Playing With Fire: Dragons Of The Darkblood Secret Society

by Meg Ripley

  “You know what I mean, freak,” Frank growled, his eyes dark with hatred. “I know what you’ve been doing. Think you can drive us out of town? Out of this state?” his hands tightened on the handles as he screeched at them, spit flying out of his mouth. “Guess again. You can’t keep the humans drugged up with memory serums forever, and I got an antidote. Know what that means? I figured it out, freaks; old Frank figured it out!”

  “Figured what out?” Susanna asked then, and she didn’t even flinch when he moved one of his guns to her. Her face hardened, but she didn’t move.

  “That you guys are demons, senorita,” he sneered. “Seen you with my own eyes, sprouting fur and claws as sharp as the day is long. Tried to tell the others, but they didn’t believe me. It’s those damn drugs you use to keep us docile. They wanted to see you for themselves, and since they’re not enlightened, like me…” he laughed, and the sound was crazed. “They didn’t see you. But I see you.” His smile slipped as he gazed at Susanna, and Thomas wanted to leap in front of her and shield her from everything—even his steely gaze.

  “So, you were trying to kill us from the start?” Susanna’s voice didn’t portray any fear, while Thomas was struggling to keep his pulse under control. How can I get us out of this?

  “Not from the start,” Frank admitted. “At first, when I didn’t know for sure you were demons, I just wanted you gone. Then I saw you change, when I was hiding down in the community center…I guess you guys do have blind spots.”

  Thomas looked at him then. “Blind spots?”

  Frank beamed, looking genuinely proud of himself. “You all are nose blind, just like any other human. Can’t smell your own shit. So, I took advantage of that.” He paused, and his smile faltered. “Not literally. But I dressed in some of your clothes, and used the rest to make quilts and blanket so you wouldn’t see me coming. You could pick up a little of my scent, but not enough to pin me. Once I figured out you couldn’t see humans clearly in visions, I was all set.”

  A frisson of terror moved through Thomas’ body, and he didn’t have to think of more questions to keep the man occupied—they just came pouring out of him.

  “How did you know about the visions?”

  Frank smiled nastily. “You think you’re the only people who know how to spy? I’ve been a lot closer than you think, Loverboy.” He winked, and a wave of revulsion moved through him. He must have seen us the other day.

  “Why are you doing this?” Thomas demanded. “Why are you messing with us? We were going to fix your shop for you, and then move on with our lives. We had nothing to do with its destruction, you have to know that.”

  “If you hadn’t been here, none of this would have happened!”

  Thomas sucked air into his lungs sharply as Frank swung both of his guns toward him until they both pointed at his chest. His heart stopped, and he heard screams, but they seemed soft and distant.

  Frank’s mouth set into a thin line, and he narrowed his eyes.

  “No,” Thomas said frantically. He saw Natalie and Charlie exchange a look, but he didn’t dare move his head to see what it was. “Frank. Why are you doing this?”

  “Because my niece got stuck by one of you beasts, and when I demanded she cut ties with him, she cut me off instead!” Thomas noticed that even the whites of Frank’s eyes were yellow. “My own flesh and blood shunned me. I know you don’t care about humans, but my niece was the last good thing I had in this god forsaken town.”

  Frank’s thumbs pulled down on the hammers of both guns, and adrenaline shot through Thomas’ body. “I didn’t get to burn you to death, but I’ll burn you after. Wanna know something?” he smirked. “Your girl Leslie wasn’t completely wrong about the burial ground. There’s shifter bodies under that barn. Men like me have been putting them there for years. That’s why you’re all drawn to this land. That’s why you’re all transfixed on it.”

  That’s how you snuck up on us, Thomas realized. Some weird shifter magic. Thanks a lot, metaphysics.

