Taming The Shifter
Taming The Shifter
Lisa Childs
A werewolf’s need for vengeance…When Detective Kate Wever shoots a man in the chest, she expects him to die…and to stay dead. But it seems that Warrick James is not like other men. What he is, though, is a mystery that can only lead her deeper into danger.As she learns about Warrick’s all-consuming quest to stop whatever monster killed his father, Kate realises that things in the underworld of Zantrax City are not as they seem. And it isn’t long before Kate is swept up in a passion unlike any other…
“You’re not weak at all,” Warrick assured her. “You’ve overpowered me.”
“Because you let me.”
He nodded. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You did,” Kate said.
“Not anymore,” he said, lifting his head to close the distance between his mouth and hers. His lips skimmed across hers. “Now I just want you …”
And she wanted him, her skin heating and tingling everywhere they touched. The sheet had slipped down, so that her breasts were bare against his chest. His hair, that covered his impressive pecs, tickled and teased her nipples, bringing them to tight, sensitive points.
“And I want—” Kate struggled free of his loose grasp and grabbed up the sheet again, holding it between them like a shield “—to arrest you.”
LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in Michigan with her two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a Rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com (http://www.lisachilds.com), or snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
Taming the Shifter
Lisa Childs
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#u54b86b19-e206-59b3-a1e0-8c23b03d754e)
Introduction (#u3ff6efed-0e55-5591-b27c-81ff2e1e40b9)
About the Author (#uf0970eaa-30c8-5149-b187-82dfdc5d3aef)
Title Page (#u8e15852b-c3ff-5a81-a03c-1b475d1fb33a)
Prologue (#ulink_65d06e89-8645-5c21-a04b-d85b168f7419)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_a2166291-86ad-5afc-934c-a44e9db55b6b)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_0073c59a-b5e6-588b-bc20-b84be2ae9593)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_1dcd7512-add9-52cf-aa3a-c8e4dbd473c0)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_4c25a805-97eb-5009-b1c2-d0cc41cdb9c4)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_047b5a95-f3a2-5db9-8971-09f00a4109d5)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_f9988d14-4c5e-5c13-8a98-55c6fde0f878)
The sweet, metallic scent of blood hung heavy in the air, and chimes rang out from the clock tower in the town square. Warrick James didn’t need to know what time it was. He was already too late. He was always too late.
He pushed open the door and stepped into his father’s den. He had known what he would find; he’d been warned. But still the scene struck him like a body blow.
His father lay back in his chair, blood gushed from a hole blown in his chest. Even with the bullet—that special bullet—in it, his heart continued to pump.
And his father’s eyes stared—not up at the man who had taken his life. But at the man who had failed to save him. Warrick was used to the disappointment in his father’s pale brown gaze. For thirty years, he had seen it every time the man had looked at him.
The chimes continued to ring out. Was that the eighth or the ninth? Just a few more chimes before midnight arrived...
Warrick reeled; his heart feeling as if a shot had been fired into it, as well. Maybe a bullet would pierce it next. Reagan—the man he’d known he would find standing over the body—held the gun yet, his finger against the trigger. And the barrel of that gun was pointed at Warrick.
“What kind of monster are you?” Warrick asked even as he felt his own body beginning to turn from man to beast. “How could you do this?”
“You don’t understand,” Reagan replied. “Let me explain...”
Warrick shook his head. He was beyond listening. He didn’t even care that that gun—loaded with those special bullets—was pointed directly at his heart. Just as the clock chimed for the twelfth time, he launched himself at his father’s killer.
* * *
Detective Kate Wever intimately knew the city she protected. Before being promoted to the major case squad, she had patrolled these streets. She knew the metropolis of Zantrax, Michigan, as well as she knew herself. As she knew her friends...
Or so she’d once believed. Now she wasn’t certain what, or who, to believe. Except for Bernie...
She knew not to believe the vagrant. Yet she followed him into the dead-end alley between some of the tallest buildings in the city. The sun hadn’t set, but it was dark in the alley. The air hung still and putrid above the asphalt.
Kate, following too close to Bernie, held her breath—unwilling to breathe for fear of gagging. The man should have gone to the shelter instead of the police station. He could have used a shower. And probably a meal. Or at least some coffee. She held out a cup to him and pulled a sandwich from her pocket. “Here,” she said. “You need to eat.”
He needed to sober up. The stench wasn’t just because he hadn’t showered for weeks—maybe months. He also smelled strongly of alcohol. Or of strong alcohol...
She hadn’t brought enough coffee. He reached for it, his hand shaking. The cover came off and the hot liquid spilled over the rim and splashed onto the front of his long trench coat. “Bernie, are you all right?”
His gray-haired head jerked up and down in quick, nervous nods. His dark eyes were wild. With fear or drunkenness?
“It’s this place,” he said with a shudder of revulsion.
“We didn’t have to come here.” She wasn’t sure why he had insisted on her following him from the station to the alley. With no sun between the buildings, the air wasn’t just still—it was cold.
She shivered. But not just from the cold.
One of those buildings had a bar in its basement—Club Underground. A bar where strange things happened...like Bernie had claimed happened here. Too bad her friend owned the place...
“This was my home first,” he said, gesturing toward a Dumpster shoved against one of the buildings. “Then all of them started coming around—making trouble.”
“All of them?” she asked. “Who are you talking about?”
“What,” he corrected her, the word sharp. “They’re not human. They can fly.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked. And exactly how much had he had to drink?
“Those things,” he said. “I’ve seen ’em fly out of the alley—straight up in the night sky like big, human-looking bats.”
He had definitely gotten into some strong alcohol, but his words weren’t slurred. So maybe he’d just been drinking so long that the alcohol had damaged his brain. Over her years on the streets, she had seen a lot of vagrants develop alcohol dementia. She wouldn’t be able to reason with him; he was probably beyond that.
So she simply asked, “What do you want me to do about them, Bernie? Flying isn’t a crime.”
“They’re killers,” he said. “They kill humans and each other. If you’re not careful, Detective Wever, they might kill you.”
Kate smiled and opened her mouth to assure him that she would be fine. But the alley suddenly grew darker and colder. Along with a chill, a sense of foreboding rushed through her, and for a moment she believed Bernie. There was something out there—something not quite human—and it was coming.
For her.
Chapter 1 (#ulink_ad911d3f-c812-5791-8439-1d651a783576)
The murderous intent gleaming in the man’s topaz eyes chilled Kate’s blood. He was going to kill someone.
His hands, with wide palms and long, strong fingers, grasped her shoulders. Then he moved her aside and continued his pursuit of the man he had been chasing down the street before Kate had stepped into his path. But instead of knocking her down, he had caught and steadied her. Her skin tingled from his touch despite the layers of jacket and sweater that had separated his palms from her bare flesh.
She shook off the eerie feeling and forced herself to move, running after him. And as she ran, she reached for her phone and her gun. She wasn’t on duty, but it was her job to stop him from killing.
In a metropolis like Zantrax, Michigan, a detective was never truly off duty—no matter that her real shift had ended hours ago. Or that she wanted nothing more than a stiff drink and a soft bed and sweet oblivion.
“Where the hell did he go?” she murmured, unable to catch a glimpse of him ahead of her. This close to midnight the sidewalk wasn’t as crowded as during the day—especially since this area consisted mostly of office buildings and warehouses.
Except for the underground nightclub in the basement of one of those buildings.
Club Underground was always busy, always full of people who were too beautiful to be real. She shook off the doubts Bernie had put in her head a few weeks ago.
He was crazy, she reminded herself.
And maybe so was she for not calling for backup before chasing after a man as big as the one who had nearly run her down. But she couldn’t call in a crime in progress until she knew he was actually committing one. It was possible he’d just been running, albeit in jeans and a white sweater, and she’d just imagined that murderous gleam in his eyes.
Damn Bernie and his wild stories. But if she was being honest, she had to admit she’d had doubts about her city even before Bernie had warned her about flying nonhumans.
The man who’d nearly run her over had been human, though. And he had definitely been angry as hell. She couldn’t see him now, but she couldn’t get that brief image she’d had of him out of her mind. He was so tall and broad-shouldered, with a long mane of thick black hair that he would have been impossible to miss had he still been on the street ahead of her. But he couldn’t have just disappeared.
She stopped and glanced around, peering into the shadows gathering outside the circles of light from the streetlamps on the sidewalk. A rage like his wouldn’t have been easily suppressed or controlled so that he could hide silently in the shadows, though.
She cocked her head and listened. Grunts and groans and an almost inhuman cry shattered the quiet of the nearly deserted street and confirmed that her instinct to pursue the man had been right. Her pulse leaping, she tracked the sounds of the fight to the narrow opening of that alley between the building with Club Underground in the basement and the deserted furniture warehouses.
Lifting her cell phone, she reported the assault in progress. A unit would be dispatched for backup. But, remembering the gleam in those unusual topaz eyes, she doubted backup would arrive in time to prevent a murder. So she pulled her gun from her holster and, adrenaline and nerves coursing through her, stepped into the alley.
The two men grappled on the ground, rolling across the asphalt as they locked in mortal combat. The man with whom she’d collided swung his fists over and over into the face of another man. They were closely matched in size—tall and muscular. But one was clearly the attacker, the other the victim. The victim kicked and pushed, trying to get away. “Stop!” she yelled. “Zantrax PD. Break it up!”
The man on the ground murmured something, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
“Shut up. Just shut up! Or I’ll tear your damn throat out,” the attacker growled, his hand reaching for the other man’s neck.
“Stop!” Kate shouted now, panic rising. “I’m Lieutenant Wever, a detective with Zantrax Police Department, and I’m placing you under arrest for assault.”
But he ignored her as if she had not spoken at all. She couldn’t just stand there and do nothing while one man killed another—as she watched. So she fired. The bullet struck the man’s shoulder and propelled him back. He shook his head and shrugged, as if shaking off a muscle twinge and glanced at the blood spreading down his sleeve and across his white sweater.
The victim struggled beneath the man she’d shot, but before he could get out of reach, his attacker caught him again. His hands, his long fingers stiff like claws, closed around the man’s throat. Despite the bullet in his shoulder, he had lost none of his strength.
Was he on something? Drugged suspects were sometimes harder to subdue and apprehend because they tended to be more violent. And superhumanly strong.
So Kate fired again.
This bullet propelled him back farther, his hands slipping from his victim’s throat. Finally, he turned toward her, as if just noticing that she’d joined them in the alley. With that murderous intent directed at her, he lurched to his feet, and she noticed the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans.
He was armed and he was heading straight toward her.
Heart hammering with fear, Kate fired again. This bullet struck him directly in the chest—in his heart. He pressed his hand to it as if pledging allegiance. Then he pulled it away and looked down at his bloody palm—seeming surprised to see the blood.
Had he thought she was firing blanks? Couldn’t he feel the wounds in his shoulder? Blood saturated the sleeve of his white sweater and spread like a red wave across his chest. Finally, his legs buckled beneath him, and he dropped to his knees on the asphalt.
While he fell to the ground, another man rose from it—albeit with a lurch and a groan. The man he’d been pummeling stumbled forward.
Instinct had Kate swinging her gun toward him. But he had no weapon at his waistband and was in no physical shape to assault her or his attacker.
“Stay back,” she said. She wasn’t sure who she was protecting—herself or the man she’d shot. She stepped between them.
“He needs medical help,” the beat-up man murmured, his voice weak—probably from nearly having his throat ripped out.
She’d had no choice. She’d had to shoot.
But even with three bullets in him, he was reaching out as if trying to grab for his victim again. “No...”
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll get you help,” she said. She’d had to shoot him, but she felt guilt hanging heavily over her like the night sky. “Save your strength...”
However, he must have used his last because he slumped forward, his chest and head hitting the asphalt.
“Oh, God!” she exclaimed in horror. What had she done? She hadn’t wanted to kill him. She’d just wanted him to stop. During her career, she’d had to shoot other suspects—had even killed a couple of them. But she hadn’t felt like this then. She hadn’t felt any doubt and certainly not any guilt.
