“I won’t let it.”
He didn’t blink, didn’t hesitate. His power swarmed around him, a cocoon of heat, making the air around him ripple from the temperature change. Somewhere deep in me, I believed he could do it. By his sheer force of will, he could stop anything bad from happening to me, to us. My insides quieted and the voice I’d come to rely on huffed inside my brain with contentment.
He is powerful. He will protect us.
“Let’s say I agree. What’ll it mean for us? For all of us?”
“Baby, I’m talking about solidifying all the bonds.” He smiled down at me with relief in his eyes as he took my hand in his larger, stronger grasp. “Making you officially the Pack Eithina. Pat and I think it will protect us and the others if our magic is stronger.”
“Didn’t we do that already?” I asked.
“We brought you into the Pack,” he said, stroking circles into my palm. God, that felt so good. How did he always know just what to do to quiet my anxiety? He had no idea what he did to me. Oh wait, yes he did.
“We don’t want to take any chances.” He continued as if he couldn’t scent my lust on the breeze.
“You’re awful talkative this morning.” I glowered at him.
“It’s important,” he said, shaking off my chiding tone. We were alone, without a soul in hearing range or even a squirrel skittering about. If he wasn’t willing to play with me, it meant he was serious.
“They’re coming for us, aren’t they?”
“We think they know what you are. Garrett’s heard rumblings through his contacts about a Fertiri. Others are talking about a Golden Anidae. Whatever happened in Vegas, word’s gotten out.”
I’d been finding myself while in Las Vegas. Truthfully, I’d been hiding from both of them and what they’d meant to me. I’d stumbled across Marabelle and her human servant, Cordero Salazan and he’d been hell bent on slaughtering every werewolf on the planet. I’d killed them both and discovered that my magic was much more than I knew and had shifted to wolf while not actually being a werewolf. It had scared the shit out of me but it did come in handy.
Dean watched me.
I turned from him and stalked a few strides toward the river.
“We can’t just live here in peace?” I asked, not really expecting him to answer. I knew better. The supernatural world wouldn’t let us.
“The board won’t stop,” Dean admitted, maybe for the first time. “Not until we’re all dead and forgotten.”
“If they had just left us in peace,” I mumbled, knowing that for their own survival, Lebensblut couldn’t leave us alone. I wouldn’t have.
I took a deep breath, and cleared my mind. I couldn’t avoid the threat any longer. I took another deep breath, ready to give my answer when a stench so pungent my eyes watered assaulted my nostrils.
“What is that?” I asked, scrunching my nose up with distaste.
“Death,” Dean growled.
A man stepped out from behind the pillar among the trees. His steps were long and slow, almost stumbling over himself without ever diverting his attention away. He lumbered toward us, all stiff legs and dangling arms as if he couldn’t feel his limbs. His eyes never focused on either of us, appearing vacant in a stare that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Covered from head to toe in dirt, it was caked in his dark hair and soiled his clothing like a shroud. His skin was sallow and hung loose from the bone.
“Hey, do you need help?” I asked, taking a step forward. Dean caught my arm and jerked me back. “What’s the—” I started to ask, then got a really good look at the guy. The skin surrounding his mouth was covered in dried blood and his lips were torn, almost shredded, snarling away from his teeth. String dangled from his lips where it was still sewn through the flesh.
“Sssshit!” I hissed. Stepping back into Dean, my back pressed to his front and I took the second of contact to breathe. I shifted my weight to my back foot and pushed off.
The man stumbled forward without deterrent as I raised my fists to defend myself.
A deep rumble vibrated through Dean’s chest beside me as the man got within striking distance.
Swinging his heavy fist, Dean drove his punch deep into the man’s cheek and teeth fell from his mouth as the guy’s jaw smashed. Dean retreated, keeping his fists balled.
I glanced down and caught a glimmer of white as several of the man’s teeth were still imbedded in his hand.
“Ugh, that’s disgusting,” I said, balling my fists beside him.
He didn’t respond.
The man kept coming.
Stones shifted behind me and I turned. A woman in a tattered, pale-pink suit with exaggerated shoulder pads lumbered up from the river. Her clothes were soaked and clung to her gaunt frame. Overly large rimmed glasses hung lopsided on her face as she stumbled toward me with one dirty, white flat on her foot. The other foot was bare. Her face and neck were covered in a thick brown coating of cracked, dried blood.
I kicked out, planting my foot in the woman’s solar plexus. She stumbled back but didn’t flinch as she kept coming. I glanced over my shoulder at Dean. He was having the same trouble that I was but with two of them. Another man had joined in the fight from somewhere.
The woman came at me again, smelling of rotting flesh, fish from the river, blood, and death. I gagged on the stench and took a step back. My stomach churned with the odor and my skin crawled at the vacant expression in her glowing green eyes. She was walking and moving but nobody was home. She lunged at me, and I jumped back tripping on my own feet, trying like hell to keep her hands off me. I didn’t want her touching me, ever.