  “Now, I think I’ll get this over with,” he said finally, and his voice was choked with tears. “None of you try anything funny, now. I’ll get you one at a time. Would have been better in the barn, but then you had to go and figure out my plan.” He chuckled and shook his head. “You know, it’s—”

  A loud boom sounded, and the next moment, Frank was dropping toward the ground, both guns falling from his lifeless hands. Thomas blinked rapidly, trying to make sense out of the scene before him; everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. The grass fluttered beneath his body as his weight settled on it, and a dark red stain was spreading out around him, turning the soil brown and wet. His eyes finally told his brain that Frank’s head was missing—it had been torn clean off his shoulders by the lioness standing over him, wearing an expression as bewildered as the rest of the pride’s.

  Susanna stared around at them with her eyes wide, panting from the effort of ripping the man’s head off. She’d gotten over to him before he realized she’d moved; but how? Before he could ask, she started speaking.

  “Everything slowed down,” Susanna said numbly. “It came to me in a flash…and then it just slowed down. And I got to him before he could…” she trailed off, and her vivid green eyes filled with tears. The boom must have come from her faster-than light movement.

  Natalie was crying, and Charlie wrapped his arms around his wife as she sobbed into his chest. Leslie was staring at the body, unable to pull her eyes away from the darkening red pool around his frame. Her face was bone-white, and Thomas had a feeling she wouldn’t be volunteering for any more adventures for a while.

  Susanna let out a strangled sob, and Thomas felt his heart wrench in his chest even as relief started to wash into his bloodstream. “It’s okay,” Thomas said, hurrying forward and stepping over Frank’s corpse. “It’s okay. We’re safe now. You saved us.”

  “We’re safe?” Susanna asked. She turned her eyes toward him quizzically and drew in a deep, shuddering breath, apparently gathering her air to speak again.

  Then, for the first time ever, she fainted before he got the chance to faint first.

  ****

  They sat together in their wicker rocking chairs every day afterward, holding hands and sipping mixed drinks while they stared at the sunset. Susanna would sometimes go out before the sunset started and sit on the grass, ripping individual blades from the soil absentmindedly until Thomas joined her. After everything that had happened, it felt nice to be able to stare blankly ahead without anticipation of anything ruining their marvelous sunset. Evan would drop by on occasion, or Natalie, but for the most part, everyone’s lives returned to their normal swing. Only Susanna and Thomas seemed frozen for a while—trapped in place like ghostly images of their former selves.

  “Anything today?” he would ask as he slipped his hand into hers.

  “Just normal stuff,” she would say. Or, “Kylie is going to lose her keys down a storm drain tomorrow; it’ll tie up our pride’s schedule since we’ll be down one car for the caravan.” Then they would talk about television, or black holes; anything at all that wasn’t about Sierra Leandra. Thomas kept thinking about the vacation she’d mentioned, wondering if it was closer now, or further away.

  Sometimes when he spoke she wouldn’t say anything, and he knew that she was thinking about seeing Frank’s body crumple to the ground, or how close Thomas had been to being shot to death. She wouldn’t move, and it seemed like she wasn’t even breathing, so he would put an arm around her shoulders as she let her feelings spread out and float away down the gentle slope of their back yard and out over the fields, toward the fertile farmland and the promise it held.

  Then she started coming to him with predictions; just weather changes at first, and then a few basketball game scores a day or more in advance. It warmed his heart immeasurably to see the twinkle in her deep green eyes as she spoke about the flash of clairvoyance excitedly, stumbling over her words in trademark Susanna fashion. Slowly, the thin lay
er of ice that had surrounded her since they’d been targeted started to crack and fall away. She was laughing again, and singing. She stopped hiding when their friends came over, and they all visibly reacted to the change in her demeanor. On one particularly cool evening, he sat next to her in the grass, and she turned to him with a slow smile moving across her face.

  “Guess what I saw today?” she asked.

  “What?” he said, expecting to hear about new horse at the stables just outside of town, or the renewal of their favorite sitcom.

  “The mountains,” she answered. “Covered in snow. Beautiful peaks dusted in fluffy white flakes, three or four feet of it falling at a time. A lodge, some rum, and a fire.”

