Cave Canem

by Susan Sizemore

  She glanced from the Ferrari to Dan Conover. “The dead really do travel fast.”

  He went around to the driver’s door. “Get in,” he told her. “And tell me where to point your nose.”

  SIXTEEN

  HE’S NOT ONLY GETTING THE HANG OF IT, HE’S GETTING to like it, Valentine thought as she sat on the edge of the ruined bed and watched Yevgeny and Bela.

  The pair were on the floor in the middle of the room, and neither of them was currently bleeding. He had the dog on her back, one hand on her belly and the other touching her head. His big blond Russian eyes were closed, his features stern— except for the occasional hint of a tiny smile. He and Bela the hellhound were deep in telepathic conversation. And getting along quite nicely for the moment.

  Yevgeny had finally gotten the idea that the most important part of training a hellhound was conducted from the inside of its bright and stubborn little head.

  Valentine nodded in satisfaction that Yevgeny had once again mastered a skill from her.

  “Always my smartest pupil. Always the quickest study. Sex. Languages. Magic. This.” She sighed. “I miss you,” she told him, knowing he couldn’t hear her. She gave an ironic shrug. “Regret. The spice of life.”

  A moment later, Yevgeny let Bela up and backed away on hands and knees. The pup was instantly up and coming at him. But Yevgeny shifted shape as she came, going from human form to the fanged and clawed shape vampires called the mask. He drew his lips back and growled. The hellhound dropped to her belly and whimpered.

  Yevgeny stroked her submissive head. “Good girl.” He turned his head to give Valentine a triumphant, fanged smiled.

  She gasped. Damn he made a gorgeous vampire!

  TESS’S head jerked to the right as the car passed through a crossroad.

  “Stop the car!” Tess shouted.

  Dan responded immediately and Tess jumped out to taste the air more thoroughly. Dan joined her in the middle of the crossroads. Stars wheeled above and the roads stretched out across the empty landscape.

  “Do you smell that?” she asked him.

  “I sense it,” he answered. “Strigoi and hellhound.”

  “Nearby.” She turned in a slow circle and pointed. “Demon and hellhound that way.” She glanced at the vampire. “Choose.”

  He didn’t answer, but gestured her back to the car.

  “WHAT’S the matter?” Yevgeny asked. He morphed back to his human semblance. “Are you all right?”

  Valentine blinked, focused on his concerned face. You’re prettier showing your true nature, she thought.

  Yevgeny must have caught her thought because he looked startled, but the dog came up behind him and he immediately returned his attention to Bela.

  Valentine got up and went to stand by a broken window. She breathed in the cool desert breeze and rubbed her arms. More than air circulated around the deserted motel.

  “Something wicked this way comes,” she murmured. “Among other things.” And stood back to see what would happen next.

  SEVENTEEN

  WHEN DAN KICKED THE DOOR OPEN HE WAS TRANSFORMED into full Hunter’s mask. Tess came through the window an instant after him in her wolf shape.

  The strigoi male jumped to his feet, holding the brindle pup in his arms. “She’s mine!” he declared. “Back off, Conover.”

  “And your little dog, too,” a voice drawled from the shadows.

  Tess snarled at the other vampire.

  Dan stalked toward the blond vampire. He wasn’t sure whether he was going to kill the thief or snatch the pup first. But he hesitated when the pup lifted its head and growled at him.

  Still in the corner, Valentine said, “They’ve bonded.” He glanced her way. She shrugged. “What can you do? It’s true love.”

  “Bonded?” the blond vampire shouted. “No, we haven’t! Bela’s for Sebastian.”

  “Think again, Yevgeny,” she answered. “Do you really think you can walk away from her now? Look at how he’s holding her,” she said to Dan. “Look at how she’s protecting him.”

  Tess morphed back into her human shape and adjusted the bits of leather wrapped around her to modestly cover herself. She looked like an amazon character in a role-playing game.

  Dan came back to his own human form and took a long, hard look at Yevgeny. The younger vampire stared back just long enough to show he wasn’t afraid of a fight, then looked away before it became necessary for Dan to prove his dominance.

