by L. A. Banks
“Why would I want to do that?” She looked at him, trying to keep her mental checks and balances, along with the very real threat he presented, in the forefront of her mind.
“There are important members you must meet there, and we feel unnatural movement beyond the demon doors headed toward that sector. If he won’t educate you, I will,” Shogun said, gesturing toward where Max had previously been.
She had to look away and she motioned with her chin toward the house. “This hunt is vital; I can’t stop in the midst of it and even begin to address this. Not to mention, you’re in shadow country, and a border breach could start a full-scale war.”
“Believe me, I understand the dilemma. My goal is not war with the Shadows. I’m twenty men strong out here, and we have your backs.” He reached out and touched her cheek briefly and then withdrew his hand. “I came to ensure that you’d never be infected. Anything you don’t kill, or if you get in over your heads, we’ll hunt with you. Tell your man we’re not the enemy. We’ll drag whatever is still kicking and screaming to the quarantine dens. Temporary truce for a common goal . . . a cease-fire for now.”
He smiled a peaceful smile, snow battering his handsome face. “No matter what, I still want an alliance with you and anything more that you’re comfortable with, Sasha . . . you’re part of the prophecy. He doesn’t own you. Remember that.”
She watched him back away into the night and become invisible in the standing line of trees. It took her a moment to stop the warm shiver he’d sent through her.
HUNTER HAD MADE it up onto the deck. A scout of the perimeter proved that those inside were too far gone to even have sentries posted. They’d grown overconfident. Then again, with infected werewolf virus strumming through their veins, what did one expect? But as he drew nearer and looked more deeply into the house, a part of him seized. Mountain Shadow was with them? His closest friend and ally from years gone by? Hawk, too? Hunter glimpsed up at the moon, glad that it would be weeks before it waxed full again, yet completely morose to realize that his friends would never see another.
Leveling his semi at the glass, he stared at the pack one last time. Fox, Hawk, Rabbit, Mountain, with eight she-shadows, would be gone. As glass shattered and screams rent the air, he wondered if Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow had saved or eaten Sasha’s men, Woods and Fisher, up in Canada. He didn’t know and was at a place in his mind where right now he didn’t care. All feeling had abandoned him as he walked forward squeezing off rounds.
SHE CAME THROUGH the glass at the back of the house in a hard roll and took cover. Shadow wolves were down, but several got up, transformed into quick-moving blurs of pure danger, and attacked. Hunter had gone to some insane place in his mind, dropped his weapon and transformed into a wolf—now was not the time! Four huge infected Shadow Wolf males snarled and lunged. With a double-fisted Glock nine-millimeter assault, she got two, aiming at their hearts through their spine as she blew their backs out midair.
He shouldn’t have to waste his own, was the mantra in her head that kept her firing, kept her moving with no mercy. She remembered Rod as she held her weapons steady and kept firing without blinking. Demon-infected wolves had to die.
Coming down the steps, however, were several halftransitioned she-shadows with infected werewolf heads and fangs and gruesomely half-human upright bodies carrying pump shotguns. Hunter had taken a severe blow to the back of head by way of a swung sofa from behind and was lying sprawled and dazed. She got Rabbit with a flung Bowie knife that he caught in his left eye as he turned, and her Beretta did the rest. The two seconds that Fox Shadow jerked his attention toward her was just long enough for Hunter to jump up and get out of the way of a pump shotgun blast.
“All of us,” Fox Shadow shouted, “got what you always had, motherfucker! Even Mountain Shadow was tired of taking second seat to your ass! He was a purebred, and should have been alpha to the pack, but you had the unfair advantage—we just evened the score!”
Machine-gun spray lit the floor, splintering wood as she ran across the gleaming oak and dove out the shattered windows. Hunter was on her tail; they had the same objective—find the grenades in his jacket and blow the house. Destroy the virus. But an anvil-sized fist came out of the shadows, as they reached their destination at the same time, and collided with Sasha’s jaw.
She fell backward in what felt like slow motion. She saw the one-eared Shadow Falcon go airborne, transitioning into full demon wolf as she hurtled forward. Hunter’s wolf pulled back, becoming his human form to snatch his nine, level it at the same moment Sasha had lifted both her arms, Berettas in her fists, she and Hunter squeezing off rounds to both hit Falcon’s back and chest.
Sasha’s spine slammed the snow with a thud that knocked the wind out of her, and she only had seconds to roll out of the way of a dead, fast-moving carcass dripping gore. She was up on her feet in a flash, had a grenade, pulled the pin, and hurled it toward the house. The concussion from the blast knocked everyone back. A loud rumbling in the distance made Hunter look at her quickly. No words were necessary: avalanche.
But a deformed Fox Shadow lunged forward from behind a tree, stronger than ever, more insane than he’d been before at the sight of his mate’s lifeless form. Hunter held his ground, weaponless, naked, for what seemed like an eternity, as his pack brother rushed him. It took everything in her to let the battle finish the way she knew it had to—this was Hunter’s kill. In a blur of fury, he’d grabbed the pump shotgun that lay near Falcon’s limp body, lifted it, took dead aim, and pulled.
