Bless her, she had proved herself tough enough to handle what came her way tonight, making some headway into being accepted by his pack. Vampires in the park. The werewolf in the library. She wasn’t used to being half wolf, and now there was a suggestion she might not fit the half human part of the equation.
None of that mattered here, he supposed. He had to get the heat off Kaitlin and allow her some breathing room. Everything else could be handled in private. There was a criminal to catch. Everyone here was at risk.
The arrival of Dylan’s friends was both a relief and a distraction. The two Miami wolves heading their way garnered everyone’s attention.
“Tory and Adam,” Dylan said by way of introduction.
It didn’t take Michael long to observe the details of what amounted to a super team of hunters. These Miami Weres radiated strength and power. Existing in a big city like Miami would mean they were tough, resilient and experienced.
Tory, the Lycan female, was a stunner with long, curly red hair and perfectly white, flawless skin. In spite of the balmy night, she was dressed in leather.
Her light-colored eyes gave him the impression she had seen a lot, been through a lot. In that gleam lay the hint of a world filled with pleasure and pain in equal doses. Her serious expression revealed a depth of sadness that didn’t quite eclipse the tension she tucked inside her deceptively svelte body.
The other Were was male, tall, well-built, with a dangerous aura most career cops had. Adam Scott had dark hair and a tan complexion marred by a scar that ran down the left side of his face. He carried a gun, and was too far out of his jurisdiction to exhibit a badge. That scar would have proved he wasn’t a Lycan if his scent hadn’t. If he’d been Lycan, no evidence of past battles would have remained for public viewing. And that gun he carried had to have been modified for a Were’s aversion to metal.
Miami had sent an A-team after Chavez.
Still, something else about this pair needled at Michael’s mind before he figured out what that was. The red wolf and the cop were a pair. A couple. The fact that they had imprinted was written all over them, from the way the cop let Tory take the lead, to the way her expression eased when she looked at Adam Scott. They were lovers. Mates.
Michael looked to Kaitlin and back to the pair, wanting to question the validity of his perceptions. These two, from different backgrounds, had imprinted and had been accepted into Judge Landau’s Miami pack. Lycan rules about preserving undiluted Lycan blood had been broken with this pairing, and no one seemed to care.
“What about the rogue I saw?” Michael asked Dylan, getting back to the situation confronting them and the reason for their visit.
“It’s likely that one was created recently, which is why we have to find Chavez as soon as possible. We don’t have long until the full moon,” Dylan said.
“Clement is a small city. There’s no room to hide a force like Chavez and his gang. If there were to be a bite club, it would be big news.”
“That’s why we need to catch him here, before he moves on to a larger city. There are fewer places to hide here, and as you say, a population this small would notice a missing person or two.”
“Hell,” Michael muttered. “Clement wouldn’t know what hit it.”
“Let’s hope Clement doesn’t have to,” Dylan said.
Kaitlin retreated several paces. Michael felt her fatigue and flagging energy, a state made worse by the reminder of how close the next full moon was.
He wanted to hold her, and couldn’t do that. Being Alpha of his pack and acting like one had to take precedence over his emotions.
“What else am I?” Kaitlin addressed Dylan, interrupting with wide, innocent eyes. “If you know so much, maybe you can tell me that.”
Dylan Landau turned his light eyes her way. “I really don’t know. I have met only one other female who had a vibe similar to yours.”
“What was she?” Kaitlin pressed.
“Something dark,” Dylan replied. “Though it turned out okay.”
Kaitlin faced Devlin. “What were you suggesting I might be, with your Irish remarks?”
Devlin shrugged. “It’s not for me to say.”
“That would be a first,” Rena quipped wryly.
The importance of catching a fiend like Chavez took a momentary backseat to the female Michael called his little wolf, and who two Weres had just insinuated might turn out to be so much more than that.
Not for the first time, he wondered what the hell was going on.
*
Nothing Dylan had said about her made sense, Kaitlin thought. She was as human as anyone else in Clement. At least she had been until last Friday night.
Had everyone gone crazy?
Had she?
Scanning the faces in this circle of Weres, she couldn’t read any of their expressions. She did sense the emotional turmoil under the surface that no one was showing up front.
“So,” she finally said, refusing to let this go when it was so damn important. “If that’s true, and you all think I’m something else, as yet undefined…what would that do to the half human, half wolf classification this pack has already given me?”
No one seemed to be able to answer to that, or dared to give an answer a shot. Kaitlin again looked to Devlin. “Why don’t you give it a go, since you brought it up in the first place?”
“Well,” he said. “I suppose the rest would depend on what percentage that other part might be.”
“Which is what we all picked up on without understanding why,” Rena said, catching on. “And again, can we get on with the creeps who have invaded out town?”
“Yes,” Michael agreed. “Kaitlin’s heritage isn’t our problem. Mad werewolves who chew on others for sport are.”
Tory, the Lycan female, spoke up. “I’m guessing more than one of these buildings has a basement, and that Chavez would pick a place like that to hide in.”