  Smart boy, Dan thought. “Who the hell are you? What are you doing with my dog?” He jerked a thumb at Valentine. “And her? Did you help him steal Baby’s puppies?” he asked Valentine.

  “Why’s the other one with a demon?” Tess put in.

  “What other puppy?” Yevgeny asked. “I only took Bela— and I didn’t steal her. I left gold for her.”

  “Oh, shit,” Tess said. “It was the spell he used. I bet I know what happened.”

  All gazes turned to the werewolf witch.

  “Go on, Tess,” Dan said.

  “Demons have waited a long time to get their claws on a hellhound but they couldn’t get to them on their own. They’re experts at exploiting other beings’ use of magic, but not much good at working spells on their own. They more or less need hosts they can attach themselves to so they can manipulate the host’s use of energy.”

  “Welcome to Witch School 101,” Valentine said.

  “Don’t be mean,” Yevgeny told her. “Go on,” he urged Tess. “Tell me how I screwed up and involved a demon in this mess.”

  Tess smiled at the big blond. Dan didn’t like it. Valentine sniggered.

  “My bet is that a demon followed you and stole the other puppy while the spell still held Dan.”

  “You let a demon into my house?” Dan shouted.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Yevgeny said. “I needed the pup and was following tradition to get her.”

  “I’ve left plenty of bodies lying around to discourage that tradition.”

  He was not happy with what Yevgeny had done, but as he watched the pup lick the younger vampire’s chin and the vampire rub the pup’s head without seeming to notice, he knew he wasn’t going to kill Yevgeny. He’d let him get away with the theft—for the hellhound’s sake.

  “How did you get involved in this?” he asked Valentine.

  “Innocent bystander,” she answered.

  “I asked for her help training it,” Yevgeny said. “And she taught me all the magic I know.”

  “You poor dear,” Tess sneered.

  “But where are the demon and my other pup?” Dan asked.

  “Here,” Valentine answered.

  She pointed toward the window just as a huge black body came crashing through it.

  EIGHTEEN

  “DAMN!” TESS SAID AT THE SIGHT OF THE PURELY malevolent hellhound. It reeked of insatiable hate and hunger. She knew death on four paws when she saw it.

  She stopped thinking and morphed, missing some of the action as her perspective and vision changed from human to wolf.

  The demon entered to add to the chaos in the crowded room within the instant it took her to change. The creature screamed hatred as he raced toward Valentine. The ancient vampire’s attention was on the attacking hellhound.

  Tess sprang onto the demon’s bare back before the creature reached its prey. She sank her teeth through greenish skin, tasted metallic blood, crunched through bones. It still tried to crawl forward even after she’d severed its spinal cord. Tess used all her strength to hold the demon’s body down. She gnawed at the thing until it finally stopped moving.

  Roars, shouts, and the crash of bodies drew Tess’s attention away from the corpse. Worry killed any desire to feast on fresh meat. She spun, ready to help Dan.

  VALENTINE watched Yevgeny whirl around, using the bulk of his body to protect the animal in his arms. The heavy black beast leapt onto his back. Blood arced upward onto the walls and ceiling. Yevgeny cried in pain.

  Terror raced through Valentine.<
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  “Yevgeny!”

  The demon appeared before her and blocked her view. The werewolf brought the demon down. This brief struggle kept Valentine from getting to the others, but to immortals a moment was a long time. Actions that would have appeared to happen at light speed to a mortal seemed in slow motion to her.

  She shouted to Dan for help, but it wasn’t Dan Conover she saw when she looked his way. “Corvei,” she breathed.

  When the werewolf tried to spring forward, Valentine grabbed her and buried her fingers deeply into thick fur.

  “Calm down, Tess,” she urged when the werewolf struggled and snapped at her. “I’m saving your life. You can’t go to him like this. Corvei specialized in beast hunts in the arena. You need to change shape before he goes after the wolf as well as the hound.”

