by Eva Chase
The trucks, small delivery ones with no windows on the bulky back compartments, slid into the lot, staying on the opposite side from us. I kept my dragon eyes trained on the windshields, the doors, for any hint of a figure raising a gun.
A slim, dapper-looking man stepped out of the cab of the middle truck. His hair was pure black and his eyes glinted with some semblance of life, but his skin was deathly pale. A sour smell reached my nostrils.
The stench of the undead, that only our sensitive shifter noses could pick up. Their human victims never realized.
This guy was clearly the king. He strode into the middle of the lot, past the vacant pumps, as if he wasn’t worried for himself at all. His gaze didn’t even flicker my way, even though there was no way he could have missed the massive dragon watching him. Nine of his people gathered behind him, standing guard. The others stayed in the trucks.
“We’ve come to your parlay,” West said. He and the other shifters were poised by the first of our cars, ready to use it as a shield. “Maybe you’d like to explain why your people attacked so many of ours last night?”
The vampire king smiled thinly. “That was a demonstration. To provide context for this talk.”
“That context meant more than a hundred deaths among our kin,” Nate said, his voice almost a growl.
The king looked at him blandly. “And now you know how serious I am. But no one else needs to die.”
“Wonderful,” Marco said. “We’re duly informed of your seriousness. How about you get on with the actual reason you’re here?”
“This is entirely your fault,” the vampire king said in a haughty tone. “We all know the space for the supernatural kind in the modern world is dwindling. We vampires have learned how to adapt, how to blend in among the humans so that they don’t discover us. But you shifters.” A sneer crept into his voice. “Like the animals you transform into, you let your baser instincts overcome common sense. You run around without control. You can’t stick to a human form.”
“We take care of any troubles caused by our own kind,” Aaron said.
“Not well enough. You can’t even control your own kind enough to stop them from turning against you. I’ve heard all about the chaos of your community from shifters who’ve already attacked you more than once and gotten away.” He let out a faint huff. “You’re careless, and eventually you’re going to be found out. And then the humans will be on the hunt for the rest of us too. None of us is safe while you continue giving into those animal impulses.”
“We need to shift just like you need to drink blood,” West said tightly. “You don’t see us trying to stop you from eating.”
“We don’t need to run around in the open with our fangs out to eat,” the king retorted. He slapped his hands together. “From my view, it would be better if we were rid of all of you. But I’m willing to consider an alternative. We have identified a few isolated areas of the country humans find so unpleasant they rarely travel there. You will stay there, and never cross those boundaries—and then you may live.”
Did he really think we’d agree to that? Move the entire shifter community to some inhospitable zones—and what, with the vampires guarding us like refugee camps, making sure we never ventured out? I bared my teeth.
“You have to know that’s a completely unreasonable suggestion,” Aaron said.
Marco chuckled dryly. “We’re not going to uproot all of our kin just so you can indulge your paranoia. What else have you got? We might be willing to work with you—if you’re actually working with us and not just trying to herd us into a pen.”
The king’s posture shifted. I felt it from him then, before he’d even opened his mouth—he’d been playing the part of negotiating, but he’d never really expected us to accept. And he’d just checked out of the discussion completely.
Checked out to give himself over to the other purpose of this meeting.
A roar of warning broke from my throat just as a flood of vampires burst from the backs of the trucks.
Chapter 5
Ren
Fire rushed up my throat after my roar. I’d have fried the vampire king into cinders just like that if he hadn’t moved so fast. The boss bloodsucker leapt into the shadows around the old gas pumps and vanished. Apparently the vamps couldn’t just blend into the darkness—they could disappear right into it too.
I didn’t have time to figure out if I could chase him through the shadows. Dozens of vampire soldiers were charging forward to take his place, swinging the guns they must have had stashed in the trucks to aim at me and my alphas.
Fuck that. I spewed out the flames crackling at the back of my mouth with a sharp heave of breath. My dragon fire washed over the bloodsuckers in a wave. Every vampire body it touched burst into cinders.
Several shots rattled out over the hiss of the flames. A bullet caught my shoulder with a tiny burst of pain. Not enough to slow me down. With a whip of my head and a fresh spurt of fire, those guns turned into so much misshapen garbage.
I sprang forward into the heap of ashen dust I’d created, readying for another blast. A bunch of the vampires had gotten smart, racing for the tree line at the edge of the lot. My next outpouring of fire caught the stragglers, but more than I liked escaped into the shelter of the trees where I’d have to take them down one by one.
Shots rang out and snarls carried from the forest. The shifters who’d come as our defenders must be circling around the lot to hold off the vampire attackers.
“Into the cars!” Nate was shouting. “The parlay is done.”
West’s voice, harsh with anger, broke through the bear shifter’s. “Everyone, let’s get out of here, now. Do not engage unless you have to.”
The vampires who’d walked to meet us with their king unarmed had run for their own trucks. To grab more guns, I’d bet. They could forget that—and forget driving the trucks as well. I wasn’t letting them give chase once we got on the road.