Her hand shaking, she reached for her cell. Where the hell was the backup she’d called? If she hadn’t shot him, she might have been the one lying in the alley bleeding out if he’d grabbed for his gun. He still had his weapon on him, but he hadn’t pulled it. He wouldn’t have needed the gun to kill her, though; he could have used his bare hands like he had on his victim.
She gripped her gun tighter in one hand while she used her other to press the call button on her cell. Before anyone answered, she heard the sirens. Help had arrived.
But was it too late? Was he already dead? There was so much blood, pooling like tar beneath his body. She dropped down next to him. His face was to the side, his strange topaz eyes staring up at her. She couldn’t help him. Her only medical training was CPR, and he was breathing. His heart was beating. She couldn’t help him.
“You let a killer get away,” he said.
She glanced around the alley. Even in daylight it was dark between these buildings. Now, close to midnight, the blackness was thick and impenetrable. The other man could have been standing beside her and she might not have seen him. But she knew he was gone. While she’d been distracted, he’d slipped away.
“A killer?” Had she shot the wrong man and let the real perp escape?
“Yes,” he murmured, and blood gurgled from his mouth now. It was amazing he was still alive—given where she’d hit him. But he wouldn’t last much longer.
“Hang in there,” she implored him. “Help’s coming...” Would they be able to find the narrow entrance to the alley? “I’ll get them...”
She moved to stand up, but he caught her wrist in his hand. His incredibly large, strong hand. He could have easily snapped her wrist—if he’d wanted, if he wasn’t near death.
“I’ll get you medical help,” she promised.
“You made a mistake,” he said, his voice a low growl. “A fatal mistake...” He seemed less concerned about his wounds than the fact that the other man had slipped away.
His words—his last words—chilled her. His eyes had closed, and he was no longer breathing. She could administer CPR now, but it wouldn’t be enough to save him. He needed the paramedics and a fast trip to an operating room. She pulled her wrist from his weak grasp and ran from the alley.
It wasn’t until she returned with the EMTs and patrol officers that she realized her mistake.
He was gone.
“No!” As frustration and anger and shock rioted within her, she screamed the word. “No!”
The scream burned her throat and jerked her awake. Her heart pounded furiously, hammering at her ribs. She gasped for breath and clawed at the sheets that had tangled around her thrashing body.
No matter how many times in the past couple of months that she dreamed about that night, the intensity of that encounter never lessened. She relived every emotion as well as every action. But still, she could not figure out exactly what had happened to his dead body.
She had seen the blood gurgling from his mouth to join the dark pool of it lying beneath him on the asphalt. He had stopped breathing and closed his eyes.
He had died.
He hadn’t walked out of that alley. But somehow in the short time that she’d gone to the sidewalk and led the uniforms back to the alley, his body had disappeared. Maybe the other man, the one he’d been beating, hadn’t left the alley when she’d thought. Maybe he’d waited until she’d left.
And done what? Killed a man who was already dead? Dragged off his body? He hadn’t been in any shape to do that.
But how had the body disappeared? The alley dead-ended into a third building; none of the doors opening onto it had been unlocked. There was nowhere he could have gone even had he been alive. But dead...
She had even tracked down the homeless man who’d admitted to living in the alley. Bernie had claimed to not have been there that night. In fact, he’d said that he didn’t often stay in the alley anymore because he was scared that the humans—that weren’t really human—would kill him. Like he’d warned her that they might kill her, too.
Hell, maybe Bernie’s warning hadn’t been so outlandish. Maybe there were humans—that weren’t really human—that could fly. And that man had been one of them. That was about the only explanation for how he’d disappeared.
She shook her head, disgusted with herself for wanting to believe Bernie’s wild, alcoholic dementia-influenced story. But what was the alternative? Angels? If she was spiritual enough to believe in them, they flew. But she doubted the man she’d shot—who had been so intent on killing his victim—was an angel.
“So where did you go?” she mused, pushing her sweat-dampened hair from her forehead. She had gone back to that alley nearly every night since it had happened, but she had yet to figure out how he could have just disappeared. “I looked for you everywhere...”
“Not everywhere,” a deep voice murmured.
Kate jerked upright in bed, one hand clutching the tangled sheets to her chest—the other sliding under the pillow next to hers for her gun. She pulled out the Glock and directed the barrel toward the shadows in the corner of her bedroom.
He stepped away from the wall and moved into the glow of the moonlight streaking through the partially open blinds. His mouth curved into a mocking grin. “What are you going to do, Kate? Shoot me again?”
She shivered and tightened her grasp on her gun. She was too shocked over his appearance to ask any of the questions she should have. Who the hell are you? How the hell did you get in? All she could do was murmur, “I did shoot you.”
Sometimes she had wondered if she’d missed. But that wouldn’t have explained the blood. The crime techs hadn’t been able to explain it, either—except to say that some animal must have been killed in the alley.
The man lifted a hand to his chest and patted it. “Did you?”
“I know I did. I saw you bleeding.” Blood had gushed from the bullet wound in his heart. She swallowed the lump that had risen up the back of her throat.
She hadn’t just shot him; she’d killed him.
“I saw you die.”
So how was he in her room, stepping closer to her bed?
“Then I must be a ghost,” he said. As totally unconcerned about the gun as he had been the night she’d shot him, he settled onto the mattress next to her, his muscular thigh rubbing against her hip.
“I don’t believe in ghosts.” But she couldn’t deny that he was haunting her. With the glimpses of him she had been catching in crowds. With these strangely erotic dreams...
But she was awake. Wasn’t she? So she couldn’t be dreaming.
“Maybe I’m your conscience,” he suggested.
“My conscience isn’t bothering me,” she said. But he was. He had been ever since she’d bumped into him on the street and looked up into those eerie topaz eyes. She had lost herself in that intense gaze of his, and she had yet to find her way back.
She should have already placed him under arrest for his older crimes—assault and leaving the scene of that crime—and his latest crime: breaking and entering. He must have come through her window; she felt the breeze blowing through it and she hadn’t left it open—not this late in autumn.
But if she tried arresting him, he would undoubtedly resist. And she’d have to shoot him. For some reason she didn’t want to shoot him again—because then he might disappear again, like he had that night.
Even now she wasn’t certain that he was real, that she wasn’t dreaming. Thoughts of him and that night had kept her awake for so many nights that she was beyond exhausted. She was probably just dreaming...
* * *
Heat flashed through Warrick James, radiating from where his thigh rubbed against her hip. Only denim and a thin satin sheet separated his skin from hers. The sheet was so thin that it was obvious she wore nothing beneath it. The dark areolae of her full breasts were visible beneath the champagne-colored satin, her nipples peaked on the shapely mounds—probably from the cool breeze blowing through her open window. She couldn’t want him...as much as he wanted her.
His body hardened as blood rushed through his veins, hot and heavy. He would have to be crazy to be attracted to her—the woman who had tried to kill him and obviously felt no remorse. “Don’t you have a conscience?” he asked. He shouldn’t have been surprised that she didn’t. Apparently nobody he knew had one.
“Yes, but there’s no reason for it to bother me,” she murmured, her brow furrowing with genuine confusion. A lock of silky-looking black hair fell across her forehead and skimmed her jaw. Her hair was dark, her skin pale and her eyes a sharp, clear blue.
Hell, maybe he would be crazy if he wasn’t attracted to her. But this attraction did nothing to cool his anger with her.
He barely resisted the urge to reach out and shake her. But she was still holding that damn gun. And while she couldn’t kill him with it—permanently—the bullets still hurt. He grimaced in remembrance of the pain that had burned so fiercely in his chest that he had actually lost consciousness. “Because you shot me.”
“And if the situation was the same, I’d do it again,” she replied. “Shooting you was the only way to stop you from killing that man. Even after I identified myself, you wouldn’t listen to my commands to let him go. And you had this look on your face...” She shuddered.
“You didn’t understand what was going on,” he said. “You should have given me a chance to explain.” That he had been doing her job for her. He had been protecting and serving all the citizens of Zantrax—both human and superhuman—as well as his home village of St. James.
“You were too busy strangling the life from that man,” she reminded him.
“Yes,” he said, frustration gnawing at him that she had stopped him from doing what had to be done, what apparently should have been done years ago so that other lives wouldn’t have been lost and destroyed. Now the bastard, Reagan, had gone underground. He hadn’t been easy to find the night Warrick had chased him into that dead-end alley; he would be even harder to track down now. Thanks to Detective Kate Wever.
“Why?” she asked. “I fired the first two shots into your shoulder, but you wouldn’t stop. You were in such a murderous rage.”
He couldn’t deny that he had been. “I had a damn good reason.”
“You should have stopped beating him when I told you to,” she said, “then I would have taken a report and you could have explained your actions.”
But he had been beyond explanations. Beyond reason. All he’d known was his hunger for vengeance, the exact same hunger he should be feeling for her—just for vengeance. But, despite the gun she held on him, another kind of hunger gnawed at him—and only that thin sheet separated her naked body from his gaze, from his touch. His fingers itched to reach for the sheet, to tug it off. But she would undoubtedly shoot him again.
“Explain the situation to me now. Why were you trying to kill that man?” she asked. “You called him a killer.”
Reagan was. But Warrick shouldn’t have told her that; it was none of her business. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t share his story without disclosing secrets he would really die if he revealed. That story haunted him, like he had tried to haunt her. Since she kept staring at him as though he were a ghost, he must have been successful haunting her. But he didn’t bother correcting her misconception; it was better that she think him a ghost than what he really was. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, but he couldn’t shake off the pain any more than he could the hunger. “Some people just need killing.”
She sucked in an audible breath and adjusted her grip on her gun, steadying the barrel that was still pointing directly at his chest. “That’s not for you to decide.”
“It wasn’t for you to decide that he should live and I should die.” Because she had let that bastard live, more would likely die. Maybe even her...
She drew in a shuddery breath. “You gave me no choice. I couldn’t just stand there and let you kill him.”
“So instead you killed me.”
“But you’re not dead,” she murmured, reaching out the hand not holding the gun toward his face. And as she did, her sheet slipped a little lower and revealed the deep cleft between her breasts.
He sure as hell wasn’t dead, not with the way his heart pounded frantically as desire coursed through him. Then her fingers brushed across his face, scraping over the stubble on his cheek until her fingertips covered his lips. Heat sizzled between them. He uttered a gasp of breath, and she shivered.
“You’re not a ghost, either.”
“No,” he admitted, moving his lips against her fingertips.
She shivered again, and her nipples hardened even more, pushing taut against that thin sheet. “If you’re not a ghost, what are you?”
“Well, I’m no angel.” But if he was, Warrick would be an avenging one. Or he would have been had she not interfered. Because she had, he had lost his chance for vengeance...against his enemy.
Her interference should have made her his enemy, too. He’d told himself that she was. And that was why he couldn’t leave her alone even though he no longer had any reason to stay in Zantrax. Except vengeance. Against her.
Liar.
His tense, aching body called him on his lie. He didn’t want vengeance on her. He just wanted her. Her fingers still pressed against his lips, he didn’t have to speak—to explain. All he had to do was lean closer...to her.
* * *
Kate’s heart hammered against her ribs. He was staring at her mouth with that intense, eerie topaz gaze. He was going to kiss her. And just like she hadn’t wanted to shoot him in the alley, she didn’t want to stop him.
He had broken into her apartment and had been watching her sleep. And instead of shooting him, she was going to let him kiss her? After all of those sleepless nights, she had totally lost her mind. She had no doubt anymore.
Only desire.
She had touched him to see if he was real or if her fingers would pass right through him like mist. But she couldn’t stop touching him, skimming her fingers along his jaw to his lips—which were surprisingly soft and warm. She wanted to taste them, too. She slid her hand to the nape of his neck and tugged him closer so that only a breath separated his lips from hers.
He was breathing. Fast and ragged. And his heart was beating. She could feel the vibrations of it despite the small space that separated his body from hers. His skin radiated warmth to hers, making her tingle in reaction.
