by Cecy Robson
Misha collapsed on the floor like a pile of wet laundry.
Petro charged.
I cursed.
Petro leaped in the air, gunning for me. His sole hand extruded nails the length of my forearm. Drool dripped down his deadly fangs. His muscles rippled as he roared. Freaking roared like a goddamn lion.
I did what any tigress would have done in the face of such a predator.
I hauled ass and dove behind the smoking zebra couch.
The whole room shook as Petro took out the wall next to me. His new form may have been powerful, but it also made him clumsy. Flames sizzled his skin as he rose. He charged yet again. I sprinted toward the window, but he was suddenly in front of me. Then behind me. Then in front of me once more. He laughed. He may have been clumsy, but his speed trumped mine.
I jerked to my left, then quickly veered to my right, narrowly avoiding the slash of his claws. “Do you feel pity for me now?” he asked, his long fangs distorting his words. Petro continued to laugh, his mirth growing stronger with every sweep of his arms.
He stopped laughing when I rolled and kicked my heel into his mutated man parts.
Petro backhanded me with the stump of his severed hand. I slammed into one of the pillars, struggling to rise, too stunned to change. Petro lurched toward me, batting the flaming furniture from his path, his dark eyes promising more pain. I backed away, sliding across the floor of sharp debris as my hands searched blindly for weapons.
My back hit something hard. I’d reached the stone fireplace.
I was out of space. Out of time. Out of options.
But not out of hope.
Glass exploded in a screech as a large gray wolf soared through a side window, tackling Petro across the length of the room.
Aric.
His presence beckoned me to my feet. I stumbled forward, crashing onto my knees as he and Petro tore into each other like monstrous pit bulls.
I crawled to Misha while fragments of ceiling fell like flaming coals. Snarls and hisses rose over the deafening sound of crackling fire.
“Misha. Misha, wake up!” Misha didn’t respond to my hard shakes. He remained limp and barely breathing. I reached beneath his arms to drag him out, but Aric’s pained howl jerked me away.
Petro had slashed his claws across Aric’s face. Aric reeled back. Petro had only grazed him, but his nails were sharp enough to slice through Aric’s fur. Blood ran into Aric’s eyes, blinding and enraging his beast. Aric’s jaws snapped Petro’s remaining hand like rotting bark and spit it at his feet. He aimed for Petro’s throat, but Petro’s fangs found Aric first.
Petro’s long incisors pierced Aric’s chest. Aric refused to let him feast. His mammoth paws dug into Petro’s overcooked flesh, sending chunks of Petro’s muscles to sizzle on the hot floor. Petro released Aric with a powerful shove. Aric rebounded back, launching himself at Petro.
The only thing that saved Petro was his speed. He caught Aric in midair and threw him. Aric rocketed past me and into a pillar. Half the ceiling tumbled down, creating a flaming barrier between me and him.
And trapping me with Petro.
Aric’s snarls penetrated the booms of the collapsing house. I could hear the thundering of his powerful legs racing back and forth as he tried to find a way to me, but I didn’t dare shift my gaze from the grilled psycho vamp coming at me.
I grabbed the discarded gold chain as Petro rushed me, flinging it against his shins with all my might. The cursed gold seared his raw skin, sending the poison into his bones. His haunting cries amplified as he tugged them with his mutilated arms, thrashing in agony.
I scrambled away from him, taking Misha with me. Through the thick black smoke, Aric’s human voice called to me: “Celia! Get to the front of the house!”
My eyes darted around frantically. The room resembled a virtual hell storm, the walls seconds from caving in. I didn’t know where the front was, but I knew I needed to move, fast. I lugged Misha into a fireman’s carry and bolted to where Aric’s voice beckoned me.
We swept through a narrow, flame-ridden hall and into the grand foyer, where I caught a glimpse of the front doors through the haze. There was our way out. But the loud crunch of wood halted my steps. Beams crackling with fire fell across our only exit.
Shit.
I backed away from the flames, momentarily stunned. Except the sound of Petro’s roars and chains being tossed motivated me to race up the steps.
