Taint of Shadow

by Cassandra Moore

  It was the light from a cell phone that caught his attention. He’d circled the building once and seen no signs of Kayla when a man exited a side door into the network of alleys behind the nearby shops. His attention remained on the device as he stabbed at the screen with an irritated finger. The wan glow of the cell phone screen drained more color from the man’s already wan skin.

  DJ Specter. Noah recognized the man’s face from his social media. The werewolf hesitated a moment and looked between the receding back of the vampire and the club he’d exited. One might have Kayla in it. One was a known lackey of Paul Kiplinger, and one both the pack and the local biters had wanted to get their hands on. As Specter disappeared into the alleys, Noah cursed and followed.

  By the time he reached the spot he’d seen Specter, the performer had disappeared. Noah scanned the area, the roofs, the shadowed corners where a vampire might hide. Had the leech caught a whiff of a werewolf on his trail? He has to be here somewhere. The club’s back the other direction. Please don’t let me have lost a chance at both of them.

  But then he heard the whimper as the sharp stabs of nervous instinct crawled over his skin. Soft, afraid, the sound of a person too terrified to scream. Noah canted his head to listen, strained to pinpoint the sound.

  There. A dark alley several yards away.

  The voice started pleading, distinctly male in tone now that it used words. “Just let me go. Let me go. I won’t tell Paul. He won’t hear where you are from me. Just let me go.”

  Noah could smell blood. Death. Undeath. It sounded like someone had found his prey before he had.

  He charged the remaining distance. With a skid, he arrived at the mouth of the alley. Only barely did he note DJ Specter. Instead, he saw Kayla. Black shirt. Jeans. Dark blonde hair loose over her shoulders. Hand around the throat of the vampire Noah had chased.

  She leaned close to her quarry, her face not even an inch away. Her lip curled in a snarl as she looked over the top of her sunglasses. While her lips moved, Noah couldn’t hear what she said. The vampire did, though, and his eyes widened.

  Werewolf and prey heard Noah at the same time. Both turned to face the end of the alley. Her eyes glowed, two eerie, blue-violet points in the darkness.

  They glowed. Not reflected. The light came from within her eyes, which looked more wolven than human. Not the blue he knew from their time before, when the white wolf he loved ran next to him. Unnatural purple. A shade that sent chills down his spine.

  As he stared, stunned by the uncanny light from her eyes, she shoved her glasses up her nose then turned back to the undead she held by the neck. “Tell me where Miles and Mason Bristol are.”

  “N-Night Moves,” he gibbered. “Th-That’s where they go when they w-want to have fun.”

  Noah found his voice. “Kayla, what are you doing?”

  “Hello, Noah,” she said, voice even, gaze never leaving the vampire. “I’m just looking up some old friends now that I’m back in town.”

  The loyal pack member in him knew he should convince her to let the biter go. The rest of him wanted to help rattle the undead’s fangs from his head. Torn, he settled for a middle course. “His coterie isn’t going to be happy about this.”

  She snorted. “There are a lot of things I’m not happy about. They can get over it.”

  “I won’t tell them!” the man offered helpfully. “This is just between us. You remember me. I never did anything to hurt you. That was all Paul. All of it was his idea.”

  Kayla raised an eyebrow. “All Paul.”

  “All of it! You know how he is. He got the idea in his head, and he wouldn’t let it go! I thought it was crazy, you know, just fucking batshit, but he didn’t listen to me—”

  “Was it Paul’s idea to record my screams to mix into his music?”

  Specter’s flow of words halted. “I—”

  “Was it his idea to starve us to ‘test our loyalty’, then watch us fight over food? You had your mic out for the snarling, didn’t you?”

  “It would have been a shame to let those great sounds go to waste, right? I mean, you’re famous now. Those mixes are a hit. I’ll give you royalties. Whatever you want.” He swallowed around her hand on his throat. “I won’t tell them anything. Right now, I just want to get out of town and never look back.”