He was no ghost. No dream.
“What the hell are you?” she murmured again. “Indestructible?”
“I’m destructible,” he replied with a heavy sigh that teased her lips.
“You weren’t wearing a bulletproof vest,” she said. “I saw the gunshot wound, saw you bleeding.” Her trembling fingers skimmed down his neck to the buttons on his shirt. She needed to see the scar, needed to understand how a man could have survived such an injury. If he was a man...
He caught her fingers in his hand. “If you see my scars, I’m going to have to see yours.”
Goose bumps lifted along her bare shoulders and arms. She had scars, but hardly anyone knew about them. How could he know? The fear she should have been feeling the minute she’d discovered him in the shadows finally coursed through her. The hand holding the gun tightened on the grip.
“Who are you?”
He chuckled and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Poor Kate, you can’t figure out if you want to kiss me or kill me.”
She gasped at his arrogance and his perception. And the desire that jolted her with his touch.
“Remember how well that worked out for you last time,” he goaded her with a wink, his long thick lashes brushing against his chiseled cheekbones. “You can’t kill me.”
“You said you’re not indestructible.”
“Killing someone isn’t the only way to destroy them.”
She knew that better than most. “Is that what you’re trying to do to me?” she asked. “Destroy me?”
Reporting an officer-involved shooting and being unable to produce the body had harmed her career. Seeing glimpses of him everywhere after she thought she’d killed him had harmed her sanity. That had to be why she was so addled, so confused—that she’d asked none of the questions that she should have, that she hadn’t fired her gun.
He sighed again, raggedly, and leaned his forehead against hers. Then his hand slid from her cheek, down her neck to clasp her throat. “Like you, I can’t figure out if I want to kiss you or kill you.”
Chapter 2 (#ulink_08a83ee9-3644-5a0b-b081-b41cb027c6ad)
The barrel of the gun jammed hard into Warrick’s chest. He smiled in anticipation—not of the bullet but of her mouth beneath his, her lips opening for his possession. And he wanted to possess her.
In every way.
A clock chimed, the metallic clang reverberating from the living room beyond her closed bedroom door. He had been out there before, when he had checked out her whole place after coming through her window. The open living area was as big a mess as her clothes-strewed bedroom. But out there newspapers and mail littered the couch, small table and countertop. Only the grandfather clock standing on the wall next to the front door was neat and polished—its wood and brass gleaming. The old clock chimed again.
His skin tightened, tingling and itching. He shouldn’t have made his presence known to her—not this close to midnight. But when she’d awakened with that emotional shout, he hadn’t been able to just walk away—no matter how much he should have. He had been watching her...to see if the man she’d let get away that night was also watching her. Or that was what he’d told himself—that she might lead him to Reagan. Or maybe he’d just liked messing with her because of that—because she’d let Reagan go while she’d shot him.
The chime clanged again.
He didn’t have enough time. Not for what he wanted to do to her. And with her.
The clock chimed for the fourth time. And another, higher-pitched chime echoed it as someone rang the doorbell. Kate’s eyes widened as she glanced from him to her bedroom door.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” he said.
And the clock chimed again.
“No,” she agreed. “I’m going to arrest you.”
“Arrest me?” he asked. “For what?”
“Breaking and entering, for one,” she said. “And assault.”
“I haven’t assaulted you,” he said, flinching as the clock chimed for the sixth time. His scalp tingled, and his jaw grew tight, his teeth aching from the pressure. He didn’t have time to assault her. He had to leave. Now.
He pulled back from the tantalizing closeness of her sensually full lips. And closing his eyes against the sexy temptation of her naked body covered with just that thin sheet, he stood up and stepped back from the bed.
Her doorbell echoed the chime again. And he opened his eyes.
Still clutching that sheet to her body with one hand, she stood up, too, and kept the gun barrel trained on him. “I’m arresting you for the assault of that man in the alley.”
He focused on her face, anticipation of another kind winding through him. Maybe Reagan was still here. Maybe she would lead him to his father’s killer. “He swore out a complaint against me?”
Her lips thinned, pressed tightly together—refusing to answer him.
He clasped her bare shoulders in his hands. “Did he? Do you know where he is?” Maybe he hadn’t completely lost his trail.
She shook her head.
“Then no complainant—no case—no arrest,” he said, as that damn clock chimed for the seventh time.
“I will swear out a complaint.”
“If we hadn’t been interrupted,” he said, trailing his fingers down the bare skin of her shoulder in a caress, “you would have no complaints.” And then, despite the damn chiming clock and doorbell, he leaned down and brushed his mouth across hers.
Damn. Like honey and caramel and all the sweets that had always been his weakness, she tasted just as good as he had known she would. Too good for him to resist deepening the kiss. With gentle pressure, he parted her lips with his and dipped his tongue inside her mouth.
She closed her eyes and pressed her body against his. But he stepped back so that only their lips touched, clinging. He didn’t want to break the kiss. Didn’t want to leave her. But the damn clock chimed again.
* * *
Lips tingling, breath coming in ragged pants, Kate finally opened her eyes. But he was gone. Cool air chilled her skin from the breeze blowing through the open window. Had she left that open? Or had he opened it?
Or had he ever really even been there? She still couldn’t believe that the man she had shot, the man she’d watched die, had been in her bedroom. It wasn’t possible. But then, his dead body disappearing wasn’t possible, either.
Fists pounded at her door, her visitor having abandoned the bell and whatever patience he or she might have possessed.
Kate couldn’t blame them; she had kept them waiting for a long time. But hell, it was midnight. Who would visit her so late—except him?
Had he actually been there—or had she dreamed it all? No, impossible.
She could still taste him on her lips—as dark and dangerous and rich as his eerie topaz gaze and gleaming black hair. Another knock and the twelfth chime of the clock pulled her to her senses.
Still holding the gun, she thrust her arms into the sleeves of the robe draped across the foot of her rumpled bed and one-handedly secured the belt. Then she rushed to the front door before her crazy visitor woke the whole damn apartment complex. “What the hell—”
Palms lifted up, Paige stepped back from the doorway. “Don’t shoot.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” Kate challenged her blond-haired friend.
“Because we’re your friends,” Paige replied. Their other friends stood behind her. Brown-haired Elizabeth “Lizzy” Turrell, the red-haired assistant DA Campbell O’Brien, and Dr. Renae Grabill, the trauma resident with her short, dark hair and haunted gaze. Like Kate, Renae saw too much tragedy on the job.
“You woke me up,” Kate said. That alone had to be a shooting offense, especially when the dream had been as real and erotic as the one she had been having. But if it had been a dream, it had been the most vivid one she’d ever had.
“Looks like you were having one hell of a night,” Campbell perceptively remarked, lifting an auburn brow above one of her green eyes. “Is he still here?”
Lizzy snorted. “When’s the last time you saw Kate with a man?”
“Yesterday, but she was handcuffing him,” Campbell admitted. “Maybe she’s into that kinky stuff, though.”
“I’m into getting my sleep after a shift,” Kate said and feigned a yawn. “And you know why I was cuffing that guy—I was on duty.”
“You’re never off duty,” Paige said.
“You need to take a break once in a while,” Lizzy added.
“That’s what I was just trying to do,” Kate pointed out, “when I was sleeping.”
“Sleep sounds good,” Renae agreed. As a trauma surgeon in a crime-ridden city, she never got enough herself. “But you were supposed to meet us at Club Underground.” She had agreed to meet them this Friday since none of them had to work the next day.
Kate shuddered.
Even though Paige owned the place, Kate hated it for so many reasons. When Paige had first bought the club, someone had relentlessly stalked and terrorized her at the place.
That had been years ago. Paige’s stalker was gone now, but Kate still didn’t know the whole story. She just knew that her friend was safe and happier now than she had ever been. The investigator in her wanted to find out exactly what the hell had gone on at the creepy underground club. But because Paige was her friend, Kate hadn’t pressured her for details. She hadn’t wanted to disturb Paige’s happiness.
Now Kate had her own worries. Her own stalker.
That was another reason she hated Club Underground. Him. She had shot him in the alley behind the building. But she hadn’t killed him, like she’d thought. It wasn’t his ghost haunting her; it was him—gaslighting her.
“Hey,” Paige said with a chuckle. “That’s my place you’re disparaging.”
“Not disparaging,” Kate said.
“Just avoiding?” Paige probed, her blue-eyed gaze narrowed with concern. “You’re lucky Sebastian gave up on waiting for you to open the door. He took off when you didn’t answer the bell. He’d be quite upset that you’re not patronizing the club anymore.”
Sebastian, Paige’s younger brother and the long-time manager of Club Underground, had talked his sister into buying the place after she’d given up the law profession years ago. With his movie-star good looks, he could talk anyone into anything. Usually he talked women into his bed.
“He probably realized that waking up a detective is not a good idea,” Kate said, tapping her lowered gun against her thigh.
“He probably realized that there was somebody more welcoming waiting for him,” Campbell said.
“Since you wouldn’t come to happy hour, we brought happy hour to you,” Lizzy said.
Paige held up a bottle of white wine, and Kate snorted in disgust. Then Campbell raised another bottle, of liquor nearly the same amber as the man’s topaz eyes. Whiskey was Kate’s drink—when she drank, which wasn’t often. Just during happy hour, which was whenever the busy women managed to get together.
“You’ve been so busy the past couple of months,” said Renae who was equally, if not more so, busy but always made time for her friends, “that we’ve missed you.”
“So let us in,” Campbell said.
“Sorry,” Kate murmured as she stepped back so her friends could enter her messy living room. She had one couch, which was littered with clothes and newspapers, and a coffee table that was buried under plates and fast-food containers. If she’d known she was having visitors...she still wouldn’t have had time to clean up. Not with the shifts she worked and not with all the time she spent off duty trying to solve a case nobody believed was a crime—because they hadn’t seen the body.
But she’d seen the body. That night and again in her bedroom.
“Kate?” Lizzy asked, her soft voice full of concern. She was the mom of the group—having raised four kids on her own. She tended to mother them, too. “Are you sure everything’s all right?”
Kate nodded and lied, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Her place was small, hardly enough room for herself. But she picked up and tossed stuff aside, making room for her friends just as she had made room in her life for these women; their friendships were vital to her sanity. She had never needed them more than now.
Renae and Campbell dropped onto the floor while Paige and Lizzy squeezed together on the couch, making room for her to join them.
“I’m really glad you guys came over,” she said with gratitude for their friendship and their concern.
But she dare not tell them about her other late-night visitor, or they might think her as crazy as she already thought herself. He couldn’t have really been in her bedroom—in her bed. She couldn’t really have kissed him.
He was dead. She’d killed him.
* * *
Warrick hit the ground on all fours then glanced over his shoulder at the leap he’d taken off the fire escape outside Kate Wever’s fourth-floor apartment. “Damn...”
“You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself,” a deep voice murmured.
He tensed and cursed. He couldn’t be discovered. Not like this...not after he had already turned into the form he took every night from midnight till dawn. But the man was too close for Warrick to disappear, unseen, into the shadows.
“But I already know that you don’t die easily.”
Finally recognizing the voice, Warrick whirled around, claws drawn—teeth bared as he uttered a warning growl.
“And neither do I,” Sebastian Culver reminded him. “So you can put those away.”
Warrick had just been messing with the other guy. He felt no hostility—only gratitude. He sheathed his claws and grinned at the dark-haired man. Well, actually, Sebastian wasn’t a man—or not just a man. Either. “I’m glad to see you again.”
“I can’t say the same,” the vampire replied, his voice and pale blue eyes cool. “I thought you would have left Zantrax by now.”
“I have unfinished business here,” Warrick said, tensing at the other man’s unfriendly tone. Why was the guy hostile toward him now? Had Reagan gotten to him somehow?
“She,” Sebastian said as he gestured toward the bedroom window four floors up, “better not be your unfinished business.”
Warrick had been in Zantrax long enough to hear the underground gossip. Sebastian Culver was quite the playboy. Had he been involved with Kate? Or did he want to be? Warrick’s guts knotted, jealousy twisting them. “Why?”
