Benic chuckled. “How could I feed so many if they were? We’re not an over-bred people. Most are domesticated shifters that have abandoned the wild for a more refined life. Some are from across the ocean.”
“From Europa?”
He raised an eyebrow, stopping mid-sip.
“Sorin told me some of your history.”
“And how does it compare to yours?”
Susan had to admit that Benic’s lab contained more advanced equipment than she’d suspected. His grasp of timelines and dimensional travel seemed more solid than Sorin’s. Maybe she could find some of the answers to her question here. “Eorthe appears to be following similar event patterns but your dimension is behind by a few centuries. It’s almost like something made time stall.” She snorted. “And you have the whole monster thing.”
“Remember, in this dimension, you are the monster. Could you have traveled in time?”
“No, not possible. A gateway through dimensions is like a bridge or fold that crosses over but only in a direct path. Not forward or back. Something must have happened to either retard the progress here or accelerate our progress on Earth.”
Benic clicked his fingernails on the rim of his glass while staring out the window. “Your blood lacks a virus that everyone else in this dimension carries.”
She sat bolt upright. “You know about viruses?” They were very small in comparison to bacteria and needed powerful microscopes to detect them. Or, possibly, vampire eyesight with a regular microscope.
“Yes. I discovered them about one hundred years ago.”
“You discovered them?” She’d been underestimating this culture and Benic. “And I don’t have this specific disease. That doesn’t seem too odd. I am from a different world.” She leaned her elbows on the table.
“Our worlds are similar. Why is it absent from you and no one else I’ve studied? We’re speaking of hundreds of thousands of test subjects from different species.”
“What does this have to do with our timelines?”
“Exactly.” Benic pointed at her, excitement flashing in his expression.
“I’m not following you.”
“You mentioned that something big had to have happened to have no humans here and only humans on Earth. It left me thinking.” He gestured to his lab. “And studying your blood gave me an idea. A virus made the difference.”
She chewed her bottom lip while staring at the vampire, but not really seeing him. Was it possible? His theory was the best thing she had at the moment. “I’m listening, go on.”
“Something happened six hundred years ago.” He spoke quietly. “A plague. There’s no written record of it, but spoken history lasts long among immortal vampires. We’ve found old ruins of cities in Europa and in the Middle East but no evidence of who built them.” He shook his head. “It’s like another civilization existed here then vanished overnight.” He fell silent and stared at her with an expectant expression.
She scratched her chin. People lived here before the monsters. Her eyes grew wide as she gasped.
Benic nodded and finished his wine.
“Humans?”
“Very possibly What leads me to this idea were your charming myths about humans being bitten—”
“And turning into—vampires or werewolves…” She slapped her hands on the table.
“Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. A great disease fell upon this world. Few know of it but we vampires call it the Black Plague. From the bones we’ve found, buried in mass graves, we speculate that many, many died.”
Susan grabbed her wine glass and drained it. Wiping her hand across her lips, she focused on what Benic hinted at. Had a virus wiped out the human population? Then where had all these species of creatures—people—evolved from. She rubbed her temples. “Get to the point, Benic.”
“You don’t have the virus because the disease never existed on your world. It’s a bloodborne pathogen transmitted via mother to child, which is why everyone has it here.”
She slapped her forehead. “You think the virus changed the humans into other species.”
“Yes, some of them. It seems most died. You, my dear, are a blank slate waiting to contract the virus and change.”
The world dropped out from under her and spun. She couldn’t catch her breath for a moment and clutched the table for balance. “You think I’m going to catch the virus?” Oh shit, she’d had unprotected sex with Sorin.
“I know you will.” His secret smile made her queasy.
The empty wine glass next to her hand caught her attention.
“My blood was mixed into the wine. It should be enough to trigger a reaction if my hypothesis is correct.”
