Chapter 2
Virtually skimming the ground, Parker ran until the scent of blood, arising like a solid barrier, stopped him.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled. His chest tightened. A huddled body lay on the grass, just yards from the wall. A human body.
Parker shook his head. Too late? Maybe not. The slightest movement of a hand on the ground, a mere reactionary flutter, encouraged him to step closer.
It was a woman, he saw, curled into a tight ball. A petite thing, young, slender, with a delicate bone structure, her blond hair fanning out around her as if she’d fallen where she lay.
Parker’s beast gave a whine that he ignored. Moving in for a closer look, he heard the woman’s breath rattle faintly in her throat. A slick red ooze covered her face, neck and shoulders. Long strands of hair that had probably once been silky stuck to the blood from a gaping wound on her forehead, so that none of her features were fully visible.
Quickly, Parker dropped to a crouch beside her.
She appeared to be in her early twenties. The skin on her bare arms was smooth and lightly tanned. Rounded breasts filled out a watery blue camisole. Her dark denim jeans looked expensive. She should have known better than to stray this far from civilization at any time, let alone after dark.
A surge of nerve burn flashed across Parker’s skin as he reached out to touch her. Silently, he warned the moon to back off.
When the woman moaned, Parker’s human heart went out to her. But the dark passenger he carried inside him felt something else, and reared back as if the spot might be contaminated.
Surely the cause for alarm didn’t relate to this woman, so hurt and helpless, Parker reasoned. Someone else had to be there, out of sight. Maybe even more than one someone.
A flare of anger ripped through him, to go along with the claws. His beast’s intuition battered at him as if the thing inside him truly was a separate entity, and as if the beast knew something the man didn’t.
What’s wrong with this picture, beast?
What do you see?
His hand remained suspended above the injured woman he hadn’t yet touched, having been repelled by so much blood and at the same time drawn to it. This female, whoever she might be, was struggling to breathe, fighting to stay alive. Would he be able to help her? The claws, the intoxication of night on his skin, the scent of her blood and the nearness of his beast’s time for freedom were filling Parker’s body with vague warnings he wasn’t able to grasp. Too vague.
He touched the woman’s neck, careful to manage the claws. Pulse weak.
Carefully, he rolled her onto her back, then brushed the hair from her face with the side of his hand. “I have you,” he said hoarsely, meaning it, yet feeling unpredictable. “I’ll get help.”
“No.” It was a whisper, pushed by a shallow breath, after which her eyes opened, then quickly closed again, unable to sustain the effort.
Parker leaned in farther, silently assessing.
She’d been blessed with fine features: small nose, pointed chin, wide-set eyes, maybe blue, gray or green—they hadn’t stayed open long enough for him to tell. Her lips were heart-shaped, a swollen reddish-blue, and surrounded by a bloodless, ghostly pale face. A face disfigured by deep lacerations that ran from her hairline to her chin, leaving one cheek a bloody pulp.
Parker’s muscles seized in protest. He blew out wordless sound. This female had been badly beaten and slashed. He’d seen a lot of terrible things in the E.R., but this?
In spite of the severity of the damage and the possible clog of blood in her throat, the woman tried to speak. What Parker heard was, “Trick.”
“No trick,” he countered in a tone as gentle as he was able to make it, given his feelings of disgust for what had happened to her, and his own recent events. “You’re hurt. I’m a doctor. We’ll—”
He didn’t get the last sentence out. With a neck-snapping turn of his head that would have severed the spine of any typical human without a beast’s connections, he scanned the dark. Jumping to his feet, Parker recognized this particular wave of cooler air as a warning of imminent danger close at hand.
A voice carried to him over the grass. “Look, my brothers. The woman has brought us a new toy to play with.”
Parker counted one, two…no, five figures emerging out of the shadows to form a loose circle around himself and the injured woman. The newcomers were too close not to be taken seriously and too far away to wring their necks for taking necessary time away from the girl. He’d been too concerned about her injuries to have seen this coming.
