“You are a stubborn woman.” Michael held out the shirt.
Kaitlin searched the dark, hoping to find different answers than the ones Michael had already given her. Wolf? Damn.
“Come,” Michael said, offering both the shirt and a hand.
She didn’t place her fingers in his. In touching Michael, she’d feel human again and needier than ever, when according to Michael, being human was far from the truth. If her fate was sealed, she had to give in and embrace what Michael and his moon were telling her.
“Cover your head so you won’t have to feel the light,” he advised. “Maybe that will help to ease your fears.”
She shook her head.
“All right.” Michael sat down on the bench. “I’ll just sit here then, and watch you go.”
The idea of leaving the overhang rendered her immobile. Their shelter suddenly seemed to Kaitlin like a tiny ship in a vast sea of uncertainty. Who was she kidding? She wasn’t going out there alone. She wasn’t really that brave.
“You’ve scared me, that’s all,” she said. “This whole night has scared me.”
“The vampires are gone, Kaitlin. If you’re talking about becoming a werewolf, I honestly thought you’d prefer life over the alternative, no matter where that life led,” Michael said. “There are good parts to being what you now are, you know.”
“Such as?”
“The park is a great place without the monsters currently tearing it up. The camaraderie of a pack is like nothing else, and almost equals the sensation of moonlight on your skin. My world is sensuous and beautiful beyond the top layer that other people see. And due to our added strength, we don’t have to be afraid of much.”
“Beneath that top layer is a fur coat,” Kaitlin said.
“True. Yet after a while, even those who weren’t born to the wolf begin to like it.”
She faced the park. “If I’m already feeling odd, and it’s not just sickness, what will happen to me if I step out there? What if I feel the moon already?”
“It can’t be the moon.”
“Okay. I’m going to find out,” she whispered, with an added inward maybe. If she took a giant step, she’d know for sure if what she was feeling was fear or something else. Something worse than fear.
With her eyes closed, she slid a sandaled toe forward, allowing two inches of skin to meet that damn mystical lure Michael had mentioned, hoping for the best, praying for a miracle.
*
The look Kaitlin gave him when she turned her head was one of a sorely wounded soul in search of enlightenment. Anger was in that look, and condemnation.
Could he blame her?
Nothing happened when she stuck out her foot, though it was clear that she had anticipated a reaction.
Michael shot to his feet, anxious about this whole deal, and was beside her in a flash. Kaitlin’s eyes were glassy, her face pale enough to belong to the undead. She was looking at him without seeing him. Looking through him.
Muttering an inward curse, he reached out to her. Kaitlin shied away, leaving the shelter of the overhang by taking several steps into the night. Standing in the open, with a mixture of moonlight and darkness crossing her features, she gazed up at the sky as if tempting the moon to strike. Here I am, he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her say.
But she remained silent.
“Talk to me,” he said quietly to the woman who single-handedly obliterated what he’d come to expect as the usual process of transitioning from human to Other. It was clear to him that she was feeling something.
He had never seen this kind of recovery or the arrival of her current level of awareness, and wasn’t sure how to proceed. His plan to hand her over to Rena might have backfired because he wasn’t certain Rena would understand the complexity of this particular case, either.
What was she seeing, standing there?
What was she feeling?
He closed his eyes and looked into her mind.
“Kaitlin,” he said, able to feel the stirring, faint movement of the wolf tucked deep inside her as easily as if his own wolf was doing the fidgeting.
He cut off a rising growl. Kaitlin’s wolf was waking before the rest of her could catch up. The moon was calling to her early, and that just wasn’t right.
She wasn’t Lycan. There wasn’t one real wolf bone in her body. A possible explanation for her reaction to wolf blood was that he had given her too much of it and her system was in a state of confusion. He really didn’t know what to expect. Although Kaitlin wasn’t the first human he had protected from fanged demons, she was the first human he had shared his life force with. The first person he’d wanted to share himself with. Rescuing her had felt personal.
“Kaitlin.” He called to her again, moving to within touching range without actually making contact. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I see things. Valleys and hills.” Her voice was distant, as if she was relating part of another dream. Michael figured she was hallucinating, since there were no hills or valleys surrounding the college, and they were standing on flat, grassy ground.
He wondered if Kaitlin wouldn’t be able to handle her transition, if he had merely extended her life by hours, instead of years, before that inner bonfire took her down. She looked otherworldly as she stood there, and more transparent than solid. Paler. Slighter than ever.
When she spoke again, his heart fluttered.
“More of them.” Her gray eyes flashed as she struggled to focus.
“More of what, Kaitlin?”
“Vampires.”
“Damn it all to hell!” Michael didn’t question her perception. He put his fingers in his mouth to whistle, knowing the pack would still be relatively close and patrolling the area, and that they would hear his call.
“These damn bloodsuckers just aren’t going to give up,” he said with his senses on full peripheral scan. “I don’t know why so many of them are coming out tonight. There must be a reason.”
As he looked at Kaitlin, Michael began to consider whether this new wave of bloodsuckers had something to do with her. Was Kaitlin some kind of vampire magnet?
