He had no memory of anything after glimpsing Einar’s reflection in the bathroom’s tiny mirror as he bent to pick up his cell phone from the end of the bed. One minute he’d been aching for his life mate, the next, he was standing in a bedroom, blood oozing from the back of his head, the base of his spine killing him, dressed by a psychotic dark elf with revenge issues.
Another growl vibrated low in his chest, his beast less than impressed with the situation. “Time to finish this, Rourke. You’ve fucked everything else up so far, time to bring the whole thing to an end.”
He took a step toward the door and collapsed to his knees, white-hot pain slicing into his lower back. Arcing up his spine. Into his chest.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself upright and reached behind his back with one shaking hand, the pain exploding into blistering heat. His fingers skimmed the base of his spine, something wet slicking their tips before another arc of excruciating agony shot through him.
The fucker’s stabbed you, Marshall. Right at the base of your spine. You’re lucky he didn’t sever your spinal cord.
The chilling thought turned Marshall’s mouth dry. He pulled in a slow breath, forcing the pain from his mind. It wasn’t the wound that affected him. Einar’s blade had missed anything too important. He suspected what was causing his grief was the very thing that had killed Delanie McKenzie and almost killed Jackie. Poison.
How long can you fight it, Marshall, before it takes you out?
Long enough to neutralize the pointy-eared bastard and find Jackie. Wherever she was, she wasn’t dead. He could feel it in his soul. Einar may have gotten the jump on him, but Jackie was still out there alive. Possibly still pissed at him.
Maybe that’s for the best? You’ve done nothing but bring her pain and death. The farther she is from you, the better.
He let out a low sigh and forced himself to his feet again. Fresh pain rolled through him at the thought of a life without the tiny Sydney detective. Hot and tearing pain made his heart feel like it was being compressed, but he shut his mind to it. It would serve him no purpose but to weaken him. Until he’d dealt with Einar, nothing else mattered.
To his surprise, the door swung open when he turned the knob, a long and cheery hallway stretching away from the bedroom. Eyes narrowing, he stepped from the room, the worn carpet under his bare feet keeping his footfalls silent. Framed images of a family studied him from the sky-blue walls. A man in his fifties and a woman possibly only a few years younger rested their hands on the shoulders of a smiling young girl dressed all in pink with braces on her teeth. Marshall’s stomach tightened at the contented love in the photo. The occupants of the house. He clenched his fists, cold anger twisting through his focused calm. If Einar had killed them, or harmed them in anyway…
He turned his mind from the humans, continuing to move through the house. Every muscle in his body coiled, expecting Einar to leap at him any given moment. Yet each room he came to sat empty and disused. Nothing undisturbed, no sign of a struggle or violence.
He drew a deep breath, tasting the air. The salty odor of human lingered on the air, the walls and floor and furniture infused with the family’s presence. And something else. An emptiness that made his nerve-endings tingle.
You should have known Einar was something other than a mage. How many times had you wondered why he gave off no scent? It wasn’t that he didn’t give off a scent. It was that the damn dark elf removed it from the very air.
Pulse quickening, he tuned his senses in to the sounds of the house instead. His inner beast snarled with the need to be released but he kept the dire wolf in check. Now was not the time to shift. The massive creature was a formidable force, one even a psychotic dark elf would have trouble defeating, but he still did not know if Einar knew what he was. Nor, for that matter, what affect the poison from Einar’s blade would have on his other form. In all the tests run by the P.A.C. science guys on how non-humans reacted to elvish magick, none had been conducted to see what would happen to a dire wolf. Why would they when as far as they were concerned, the dire wolf shifter was extinct.
That kinda intel would’ve come in handy about now, wouldn’t it, Marshall. Kinda fucked up there, didn’t you?
He suppressed an angry grunt. He’d fucked everything up about this mission. So much for being the agency’s newest golden boy.
Approaching the last room of the house, he dropped into a low crouch, his stare locked on the open doorway. The air hung heavy with emptiness—a sure indicator his ex-partner was on the other side. And yet, this time something else seemed to cut the surreal void. A smell of mouldy loam and rotten moss.
