by V M Black
“You can at least pretend that you’re following me,” she said, starting toward the entrance. “You’re not even wearing a leash. Heck, you’re not even wearing a collar.”
Harper cast a nervous look around the parking lot, wondering what exactly she should be looking for if more of Mortensen’s men were waiting for them. Another black sedan? The parking lot was less than an eighth full that late on a Sunday evening, but the colors of the cars were indistinct, muddy under the high commercial lights.
Still, she didn’t notice anything unusual as they approached the double set of automatic doors, the lights from within the store spilling out onto the sidewalk.
“We’re totally going to be on People of Walmart tomorrow,” she muttered. “Front page of the website. Pinned. We might even become a meme.”
One ear swiveled toward her, Levi walked so close that his shoulder rode against her hip and thigh. She rested a hand lightly on the fur at the scruff of his neck, gray with golden undertones that echoed his hair.
The greeter did a double take as they entered the store. He cleared his throat and swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Uh, miss—” he started.
Harper gave him a huge, shit-eating grin. “Service dog!” she chirped, not slowing down.
“Really, miss?” the man said, looking around with a slightly panicked expression.
“ADA compliant,” she caroled, grabbing the nearest free cart. “Handicap accessible! Equal opportunity employment!”
She spun the cart around and walked as quickly as she could toward the back of the store, hunching over the handle as if that could somehow make her and the enormous wolf next to her less noticeable. A woman pushed her cart between the clothing racks, took them in with a single glance, and gave a high-pitched squeak, abandoning her cart to dive back in among the clothes.
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Harper whispered fiercely as other shoppers stopped and stared.
Next to her, Levi’s ears flicked, and from his expression, as well as she could read it, he seemed to be laughing.
“You look ridiculous, you know,” she told him.
They were blasting past the women’s clothing department, and Harper snatched an oversized hoodie and a pair of socks from a rack as they passed. The electronics section was in the very back of the store, and she dove into the nearest of the short aisles without stopping, heading to the back wall. She slowed as she walked along it, peering at the signs as they worked their way through the department.
Levi shouldered past her, making a line straight for the computer accessories aisle. Harper made a noise of protest.
“You’re supposed to be with me,” she said, pushing the cart quickly after.
He was already nosing an SD reader from the display rack. It hit the floor with a sound that seemed as loud as a thunderclap in Harper’s ears. Looking around to make sure that no one had seen that, she snatched it up and threw it in the basket, treating Levi, who sat and grinned at her, to her most scathing glare.
“This was your idea—to avoid the wrong kind of attention, remember?” she whispered harshly at him. “Just act like a freaking dog for the next fifteen minutes until I can get us out of here, okay?”
Harper spun around, then almost jumped out of her skin as he slipped his snout up the back of her shirt and planted his cold nose on the small of her back. She swatted at him, but he ducked away too quickly.
He was enjoying this, despite the danger they were in.
No. She corrected herself, staring narrowly at the enormous wolf. He was enjoying this because of the danger they were in.
And if she were perfectly honest with herself, she was, too. Just a little bit. Since she’d met him, she’d felt more alive than she ever had.
Harper started forward again, heading toward the camping and hunting department. Ammo and paracord should be there. Levi kept pace beside her, leaning his shoulder into her leg—so she’d know he was mocking her, even as he stuck close.
Awesome. She was shopping Walmart with a sarcastic, asshole werewolf.
She reached the back wall where the ammo was stored. It was, of course, in a locked cabinet.
Damn.
She spied an employee slinking down an aisle in camping, trying to pretend that he didn’t notice her and her hulking companion.
“Hey! Excuse me. Hey,” she said.
The guy was probably a couple of years younger than her, an adenoidal teenager with an unfortunate complexion. He pivoted with visible reluctance.
“May I help you?” his mouth said.
Oh, shit, that’s a big dog, his eyes said.
“Yeah, we—I need some help with the ammo, please,” she said. “Have you got the keys?”
“Yeah?” he said, as if he was hoping that was the wrong answer.
Harper nodded impatiently toward the cabinet. Levi sat back on his haunches. As the nervous teen approached, he gave a great yawn, showing a row of long, white teeth and ending with a visible snap that made the sales clerk jump.
Harper kicked Levi as inconspicuously as possible with the toe of her boot and gave the guy a big smile and an encouraging nod.
With another panicky look at Levi, the clerk produced a fistful of keys and unlocked the cabinet. “You’re not blind, are you?” he asked. “I mean of course you’re not. How would you shoot if you were blind?”
“Maybe I’m buying it for someone else.” She reached past him and scooped up three boxes of nine mil luger and the last two of .38 special cartridges.
“I’m sorry miss—ma’am,” the guy said. “Customers can only buy three boxes of ammo each.”
She smiled sweetly. “That’s fine. There are two of us.”
The clerk looked from her to Levi and back. He opened his mouth, and Levi made a soft warning noise. Eyes going wide, the clerk closed it again and swallowed visibly. “That’s all right then, ma’am.”
She paid for the ammo at the hunting and fishing desk with Levi’s prepaid debit card, which provoked a noise from the wolf that she silenced with another casual prod of her boot. The sales clerk finished the transaction and hightailed it out of the department as if his pants were on fire.