“Because if she is,” Sebastian replied, “it’ll make me regret saving your sorry life.”
“I appreciate your help that night.” Warrick had wanted to thank the man for a while for pulling him into the underground passage to the club when Detective Wever had briefly left the alley after shooting him. Sebastian hadn’t brought him into the club but to a secret room between it and the passageway—and to a special surgeon. “But you can’t actually save a man who can’t die.”
“You can die,” Sebastian said. “Same as I can die.”
“But I wouldn’t have died that night.” The surgeon, Dr. Ben Davison, had eased his pain, though.
“But your secret would have been discovered,” the vampire pointed out. “And to men like us, that’s worse than death.”
“And will lead to death.” Someone’s death...
He glanced up to that dimly lit window, too. She hadn’t turned on any lights in her bedroom, so she must have left the door open to the living room. What was she doing in there? Maybe someone other than Sebastian had been ringing her bell. Who?
“She’s a smart woman,” Sebastian said. “She’ll figure it out.”
“Your secret or mine?”
Sebastian gestured at him—in his changed form. “Your secret is more obvious. You cut it close.”
“Cut what close?” he asked, feigning innocence.
“I saw you jump out the window,” the other man informed him. “You were with her.”
“Jealous?” he couldn’t resist goading.
Sebastian uttered a sigh of such weariness that it revealed he was much older than his physical appearance would lead one to believe. “I’m concerned.”
“For her or me?”
“I don’t know you.”
Yet the man had been compelled to help a stranger—a strange creature, no less. Fortunately one legend—the one about vampires and werewolves constantly being at war—was myth.
“How well do you know her?” Warrick asked, that insidious jealousy winding through him again. He hadn’t been a jealous man until the people he’d loved the most had betrayed him. But he’d been a fool then. Their betrayal had made him much wiser.
“Kate is a friend,” Sebastian replied. “A good friend.”
“Does she know your secret?” Warrick asked. “Does she share your secret?” He didn’t think so; he had felt no fangs when he’d kissed her—only softness and warmth.
“She’s human,” Sebastian said. “And unaware of the Secret Vampire Society.”
“For now,” Warrick said, worry joining his jealousy. “But if she’s as smart as you think, she will figure it out.”
“You’re not one of the society,” Sebastian said, his light blue eyes narrowed as he studied Warrick. He must have noticed his concern because he added, “But you know its rules.”
“Our pack shares many of those same rules.”
“If a human learns of the secret society, she becomes a threat that must be destroyed,” the vampire said.
Warrick sighed with regret. “That’s one of the rules we share.” A rule that was necessary to protect the pack.
“The society has an amendment to that rule,” Sebastian admitted. “If a human learns the secret, he or she can avoid death if they become a member of the society.”
“A human can only become a member of the pack by mating with one of the wolves...” He swallowed hard, choking down bad memories and a pain he had once thought he would never survive. It had been much worse than the bullets Detective Kate Wever had fired into his shoulder and his heart. “For life.” There was more to it than that, like with vampires—biting was involved. But it was more a brand than a feast.
“The society’s rule is supposed to be the same,” Sebastian said, “but too many exceptions have been made to it for it to be stringently enforced.”
“That might be the rule that the pack enforces most stringently,” Warrick said. That was why he had lost so much. The love of his life, his family, his pride, his trust...
And now, dallying as he had with Kate Wever, he must have lost his damn sanity, too. He hadn’t really wanted vengeance against her; he had only been telling himself that so he’d had a reason to stick around. He’d also told himself that Reagan might not have left. But he wouldn’t have known because after she’d shot him, all Warrick had been able to see was Kate.
She was beautiful, but there was something else about her—a strength and an integrity—that attracted him.
But why would Reagan have stayed? If he was as smart as Warrick had always believed he was, he wouldn’t have stopped running yet. He was probably far, far away by now.
“You don’t have to worry about Kate,” Warrick assured the vampire. “I will be leaving Zantrax.” There was no reason for him to stay now. But he caught himself sneaking another glance up at her window.
“Going home?”
He shook his head. Just as he had no family, no mate, no honor—he had no home, either. “I still have unfinished business. I just don’t think it’s here any longer.”
Despite his usually exceptional tracking abilities, he had lost the scent that night. Reagan would have known to put distance—a hell of a lot of distance—between them. And Kate shooting Warrick had given him time to do just that. But his anger with her had cooled. If only his desire could...
Her scent filled him. She didn’t smell of flowers or some other cloying odor. She smelled like she tasted: sweet—sugar and vanilla and some spice. How could such a strong, fearless woman be so sweet?
Sebastian sighed, as if giving up a battle he had waged with himself. “You might be wrong about that.”
Confusion wrinkled the hair on Warrick’s brow. “I thought you warned me off her.”
“I did,” Sebastian said. “I’m giving you another warning now. The reason you came to Zantrax may not have left yet, either.”
“You’re saying...” His heart slammed into his ribs. “He’s still here?”
“The guy you tried tearing apart in the alley?” Sebastian nodded.
“How do you know?”
The dark-haired man grinned. “In addition to managing Club Underground, I fill in at the bar some nights. A bartender hears things...”
“Your surgeon friend treated him, too?” Warrick guessed. How else would he have known what Warrick had done to him? It had been just the two of them—and Kate—in that alley. Sebastian hadn’t come out of the passageway until Kate had left. She’d been getting him help; that was why she had rushed from the alley. But her paramedics wouldn’t have been able to help him—not when he had changed moments after she’d left him.
Sebastian shook his head, probably trying to protect his surgeon friend from Warrick’s wrath, because he wouldn’t meet his gaze. For Kate had let the murderer go and then the special surgeon had treated him...
Of course these people had no idea what Reagan had done—what kind of monster he was. Warrick must have injured the son of a bitch, though. Satisfaction filled him. But like Warrick, Reagan wouldn’t die easily, either. So he would have to try harder.
“Why do you hate him so much?” Sebastian asked.
“Because he took everything away from me that I ever cared about...” Until then Warrick hadn’t hated Reagan; he had actually been foolish enough to care about him, to love and respect him. But he had been an even bigger fool to trust him. It didn’t matter that they were brothers—at least, it didn’t matter to Reagan.
“Then I was right to warn you,” Sebastian said.
“Warn me?” Warrick considered it more good news than bad. He hadn’t lost Reagan’s trail, like he’d worried he had.
“Yes,” the vampire replied with a nod. “Sounds like this man you’re trying to find poses quite a threat.”
Warrick chuckled. “Hell, no. He can’t hurt me anymore.”
“But he could hurt someone you care about again.”
“There’s no one left.” And he had nowhere to go—because Warrick couldn’t go home again until he’d gotten justice for his father’s murder. The son of a bitch had really taken everyone and everything from him.
Sebastian Culver glanced up at Kate Wever’s window now. “No one left?”
Warrick chuckled again but this one was hollow. “The woman shot me. Why would I care about her?”
“I was wondering that myself,” the vampire said. “What the hell were you doing in her place tonight?”
“She shot me,” he repeated. “Her interference allowed him to get away that night.” But not again. Reagan would not get away again. Maybe that was why the murderer hadn’t left Zantrax, either. Maybe even Reagan knew that it was time to end this.
“So you were going to hurt her?” Sebastian asked, anger flashing in his eyes, as he stepped closer to Warrick.
They might not be able to kill each other. But if they tangled, they could do a lot of damage. Inflict a lot of physical pain...
Warrick uttered a weary sigh and quipped, “I’m all about revenge.”
For what felt like so long now...
“She was just doing her job,” Sebastian said in her defense and with great respect. It was unusual that vampires respected humans. But then Kate Wever was an exceptional human.
“I know that.” Logically he had always known that, yet he hadn’t been able to stay away from her. “I’m not going to hurt her.”
Sebastian pushed his hand through his long, dark hair. “Maybe you’re not the one I should be worrying about...”
Warrick dragged in a deep breath. And as he did, he caught another scent. Fear. His own. “You think he might hurt her?”
“I don’t,” Sebastian said. “But do you care about her?”
“I don’t know her.” But he did care—enough that he didn’t want her harmed because of him. While he had no future with Kate Wever, he wanted her to have a future of her own.
“Does he know that?” Sebastian asked. “If he’s been watching you, what might he think?”
He bit off a curse. The vampire was right, but Warrick didn’t want him to know it.
Reagan had ruthlessly taken away everyone Warrick had ever cared about. And because Warrick had stayed in Zantrax, because he had stayed near her, he might think Warrick cared about her. His obsession with Kate Wever had put her in danger.
* * *
How badly had that human detective’s bullets wounded Warrick? She hadn’t killed him; Reagan knew that or he wouldn’t have left the alley that night.
But because he didn’t know how badly Warrick had been hurt, he hadn’t left the city yet. He should have. No good would come of him and his brother being in the same city—not unless he could make Warrick listen to him. Make him realize that Reagan wasn’t the threat to him.
Guilt tugged at him, though, and the sunrise on which he had been so focused blurred before his eyes despite his front-row seat on a rooftop of one of Zantrax’s highest buildings. He had hurt his brother—far worse than the female detective’s bullets could have. He didn’t blame Warrick for wanting to kill him.
But Reagan wasn’t the only one who would die. Warrick would die, too. And probably so would she.
That was why Reagan hadn’t left yet. He had to make his brother listen to him. He had to—or they would lose more than their father and each other. They would lose even more than their lives...
Chapter 3 (#ulink_2aa431a2-af77-51af-ac5e-0cf0cb7e5b94)
The high-rise buildings cast deep shadows, blocking out whatever glow of the moon that might have illuminated the alley. Kate had only her flashlight, which she gripped tightly in one hand, and her gun, which she gripped in the other. The Glock was still holstered, but the leather strap was unclasped, so it was ready to be drawn.
This place, this damn alley, and the club housed in the basement of one of the buildings, creeped her out. Too many strange things happened in this part of Zantrax—around Club Underground. Paige’s stalking, Bernie’s flying people and now his disappearing body...
Last night that strangeness had invaded Kate’s bedroom when his body had reappeared there—alive.
Despite the sweater and heavy jacket she wore and the fact that none of the cool mid-November breeze could blow between the buildings, Kate shivered. She actually would have welcomed a fresh breeze; there was only stagnant, stale air in the alley. It smelled more of the trash in the Dumpster than the crisp scent of burning leaves and roasting pumpkins she usually associated with autumn.
But the ghost that never quite seemed to leave her—he fit in with the season. But he wasn’t really a ghost; she didn’t believe in them.
He had to be real.
But then who had she shot in the alley?
His twin? If so, what had happened to the body? She shone her flashlight beam around the alley, bouncing it off every brick on every wall of the three buildings that backed up to and blocked off the alley. There was no space between the buildings, no way for a body to squeeze out. None of the doors that opened onto it had been unlocked that night—most of them were walled off inside so that they never opened.
Frustration coursed through Kate and triggered her usually long temper, so that she snapped and kicked out, driving her heel into the corner of the Dumpster. Its rusty legs squeaked as it rolled back a couple of inches.
That squeak echoed one she’d heard before, just as she’d been running from the dark alley to get help for the man she’d shot. She had relived that night so many times that she remembered every sight, every smell and every sound...
The Dumpster must have moved that night, too.
She stepped closer to the rim of the rusted metal bin, gagging on the putrid odors that emanated from it, and shone her flashlight beam inside. The circle of light glanced off boxes and torn bags of garbage, from which coffee grounds, old liquor bottles and other food scraps and papers spilled out.
No homeless man.
Had Bernie been there that night? Was he the one who’d moved the Dumpster and the man? He’d claimed he hadn’t been, but Kate knew better than to believe what anyone told her. Too many people lied. Or kept secrets.
But if the vagrant had been there, would he have moved the Dumpster or would he have hidden quietly inside to avoid detection? She had checked the Dumpster that night; she had looked for that body everywhere—except beneath the metal bin. Kate pulled her hand from her holster and shoved her flashlight into her back pocket. She reached out for the Dumpster, pushing at it with both palms.