  “You’re right. You won’t tell them.” Fur scurried down her arm, from her elbow to the now sharp claws at the end of her half changed hand. The talons closed like the snap of a jaw, dug deep into the vampire’s throat, and ripped it out.

  Black ooze poured from the open wound. For a moment, the vampire looked stunned. Then he slid down the wall, covered in his own vital fluids. Noah felt the bile in the back of his throat as DJ Specter tried to speak but only managed a gurgle. Drops of black blood spurted out from the wound as the air propelled them.

  Kayla ignored the tacky spatter that covered her hand. As the undead fell, she knelt to retrieve several sharpened stakes that rested on the ground. With a smooth movement, she drove one into the biter’s chest. His pathetic wheeze of a scream rose for the briefest instant then died, just as he did, a long-delayed end to an unnatural life.

  It was not the reunion Noah had hoped for. It looked more like the start of the war he had campaigned for.

  At last, she turned to face him, her hand human again and eyes shrouded by the glasses on her face. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to find you. Moira called me, and I came...” He took a step forward. Despite what had just happened, he wanted to touch her, to feel that she was real.

  “I told her I didn’t want to see you.” But it wasn’t a dismissal. He could hear the conflict, the pain in her voice.

  Another step. “Why would you not want to see me? Kayla, it’s me.”

  She could have backed away, but she didn’t. Instead, she looked at the body at her feet. “Why? Isn’t that obvious? I don’t want you involved in this. Go home. Forget you saw me. It’ll be better for you that way.”

  The meaning of her words was perfectly clear. I don’t want to ruin your life. I’ve already done something against the rules, and I’m not finished yet.

  “I’m already involved. I always have been.”

  “Go home, Noah.”

  “Whatever happened to you that night happened to us both. I’m not leaving.”

  Her fists clenched, released, clenched again, conflict written in every movement. While she fought with herself, he closed the distance between them, and before she could object, he wrapped her in his arms. She was stiff for only a heartbeat, and then she melted against him. He breathed in the smell of her, different from before but still her, still his mate.

  “We’re in this together,” he murmured into her hair. “We always have been.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.” But she held him tighter.

  After too short a time, he let her go to lock gazes with her. “I do. I love you.”

  The corners of her eyes crinkled, and her brow furrowed with an obscure hurt he didn’t understand. Not yet.

  “Don’t say that now. If you can still say it later, after...”

  “After what?”

  She turned away from him to face the filthy alley. “We should leave.”

  As different as her smell, this was not the Kayla he knew. She would never have turned away or shut him out so quickly. But then, the Noah she had known might have taken it to heart. Stung, he would have seen how she had changed, decided she didn’t want him now. Would he have wondered if he wanted her now? Would he have questioned it?

  Yes. But then again, he’d changed, too. From cub to wolf. Follower to alpha.

  “First things first,” he said, resolved. In the shock of seeing her and the death of the vampire, he hadn’t noticed how his muscles had tensed. Now he could feel the energy that had built in him. “Let me check the area. Can you get the body into that garbage bin?”

  “Yes.” She cocked her head and regarded him for a moment then
bent to heft the body over her shoulder. Without her werewolf blood, she never could have done it. Even then, she would have struggled with a partial shift, something she had never mastered. But judging by her performance earlier, and the way she hauled the dead vampire up, she no longer had those problems.

  Once again, he wondered what had happened. But she turned away, and he knew she wouldn’t answer him now if he asked. Instead, he steeled himself and turned away from her to sweep the surrounding alleys for anyone who might have heard. A whisper in the back of his mind warned that if he looked away from her, she would disappear. Or that he wouldn’t have seen her at all, and he would have proof that he had snapped at last.

  He ignored it. If his grief had driven him to delusions, he could handle that. Just as long as it meant he could see her again.

  As he completed the circuit of side streets and alleys, he heard Kayla grunt. The body hit the bottom of the empty can with a loud clang. Noah saw her toss a dislodged, designer tennis shoe into the bin as he returned.