The night was just chock-full of surprises.
“Or maybe,” the same heavily accented voice chided, “what we have found is a pervert in his own right, since he appears to be missing some clothes.”
“Clothes be damned. Did you do this to her?” Parker demanded, knowing the truth well enough. These jokers’ scents permeated the woman by his feet. They smelled of overcooked fat and wore the baggy uniforms of a typical street gang. Miami gangbangers. Security in numbers. And these filthy scumbags had savaged the blonde.
Parker’s body gave a heave of disapproval. Blood gushed through his open thigh wound as if his beast were attempting to slide through the hole.
Tensely, Parker stood his ground as three of the gang members inched toward him in the way hungry coyotes crowded in on a meal. That image made him sick to his stomach, and he knew why. His wolfishness was growing more substantial, lured to the surface by anger and uncertainty. His beast wanted to burst out ahead of his scheduled release time to take over the driver’s seat. His darker side wanted to confront the danger these lowlifes presented.
Maybe on another night he could have shouldered a surprise like the pop of unexpected claws and the lively interest of his inner beast, but not this one. It wasn’t time for a transformation and he wasn’t the only person involved here. Even so, he felt a distancing from himself, as though his humanness danced on a last remaining thread of control.
“It speaks,” the spokesman for the group quipped. “And isn’t that just too bad. Now we will have to hear his screams for mercy.”
Heck, maybe he should sic the beast on these guys, Parker thought. It would serve them right to have the tables turned. But it just wasn’t time for that. And no matter how he looked at this, and whatever form he might long to take, five-against-one odds were going to be bad.
“Buzz off,” he warned, flexing his clawed fingers. “First and final warning.”
It was a fine threat, but a wave of light-headedness washed over him with very bad timing. His head needed to be clear if he wanted to live. Plus it was completely insane to believe that his beast could emerge unbidden. The claws had been a mistake, a slip. Say he could open up to the beast, let it take over early, and together they managed to kick some gangland butt. What then?
Parker’s anger tripled as he breathed in the faintest trace of perfume drifting to him above the odor of blood, coming from the woman on the ground. Perfume and blood. Blond hair and a slashed face. Sure, he might be some kind of monster, but the jerks facing him were much worse.
He knew what these guys would be thinking, could almost hear them laughing. How much trouble would one unarmed, half-dressed guy be?
“Plenty,” Parker answered, without the benefit of the question being asked aloud. “And willing.”
The three thugs closest to him paused to glance toward their brother. Parker looked at him also. Big guy. Dark-skinned. No shaved head, bucking trend. Waiting a few seconds more, even though his ligaments and tendons were starting to strain with tension, Parker brushed his claws back and forth over his jeans with a swishing sound.
“We don’t like your tone,” the big guy spat.
“We don’t much like yours, either,” Parker said. Me and my internal friend.
“Are you hiding a knife under your armpit?” the leader droned sarcastically. “A gun in your pants? Because that’s what it will take to keep us from dragging your ass of
f to our boss. He prefers his entertainment alive, you see, even barely.”
A moan, faint but noticeable, came from the woman on the ground. Time was wasting. Her life had to be draining away. While he…was feeling so strange.
Pulsating biceps sent an icy shiver of apprehension up his spine, a familiar sensation Parker couldn’t ignore. He heard the pop of one vertebra realigning. Then another.
Oh yes, he knew this feeling, all right. He knew what it meant. He was going to morph, full moon or no full moon, willing or not. The claws had been a precursor, a warning, for which the scent of blood and the state of this poor woman’s face had sealed the deal. His beast was about to blossom and there would be no holding it back.
Angling his neck, Parker heard a crack. Better than knuckles. The sound caused an instantaneous fire in his belly that rapidly spread upward into his shoulders, then flowed down his arms like molten lava, to leave a trail of sparks all along his overstretched nerve fibers. His claws raked his palms as he fisted his fingers. His jaw tensed.