“He’d have to share it with vampires,” Rena said.
Adam Scott had a deep, authoritative voice. “That means we either do a sweep, building by building, and preferably after everyone in those buildings has gone home for the night, or we wait until the next moon and watch the fireworks as Chavez reappears with whomever he has bitten between now and then.”
“Hell, how many wolves could that be?” Michael asked.
“You don’t even want to know,” Adam replied.
Kaitlin zeroed in on the scar on Adam Scott’s face, then touched her neck to finger what remained of the injury that would also leave a mark like that. She wondered what had caused Adam’s wound, and if it had been an injury on his day job or the antics of a crazy werewolf like the one that had cornered her in the library. Was Adam here for retribution?
Cade spoke. “In the meantime, we potentially face a slew of vampires in each of those places, all of them up and kicking in the dark.”
Kaitlin searched the faces in the circle, not certain where things would head next. Night air sparked with the power of the combined presence of these Weres. She should have been proud to be one of them, and accepted by them. At the moment, and with all the cryptic insinuations about her possible heritage, she would have preferred to stick to the part human, part wolf description…with no room for housing anything potentially far worse.
“What do you think, Kaitlin?” Dylan was asking her.
“What do you mean?” she returned.
“Can you venture a guess as to where the rogues might be? Or where they won’t be because of a nest of vampires?”
She was shoulder to shoulder with Michael. His tension increased with Dylan’s question.
“You think I’d know that?” she said.
“Didn’t a vampire hurt you?” Dylan asked.
Her hand was on her throat, which meant that Dylan didn’t miss much.
“If one did, you might be able to sense them better than we can,” Dylan continued. “From farther away.”
She thought back. It was true that she had sensed v
ampires tonight and had warned Michael, but how she had done that was a mystery. Fear of being out of her league among these experienced Weres kept her from speaking. Michael was looking at her. They all were.
“It can’t hurt to try to locate them,” Dylan suggested. “Maybe part of you understands how to do that.”
“Why would it?” Michael’s voice registered his uneasiness with this line of questioning.
“Because she has been up close with one in a different way,” Dylan said.
Hell, could everyone read her mind? Did all of these Weres know what had happened to her?
“Sorry,” Kaitlin said, frustrated, scared all over again by Dylan’s reminder of that vampire attacker’s foul breath and how close she had come to dying. “I don’t see how I can know their location when I barely know the direction of my apartment.”
Michael moved. Turning slowly, he spoke to everyone. “Let it go. We can start the search and do one building at a time if we have to.”
As all eyes shifted to him, Kaitlin swayed. The ground was moving, and a quick look at the others told her no one else had noticed. More outside pressure came, as if the night again was closing in. Piled on top of the internal pressure threatening to make her shout, she caught a new scent that was similar to the sharp odor of rotting wood.
She widened her stance. Raising her face to the sky, Kaitlin drew in a breath of night air that might have carried a message of sorts if she could figure out how to access it. Both the earth and the wind were trying to communicate with her, and that notion was bizarre. Still, she had a feeling their message was important.
Was it a warning? A signal to be wary?
Why did she think the wind could speak her language?
Who would believe it?
*
Michael felt the direction Kaitlin’s mind had taken. Before he had a chance to explore further, she slammed a mental door in his face. He didn’t know how she did that, because it was a barrier he could not scale.
Before long the others would notice how Kaitlin had frozen in place. They would note the ashen pallor of her face. Getting her out of there was crucial. She wouldn’t want them to discover the reason for her sudden color loss. Sooner or later, they would pick up with greater detail the new thing blossoming inside her.
The rapid growth of the wolf inside Kaitlin was like nothing he had ever encountered. He couldn’t wrap his senses around the reason for its early intensity, or comprehend why it was happening to her at all…unless Dylan and Devlin were right, and she wasn’t quite human to begin with. Perhaps they were nearer to the truth than he had been because he was close to her on a level that extended far beyond their brief acquaintance with her.
Imprinting with Kaitlin was no joke. Lust and attraction and cravings were all part of that. Longings to be near her, to touch and smell her, had been magnified to alarming proportions. Because of that, it was entirely possible that he had missed something important.
Hell…maybe he hadn’t felt sorry for her that fateful night and some kind of magic had been at work the whole time, directing his actions where Kaitlin was concerned. Maybe she had lured him there.
Her aliveness was expanding. The thing centered at her core had picked up a glow, as if an internal lantern had been lit. She had wavered in and out of transparency prior to this, or so he’d thought, convinced at those times that he had made those things up.
He wasn’t so convinced about his imagination now.
Dylan had been wrong in assuming what Kaitlin hid was dark, though. If this other side of her carried dark traits, it did a damn fine job of faking the opposite. Michael was afraid that if she stood here much longer, that internal light might shine from her pores, becoming a beacon for every living thing in their surroundings.
Light was the essential element that vampires and rogue Weres lacked, the element that species clinging to the dark left behind, along with their former lives. That had to be why they were attracted to her.
