Harlequin Nocturne March 2014 Bundle: ShadowmasterRunning with Wolves

by Susan Krinard

  She stared at him with incredulity filling her face. “You didn’t know my father. You’re too young. How dare you tell me you promised him? I’m not going anywhere with you. Now I think you should leave.”

  He stepped toward her then stopped as fear widened her eyes and she backed up against the cabinets.

  “I don’t know why your parents didn’t tell you about The Colony or about yourself, and I’m sorry for that, but I don’t have time to explain it all to you now. Those cracks in your walls aren’t caused by fault lines. They are doorways splitting open and leading into a demon dimension. Soon they will be wide enough for the Gauliacho to get through. Trust me, you don’t want to be here when they do.”

  “Demons! Are you listening to yourself?”

  “I know it sounds crazy.”

  “It doesn’t just sound crazy. It is crazy.”

  “It’s the truth. You heard the whispering. You breathed their air and it made you sick.”

  She stared at him wide-eyed and began shaking her head back and forth. “No. It’s. Not. Now get out.”

  * * *

  How could Shay have been so stupid? She knew better than to invite a stranger into her home. But she’d been distracted by his good looks and tempted by his cold hard cash. Idiot. Never before had a smooth-talking handsome man fooled her, and the one time one had....

  And then she noticed the pictures that were missing off her kitchen wall and her fingers froze at her sides. “What have you done with my photos?”

  He held up her tote bag. “I packed them. We’re taking them with us. You shouldn’t need them to prove who you are, but it wouldn’t hurt. Bring your papers, too—birth certificate, driver’s license and anything that might have this symbol on it.” He pulled up his sleeve and showed her a tattoo on his forearm of a large swirling circle with five claws sticking out from the sides.

  Shay gasped as her knees weakened. Coffee forgotten, she dropped into a chair at the table. The tattoo was exactly like the one her father had worn. Her hand fluttered to her neck, to the amulet hidden beneath her shirt as she recalled her father’s words the night he’d given it to her.

  You’re a big girl now, Shay. Big enough to wear a big girl’s necklace. Do you see this symbol? Her dad had swung the obsidian amulet in front of her. This is a symbol of a very special place. A place where your daddy came from. If anyone ever comes to you and they have a symbol like this, you must trust them. You must go with them. Never take it off. Promise me, pumpkin?

  All these years and she’d kept her word. She’d never taken it off. And now someone who had a symbol just like hers was here.

  You must trust them.

  But how could she?

  “I’m sorry I don’t have time to explain everything that is happening to you. Please trust me when I tell you that you are in danger. We both are. What happened in town today was just the beginning. We have to get out of here. We have to get you back to The Colony where you will be safe.”

  “Why?” She didn’t understand. How could she? “Why this colony? Where is it?”

  “The demons can’t sense us there. It’s protected.”

  Shay stood on shaky legs. “And you’re saying that once I go there...” She couldn’t finish the words.

  “You might be able to leave. Like I can, but only for short periods of time. Most choose not to.”

  Unbidden tears filled her eyes. She didn’t know why. She didn’t believe him. She didn’t have to listen to him, even if she could still hear her father’s voice echoing in her mind. But it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. “This was my grandmother’s home. It’s my home. Buddy and I love it here. We can’t just leave. We won’t leave.”

  Jason sat back in his chair and took a deep breath. “What has been happening to you, the colors you’ve been seeing—”

  A chill swept over and wrapped around her. How could he know about that?

  “Have you started to hear the buzzing yet?”

  She stared at him, unable to move. To breathe. Was it possible that he was telling her the truth? How else could he know these things?

  “It’s part of the change. Your body is transforming, and that transformation is what is attracting the demons. Soon it will draw the Gauliacho, too. They’ll come through the walls, through the cracks. We can’t be here when that happens. Please, Shay, pack what you absolutely must have and do it quickly. We have to go.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe you know some things about me that you shouldn’t know, but that doesn’t mean I am going to give up my home and run away with you. I don’t know anything about you. I don’t believe what you’re saying. I just... I won’t go.”

  Silence thickened the air between them and she was finding it hard to pull in a breath. He was angry, she could see it in the bunching of his muscles, could hear it in the sharp intake of his ragged breath.

  “I don’t think you understand,” he started again, his face tense, his eyes dark. Energy pulsed around him, making him look bigger than he was, stronger, more lethal.

  How could she have invited him into her home? Why hadn’t she seen this side of him? How big he was? How dangerous? And yet, he had the tattoo. And she had the echoes of her father’s words playing around the edges of her mind. You can trust them.

  “I...I just can’t run off with a perfect stranger,” she said again, though she wasn’t sure if she was saying it for his benefit or for hers. No sooner had the words left her mouth than a rumbling shook the kitchen. A long crack split the wall where her family’s pictures had once hung, forming a long gaping fracture.

  Jason stood so fast his chair crashed to the floor behind him. “You have no choice, Shay. We have to go. They’re coming! Hurry!”

