“Your license to exist had expired, Shashur,” Cinatas whispered. “I am your executioner,” he taunted.
Pathos exploded throughout the room like lightning, howling with rage. He ripped the machine apart and pulled loose the bands binding Cinatas.
“Pathos,” Shashur gasped. “You won’t believe what Cinatas has planned to do. He poisoned me during the Elan transfusion, and he’s plotted to overtake the Vladarian Order.”
Cinatas didn’t even try to rise from the device. “Pathos! Just the son of a bitch I wanted to see.”
Pathos placed his hands over Cinatas’s eyes. “My son. Your pain will be avenged. Let me heal what I can.”
“Your…son?” Shashur gasped.
Pathos looked up at Shashur’s shock and smiled. “Yes. Blood of my blood. Seed of my seed.” He nodded to Nyros, awaiting instructions. “Take him to the Red Demon Pits and make sure his last moments are his worst.”
Warm sunlight streaming through the great room’s high windows was Annette’s first hint that she was still on earth, despite the heaven Aragon had carried her to several times in the past few hours. (The last time had been with strawberries, an experience that still had her creamy and hot despite her satiation.) The second hint was the sharp crick in her neck from sleeping with her head pillowed by the bulk of his shoulder. They were still naked and entwined on the sheepskin rug, all cozy and warm from the fireplace and from Aragon’s heat. The thick, warm disk of Aragon’s amulet sat firmly between her breasts, making her feel as if part of him still resided inside her.
Unfortunately, the third and final hint that she was still on earth was a showstopper. People were pounding on her door, sounding close to breaking it down. Sam and Emerald’s voices were the loudest. “Annette! Open up!”
“Hell.” She scrambled for her sweats. Now she knew how the three little pigs must have felt. Sam sounded like he was about to huff, puff, and blow her house down. Except it was too late, she thought. The big bad wolf had already eaten her up, strawberries and all.
Aragon did not look happy at the intrusion. She groaned and handed him his clothes, finding the flash drive as she did so. “Hurry and put these on,” she told him, slipping the flash drive beneath her shirt. She noted that the lights were on as she passed the kitchen, so she had power, which meant a functional computer. She wanted to rush to the keyboard, and it was all she could do to force herself to answer the door.
“Great sex” had to be flashing on her forehead like Vegas neon on steroids. It had been too good, and she’d been without too long. Her lips felt kiss-swollen. Her hair was in a wild tangle, and her nipples had hardened to shameless little beggars poking at her sweatshirt, ready for more. She schooled her mouth into a tight-lipped frown and wrapped the long length of her hair around itself, tucking the twisted end to simulate her usual knot. One glance in the foyer mirror revealed her failure. She just couldn’t seem to summon the tightly bound reserve she’d worn so easily before.
She’d just have to brazen it out with her friends. She was a single, consenting adult. And she wasn’t the first woman to have sex with a man the same day she’d met him.
Yeah, but how many of those did it with a werewolf from the spirit realm?
But then, how many women ever connected with their lovers on such a deep level? It had been more than just sex. They’d made love, and there was no getting around it.
Had it all been in her mind? Had all of her pent-up frustrations made last night more than it actually was? She might have had a chance to find out this morning if the yoyos on her porch hadn’t come barging in.
She snatched open the door and crossed her arms over her chest, tapping her foot. “It’s barely seven A.M. The cocks haven’t crowed yet, and I haven’t had my coffee. Who wants to die first?”
Sam and Emerald took one look at her and gaped, but Annette didn’t have a second to dwell on their knowing expressions.
Jared pushed his way inside, his expression grim. “Where is he?”
Erin grabbed Jared’s arm. “If Aragon had made good on his pact to execute a poisoned Blood Hunter, then there wouldn’t be an us.”
Jared squeezed Erin’s hand in reassurance. “You misunderstand. It is concern for him that drives me, not anger. Two Blood Hunters from the same band falling within days of each other? This is unprecedented, and my brethren are in deep trouble.”