Insane idea. He shrugged it off. Vampires didn’t plan, or have specific goals for taking revenge on their enemies. Vampires only wanted one thing, and that was to feed. Their entire existence depended on finding humans to feed on. Yet they were coming to this area as if he, Kaitlin and this damn park were ground zero for an undead rally.
“I have to get you home.” He waved the blue shirt at her and stressed the word. “Now.”
Seeming to comprehend the problem, she nodded. Instead of coming to him, though, she spun on her heels and took off at a run in the opposite direction…like a damn little half-human fool who hadn’t believed a word he’d said.
*
Kaitlin couldn’t breathe but refused to stop running, sure that if she kept going she could outdistance the nightmares that felt like her past, present and future all rolled into one big terrible tangle.
She felt much too vulnerable near Michael, possibly because she actually was. He held all the cards. He was the keeper of Lycan secrets. Michael wanted her to be strong, while also fostering her need for him. He would gladly have carted her home, and then what?
She was alive, and riddled with guilt about that. Michael belonged with his pack. If his pack were to accept her, and that was what she ended up wanting, she’d have to get Michael to sever whatever ties bound them together so that he could do what he needed to do without worrying about her.
So she ran away from him, dreading every yard of ground she covered that created more distance and lamenting her need for space. She needed to be on her own to think. Michael needed to be with his pack. She would face this werewolf prognosis head-on as soon as her emotions caught up.
She ran without assistance or support, not looking at the moon. Her legs were strong enough to carry her over grass and concrete, and those things kicked up familiar, comforting smells in a world that had first spun h
er around and then dumped her on her ass.
She didn’t feel like a werewolf, despite the sickness inside her. Her legs were her legs. Her chest heaved with a need for oxygen like any human’s lungs did while sprinting. Still, if being a werewolf meant she’d stop being afraid of every damn shadow, maybe that was a good thing.
“I’m still Kaitlin!” she shouted to the moon that was supposedly going to help change her.
What she wasn’t, she quickly found out, was fast enough to outdistance a vampire.
*
Michael moved so fast, his surroundings seemed to have liquefied. Kaitlin didn’t know how to truly perceive the dead, and she was heading toward one of them.
He ran for only a short time before allowing his wolf to take over. Arms, legs, feet, torso began to morph in record time. With one good leap into the air as a man, he landed as a wolf and bounded forward with the kind of speed only an animal could utilize.
With the sound of cars in the distance and civilization too close to put him at ease, he became aware of Kaitlin’s racing heartbeats before seeing her. In his wolf vision, she was a heat source.
He also detected that vampire slithering through the dark on a parallel path to the one she had taken.
He caught up to her in seconds. Hurtling past Kaitlin with a fury inside him that bordered on insanity, Michael lunged at the vampire, meeting it in a tremendous body slam that sent shock waves through the air.
They fell and rolled over in the grass, tumbling body over body until Michael came out on top. Without hesitation, he bit down on the vamp’s neck, severing ligaments and everything else in his way, until the vamp’s head rolled away from its emaciated body.
Done deal. The undead could survive a lot of damage, but not without a head. He had to assume that the person that vampire had once been would have thanked him for putting him out of his afterlife misery.
The whole thing took less than a minute. When he looked up with his muzzle dripping vampire blood, he was afraid of the picture he presented to Kaitlin.
She wasn’t there.
Without the ability to speak, he was momentarily at a loss. He backed up, searching the area, convinced that he had to be mistaken, and that she had to be hiding nearby.
He heard the pack coming. They were running full tilt, cutting through the night like well-aimed arrows homing in on a target. As for himself, shifting back and forth from his wolf form so many times in a short period had left him lacking in sustainable energy and panting with the effort to maintain his current shape.
Wanting to run, to find Kaitlin and chase more vampire prey, Michael waited for the pack to arrive. Rena was in front, and slid to a stop beside him. All four Weres wrinkled their human noses. Four menacing human growls of disgust rumbled in the dark.
Rena said, “Where’s Kaitlin?”
Michael growled a reply.
“Shit,” Rena said, already sniffing for clues as to the direction Kaitlin had taken. “There’s something chasing her.”
The others nodded in agreement.
Michael was already gathering to move.
“Michael.” Rena again faced him. “Though I don’t condone what might happen, it would end your responsibility where she is concerned if you let her be. Like she wants you to.”
Yeah. That’s not going to happen.
Michael leaped ahead, tearing through the night, pounding the ground, swallowing the dark breeze as he followed Kaitlin’s trail like a wolf possessed.
Old thoughts reemerged as he raced on; bits of remembered remarks and phrases from his youth.
There are some good humans, Michael, but it’s not worth risking our species to seek them out.
People have always shunned what they know to be different, and that fact will never change.
Your mother didn’t stand a chance against silver bullets specifically designed to take down our kind, from the weapon of a hunter because of greed and a hatred for what he could not understand.
No one came to your mother’s aid. None of us were near.
I’m sorry, son. I will always regret having to tell you that your mother is not coming back.