Harper was just turning toward the camping section to find the paracord when Levi’s low growl stopped her in her tracks.
It was a deep, chilling rumble that hit her in the most visceral, animalistic part of her brain. She looked down to see the wolf standing with his ears pricked forward, his head lowered slightly below his bristling shoulders. His entire body radiated tension, all of it directed at the object upon which his eyes were fixed.
Inevitably, Harper’s gaze rose to follow his. There, in the aisle only half a dozen yards away, was an impossibly beautiful man, impeccably dressed in a blazer, turtleneck, and slacks. Where had the other shoppers gone? Harper wondered.
But really, what did it matter when there was a man that interesting in view. He looked so...nice. Yes, that was the word, coming to her almost as if it were being drummed into her head. Nice. Nice, nice, nice. He was so very nice.
He smiled, and Harper felt herself step toward him, her body moving almost of its own accord.
So that’s what a vampire’s like, a distant part of her mind thought.
And then Levi exploded in a streak of muscles and teeth, bounding forward, crashing into him and bearing him down under his mass.
The vampire’s hold on her broken, Harper screamed as loud as she could because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then she ran, the cart braced ahead of her like a battering ram, heading straight for the tangle of bodies, furry and man-shaped. Just before her cart struck, the vampire surged to his feet again, streaming blood from a wound on his throat that was healing as Harper watched. His fists moved so fast they were a blur, slamming into Levi’s body over and over again.
But physics won. Harper had been going fast, and she threw all her weight behind the cart as it slammed into the vampire’s back. The vampire went down, an
d her stomach was thrown hard into the cart handle.
Now what?
She hadn’t planned past the point of impact, and now the cart with all their supplies tangled with the vampire’s legs. Before she could decide whether to cut her losses, Levi broke away and bounded against the cart, knocking it free.
“Nice,” she said even as she launched herself up the aisle without looking back.
The cart’s wheels spinning madly, Harper ran in a dead sprint toward the exit that led out to the fenced yard of the outdoor department as Levi kept pace. Surprised shoppers leaped away at the sight of the redhead and the huge wolf bearing down on them. At least, all the legitimate shoppers did, because as she ran, Harper saw men drop hand baskets and abandon carts to come after them.
She cursed under her wheezing breath, her boots slapping against the tiled floor. She was a strong runner, but she wasn’t a fast one, and those musclebound men would be able to chase her down easily even if they were all merely human. Hoping to slow them down, she yanked things into the aisle with one hand as she passed, flinging down fans and trash cans and sweeping an entire row of solar garden gnome lights to crash behind her.
How many were there? It hardly seemed to matter, because there would be more than enough, she was sure, to overpower the two of them. And then what? Would they kill them both right there, in plain sight of everyone? Or would they haul them away to do their dirty work?
She didn’t know, but she knew that she and Levi would be goners either way. She cast a look back as she neared the automatic doors that led out to the outdoor living yard. The vampire was pacing behind, keeping his distance.
Smiling.
The bastard.
One of the men got too close, lunging for her, but Levi was there, and with a snap of his jaws and a strangled scream, the man was crumpled on the floor, bleeding, and Harper was past and free—for the moment.
Levi made a whining noise as she took a hard right through the doors and into the fenced outdoor area, yanking off the sunglasses and sticking them in her purse. It wasn’t until she was well inside that she realized why. The big, metal gates were chained shut for the night, and the fence was far too high to climb.
She’d steered them right into a dead end.
Levi came up beside her as she stopped. With seconds to spare, she jerked her purse open and pulled out the guns, jamming them into her waistband, then shoveled the ammo, the hoodie, and the SD card reader inside. She left the empty cart and ducked down an aisle, using the tall screen of shrubs to hide from the view of the double doors.
“If you’ve got any ideas, now would be a good time to shift back and let me know,” she whispered to the wolf.
Levi broke off staring intently through the foliage to nudge the nine mil with his nose.
“Yeah, I could figure that out myself,” she whispered, pulling the gun from its holster as a silhouette appeared in the doors that led back inside. “I was hoping you had an idea that wouldn’t get us killed.”
Levi nodded his head. She looked at him, trying to figure out what he meant. He did it again, in a more exaggerated way. She turned the way he was facing—toward the locked gate. He wanted her to go toward the gate.
“It’s locked,” she whispered at him. Shooting off locks worked great in movies, but in real life, that was a very good way to get yourself hit with a ricochet—and maybe not open the lock at all. But he just nodded again, even more forcefully, so, casting a look at the six men who were warily standing just inside the yard with guns drawn, she started to edge cautiously toward the fence.
Levi set out in the other direction, shaggy head low to the ground, stalking slowly between the aisles. Harper hoped that he knew what he was doing, because she was already at the edge of the gondola display and couldn’t go any farther without being seen—and probably shot. She crouched low, her chest and stomach pressed to her thighs, and watched.
The doors slid open, and one more man came out. The vampire. He cast a contemptuous glance around the yard, and Harper swore that his gaze rested on her for an instant before sliding past again.