Jesus, is that what he really smells like? Thank God he kept it hidden all these years.
Hot pain shot up Marshall’s spine, reminding him he was wounded, but he remained motionless. How did he do this?
“Do you still take sugar in your coffee, Agent Rourke?”
Marshall scrunched his face and dipped his head, letting out a humourless snort. Fuck. He straightened to his full height and rounded the corner, the stab wound in the base of his spine a blistering ball of pain.
Einar stood at the far kitchen bench, his back to the door, appearing—to all intents and purposes—to be making a cup of coffee. “I never took sugar in my coffee, Einar.” He stopped two steps into the bright, airy room, his nerve endings firing, his back a world of agony. “In my tea, yes. Coffee, no.” The cloying stench of blood and decomposing meat filled his nostrils and he flicked a quick inspection over the spotless kitchen. “Where are the occupants of this house?”
Einar turned and gave him a small smile, and Marshall tensed. The man hadn’t changed since he’d seen him last, two years ago standing in the P.A.C. commander’s office. He still stood like a conceited aristocrat. He still oozed deadly promise. His skin still looked like tanned leather. His eyes still burned with empty malice.
Without uttering a word, Einar placed two mugs on the table between them, smiled at him through the wispy white steam rising from each one, and then walked to a closed door to his left.
Marshall narrowed his eyes. Einar was limping. Only slightly and he was doing his best to conceal it, but a limp all the same. Interesting.
“I see your fondness for humans hasn’t changed.” Einar tsked with condescending distaste, the sound all too familiar to Marshall’s ears. “A weakness you have not learnt to control.” He pressed his palm flat on the door and pushed.
It swung open, revealing a small laundry room shrouded in dim shadows. And three people lying stiff on the floor. A man, a woman and a teenage girl.
“They are not dead,” Einar spoke. Marshall jerked his stare back to his ex-partner, struggling to keep his wolf in check. “Their death would serve no purpose.” Einar grinned, flashing teeth much more pointed than before. “At least, not until now.”
Marshall’s beast snarled, surging for release. He stood motionless, jaw clenched, face composed. He knew this game. Einar played it very well. Antagonise the enemy until their control cracked. “How did you know I sent you the intel on the thylacine?” he asked, changing the subject. Deflecting Einar’s strike.
Einar let the door to the laundry swing closed, his eyes glinting with smug delight. “Who else would? Who else had a reason to put me in a specific place?” He moved back to the table and Marshall noted how his ex-partner favoured his right leg. How the material of his trousers seemed to be stretched over something high on his thigh. Something like a bandage wrapped around an injury? “Who else but my noble partner trying to flush me out so he could right his own foolish wrong?” He picked up one of the steaming cups of coffee and raised it in a salute. “How pathetic it is you totally failed in your objective.”
Marshall shrugged, ignoring the sharp shard of pain the action sent stabbing into his neck. “Wouldn’t say that, Einar. After all, the thylacine is still alive, and you’re here in Australia. Exactly where I wanted you to be.”
Einar laughed, a rising chortle that made the
hair on the back of Marshall’s neck stand on end. There was nothing sane in that laugh. Nothing joyful or humourous either. “The thylacine will be here very soon, Rourke. And the moment she walks through the front door, I win. I get to kill the last Tasmanian-tiger shape-shifter in existence before I butcher the last dire werewolf alive. By the way, Agent Rourke, very clever of you to keep your true form from me. It would have made our working relationship rather…tense.”
Marshall smiled. “Well, you know me. Always thinking of others before myself.”
Einar studied him, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Hmmm. Tell me, was fucking Jacqueline Huddart part of your plan to catch me, or was it an added bonus?”
Marshall’s blood ran cold, his pulse leaping into furious flight. “Didn’t realize you were a peeping Tom as well as a psychotic killer, Einar. Did you put that on your P.A.C. job application?”
