Full Moon Rising

by Arthur, Keri

  “Yes. He told me to stay here—he’s coming to us.”

  “Did he tell you someone tried to kill him?”

  “Yes.” He hesitated. “He also told me Kelly has gone missing.”

  Something inside froze. “But . . . but she wasn’t supposed to be looking for you. She was supposed to be on another mission entirely.”

  “She was. Jack’s sent out searchers. They’ll find her.”

  Rhoan’s tone was meant to be reassuring, but all I could think of was the other guardians who’d disappeared of late. I didn’t want that happening to Kelly. Didn’t want it happening to anyone I knew, or even to anyone one I hated.

  With one exception. “Gautier threatened her last night. Has Jack questioned him about it?”

  “Yes. Gautier’s many things, sis, but he isn’t a fool. I doubt he’d attack another guardian.”

  “Gautier would kill anyone who got in his way.” Especially if he thought he could get away with it.

  “Kel’s a survivor. She’ll be okay.”

  She might be a survivor, but if Gautier had gone after her, then she was dead meat. Though I guess she did have more of a chance against him than whoever was behind the mutilations of the other guardians.

  “If he’s hurt her—” I just couldn’t say killed her. I didn’t even want to think about it. “I’m going to kill him.” Blow his brains out, then stake his rotten heart.

  “If he has hurt her, you won’t have to. Jack will.”

  Maybe. Maybe not. Gautier was our best, after all. I blew out a breath and changed the subject. “Jack knows about us.”

  “He’s known for a long time. You can trust him, sis.”

  I’d thought I could trust Talon, too, but after the discussion we just had, I wasn’t so sure.

  “Where are you now?” he added. “Or rather, how long will it take you to get back here?”

  “I’ve been with Talon at the Kingfisher.” I glanced at my watch. “It’ll take me about half an hour to get there, because I have to go to the Casino parking garage and collect Misha’s car—”

  “Misha lent you one of his cars?” The surprise in Rhoan’s voice came through loud and clear.

  “I’m not that bad a driver—”

  “This from the woman who has wiped out how many cars in the last ten years?”

  “Eight,” I mumbled. “But only two of those accidents were my fault.”

  “The jury is still out on the other six, though.”

  “I just got your ass out of jail, brother, so you could play nice for a little while.”

  He chuckled softly. “If you insist.”

  “I do.” I hesitated, then added, “Jack’s going to try to drag me into this investigation. I don’t want to be involved any more than I am, Rhoan. I don’t want to be a guardian.”

  “I know.” The amusement fled from his voice. “And I’ll do what I can to keep you free, but when it comes to this particular case, I don’t think there’s any escape.”

  Which is not what I wanted to hear.

  He paused, then added, “You might want to ring Talon and Misha, and just warn them that work is creating problems that may spill into your private life. Tell them to be careful.”

  “Misha’s gone back to his pack, and I have no intention of speaking to Talon for the next couple of days. He’s being a bastard.”

  “Always has been. You just couldn’t see past the sex.”

  “True. But then, the sex was damn good.” Or it had been, until recently. What had changed, I wasn’t sure. Certainly Talon hadn’t.

  “Just be careful, Riley.”

  Like I needed to be told that. “See you soon, bro.”

  I hung up and caught the tram down to the Casino. If I didn’t get Misha’s car out of the garage soon, the fees would cost me more than the old Mercedes was actually worth. I took the elevator down to sublevel three and headed out across the concrete expanse. Water dripped in the distance, and up ahead, lights blinked, sending shadows scurrying through the concrete paddock.

  Sound whispered around me—the soft scuff of a heel, followed by the faint caress of mint in the air. I stopped abruptly, muscles tense as I looked around. There was no one else there . . . and yet there was. My gaze swept across the shadows filling the distant corners. A vampire lurked there—but he wasn’t what I sensed. It was something else . . . something stranger.

  I sniffed. The air was a mix of dampness and exhaust fumes, but underneath it lay something old. Something rotten.

  Something almost dead.

