“Is it still night?” Chloe asked.
“Close to midnight.”
“How long have I been here? A week? A month?”
“You’ve been here an hour.”
An hour? Chloe put a shaky hand to her forehead, felt the outlines of the bandage. “My face doesn’t hurt. Neither does my head or ribs. I can breathe.”
“You remember about all that?”
“I doubt if I’ll ever forget it.”
“Then you remember how you got the wound on your arm?”
Chloe didn’t want to see the monster that had caused that wound, but his face came hurtling back, called to mind by the woman’s question. Dark face. Milky-white hair. The dreadful black, bottomless eyes. She heard an echo of the sound of her wrist breaking in his grasp, felt his breath on her bare skin as he slid his wet mouth down from her shoulder to the softer part of her upper arm.
The memory forced Chloe upright. The room spun around just once as she heard the shade being drawn, and then light—fierce and cool—streamed in through the window.
She gasped as the light hit her bare legs, her arms, her face. She opened her mouth to unleash the sound choking her. Her skin turned black, then white again, then black as her body seemed to stretch beyond itself. Awful noises accompanied the changes. Wet sounds. Grinding sounds. Ready to scream, she looked desperately to the woman beside her, who promptly closed the shade.
As the light receded, Chloe fell back to the mattress, felt herself suck inward with a quickness that left her reeling. After several moments, her breathing evened out. Her nausea disappeared, leaving her feeling lighter, almost shockingly euphoric.
“It’s going to be all right now,” the woman told her in a hushed voice that seemed very loud in the confines of the room. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Chloe.” She barely got that out, sure that the air carried a foreign scent she couldn’t place. Sensing a distant vibration, she looked to the window, certain that a voice out there was calling to her.
“Chloe, can you tell me if you have ever been bitten before?” the woman asked, whispering now.
Bitten? Yes, that’s what had happened to her in the park. That was the horrendous part of her beating she had chosen to block out. The monster had chomped on her arm, taken a bite. He’d pulled away her flesh and some of the muscle, leaving his mouth a bloody mess. She’d been so scared, fearful she wouldn’t make it if she retained that image. Her brain had complied by providing a blackness, a void where that event could be hidden, at least for a while.
“Think back further,” the woman suggested, “to anything significantly like a bite?”
“Rattlesnake,” Chloe said. “I was bitten by a rattler when I was thirteen.”
The woman nodded her head, as if something had just made sense to her. “And you survived that bite, too. Maybe that’s it, the key to your body’s quick adaptation. Venom, and the effects it produced.”
She’d come close to dying that time, too, Chloe recalled. Two bites, two near fatalities. Two too many, for sure. But she wasn’t at all clear about what the woman was suggesting.
“The desert makes you strong.” Chloe repeated her mantra. “What’s the voice out there?”
“The moon.”
“The moon has a voice?”
“Oh, yes. For those who can hear it.”
Chloe glanced at her wrist, no longer in its bandage. “This should still be hurting.”
“From now on you’ll heal very fast,” the woman said. “Supernaturally fast. The creature who hurt you in the park carried an ancient virus in his saliva, and infected you.”
And there it was. The answer. The reason for the tremors, the sickness, the hallucinations and the rolling blackouts. Not just superficial wounds and stitched-up holes had caused her reactions, but a damned, freaking virus.
“This virus’s effects are ruled by the moon,” the woman explained. “By a full moon in particular.”
Chloe felt light-headed as those words sunk in. Behind them appeared a face she wanted to see, curtained by straight black hair, the color of midnight. She could smell this man’s scent, feel the taut contours of his muscles, remember the words Parker Madison had whispered to her.
Can’t let one drop of moonlight reach her.
She delved further back, groping, her head starting to spin.
I don’t know about the werewolf part. I don’t understand how the wolf thing came about. That’s why I’m out here tonight, looking for answers…. Problem is, I’ve started to like the changes. At the same time, I have to wonder how much longer I’ll be able to keep the old me together.