Annette turned to see Aragon’s broad shoulders filling the doorway. The stark hopelessness in his dark eyes sucked her right to him, telling her last night had been everything she’d felt, because she knew how he felt now. She understood him and ached for him. His rugged features were so sharply grim that they stabbed through her waffling heart, pinning it in place like a moth to a board. She could still struggle, but her heart was fixed…on him.
“The Brethren are in less trouble than they’d be in had I continued as their leader,” Aragon said harshly.
“What do you mean?” Jared asked, his eyes narrowed to points of blue fire as he pulled from Erin’s touch and moved toward Aragon.
Aragon didn’t answer. Testosterone-laden tension filled the room as the two Blood Hunters faced each other. Something about their posture, their sculpted, hard bodies, and the air of power surrounding them shouted their elite warrior status.
Sam didn’t help to ease the mushrooming tension either. He shifted closer to Annette and spoke low in her ear. “You’ve not only been bitten. You’ve been devoured.”
Emerald shook her head, slicing a sharp glance at Sam before focusing on Jared and Aragon. “Don’t be a prudish gack-head, Sam. Nette can shag who she wants, what she wants, and when she wants.”
Annette winced. Emerald could have left off the “what” and just said who and when. Aragon was not a what. He was a being, just like a man—more than a man. Annette had seen that last night. No, not just seen—she’d felt it deep inside of her.
“You weren’t poisoned by a Tsara, were you?” Jared demanded. It was clear in his voice and in his face that being poisoned was the only acceptable reason for Aragon’s arrival on earth.
“No,” Aragon said after a very long moment. He turned his back to everyone, as if the accusation in Jared’s face was too much to take, and walked to the window. “I forsook my vows and left the Guardian Forces.”
“By all that is Logos’s Will!” The force of Jared’s exclamation shook Annette. “Why would you condemn yourself to such a fate?”
“What fate?” Annette’s breath caught and her heart thudded. Condemn? “What is he talking about, Aragon?” She crossed the space between them and set her hand on his shoulder, recalling that he’d said something about his time being limited, but she thought that meant here on earth. Not permanently.
“Nothing,” Aragon said.
Jared responded faster than she did. “I wouldn’t call an eternity of wandering alone between worlds nothing. Why did you do it?”
Annette’s pinned heart fluttered wildly.
Angry and wishing he could just disappear, Aragon whipped around to face Jared. The Blood Hunter and comrade in arms had been closer to him than any other being ever until his joining with Annette last night. He and Jared had watched each other’s back through the thick and thin of war as Logos’s Guardian Forces battled Heldon’s Fallen Army, seeking out and protecting the Elan from those who fed upon their special blood. Aragon could remember many instances when Jared had saved him throughout the years, and it was those memories that wrenched the pain and self-disgust chokingly tight around him now.
“Don’t you understand?” Aragon forced the words from his tangled whirl of emotions. Have you forgotten that it was I who urged you to sacrifice yourself at the Sacred Stones? If the Elan woman hadn’t loved you so much, you would have been eternally dead yesterday morning. Under my leadership our band became divided. They were right, and I was wrong. I failed, and so I left.”
Jared shook his head, his hands fisted. “By Logos, Aragon! Failure can only be determined by the Guardian Co
uncil. You know that.”
“I saved them the trouble. I’ll execute Pathos and move on.”
“You’re wrong,” Jared said. “You’ve been poisoned, only it happened years ago. You’ve been gunning for Pathos for a millennium. Why?”
“Because of what he did! The Blood Hunters will always bear the stain of the bloodbaths he orchestrated in the past and the Elan he continues to kill to this day. It must end. If breaking Logos’s Law to see it done is necessary, so be it.” Aragon fisted his hands, feeling the chafe of Jared’s disappointment in him and Annette’s confusion. He could see it in her face, feel it in the emotions that seemed to be crying out inside her.
Had he known that seeking pleasure with her would have melded his spirit so intimately with hers, he would have walked away…. He shook his head. He wouldn’t have, which told him just how dishonorable he was.
