“You said—”
“I healed you,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “I did not have the anger for anything more.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“My magic is based in anger.”
“What are you, some kind of witch?”
“Do I look like an old woman with a cauldron and a cat?”
She tilted her head, peered at him for several seconds. “If you put on a hat, scowled just like that—maybe.”
He sighed, unamused. “I’m not a witch.”
“Sorcerer? Wizard? Warlock?”
“I don’t know what I am. I only know that when I get angry, what I want to happen, does.”
“Seriously?”
He lifted one finger. “Invisibility cloak.” A second finger. “Shifting in the sunlight.” A third. “Healing you.”
Alex lifted her thumb. “Doing me.”
“That I didn’t want.”
“Felt like it.”
He made an impatient sound. “I thought we were going to pretend that didn’t happen.”
“Right.” She flashed her hand in front of her face. “Forgotten.” If only it were that easy. “Tell me more about your anger magic.”
“I guess we aren’t going to sleep anymore.”
“You’re tired?”
“Guys usually fall asleep…after.”
“After what?” Alex asked sweetly, and batted her eyelashes.
She could have sworn she heard him laugh, but when she stopped batting and peered into his face all she saw was the same sour expression he wore whenever she was near.
“I have no idea how I became magic,” he said. “I only know that the first time I changed, I did so because of my fury.”
“You weren’t bitten?” she asked.
“Not all werewolves are bitten.”
“True,” she agreed. “There were the genetically engineered ones.”
“Mengele.”
Alex cast him a quick glance. “You know about that?”
“I’ve been around a very long time. I know about everything.”
Not everything. He didn’t know Alex had been engineered to spy. And he’d better not ever find out or she might end up magically dead.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“I was born in the year 836 in what is now called Norway.”
Alex let her gaze wander over him from his big feet, to his big hands, to all the big parts in between. “You were a Viking?”
“To be correct, Viking was a verb. To go a Viking.”
“The act of conquering wherever, whatever, and whomever you wished.”
“Technically, yes.”
“How did you become furry?”
“Have you ever heard the Norse legend of the berserker?”
“No,” she lied. She wanted to hear his version.
Barlow lifted his brows, surprised. “Aren’t all Jäger-Suchers supposed to learn as much as they can about as many different types of shape-shifters as possible?”
“Where did you hear that?” He appeared to know more about the Jäger-Suchers than they knew about him.
“I have my sources.”
Edward had said every agent he’d sent after Barlow had never returned, so Alex could surmise just who those sources had been. She wondered how long they’d lasted under Barlow’s torture before they’d told him everything.
She didn’t plan to.
“A berserker,” Barlow continued, “is a Norse warrior who, in the heat of battle, becomes an animal.”
“Poof, he’s a zebra?”
Barlow’s lips twisted as if he wanted to laugh but would never allow it. At least not around her. “Legend said that there were Norse warriors who wore the skin of a wolf; then they became one.”
“How?” she asked.
“No idea.”
“Yet you’re one of those who became?”
“As far as I know, I’m the only one.”
“Say what?”
“I’m the only one who actually became a wolf. Others wore the skin, fought with trance-like fury, became known as berserkers—”
“Hold on,” she interrupted. “You’re telling me you were the legend?”
“Could be.”
“Did you ever hear the legend before you shape-shifted?”
“No. But it wasn’t as if we had cell phones back then. We barely had books.”
“Did you ever hear it on your travels? Before your story spread to the masses?”
He peered at the ceiling, considering, before he said, “No.”
“Fantastic,” she muttered. “You can’t just be a regular werewolf, you have to be a magical legend with anger management issues.”
“Go figure,” he said.
Alex squinted at him through the gloomy glow cast by the lantern. “You’re awfully hip”—she snapped her fingers—“for a Viking.”
“I learned to fit in.”
She laughed. “Believe me. You do not fit in.”
He stiffened. “Of course I do.”
“Just because you talk like a human and sometimes walk like a human, that doesn’t make you human.”
His jaw tightened. “I am more human than many humans I’ve met.”
“Sure you are.”
He frowned and Alex stifled a smile. Good. She’d gotten to him. He was far too confident. Most werewolves were. They had reason to be. And Julian had more reason than most.
“Getting back to how you became furry,” she said. “Explain.”
“I just did.”
“You don’t think ‘I got pissed and became a wolf’ requires a tad more clarification?”
“There is no clarification,” he said. “We were in battle—”
“Where?”
He said a word that sounded like guttural gibberish to Alex. Then his lips tightened and he spat out, “Scotland now. They are nasty fighters, the Scottish.”
“So Braveheart wasn’t all Hollywood hype?” He appeared confused again, and she rolled her eyes. “You may talk like you’re from this century, but you need to watch a few movies if you ever want to fit in for real.”
“I don’t,” he said sharply. “I plan to stay in my village from now until the day that I—”
“Die?” she murmured. “Right. What was different about the battle in Scotland that made you—” She waved her hand. “You know.”
“Furry?” he supplied.