Fire boiled the sweat on my skin. Tears ran hot down my face. My heart pumped with fear. Death by fire was not how I wanted to go.
And neither was death by a second-rate asshole master vampire.
The pounding steps behind me urged me down the hall. I kicked open the last door, dropping Misha as Petro dove on top of us. I fell with a hard thud against the blistering floor before Petro kicked me across the room and into an antique bureau.
The mirror shattered, slicing at my breasts. Blood soaked my shirt, but I barely felt the pain. Funny how hatred could run so deep it numbed. In the cracked glass I watched Petro trudge toward me.
I also watched my guardian angel rise behind him.
Petro advanced slowly, his dismembered face contorting with hatred. “You’re going to hell, Celia. You just don’t know it yet.”
This unholy bastard had used me to fuel this nightmare. But you know what? I was done being nice. “You first.”
I grasped his arm when he tried to strike and dug my fangs into the seared muscle, using my unique ability to return his soul. The glow from his body burned as bright as a star. Petro’s crazed, horrified eyes stared at his illuminating form. “No. Noooooo!”
I kicked Petro into Misha, using his shock to our advantage. Misha wasted no time. He dragged Petro against him and dug his claws into Petro’s heart while his serrated fangs ate through his neck like acid.
Flames chewed on the room. Misha fell to his side, covered in Petro’s remains, his words mere pants. “We need…to get out.”
“Yup.”
I hauled Misha up by the shoulders and threw him out the window. Loud grunts and angry swearing in Russian accompanied his landing. Good thing master vamps were immune to fire. Bad thing? The walls collapsed after him and the ceiling came down, blocking my exit with a barricade of flames. I stumbled back and fell, my lungs burning, my head spinning. From somewhere outside, my sisters screamed my name.
It was the last sound I heard before everything went black.
CHAPTER 35
Petro had it all wrong. I didn’t go to hell.
Only heaven could fill my lungs with such a sweet, wondrous aroma. Aric’s scent surrounded me. I opened my eyes to find him sleeping next to me in my bed, my body tucked protectively against his. I thought I’d dreamed my fight to the death, until fragmented bits of memories flooded my mind. The sound of the walls crashing. The feel of strong arms wrenching me from the burning floor. The cold night breeze slapping against my hot skin. And Emme’s healing light.
I raised my fingertips slowly and pushed the singed hair away from Aric’s brow.
His steamy brown eyes blinked open. “Hi, sweetness,” he whispered.
“Hi, wolf.” My smile faded. “You saved me, didn’t you?”
Aric stroked my tears away with his thumbs and gathered me to him. “I didn’t think I’d reach you in time.”
“But you did.”
“Yeah. I did.”
Worry made my insides churn. “What about my sisters?”
Aric stroked my back with his large hand. “Safe. In their rooms. With my wolves. Except for Taran. Gemini left after he brought her home. He patted her head good-bye.” Aric chuckled. “I don’t think Taran liked that very much.”
“Probably not.” Aric wore only sweatpants. I smiled against his bare chest, wondering what I looked like…and who had dressed me in my tank and shorts.
“Your sisters cleaned you up,” Aric answered, likely scenting my sudden nervousness. “I stayed to make sure you were safe. It was a hell of a fight, but we ende
d the bloodlust.” His hand stopped against my lower back. “Do you mind that I stayed?”
My husky voice fell lower. “No. I like you with me.”
A gentle purr rumbled against my breasts. Aric growled—soft and sexy—beckoning me closer to him.
But something didn’t seem right.
I lifted my head and peered over his broad shoulder. He frowned. “What are you looking at?”
I slumped back down and nestled my body closer to his. “It almost seems strange not to find a fire-breathing ax murderer with a forked tail and six eyeballs lurking next to the bed.”
“There aren’t any mutant vamps with chain saws in the closet either. I already checked.”
We stopped laughing when Aric fixed his gaze on my lips. “I had to give you mouth-to-mouth,” he murmured.
I swallowed hard, trembling as the surging warmth between us amplified into a tantalizing heat. “Sorry I missed it.”
No vampires. No bloodlust. No psychotic preternaturals waiting to eat me. Just me and Aric.