She jumped to her feet and pitched the glass at him. “I’m not a fucking lab rat. You said most of those people who originally went through the change died from the virus.” Her voice cracked with strain. “You’ve killed me.” She pointed to the window. “Sorin is out there and he loves me. Don’t think this is over so easily.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Somebody retched next to Sorin. He rolled on his side, blinking away his blurred vision.
Ahote, in feral form, dry heaved. The contents of his stomach were already on the forest floor. His back muscles bunched with another wave. The hunter wasn’t much of a threat at the moment.
Sorin scratched his head and glanced at his surroundings. Did the oversized pup knock him out? His head didn’t hurt, only felt groggy, like he drank too much the night before. “What happened?”
Peder popped up out of the underbrush in his civil form. He blinked, his eyes wide as he stared with a dazed look. “The vampires.” He swallowed and cleared his throat. “They attacked us.”
Shock kicked him low and hard. Sorin sprang, using his feral strength, and landed on his paws. Claws dug into the moist soil as he scanned the area. “Susan!”
Her name echoed among the towering trees. No one answered him. His heart beat so fast it skipped. “Susan?” He shoved ferns aside, praying to glimpse her sleeping form among the plants.
Ahote finally straightened. He rolled something tiny between his claws. “Some kind of small arrow.” He glanced at Sorin. “Poisoned?”
A growl built in his chest. Raw and jagged, it vibrated, cutting up his insides. They’d taken her. That creature had taken his Susan.
“Kele?” Peder climbed the steps to the Temple and returned immediately, shaking his head. “Why would they take them?” His soft voice sounded loud in the hush that fell among them.
Ahote gestured to his pack mates, the hunters who had accompanied them, and tossed the dart aside. “Doesn’t matter. They have the females.” He turned to the groggy Payami males. “Report back to the alpha what has transpired here, especially Benic’s traitorous actions.”
The males took off without comment. Sorin didn’t envy their duty. Kele was Inali’s only child.
Ahote stomped past Sorin, knocking against his shoulder.
Primal instinct took over, flashing through his thoughts. Sorin grabbed Ahote’s arm. “Where are you going?”
“To the castle. That’s where Benic would take them. I can’t return to my den without Kele.” He glared, challenging Sorin’s dominance.
He didn’t have time for this nonsense. Turning on each other wouldn’t rescue Susan any quicker. The vampires knew how to divide shifters, and Benic had done an excellent job with him and Ahote. Sorin shoved his claws into the other shifter’s flesh, drawing blood. “Brother, I’m not the one who stole her away.”
The Payami hunter’s eyes flashed before he stepped into Sorin’s personal space, butting chests. The odor of his breath coated Sorin’s tongue. “Yes, you are.” Ahote punctuated each word with a thrust of his shoulders. “And I’m not your brother, dog.”
They weren’t speaking about the same female. Technically, Sorin had stolen Susan from the Payami while she wore Ahote’s mark. “If she was so important, then you shouldn’t have failed in your job to protect her. Susan gav
e herself freely to me.” With a move his father taught him, Sorin tossed the other hunter on the ground, his teeth around his throat the moment he landed. Sorin might not be Ahote’s alpha but he needed to understand Sorin deserved the title. The Apisi had a terrible reputation because of his father but Sorin had earned the position. He shook Ahote by the throat until he went limp in submission.
The dark shifter took a shaky breath.
Sorin dropped him onto the ground and pinned his chest with his hand. “Don’t forget this.” By the setting sun, they’d been asleep for hours. Storming the castle was suicidal. Yet what choice did he have?
The Apisi were weak, still recovering from illness. Sorin couldn’t remove the healthy hunters guarding them for his selfish desires. Also, his territory lay in the opposite direction from the castle. He didn’t have the time to return to the den and come back.
With aching lungs, he took a deep breath. Who knew what the vampire was doing to his newfound love? Glancing at Peder, he couldn’t ask such a sacrifice from the smaller omega either. “Peder, I need you to return to the den with a message.”