And—
The night the changes began I was sure I was dying of some lethal disease. Excruciating, debilitating, draining.
Oh. No. Hell, no. God, no.
“Are you telling me that I’m a…werewolf?”
“Welcome to The Sanctuary,” the woman replied.
The three Weres on the lawn issued a series of snarls just loud enough for Parker to hear. Warning sounds. Threatening. Everyone on the porch froze.
“They’re here,” Parker said. The scent of wolves out there beyond the wall was strong enough to make the smell of blood seem subdued by comparison. There were several wolves, he figured.
“Let’s hope so,” Wilson replied.
Parker faced the detective. “What did you say?”
“Let’s hope all of them are here, in full force. Every single one.”
“Dammit, Wilson,” Parker muttered. “Were you expecting this?”
“Sooner or later. What else could Chavez do when we’ve been closing in, narrowing his territory night after night, making sure not too many of his guys get out or back in? His warehouse was destroyed, as was most of his pack. His kingpin days are over. He is wanted by every law enforcement agency in this city, and by us. He can’t go to prison because even Chavez fears what might happen to him there when those folks find out he’s a freak.” Wilson shook his head. “He was a fool to stay in the area. And his lapse is our gain.”
“What? You’ll call the cops out here to help fight them off? How can cops handle fully morphed werewolves? How do they even know about that?”
“Only a few cops and officials are going to lead the parade,” Wilson explained. “These rogue bastards killed one of our own, among scores of others. We don’t take losing one of our guys lightly, or anyone else for that matter.”
“So why didn’t Chavez leave the city, if he realized it might come to this?”
“Only two reasons that I can think of,” Wilson replied.
“The term criminally insane comes to mind,” the rust-haired fighter interjected.
“And those two reasons might be?” Parker pressed.
“Revenge,” Jenna James answered, as if she had been asked that question. “Revenge often drives the unbalanced mind when reason fails. That or…”
Everyone on the porch waited eagerly for her to finish her statement, Parker included.
“Love,” she finally said.
Now she had his full attention.
“The sick bastard might be doing all of this for love?” the rust wolf said disbelievingly.
“No,” Jenna clarified. “Revenge would be the larger goal, since he is here and pressing his presence. I’m just saying that men, and not only those we’ve categorized as insane, have been known to do a lot of strange things in the name of love.”
As if Parker didn’t already know that.
But he hadn’t done those things out of love for the little she-wolf. He had wanted to help her, felt protective of her after seeing the damage she’d sustained. She was to become a wolf, in a time when he hadn’t known there were many others.
Was that so? his mind nagged at him. And what about the feelings of possessiveness? The attraction that had him spending the night in her hospital room? What about the stabbing feelings of loss he had experienced when she’d disappeared? The bliss of finding her again? The erotic kiss? The hunger
for what lay between her legs? What about the feel of her soul pulling against his? How about when she had climbed up the front side of his body, virtually nailing him to the spot?
The word love loomed large in his mind now. So much so that he whipped around to face the open door. With rogue wolves licking at their heels on the other side of that wall, and the real reasons for their presence eluding him, Parker wanted nothing more in that moment than to get to her. His Jane Doe.
He took a step toward the doorway, paused when the young morphed Were on the lawn snarled again. Parker sensed the density of the wolves now, near the wall, waiting. Everyone else here sensed them, too. How many rogue Weres were out there? How nasty had their master made them? Would the elusive Chavez lead his pack against Landau’s home when Landau wasn’t here to protect it?
Had those two shooters tonight been decoys, after all, to get Landau away? Had this all been a trap, as had been suggested? A wolf trap?
There were three Weres on Landau’s lawn, fighting ready. Their pelted bodies were picking up scents and clues with each and every fiber that made them what they were.
Parker went over his count. With himself, the tally of wolves this side of the wall equaled five. On top of that, there was a detective who probably had a gun stashed somewhere, and a shrink who could fell a man with her smile. But these rogues weren’t men at the moment. And Jenna wasn’t smiling.