He slid his gaze over her, feeling the depth of the concern in her dark eyes and craving once again to be within the fiery core of her passion. He wanted to drive her through the gates of heaven at least once more before his time ended. Mortals had no idea how blessed they were to reach such heights of pleasure.
“The Guardians aren’t going to stand by and let you do this. They can’t. They will seek to punish you before your fate,” Jared said.
“I expected they would.”
“Then you’re a fool for taking the risk. What if they reach you before you eliminate Pathos? You will have wasted your life.”
Aragon shrugged. “It was my choice.”
“I think you’re both missing the point,” the mortal, Sam, interjected.
“You don’t know anything about this, Sam,” Jared said.
“Nope. But I do know we had four people murdered in Manhattan, and that we’re going to be added to that number shortly. We’re going to have vampires, corrupted werewolves, and demons breathing down our necks, and we don’t have a single plan of action established or a defensive play on the table. And the enemy is already a step ahead. There are trucks receiving loads of evidence from Sno-Med as we speak.”
“You found the tunnel, then?” Annette asked. Still, her stomach sank as she realized she wouldn’t have another opportunity to search for information on Stef. “I didn’t get enough last night. I needed more!”
A dead silence fell, and everyone but Aragon turned to stare at her.
Sam cleared his throat. “Maybe you want to discuss that with Emerald later.”
Annette blinked, started to frown, then glared at Sam when she realized how he’d taken her words.
Erin covered her mouth, but the giggle still escaped, her honey eyes bright with a knowing look that told Annette that being out-of-this-world lovers was likely common to all Blood Hunters.
“Information!” Annette clarified, holding up her flash drive, her cheeks burning. “I won’t know for sure until I have a chance to look, but I don’t think I copied enough information off the Sno-Med computer to help me find out where Stefanie is.”
“Bleedin’ hell, Nette. This happened when?” Emerald narrowed her eyes.
“You didn’t tell them?” Annette glanced at Sam.
He held his hands up. “Rough night on the force kept me busy. Besides, once I mentioned Aragon’s presence, everyone headed here like bats out of hell.” He winced and looked at Jared. “Do they have bats in hell?”
“Underlings,” Jared said.
“Fook bats and underlings, I want to know what Nette did last night.”
Now that she thought about the situation and Mr. X’s no-show, and since Aragon already knew, she decided to tell her friends everything. “Last night, I, uh, received an anonymous phone call telling me information about Stefanie’s whereabouts was on the computer in Sno-Med’s Infectious Disease Department. I was supposed to meet the caller at midnight to get the information.”
Emerald spoke. “You bleedin’—”
Sam yelled, “Why in the hell—”
“—didn’t you call me?” They ended together.
“He demanded that I tell no one. And I wasn’t about to blow a chance on finding out about Stef because I was too big a coward to go alone. You all would have insisted on going, and you know it.”
“I don’t believe this. Who was it?” Sam demanded.
“I don’t know. The voice was disguised…muffled.”
“Man? Woman?”
“Man.”
“Son of a bitch. Why didn’t you call me? We could have had a tracer set up on your phone by now.”
“He didn’t talk that long. Besides, he didn’t show anyway.”
“Surely this means she is alive,” Erin said.
Annette shook her head. “No. It could mean that. But it could just mean where her body is, or it could be a hoax.”
“A hoax to lure you to a deserted building, alone, so someone can bleedin’ kidnap or murder you.” Emerald paced. “After what Dr. Cinatas did to us, I can’t believe that you were gack-headed enough to go. How could you?” She waved her hands in the air, bracelets tinkling with her agitation. “You, who had the bloody nerve to lecture me about meeting Erin and Jared at the Sacred Stones at dawn?”
Annette winced, recalling how much grief she’d given Emerald for picking up Erin and Jared off a mountain road and driving them to her clinic for help.
“And I was expecting them!” Emerald added. She’d had visions, Annette recalled, of Jared’s coming to earth and the evil they would all have to fight. “Had moved from Ireland to Twilight just so I could!”