The young shifter changed into his feral form and approached him on his stomach. “Don’t send me away. You need help.”
Pride swelled in Sorin’s chest. He cleared his throat. His omega would risk life and limb for his happiness…
Ahote pushed Sorin off his chest. “Let him come. We don’t have time to waste.
The metal bracelet around Kele’s wrist chafed her skin. A thick chain linked it to one of the solid wooden posts of the bed. She yanked at the restraint again. It didn’t even creak. The metal was vampire-made, which meant shifter-proof, and definitely Kele-proof.
Short of breath, she paced at the limit of the chain’s length, searching for something to break the lock. She tried not to look at the other empty chains on each bedpost. No matter how much she tried to ignore them, her gaze would return.
Benic restrained people to his bed? Queasy, she pressed her hands to her stomach. Things could have been worse. She could have awoken restrained by all four limbs but Benic never struck her as the kind who would take a female against her will. Yet here she was, chained to a bed after being drugged.
Her parents lacked the resources to attack the castle. Would Benic bargain with them for her release? According to him, they wanted to mate her to some stranger and send her away.
She flopped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. No one would rescue her. She needed to make an escape plan and include Susan in it.
Resting her arms on her forehead, she squeezed her eyes shut. She’d been such a fool. She’d watched Benic manipulate her parents for years. A simple statement at the right time or a minute change in expression. He used those same tricks on her so she’d allow him on her journey to the Temple.
With a small growl, she grabbed the chain and gave it a good yank again. She’d thought herself so smart.
Naïve. That’s what she was. Taking Benic into her confidence, thinking him a friend but he had played her. History should have taught her. Vampires knew how to weave themselves into a shifter’s life and tear them apart. She’d thought Benic was different. Sneaky, but not malicious.
He’d kissed her. Made her think he cared. She would have followed him home if not for Peder. The omega had opened her eyes. Showed her a shifter’s interest was what she truly wanted. She glanced at the bed. Benic would use her.
The bedroom door cracked open.
She jumped to her feet and swallowed her fear. With a snarl that would have made her mother proud, she met a stranger’s wide-eyed gaze.
He kept the door between them. “Benic must still be occupied in the laboratory.” Moving with the combined grace of a predator and a dancer, the stranger entered the room. His gazed traveled from her head to her toes. “I do love it when he brings me a present.” The stranger didn’t smell like shifter or vampire—or human. Step by slow step, he approached, remaining just out of her reach. “Aren’t you a pretty shifter? Do you bite?”
His scent drifted deeper into her muzzle. She leaned toward him. He smelled of cedar and fresh rain. She took a deeper breath and caught a hint of sex in his scent as well. Dark eyes watched her with pretend disinterest. She recognized such a look. Benic used it when he hunted, yet this one was no vampire. “What are you?”
The male sat on the floor. Crossing his long legs, he settled and made a pleasant sound in his throat. It vibrated along her spine. “Straight to what and not who?”
She wanted to stretch out over his lap and let him pet her. Shaking her head, she cleared those urges. Or tried to. Something was clouding her judgment, making her react more on an instinctual level.
He gave her a lazy smile. “I’m an incubus. My name is Inacio.”
Lungs burned and muscles ached as Sorin finally reached the edge of the forest, close to Benic’s castle.
Ahote and Peder followed somewhere behind him. Once he started running, he couldn’t rein in his speed, not with Susan awaiting rescue. He clenched his jaw to silence the snarl wanting exit. Better to keep his thoughts on task and not allow his limited imagination any freedom when thinking of Susan in Benic’s clutches.
Crouching in the thick underbrush, he caught his breath. The stone castle rose on the crest of a hill. Colorful pennants snapped in the wind on the peaks of the three towers. He had never seen a castle, let alone been in one. The thing was huge. Where would Benic hold Susan? A wall surrounded the structure, too high to jump, and soldiers guarded the entrance.