“Maybe we can continue this chat later?” he suggested, afterburn dropping his voice an octave. “The woman needs help.”
And the beast needs twenty-four more hours to chill.
This is not a good precedent.
“So, you would like us to call you a cab, maybe?” A wave of the big guy’s hand caused his four brothers to step forward in unison, like puppets.
“Tires might ruin the grass,” Parker said, disgust riding his skin in the form of yet more heat. “But transportation would be nice, all the same. Will you have one of your merry men call for it, or actually do something yourself?”
The next sound the woman made seemed to ruffle through Parker. Right through him, as if her raspy plea somehow slipped beneath his skin to meet his beast face-to-face, stirring up trouble of another sort. That longing for a hot, tight place.
Parker felt his heart stutter, stall, then immediately start back up. He had suddenly grown rock-hard below this belt. Something about this woman appealed to his beast.
Glancing down, he said to her, “I’ll get help. I promise.”
“We just don’t think you can keep that promise, perv,” the thug said with a laugh. “Because who is going to help you? You have no idea who we are and what we can do.”
In spite of the threat of violence tainting the air, Parker got another whiff of citrus emanating from the ground, a fragrance almost as ethereal as the woman wearing it. He didn’t have time to think beyond that. A second scumbag barreled forward, as if urged to action by a silent cue. A third followed. Surrounded, knowing he would have to fight, Parker chanced another look. At her.
Inexplicably drawn there.
Struggling with the pain threatening to take her down, Chloe stared at the man standing above her, supposing that her mind had to be going. The man looked like an avenging angel.
His face had become visible to her now in the drip of eerie, dappled light from above, a face composed of taut, tanned skin over sharp angles. Dark hair hung past his ears, frosted by a silver liquid shine. His eyes, light, extremely bright, bored into her, stirring long-dormant feelings she was unable to tap into, rekindling something that had been about to slip away.
It felt to her as though he, whoever he was, had called up through his gaze the single spark of life left in her, that little flicker about to be extinguished by so much hurt and chaos. Sensations soared through her, one after another, weaving in and out of her pain. She felt damp grass under her body, saw the twisted shape of the trees beside her, smelled the foglike humidity of the night.
Emotions flowed as if a tap had been left open. Anger, fear, love, hate, longing, lust were all there and exposed. Yet the lure of this man’s eyes lifted her up from the blackest depths, as if he had gripped her soul and was tugging hard. His blue eyes were both fire and ice, beautiful and disconcerting, taunting and sympathetic, strange and yet familiar.
Did she know this guy? Where had she seen those eyes before? At the university, where she worked? At the hospital lab she utilized for her research? In some hallway? Outside a grocery store? Did it even matter? The ground seemed to be slipping out from under her. She felt about to float off.
“Sorry,” she tried to say, knowing that what came out sounded more like a grunt than a word. Still, the guy responded as if he had understood.
“I’ll get help,” he said. “I promise.”
She believed him. God knew she did. In order to do that, though, this man would place himself in jeopardy. He already had. She had been dessert for this gang, and now he was new bait for them to continue their rampage of evil. She didn’t have any money, carried no purse. She didn’t wear jewelry. What had attracted them to her so near that freaking wall she’d been watching? Why had this happened?
The air swelled with their wily, eerie presence. The beautiful guy who stood over her had no idea what he was getting himself into.
Must get to my feet.
Unfortunately, neither her arms nor her legs responded to her will to move. Whatever these freaks had done to her this time had been the final straw. The horror of it came crashing down.
Not gone yet.
Not a quitter!
Chloe plunged her fingernails into the dirt so forcefully, she felt the strike ricochet through her. With a small, inward shriek, she felt her fingers sink in. Gripping the earth, she pulled with all her might, and succeeded in moving her body only half an inch. But that was half an inch toward the light, not the dark. Toward the light in this man’s eyes.