In bed.
He leaned in, drawing me to him, his lips meeting mine hard.
Aric was a force of nature. And for once my beast was no match for the elements….
Please read on for a sneak peek at the
next exciting installment in Celia’s story,
A Curse Embraced
Available from Signet Eclipse in July 2013
We reached the end of the alleyway and stepped onto the worn frozen path. The snow had melted, but it seemed the grass hadn’t quite recovered from the winter’s bashing. The rain and warming sunshine of April would soon resuscitate it. Come summer, the shop owners would struggle to maintain the large section of lawn. For now it lay asleep. Parts of it yellow, other parts balding. Only a few shoots of green daring to make an appearance.
The path widened as we traveled up a small incline leading into the forest. “Would you like to have dinner with me?” Taran asked Gemini. She tried to sound casual, but I recognized the underlying hope. He hadn’t, after all, responded to her suggestion.
Gemini gave a stiff nod, but didn’t speak. And it wasn’t due to his shyness. His entire demeanor changed as the thick pined forest swallowed us whole. His dark watchful eyes took everything in. Except he wasn’t the only predator reacting to unknown territory. Aric’s touch turned from affectionate to protective once the trees shadowed the path and blocked out the faint afternoon sun. My tigress stepped forward, sharpening our sense of smell, sight, and hearing. Even Taran knew better than to speak. Chitchat didn’t allow the full use of our senses.
My ears focused on the sounds of the forest, ignoring the way Taran’s boots passed along the hard ground. Ravens cawed in the distance and a few chipmunks and rabbits scampered along the crisp pine needles. As we drew farther in, the sounds of the forest reduced to the brush of branches in the wind. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. Just us.
The world of the living vanished in one gradual space of time. “Do you feel that?” I whispered to Aric.
Aric nodded. “Yeah. Stay close to me.”
Funny. That was usually my line to my sisters when evil was afoot.
The path curved to follow along the Truckee River. The melting snow from the mountains had caused the river to rise to the edge. Chunks of ice slid over the roaring rapids. I shuddered, dreading an accidental soak. Swimming remained a skill I’d never mastered. And by the looks of the raging stream, it wasn’t an optimal place to learn. Note to self: Avoid having some scary evil thing take you for a dip.
The firs along the river dwindled. Benches fashioned from tree trunks rested between the more open spots. A beautiful place to enjoy I supposed, minus the intensifying creepiness digging a hole into my chest.
The growing heaviness forced Gemini to escort Taran next to me so he and Aric could flank our sides. But then something stirred in the wind, like the heavy sweep of an invisible sail. Pained howls blasted my ears and the gallop of massive paws shook the ground beneath our feet, sending pebbles rolling like marbles along the trail. Taran instinctively reached for me. The wolves didn’t possess her ingrained response. Then again they never had my unique ability to rely on. I grasped their wrists and shifted the four of us far beneath the ground. My rare gift broke down our bodies into tiny molecules minute enough to pass across the packed earth. We surfaced in the thickness of the woods just as a herd of black bears raced past us along the path.
We probably could have sprinted out of the way, but I would have risked contacting one of the bears. Animals and my “weirdness” didn’t play nice. With my protective shields down, I’d fall to the ground in a massive seizure and emerge as Celia the Bear. Considering I’d have no way to change back to Celia the sort-of-human or Celia the formidable tigress, shifting us from harm seemed like the ideal way to go.
Aric and Gemini’s mouths parted as they examined their forms. I’d never shifted them before and they were likely surprised all their important parts remained intact. “Sorry. I didn’t have time to warn you.” My face heated, but my unease kept me from experiencing the full range of my humiliation.
“It’s all right,” Aric said. We stepped back onto the path cautiously, unsure what lay ahead. Aric didn’t finish watching the bears disappear around the bend. Instead his preternatural side searched where I searched, in the direction they’d run from. “Gem,” he said, his voice bordering close to a growl.
Gemini slipped his sweater over his head, revealing the muscular T-build common of all wolves. Taran’s jaw fell opened and I think she might have drooled. “Will you hold this?” he asked.