He never flinched as Fox Shadow’s head exploded gore in his face, but simply stepped aside as his headless body hit the snow with a thud.
Yet there was no time to contemplate the vagaries of fate. She grabbed up Hunter’s clothes in a bundle under her arm and reached out her hand.
“Run!” she shouted.
But he didn’t move. He just looked at the destroyed house, his dead pack members who were transitioning back to human forms with glassy eyes. She understood where her man was; his entire squad, save for a few, had been wiped out. It was like losing one’s entire family. But she didn’t have time for the gentle touch. Survival was paramount.
“Show me the way to the dens!” she hollered over the roar of the snow bearing down on them.
He looked at her, blinked twice, got that faraway fatalistic look out of his eyes, and took her hand. This time, she wouldn’t argue about the speed, his methods of transport, as long as they got an evac out of the hot zone.
They came to a tumbling landing in a very serene underground cave. A warming fire was built, she could smell food grilling, could hear it sizzling on the flames. A still pool that seemed like black glass was at the center of an animal-fur-strewn haven. The slightly pungent scent of tobacco smoke wafted past them and she and Hunter turned to greet it.
“Bathe, heal, eat, and attend to your spirits,” Silver Hawk said, coming out of the shadows. “Now that I am satisfied you are alive, I can go deeper within, where the rock art comes alive and our history dances on the walls. When you come to my age and can sit still enough, you will see. But now is not the time. You must heal.”
“I’m all right,” Hunter muttered, wiping gore from his face and body as she clutched his clothes.
“The prophecies were harsh. Your spirit has been torn ragged, son,” his grandfather said, and then with his pipe he pointed to a clean deerskin shirt, a pair of pants, and moccasins warming by the fire near a beautiful beadadorned, doeskin dress and fur-lined moccasins. “Stay within the dens in the shadows with your mate until you can stand to look at yourself in the clear light of day.” His aged eyes held Sasha’s with a silent plea. “Heal him. I do not own such magic. Then let him heal you.”
Before she could respond, the old man was gone.
She didn’t speak, just took Hunter’s hand and began walking toward the glistening pool. His body yielded, his strides long and fluid behind hers, no resistance within him, just a deep, resigned weariness t
hat she could fully relate to. She stripped slowly and quietly and again took his hand. His face was crusted with blood but she cradled it in her hands nonetheless and kissed him slowly. Her silent prayer was that another warrior hadn’t also been lost tonight . . . one that had traveled thousands of miles on a mission to possibly be crushed by the snow. But she could only care for them one at a time, and right now this one had fought hard and was in so much pain that she could feel it radiating from his skin. Right now was not the time to split hairs on what their relationship meant; it just was what it was at the moment.
“I’ve got your back,” she whispered, then led him into the bath.
EPILOGUE
WITH A FULL moon approaching, and Hunter looking extra delicious, there was no need to out Winters—the kid couldn’t help it if a vampire had come to him, looking like her, naked in his dreams, and got a bogus invitation into the lab. The kid was undoubtedly under duress when he caved.
Some things she and Hunter just never spoke of. She never said a word about the night they’d tracked Fox Shadow’s traitorous ass down and made him disappear. Between them, the three rogue shadows—Fox, Dexter, and Guillaume—had been able to overpower the solo vampire coming out of NORAD with the vials; bitch of it was, Dexter got away, and some of the vials were still out there. At least Woodsy and Fisher had turned up in the Yukon alive and well, and Hunter still had two go-to guys left from the pack whom he could count on—Bear and Crow.
Speaking on an alliance proposal that was still niggling the back of her brain was out of the question at the moment, just like asking what a very intriguing stranger had meant about her being a part of the prophecy was for all intents and purposes taboo. Yet, there was so much to learn. New Orleans was definitely somewhere she had to go, but might not necessarily get into all the details why. A solid lead was a solid lead. She had to get her arms around the differences between vampire tunnels, shadow paths, demon doors, and really learn more about how regular werewolves functioned, plus supernatural politics in general. There were more species than she could have ever imagined, and way more than the government had to know about. Some contacts would always remain on a need-to-know basis. But an alliance with a Shogun werewarrior, in the spirit of detente, hmmmm. Yeah, some things were definitely better left unsaid.
The real crime was just how many Shadow Wolves had got turned on to the virus and got turned out . . . then had had to be terminated. Having to put down she-shadows gone were-demon had really messed with her man’s mind. That would haunt Hunter for a long time; regular doses of primal female medicine seemed to be the only cure. Same deal with her—he had a way of taking the edge off that thing called raw pain. She’d have to make sure that she worked her schedule to be off base at the time of the next full moon. There was no sense in playing with C-4; what they had between them was always hot enough to blow.
Yeah . . . there were a lot of unanswered questions still plaguing her mind. Questions like where Shadow Wolves really came from, how demon doors opened, and how one could close them. She wanted to know which pack member she was directly related to, but needed to go on another spirit walk for that. It would take a while before she was ready to go there again. Then there was the nagging question of who had tipped off the vampires, and how far up the conspiracy went. Not to mention, where the hell that weasel Dexter was, and how much of the tainted product was still out on the street now.