Inhaling the night, Parker centered himself and cast his senses outward. Ten. His inner radar perceived ten Weres in the area. Maybe a few humans with weapons, too. All in all, a lethal enough dose of anger to exact some serious revenge.
While here at The Sanctuary there were women to protect.
Cracking his thick neck with a sudden twist, the rust wolf hit the second step, shedding his shirt. By time he had reached the fifth, he looked about as lethal as anything the rogues could have thrown at them.
Sensing something in the wind again, feeling that draw on his soul, Parker threw a quick glance to the open doorway. She was calling him, and he couldn’t desert his post. She was moving, and he feared it would be toward him. Was she hurting? Crying out for help? Needing to be calmed?
No! He sent the message to her with as much force as he could muster, hoping the connection they shared would make her heed his warning. Wait!
But she wouldn’t wait, he knew. Not this woman. Not for anybody. The feistiness with which she had clung to life and to him were examples of the tenacity of her will.
How he wanted her, lusted for her. Did that mean he loved her?
The purr of a sports car’s engine spun him around. The car was coming fast, had to have clocked eighty miles per hour on the long stretch of driveway, but it eased to a stop in front of them. The driver-side door of a red Porsche flew open, and a man jumped out. Without bothering to close the door, he lunged for the stairs, making it in two strides.
This guy looked like another damned Viking—tall, built, angular-featured and fair-skinned. His clothes reeked of a bulging bank account, and his long, light blond hair was gathered in a band at the base of his neck. He was handsome, but able to pull off a ruggedness suggesting he might be more than he seemed. The set of his features hinted that this was a man to be reckoned with, and a Landau, no doubt about it whatsoever.
This guy had to have been werewolf for a very long time. Perhaps the longer a man spent sharing his body with a beast, the more virulent his presence became.
“Are we ready?” he asked simply.
So, he was here for the inevitable fight? Parker leaned against the door frame, awaiting the answer to that question.
“Dylan,” Wilson acknowledged. “Glad you made it. Yep, we’re in place. What about the judge?”
“Got the two assholes booked.”
Dylan Landau, Parker acknowledged. Judge Landau’s son. Miami’s deputy D.A.
“What about Dana?” Wilson asked Landau.
“She’s with my father. Where’s Scott?”
“He’s out there. And Tory?”
“In the car.”
Somebody named Tory was in the car. Parker checked out the Porsche, unable to see past the tinted windows.
“Any minute now, he’ll come knocking,” Wilson stated.
“I’m sure he thinks his ruse did the trick,” Landau agreed.
“But we lost two good friends,” Wilson said.
Landau nodded. “Too many fine people have fallen to this creep. Time to take him out.” He caught sight of Parker in the doorway. “And you?” he said, with the voice of a damn good D.A. cross-examining a witness on the stand.
“Parker,” Wilson answered for him. “Friend of mine.”
Landau nodded his acceptance, cocked his head, sniffed the air. “New female?”
Jeez, these guys were like homing devices. Parker spread his legs to fill the doorway and stood his ground. Then he felt a pull on him so strong, so complete, that he forgot Landau and the others, knowing on some sublevel of consciousness what it had to be, damn her little werewolf hide.
Slowly, he turned. And there she was. Incredibly, unimaginably, his towheaded patient stood on a step halfway down the Landaus’ grand staircase. She wore a man’s baggy shirt that partially covered her bare, lean, shapely thighs. Her blond hair was slicked back from her face, where her wounds, un-bandaged now, stood out lividly against her porcelain skin like slashes of red lipstick. She wasn’t shaking. Her green eyes were blazing.
In spite of everything going on, and what the night would bring, Parker wanted to run up those stairs to meet her. He wanted to do all those things to her, with her, that he’d been dreaming of.
But timing truly was everything.
Chapter 19
Chloe gripped the railing as if her hold on the wood might be the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth.