She nodded. This time it was her turn to fall speechless. Gemini cracked his neck from side to side. A large black wolf punched his head through Gemini’s back, sniffing the air. Like solidifying ink, he slid his powerful form onto the hard soil and sped off in a blur of black. The human half of Gemini that remained blinked his dark eyes. “Come. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
Gemini’s ability to split into two remained, hands down, the coolest supernatural feat I’d ever seen. Taran squeaked when he whisked her in his arms and raced after Aric and me.
My tigress made us fast, faster than wolves. Common sense, and the realization that “danger lurked, Will Robinson,” kept me from bolting ahead. Aric still felt I moved too quick despite being a breath behind me. “Don’t get ahead of me, Celia.”
“I found it,” Gemini’s low voice said behind us. “This way.”
The path veered in two separate directions. One led deeper into the woods. Gemini kept us on the one paralleling the river.
The sour stench of death stung my nose just as Gemini’s other half appeared before us, baring his teeth. We followed behind him. Our pace slowed as we ambled down a small, steep hill where an abandoned mill hugged the edge of the river. The large broken wheel sat in the water, moving just enough to squeal. The rest of the large structure dented inward where the moss-covered roof had partially collapsed. A deathtrap in the making, and one long forgotten. Someone should have demolished it decades ago, but the small town didn’t strike me as possessing funds to see its destruction through.
The closer we neared the mill, the more the foul odor increased, its acidic scent sharp enough to make my eyes water. “Son of a bitch,” Taran muttered. Her blue eyes blanched to clear. Something skulked inside. And it didn’t want us there.
Aric whispered into his phone. “We found something. Track us.”
“On our way,” Koda said on the other end.
Gem eased Taran onto the ground as we crept onto the rickety porch steps. A few good tigress strikes and the moldy and graffiti-lined brown building would collapse inward. Too bad we had to investigate before sending it, and the malevolence lurking inside, to hell’s trash heap.
A padlock the size of my palm lay discarded on the mud-splattered floor, its hook twisted as if broken off. Slowly, Aric opened the creaky door.
Footmarks cut into the thick layer of dust. Drops of dried blood wer
e splattered like raindrops alongside of each step. My growl rumbled in sync with the wolves. My tigress didn’t like it here. But she hated what waited even more.
Pockets of light trickled through the holes in the wall, illuminating sections here and there in the otherwise pitch-black room. The increasing aroma of death forced my claws and fangs to shoot out. I barely kept my tigress from emerging.
A set of stairs led up to the second floor. A small office with a door opening to another room sat to our far left. The vast room on our right housed bent and broken pieces of metal office furniture. This must have been the area where the administrative staff worked back when the mill had still struggled to stay open.
We abandoned the small sectioned-off area without so much as a sniff. After all, the revolting fragrance of sulfur permeated stronger to our right. A few folding chairs leaned against the dirty 1960s wood-paneled walls and a tattered armchair lay tucked in the corner. The calendar push-pinned into one of the panels remained opened to February of many years past.
We followed Aric through the large room, trailing the footsteps, and of course, the blood. I bit back a gag, the smell of decay threatening to bring up my lunch. Taran swore beneath her breath. She didn’t have to possess an inner beast to sense the death. Death slapped at our faces and demanded respect.
The roar of the river echoed from the back. Likely a section of wall had caved in based on how loud the sound of rushing water carried through the mill. We passed through a small room where the branches of firs poked through the busted sections of moss-eaten walls. Despite the growing Grim Reaper aroma, I thought we’d have to cover more of the building until we found our quarry.
I thought wrong.
The mill opened to one enormous area strewn with burlap sacks, broken rakes, and oh, yeah, a stack of corpses. Most girls got flowers, or maybe chocolates on their dates. I got dead bodies. Lots of them. Lucky me.
Taran stumbled away, choking back her sickness and burying her face into Gem’s chest. Aric gripped my arm, offering me comfort. He didn’t need it. He witnessed death as often as I witnessed life as a labor nurse. And yet as much as I wanted to mirror Taran’s actions, my tigress kept us in place and took in the horror.