  Thomas blinked, not daring to believe what he was hearing. “Where might this ski lodge be?” he asked casually.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe Aspen? Perhaps Vermont?” She closed her eyes thoughtfully. “I’m not quite sure, but I do know there was a hot tub on the patio, which was also covered.”

  Thomas turned to his mate and kissed her on the lips. When he pulled back, she giggled, and the roughened chuckle was like music to his ears. “What was that for?”

  “Just because,” he answered. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

  Susanna pecked him on the cheek and gazed at him dreamily, the sunset painting her skin even brighter and warmer than usual. “It’s reason enough for me.”

  THE END

  Rogue Wolf: Wild Forbidden Mates

  Story Description

  Two rival shifter clans.

  One relentless and forbidden love with a rogue wolf that breaks all of the rules.

  In the small town of Spring Lake, the long-standing rivalry between a pack of werewolves and a clan of were-panthers erupts into full-scale battle. Raul, an ex-Navy enforcer of the Wolf pack, is forced to take sides in the conflict when a group of panthers–who have been raiding werewolf businesses for weeks–is finally captured, and the order given by the Pack’s Alpha male is to execute them without trial.

  He can only save one: Keira, a voluptuous panther female who only consents to let him rescue her after she nearly beats him in personal combat.

  But the war between the two groups is more complicated than either of them know. As they begin to unravel the two Alphas’ motivations in attacking each other, Raul and Keira’s rivalry develops into a hot, heavy, and forbidden romance, sparking further reprisals and deeper battles between their people.

  Will Raul and Keira find a way to bring their clans together, or will their love be torn apart by the chaos of war?

  “Raul, we’ve got another one,” the voice on the other end of the line began as soon as the call connected. Raul groaned, scrubbing at his face. It was still dark outside—but it was nearly four in the morning, and he had been looking forward to finally going to sleep.

  “Bastards keep slinking off before one of our guys can catch them in the act,” Raul said bitterly. He could feel the frustration of his pack-mate on the other end of the line, sense it as an extension of his own irritation.

  For weeks, he, Gary, Cameron, and Adeline had been tracking a group of vandals; their scent marks at the scenes of the crimes were easy enough to read, but all traces of the assholes responsible for the graffiti and broken windows—not to mention a few petty thefts—disappeared within a half mile of the site. It was just like a bunch of sneaky panthers, Raul thought bitterly. The town of Spring Lake had fewer than five thousand residents; and yet, Raul and the other enforcers for the Pack hadn’t been able to track down what they’d counted as five panthers. The other members of the Pack had started looking at him doubtfully, and the Alpha—Reginald—had put more and more pressure on Raul as the Pack’s number one enforcer to get the job done.

  “Someone was asleep at the wheel,” Cameron said, his voice full of brittle irritation. Raul growled low in his throat; he had asked for the Pack’s participation in staking out the various businesses that might come under attack. He, Cam, Gary, and Adeline simply couldn’t watch over all of the businesses that the members of the Pack owned in the town. They needed people to be vigilant, and they had needed to have a way to track the shifty, good-for-nothing panthers to their den, wherever it was.

  There were just enough people in the town for it to be impossible for any of the members of even the large wolf pack to know everyone, to know all of the addresses. Spring Lake was home to a thriving supernatural community—and even Raul, in his position of relative authority within the Pack, didn’t know all of the shifters in the area. There were even some, he was fairly certain, who lived outside of the town proper—in the woods that surrounded the town, closing it off superficially at least from the rest of the country. He had done what he could, asked who he could, about the whereabouts of a group of panthers and had come up empty.

  “Which business was it?” Raul put his phone on speaker and set it down, standing up from his seated position on the couch to get ready to leave the house. If another one of the Pack-owned businesses had been vandalized, the Pack would expect him to be there before daybreak, working the scene, trying to find a clue that might not have been at the other raids. Eventually those fucking panthers are going to get sloppy, he thought. And when they do, we’ll track them down and put the bastards on trial.