How would two-and-a-half wolf shifters take over this monstrosity? He laid his head on his arms and watched the guards pace the wall back and forth, more like a mechanism than people.
A silent brush of ferns announced Ahote’s arrival. He settled next to Sorin. “You drive a hard pace.” Licking his muzzle, Ahote took in their surroundings and panted. “I lost the omega though.”
“Peder will follow our trail. He has a great talent for tracking.”
The guards were shifters and never missed a beat. Back and forth, back and forth they covered the wall. In some sick way these shifters considered this eyesore a den. “Have you been here before?”
“Yes. My alpha came on occasion for diplomatic visits. You should try it sometime.”
Sorin cuffed his ear. “I bow to no one. A shifter doesn’t need to live in a castle to be domesticated.” Ahote didn’t deserve the brunt of his frustration but he kept poking at Sorin’s wounds.
“Are you calling my alpha a pet?”
Sorin ignored him. The vampires used diplomacy and sweet words like shifters used claws and teeth. Benic’s control over the Payami, the strongest pack in the tribe, galled him.
Sorin had been fighting the world his whole life. First his father, then the demoralization of his pack, now the illness, but he’d won each fight. He wouldn’t lose this one either. The only difference was for once he acted for himself.
“The gate is too well guarded.” Sorin pointed to the entrance at the castle front. Merchants and farmers passed through, each questioned by the guards before entering or leaving.
“Benic is smart. He’ll have warned the guards about us and given our descriptions.”
The bastard knew tactics. “He mocks us by leaving the gate open like an invitation.” Who knew how long he’d been fighting shifters? The vampires had ruled these lands all Sorin’s life yet he knew very little about them.
“We should wait until nightfall to move.” Ahote stared at the walls with as much hatred as Sorin felt.
“I can’t bear what he could be doing to Susan during those hours.” She could be dead by then. He shook his mane and laid his ears flat. “We move after the sun sets.” They had at least an hour to make a plan.
“You really do care about her.” It wasn’t a question. Ahote grasped his shoulder, the tips of his claws resting on the skin. “That’s commendable.”
Guilt stabbed Sorin’s chest. It didn’t last long but it made an appearance. Had this shifter care
d for Susan? He glanced at the dark hunter and words escaped him. He nodded then turned his attention back to the castle. He almost wanted to apologize. Almost.
A branch snapped, and a disheveled Peder plopped onto the cool ferns—eyes closed, tongue lolling out. He caught his breath.
“Good, we didn’t lose you.” Sorin patted his shoulder.
“Not yet, Alpha.” He spoke between gasps.
“Tell me about the castle, Ahote.”
He sighed. “What can I say? It stinks of stale offal. The shifters who live within have gone nose blind. People are everywhere. They keep prey animals in pens and some…farm.”
Sorin shuddered. “Any other ways inside?”
“The south gate is just as guarded as this one. I haven’t been here enough to discover any secret ways in or out.”
Scratching his chin, Sorin continued watching the guards pace the wall but the eastern sentries passed at a slower march than the northern. “We’ll have to climb the wall under cover of night, take out the guards and search the castle.” With an army of shifters, they might succeed. He gazed at his exhausted, recently poisoned companions.
They were doomed.
“And how do we escape with the females?” Ahote asked.
“On my magic unicorn.” Sorin pointed at his cock then punched the hunter in the shoulder. “How do I know? We run. My main concern is getting inside. I must have missed the lesson on raiding castles as a pup.”
“I didn’t.” Peder spoke into the thick silence. He crouched low under both their sharp gazes. “I listened to stories the old ones told. Actually, I begged them to re-tell them when I could. About when the vampires first arrived on our lands.”
“And what is your idea?” Sorin prompted his resourceful omega.
“We’ll need a cart, some peasant’s clothes that fit me and a skunk.”
Sorin refused to blink, afraid if he looked away, he’d miss his Peder blooming into a possible hunter.
“Sounds like the making of a nasty joke.” Ahote chuckled.
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