“Run!” Again, it was nowhere near a word. She cleared her throat, gurgled up blood that trickled down her chin and tried again. “Run!” So much energy needed to say one damned word and travel one inch. “Save…yourself….”
A quick touch caused her to recoil. The man with the luminous eyes, close again, had gently laid the back of his hand on her face. In this moment of imminent danger, he had taken the time to reassure her. Reacting to the kindness, Chloe’s heart gave one good strong pulse.
“Hang on,” the black-haired avenger said to her. “I have to take care of something, but I swear I’ll be back.”
The young woman’s eyes were open, and trained on him. Green eyes, Parker noted, and dazed because of what had happened to her. His insides clenched again as his eyes met hers. His beast rumbled. Recently unused body parts stirred. But it was too late. Whatever message she had beamed to him with those bloody, beautiful eyes slammed the beast the rest of the way into him, and into action.
Head. Neck. Shoulders. Chest. Ligaments began to stretch at their insertions with the sound of wet meat being slapped on a plate. Pain soared through Parker as his hips realigned and his thighs bulged. Both knees crackled. His stomach gave a lurch. Acute distress accompanied this transformation, because this wasn’t supposed to happen, had never happened, not without the full moon’s prompting. Not without her very special attention.
His face stretched, bringing a sting reminiscent of being knifed behind the eyes, but it was only a portion of the discomfort he usually encountered with a physical shift. Faster than the time it took for him to blink a second time, his bones had settled into their new shape. A stranger-than-usual kind of strange shape. Only a partial semblance of the normal routine. Parker could see past his nose. He was panting, but not much fur sprang from his pores, other than on his chest and forearms.
The birth of a beast, and yet not.
Head raised, and holding tightly to his mental faculties, Parker straightened up to his full new height, a few inches taller than his usual six-two. He could see in his peripheral vision that he had indeed only attained part of the beast’s shape. Half of the beast emerged—as if somebody had hit the pause button too early. It was an astonishing feat.
His jeans were now tight, but not tight enough to constrict further development. His arms looked somewhat like his arms, only better. His skin felt thicker. His body was hard all over.
Longer now in this incarnation, his hair swept acros
s his bare, muscled shoulders. He tasted blood. His mouth, though not fully developed, contained a full set of razor-sharp teeth that made the claws seem like child’s play.
Rolling back his enhanced musculature, baring those canines, Parker studied the freaks surrounding him, absorbing his personal discomfort with a ferocious howl that, if translated, would have meant:
Be bested by a bunch of stereotypical street thugs?
The hell you say!
Chapter 3
So. He’d done it. Shifted early—if only in part. No time to think about the ramifications of that. The five guys were close enough now that Parker could see details—such as the long stripes of scar tissue on their forearms that looked like white, ridged tattoos.
He stepped forward to narrow his attention on the three in front of him. Their reaction to his appearance had been expected, and had provided him with some lag time, but the idiots were soon on him anyway, like crazed infants in need of a lesson from a monster. Like insects on honey. Were they completely nuts? So high on drugs they failed to notice what had just happened?
They beat at him with their fists, kicked at him, tried hard to wrestle him to the ground. They were strong suckers. He knocked one of them over with a right-fisted punch to the face, and felt his claws swipe the guy’s flesh as he went down. Parker twisted sharply to gain access to the second and the third, noting how the two others remained apart, maybe waiting for signs of fatigue in the fighter the way a pack of hyenas might, and content to watch their brethren fight. He would have yelled “Cowards!” if his teeth hadn’t been in the way.
One of the bastards jumped onto his back and hung there. Parker spun again, tucking his arms into his sides, shaking that guy off with a mighty twist, ready to deal with the one remaining imbecile.
He was distracted midblow. Not by a sound this time, more by an internal alarm that had nothing of the smell of cops or more creeps arriving on the scene. This new perception was fierce, nagging, unusual.
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