Einar grinned, pointed teeth flashing again. “Watching you mount her from behind like the filthy animal you are was quite an education. And rather arousing, I admit. I’ve never been more excited at the thought of ridding the She-God’s world of two abominations as when I witnessed you copulate.” He raised one eyebrow and took a sip of coffee. “I must say however, the thylacine looks to be a very energetic sexual partner, and quiet noisy too. The sounds she made when you stuck your dick in her—”
Marshall rammed the table into Einar’s gut, folding the man in half. The untouched cup of hot coffee splashed over Marshall’s arms and stomach but he didn’t care. Fury ripped through him. Cold and absolute. He shoved the table again, driving his ex-partner backward, a growl bursting from deep within his throat.
Einar snapped up his head, eyes burning blue hate. He let out a wild cry, the sound high and piercing, flung the table aside and lunged straight at Marshall. He struck him in the chest, slamming him to the linoleum floor, his hands wrapped around his throat. “You think you can kill me, wolf?” His fingers sank harder into Marshall’s neck. “With the poison from my blade pumping through your blood?”
Searing pain detonated in the base of Marshall’s spine, up his back into his head and chest. He grabbed at Einar’s legs, black stars bursting in his vision, and drove his fingers into the wound high on the man’s right thigh. Something hot and wet flowed over his hand and Einar threw back his head, wailing in that same high-pitched cry.
Marshall bunched his fists together and smashed them against Einar’s chest, punching him backward. The pain in his lower-back erupted in excruciating fire and he bit back a sharp hiss, his muscles cramping. He rolled onto his stomach and snapped to his feet, spinning to face his ex-partner a mere second before Einar could recover his. He struck out with his foot, driving his heel into the man’s gut. Einar’s back crashed into the edge of the kitchen bench, the impact making the cupboards shudder. Doors flung open, crockery tumbled from the shelves and smashed into pieces on the floor around Marshall’s bare feet. He threw himself at the dark elf, his inner beast slathering for control. His hands wrapped around Einar’s throat. “You think elf poison can slow down a dire wolf?”
He slammed his fist into the man’s nose, again, again. Ink black blood burst from each nostril and smeared his knuckles, but he didn’t stop. The pain in his back turned to ripping agony, but he didn’t stop. The blood in his veins felt like boiling acid, surging for his heart, but he didn’t stop. He smashed his fist into Einar’s nose again, his pulse pounding in his ears. Einar bucked beneath him, and before Marshall knew what was happening, his ex-partner reared backward, using the bench as a pivot-point, and shoved his feet into Marshall’s stomach.
The room turned to a blur of beige as he reeled backward, hideous black blotches blooming in his vision. His gut cramped, followed by his chest. His knees buckled and he crumpled onto all fours, head swimming, heart racing. Faster. Faster.
“Of course, I think elf poison can slow a dire wolf down.” Einar’s feet appeared in his sight, the left one painted with Einar’s own blood. Marshall lifted his head just in time to see the man’s fist punching down at his face. White pain detonated in his nose, up into his eyes.
“Why wouldn’t it?”
Einar grabbed Marshall’s hair and yanked him off the floor. The dark elf’s knee smashed up into his chin, driving him back farther. Blood gushed from his nose, down his throat, choking him, drowning him.
“A dire wolf is just an old dog who didn’t know when to die.”
Einar’s foot slammed into Marshall’s crotch and he bowed into a stiff arc, blistering pain lacerating his mind.
Jackie.
Einar moved to stand over him, a long silver knife gripped in his left hand. He smiled down at Marshall, his normally blue eyes glowing an iridescent red, his pointed teeth glistening with saliva. “And as you know, I’m very, very good at putting old dogs out of their misery.” He crouched down beside Marshall, head tilted to the side, elbows resting on his bent knees, knife dangling above Marshall’s gut with arrogant nonchalance. “When the time is right.”
The cloying stench of rotting moss filtered into Marshall’s blood-clotted nose and he slipped his blurred, black-fogged gaze to the man’s thigh, a weak laugh bubbling up through his throat. “She made you bleed…” He smiled, his face screaming in pain at the movement of its muscles. “How’s it feel?”