  Dan Conover could change into two types of vampire shape but he faced the hellhound in human form. As an Enforcer, he always carried a silver knife, but he didn’t have the weapon in his hands now. He was a man going up against a monster, but as a mortal he hadn’t been an ordinary man.

  Corvei’s eyes were cold, narrowed with concentration. His face was expressionless. The ability to kill blazed from his smallest movement. It was a gladiator against a wild beast, facing off in the center of the room.

  “He’s about to kill one of his own children,” Valentine told Tess. “He can’t do this any other way.”

  THE red eyes that tried to stare Dan down were full of intelligence. He wouldn’t let himself care. He didn’t feel compassion for the madness he saw in those eyes either. He never looked away as he circled slowly, assessing how to attack.

  The beast circled as well, its eyes locked on his. Hot drool dripped from fangs too large for its muzzle. Its growl was a continuous diesel-engine rumble in its deep chest. Its steely claws gouged the concrete floor. Dangerous and beautiful, it studied him.

  But it didn’t have patience. It didn’t have experience. It couldn’t wait.

  “You’re still a puppy,” Dan said when the hellhound sprang toward him.

  He grabbed its front legs while it was still in the air and swung it around. Its huge head swung back and forth, seeking flesh. It bit into his forearm, but Dan didn’t let go even as the beast worried at the wound. Vampire flesh was tougher than mortal. Dan bled, but his arm wasn’t bit in two the way a man’s would have been.

  He smashed the beast on its back onto the concrete. He followed it down, planting his knees on its exposed abdomen. It snapped for his throat, raked claws across him. Dan ignored pain and the creature’s piteous howling. He extended his own hard claws.

  He killed the hellhound the same way he would have another vampire. By opening its chest and ripping out its beating heart. The heart was still beating when Dan stood with it clenched tightly in his hand.

  With his own howl of pain, Dan threw the ruined pup’s dark heart as hard as he could through the gaping window.

  He dropped his arm and looked around for his next kill. He started toward Yevgeny. The other vampire lay still on the floor. The uncorrupted puppy was licking his face.

  Tess’s arms came around him before he could take another step. She pressed her human form against him, flooding him with her warmth and life. She brought back his sanity with her touch. He grabbed her and held on as hard as he could. He mourned this loss as he had mourned all the lives he’d taken as a gladiator, strigoi, and Enforcer. Tess was a light beyond the pain. Tess beckoned him with the promise of life to hold on to.

  “Let go of the hellhounds,” she whispered to him. “Now you have a werewolf to call your own.”

  VALENTINE dropped down beside where Yevgeny lay in a widening pool of blood. She had to push Bela aside to ease his head into her lap.

  The skin was blue around his pale lips, his heartbeat faint and slow.

  She stroked hair away from his face. “Oh, no, I’m not losing you again.”

  Bela was sniffing at Yevgeny’s shoulder. Valentine held her wrist out to the little hellhound. “Here.”

  It obligingly bit her.

  She thrust her bloody wrist into Yevgeny’s mouth and let life pour into him. “This is the second time in a week,” she muttered at sharing her blood like this. “I am such a slut.”

  Within moments, Yevgeny was suckling from her as if he would never stop. She closed her eyes and let the pleasure of the sharing take her.

  When she couldn’t take it anymore, she commanded, “Stop!”

  His tongue slid delicately across her wrist. A thought teased her, Are you sure?

  He sat up and they helped each other stand, but continued holding hands. He smiled down at her. “Why did you do that?” he asked.

  “You were dying.”

  “I’m a vampire now,” he reminded her. “I’m already dead.”

  She opened her mouth, closed it. “Right,” she said. “I knew that.”

  “Oh, yes, you knew what you were doing. Don’t play the ditzy dame with me.”

  He pulled her close. They both stank of the heady perfume of blood. Her need for Yevgeny was stronger than ever. Any moment now she was going to sink her fangs deep into his delightful flesh. And he was going to do the same to her.

  Fancy that.

  “What about your bond with Haven?” he asked as he began to caress her.

  “Haven?” she asked, and laughed beneath their kiss. “Let his girlfriend have Haven.”