  Fueled by his fear, and her own, she ran to her room at the back of the house and pulled a duffel down from her closet. What was happening? She didn’t know, and yet she started throwing things into the bag without much thought of what she was grabbing until it was overflowing. How could she choose in a matter of seconds which items of her life to take with her and which to leave behind?

  She stopped, took a deep breath then picked up the duffel and dumped it upside down, shaking the contents onto the bed. She started again: her two favorite pairs of Levi’s, her favorite sweater, socks, underwear, boots, a long-sleeved T-shirt, the book she was reading, her jewelry—not because she owned a lot of nice pieces but because most of what she did own had once belonged to her mother—a spool of yarn, her crochet needles.

  “How are we doing?” Jason asked, appearing in the doorway; his eyes, wide with urgency, fell on the half-crocheted scarf in her hand as he shifted back and forth on his heels in his impatience to hurry her.

  “Almost done.” She grabbed some shorts and T-shirts and shoved them into the duffel, then ran into the bathroom and seized all her toiletries, sweeping them into a makeup bag, then hurried into the living room. She stood in the middle of the room staring at the brocade sofa, the soft leather wing chair that she loved. The antique sideboard filled with porcelain and crystal, her memories, her family’s heirlooms, whether they were valuable or not, how could she leave them all behind?

  Tears welled in her eyes and she collapsed onto the sofa. What was she doing? She dropped her head into her hands and tried to catch her breath and still her racing heart. This was crazy. He was crazy and somehow he’d sucked her into his delusion.

  But as she sat there, listening to her heart thud in her chest and trying to get ahold of herself, she heard faint whispers filling the air. Like before, in the apartment, they seemed to be coming from the wall. From the crack. Slowly, she rose off the sofa and walked over to the deep fissure in the wall. The same wall that had been a supporting structure for this house for the past sixty years and suddenly it was broken.

  And emitting a foul-smelling gas. She placed her hand ov
er her nose and mouth and leaned in closer. They are doorways leading to a demon dimension. Jason’s words filled her head and quickened her heart. But that was crazy! There was no such thing as a demon dimension. She leaned in closer, listening, and then she heard it again, the whispering that had filled the room with a strange rhythm that was almost a chant. The one word she could grasp clearly.

  Abomination.

  Chills scurried madly down her arms and across the back of her neck. But it wasn’t just the chills; a strange vibration pulsed deep inside her ears, and the room began to spin. Darkness bloomed on the edge of her vision and her legs turned rubbery. Weakened, she turned and, on her way out of the room, grabbed her grandmother’s afghan and her laptop case. She slung it over her shoulder with the duffel and hurried out the door and onto the porch. She quickly closed and locked the door then turned around and stifled a scream.

  Jason stood on the porch’s top step, the tote bag and a bag of Buddy’s dog food under his arm. Buddy stood crouched a foot behind him, his hair bristling as he stared out into the yard. A lone wolf stood not ten feet in front of them, his head bowed, his teeth bared. Buddy whined, pushing himself next to Jason’s powerful legs.

  “What does it want?” Shay asked nervously.

  “He’s drawn to the smell of the demons.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s in his blood. He knows the smell, he fears it, but he doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t remember.”

  She didn’t understand. How could she understand? It was nonsense. “Will it hurt us?”

  “I don’t know. He’s confused and afraid.” Jason stepped off the porch, walking slowly toward his truck. The wolf’s eyes tracked him as he proceeded across the yard. Its upper lip lifted, showing a row of sharp teeth as it caught Jason’s scent, then it snarled a warning that sent the hair on her neck standing on end.

  Jason slowed, taking a tentative step forward. Then another, his eyes never leaving the wolf’s. He was almost to his driver’s door when another wolf stepped out from behind a large redwood tree.

  Shay gasped a breath and held it to keep from calling out a warning. Very slowly and deliberately, Jason closed the distance to his truck and opened the driver’s door. She didn’t let loose the air burning inside her chest until he climbed inside the truck and slammed the door shut.

  “Buddy.” Instantly, he was by her side. A low growl rumbled in his throat as another two wolves stepped into the clearing and moved toward them. She leaned down and grabbed ahold of Buddy’s collar. They had to get back in the house. But before she could take a step, Jason’s truck roared to life. He flipped on the headlights and, in the dimming light of dusk, lit up the yard. The wolves turned and faced him, their eyes glowing greenish-gold in the headlight’s reflection.

  The truck inched forward, moving close to the porch, one tire riding up the bottom step. Jason pushed open the back door of the crew cab and yelled, “Come on, Buddy!”

  In a flash, Buddy yanked out of her grasp and jumped into the backseat of the truck then slid between the bucket seats up front and positioned himself in the passenger’s seat. Amazement surged through her at how easily and quickly Buddy obeyed him, which quickly turned to annoyance. She had no choice now. There was no going back.

  “Come on, Shay,” Jason yelled.