  My stomach stirred. I clenched my fist and forced my feet to walk on. The car was only two rows away—closer than the elevator. Not that I could retreat that way even if I’d wanted to because whatever that smell belonged to stood between me and the elevator.

  Air caressed my cheek with foulness. The vampire was on the move. I dug the keys out of my bag and clicked open the car. The taillights flashed in response, briefly illuminating my surroundings with cheerful yellow.

  I opened the car door and threw in my bag. My neck prickled a warning and I spun. Something glittered in the air—a thread of silver arrowing toward me.

  I swore and ducked out of the way, but it was too close, too fast, to avoid. It sliced through my coat into my arm, biting deep into my flesh. Pain slithered through me, and with it came a cold sensation. Icy fingers began spreading from the wound, reaching up toward my shoulder and down toward my hand. I wrenched the thing free, but it felt like half my arm came with it, and I couldn’t help screaming.

  When I held the thread up, I saw what remained of the barbs on the arrowhead. Saw the flesh hanging off them.

  Warmth pulsed down my arm, and from the shadows came a surge of blood hunger, a force so strong it almost knocked me over. Sweat broke out across my brow, yet the coldness was spreading, making me tremble.

  Air screamed. I blinked, switching to the infrared of my vampire vision, and saw the blur of heat rushing at me. I swung, kicking the vamp as hard as I could. But my movements seemed to be in slow motion, and the vampire easily avoided the blow.

  His fist swung. I ducked, felt hair stir as his hand skimmed the top of my head, then rose, fist clenched as I cut upward. The blow hit him under the jaw and knocked him off his feet. The force of it numbed my fingers. I shook my hand, trying to get some feeling back.

  Sweat stung my eyes and obscured my vision. I blinked, but it didn’t seem to help any. The vampire was little more than a smudge of red as he scrambled back to his feet and rushed at me.

  He lashed out again. I blurred, but it felt like my feet were stuck in glue. The vampire’s blow smashed into my chin and sent me sprawling backward. I hit the car door with a grunt and fell sideways to the floor, my breath leaving in a whoosh of air. Pinpoints of lights were dancing before my eyes, and I wasn’t sure if it was lack of breath or something else.

  Then the vamp hit me, his body covering mine, hot and heavy. Though gasping for breath and fighting the blackness threatening to consume me, I heard the vampire’s snarl. The shadows were unraveling around him, revealing gaunt features and dead brown eyes that were identical to Gautier’s. His teeth were extending, saliva dripping from the points in expectation of the feed.

  I thrust my hands between us, and tried to push him away. I might as well have been trying to move a mountain. My strength was slithering away, the darkness coming in, and close by the dead thing.

  Watching, waiting.

  I didn’t know what it was. Didn’t care. Just knew I couldn’t let it get me.

  The vamp’s teeth sank into my flesh, and heat flashed white-hot through every cell in my body. The sounds of his greedy sucking filled the air, the last thing I’d ever hear if I didn’t do something soon.

  I took a deep breath and gathered the last of my fast-fading reserves. Energy surged through my limbs. I grabbed the vamp’s head, ripped him away from my flesh, and twisted his neck hard.

  Bone snapped. Breaking his neck mightn’t kill him, but it sure as he
ll would immobilize him and allow me to get away.

  I rolled him off me, then grabbed the car door and pulled myself upright. The parking garage whirled around me and, for several seconds, I simply stood there, battling for breath as sweat dripped down my face and blood ran from my neck and arm. There was a bitter taste in my mouth, my throat was drier than the Sahara, and my heart pounding so erratically it felt like it was going to leap out of my chest.

  Something had been on the arrowhead. Something meant to knock me out.

  Ahead, a creature that was cool and blue moved toward me. It seemed to flow rather than walk, shimmering brightly one moment, fading out of existence the next.

  I blinked, not sure what I was seeing. Or if I was actually seeing.

  Then the smell hit me. This was the dead thing. The thing I couldn’t let get me.

  I tried to climb into the car, but my legs had become lumps of unfeeling ice and suddenly I was toppling sideways again. I hit the ground with a grunt, gasping for breath as the blackness rushed in.