He heard those words often enough to be able to see his father’s lips moving. His dislike of getting close to humans had grown from that moment. He had vowed never to interfere where he didn’t belong. And then he had helped a human named Kaitlin without thinking, feeling her pain and picturing his mother alone and dying. Wondering what would have happened if someone had kicked that wolf hunter to kingdom come and helped his mom get home.
He had broken a deep-seated personal vow. Now he knew he had imprinted with a human whether or not he had meant to. For a werewolf, imprinting was an unbreakable union, and lifelong.
Kaitlin must have felt this, too. She had been chained to him by his actions. Though she wanted to be fiercely independent, that wasn’t going to be the direction of her future.
Hell.
He loped faster, glad that Kaitlin had sensed the monsters on the loose tonight and had the wits to run. She was heading back toward the college. In a night of missteps, moving toward a crowd might be one small thing in Kaitlin’s favor.
He ran faster.
She had veered toward a building that used to be the main college library. While the building wasn’t empty or derelict, and still housed some collections, it was no longer the gathering place for most of the university’s student population, by the looks of things on a Monday night.
His hopes slid a little. The fact that the building wasn’t empty was a worrisome detail that had to be carefully considered. Who wouldn’t notice a large wolf shadowing a woman through corridors and half-empty shelves?
Kaitlin? Michael sent a silent call. Hold on. I’m coming.
He had promised she would be safe tonight, and that promise had been broken. Would she believe anything he said after this?
A rain of dark, foul-smelling ash struck his muzzle, but Michael kept running. A vampire had perished here just moments ago. Who had seen to that if his pack was behind him?
He was accosted by another strange scent that he almost recognized until something deferred his attention from it.
His head came up. His ears pricked forward.
Bless her pale, shapely hide. Across that chain binding them together, Kaitlin had heard him and was answering his silent call.
Chapter 10
The beast on her tail was closing in.
Kaitlin tore through the hallway like a winged demon, knowing this old library better than most people, having spent a year doing research here before the newer building opened. She hoped that fact would help her now.
She moved right, turned left down a long corridor, not sure if she should shout for help or lead the monster away from the few other people occupying this building. She wasn’t sure she could handle this new threat, or even face it.
To say that this had been a long day was an understatement. She had set her studies aside in order to learn something entirely new that would help to guide her future. The scent of vampire was one of those things. And though that putrid odor would be forever embedded in her lungs, it didn’t mesh with the unusual smell of the thing chasing her.
Were there different smells for different vampires?
Were there different kinds of vampires?
Guilt about running away from Michael was an added pain to the pressure in her lungs, but she couldn’t have this both ways. Either she wanted him with his pack, or with her.
Still, facts were facts. She was a hindrance to his pack when dealing with these monstrous fanged creeps. Her family’s credo had been about keeping out of trouble by not standing out. By blending in. Following their lead, while at times resisting her rise of inner rebelliousness had been her daily quest.
She ran as fast as she could, energized by fear. Nerves were firing. Adrenaline was dumping into an overwrought system.
Without having to look, Kaitlin knew the beast was right behind her. Maybe running turned vampires o
n. Possibly their minds had been left for dead, while the rest of them worked off the smell of terror. Being near other people didn’t seem to deter this particular monster. Neither did racing through enclosed, lighted hallways.
Her pursuer’s presence was like a dark, unshakable shadow. A reminder she didn’t need about the things vampires were capable of. Yet there was also a familiar pressure in the air that sliced through the rest of this sensory bullshit. Wolf.
One more right turn brought her to the staircase leading to the mezzanine overlooking the main library floor. Circumventing a few people by managing to remain just out of sight, Kaitlin groped for an idea about what to do next. Although she didn’t want to call Michael again, she whispered his name.
The irony of sprinting through a research facility when she couldn’t stop to learn more about what was chasing her stayed with Kaitlin as she raced through another row of mostly empty shelves. There were only so many places to get away from this thing.
Damn it. I’m screwed.
Kaitlin? Hold on. I am coming.
Michael’s words buzzed through her with a crackle of electricity. In the midst of a high-speed chase probably not destined to end well, his effect on her continued to exemplify the word seductive.
Running from Michael had been a stupid move. She saw that now. She kept moving, dodging shelves, breathing through her mouth. Though Michael wasn’t here in person, she knew he soon would be. All she had to do was hang on and take this monster on an extended tour of the stacks.
Kaitlin hoped to God she could do that, because it was going to take a miracle to pull off. Then again, she had already experienced one miracle, care of Michael, and was exhaling the breath to prove it.
“Hurry, Michael,” she whispered, resigned to be a damsel this one last time, and swearing a solemn oath not to make it a habit.
*
Hurry, Michael.
Kaitlin’s shout reverberated inside Michael’s skull leaving a long, lingering echo.
When he reached the entrance to the library building, he knew he’d have to lose the fur. Problem was, beneath that fur he was naked, which would no doubt cause quite a stir in university hallways, especially since the days of thrill-seeking streakers were over.
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