttering over pale brick.

  Angus drove all the way to the porch steps and shut off the engine and the lights.

  “This isn’t Shifter Bureau,” Tamsin said. They favored square, anonymous, sterile office buildings.

  “No kidding.”

  Angus took the keys out of the ignition and closed them in his big hand, as though again fearing Tamsin would grab them, shove him out the driver’s side, and take off. If Tamsin wasn’t hurting so bad, she just might.

  Because her door had no inside handle, she had to wait for Angus to come around and let her out. The window was an old-fashioned crank-down kind—no electronics in this old tank—but she couldn’t get her good hand around to roll it down.

  Angus yanked open the door, reached in, and hauled her out, careful not to touch her injured arm. What a guy.

  He took her up the porch steps to a wide veranda filled with rocking chairs and a porch swing—a lovely place to sit on a summer day with a mint julep and watch the world go by. Tamsin wanted to find out how to make a mint julep just to sit on this beautiful porch with one.

  On the other hand, her fox did not want her to go into that house, which Angus unlocked with a key he took from under a flowerpot. The vibes were making her fur itch.

  “Don’t tell me you live here.” Tamsin peered at the glossy painted door with stained-glass sidelights and then up at the hanging porch lamp that looked new. The lamp swung a bit, though there was no wind. “Collared Shifters are allowed to live in giant plantation houses now, are they? Dark, creepy ones?”

  “Belongs to a friend,” Angus said, his words clipped. “I look in on it for her.”

  “Her. Oh, very interesting.” She shot him a knowing glance, which only earned her another scowl.

  Tamsin didn’t know why she was bothering with nonchalance. Angus was Shifter—he must have already scented she was a terrified pile of mush under her bravado.

  So, why wasn’t he browbeating her or laughing maniacally, maybe evilly rolling his hands and saying things like “You’re in for it now, my pretty”?

  Instead, Angus looked angry as hell that he was doing this. He’d brought her to a place that didn’t belong to Shifter Bureau, but it must belong to a human—Collared Shifters weren’t allowed to own property. Tamsin wasn’t wrong when she said the situation was interesting.

  Angus rattled the key in the lock, cursing under his breath. The door remained closed.

  “Having trouble?” Tamsin asked brightly. “Maybe your girlfriend changed the locks. She’s sending you a signal.”

  “Fucking hell.” Angus stood back and glared at the door. “Just let me in.”

  The lock clicked. Tamsin’s cheeky words ran out as the door slowly opened, a cold draft of wind pouring at them from inside.

  No one was behind the door. Angus grabbed Tamsin by her good arm and hauled her into the house. A flick of switches flooded the downstairs hall with light.

  The old house was in excellent repair, with varnished wooden panels, solid doors, and modern lights made to look vintage. Carved and polished chairs and inlaid tables stood along the hall, the tables filled with trinkets and vases of colorful silk flowers.

  Someone with wealth and taste lived in this house—so what was a tamed Shifter from a Shiftertown doing freely entering it?

  Angus led Tamsin into a bathroom that was tucked under the stairs and shoved her down onto the closed toilet lid. He rummaged in a tall, narrow cabinet next to the sink and brought out bandages, gauze, and antiseptic.

  Tamsin flinched at the sight of them, knowing what was coming would hurt.

  Angus snapped on the water in the sink, lifted Tamsin to her feet, peeled away the now bloody towel, and eased her hurt arm under the stream.

  She was right—it hurt like hell. Tamsin sucked in a breath, and Angus, concern in his eyes, gently sloshed water over the wound. He touched her so carefully his fingers barely brushed her torn skin.

  Once the blood was washed away, Angus ripped open a packet of gauze, soaked it in the antiseptic, and gingerly touched the gauze to her torn skin.

  “Holy . . .” Tamsin whispered.

  “Hurts, but it will help against infection,” Angus said without softening. “Shifters are only so invulnerable.”

  “No kidding.” The worst of the blood and dirt were gone, but Tamsin’s arm was torn all to hell. Shifters healed quickly, but very bad injuries could kill a Shifter as hard as they could a human.

  Angus finished the torture with the antiseptic and then wrapped gauze around her arm and secured it with a long bandage.

  “Should help,” he said.

  Before Tamsin could thank him—or say anything—he had her out of the bathroom and back into the hall. The gentleness with which he’d tended the wound didn’t mean he was going to let her go. Not at all.

