The Lure of the Wolf

by Jennifer St Giles

  “Sorry. You’ve a quest to take care of, and so do I. I don’t know how to send you back or even exactly how you came to be here.” Which was essentially the truth. She had an educated guess that the amulet was key, but she didn’t know for sure. “What forest were you in? Can you tell me anything about the area? Anything different or unusual about it?” Her touch seemed to do something to him, because his gaze was riveted to her hand clutching his wrist. Then he slowly moved his gaze to her face.

  “Different? Unusual?” he asked softly, staring at her intently, as if seeing her for the first time. The harshness of his features eased within moments as a sensual light warmed his gaze.

  “You are so soft,” he said. “Your touch and your skin.” He slid his thumb down her throat to her collar bone and traced its ridge, making her heart pound and her body heat. She released his wrist and let her hand fall to her side, pressing her palm to the cool wall.

  “I’ve never known things such as this fiery interest you ignite inside of me,” he said, brows drawing together. He didn’t look exactly pleased with his attraction.

  She could have stopped his exploration, but her senses screamed too loudly for her to do anything but feel. How long had it been since she’d let herself feel anything but determination and guilt?

  He leaned in closer and breathed deeply, making her impossibly even more aware of him. “What scent do you cover yourself in?”

  “Gardenia,” she whispered, catching her breath as his fingertips splayed across the rise of her breasts, just above the edge of her towel. She arched to his touch before she could think, causing the tucked end of her towel to loosen and dip lower across her breasts, barely covering her nipples. Seemingly awed by the feel, he followed the towel’s edge down, caressing the cresting curve of her breasts as his fingers pressed gently into her skin.

  The erotically slow exploration had her trapped in a wave of edgy expectation. Her heart hammered with desire and fear, of him, of who and what he was, and of herself. She fisted the bottom hem of the towel in her hand, trying to keep from running her fingers through the silk of his hair or along the hard contours of his chest…and below. The six-pack tapering down to his impressive sex and thighs needed to come with a warning label.

  She’d always lived her life under rigid control; yet here she was, a breath away from exploding. Whether it was the unexpectedness of the situation or the man himself, she didn’t know. She only knew she’d never been this sexually excited in her life.

  He could have easily jerked the towel down farther, but he didn’t. Instead, he slid his hand up to finger a long curl that had loosened itself from her customary tight knot. He rubbed it between his fingers, slowly, savoring the feel and driving her need even higher because she wanted that sensual, alluring touch…oh, just where she burned. If he’d just…a vision of her dropping the towel and backing him to the wall to drive him past this lazy control rushed through her mind.

  No. You have no idea what you’re getting into, or who or what he is. This isn’t like you, Annette! You’re disciplined, logical, rational…you’re—

  The room flashed white, and she blinked, slowly registering from the crack of thunder that lightning had struck somewhere very close by. She could relate. She felt as if a bolt had hit her right between the legs—eyes, that is.

  Aragon froze, then shook his head as if surfacing from a dream. He backed away from her. “What power do you hold, mortal woman?” he demanded.

  “Annette,” she said. “My name is Annette, and I don’t know much more about this than you do.” Then she recalled what Emerald had said. “Perhaps it has something to do with Twilight’s scrambled magnetic fields.” She waved her hand in the air, and lightning struck again as thunder immediately boomed, making her jump. The storm had arrived.

  Strangely, Aragon swung around to face the window with his sword raised. “Enough talk. Show me the way from this mortal dwelling to the forest.” The heavens exploded with a loud rumble.

  “You’re going out there naked into that?”

  “We must hurry,” he said, then marched in the direction of her bedroom.

  “Wrong way,” she said, her voice squeaking high at the thought of him naked in there. “Come this way.” She motioned for him to follow as she tightly clutched the towel. Had she seriously contemplated backing He-Man to the wall? She’d truly lost her mind. She led him from the cabin and pointed at the woods.