I rained fire down on the fronts of the vehicles, melting the metal hoods and the engine workings underneath into twisted blobs. The windshields shattered with the heat. A few of the vampires around back ducked from behind the cargo areas, guns in hand. I leapt higher into the air, summoning another stream of fire.
I didn’t catch one of them in time. The automatic gun thundered, its spray of bullets searing across my hind legs and thigh. I shrieked more in rage than pain and pelted the vamp with flames. In an instant, he and his gun were a molten lump.
More gunfire was still going off amid the trees. Ignoring the stinging ache radiating through my legs, I took off toward the forest. Some of the shifters were dashing to our cars, but others were still wrestling with the vampires, trying to cover their kin’s escape.
A black wolf slashed open one vamp’s neck, and the bloodsucker crumpled into a healing stasis. Two foxes, a red one and a tawny one with huge ears I guessed was Felix, sank their teeth into another vampire’s legs at the same time and yanked. The vamp tumbled, and Felix was at his throat a second later.
The trees made it harder for the vamps to get a clear shot with their guns, but that didn’t stop them from using their weapons. Bullets thunked into tree trunks and bark sprayed. A coyote stumbled and fell as the hail of bullets caught it across the chest. Marco’s lion lieutenant, who’d joined us for the parlay, sprang at a bloodsucker and bashed the woman’s head into a jutting root. Before he could wheel, another vamp had leapt from behind a tree and started shooting.
Blood burst from wounds down Leonard’s side. I caught the vamp with a spurt of fire. A couple of canine shifters ran to grab the lion shifter as he crumpled, transforming back into human form. They hefted their injured ally up to carry him to the waiting cars.
I fried another two vampires. Between the pain spreading from my own wounds and the energy I’d expelled already, my dragon body was starting to prickle. I wasn’t going to be able to hold the shift much longer.
Lights glowed across our end of the parking lot. Engines rumble
d as the canine kin waited for the last few stragglers to make it to the vehicles. A couple cars had already pulled away. As the rest of the fighting shifters broke from the trees to make an escape, the remaining vampires pushed to the edge of the forest where they could more easily pick us off.
Not if I had anything to say about it. I dove, blazing a line of fire along the edge of the lot. In his wolf form, West wove among the fleeing shifters, urging them on toward the cars. Nate’s bear charged at the vampires that were trying to dodge my flames. At the other end of the lot, Aaron and Marco had tackled the last of the vamps by the trucks.
My flames flickered out. I wrenched at my chest, trying to produce more, but my lungs stuttered. In that moment, one of the vampires sprang forward and pulled his trigger with his gun pointing straight at Nate’s back.
West shoved the bear shifter to the side, but his wolf was barely big enough to jostle the much bigger animal. The bullets clipped the grizzly’s head and streaked down his side. Nate groaned, spinning around but already swaying.
No! Panic knifed through me, twisting my gut. The fury that followed it blazed up so fast and hard my vision hazed white.
Not my mate. These undead monsters were not taking him from me.
More fire than I’d have thought I’d had in me—more fire than I’d have imagined I could ever have summoned—ripped up from my lungs. It scorched my throat and singed my own teeth. I expelled it all with a scream of anger.
The rush of flames crashed into the vampires at the edge of the forest, searing through all of them before they could so much as flinch. It seared up the trees too. Up the trunks, blackening the bark and biting into the wood beneath. Flickering into the leaves, filling the air with smoke. The rising wind whipped it into a fury to match my own.
A fury I couldn’t control. The fire surged from tree to tree, burning the rest of the vampires up or sending them running into the shadows. But it didn’t stop. It crackled on, devouring all the vegetation in its path.
I hit the ground. My human legs sagged as I shifted. Blood streaked down my pale skin from the bullets I’d taken.
Aaron rushed to my side. West and Marco had shifted back into human form too, hauling Nate into the back of one of our vans. The bear shifter’s head drooped in West’s grasp, his skin waxen. A dribble of blood spotted the pavement along their path.
“He’s alive,” Aaron said, but I thought I heard an unspoken for now in there. My raw throat squeezed shut. I stumbled upright at the eagle shifter’s tug. He pulled my arm across his shoulders and looped his around my waist.
The fire blazed on through the forest, its heat wafting over us. A shudder passed through me.
“I started a whole forest fire.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it now,” Aaron said. “As soon as we’re on the road, I’ll call the closest fire department. They’ll know what steps to take.”
He started to lead me to one of the other cars, but I shook my head. “I want to be with Nate. I need to be with Nate.”
Aaron looked as if he might have argued, but then he changed his mind. “All right. But someone has to tend to you too.”
I hobbled with him to the van. A couple of kin were already bent over Nate’s prone body, sharing blood and digging out the bullets. “Ren,” West said hoarsely, but Aaron waved him away.
“We should get back to our cars. Get everyone out of here before any more vamps show up.”
“Right.” West shook off his momentary hesitation and bellowed down the end of the lot. “Everyone! Move out!”
I half scrambled, half dragged myself onto the van bed next to Nate. Another canine shifter leapt to see to my wounds. I closed my eyes, tuning out his attentions and pressing my face to my mate’s shoulder. The glimpse I’d gotten of Nate’s torn-up torso was more than I ever wanted to see again.