Her muscles strained in her shoulders, arms and stomach, but the metal crate barely budged, skidding inches across the asphalt. It creaked and squealed in protest of every bit of distance it moved. Gritting her teeth, Kate pushed harder. Then she reached for her flashlight again and shone the beam beneath where the Dumpster had been.
If she could find a trail of blood, she could prove that she hadn’t imagined what had happened that night. But a couple of months had passed. The blood could have washed away or degraded enough that she wouldn’t be able to find it with a flashlight. She would have to bring in a forensics crew. Would the department authorize it when they’d already gone over the alley once and found nothing but blood they claimed they couldn’t even prove was human?
Doubtful. So she had only herself and her own investigative skills to prove what had happened that night. That she had killed a man. She shivered, jiggling the flashlight so that the beam bounced around the asphalt and glinted off the metal of a manhole cover. She hadn’t noticed that before.
Could someone, perhaps his twin, have dragged the body down into the sewer? That made more sense than any alternative. Kate always needed to find the sense in even the most senseless of acts. Rationalizing the irrational was the only way she managed to keep her sanity with her career. And with her life...
She had seen and done many irrational, senseless things over the past forty years of her life. And this was probably another—but still she reached for the manhole cover, after setting her flashlight down on the asphalt, its beam directed toward the opening to the sewer.
But when she reached for the cover, the light moved off it. The beam rose, shining into her eyes—blinding her. She squinted against the light. “Who’s there?”
She hadn’t heard anyone enter the alley. Had felt no other presence. But, like last night in her bedroom, she was suddenly not alone.
“Is it you?” She reached for her holster—and the gun—even though it had done nothing that night. If she believed her late-night visitor, he had survived the bullets she’d fired into him. If she believed him, she couldn’t kill him. “What do you want with me?”
But she received no verbal reply. Her only answer was physical, as the beam swung down, and the heavy metal flashlight struck her head. For a moment she glimpsed a shadow behind the beam—tall, broad-shouldered. Dark.
It could have been him.
But then everything else went dark as Kate fell and her body struck the asphalt.
* * *
She was going to die. She was actually surprised that she wasn’t already dead—especially given what she had done to the pack—the dissension she had caused. But there was a reason they hadn’t killed her yet. They intended to use her as bait to draw Warrick and Reagan back to St. James—the village their father had founded in a remote area of the upper peninsula of Michigan.
But to draw them back, one of them would actually have to care about her. She glanced around the log and fieldstone cabin—empty but for her and the memories she had made there. Good and bad.
No. Reagan and Warrick weren’t coming back. And she couldn’t stay—because once the others realized that she served no purpose, they would kill her.
Sylvia’s fingers trembled as she struggled with the zipper on her suitcase. She had to hurry because time was running out. Warrick and Reagan had already been gone too long.
Maybe they had already killed each other, or maybe they had been killed. Grief and guilt struck her like a blow, and her eyes stung from the pain, tearing up. But she had already shed too many tears—of guilt and pain and loss and, if she was to be honest, self-pity. She blinked away the moisture and ignored the sting.
And wouldn’t she know if he was dead? They’d had such a strong—almost otherworldly—connection. Their souls had called to each other. But if that connection was real, he wouldn’t have left her.
That relationship hadn’t been real; it had been only a fantasy. But something real had come of that fantasy.
And so she had to be strong now—because her life wasn’t the only life she needed to save. She pressed her shaking hand over her swelling belly. She had to leave before the others figured out that Warrick and Reagan weren’t coming back. Dragging the suitcase off the bed, she turned toward the door and finally she realized that she wasn’t alone.
And that it was already too late...
* * *
Warrick was too late. He could already smell her blood, the scent—so thick and sweet—burned his flaring nostrils. He rushed into the alley. Blind in the darkness until his eyes adjusted to the deep shadows, he could have been jumped—had whoever attacked her still been present.
But he cared less about his own safety than he cared about hers. And with good reason. She was alone in the alley, lying on the asphalt. Her hair tangled across her face, the ends of it falling into the blood pooled beneath her head.
His heart kicked his ribs as fear and concern jolted him. He had once wanted to see her like this—in those moments after she’d shot him and he had writhed in pain on the asphalt. He had wanted to see her lying in her own blood, like he had been. But that killer vengeance had lasted only for those pain-filled moments. As he’d told her vampire friend, he knew she’d only been doing her job that night.
He dropped to his knees beside her and skimmed his fingers across her face, brushing her hair from her eyes. They were closed. Because she was unconscious or dead? Blood oozed from a deep gash on her forehead, staining her skin red on the path it had taken across her face to the asphalt.
“What were you doing here tonight?” he wondered. “Doing your job?” Or looking for him again? But she considered that her job, finding and arresting him for assault. If she only knew the circumstances...
She probably still wouldn’t condone his vigilante justice. She wouldn’t understand that he had to reclaim his honor to reclaim his position in the pack.
His fingers trembled as they trailed down her cheek to her throat where he felt for her pulse. It stirred beneath his fingertips, faint but steady.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured. “Hang in there.” He glanced around the alley, but unlike the night Sebastian had come to his aid, no one stepped from the shadows—or the sewer—to help. Dare he move her to that secret clinic? Or would moving her hurt her more? It couldn’t hurt her any more than leaving her alone and vulnerable in the alley.
If any of the other creatures of the underground caught the scent of her blood...
She wouldn’t survive the feeding frenzy.
He slid his arms beneath her and gently lifted her limp body. Her head lolled back, blood dripping from her wound. He grasped her closer and cradled her neck in one hand.
“How the hell did I get to that clinic?” he muttered. He’d blacked out for a while and had just briefly regained consciousness in the passageway beneath the alley.
His attention zeroed in on the manhole cover near where she’d been lying. Was that what she had been investigating when she got attacked?
“Oh, God, you have to let this drop,” he implored her—even though she couldn’t hear him. But learning about the Secret Vampire Society would get her killed for certain. So if he took her down that manhole, he was risking her life. But if he didn’t get her help...
She was human. She would really die. And that was something that he couldn’t just watch happen. Hopefully, she would not regain consciousness in the sewer. He kicked the cover aside and stepped into the hole, feeling for the rungs with his feet. Careful of her head, he maneuvered her through the opening and descended into the passageway that led from the alley to the basement clinic.
Holding her close, he knocked—using his foot—on the riveted steel door. “Someone’s gotta be here...”
She hadn’t stirred, hadn’t even murmured, and her body was so limp, so lifeless. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe she had already lost too much blood...
He kicked harder at the steel, so that the door vibrated in the jamb. “Come on! I need help!”
The knob rattled as a lock turned and finally the door opened. He breathed a sigh of relief while Dr. Davison cursed. Shoving past the surgeon, Warrick carried Kate to the table.
“What the hell did you do to her?” Dr. Davison asked, his dark eyes hard with suspicion and anger. The doctor wasn’t old—at least not by vampire standards—but gray liberally sprinkled his dark hair.
“I didn’t do this,” Warrick hotly denied. Maybe he’d once considered hurting her, but he wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to actually do her harm. Now the person or creature that had hurt her...
Even the special surgeon wouldn’t be able to save that animal after Warrick got done with him.
“Then what the hell happened to Kate?” The doctor grabbed up some instruments.
“You know her?”
“She’s my wife’s best friend,” Dr. Davison shared as he leaned over her and examined the gash on her head. Then he checked her neck, too, probably for puncture wounds. “So tell me how she got hurt.”
“I don’t know,” Warrick replied. “I found her like this, lying unconscious in the alley.”
“She never came to?”
“No.”
The doctor opened her closed lid and shone a light into her eye and then repeated the action on her other eye. “Her pupils aren’t blown.”
“That’s good?”
The doctor nodded as his fingers gently probed her head wound.
“Do you work on humans, too?” Warrick asked, wondering if he had brought her to the right doctor. Maybe he would have been smarter to bring her to the local emergency room, but the clinic had been closer.
Davison nodded again. “I started with humans and still work on more of them than the other creatures.”
“So you can help her.”
The doctor sighed. “I don’t know...if anyone will be able to help her if she regains consciousness here.”
Warrick shuddered as he worried that in trying to help her that he might have put her in more danger. But the society’s wasn’t the only secret he risked exposing as his watch buzzed out a warning that midnight was only minutes away. Already his skin was beginning to itch as hair rushed to the surface. His jaw ached as the bone stretched—his face was changing shape.
“I hope Kate doesn’t wind up like me,” Davison murmured as he reached for a syringe.
“How’s that?” Warrick asked.
“I stumbled onto a secret I wish I had never learned.” A muscle twitched in the doctor’s cheek. “And it nearly cost me everything...”
“But you learned the secret and lived.”
“Extenuating circumstances. They needed me,” the surgeon explained. “But now I’m one of them.”
Kate as a vampire? It was easier to imagine her as that than as a werewolf, though. His muscles expanded, ripping through his jeans and his shirt, as his body took its other form. This was the only life he had ever known, having been born and raised in the pack.
He had only imagined turning one human into what he was, and he had lost her...just as he had lost everything else that had ever mattered to him.
Just as he might have lost Kate tonight...
But Kate didn’t matter to him. She was a stranger, a human who had thwarted his plans. He needed to leave her to the doctor’s care and get the hell out of Zantrax.
“You’ll be able to help her?” he asked the surgeon for his assurance.
“I won’t be able to go home if I don’t save Kate,” Davison replied. “Now get out of here. She can’t see you like that.”
A moan emanated from Kate’s throat as she shifted on the table, reaching for her head.
It was too late for Warrick to hide.
* * *
Images flitted through Kate’s mind. Bright lights and searing pain and dark alleys and sterile rooms...and a man who wasn’t a man. Her head pounded as she tried to sort out those brief images. But they were like old photographs, the colors faded and washed-out, so that she could barely make out the subjects.
Like old dreams that she could barely remember...
Dreaming. She had to be dreaming. Her eyes were closed; the lids so heavy she could barely lift them. After some effort she managed to blink them open and blink away the grit of deep sleep.
Then she focused on the room. Sunlight streaked through the blinds at the window, casting a warm glow onto the hardwood floor where her clothes lay in a heap. She fought against the sheets tangled around her, but as she sat up, the room spun. Her head lightened and the bright glow dimmed.
“Easy,” a familiar deep voice murmured. “Not so fast...”
He was back.
Instinct had her reaching under the other pillow but her palm skimmed across the satin sheet to the edge of the bed. The gun was gone.
“You don’t need it,” he said as he approached the bed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Someone hit me...in the alley.” That had happened, hadn’t it? She’d been in the alley, searching for...him. But he must have found her first.
“It wasn’t me,” he said and just as he had that first night, he settled onto the bed beside her—as if he was familiar with her bedroom. With her.
She snorted. “As if you’d admit it if it was... I would arrest you for assaulting an officer.”
“You’ve tried once to arrest me for assault.”
But he had disappeared, like those images from her mind. She couldn’t remember now exactly what she’d seen. What had been real and what a dream. Was he a dream?
“How did I get here?” she wondered. Not just in her apartment and in her bed, but naked beneath her sheets. Just how much of the night before had she forgotten? Had he taken off her clothes? What else had he done to her? She shivered as she imagined him touching her and more...
“I found you in the alley,” he said. “I got you some medical help then brought you back here. Don’t you remember anything?”
She reached a trembling hand toward her head, and her fingers skimmed over a gauze bandage. Stitches tightened the skin beneath it, which throbbed with a dull ache. “No...” she murmured. “I don’t remember anything after I got hit.” At least she didn’t remember anything that seemed real—that could have actually happened.
“You have a concussion,” he said as he gently trailed his fingers along the edge of the gauze. “Someone hit you really hard. Did you see who it was?”
“Only the bright light...” And the shadow behind it. The tall, broad-shouldered shadow. It could have been him.
But then why was there so much concern in his eerie topaz eyes? “Your pulse was so weak...” He shuddered. “I thought you were dead or nearly dead.”