  He nodded and grunted, then turned to look at her. He seemed about to say something, but then a bolt of lightning ripped across the sky and hit a tree directly across the yard from the porch. She gasped, backing into the cabin, feeling the hairs on her arms and neck stand stiffer than her knees were able to at that moment. Aragon swung around and ran into the forest, howling like…hell, she couldn’t even think of anything that crazy.

  The hottest buns north or south of any worldly or otherworldly Mason-Dixon line just happen to belong to a madman.

  She slammed the door shut, shoved the deadbolt into place, then ran to the bathroom. Groping around in the tub, she found the amulet. Careful not to touch the disk, she picked it up by the chain and swung around, looking for the darkest place to hide the thing. Too bad she didn’t have a garbage disposal.

  Three steps down the hall, at the same place he’d tried to rescue her from the phone, she came to a halt and drew several deep breaths. He really didn’t know what a phone was. She closed her eyes and tried to recall everything Erin had said about Jared.

  Then Annette groaned as a swell of guilt knocked her flat. There’d been a number of things Jared hadn’t known. It had to be the same for Aragon. How could she have been so insensitive, so stupid? And she’d let him go running naked into a thunderstorm.

  Snatching a pair of sweats from her drawer, she pulled them on with a pair of sneakers and ran back. Always prepared for any emergency as a doctor should be, she grabbed the heavy-duty flashlight from the plug and unlocked the door.

  “Aragon!” she yelled, but the whipping wind sucked away any sound. The rain had started, and the night still flashed with the fury of lightning and thunder. Biting her lip, she glanced up at the sky, and after only a moment’s hesitation ran to the trees where Aragon had disappeared. Rain stung her head and face as it pelted down, but she pushed forward, worrying more and more about what could have happened to him with every step. “Aragon!” she called again, delving into the prickly branches of the thick pines. Here, amid the trees, the force of the wind eased and the rain sluiced down from the needles in rivulets, giving her some relief from the storm. Every way she turned, she saw only trees and brush and no sign of Aragon. He’d apparently moved on with his quest. Something the man looked more than capable of handling. Why in the world was she worried about him out in a storm? She had a quest of her own.

  Deep within the heart of the spirit world, a whispered cry of disbelief echoed from realm to realm. For amid those who served Logos, it was unthinkable that a Shadowman so elite as to hold the title of Blood Hunter had abandoned his duty as a protector of Logos’s Elan.

  The act had brought about a special meeting of the Guardian Forces Council, one that Sven had been summoned to attend. Shoulders burdened with the heavy weight of the council’s judgment, he shifted to where York and Navarre waited. Within one moon’s cycle they’d lost both Jared and Aragon, leaving a gaping hole among their band and a wrenching sorrow in their spirits—a sorrow that was only going to deepen when Sven relayed to the others the council’s decision.

  As expected, York was pacing, his fiery countenance exuding a great power barely held in check. Navarre sat quietly, a rock-solid force no matter what battle was waged, even the unprecedented turmoil with Jared’s poisoning and now Aragon’s defection. No, Sven couldn’t put so strong a word upon what Aragon had done. Aragon hadn’t turned to evil, hadn’t joined the Fallen. So defection was wrong, but Aragon had sought his own way rather than Logos’s. Instead of seeking the wisdom of the Guardian Forces Council for direction, A
ragon had punished himself, and now that punishment would have more severe consequences than anyone imagined.

  The council refused to see Aragon’s choice as the misguided action of a spirit in turmoil. By acting on his own and forsaking his post, Aragon had made a choice that could not be permitted. If others followed, then the structure, order, and integrity of the Guardian Forces and their shape-shifting Shadowmen would disintegrate.

  Before Sven could speak to his brethren, York clenched his fist with a passionate cry, and Navarre bowed his head.

  “What do they want us to do?” York demanded. “I see the despair in your spirit, Sven; your very soul is crying out in sorrow.”

  Sven sighed, letting his shoulders slump under the burden he’d stoically borne without a flinch before the council. “Aragon cannot be redeemed, nor will they allow his spirit to eternally hover between heaven and earth, as we all believed his fate would be. Should he cross the spirit barrier, he is to be captured and executed.”

