by L. A. Banks
If she told her commanding officers about the rogue shadow wolves, of their existence and their complicity in brokering contraband, the military would, in ignorance, move against the clans without distinction. It was best that their roles remained in the shadows. She also supposed the same was true of uninfected werewolves, but she wasn’t about to admit that in front of Hunter.
“Then should we be concerned about mass Turnings in the Colorado Springs area?” Major Adams asked after a while, the strain of the silence on the line obviously wearing on him. “Since you’ve said there was a human who got infected and traveled clear up to Vancouver—that’s a trail too large to contain. What’s our exposure? A werewolf already murdered the general. Are we at risk for a massive outbreak?”
“No, sir. Exposure is minimal, sir. We got the infected smuggler and put him down hard. A lot of his gang are also left on the site, sir. Primary contagion is contained.”
She and Hunter shared a look. Dexter got away. She nodded, but things were already complicated enough.
“Police band scanners can put us on the trail of any unusual deaths, and we can sweep hospitals for strange animal attacks and do follow-up,” Sasha said plainly, trying to give the brass some ease. “But I do need to hunt down those vials, however, because those could be brokered to unfriendly nations.” She paused, letting them mull over that morsel of information. It would mean her freedom papers, her freedom to hunt, if they went for it. They had to trust her, and allow her to work with Hunter without intervention.
“At present,” Sasha said, forcing as much authority into her tone as she could, “the vampires do not have the technology to trap, contain, and create the vaccine— hence they wanted the blood samples with werewolf toxin destroyed. The werewolves are not that organized yet and are not technologically adept. But somewhere along the way in the handoff, there was a double-cross and the vampires lost possession of the vials.”
“Lieutenant, would you speculate, then, that is this when the creatures went to General Wilkerson to dissuade him from continuing with the Sirius Project vaccine?” General Griffin’s voice was tight and gruff, but that he’d asked a question meant he was considering the plausibility of everything she’d said.
Choosing her words carefully, Sasha leaned against the wall. “A werewolf could have mutilated the general, given what the smuggler said was the method of torture—but only a vampire could have gotten into the lab, passed a retina scan, gotten into the vault, and come out with the vials of Rod Butler’s blood. Not to mention that they’re experts in handling blood. So finding a random human’s blood to replace what was in the trays was no problem. They are also shrewd enough and strong enough to deliver the kind of wounds that killed the general. The giveaway is their stealth. Dorothy Wilkerson never heard her husband die. Werewolves are not that quiet, and once on a rampage, those creatures keep killing until the moon phases out. The moon wasn’t full. Dorothy is still alive. Had an infected werewolf been in the house, she, too, would have been eaten.”
“Then how in the hell did a goddamned vampire get into our labs!” General Griffin bellowed. “I thought we had all sorts of protocols against that!”
“We do, sir,” Dr. Holland said. “We have every kind of charm, spell, ward, religious barrier set up. I don’t know how that would have been possible.”
Sasha pushed off the wall, her eyes steady on Hunter, who nodded slowly. The general’s outburst confirmed he believed her line of reasoning.
“Human error,” Sasha said flatly, making the line go silent again.
“Vampires are the most seductive of the paranormals. They can offer money, power, fame, sex . . .” she said, allowing her voice to drop to a vicious whisper on the last word of her statement. “If they want to take a human’s mind and hypnotize him or her into certain behavior, they can. And all they need to cross all those wards and spells is an invitation. Anyone in the whole base complex could have been temporarily stunned, charmed, and let those mist-travelers into the tunnels. Once there, they could have lifted whatever they needed, including any of our technology. My sources are unorthodox, sirs, but I know these entities like the back of my hand, and my scout saved my life while we were under heavy fire at the wharf—so I trust him as a partner. The vampires could waltz right into the White House by blowing the mind of a security guard. We’ve just seen it cost a general his life. The situation is dire, sirs.”
“Holy shit!” the colonel exclaimed. “How do we bar them? There has to be a way.”