There was a sudden clatter in the depths of the yard, and several of the men jumped and started to head after it.
“Stop,” the vampire ordered. They froze. “We keep together. They’ve got guns, and the werewolf can rip any one of your throats out. You split up, you sign your own death warrant. Capisce?”
“Sir,” they muttered, forming up around him.
The vampire stuck to the middle of the group, and they walked slowly into the darkness of the yard, beyond the reach of the indoor lights. They kept to the edge of the overhang, their backs to the tall display rack there.
Harper tensed as they passed her hiding place, the vampire’s head turning this way and that, scanning the aisles. As soon as they were past, she moved quickly, running across the aisle with her body bent double. Her boot scraped on the concrete just as she reached the shelter of the next display. She froze, hardly daring to breathe. The vampire’s head snapped around, but he didn’t order his men to stop, and after a moment, he looked around again. Harper dropped to her hands and knees and crawled for the gate.
She was almost there when a shout made her look back just in time to see the huge rack, piled high with boxes furniture and bags of fertilizer and soil, totter outward and begin to fall. The men yelled with alarm, scattering, and the vampire reached up and caught the edge of a shelf, stopping the rack in its descent.
But that did nothing to stop everything that was on it. Bags of soil came sliding off in a heavy avalanche, huge boxes slamming into the men as they tried to duck away.
Levi was a blur of fur and teeth, bounding up the aisle behind the rack he had just toppled. He was still running as he shifted, the huge red-gray wolf changing to a man between the time his front paws left the ground and his back ones landed—as feet.
He snatched the gun from Harper’s hand as the vampire heaved the rack aside.
“Stand back,” he ordered, throwing his body between her and the lock on the gate.
Harper started to protest, but the gun went off, and Levi gave a sharp yelp of pain before yanking the chain, now loose, from the gate. Harper swallowed her objections and lifted the bolt that was now the only thing that held the gate closed, putting her shoulder against it. The gate swung open, and Levi grabbed her by the arm and ran toward the car, the pistol in his other hand.
Cursing, Harper dug blindly in her purse for her keys, coming up with them just as they reached it. She fumbled for the right one, but Levi didn’t stop, balling up his fist and punching through the glass, then yanking the lock up to swing the door open.
Harper squawked, but there was no time now to protest. Levi dove across the bench into the passenger seat, and she swung in right behind him, slamming the door and jamming the keys home. The headlights illuminated the vampire, standing in the middle of the parking lot.
Harper didn’t hesitate. She slapped the car into gear and floored it, aiming straight for him even as he started to raise a gun at her through the front windshield.
“I’m sorry, Baby,” she said, and she braced.
There was a thump, and the vampire rolled up her hood, across the windshield, and over the roof of the car as she roared out of the parking lot.
She looked over at Levi, who sat bloodied and panting against the vinyl seat.
“So I think they definitely know who I am now.”
Chapter Five
“Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a safe bet,” Levi said.
“Oh, God, my car,” she groaned then. “The window. Dammit, Levi, the hood!”
But Levi didn’t answer. Instead, he grabbed a handful of her hair, dragged her mouth to his, and kissed her, hard, pushing past her surprised lips and teeth and into her mouth. And just then, she tasted like the best thing he’d ever had in his life....
For a moment, she went stiff, then she relaxed, kissing him back until the sudden sound of the rumble strip under the tires made he
r jerk away and correct the car’s course.
“What the hell was that about?” she said, but she looked more turned on than outraged, her pupils unnaturally wide.
“Sorry,” he said, not really meaning it. “Some of the wolf hangs on for a while after a shift.”
“And the wolf wanted to kiss me?” she asked incredulously, her brows shooting up toward her hairline.
“Not exactly.” He didn’t want to explain then how the mind of the man and wolf blended, how the smell of her had gone straight into his brain, the smell of woman and sex. Worse, the smell of him on her stirred thoughts that were quite foreign to his existence up until this point.
Sure, werewolves formed strong bonds, sometimes instantly. That’s where packs came from, after all. Most people had thought that pack structure was something rigid among wolves, a collection of different individuals brought together under a powerful male and female alphas, overturned only when a younger wolf fought and won supremacy over the male alpha.
But of course, that was merely an old misunderstanding of human researchers. Werewolves knew better. Always had. A pack was a rough-and-tumble extended family, the alpha couple the parents—or, more rarely, the grandparents—of the rest of the wolves. The bonds of relation and devotion kept the couple together and also kept their children around for as long as five seasons after they’d reached maturity as they helped in the raising of their younger brothers and sisters.
Until the other call grew too strong, and they wandered off to face the world on their own—or to find their own mate and start their own pack. And while wolves, like dogs, had their liaisons, when they finally settled down, it was for life.
But werewolves weren’t wolves, not really, and Levi treasured his rootless status, without care and without anything or anyone to weigh him down. If he wanted, he could wander back to the family home, where he was always welcome as long as he followed the rules. But families were a weakness, even the family he already had, never mind one of his own making. It was better that he lived alone, staying away from his brothers and sisters and most especially avoiding any romantic entanglements that might lead to something more.