Nate’s chest still rose and fell with steady if shallow breaths. I longed to squirm closer, to hear the thump of his heart in his chest, but I was afraid to disturb the wounds that hadn’t yet closed. Instead I nestled as close to him as I dared, willing with every shred of my soul for him to heal. For him to be okay.
The van’s engine rumbled, but the roar of the forest fire carried over it. Flames danced behind my eyelids as the wheels lurched over the uneven ground to the highway.
Not all of the destruction here was the vampires’ doing. In that moment when I’d seen my mate fall, I hadn’t been thinking at all, only acting. A mindless animal, like the vampire king had said. It wasn’t just Nate who might die because of this battle tonight. And if any innocent people did, those deaths would be on my conscience.
As we roared down the highway toward the canine estate, I wasn’t sure which potential tragedy made my heart ache harder.
Chapter 6
Aaron
Dawn light was only just starting to seep through the trees beyond my bedroom window when I pushed myself out of bed, but I wasn’t getting much sleep there anyway. Bleary-eyed but with humming nerves, I found myself wandering down the hall to the healer’s dormitory.
The room held several cots, but right now only two were occupied. The other shifters injured in last night’s battle must have recovered enough to return to their own quarters.
Nate was still sprawled on his cot like he had been when I’d left the room a few hours ago. The healers who’d attended to my fellow alpha were leaving him be for now. They’d bandaged his wounds, and blood hadn’t seeped through the white gauze, so I could assume at least that they weren’t bleeding anymore. He was still breathing. He just hadn’t woken up.
Serenity was curled up on top of the covers of the bed next to his, her eyes finally closed. Even asleep, her face looked tense. She’d been afraid of disturbing Nate but unwilling to return to her own room last night, despite the healers’ cajoling. Her own wounds had closed, only angry pink marks still dotting her pale legs. Soon they’d fade too, like all the other injuries she’d taken in her first few weeks as our dragon shifter.
What an introduction to the shifter community she’d had. Every time I thought the worst was over, the world upped the ante on us all over again.
I didn’t want to wake her. There wasn’t anything I could do for Nate. I’d at least seen he was still alive. But I couldn’t quite convince my feet to carry me back to my own room. All that waited for me there was more restless dozing.
The door to the healer’s dorm clicked open. Marco slunk in, looking as weary as I felt. He came to a stop beside me.
“No change?”
“Not for the worse, at least,” I said.
“Small blessings.” The jaguar shifter’s lips curled as if he couldn’t decide whether to smile or grimace and had ended up halfway in between. “What the hell are we going to do without the bear’s strength?”
“We’d lose a lot more than that if we lost him.”
“That’s true,” Marco agreed. The feline alpha must have sensed as much as I did that in a lot of ways Nate was the glue that had held our quartet of clashing personalities together—with his strength, but also that easy warmth he always seemed to radiate, unless you gave him a good reason to get angry. It was hard to squabble all that much when he was around.
We hadn’t even come together properly yet, not with West still dangling the possibility of eschewing the mating alliance altogether. I’d thought the canine alpha was starting to come around, but what would happen if Nate died? How united would we be then? The young man he’d have been training to take the alpha position after him wouldn’t be of age yet. Either the disparate kin would fall into fighting over the rulership, or Serenity would be left without another mate.
If we lost Nate, the vampires might have won already, without even one more drop of blood shed.
“Have you seen West this morning?” I asked Marco.
He nodded. “Wolf boy is prowling around the common rooms snapping at anyone he doesn’t like the look of. So only slightly more annoying than usual.”
“He feel
s responsible.”
“We all knew we had to go to that parlay, no matter how much it looked like a trap.” He glanced at me. “Any problems reported from any of your settlements?”
I shook my head. “It looks like the vamps elsewhere were holding back waiting to see how last night played out. I doubt we’ll get another reprieve tonight.”
We might have left the room then, our combined uselessness heavy enough to push us into motion, but Serenity stirred. She rubbed at her face and shoved herself upright on the bed. Her gaze rested on Nate for a moment, her mouth twisting, and then rose to us.
“What’s happening?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “He’s still healing, just… slowly. We have to assume he is, at least. He hasn’t taken any turns for the worse.”
She got up and walked to the side of the Nate’s bed, resting her hand on the bear shifter’s arm. “But he hasn’t woken up at all?”
“It’s pretty normal for us to need a good long sleep when we’ve been severely injured, princess,” Marco put in. “To make sure we don’t go running around straining those internal organs all over again while they’re still piecing themselves back together.”
“I don’t know. That just sounds like a coma to me. And sometimes people don’t come out of those.”
“Shifters aren’t your regular sort of person,” Marco said archly. “And alpha shifters least of all.” But the tilt of his head was a little stiff. Nate wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Our dragon shifter could clearly tell that too. Her expression held so much worry that I had to go to her. Marco shot us a look and then drifted away.
“Hey,” I said, tugging Serenity to me. “He’s hanging in there. The fact that he’s still with us after the wounds he took last night is a very good sign. We’ve got centuries of history behind us. Shifters are a tough bunch. It’s not all going to end just because some vampires got some ridiculous notions into their heads.”