  The last thing I remember seeing were the hands that reached for me.

  Hands that were blue and suckered like a gecko’s.

  Chapter 8

  Awareness returned slowly. It came as an ache—a throbbing heat that radiated from hot spots in my arm and my neck, with smaller flares of warmth coming from my wrists and my ankles.

  Noise surrounded me. My heart, beating nine to the dozen in time with the pain. Above that, the throbbing beat of a bass, a rhythmic tune that seemed to pound through the metal underneath me, mingling with the deeper, throatier roar of an engine.

  Laughter drifted past—deep, powerful and male. With it came scents—musk, mint, and decay, entwined within the metallic odor of blood. Blood that was stiff and heavy on the sleeve of my coat.

  I cracked open my eyes. There was nothing to see but blackness. I blinked, and realized the blackness was a cover of some sort. Pinpricks of light spotted the material, indicating it was daylight. I wondered if it were the same day, or another.

  Laughter edged across the noise again, and through the musky foulness of the blanket covering me I caught a whiff of alcohol. I hoped that meant my captors were drinking, that it wasn’t just another odor coming from the blanket covering me. The chances of escape escalated if the men were boozing.

  I shifted slightly, trying to ease the ache in my arm. Chains rattled, scraping harshly across the metal flooring underneath me. The surrounding noise stopped, and I froze.

  “She awake?” The voice was deep, guttural.

  There was several beats of silence, then, “Nah. I told you, they pumped her with enough juice to drop an elephant. She won’t wake for at least another twenty-four hours.” The second voice was a mirror image of the first.

  Silence fell again. I listened to the hum of the tires against the road and, after a while, drifted off to sleep. The slamming of a car door woke me sometime later.

  The road noise had stopped. So too had the throaty roar of the engine. The sharp odor of the two men had faded somewhat, and I could hear only one intake of breath.

  It might be the only chance I had to escape. I lowered my shields a little, feeling out the thoughts of the man still in the van. Unlike the guards at Moneisha, this man was shielded from psychic intrusion.

  I swore under my breath. That one fact would make escape more difficult. The only chance I really had now was if I could somehow get the man’s attention and get him in the back of the car with me.

  And the best way to get a man’s attention? Flash some breast, of course.

  I shifted a hand. Metal clinked against the metal again. Obviously, I’d been chained, and if the burning on my wrists and ankles was anything to go by, those chains were silver. I couldn’t claim my wolf form until they were off.

  In the front of the van, the man stirred. I held still, waiting, until the squeaking of the seat indicated he had gone back to whatever he was doing. Slowly, carefully, I undid the buttons on my coat, then pulled up my sweater. Once my breasts were free, I flicked off the foul-smelling blanket and rolled onto my back. I kept my eyes closed, my breathing slow and even, as if I were still out of it.

  The seat squeaked again, then came a sharp intake of breath. Desire surged around me, a hunger as sharp as any wolf’s.

  For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the van lurched as the man moved into the back with me. The scent of mint and death became so strong my nose twitched. Only with those scents came a feeling of wrongness. This man wasn’t human, wasn’t wolf, wasn’t even a shapeshifter or vampire. He was something else, something I’d never come across before.

  And whatever he was, he was dying.

  The heat of him caressed my skin. His breathing was short, sharp, the smell of his desire so strong it stirred the moon fever in me.

  He stopped. I cracked open an eye, watching as he reached for me. His eyes were a muddy brown and filled with hungry intentness. Around his neck was a thin piece of wire—the psychic shield. Get that off, and his mind was mine.

  His fingers ran across my breasts, his touch hot and somehow foul. Bile rose in my throat, but I resisted the urge to move. He smiled, revealing teeth that were as pointed as any vampire’s but stained black and rotten.

  It took me a moment longer to realize those teeth were actually extending. He was going to feed . . . on my breasts.

  I lurched up, chopping a hand across the windpipe with as much force as I could muster. He made a gargling sound, his eyes wide as he struggled to breathe.