“We’ve gotta give Trudeau whatever resources she needs to get the job done and to lock our facilities down! I want those vials back. I don’t care if her methods are unorthodox or if the woman howls at the moon! We cannot have this contagion and double agents running rampant and killing our leadership. Gentlemen, redeploy resources so that the only soldier who has brought me answers can complete her mission.”
No one spoke as the general’s words reverberated through the room. He was still breathing hard from his impassioned outburst when he spoke again.
“Lieutenant,” the general said, his tone questioning now as it took on a quality like that of speaking to a peer. “Please. Do you know of any way we can bar vampires and werewolves from entry to our facilities, given the vast vulnerability presented by possible human error?”
Sasha smiled and shrugged. “Sir, only one thing comes to mind. A natural predator to all these entities with bad blood . . . It can sense them on the premises . . . this very noble creature called a shadow wolf . . .”
THE WIND HAD gone beyond howling; it was screaming as the driving snow and ice lacerated their faces. Hunter stepped into her, pressing his body to hers, parting her thighs with his knee, his massive palm emitting sudden heat at the small of her back, his fingers splayed wide against her spine as he clutched her amulet in his other hand and nodded for her to mirror his stance.
“See my grandfather’s porch in your mind—match my mind vision,” he yelled above the screaming winds. “We are one, same clan, life-mates, and must shadow travel on the wind like the clans of old did to convene at summits. Complete trust is required. Never let me go once we enter—if you break the seal, I could lose you in there forever.”
She squinted against the stinging snow to see his hair majestically lifted by the winds. His dark frame towered over her, snow catching in the five o’clock shadow that covered his jawline and sticking to his long onyx lashes and thick eyebrows. She could feel preternatural heat begin to waft from their amber charms. He brushed her forehead with a kiss. She held him tighter, grasping his leather bomber jacket in one fist. He nodded again, moving her away from the shelter of the building into the direct ferocity of the gale-force wind.
Snowflake shadows speckled the ground as he walked with her in an almost dance step, his legs between hers, spinning them around and following the direction of the wind, faster and faster until they almost fell. Then they suddenly entered a ground shadow at the edge of another building, and were gone.
That’s when she felt it, the full velocity of the wind. That’s when she screamed as she experienced what could only be described as her body exploding into a million snowflakes and moving with the unfathomable power of nature contained in the wind. Centrifugal force made it nearly impossible to breathe. She concentrated on Hunter’s edict to keep him close, and she pressed her face against the warmth of his chest, tightened her legs around his, clenched her fists around leather and amber—if he let her go within this freezing black void, to forever move at this speed trapped between planes of existence, she would lose her mind.
Then, without warning, they were falling. It was as though someone had dropped the bottom out from under them and the force that had originally been thrusting them forward was sucking them down into a blackout-creating spiral. She landed hard and ungracefully on something solid. Him.
“Breathe,” he said in a low, rumbling command. “Keep your eyes closed until the vertigo stops and breathe through your nose or you’ll hurl.�
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He didn’t have to tell her twice. The only thing halfway saving her stomach was that she’d done enough rounds of in-flight simulation training and other military-inspired, grueling tests to have some frame of reference. Still, this was no joke and not for the faint of heart. Maybe if she’d known what to expect—but sheesh!
After a moment, she slowly opened her eyes and blinked at the blurred landscape. Her skin felt hot and cold at the same time and everything beneath her leather jacket and pants felt like second skin. She pushed up from Hunter’s huge frame and dragged her fingers through her hair, glad that it was snowing and cold outside. Finally giving in to the urge, she opened her mouth and drew in a deep breath, unable to gulp enough clean, normal air into her lungs.
“Take your time with that,” he warned, placing one hand against her back and one against her chest. “It’ll burn like—”
“Oh!” Panic consumed her; her lungs were on fire. Sasha doubled over gasping, but Hunter caught her and pressed hard with his hands.
“Through the nose!” he said firmly. “Or you’ll be upchucking blood.”