Einar hissed, a venomous sound, and he slammed the hilt of his knife close to Marshall’s nose. “You’re but an hour away from death, wolf,” he sneered, his spittle burning Marshall’s cheek. “Just long enough to watch me gut the thylacine bitch before I skin you a—”
A snarling streak of russet-gold smashed into Einar’s ribs, barreling him sideways. His knife skidded across the linoleum and his head smacked the floor with a dull crack. Marshall stared—blood and pain blurring his vision—at the large animal standing on Einar’s chest, pinning him to the floor, its long, sharp teeth bared a mere inch from the man’s stunned face.
Jackie, no.
The thylacine’s ears pricked, but it didn’t move. Its muzzle wrinkled as it snarled again, its front paws pressing harder on Einar’s shoulders, its stiff tail a motionless whip extending from its straight spine.
Jackie. Marshall’s gut clenched, his breath growing rapid, shallow. He tried to move, but couldn’t, his body engulfed in agonizing pain. No. Run. Get away.
A black shimmer of light rippled over Einar’s flesh, his iridescent eyes burning brighter. “Hello, detective,” he murmured, grinning up at the animal on his chest. “Glad you could—”
The thylacine didn’t let him finish. Or rather, Jackie didn’t. She transformed, her Tasmanian-tiger form rending into her human in the space of a heartbeat. Her elbow smashed into Einar’s throat with brutal force and speed.
A wet glurk burst from the man’s lips. His legs and arms flopped on the floor, a spasm as violent as the blow Jackie delivered to his throat claiming him. And still she didn’t move, her knees gripping his hips, her stare trained on his face. Unwavering, unrelenting. Inescapable. “I told you I wasn’t coming after you as a cop,” she whispered.
She slammed her elbow into his throat again, followed by the back of her fist to his temple. He flopped beneath her, eyes bulging, a keening cry tearing from his throat. His hand flapped at the floor, seeking his knife, and Jackie smashed the side of her right fist down on his wrist, her face expressionless as the sound of shattering bone filled the room.
“Bitch!” Einar roared, skin rippling black light again.
“Jackie,” Marshall called. Dread pooled in his gut. He tried to move again, to get up, to go to her, to help her, but his body refused to obey. Pain devoured him. It burnt him alive from the inside out. “Get away. He’s changing.”
Einar’s leathery flesh shimmered black once more. He wailed, still reaching for his knife, his hand flopping on the end of his arm like a dead squid. Blood flowed from his nose, his thigh. His eyes flared with red hatred. “Fucking kill you, you cunt!”
His scream stabbed straight into Marshall’s c
ore. He’d heard that banshee tone before. Einar was at the edge and nothing would stop him now.
Jackie narrowed her eyes, her naked body covered in sweat, her muscles coiled to taut steel. “I’m pretty certain I’m the one on top.” Her shoulder’s bunched and she smashed her left fist into his jaw. Blood and teeth spewed from his mouth.
He screamed again, a high squeal unlike any Marshall had heard and, limp fingers slapping at the blade of his knife, he vanished.
Jackie was on her feet and beside Marshall before he could blink, her grim expression hardly changing, as if Einar’s sudden disappearance was commonplace. She crouched down beside him, scooping one arm under his back and hauling him upward. “We got to get you out of here.” Her words caressed his pain like a gentle kiss and he gazed up at her, barely able to see her through the black fog taking him. “I don’t think he’ll be gone for long.”
“Run,” he wheezed, trying to lift his hand to touch her face. One touch. “Get away.”
She chuckled, shaking her head as she jerked him to his feet. She slung his arm around her shoulders, her tiny frame taking his weight even as he tried to pull away from her. “You’re a complete moron, you know that.”
He laughed, the sound a liquid gargle. “I’ve been told so.”
For a split second, her gaze held his, her clear amber eyes shining with a clarity, a strength not there before. Her nostrils flared and she pressed her lips to his, the kiss quick and harsh and more wonderful than he could fathom. “C’mon, Pacman,” she muttered, heaving him closer to her body. “Time to run away from the ghost.”
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