  I gave him no time to think, no time to react, just ripped the wire from his throat, almost garroting him in the process. With the wire gone, I lowered my shields and surged into his mind, swiftly taking control.

  I thrust him back against the wall of the van. Pain burned up my wounded arm, and sweat broke out across my brow. There wasn’t a lot of strength in my grip, and I was forced to switch hands. The chains chimed, jarring against the sound of the stranger’s harsh breathing.

  Using my free hand, ignoring the increasing pain, I gripped his face and forced him to look at me. “Where has the other man gone?”

  His voice was as flat and as lifeless as his eyes when he answered. “For a crap.”

  So I had maybe five minutes more, at best. “Where is the key for the chains?”

  “He has them.”

  I swore softly. “Where are we?”

  “In a rest stop near Seymour.”

  Which was only about forty-five miles out of Melbourne. Obviously, not enough of the elephant juice had gotten into my system, because I’d slept little under an hour. “Where are the keys for the van?”

  “In the ignition.”

  “Move into the passenger seat.”

  He obeyed. I wiped the sweat from my eyes and knew from the pounding ache beginning behind my eyes that I couldn’t hold that depth of control for much longer.

  I threw off the blanket and looked down at the chains. They were definitely silver, not metal, but luckily, they weren’t tethered to anything in the van. They’d wanted to restrict my movements, but hadn’t expected me to wake before they’d reached their destination. I pulled down my sweater, climbed into the front of the van, and started the engine.

  “Where were you taking me?”

  “Genoveve, then Libraska.”

  The first name rang a distant bell. I’d heard it somewhere before. But at present, I didn’t have the time to worry about it or to question him any further. I had to escape before the second man came out because I very much doubted if I’d have the strength to battle two of them.

  “If you’ve got a phone, give it to me.”

  He did.

  “Has the man in the toilet got one?”

  He nodded. I swore softly. The minute I took off in this van, they’d be ringing their superiors to report the fact—and there wasn’t one thing I could do to prevent it. There were limits to my mind control and I wasn’t about to hang around just to destroy that second phone. It wasn’t wor
th the risk.

  “Climb out and go to the toilet.”

  Again he obeyed. I leaned across the seat, locked the door, and threw the van into reverse. The tires squealed against the bitumen, and out of the corner of my eye I saw someone running out of the men’s toilet, pants flapping around his knees.

  Smiling grimly, I shoved the van into gear and sped off. The control I had on the second man snapped, and the pain of it rebounded through me, as sharp as glass. I glanced in the rearview mirror and, through the blur of tears, saw the second man running after me. He was fast. Vampire fast.

  I flattened my foot. The old van shuddered and began to pick up speed, blowing smoke as I sped out of the rest stop and headed for the free-flowing traffic on the Hume Highway.

  A quick glance in the mirror told me the second guard was almost close enough to open the back doors. I didn’t think I could eke any more speed out of the van, so I did the next best thing—cut from the merge lane into the left lane, right in front of a car. Tires squealed behind me. I looked up to see a Ford slither sideways, clipping the rear of the van and throwing me forward. As I battled to keep the van straight, the Ford spun into the path of the guard, throwing him up and over the hood. He landed on the strip between the merge lane and the left lane, and didn’t move.

  I sped on. I’d escaped. Now I just had to get back to my brother. One thing was certain—I couldn’t do it in the van. It was too hot—because of the accident, and because my escape was undoubtedly being reported back to those behind the kidnapping attempt.

  I took the off-ramp to Seymour and eased up on the accelerator. The last thing I needed was to be picked up by the cops. I cruised through town, turning into a side street near the outskirts. This I followed until I came to a crossroad. After looking both ways, I headed right, simply because it was a dirt track that disappeared into trees.

  When I was deep within shadows, I pulled off the road and stopped. It was then that reaction set in. For several seconds, I didn’t move, simply sat there, sucking in breath and swallowing bile, my whole body trembling.

  Eventually, I found the strength to move. I grabbed the phone, then opened my door. The chains on my legs weren’t long, forcing me to jump down rather than climb.