  Angus opened a drawer in a hall table and extracted a pair of handcuffs. He growled when Tamsin’s eyes widened, and he said, “Don’t ask.”

  Tamsin grinned. “Kinky.”

  Her bright word died as Angus clicked one of the cuffs around her left wrist and locked the other around a thick newel-post of the staircase.

  “Stay there,” he rumbled. “I need to make some phone calls.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tamsin waited for Angus to move down the hall before she partly shifted to her fox to slide her slim paw out of the handcuff.

  It hurt like hell to do it, because she couldn’t change only one paw—both had to go, and her legs and face started to shift as well. Her injured arm protested, and she spent a moment biting back tears as she resumed her human shape. The fox could move faster, yes, but Tamsin would need her clothes and her money, so human she had to stay for a while.

  She followed the sound of Angus’s voice to a room in the front of the house, next to the front door.

  He’d hear her or see her if she slipped past the room—a human might not, but Angus was obviously a tracker and it was in his best interests to bring her in. He wouldn’t be careless.

  Back door it was.

  Angus’s words rang down the hall. “I don’t care if he’s hibernating for the winter. He said anytime. Was that just bullshit?”

  Whoever Angus spoke to had him furious. Tamsin couldn’t hear the other voice on the phone at this distance, but no matter—it was clear Angus was calling for backup.

  One wolf she could handle. A pack of Shifters cruel enough to give one of their own to Shifter Bureau she could not.

  Tamsin crept down the hall to the back door.

  That door slammed open, and a man stepped in, talking hard into a cell phone. He was on the short side—at least shorter than a Shifter—with black hair and very black eyes, tatts on his arms and neck, and his scent was . . .

  Tamsin stepped back, snarling.

  He eyed her in irritation, but his attention was on whomever he spoke to on the phone. “I told you I’d ask. He can be tetchy. His mate can be too—she hates for him to be called out for every bump and scrape, and I don’t blame her.”

  “Well, tell him it’s an emergency,” Angus’s voice came from down the hall. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Jaycee will vouch for me.” His tone lost confidence. “Maybe.”

  Tamsin swung to look down the hall, then back at the smaller man, who eyed Tamsin up and down. “Yeah, it does look pretty bad. I’ll do what I can.”

  A growl came from the far room, and Angus stepped out and glared down the hall. He lowered the phone and b
ellowed at the smaller man, “What the hell? Why didn’t you say you were right outside?”

  A shrug. “I wasn’t. Until just now.” The man nodded in Tamsin’s direction. “What is she?”

  “What are you?” Tamsin countered. She did not at all like the whiff of otherworld she caught from his scent.

  “Not Fae,” the man said with emphasis. He clicked off his cell phone. “The name’s Ben. Or Gil. Take your pick. Not Fae. Got it?”

  He pushed himself around Tamsin—very carefully not touching her hurt arm—and strode down the hall toward Angus.

  He left the way to the back door clear, and Tamsin headed swiftly for it.

  Ben hadn’t bothered to close the door all the way, and it remained tantalizingly ajar. She heard Ben on the phone again, speaking jovially to whomever they were summoning to keep her here.

  Two more steps, and she’d be gone. She could outrun wolf-man and not-Fae dude easily, but if Angus brought in more backup, she’d be in deep shit.

  “She’s safer if she stays here,” Angus said behind her. “Seriously.”

  Tamsin swung around. Angus wasn’t talking to Ben, who was in the room at the front, still on his phone. Angus’s line of sight was the stairs, but as Tamsin looked wildly at them, she saw no one.

  Screw it. Tamsin bolted for the door.

  Just before she reached it, the door swung closed and quietly clicked shut. Tamsin grabbed the knob, but the door wouldn’t open. She frantically searched for a bolt or lock that held the door in place, but the deadbolt was undone, the knob turned easily, and no chains were in sight.

  She beat on the door with her fist before she told herself not to waste energy. Better to find a window, slide through it—hell, change to fox and climb out through a chimney if she had to.

  Tamsin turned to find Angus right behind her, holding the handcuffs.

  “Just sit here and wait for the healer,” he said. “Unless you want your arm to fall off.”

  Tamsin shook her head with emphasis. “I’m not staying while you call in Shifter after Shifter to keep me prisoner. I’m outta here, wolf-boy.”