She shrugged. The quilt slipped, and his gaze went to her bare shoulder, heating before he tugged it away.
“I saw my brother fall.” His face filled with such anguish Alex got a chill and pulled the blanket closer. “I howled to the night sky. Called upon Odin to give me strength and fought my way toward him, but…” He shook his head. “In the fury that followed, the skin of the wolf that I carried upon me became my skin, and I ran beneath the fullness of the moon as a beast.”
“And then?” Alex prompted when his silence stretched too long.
He looked up, blinking as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Ever after I became a wolf when the moon was round. Or my anger made me so.”
He’d begun to speak with the formal cadence of those who spoke English as a second language, his memories more real, it seemed, than her.
“I discovered as time went by that fury brought forth my magic.”
“Magic in the blood,” she murmured. “Perhaps in your past.”
“Perhaps.”
“But you can make other wolves,” she said. “That’s strange.”
“Why?”
“Lycanthropy is a virus, passed through the saliva. If you became a wolf by magic, then how is it you can spread the virus through a bite?”
He turned his palms up. “All I know is that I can.”
Chapter 8
Alex fell asleep again. Shape-shifting required voracious amounts of energy, and the one small rabbit Julian had left for her dinner would barely have taken the edge off her hunger. Combined with the adrenaline r
ush from being chased by a polar bear, then being severely injured, her becoming unconscious for several more hours had been a given.
Julian, however, was wide awake. He lay side by side with Alex, trying not to let their skin brush, but every once in a while it did. Then he would have a flash of them together, and the only way to make the images stop would be to think of Alana and how he had lost her.
This child—and Alex was a child, even without the nearly twelve centuries that separated them—had killed Alana in cold blood and without remorse. That he’d touched her, kissed her, been inside her, not only kept him awake but made him slightly ill. That his body kept responding as if it wanted to do so again eventually forced him to leave behind the warmth of the quilt and venture into the chill of the cave where he sat with his back against the hard, icy stone and stared at her sleeping face. She really was quite beautiful.
Julian growled a curse in Norwegian and banged his head against the wall. The resulting thud echoed throughout the small space and caused Alex to murmur what sounded suspiciously like his name.
What in Thor’s hammer had possessed him to bring her along? Besides the fact that he’d been physically unable to leave her behind.
By dusk the storm had petered out. The sun set in a clear sky, red and pink and orange rays spreading across a vista of ice and snow. Julian shape-shifted, relishing the brush of the wind in his fur and the drift of the last few snowflakes tumbling onto his face.
“Planning to leave without me?” Alex stood in the opening. The quilt around her shoulders only reached to the apex of her thighs.
Julian’s gaze was drawn to the long, toned length of her legs, and he remembered how they’d felt clasped around his hips as he’d pounded into her again and again—
“Wake up on the wrong side of the cave?” she murmured.
Only then did he realize he’d been growling.
Annoyed with himself for the hard-on he couldn’t seem to shake, and with her for giving it to him, Julian ran into the deepening gloom.
Once Barlow’s tail disappeared over a near ridge, Alex dropped the blanket and changed.
She’d slept better than she could remember sleeping in years. Had that been because of the great sex or because for the first time since her father had died she hadn’t felt alone?
Alex caught the flash of Julian’s golden fur just ahead and increased her speed. How was it that a man she considered her enemy, an animal that had turned her into one, too, had made her feel secure enough in his presence to sleep peacefully for hours? Just because the man had made her come didn’t mean he was anything less than a beast.
They continued on throughout the night, moving farther and farther north. Julian appeared and disappeared ahead, but he never allowed Alex close enough to actually run at his side, and that was fine by her. Despite being housed in a wolf’s body, her woman’s mind remained confused.
She saw nothing but snow and ice and trees, a few bunnies, which she managed to catch and eat. Her legs were working almost in tandem with her brain tonight. She only tangled them together and fell once or twice.
Not long after midnight, lights sparkled on the horizon. Alex blinked and they disappeared. She figured they’d been a mirage, especially when they reappeared several times over the next few hours, winking out again each time she tried to focus on them more clearly.
The air was so cold her eyeballs ached. Maybe that was why.
They’d left the trees behind. Eons of ice and snow spread to the sky. Alex began to worry about what would happen when the sun came up and she changed. Naked, without any kind of shelter, life would become extremely unpleasant.
However, in that time of eternal darkness, when the moon drops away and the sun is not yet born, a light twinkled to her left. For an instant she thought perhaps it was the aurora borealis—something she’d heard of, though she wasn’t quite sure what it was.
She paused, snorting with surprise, the chill of the night and the warmth of her breath creating a cloud of mist about her head. When it cleared, she saw the lights hadn’t come from the sky but a village.
More of a city really, with streets and electrical poles, houses and businesses. Cars. Trucks.
Her snout hung open. This place appeared as modern as any small town in America. Probably because it was a small town in America.
She took one step forward, and Barlow howled—much farther up the trail.