The only good part of it was that the vampires wanted the samples destroyed as much as she did. Silver lining: she had a budget, very cool weapons, serious project authority, and the latitude afforded to Black Ops missions—as long as the job got done, the president and top generals didn’t really wanna know. The bad part was that there was still a market for something that could turn a human berserk . . . drug market, weapons market, it really didn’t matter. DIWs, demon-infected werewolves, were a problem.
There’d always be a buyer for bad blood.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at L. A. Banks’s
next book in the Crimson Moon series
BITE THE BULLET
Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks
AS SOON AS she was sure that Hunter was out of range, Sasha ransacked the backpacks until she found their amulets. He’d shoved them to the bottom, rolled in layers of clothes. The clasps had been broken. She took shallow sips of air, gently trailing her fingers over the tender spot at the nape of her neck and then up the back of her scalp to where a small knot had formed, trying to focus, trying to remember.
They had transformed on a shadow run. He’d picked up the trail of large game—a bull moose. It was too big; she’d tried to signal him. Hunter was larger than she’d remembered when he’d transformed again; two hands higher at the shoulders, larger jaw, barrel chest. His eyes held something in them that frightened her.
Sasha shoved the amulets back where she’d found them and began to pace inside the tent with her eyes squeezed shut. “Oh . . . God . . .” It was coming back in fits and starts, jags of horror that she wanted to forget.
He’d outstripped her on the run. The animal they hunted turned and lowered its mantle. hunter went up on his hind legs. Sasha opened her eyes and hugged herself with a start, breathing hard. He hadn’t brought it down like a wolf. One powerful swipe from a forepaw had snapped a damned bull moose’s neck!
How could she not remember? How could she not remember! How could she not remember? She tore around the tent looking for weapons, blood pressure spiking when she couldn’t immediately find them.
Cupping the back of her head, she bolted out of the tent. Panic perspiration made everything she wore stick to her skin. Images of Hunter crouched over the carcass snarling as he devoured the animal’s heart and liver brought her other hand over her mouth to keep from hurling. She could see it all clearly now—blue-black night, steam rising from fresh kill that had been opened and gutted. Oh, God, oh, God, when did she fall and hit her head?
Backing away . . .
She’d come to a skidding halt. Their eyes had met. She was so stunned that she’d changed back into her human form and stood. He did too, then cried out and yanked the chain from his neck . . . she’d spun to run, caught a lowhanging branch, and went down. Then she was inside the tent. His arm was anchored around her waist. She squeezed her eyes shut again, remembering his impassioned voice choking out a ragged apology behind her.
Hunter had purposely knocked her unconscious, and the reason why broke over her in horrifying clarity.
Hunter was infected.
She felt a scream of rage and grief build in her throat over the thought that something like this was happening. But she swallowed it. There would be time to grieve later.
Right now survival was imperative and she needed to find her gun.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the next
Vampire Huntress Legend
The Shadows
BY L. A. BANKS
Coming July 2008
from St. Martin’s Paperbacks
SURREAL CALM OVERTOOK her as she listened to Carlos. Rather than the sensation entering her, it oddly emanated from within her. She’d promised him that she would eat. Damali moved her hands by rote to appease him . . . stalling for time by picking up the paper bag, slowly opening it, taking out the plastic container, opening that with care and then allowing her meal to sit before her untouched as she listened intently to what her husband was saying. Something about the smell of the food now turned her stomach.
It was only when she saw him blink that she became aware that time had actually slowed down all around her. His lids slid closed as through a heavy curtain of onyx lashes had been dropped to thud one against the other. His voice was now like distant thunder—a rumble of unintelligible words, they were being spoken so slowly.
Background sounds thrust their way to the forefront of her senses. Her breaths and heartbeat, his breaths and heartbeat, were each so slow and so loud they created a collision inside her head. Even though she couldn’t qui
te make out what he was saying, she gathered what she could from his private, urgent tone and then watched how he slowly leaned in close to her to speak.
Carlos’s physical warmth suddenly felt as though she’d been wrapped in a blanket and then soon became a searing barrier like one would expect if one stood before an opened oven that had been left on broil for hours. She settled back from the uncomfortable body heat radiating off him, and as she did, the sound of her clothes rustling against the chair was jarring.
He swallowed hard, pausing mid-sentence, and she almost cringed from the change in decibel that had transitioned the low rumble of his voice to the mucous-thick sound of saliva coating his throat. Yet through all of it, she oddly knew what he was saying, not from the words, but the impressions that began to form behind her wideopened eyes.
In a vision, Damali saw it. The poisonous vapor. The way it slid out of technology orifices and opened dark portals within houses, buildings, and within human minds. The airwaves were polluted. The gray-zone, the earth plane, was becoming denser, darker, more twisted and violent.
Shadow entities spilled over the very edges of Hell and into the psyches and spirits of the unaware, diving into the pools of light that are normally within each human being.
Damali sat transfixed as she watched how the demonic forces entered a living body and then swallowed up all the clean light within it, slowly corroding it until there was simply no living aura left. At the point of total eclipse, the person was no more. Gone was their will, along with every shred of humanity that had once defined them.