He also wanted to melt into that inner light, and into her. Kaitlin Davies was some kind of unidentifiable spirit, and this first inkling of what that spirit looked like would have surprised everyone here. Even Kaitlin didn’t know this. Whatever had been hidden inside her must have been dormant before tonight.
As her gaze gravitated to him, the wind picked up. For a moment, Michael believed she had conjured it. But it was an ill wind that Kaitlin was showing him, and tucked inside it wafted the unmistakable odor of several bad things.
Chapter 13
Rena was the first to speak. “Hey, are you all right?”
Michael shook off the spell he’d been under and barked, “Fine,” then pointed to Dylan. “There’s a nest in the building beside the athletic field.” He inhaled deeply, finding images in the wind. “More unwelcome guests are being housed in a warehouse beside the dorms.”
No one asked how he had managed to pinpoint the intruders so quickly, and he wouldn’t have told them anyway. Kaitlin’s secret rogue-honing ability was safe with him for the time being, despite Dylan questioning her about it. While he had a feeling she had called up the wind blowing through the circle, he was the one putting names to the evil nestled inside it.
At the moment, Kaitlin didn’t look well. Possibly she was wondering the same thing about calling up that wind, and recognizing the hints of what it carried.
“I’ll take Kaitlin home first, and then we can rendezvous at the field,” he said. “She’s not up for the kind of guests we’re expecting.”
Kaitlin didn’t argue with that. No one else did, either.
Michael felt some semblance of relief. Her unusual fast track toward her wolf had shifted from his shoulders to those of her parents. He had nothing to do with this other side of Kaitlin. Family secrets were always a burden, but her family obviously had not told her about theirs.
Relief was quickly replaced with empathy. How could her family have hidden a secret like this? Or did her family even know about her, if Kaitlin didn’t?
Had she heard those comments? Damn it, he’d forgotten to seal them off. Stiff, and as white as a ghost, Kaitlin whispered, “Please help me.”
And that was exactly what he was going to do.
Taking her hand, Michael nodded to the others and headed for the trees with the knowledge that Kaitlin wasn’t up to chasing after more turmoil.
Hell, neither was he.
*
War raged inside Kaitlin. She hadn’t been able to duck fast enough to avoid all the bad information flooding her mind. The world had changed one too many times and she was having a hard time keeping up. If her DNA carried something that was other than human, and also other than the new infusion of wolf, she’d have a lot to confront her family about. The family she had always trusted and loved.
Did this make the other members of her family different, too?
How different?
The answer, whenever it decided to show up, made family decisions and directions about not standing out in a crowd doubly dubious. Was the fact that they didn’t want to stand out because the Davies clan was something Other?
The opposing factions inside her didn’t know how to respond to the latest round of news. One side wanted her to growl in distress. The other wanted her to disappear.
Beyond her thunderous heartbeats the night had become a symphony of sounds that were like nature’s music. Night birds sang in the distance. Grass rustled as she and Michael walked.
Leaves swayed and crinkled over their heads. Branches rubbed together. This stuff had nothing to do with the moon that peeked out from behind overhead clouds. She had heard this kind of music only once before, in a recent dream.
“Do you have any idea what that secret is?” Michael asked as they walked briskly toward the street. “The one someone in your family might have kept from you?”
Kaitlin shook her head.
“You need to talk to me, Kate. Tell me what I can do to make this easier for you.”
“Michael.” The word wa
s special, safe, and made her feel better. But it was only his name, not a talisman or an answer to Michael’s questions.
“I only have an inkling of what you’re going through,” he said. “It’s very different in my case, since I knew from the start what my family was, and what I was. No secrets there.”
Michael was taking her home, doing his best to help and honestly trying to understand the situation. She loved him for that.
“I’m scared.” She tugged on Michael’s hand to make sure the bond was tight, wishing some of his incredible strength and confidence would rub off on her. “And I’m sick of being afraid.”
She remembered saying this same thing to Michael before. How long ago had that been? Hours? Days? She had lost track of time. God, could it have been only that morning? Was this the same damn day that she had awakened screaming?
“You haven’t noticed the moonlight for a while,” he observed.
“I do feel it. I had made up my mind to give in before…” Before what? Before two werewolves she didn’t know had pegged her as being different? Before a beast these guys called a rogue tried to make her his dinner?
Had Dylan’s and Devlin’s attention been the initial spark that started the ball rolling on that new Otherness inside her? Was the wind to blame? The wind that turned the movement of branches into voices that sang of starlight, escape and freedom?
She feared she might have a nervous breakdown trying to piece this together before they reached the street.
“How could you know where the monsters were hiding when the rest of us couldn’t?” Michael asked.
“I saw a picture in my mind.”
“Like the hills and valleys you spoke of earlier?”
“Yes. Like that. Just a picture I was able to decode.” She glanced at Michael. “Maybe those pictures will go away if I don’t concentrate on them.”
“Would you like them to go away?”
“Yes.” She tested his grip again and found it secure. “There’s more.”
“Like what?” Michael asked, slowing their pace.
“Something very dark is nearby, coating whatever light remains in this place.”
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