  Before she could move, another wolf appeared on the porch from the side of the house not ten feet away from her. Without a second thought, she ran and jumped into the backseat of the crew cab, slamming the door shut behind her. Jason made a wide turn and carefully drove down the road as even more wolves stepped out from between the redwoods to watch them pass, their dark eyes following them.

  Buddy whined and Shay repositioned herself, squeezing up into the front seat next to him. She put her arm around his trembling body. Though she suspected she was getting more comfort from his soft warm fur than he was getting from her. She laid her cheek against him and tried not to cry. More wolves stepped forward, flanking the road as they drove away from her home.

  “Look at them all. In all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen a single wolf. Now they’re everywhere.”

  “They’ve come from far away, tracking the scent.”

  “What if they get into the house?” She turned around and watched them move toward her home.

  “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”

  Disbelief filled and angered her. “Yes, it does. How can you say that? They’ll ruin everything. That is my home.” As she thought of the damage they could do, to the antique sofa, the leather of the chairs, the wool rugs, she felt her control over her emotions slipping as tears spilled onto her cheeks.

  “Did you shut the door?”

  “Yes, but what if they break a window? We have to go back. We have to do something, call someone.”

  “We can’t, Shay. I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do. No one we can call.”

  “Yes, we can! That is my home.”

  “No it’s not. Not anymore.”

  She glared at him, feeling the hatred burning through her eyes.

  “I’m sorry. That came out harsher than I’d intended. You have to trust me, Shay. As hard as it is to accept, life as you know it is over. You have no choice but to move on.”

  “That’s not true. We always have choices.”

  “But not always good ones. I know it sounds insensitive, but—”

  “You’re damn right it does. I will never forgive you for this, for taking me away from my home. For not calling someone, for not helping me save...” And then it broke loose, all the fear and the anger she was trying to keep at bay. It filled her heart and overflowed, expanding into her throat. Gulping, painful sobs wrenched her chest, and tears flooded her eyes, scorching her cheeks.

  Embarrassment engulfed her, merging with the fear and anger and the deep sadness. Everyone in her family was dead and everything she had left to remind her of them was still in that house. And yet, she’d chosen to go with him, to turn from her home and get into his truck. Fool.

  But what choice had she had? She thought again of the years, the memories with her grandmother. They were all she had left of her family. There was nothing else. No one else. But now the house was riddled with cracks, and foul-smelling odors and...wolves.

  She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the window.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “You already said that. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t help.”

  “It does matter, Shay, because you’re alive. If I hadn’t come today, if I’d waited one more night...”

  She turned to him. He was serious. He really believed she’d been in danger. She thought of the voices in her wall, of the feverish eyes of the wolves outside her door, and a shudder tore through her. Was he right? Was she that close to death?

  If I’d waited one more night...

  Chapter 4

  Shay must have fallen asleep. She woke with her head pressed against the glass and Buddy’s big body splayed across her lap. She dug her fingers into his fur, finding comfort in his softness. He was all she had left now. She looked out the windshield at the dark empty highway looming ahead of them.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “To the most beautiful spot on earth. You and Buddy will love it.”

  Maybe. But they’d loved it where they were. Buddy had tons of empty forest to roam. They were a breath away from the beautiful blue Pacific with its soaring cliffs and giant black rocks. There were people she knew back there, people who knew her. She sighed. Who knew where she was going now? What it would be like. Why hadn’t her parents told her about this place?

  Would she ever be able to go back home? She had to. She’d take out a loan, make the repairs on the house, call wildlife control and take back her life. Running off with a stranger
was beyond foolish and it wasn’t like her. She was practical. Logical. She didn’t let her emotions rule her actions. She didn’t operate on instinct. She was a planner, so she was making a plan.

  Except how could she plan for demons? She shook her head. Crazy. They were just cracks in the wall. Cracks that whisper? The question taunted her.

  “Will we get there soon?” she asked, trying to stretch the kinks out of her neck and back. How long had she been sleeping? She looked at the radio’s clock. Almost midnight!

  “Not tonight. We will stop at a motel a few miles up the road.”

  She nodded, rethinking her plan. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to go all the way to this colony. She was starving, and she had to use the restroom. First thing in the morning, she would call a car-rental place and take back control of her life. She didn’t know who this man was, anything about him or where he was taking her. There was no reason she had to stay with him.

  Except he had the tattoo.

  But if it was so important that she trust him, go with him, then why hadn’t anyone told her about this colony?

  “Great. While I appreciate all you’ve done today to help us, this motel will be the end of the line for me and Buddy.”

  Jason turned and looked at her, his face unreadable in the dim light from the dash.

  “Just because you have a tattoo that matches my necklace doesn’t mean I’m going to give up my life and run off with you. I know nothing about you. Nothing about where you’re taking me, or why I’m suddenly in so much danger.”

  “Fair enough,” he said, his voice tense as he pulled into an old fifties-style motel. “But will you let me tell you more over dinner? Perhaps fill in some of the holes?”

  “Those are some pretty big holes to fill,” she muttered. She stared skeptically out of the window at the bright neon vacancy sign. “Blue Moon?”