Not that there was a trail. They’d left the road a few miles back and begun to cut across the tundra. Ahead lay nothing but ice and snow—mountains of it.
She glanced at the smoke trailing lazily out of chimneys. Who would want to continue into that seemingly impassable wilderness when they could remain here?
However if this wasn’t the werewolf village, and considering Barlow’s skirting of it she didn’t think so, she’d do better to stay away. She had a feeling that in these parts, people shot wolves on sight. They’d definitely blow her away if she loped into town. Wolves didn’t do that unless they were starving or rabid—two things that often warranted an express bullet to the brain.
They’d need a silver bullet, but she wouldn’t put it past the folks of Alaska to pack a few of those just in case.
Barlow howled again, and this time he was annoyed. That howl very clearly said: Come. With a side helping of: Now!
Alex snorted, pawing at the ice with her claws. She didn’t want to go, but she didn’t have much choice. Not only did his voice call to her, making her twitch with unease at the thought of disobeying him, but her human mind understood that to walk into that village—as either a wolf or a naked woman—was beyond her.
With a growl and grumble, Alex scrambled up a very tall, slippery embankment and tumbled down the other side. She shook the snow crust from her fur and continued on.
The going was rough. No human would be able to follow this trail without snowshoes and a lot of practice. Maybe a snowmobile, but it wouldn’t be easy. Alex glanced at the night sky. Perhaps a helicopter.
Another huge mountain of ice rose ahead. Barlow stood at the precipice, glaring at Alex as if she was the lamest werewolf in the land. Annoyed, she clambered upward. Right before she got there, he threw back his head and howled so loudly she lost her footing and slid halfway back down. By the time she recovered, he was gone.
She was so annoyed she didn’t at first see what lay on the other side. A second, much smaller village appeared to have popped free of the earth.
A single light in the town square created just enough glow to illuminate Barlow trotting down the street, and there was an odd humming, almost a buzzing, in the air.
Barlow turned and yipped. Alex took a step forward despite herself. She found Barlow’s “orders” damn hard to resist—all that alpha wolf, I-am-your-maker shit—which only made her more determined to resist them.
She forced herself to remain where she was despite his call. She would join him eventually. She didn’t have much choice. The werewolf that had murdered her father was part of Barlow’s pack. Barlow’s pack lived in this village. Therefore, she would enter.
When she was damn good and ready.
Barlow waited in the town square. The place was spooky silent. Businesses lined the street. But nowhere did she see a car or a truck. Of course she hadn’t seen a road, either, since they’d left the first village behind.
Houses rose behind the commercial district, chimneys smoking. Lights flickered here and there, and she suddenly understood that the odd hum was the buzz of the generators that powered the place. Beyond that buzz she heard not a single rumble of a car, or even the bark of a dog.
In the space of a blink, Barlow changed from wolf to man. For an instant she envied him that power. She hated being vulnerable for the time it took her to morph into a woman.
“I want you to meet my people,” he said.
Alex glanced around the deserted town pointedly. She had to wonder where he was hiding that werewolf army.
“Shape-shift,” he ordered.
Alex stuck out her tongue. The long, languid, loose organ flopped free of her mouth and she drooled, which was not the effect she’d been hoping for.
“Suit yourself,” he muttered, then he threw back his head and howled.
Alex skittered, startled by both the action and the sheer volume. Her ears, super-sensitive in this form, rang, and her throat ached with the desire to answer.
She could not drag her gaze from the man, big and bronzed and naked in the half-light, as the howl of an alpha wolf curled toward the slowly lightening sky. If she’d had human skin, it would have had goose bumps. As it was she shook herself vigorously to make the odd tingle go away.
Alex turned her gaze toward the buildings, expecting his people to answer that call, but no one opened the doors and stepped outside. No one walked in from the side streets. No headlights blazed in the distance.
She turned to Barlow, ready now to reach for her humanity, to shape-shift into herself if only to ask him what the hell, and she saw them.
Dozens of wolf-shaped shadows materialized from the gloom.
Alex glanced at the empty village, then back at the approaching cadre of wolves. Huh. It hadn’t occurred to her that the whole town would spend the night hunting together. In her experience, werewolves were solitary. Of course she was starting to understand that Barlow and his wolves were nothing like the ones she’d known.
They loped across the expanse of snow and ice, even as the approaching dawn crept up behind them, sweeping down like a tidal wave. The instant the sun touched their tails, they changed, tumbling end over end just as Alex had yesterday. But unlike Alex, they gracefully gained their feet, continuing toward the village on two legs instead of four.
The sun moved inexorably forward, changing each and every werewolf from beast to man or woman. By the time the pack ran into town, they were human.
Their faces reflected joy—Alex thought because of the night they’d spent in the woods. She understood now the ecstasy of running, the cool wind in her fur, incredible speed at her beck and call, feeling at one with the earth, the trees, the land—at home in a way she’d never felt before.
Alex tensed. This wasn’t home. What she had experienced was the collective consciousness of this pack. It would fade; it wasn’t real, and she needed to remember that.
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