“You’re right, Em, but this was different. I took precautions. I went long before the appointed time. I went armed, and I left you a note in your office telling you about it.” She explained how she got into the facility and how she was able to get access to the computer.
“I’m impressed, Doc,” Erin said.
Emerald grumbled. “No matter how bleedin’ well it turned out, showing up early and leaving a note doesn’t make it okay. A hundred things could have gone wrong. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking about Stef, damn it. I have to either find her or find out what happened to her! I can’t keep on not knowing! Sam, we have to follow the trucks. Not just because of Stef, but also because of all those blood samples I took from the children at the health expo. I’ll die if one of them falls victim to a vampire.”
“Hold it!” Sam said. “We aren’t going to do anything. Nick has the trucks under surveillance, and he’ll call when they start moving. What you need to realize is that this takes your sister’s disappearance to a whole new level. I now have a trail to pick up, and I guarantee I’ll find the SOB. Someone at Sno-Med was involved in either the kidnapping or”—he paused to send an apologetic grimace—“murder of your sister. That needs to play into the plan to bring Sno-Med down.”
Annette sighed as the tension inside knotted almost to the breaking point. There was no way Sam was excluding her from the investigation. And she didn’t have to have him point out what the anonymous call last night meant. She knew it. But hearing it spoken aloud crystallized something else in her mind. “No, Sam. We don’t need to keep Stef in mind as we bring Sno-Med down. We need to find her or at least locate someone who knows what happened to her before we act against Sno-Med. Otherwise my sister could be lost to me forever.” She looked toward Aragon. “If you take out Pathos now, it might have the same result. I could lose my chance to find my sister.”
She knew she was asking a lot. Eliminating Pathos was Aragon’s sole purpose for being here.
His jaw tightened as they stared at each other. It was all there between them, everything they’d experienced; it wavered like an oasis on a desert horizon, seemingly unreal. But it was; it had filled her cup to overflowing, and their connection was hotter than ever, simmering beneath the dilemma warring in him. He swung away from her. “I don’t have the time to wait,” he said.
She exhaled as if punched. No one else spoke. His answer stung, made her want to cry out. But then she also understood how
much he needed to do what he’d vowed he would.
She could see all of them—Erin, Jared, Sam, and Emerald—also wrestle with her request. Was she being unreasonable? “Listen, I know that every day that Sno-Med is allowed to operate, it’s bad news for everybody, but shifting our focus toward finding out about Stefanie for a day won’t cost the world.”
She watched Jared cross the room and set a hand on Aragon’s shoulder. “As solid as you are within the mortal realm now, you may have the time.”
“I will do both,” Aragon answered. “I will find your sister and take care of Pathos.”
“No, my brother. We will,” Jared said.
Aragon turned to face Jared. It wasn’t clear from his dark expression if he was accepting or rejecting Jared’s words. But Annette had a suspicion Aragon would play the lone wolf as he had done before. She and he were alike in that way.
“What did you learn?” Erin nodded to the flash drive.
Annette shoved her angst to the back of her heart, realizing that the conversation they were embroiled in might not even be necessary. What if she already had all of the answers to where Stef was in her hand? What if she learned that Stef was dead? “I don’t know yet. Last night’s storm knocked out the power, but it appears to be on this morning. I haven’t read the files yet.”
“Where’s your computer?” Sam asked, reaching for the flash drive.
Annette pulled back. “This is my baby,” she said. “I get to deliver.” Leaving the great room, she moved down the hall and entered the small bedroom across from hers, where she had a makeshift home office. Everyone stacked in behind her, creating a cloud of tension that thickened every second it took for her to access the files. Yet there was something else; a sense of cohesiveness hovered like a spirit deliberating between worlds. Jared and Sam stayed near the door. Aragon stood to her right, positioning himself close enough to make her very aware of the heat of his body. Emerald was at her back, and Erin to her left.
The Lure of the Wolf Page 13