  “Do you have any matches?” she asked, wiping her hands on her jeans.

  Noah pulled out a disposable plastic lighter. “I always keep a lighter on me these days.”

  “Why?”

  He sparked a flame and dropped it into the can, then quickly moved away. It took no time at all before hot, green-tinted flames shot up from the metal bin. The foul reek of burned vampire had never smelled better. “For that.”

  The reflection of the fire danced off the lenses of her glasses. “I thought you didn’t want a war.”

  “I said they wouldn’t be happy about you killing him. The war’s something else. Come on.”

  They couldn’t avoid the inhabited streets entirely as they wound through the neighborhood to his truck. As Noah unlocked the doors, a man passed by Kayla and did a double take. “Is that blood?” he asked.

  Kayla shrugged. “Female problems. Don’t ask.”

  The man fled. Kayla stowed her stakes behind the seat then hopped in the passenger door.

  Noah started the engine.

  “You’ve changed,” she said as he navigated into the light flow of traffic.

  “I’ve had to.” So close to the full moon, the tense energy inside him didn’t want to disperse. Adrenaline fed it until he was coiled, hyper-aware.

  She flinched at the high beams of an oncoming car. “Moira said that things had been different.”

  He snorted. “Moira doesn’t know the half of it. She’s not as close in the loop as she thinks she is.”

  “What are you talking about?” Startled, she looked over to him. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of that eerie glow behind her eyes.

  “She’s on the fence, Kayla, and no one trusts the energy slingers after what we found in the woods. They won’t swear to either side. Everyone knows why, but after one worked for Kiplinger, that doesn’t mean what it used to.” He took a deep breath. In the close quarters of the truck’s cab, the scent of her, wild, feral, dangerous, was inescapable. It sent an electric charge through him, and his cock swelled against his jeans. Too much excitement, too long without her. He couldn’t keep it down.

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean, one worked for Kiplinger?”

  “Before you disappeared, we knew one of the witches had worked with Kiplinger. After, we found the site where— Where whatever happened, happened. It was pretty obvious some kind of magic had been worked. None of the slingers would admit to it.”

  “Because none of them did it.”

  He shot a sideways glance at her. “No vampire could have done that alone. Are you sure?”

  “That’s a stupid question.”

  “Okay, you’re right. It is. I didn’t mean it like that. What you said just doesn’t make sense. And anyway, we had no way to know that.” He shrugged. “We know whose side the vampires are on. We know where the pack stands. We know, on an instinctive level, what’s going on in their heads. Moira’s an enigma, and neither side can predict her. So they give her a minimum of information to placate her then keep the rest of their cards close to their chests.”

  That startled her, he could tell. Of all the political shifts in the paranormal circles, that was perhaps the largest. “So what’s the real story? She said the alpha and Pirelli are holding things together.”

  “Barely.” He changed lanes. “We were close to an open break in the truce before it. I’d like to take all the blame for that, because I was pushing hard. They’d taken you, and I was either going to find you or kill every last one of them.

  “But Regina screamed louder than I did for it. Two nights after the attack, she was ready to storm Pirelli’s estate and rip out his throat. Peter was wearing down and finally decided to ask the vampire lord directly. Otherwise, he wasn’t going to be able to keep his pack in line.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “The pack is falling apart over this.” Near their apartment, the streets were quiet. “Peter maintains power on respect held over from his earlier days. But his control is slipping. Last month, two people didn’t go over during the alpha shift.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Forced the issue. And won, that time.”

  He didn’t mention that he’d been one of the two, and that he had refused to shift. Jaw locked, he’d fought his wolf for dominance until Peter’s will overwhelmed him.

  Instead, he said, “No one wants to come out and admit that he’s failing us, though. Everyone’s complacent, afraid to rock the boat.”

  “Everyone except you.”

  “Moira told you, huh?” He chuckled and turned into the parking lot. “No, I’m not afraid to rock the boat. When I’m done, it’ll rock a whole lot harder.”