The woman caught my leg and I fell, forcing her to the ground with me. She was on me like a colony of ants, scrambling as if her limbs weren’t attached at the sockets. She seemed to move quicker on all fours than on two legs and the visual of her awkward movements made my stomach twist in disgust. Hovering above me, she strained her neck, mouth open as she tried to take a chunk out of my throat.
Her body was cold and brittle as I struggled to shove her off. Bones snapped as I slammed my fist into her shoulder but still she came at me. I pried her hand from my neck, breaking fingers in a sharp crack as I forced them away from my skin. She wouldn’t stop coming. Her hand pressed down on my shoulder as her damaged mouth grew closer and closer to my exposed throat. I reached down my hip, sliding my hand beneath my body to the bowie knife hidden along my spine.
Unsheathing the knife, I scraped the metal of the blade against the pavement of the bike path, scratching the silver. Screeching metal sparked in my ears as I drew the knife free. I plunged the eight-inch blade in between her ribs, puncturing her heart with a single clean stroke. I felt the blade graze the bone as it sunk in the woman’s body and cringed at the sensation reverberating through the blade and up my arm. No blood pooled from the wound and I shivered at the implications.
Her jaw clamped down on my shoulder, blunt teeth dug into my flesh, and I bit down on my lip to keep from screaming out. Striking her heart wasn’t working. She still kept coming. Dean roared behind me. He had his hands full and I hoped like hell, he was in a better spot than I was.
I withdrew the knife from her back, turned it in my hand and jabbed it into her neck, drawing it from ear to ear. The blade sank through her dead flesh up to the hilt until more than two inches of the blade showed through to the other side. Her skin melted and sizzled around the silver coated blade but it didn’t stop her.
I forced the knife back and away from me, sawing and severing her spine in a sick pop as the blade broke through bone. Finally, she collapsed above me, her teeth slackened their ferocious grip on my skin, and her hands fell to my sides on the ground, limp.
I kicked the corpse from me and severed the last remaining section of tissue connecting her head to the rest of h
er body. I didn’t want it growing back so this bitch could attack me again. I had no idea if that could happen but I wasn’t willing to take that chance. I gripped the knife tight in my hand, enjoying the feel and weight of it, and thanking whoever was watching over me that I’d strapped it on this morning.
I turned. Dean had the first dead guy on his knees with the other corpse’s head in his hands. I brushed the dirt and leaves from my ass as Dean twisted and ripped the head from the second dead guy’s body.
Dropping the heads at his side, Dean met my eyes, smiling. “You brought a knife running?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Yeah,” I snapped but smiled just the same.
“Feel better?”
“You know,” I said, thinking about the anxiety that had set my teeth on edge just an hour ago. As I wiped the blade on my shorts and slipped it back into the sheath along the small of my back, the antsiness and anxiety were gone. “I do.” I nodded, feeling like myself again. “You bring your phone?”
He reached in his pocket and tossed me his phone. Snatching it from the air, I sifted through the contacts and called Derek.
“Hey, Dean,” Derek said.
“Nope. Not Dean,” I said.
“Hey, Kid, what’s wrong?”
“I found your three bodies from Evergreen.”
“Where are you?” His voice dropped an octave to a ferocious snarl, making him sound more dangerous and determined than I’d ever heard him.
“Down by the Scioto on the bike path just south of Waterford Tower,” I said.
“Wait for me,” he ordered. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I hung up the phone and tossed it back to Dean.
“We’ll need to watch the cemeteries tonight,” I said.
The ground was littered with dead bodies and the sun was just barely up. More people would be on the path as the day wore on. Derek had better hurry. This was too gruesome a sight to stumble upon, even for me.
I sat down at the edge of the bike path on a large rock and got comfortable. We weren’t going anywhere for a while.
“So, tell me more about these bonding ceremonies,” I said, bringing the conversation back full circle. I was back on track and my head was clear. I guess Patrick had been right. What did it say about me that killing something cleared my head? Nothing good, that’s for sure.
Chapter 6
“Tell me what happened,” Derek said, striding up to me.
I was still perched on the rock with Dean sitting on the ground beside me, stiff and unyielding.
The area had been taped off and crime scene techs were scouring the scene. I couldn’t really explain the long, dragging footprints in the dirt on either side of the bike path or the signs of a struggle without sounding like I belonged in a looney bin in front of the techs. So I didn’t. That seemed easiest.
“Dean and I were going for a run and found these three bodies,” I said simply. It wasn’t a lie, not really. It was more like they’d found us but that was splitting hairs.
“That looks pretty nasty,” Derek said, pointing to the wound on my shoulder where the woman had clamped her teeth into my flesh.
“Something bit me,” I answered, leaning forward with my hands clasped between my knees as Derek wrote down what I said. It was the truth, damn it.
“What time did you find . . . the bodies?”
“Right before I called you,” I said.
He closed the notebook and shoved it back in his suit jacket pocket. “Okay, now tell me what really happened.”
“Like I said, we were running and they came at us from both sides,” I said softly, keeping my voice down.
“What do you mean they came at you?” he asked with flared nostrils as he reared back in disgust.