  “Though no evil poisons his spirit? Why? How can they choose so harsh a punishment?” York’s outraged cries matched those within Sven’s own heart, but they were questions that as leader of the Blood Hunters he couldn’t give voice to.

  Navarre rose and set his hand upon York’s shoulder. “It is as I feared. The council must act to preserve Logos’s order. Even though he didn’t mean to, by going against Logos’s rule, Aragon set himself as a higher authority.”

  “So now we are to hunt our own and see him executed?” York had his back to him, but Sven didn’t have to see York’s expression to know how greatly he doubted the wisdom of the Guardian Council.

  Sven didn’t speak, for the burden of his answer was too great, and the glaring fact that Aragon had stood in almost this same place with Jared was too stark a truth to face.

  “We’ve our duty to attend to,” Navarre said into the dark silence, and shifted to make good his word. Sven followed, praying that York would find the strength to join them.

  Aragon hit the trees skirting the mortal woman’s dwelling, ready to shift into his spirit form. He ran, completely forgetting that he’d turned leadership of the Blood Hunters over to Sven. All he thought about was the call to battle in the heavens roaring in his spirit.

  Though shadowed in a way they’d never been before to him even from the mortal realm, he could see the Guardian Forces fighting against Heldon’s Army in the heavens, their weapons flashing fire, hitting the ground with fiery destruction. The swiftness of their attacks and counterattacks whipped the air into a frenzied whirl, doubling the force of the carnage raining down upon him.

  That he’d forsaken his amulet, decreeing himself no longer worthy to serve, didn’t enter his mind as he raised his sword and leapt, focused on shifting to his spirit form and joining the battle. Instead of fading into the air, he smacked into a thick tree and fell back to the ground, his sword embedded in the trunk. He lay stunned a second before rolling to his feet. What in Logos’s name had happened?

  Lifting his fist, he unclenched his fingers and stared at his hand. The sense that his mortal form was more solid than ever before washed over him again, and this time he couldn’t blame it on the mortal woman and her magic. At least, he didn’t think he could. Was more time or distance needed to fade the effects of her magic? His desire for her still rushed hotly through him. Though he knew of mortal desire, having read of it in Logos’s Lore of the Ages—something all Shadowmen who work within the mortal realm had to study—as a spirit being, he’d never experienced such.

  The effect of desire was as disorienting as hitting the tree and as binding as the physical world, and he chafed under its pull upon him. His instinctual dash to join the fight didn’t make sense either. He’d left his duty behind to eliminate Pathos and needed to put his mind and body back on track with his quest. He snatched his sword from the trunk of the tree, smelling the pungent sap that seeped from the gaping hole, and realized that an entire world of scents and sensations was opening up to him. As a Blood Hunter, he’d only known the scents of Elan blood, those of other spirits, and the stench of evil. Now other scents rushed at him from every direction, the pines, the rich oaks, the decaying soil, and the purifying rain—the blood of the spirit warriors spilled in the battle raging above.

  Yet none of the scents made as deep an impression upon him as that of the mortal woman. Even now he could smell her, could still feel the wonder and the heat of her soft flesh against him. The hunger she had aroused in him still pulsed so strongly that with every beat he had to fight the desire to turn back and explore the fire until he burned alive, which was likely why he’d been unable to shift into his spirit form. He needed to rid her from his mind and spirit before shifting again.

  Glancing back at her dwelling a brief moment, he wondered about the voice that had frightened her. It still disturbed him. He’d heard every word the man had whispered, and it wasn’t so much what the man had said, but what Aragon sensed it had done to the mortal woman. A very deep pain lay hidden beneath her fiery warmth, and the man had made her pain worse.

  Aragon took three steps back, drawn toward the woman, then swung away with his hands fisted. He couldn’t allow himself to get involved in the mortal realm, or he’d lose his chance at Pathos. Time was running out. He shifted into his were-form and set his acute senses on detecting one thing—Pathos.