“Why would you care?” she asked. After all, she had shot him. Or so she’d thought...
He shrugged those mammothly broad shoulders. “I don’t know...”
“You’re mad at me for not letting you kill that man,” she reminded him. He certainly had seemed more upset about that than her shooting him.
“Yes, I am,” he freely admitted.
“Was that really you?” she asked. “That man in the alley?”
“I told you I didn’t hit you—”
“Not tonight...” She glanced to the sun-streaked blinds. “Not last night. That night a couple of months ago. The man in the alley—the one that I shot. It couldn’t have been you. Was it your twin?”
He reached for the buttons on his shirt, undoing them so that the dark gray material parted and revealed the hard muscles of his chest, dusted with silky-looking black hair. But something marred the masculine perfection—a jagged scar over his heart. He shrugged off the shirt and revealed two more puckered, nasty-looking scars in one of his broad shoulders.
She gasped and reached out, running her fingertips over first the scars on his shoulder and then the one on his chest. The scars weren’t makeup or theatrics but real skin—so warm that her fingers tingled from the contact. The very air between them heated. Her breathing slowed and grew shallow, so that she nearly panted. Her pulse raced, pounding harder and faster than that faint ache in her head.
“It was you.” She swallowed the rush of emotion and desire. “I shot you.”
“Yes, you did.”
So he’d had every reason to want to hurt her back, every reason to have struck her in the alley. But he touched her gently now, his fingers trailing from her bandage down the side of her face and along her throat. “Are you sorry?”
She shook her head, but pain reverberated inside her skull with the motion and she winced and whimpered.
“Shh...” he said. “Take it easy. Go back to sleep.” He reached for his shirt again.
But she grabbed his shoulders. “Don’t leave...”
His body tensed, and his topaz eyes dilated. “Kate...?”
“Don’t leave without telling me your name.”
His mouth, with those sexy sensual lips, curved into a slight grin. “Warrick.”
“Warrick?”
“Yes. Warrick James.”
“Warrick James,” she repeated, loving the sound of it—the feel of his name on her lips.
He leaned closer, as if she’d drawn him nearer. “Yes, Kate?”
“You’re under arrest for assault—”
He laughed at her now. “You never quit.” He moved to stand up.
But she clutched at him, holding him down on the bed. Holding him to her. “You’re not disappearing again.”
She needed to bring him in to the department, needed to prove her sanity to her coworkers. Especially the one who had been most vocal with his disdain for her story about what had happened that night.
“How are you going to stop me, Kate?” he asked. “You have no gun. You’re hurt. You’re weak.”
She winced—not in pain but in self-disgust. “I’m not weak.” She wasn’t that same scared woman she’d once been. She was older, wiser and stronger now than she had ever been. And to prove it, she launched herself at him, wrestling him down to the mattress.
He sprawled on his back without a fight, his arms wrapped loosely around her waist. Her breasts nestled against his hard, scarred chest. “You’re not weak at all,” he assured her. “You’ve overpowered me.”
“Because you let me,” she suspected.
He nodded. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You did.”
“Not anymore,” he said, lifting his head to close the distance between his mouth and hers. His lips skimmed across hers. “Now I just want you...”
And she wanted him, her skin heating and tingling everywhere they touched. The sheet had slipped down, so that her breasts were bare against his chest. His hair, which covered his impressive pecs, tickled and teased her nipples, bringing them to tight, sensitive points.
“And I want—” she struggled free of his loose grasp and grabbed up the sheet again, holding it between them like a shield “—to arrest you.”
“I’m not a monster, Kate.”
One of those dreamlike images rushed back to her mind—of a man that wasn’t a man. Of a man who was a monster—a mammoth, heavily muscled, hairy beast.
She didn’t believe him; she didn’t believe anything Warrick James said. She had been fooled once before and had believed a man to be a hero when he was really a monster.
So what could a monster be...but a monster?
Chapter 4 (#ulink_0888c583-7858-58a2-8844-c7f420cf87fb)
The human detective hadn’t killed Warrick, but what she’d done might have been far worse. She had bewitched him.
“Poor bastard,” Reagan murmured to himself as he sat alone at the bar in Club Underground, staring into his drink. He, too, had become besotted with a woman—so besotted that he’d lost himself in her. He had lost his honor and his integrity. He’d also lost his father and his brother.
Even if he could talk to Warrick and could actually get through to him, their relationship was destroyed. Reagan had destroyed it and maybe because of that, he deserved to be destroyed, as well. But Warrick didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve any more pain.
And neither did she. Reagan glanced down at the picture he’d set on the bar next to his untouched drink, and he sucked in a breath at her beauty. With her silvery blond hair and mesmerizing green eyes, she was beyond beautiful; she was ethereal. Reagan needed to get back to St. James—to her—before something happened to her. If only he’d had time to bring her with him...
But everything had happened so quickly—had gone so wrong. There hadn’t been time. And after what he’d done, he wasn’t sure she would have gone with him. Like Warrick, she would probably hate and distrust him, too.
And, he assured himself, nothing would happen to her—until he was dead. Then she would be of no use to the pack anymore. They couldn’t bait a dead man.
“You’re about to break that glass,” the bartender warned.
Reagan hadn’t even been aware how tightly he’d been gripping it until Sebastian Culver commented on it. Then he glanced at his hand and noticed how his fingers had gone white. He forced himself to release the glass.
“It’s not like you’re going to drink it anyway,” the vampire bartender remarked. “You just sit here every day until midnight—waiting for him to show up.”
And after midnight, he took to the rooftops, so that he could watch the city. So that he could watch Warrick.
The bartender shook his head. “I don’t get it...”
“What?” Reagan asked.
“He wants to kill you,” Sebastian told him what he already knew. “You should be trying to avoid him. Instead, you’re trying to find him.”
He had been trying to find him—to make sure that the human detective hadn’t wounded him too badly. But now Reagan knew where to find Warrick—near her. And he’d chosen to avoid a private confrontation that would probably end as badly as the one in the alley had. With them both wounded...
“I want him to find me,” Reagan corrected the bartender’s misassumption. “Here—in a public place.”
“You think that’ll stop him from trying to kill you?” Sebastian glanced around the crowded bar and snorted derisively. “Gunshots to his shoulder and his heart didn’t stop him from trying to tear you apart. I don’t think anything will stop him.”
Reagan sighed in resignation and reluctant agreement. “Not even the truth...”
“You’re wasting your time here,” Sebastian said.
“Not if I can save his life...” Then it would all be worth it. Even leaving Sylvia...
“Then you better find him,” Sebastian suggested.
“I know where he is,” he said. “With the detective.”
Sebastian shook his head. “He’s not with Kate.” He chuckled. “Maybe she’s done what she tried that night. Maybe she arrested him.”
Alarm slammed through Reagan. If Warrick was in custody and changed...
More than just his life would be lost.
* * *
Warrick stared through the bars, his hands grasping the old brass rungs. “Glad you’re here.”
“Glad I found you, boy,” the old man said. “You’ve been gone for much too long.”
“I can’t go back.”
“Not until he’s dead,” Stefan James agreed. His hair was more gray than black, his eyes nearly the same steely gray. But his age didn’t indicate weakness; if anything it represented the reverse. The older and wiser Uncle Stefan had grown, the stronger he had become. He was a good leader for the pack, but he wasn’t Warrick’s father. That was whose advice Warrick really needed, but he could never speak to his father again.
Because of Reagan...
Warrick’s hands slid from the rungs and he walked around the partition wall that separated the tellers from the vault area of the former bank. Or it would have had the bank still been operational but it had been deserted...until a few months ago when someone had taken up residence to hide inside the vault. As if that would have prevented Warrick from picking up his scent...
“You tracked him here?” Uncle asked, sniffing the air.
Warrick nodded.
“His scent is old, his trail cold,” the old man remarked. “But you’re still here. Why?” That steely-gray gaze narrowed as Uncle totally focused on Warrick.
“He’ll come back,” he claimed. But he wasn’t sure. He had only the vampire bartender’s word that Reagan hadn’t left the city. And why should he trust a vampire who didn’t trust him, either?
“You thought he would come back home, too,” Uncle Stefan reminded him.
“For her...”
“But he left his mate alone,” Uncle remarked, watching him closely—probably for that flash of jealousy and rage that Warrick had always exhibited when it came to her. “And he keeps running.”
“Because he knows I’m chasing him.”
“You’re not chasing him,” Uncle said with a disparaging snort. “You’re chasing your honor.”
“My honor or vengeance?” Warrick wondered now. And his hunger for vengeance wasn’t as overwhelming as it had once been. Probably because his hunger for Kate was greater. He shouldn’t have left her...
“Both, in this case,” the old man asserted. “You cannot lead the pack if you cannot claim justice for crimes committed against it.”
“I’m not leading the pack,” Warrick pointed out. “You are.”
Stefan shrugged as if the leadership role meant nothing to him. “It was always your father’s wish that one of his sons take over for him when he was no longer able to fill the role of leader.”
Warrick flinched, remembering how he’d found his father. All that blood spilling from his wounded heart, leaving nothing but the corpse of an old werewolf as, even dead, he turned at midnight. None of his power or intimidation had remained—nothing of the spirit of the fearsome leader and father.
But now another memory haunted Warrick more, of Kate lying alone in that alley in a pool of her own blood.
“Perhaps you are the right one to lead the pack, Uncle,” Warrick said of the role he, himself, had wanted to fill since he was just a pup. But as the younger son, he had never been groomed for the role—had never really been considered a possible candidate by anyone but his uncle.
Uncle Stefan shook his head. “I am an old man,” he said. “I have no sons now. No one to carry on when I grow too weak to lead. You are the future, Warrick.”
“Only if I can reclaim my honor.”
“You set off on this quest for justice,” Uncle reminded him, his brow furrowing with confusion. “Your belly burned with the desire for it.”
Warrick remembered when the heat and hunger of his rage had consumed him. Rage had ruled his life, had blinded him to anything but vengeance. Blinded him so much that he hadn’t even noticed the woman in the alley until she’d fired those shots into his shoulder.
It ached still, all these months after the shooting, just as his body ached for hers days after they had touched skin to skin—lips to lips. Now the desire burning in his belly was to possess Kate Wever in every way. She was so beautiful—all silky skin over sleek muscle. As he had once tried to haunt her, she haunted him now.
“What has changed for you?” Uncle asked. “Did he get to you?”
He had tried, that night in the alley—had tried to spew his lies and manipulations. That was when Warrick had threatened to rip out his throat, so that he wouldn’t have to listen. He shook his head. “Not him.”
“But someone has?”
He shook his head again, unwilling to tell his uncle about Kate for fear of sounding like a fickle boy instead of the decisive man necessary to lead a pack. It wasn’t as if he and Kate had a future anyway. She wanted to arrest him now for assault. What would she do once he’d committed murder?
He sighed. “Perhaps I am just wearying of the chase.”
Maybe Warrick had finally realized that his quest had been more about vengeance and pride than justice. But now, after finding Kate bleeding in the alley those few nights ago, it was less about vengeance and more about Kate.
How could he leave Zantrax when she was in danger, especially when he might be the reason she was in danger?
* * *
Blood stained the cement floor of the secret surgical room. Was some of that Kate’s blood? Paige shuddered to consider it, to remember that her friend had been that badly hurt. That strong, fierce Kate had been lying unconscious and vulnerable in an alley.
“Are you sure she’s all right?” she asked her husband. “She didn’t come to happy hour again.”
Ben nodded, but there was concern in his dark eyes. “As long as she doesn’t remember being here, she should be all right.” He poured a bottle of something onto the floor that dissolved the blood and cleaned the cement, but it couldn’t remove every trace of the horrors that happened in that room. It was as if screams of pain hung in the air with the pungent scent of the cleanser.
“She doesn’t remember,” Paige said. “She didn’t even mention getting hurt when I called her.” And Paige hadn’t been able to bring it up for fear that Kate would remember who had treated her injury and where.
“She has to know she was hurt,” Ben said. “She has stitches and a bandage.”