She covered her mouth with a hand, drawing in huge, painful inhales through her nose, tears brimming from the pain.
“The compression from the speed collapses your lungs, damned near. Fill them up too fast and you’ll burst blood vessels and capillaries.” He blotted her nose with the edge of his sweater as it bled. “The old leaders would smoke peyote to help them transcend and transition into the shadow travel winds . . . so when they came out they were very relaxed and mellow for the meeting. We didn’t have that luxury. The pain will pass in a minute. Then we’ll stand.”
She just leaned her forehead against his chest for a moment, wishing he’d at least given her a shot of tequila or something beforehand. Damn.
But true to his word, she could feel the burning sensation within her chest slowly ebbing, just like the roiling nausea had abated. The hot-cold sweats had ceased, too. Finally she had enough strength to look up at him. Half of her was really pissed off, the other half was grateful as hell he hadn’t dropped her.
“The next time you have one of these cultural ‘let’s share’ moments, I want a full debrief,” she said, pulling away thoroughly peeved. “No more of this ‘trust me, baby’ crap. All right? That was insane.”
He swallowed a smirk which made her ball up her fist.
“If I had explained all the hazards, you probably would have decided to wait out the storm and travel by conventional methods—through airports when they reopened for example—but by then, the trail would have been cold.”
She wasn’t going to dignify his comment by responding and refused to give him the satisfaction of being right. And rather than punch him in the eye, she gathered herself up on shaky hands and knees and began the perilous process of trying to stand, the entire time feeling like a newborn foal. When he got up first and extended his hand to her, she nearly bit it, not amused in the least that he drew it back as though she’d snapped at him. Well, maybe she had—but still.
“You have to admit that this was efficient,” he said with too much mirth in his tone for her liking. “The old ones never had the benefit of modern inventions such as air travel . . . but those were perilous times and global clan treaties had to be approved during summits that brought together all the pack leaders.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, finally able to stand without holding on to the porch rail.
“Do you know what you just did?” he said, his voice free of teasing as he stared at her.
She hated that she didn’t and could only stare back at him blankly.
“You mirrored me,” he said quietly. “The first time I learned to do this, I watched my grandfather ride his horse into the wind and simply disappear. He told me he’d return to this porch and for me to meet him here and to bring his horse back. An hour later when I got home, he was sitting in his favorite rocker, smoking his pipe, his eyes closed, with the most sublime expression of peace on his face. I asked him if I could try it, and he said only when I can hold the image of where I want to go strongly enough to light my amber ward. It took me two more years of trying . . . to be able to still my mind enough to hone in on a destination—to light the amulet.”
His tone was gentle and reverent as he neared her and touched her face with trembling fingers. “You looked at me with complete trust, saw this place exactly as I saw it, and took a leap of faith into a gale-force wind.”
The expression on his face made her look away as the frigid air bit into her skin.
“The alpha leaders always traveled alone to the summits . . . I didn’t know if one could share such a vision. I’d been told that one’s mate was only to go into the winds of the shadow lands under extreme emergencies. That it was our kind’s way of ensuring that the strongest of the gene pool made it out of a disastrous situation in union, as a pair. But I had no concept of how it would feel once—”
“Wait,” she said, completely breaking the mood. “You mean to tell me you had never done this, didn’t know if you could hold me in there, and—”
“All I needed to know was that I would have died trying.”
She stared at him for a moment. “Why didn’t you say so then?” What the hell could she say to that? Sudden heat flushed her face and a new level of appreciation for the man standing before her began to turn her knees to jelly. But there were bad shadows to chase, so she lifted her chin with a crisp, military nod. Besides, she would not be baited into a commitment to be his mate after knowing him for less than a damned week!
She spun on her heel and walked toward the front door of Silver Hawk’s cabin.
“I’m feeling it, too. But I know what we have to do, first—so you can drop your guard. At ease, soldier.”
She didn’t turn around, but smiled in spite of herself. “Do you have a key to your grandfather’s place?”