  Five

  It was just as she remembered. The pictures on the walls, her sock still under the coffee table. As she stepped into the apartment, it was just like stepping back into a long-dead past. She didn’t know if she loved or hated him for it.

  “Will you tell me what happened now?” he asked as the door clicked shut behind him.

  How would it hurt to tell this story? She’d never recounted it. Not to anyone. There was no desire in her to relive that night, or the months after it, but it wasn’t the potential pain that worried her. It was the chance that, if she said the words, she’d lance the festering wound inside her, the one that drove her toward revenge.

  She wanted that pain. She needed it. If she told him, she would cry, and if she cried, the built-up agony, the rage against those who had thrown her into the darkness, would drain away. Then she would have nothing left to fill her.

  You would have him.

  “Don’t shut me out.” The strength in his words surprised her. Sweet, tender Noah, the Noah who only turned animal when the moon showed her full face, had turned into a fierce, dominant male wolf. She could smell his arousal, the mix of sweat and adrenaline that made her want to growl. The rush of the hunt, the kill, had transformed into a heat deep in her belly.

  “I don’t want to involve you.”

  “I’m already involved. You can’t protect me. I make my own decisions.”

  Instead of answering, she walked to the lamp at the window, clicked it off. Then she removed her sunglasses and threw them on the table.

  He didn’t recoil. Superior night vision allowed her to see the set of his jaw, the resolute determination in his eyes. Without any hesitation he moved to her, his chest pressed to hers, and he looked into her face. She knew he saw the luminous purple effulgence, the wolfish shape of her irises, her pupils, but somehow, she knew he saw more.

  He didn’t look only at her strange, bestial eyes. He looked at her, all of her, and he didn’t flinch from what he saw. Both his hands cupped her face as his lips drew close, touched hers.

  Like a flash fire, the passion ignited. Their lips pressed together hard, mouths opening so their tongues could twine. Against his chest, her nipples hardened, and as they kissed, she rubbed them against his muscular front. Her shirt was too tight. Her
bra was worse.

  With a gasp, she pulled back. His eyes smoldered in the darkness as she hauled the garment over her head. But he wasn’t so patient with her bra. He fumbled at it, snarled, looked like he might tear it off her. She hastened to unfasten the clasps so he could pull it away, setting her breasts free. It landed in the corner.

  He pulled off his own shirt next. Muscles rippled across his chest, strong, hard knots of flesh that had grown in her absence. “Shit, Noah,” she said, her hand stretched across the bulge of his right pectoral. Under her palm, his nipple hardened.

  “I’ve been working out.” His voice, more growl now, betrayed his deep need. “Do you like it?”

  In reply, she leaned forward to lick the edge of the muscle in one long, smooth stroke of her tongue. He moaned, deep in his chest, and she did it again, closer to the darkened peak of flesh. Beneath her lips, the muscle quivered, a sign of his tested control.

  She hadn’t finished her teasing. Wide, slow circles of her tongue left damp trails across his skin in ever smaller spirals as she tasted him. Her own need ratcheted higher, but she wanted to sample every inch of this new, improved Noah. When the tip of her tongue at last touched home on the puckered nub of skin, he gasped, snarled.

  Fingers laced into her hair and pulled her face tight to his flesh. In response, she sucked hard on his nipple, drew it deep into her mouth. Her teeth closed on it just hard enough to evoke another snarl.

  “Harder.”

  His other hand ripped the button of her jeans open. Fingers dove down the front to caress her clit, swollen and wet with her desire. She groaned into his skin. Her hips thrust forward to rub herself against his hand. Months of torment, moons without satisfaction, kindled the bonfire in her gut. She wanted him to shove into her, hard, fast, merciless, fuck her until the past was nothing but ashes in their flames.

  With a tug to her hair, he guided her lapping tongue across his chest to his other nipple. She sucked it into her mouth, and he rewarded her by pinching her clit between his fingers. It was too much to stand still while he touched her; she had to grind, pull him closer, get him closer to the slit between her legs.