“Then why didn’t she mention it?” Maybe Kate had remembered more than she was willing to admit to Paige.
“Because she’s Kate,” Ben replied. “She’s proud and independent. And she wouldn’t want you to worry. And she especially wouldn’t want you to fuss over her.”
“Or she didn’t want me to know what she remembered and warn you,” Paige said.
Ben glanced at the security monitor that showed the video feed from the cameras outside both reinforced steel doors. One led to the hallway to the club; the other to the sewer. Both had been reinforced so that vampires—or other creatures—couldn’t get inside unless Ben let them in. It wasn’t just for his protection but for the protection of whatever patient he was treating. She looked at the monitor, too, and breathed a sigh of relief that both the hallway and the sewer were empty.
“She’s not out there,” Ben said. “And she would be if she had any suspicions about this place.”
“She has suspicions,” Paige reminded him. Kate had wanted inside this room back when somebody had been stalking Paige. But Sebastian had convinced her that the entrance to the sewer had been sealed off and the door led to nowhere.
If Kate ever found this room, Paige would lose her best friend. The society would order the human’s death.
As if he’d read her mind, Ben reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. But because he knew her so well he offered her no false assurances. He only offered his love as he held her closely.
“I don’t want to lose her,” Paige said.
“Maybe we can talk to the society,” Ben said.
She looked up at him and arched a brow. As if the society would listen to her. She had no way to negotiate—not the way the society’s special surgeon could.
“Maybe I can,” he amended his comment, his sexy mouth curving into a slight grin.
“But the society isn’t the only danger she’s in,” Paige said. “What about this other creature or creatures? You’ve said there are two of them.”
Ben groaned. “I shouldn’t have told you about them.”
“We promised,” she reminded him. “No more secrets.” At least not between the two of them. But they kept secrets—the secrets of the society—from all their human friends. “Are they a danger to her?”
“The pack has the same law the society does,” Ben reminded her. “But the one she shot—he was the one who brought her here for me to treat.”
“You think he cares about her?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know what to think about Warrick James. The night I treated his gunshot wounds he was furious with her.”
“So he could have been the one who attacked her in the alley,” Paige said. She wanted to meet this creature who was threatening her best friend.
“I don’t know if he attacked her, or if she was attacked because of him,” Ben said. “But I feel like he might be more responsible than the society.”
Or was that only what he wanted to believe because he and Paige and the child they’d adopted were all members of the society? It could have been a vampire who’d attacked Kate. And if that was the case, she was lucky she had only taken a blow to her head instead of a fang to her throat. But if she kept investigating, Kate was too good a detective to not figure out the secret and get herself killed.
* * *
Goose bumps lifted on Kate’s skin as she stepped into the thick darkness of the alley. Not even her flashlight beam could chase away the shadows this late at night. The anonymous call, promising to reveal everything she wanted to know, had lured her back to the alley. She had considered that it was just a ploy to get her here—to hurt her again. Yet she hadn’t been able to ignore it. Zantrax PD made it a policy to follow up on every silent observer tip. Maybe this tip was even better since it had come into her direct line and had been traced back to a public phone near Club Underground. A real witness could have made that call. Maybe Bernie.
Or the person who’d struck her that night...
She was a detective. Whatever risk it took to learn what she wanted to know was a risk she was willing to take. Of course she wasn’t usually foolish enough to go into a potentially dangerous situation without backup. But this was the second night she had taken that risk. Third, if she counted that first night when she’d chased Warrick James into the alley. But then she hadn’t wanted to risk his killing that man.
And now, she hadn’t requested backup because she didn’t want to risk her reputation. Her “missing” body case had undone the respect she’d fought for years to gain in the department. He had ridiculed her the most. Not the man she’d shot but the man from her past, the man she wished she could leave in her past— forgotten only to surface in rare nightmares to remind her to never make that mistake again.
To never trust.
But they worked together. He worked nights, though, and she worked days. Except now when she was off the clock but not really off duty.
Tonight she was more prepared, though. Her gun wasn’t in her holster but clasped tightly in her right hand while her left grasped the flashlight. She shone the beam around the alley, illuminating only one small circle of darkness at a time. Nothing moved in the shadows, though.
Well, nothing human. Small feet scurried across the asphalt. Confident she was alone, Kate gave in to a shudder of revulsion over the nearness of the rats.
“Hello?” she called out. “Anyone here?”
Why call her if the person had no intention of showing up? He or she had gone to the trouble of disguising his or her voice so that it was unrecognizable. Maybe it was just a joke. Since that night when they had all searched for a body no one had been able to find, her coworkers had subjected her to many jokes. Like the bloody dummy left in her desk chair. And her locker and even her car...
If only she had been able to arrest Warrick the other night...to bring him in to the department and show his scars. She could have proved that she hadn’t imagined it all. That she hadn’t imagined him. He was real.
But too strong for her to have overpowered without her gun. Hell, when she’d had her gun she hadn’t been able to stop him. At least not permanently. He had survived injuries that would have killed anyone else.
Was he real?
He had disappeared from her bedroom just as quickly as he had the first night she’d discovered him there. One minute he had been there, almost as if he’d been watching over and protecting her after her concussion. Then the next minute he’d been gone...before she’d been able to find her gun or her cuffs. Before she’d been able to arrest him.
Or make love with him...
She wasn’t sure which she’d wanted more. Or at least she wasn’t willing to admit which she’d wanted more.
“Warrick?” Could he have been her caller? Somehow she doubted he would have gone to the trouble of altering his voice, though.
Who would have gone to the trouble of luring her here only to not show up? It had to be a joke. She sighed over her wasted time. But it didn’t have to be wasted. She could finish the investigation a concussion had ended those few nights ago. Instead of putting away her gun and putting down the flashlight, she leaned her shoulder against the Dumpster and shoved.
The metal creaked and squeaked as it edged slightly across the asphalt. Hell, she hadn’t entirely gained back her strength after the concussion. But the Dumpster seemed heavier tonight. It certainly smelled as if it was full since mingled putrid odors wafted out and overwhelmed her.
One scent—sweet and metallic—was new.
She rose up on tiptoe and shone the flashlight inside the Dumpster. The beam illuminated a man’s face, his skin pale but for the dirt and grease smeared across it and his beard.
“Bernie!” She recognized the homeless man from whom she had taken the statement about the people he had seen flying from the alley.
Maybe that was how Warrick disappeared so quickly from place to place. Usually she would never consider such a fantastic explanation, but at least it was an explanation. And that was more than she had managed to discover on her own.
She waved the flashlight in the homeless man’s face. “Bernie!”
The vagrant’s eyes were closed. Had he passed out drunk? She could smell the liquor, too, that saturated his clothes and oozed from his pores. The beam of light shining in his face didn’t even stir him.
Her pulse quickened and she moved the flashlight down. Horror, over what she saw, rushed up to gag her. But she choked it down just enough to scream.
* * *
He had already been tracking her scent, not surprised that it was leading him to the alley, when he heard her scream. The sound of the terror in her voice raised all the hair on Warrick’s body. She needed him.
But could he come to her like this?
It was after midnight, so he had taken his other form—the form he was from midnight to dawn every night. The form that might frighten her more than what was already in the alley with her. Unless...
He ran to her, legs straining to close the distance between them before she could be hurt again. Before he could hurt her...
But when he burst into the alley, he found her alone, staring into the Dumpster. What had she discovered this time that she shouldn’t have?
Then she turned and discovered...him. Fear had already drained her face of all color, leaving her skin deathly pale in the dark. Now her eyes widened, and another scream rose to her open lips. But she bit it back, as if afraid of startling him. “Stay away,” she murmured, cowering from him.
But the Dumpster was at her back, and he stood between her and the only exit. He was down on all fours, hoping to resemble more dog than werewolf. But dogs weren’t this big, this powerful, and she knew it.
“What are you...?” she asked the question, but he doubted she expected an answer.
She did not know that he could speak in the same voice he used in his human form. She didn’t know anything about werewolves, and she could never learn because the rules of the pack were as strict as the rules of the Secret Vampire Society. Perhaps stricter, because no exceptions were ever made within the pack.
At least they hadn’t been when his father had been the leader. His uncle was unlikely to make exceptions, either, as his pride demanded he be as fearsome a leader as his brother had been—even though he was not nearly as ruthless.
“Get back,” she said, her voice soft but the command unmistakable. “I’m not going to let you finish him off.”
Finish him off? Who? Just what the hell was inside the Dumpster?
He moved closer, hoping to catch a glimpse. But on all fours, he could not see inside the metal bin. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to ease the fear that had her gripping her gun and flashlight tightly as if she was ready to use either as a weapon. But his speaking to her, in his present form, would only scare her more—and put her in more danger.
“Get away!” she said, her voice rising and cracking with her panic. “Leave me alone!”
If only he could...
Every time he left her, trouble found her. Usually here in this damn alley. He moved closer to the Dumpster, needing to know what she had found this time. He needed to know which secret she was at greater risk of discovering.
But in moving closer to the Dumpster, he also moved closer to her. The gun shook as she trained the barrel on him. “I know you can’t understand me,” she said, “but I’m begging you to just leave me—and him—alone.”
Just as he had that first night they’d met, he ignored her commands. And he surged up on his hind legs. With his front ones braced on the edge of the Dumpster, he peered inside. And now he understood her horror and the scream she had probably involuntarily uttered.
He didn’t recognize the man, but he recognized the wound. Someone had torn out the throat of the victim—as he had threatened to do to his enemy. But this man was not his enemy. Neither was Kate.
But she didn’t realize that. Trembling with fear, she stared at him—her eyes wide as if she was afraid to blink in case he attacked.
He wanted to say her name, wanted to soothe her fears. But she probably thought he’d done this— either in his present form or his other one. She had been there the night he’d made this threat to Reagan; that was why she’d shot him.
She looked about to shoot him again. But instead of backing away from her, of leaving her alone, he stepped closer. If only she could see that he was no threat to her...
That he wanted to soothe her fears.
But she breathed fast, in frantic pants. “Please, don’t make me do this...”
He wasn’t growling, wasn’t snarling—wasn’t doing anything to intimidate her but being. And that, with his mammoth size, was intimidating enough.
“Please...” The plea slipped through her lips with a whimper.
She didn’t want to shoot him tonight any more than she had that first night when she’d broken up his fight in this very alley. He understood that now. That he had left her no choice.
He had a choice—he could speak to her, could explain what he was. He wasn’t sure that she would understand, but he was sure that knowing the pack’s secret would put her in danger. No, he had no choice, either. He would rather endure whatever pain she might inflict on him than put Kate’s life at risk. But that urge to comfort and protect her had him moving closer to her.
“Stay back,” she yelled at him, as if raising her voice might make him understand—if he really was just the creature she thought he was.
He had moved too close to her—so close that he’d backed her right up against the Dumpster behind her—the Dumpster she thought held his last victim. And she was scared that she would be his next.
If only he could assure her...
But he had no choice. And neither did she.
She’d shot him once to protect another man. Tonight she lifted the gun and she shot him to protect herself.
The bullet seared through his pelt and then his skin, burying deep in his flesh. He dropped to the asphalt as blood gushed from his wound.
And he heard her scream again...
Chapter 5 (#ulink_9d9e3409-8beb-5cd2-be14-fe4c9e416c9d)
His blood had been spilled again. Even in his human form, Reagan’s sense of smell was extrasensory. It was past dawn now, but no light shone into the alley. If his vision wasn’t extrasensory, too, he might not have noticed the crime scene tape cordoning off the entrance. He’d seen it as he’d stepped right over it.
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Lisa Childs
A werewolf’s need for vengeance…When Detective Kate Wever shoots a man in the chest, she expects him to die…and to stay dead. But it seems that Warrick James is not like other men. What he is, though, is a mystery that can only lead her deeper into danger.As she learns about Warrick’s all-consuming quest to stop whatever monster killed his father, Kate realises that things in the underworld of Zantrax City are not as they seem. And it isn’t long before Kate is swept up in a passion unlike any other…
“You’re not weak at all,” Warrick assured her. “You’ve overpowered me.”