“Not necessary. He’s not in there.”
Hunter’s comment made her turn and look at him. His expression had become all business, which drew that emotion to her fore, as well.
“This storm is a bad one, and knowing Grandfather, I’m sure he has sought refuge in the dens after a vision.”
“We should go to him, then . . . make sure . . .”
Her words trailed off as Hunter shook his head and looked off into the distance.
“No. Check your weapons. Fox Shadow hates the dens; he’s grown soft and used to living in the lap of luxury. He keeps a very well-appointed cabin about ten miles’ hike from here that looks like a damned ski resort.”
“No wonder he needed the cash.” Sasha just shook her head as Hunter bounded off the porch, and then she picked up her pace to follow him.
THE RUN FELT exhilarating in the virgin snow. Hunter also hadn’t lied. Fox Shadow’s cabin looked more like a commercial lodge. Double-height, two-story, floor-to-ceiling windows, with the entire front of the A-frame structure made of glass. There were floating staircases, a wraparound deck, ivory leather furniture, track and canister lights illuminating expensive art, bearskin rugs, blazing fireplaces, and women every damned where.
But she wasn’t hatin’, just very aware, and she also knew each of the females in there probably was able to shift into a serious predator, judging by the way they fawned over Fox Shadow for a hit. Glimpsing Hunter from the corner of her eye, she watched his lip curl into a silent snarl.
“Punk bastard,” Hunter muttered and spat on the ground as they watched Fox Shadow kiss the soft bend inside Shadow Falcon’s arm and then replace his caress with a needle.
She didn’t say a word, knowing somehow that the history between all these wolves went way back to some early-childhood slight that had never healed; she could practically smell it in the silent emotional fit Hunter was having, but she kept that knowledge to herself. There were much bigger concerns.
He silently slipped down and over the ridge and gave her the hand signals to come around the back. She doublechecked her clips—two Glocks
, one in each holster, two Berettas, one for each back pants pocket. A Bowie strapped to each boot. He had a handheld semi under the jacket, plus some crazy shit that she knew he hadn’t put back on the store shelves as they “borrowed” some ammo.
The storm was in full swing, though, reducing visibility. The whipping winds moved the shadows at the treeline in erratic patterns, making it hard to stay concealed while on the move. Her focus like a laser, she made it across the wide clearing and into the shadows that flanked the house, staring up. The beta males had lost their everlivin’ minds!
Liquor was everywhere, nobody had on any clothes. But that didn’t mean they weren’t armed and extremely dangerous. And although she was supposed to be watching for an opportunity and waiting on Hunter’s signal, there were just some things she didn’t wanna see. If the shadow travel winds hadn’t made her hurl, watching two she-shadows simultaneously give Fox Shadow head would surely do the trick.
A tap on her shoulder as she came out of a shadow almost made her fire as she spun to meet it. A familiar face caused her to hesitate. Adrenaline made her ears ring and cold sweat drench her skin.
“They went dark, and by rights we should put them behind the demon doors,” Shogun said.
A tense moment stood between them. The last thing she needed now was jurisdictional conflict. The last thing she needed was very sexy, unfinished business to interrupt a critical hunt. He was dressed in a form-hugging, black thermal suit that fit him like second skin. She couldn’t help but notice.
“But they’re Shadows gone dark, not Weres,” she said, wresting her mind back to her mission.
He nodded. “I know—but I needed an excuse to see you again. There was an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
“I think I understood—”
“My sister is traditional. Prejudiced.”
Sister? Still, what did it matter? “Listen, I—”
“Don’t dismiss me out of hand, Sasha,” he said quietly, his intense, almond-shaped eyes searching her face. “I came here, outside of my territory—and you know the risks of doing that—because in my mind it was worth it. My pack thinks I have lost my mind . . . perhaps that is true. Either way, meet me in New Orleans for the next summit when the UCE gathers . . . it’s during the first full moon after Mardis Gras. Meet me.”