A tingling sensation floated along the surface of her skin, nourished by the heat she felt from Parker’s nearness. As her eyes met with his, past feelings of hopelessness over the parts of her life she had lost were quickly replaced by something bigger, better, brilliant, and as hard as steel.
Her sickness had gone. She was relatively pain-free. “Transition” was the term for this state that Sylvia Landau had described in detail. First came the trauma, the bite, the virus exchange. Then the sickness and resistance of a body trying to adjust to the invading pathogen. Chloe had been lucky, and had made it through this illness. Sylvia had told her that only a small percentage of the people who entered the transitional phase ever made it out. Blackout, the process was called. A sort of werewolf test to ensure the survival of the fittest. And her own transition had been unusual. Highly irregular.
Unlike Parker, she wasn’t a genetic Were, those whose blood was ancient and whose powers were tenfold what hers would ever be. But she was close enough. The fact foremost in her mind now was that Parker had been telling her the truth all along.
Her pulse beat against her skin, now ravenously hot. She was almost completely healed, and pretty damned invincible.
Scared, and invincible.
She couldn’t publish the results of her research on that female cop’s anomaly when she was now just such an anomaly herself. Maybe more so. She was a blonde with a jet-black pelt. Another irregularity.
Color change, Sylvia Landau had explained, was sometimes due to the force and extent of the trauma one experienced in becoming a wolf. And sometimes pelt color just had to do with feelings. Feelings. Like the ones she had for the black-haired man in the doorway. Hunger. For him—the man gazing at her with a hint of danger darkening his stunned face.
“Chloe,” she said to him, knowing he would hear and understand. Just that.
Only this one particular sound that split the night could have torn Parker’s attention from the woman on the stairs. He’d heard it before. Now, as then, it brought a chill.
“It’s the pale wolf,” he said, spinning back to the others on the porch with his heart racing. Her name was Chloe, and the rogue wolves were at the door
step. Landau’s Sanctuary had to be protected at all costs. She had to be protected.
“Yes,” Dylan Landau whispered. “Chavez sets his trap.”
“You know this wolf?” Parker asked.
“He,” Landau replied, with the tone of an unspoken oath, “bit Dana.”
“Good God,” Parker muttered. The pale-pelted bastard had bitten two women—Delmonico and Chloe. Parker had been out there in the park with Delmonico, had seen her run, roll and expertly position the gun in her hand. If she had been bitten by this bastard, what chance had Chloe had against him?
A second harrowing howl came right after the first. But this one didn’t originate on the far side of the wall. It came from inside the house.
Parker felt a rush of energy course through him, leaving live trails of flickering fire. His body stiffened in reaction, getting hard in all the right places, at the wrong time.
Jenna James pushed past him while he stood there straddling the line between fantasy and reality, movement and stillness. Jenna headed for the stairs. But so quickly he didn’t have time to blink, a fevered, half-naked body tore past him and Jenna, heading out into the night.
Chloe.
She hit the porch steps like a woman possessed, before anyone had time to even consider stopping her. Hands fisted, hair flying, she leaped to the driveway, landed in a crouch, then sprang back up, legs splayed.
The muscles of her torso rippled dramatically beneath the oversize shirt. She flung her head back as if to confront the moon straight on, parted the swollen lips that Parker had greedily tasted and howled. The anger in her call was red-hot.
Parker shuddered with the first notice of an imminent shift. As if the call had been meant for him, he leaped down after her, tearing at his clothes, feeling his outer shell slip into a more accommodating shape. Chloe was confronting not only the moon, but her tormentor. That howl had been intended for the pale wolf who had sampled her flesh.
After that, events happened fast. Chloe swayed and caught herself. She held up hands from which claws visibly sprang. Her shoulders were next to go, broadening, straining against the compactness of her slight frame. The rest of her body more or less flowed into its new shape, cracking, groaning for a few seconds only. Fur sprouted from her pores, covering those parts of her still visible. Black fur as dark as Parker’s own. When her body had finished rearranging, she swayed again and drew her lips away from her teeth.
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