“They walked and attacked us, hence the decapitation. It was the only way we could get them to stop.”
“Shit,” Derek hissed.
“Yep,” Dean huffed.
Derek glanced down at Dean and shook his head, narrowing his gaze on the Alpha. “That’s not everything, is it?”
“They were after Dahlia,” Dean said, his gaze never leaving Derek’s.
“No they weren’t,” I scoffed, knowing full well that he fought off two of them on his own.
“Yeah, they were.” He met my gaze and I knew he was serious. “I blocked them but they were going for her.”
“Could it have been a random attack?” Derek asked as if I wasn’t even there.
“No.”
“How did they know where she would be?” Derek replied.
“It’s our usual route.”
“There’s more. I got a call on the way here. Union Cemetery has six upturned graves and two bodies. That doesn’t bode well for what’s waiting at the next scene.”
Dean glanced up at me and then back at Derek, snorting his annoyance.
“Or for us later,” I muttered, slipping my hand across the back of Dean’s neck. Just to let him know I was still there and safe, I rubbed small circles between his shoulder blades. Sometimes the contact helped him when he felt cornered. His skin was warm under my fingers and I’ll admit it, touching him helped me focus too.
“I’m gonna need the Kid here for a little while,” Derek said with a shrug of apology to Dean.
I got to my feet. Taking a step toward Derek, I stopped when Dean caught my wrist in his firm grasp. I turned back to gaze down at him. I saw the fear furrowing his brow as his grip tightened around my wrist.
“You can’t go.”
“Neither should you,” he grumbled.
Crouching down in front of him, I met his gaze. The Caribbean blue of his wolf flashed through his dark olive-green irises. I could almost feel the tension in him. His wolf knew I could handle myself or I wasn’t fit to be Eithina. The man in him, however, understood I couldn’t heal myself anymore. I was vulnerable and Dean didn’t like it. I stroked my fingers in a light caress across his furrowed brow and down the line of his hard clenched jaw. Smiling, I said, “I love you, too.”
He snorted again but hesitantly loosened the grip he had on my wrist.
“I’ll be fine. I promise.”
He sighed. The breath was heavy in his chest as he closed his eyes and his shoulders slumped in resignation. Dean couldn’t go with me. He couldn’t protect me every second of the day and night. I was different since I’d come back from Faerie and that worried him. Baba Yaga had left me weaker than I’d been since I’d taken a piece of Danny’s heart into me. I think, somewhere deep down, Dean blamed himself for what he considered Baba Yaga’s theft. I wasn’t quite human again but I wasn’t as quick to heal either. What he didn’t understand was that I would have gladly sacrificed much more than my healing to keep both of the men I loved safe.
His heat wrapped around me, engulfing me with the link between us as Gaoh and Eithina. Power prickled along my skin, burning and I leaned in to press a soft kiss against his warm lips. But nothing between us was every chaste. Desire surged through me to my core and he chuckled against my mouth, releasing my hand.
“You did that on purpose,” I whispered.
“Stay and I’ll finish what you started.” His invitation was so low in the back of his throat that I wasn’t sure Derek heard it only steps away.
“Later,” I whispered.
He nodded with resignation.
I stood and strode away as Derek fell into step beside me.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Derek asked, glancing back at Dean.
The Alpha’s gaze was fixed on me and I could feel it in every cell of my body. He watched me with the clear intent of a predator and some part of me liked it.
“Oh, there are a million things I’m not telling you,” I answered with a sly grin.
“Anything I need to know?”
“Probably.”
“But you’re not going to tell me? Are you?” There was an edge to his voice that made me take a second look at him and then a glance back at Dean.
No. I wouldn’t have Derek worrying the same way Dean and Patrick did now. Especially when there was nothing any of them could do about it.
Turning a bright, confident expression up to my friend, I smiled. “Nope.”
I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman piled on top of the smaller-framed woman. The bones of the fingers sticking out from the flesh had been torn away but were long and thick. On the other hand, the pelvis, visible and gleaming from being licked clean was wide and spread open. There were chunks here and there but most of the flesh on both bodies had been torn away. The ground was coated in a thick sheen of congealed blood that had dried to a deep russet film over the manicured grass.
The two bodies appeared as if they’d been shoved and dragged until they were stacked on top of one another. The grass had been smeared with blood further out than the pool of bodies as if something had been herded here. The sweet iron scent of the stain overpowered the stench of death rotting in a pile before my eyes and for the first time, I was thankful of that.
I took a few steps back and followed the smears of blood across the grass. Stumbling upon one open grave after another and trying to avoid the ones still intact, I followed the blood trail until I’d traced a line back to a salt circle at the very rear of the cemetery. I knelt down and ran my hand over the fine crystals embedded in the blades of grass as if stomped into place. Magic tingled beneath my fingers with that same dark edge that had been at the other cemetery. It crawled up my spine, a thousand spiders marching across my flesh. I jerked my hand away, cradling it against my chest to ebb the surge of magic still tingling across my skin.
Emerald Fire (A Blushing Death Novel Book 6) Page 4