  Even with scent marks at the scene, there wasn’t a whole lot of information to be gleaned about the vandals. Raul knew that one of the panthers involved in the crimes was a fertile female—he could smell it in the rich honey-moss smell of her scent mark, buried in the deeper, sharper musk of big cat that the males left behind. He knew that there were five of them. He knew what they were. But until I know who they are, I am going to have this goddamned albatross around my neck, pulling me down.

  He had been a natural successor to the Pack’s previous lead enforcer; Reginald had groomed Raul for the position for years, even mentoring him through the Navy when Raul had enlisted. Reginald had told Raul more than once that the best thing he could cultivate beyond ruthlessness was the ability to lead, and Raul had taken that seriously. If Reginald retired—or if he fell in a challenge, or met with an accident that cut short his time as Alpha of the Pack—then Raul would be the first in contention for the Alpha position within the Pack. He would need to have the skills that it required, whether or not he ever took on the job.

  “Alicia’s bakery,” Cameron confirmed on the other end of the line. “And get this: they’re escalating, the fucking cats.” Raul felt Cameron’s barely-controlled rage and reveled in it, breathing in and out slowly. The low-level telepathy that members of the same Pack shared was sometimes a joy—but more often a pain. He didn’t want to feel heartbroken just because one of the younger members of the Pack had been rebuffed in his romantic advances to some girl or guy. But when it came to hunting down prey—or even fellow predators—it came in handy.

  “Escalating how?” Raul pulled a shirt over his head and glanced at himself in the mirror, smoothing his hair down against his skull. As soon as he had left the military, he’d let it grow out into a full, dark-brown mane, in defiance of the strict military grooming standards he’d subjected himself to for years. No one in the Pack thought that a man with long hair was anything to be laughed at, and members of the town who weren’t of the supernatural persuasion learned quickly that to laugh at his long hair was to court almost certain disaster.

  “There was a fire,” Cam said. “We managed to put it out with minimal damage, but someone still called 9-1-1, so there’s going to be an official investigation if we don’t sort this out quickly.”

  Raul groaned, throwing his head back and cursing long and fluently. “The last fucking thing we need is the cops on this,” he said. He took a quick breath. “Who’s coming to the scene?”

  “We’re trying to get ahold of Tanya and Jeremy, see if we can’t get them to take the case, keep it quiet.” Tanya and Jeremy weren’t Pack, but they were shifters—were-foxes. They could be trusted to a certain extent to slow up the investigation i
f they could get themselves on it, give the Pack a chance to handle it.

  Everyone in Spring Lake knew and didn’t know that there were supernatural humans living in the area; there was plenty of local lore about not going into the woods and scrublands surrounding the town during the week of the full moon, with vague implications of what happened to people who did. But nobody directly said that there were shifters, even elementals living amongst perfectly normal humans.

  Whenever possible, the two-natured community tried to police themselves, along with the other supernatural elements of the town. The elementals intervened only when they had to; otherwise they kept to themselves, and Raul preferred it that way. “Text me the address, and I’ll be there in fifteen,” he told Cam after a moment’s thought. “Maybe they’re getting sloppy. Maybe we’ll luck out this time.” Raul checked his pockets to make sure he had his wallet, and when Cam said goodbye, he slipped his phone into another pocket, checked for his keys. He could feel the animal nature—the part of his brain that was always the wolf—shifting, fidgeting inside of him. He wanted to be on the hunt. He wanted to track down the assholes who thought it was a good idea to harass the wolves. He growled low in his throat and headed for the door, picturing the panthers in their animal forms, slinking away from a burning building. Raul stepped out of his house and strode towards his car, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. I am going to catch them this time, even if it kills me.

  ****

  Keira’s heart pounded as she, Lachlan, William, Blake, and Floyd sped away from the scene of their most recent raid in the scent-blocked car that Noelle had contrived. She smiled to herself, worried and exhilarated, terrified and proud of what she and her clan-mates had done. “The fire was a stupid fucking idea,” Blake told Will as they put distance between themselves and the scene of their crime.