  Chapter Four

  “C ALL YOU BACK.” Sam hung up the phone, abruptly ending the call from his deputy, who had the Sno-Med Research Center under surveillance. The “all is well” report was great, but Sam couldn’t talk longer. Hearing Nick Sinclair’s voice was only making Sam’s brewing situation worse. Nick sounded way too much like his father, and that brought back memories of the last time Sam had heard Reed Sinclair’s voice. Belize.

  Two hours until midnight. Eight until dawn. Son of a bitch. Before anyone could see how badly he shook, Sam clenched his fists and shoved his hands into the pockets of his sweats. He’d like to think that the shakes were due to too much caffeine, and the sweat breaking out over his clammy skin to a dysfunctional thermostat, but he knew better.

  Heart pounding, he sucked in a deep breath and tried to stave off what he knew was coming.

  Breathe. Find something to concentrate on.

  The flashbacks always hit him at night, and were like unstoppable seizures. He was the one that needed to be locked up. Not Jared. Only Sam’s cell needed white padded walls.

  Panic attacks. Psychosomatic pain. What kind of pansy-assed shit was that?

  At home he’d get on the treadmill and run full-out until it hit. It used to be half a mile before he was incapacitated; now it was ten. Nothing stopped them, though. But here, having to watch the monitor showing Jared in a holding cell and Emerald and Erin parked in the chairs on the other side of his desk, flipping through magazines, he was trapped.

  Why in the hell did they have to show up? Why in the hell didn’t they just go home?

  He should have expected something like this. Planned for it. Emerald had a knack for making his life difficult. She’d been trouble since the day she and her little girl had sailed into town, driving that pea-sized death trap she called a car. Little cars were fine when everyone else around had them, but on curvy mountain roads full of big-ass SUVs, pickup trucks, and logging semis, being the smallest thing out there was just asking for it.

  He didn’t give a crap what the Druids did or didn’t predict—another thing about her that irritated him to no end. How could any sane human being live her life based on some mumbo-jumbo crap with visions and crystals and who the hell knew what else? The woman was nuts.

  Glancing at her from beneath his lashes, he watched her flip through the pages of a magazine, occasionally slipping her tongue out just enough to lick her finger to separate the pages. Just enough to drive him wild.

  Why her? Why after years of nothing, not even a glimmer of interest in sex, did she suddenly interest him? Was it because she was a sex therapist, and his subconscious was gra
bbing for help? Did he think he’d be like all of the other patients she helped with her little BlackBerry, thumbing out advice in their moments of desperation? Nobody must be getting any tonight. The blasted thing hadn’t gone off since she and Erin arrived over an hour ago.

  That had to be it, though. The only reason he had the hots for her was because his subconscious wanted him to be normal again.

  But you had it going for her before you even knew what she did for a living.

  Hell, she didn’t just interest him.

  He wanted to kiss her so badly he couldn’t even see straight whenever he looked at her.

  He wanted more than a kiss. He wanted to get all over her, inside and out. Her pale, silver-blond hair was spiked into a just-made-love mess, begging for him to put that same look on her face.

  At least Jared could pace. He rambled in his cell like a caged beast. Every now and then he’d pause, flex, and stretch his muscles as if something bothered him, but he wasn’t busting out of his clothes or turning into a hairy, fanged beast. Maybe what happened at the Sacred Stones had purged him of the poison inside him.

  Sam envied Jared. Nothing could get the poison out of him. Nothing could cure him. Luis Vasquez had scarred him for life in Belize. Inside and out.

  Sam was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Vasquez was a vampire. He’d always known the man wasn’t human, to do what he did to other human beings, but to hear that he wasn’t even Homo sapiens had been unbelievable. When he’d seen the bastard’s name on the list of men Erin had given transfusions to, men she was certain were part of a powerful group of supernaturals known as the Vladarian Order, he’d nearly had a flashback right there in front of everyone. Luckily, he’d made it out of Emerald’s house and down a secluded dirt road before it hit him. It had been the first time he’d had an attack during the day.