“Because you let me.”
He nodded. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You did,” Kate said.
“Not anymore,” he said, lifting his head to close the distance between his mouth and hers. His lips skimmed across hers. “Now I just want you …”
And she wanted him, her skin heating and tingling everywhere they touched. The sheet had slipped down, so that her breasts were bare against his chest. His hair, that covered his impressive pecs, tickled and teased her nipples, bringing them to tight, sensitive points.
“And I want—” Kate struggled free of his loose grasp and grabbed up the sheet again, holding it between them like a shield “—to arrest you.”
LISA CHILDS writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Mills & Boon. She lives on thirty acres in Michigan with her two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a Rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her website, www.lisachilds.com (http://www.lisachilds.com), or snail-mail address, PO Box 139, Marne, MI 49435, USA.
Taming the Shifter
Lisa Childs
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#u54b86b19-e206-59b3-a1e0-8c23b03d754e)
Introduction (#u3ff6efed-0e55-5591-b27c-81ff2e1e40b9)
About the Author (#uf0970eaa-30c8-5149-b187-82dfdc5d3aef)
Title Page (#u8e15852b-c3ff-5a81-a03c-1b475d1fb33a)
Prologue (#ulink_65d06e89-8645-5c21-a04b-d85b168f7419)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_a2166291-86ad-5afc-934c-a44e9db55b6b)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_0073c59a-b5e6-588b-bc20-b84be2ae9593)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_1dcd7512-add9-52cf-aa3a-c8e4dbd473c0)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_4c25a805-97eb-5009-b1c2-d0cc41cdb9c4)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_047b5a95-f3a2-5db9-8971-09f00a4109d5)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ulink_f9988d14-4c5e-5c13-8a98-55c6fde0f878)
The sweet, metallic scent of blood hung heavy in the air, and chimes rang out from the clock tower in the town square. Warrick James didn’t need to know what time it was. He was already too late. He was always too late.
He pushed open the door and stepped into his father’s den. He had known what he would find; he’d been warned. But still the scene struck him like a body blow.
His father lay back in his chair, blood gushed from a hole blown in his chest. Even with the bullet—that special bullet—in it, his heart continued to pump.
And his father’s eyes stared—not up at the man who had taken his life. But at the man who had failed to save him. Warrick was used to the disappointment in his father’s pale brown gaze. For thirty years, he had seen it every time the man had looked at him.
The chimes continued to ring out. Was that the eighth or the ninth? Just a few more chimes before midnight arrived...
Warrick reeled; his heart feeling as if a shot had been fired into it, as well. Maybe a bullet would pierce it next. Reagan—the man he’d known he would find standing over the body—held the gun yet, his finger against the trigger. And the barrel of that gun was pointed at Warrick.
“What kind of monster are you?” Warrick asked even as he felt his own body beginning to turn from man to beast. “How could you do this?”
“You don’t understand,” Reagan replied. “Let me explain...”
Warrick shook his head. He was beyond listening. He didn’t even care that that gun—loaded with those special bullets—was pointed directly at his heart. Just as the clock chimed for the twelfth time, he launched himself at his father’s killer.
* * *
Detective Kate Wever intimately knew the city she protected. Before being promoted to the major case squad, she had patrolled these streets. She knew the metropolis of Zantrax, Michigan, as well as she knew herself. As she knew her friends...
Or so she’d once believed. Now she wasn’t certain what, or who, to believe. Except for Bernie...
She knew not to believe the vagrant. Yet she followed him into the dead-end alley between some of the tallest buildings in the city. The sun hadn’t set, but it was dark in the alley. The air hung still and putrid above the asphalt.
Kate, following too close to Bernie, held her breath—unwilling to breathe for fear of gagging. The man should have gone to the shelter instead of the police station. He could have used a shower. And probably a meal. Or at least some coffee. She held out a cup to him and pulled a sandwich from her pocket. “Here,” she said. “You need to eat.”
He needed to sober up. The stench wasn’t just because he hadn’t showered for weeks—maybe months. He also smelled strongly of alcohol. Or of strong alcohol...
She hadn’t brought enough coffee. He reached for it, his hand shaking. The cover came off and the hot liquid spilled over the rim and splashed onto the front of his long trench coat. “Bernie, are you all right?”
His gray-haired head jerked up and down in quick, nervous nods. His dark eyes were wild. With fear or drunkenness?
“It’s this place,” he said with a shudder of revulsion.
“We didn’t have to come here.” She wasn’t sure why he had insisted on her following him from the station to the alley. With no sun between the buildings, the air wasn’t just still—it was cold.
She shivered. But not just from the cold.
One of those buildings had a bar in its basement—Club Underground. A bar where strange things happened...like Bernie had claimed happened here. Too bad her friend owned the place...
“This was my home first,” he said, gesturing toward a Dumpster shoved against one of the buildings. “Then all of them started coming around—making trouble.”
“All of them?” she asked. “Who are you talking about?”
“What,” he corrected her, the word sharp. “They’re not human. They can fly.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked. And exactly how much had he had to drink?
“Those things,” he said. “I’ve seen ’em fly out of the alley—straight up in the night sky like big, human-looking bats.”
He had definitely gotten into some strong alcohol, but his words weren’t slurred. So maybe he’d just been drinking so long that the alcohol had damaged his brain. Over her years on the streets, she had seen a lot of vagrants develop alcohol dementia. She wouldn’t be able to reason with him; he was probably beyond that.
So she simply asked, “What do you want me to do about them, Bernie? Flying isn’t a crime.”
“They’re killers,” he said. “They kill humans and each other. If you’re not careful, Detective Wever, they might kill you.”
Kate smiled and opened her mouth to assure him that she would be fine. But the alley suddenly grew darker and colder. Along with a chill, a sense of foreboding rushed through her, and for a moment she believed Bernie. There was something out there—something not quite human—and it was coming.
For her.
Chapter 1 (#ulink_ad911d3f-c812-5791-8439-1d651a783576)
The murderous intent gleaming in the man’s topaz eyes chilled Kate’s blood. He was going to kill someone.
His hands, with wide palms and long, strong fingers, grasped her shoulders. Then he moved her aside and continued his pursuit of the man he had been chasing down the street before Kate had stepped into his path. But instead of knocking her down, he had caught and steadied her. Her skin tingled from his touch despite the layers of jacket and sweater that had separated his palms from her bare flesh.
She shook off the eerie feeling and forced herself to move, running after him. And as she ran, she reached for her phone and her gun. She wasn’t on duty, but it was her job to stop him from killing.
In a metropolis like Zantrax, Michigan, a detective was never truly off duty—no matter that her real shift had ended hours ago. Or that she wanted nothing more than a stiff drink and a soft bed and sweet oblivion.
“Where the hell did he go?” she murmured, unable to catch a glimpse of him ahead of her. This close to midnight the sidewalk wasn’t as crowded as during the day—especially since this area consisted mostly of office buildings and warehouses.
Except for the underground nightclub in the basement of one of those buildings.
Club Underground was always busy, always full of people who were too beautiful to be real. She shook off the doubts Bernie had put in her head a few weeks ago.
He was crazy, she reminded herself.
And maybe so was she for not calling for backup before chasing after a man as big as the one who had nearly run her down. But she couldn’t call in a crime in progress until she knew he was actually committing one. It was possible he’d just been running, albeit in jeans and a white sweater, and she’d just imagined that murderous gleam in his eyes.
Damn Bernie and his wild stories. But if she was being honest, she had to admit she’d had doubts about her city even before Bernie had warned her about flying nonhumans.
The man who’d nearly run her over had been human, though. And he had definitely been angry as hell. She couldn’t see him now, but she couldn’t get that brief image she’d had of him out of her mind. He was so tall and broad-shouldered, with a long mane of thick black hair that he would have been impossible to miss had he still been on the street ahead of her. But he couldn’t have just disappeared.
She stopped and glanced around, peering into the shadows gathering outside the circles of light from the streetlamps on the sidewalk. A rage like his wouldn’t have been easily suppressed or controlled so that he could hide silently in the shadows, though.
She cocked her head and listened. Grunts and groans and an almost inhuman cry shattered the quiet of the nearly deserted street and confirmed that her instinct to pursue the man had been right. Her pulse leaping, she tracked the sounds of the fight to the narrow opening of that alley between the building with Club Underground in the basement and the deserted furniture warehouses.
Lifting her cell phone, she reported the assault in progress. A unit would be dispatched for backup. But, remembering the gleam in those unusual topaz eyes, she doubted backup would arrive in time to prevent a murder. So she pulled her gun from her holster and, adrenaline and nerves coursing through her, stepped into the alley.
The two men grappled on the ground, rolling across the asphalt as they locked in mortal combat. The man with whom she’d collided swung his fists over and over into the face of another man. They were closely matched in size—tall and muscular. But one was clearly the attacker, the other the victim. The victim kicked and pushed, trying to get away. “Stop!” she yelled. “Zantrax PD. Break it up!”
The man on the ground murmured something, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
“Shut up. Just shut up! Or I’ll tear your damn throat out,” the attacker growled, his hand reaching for the other man’s neck.
“Stop!” Kate shouted now, panic rising. “I’m Lieutenant Wever, a detective with Zantrax Police Department, and I’m placing you under arrest for assault.”
But he ignored her as if she had not spoken at all. She couldn’t just stand there and do nothing while one man killed another—as she watched. So she fired. The bullet struck the man’s shoulder and propelled him back. He shook his head and shrugged, as if shaking off a muscle twinge and glanced at the blood spreading down his sleeve and across his white sweater.
The victim struggled beneath the man she’d shot, but before he could get out of reach, his attacker caught him again. His hands, his long fingers stiff like claws, closed around the man’s throat. Despite the bullet in his shoulder, he had lost none of his strength.
Was he on something? Drugged suspects were sometimes harder to subdue and apprehend because they tended to be more violent. And superhumanly strong.
So Kate fired again.
This bullet propelled him back farther, his hands slipping from his victim’s throat. Finally, he turned toward her, as if just noticing that she’d joined them in the alley. With that murderous intent directed at her, he lurched to his feet, and she noticed the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans.
He was armed and he was heading straight toward her.
Heart hammering with fear, Kate fired again. This bullet struck him directly in the chest—in his heart. He pressed his hand to it as if pledging allegiance. Then he pulled it away and looked down at his bloody palm—seeming surprised to see the blood.
Had he thought she was firing blanks? Couldn’t he feel the wounds in his shoulder? Blood saturated the sleeve of his white sweater and spread like a red wave across his chest. Finally, his legs buckled beneath him, and he dropped to his knees on the asphalt.
While he fell to the ground, another man rose from it—albeit with a lurch and a groan. The man he’d been pummeling stumbled forward.
Instinct had Kate swinging her gun toward him. But he had no weapon at his waistband and was in no physical shape to assault her or his attacker.
“Stay back,” she said. She wasn’t sure who she was protecting—herself or the man she’d shot. She stepped between them.
“He needs medical help,” the beat-up man murmured, his voice weak—probably from nearly having his throat ripped out.
She’d had no choice. She’d had to shoot.
But even with three bullets in him, he was reaching out as if trying to grab for his victim again. “No...”
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll get you help,” she said. She’d had to shoot him, but she felt guilt hanging heavily over her like the night sky. “Save your strength...”
However, he must have used his last because he slumped forward, his chest and head hitting the asphalt.
“Oh, God!” she exclaimed in horror. What had she done? She hadn’t wanted to kill him. She’d just wanted him to stop. During her career, she’d had to shoot other suspects—had even killed a couple of them. But she hadn’t felt like this then. She hadn’t felt any doubt and certainly not any guilt.
Her hand shaking, she reached for her cell. Where the hell was the backup she’d called? If she hadn’t shot him, she might have been the one lying in the alley bleeding out if he’d grabbed for his gun. He still had his weapon on him, but he hadn’t pulled it. He wouldn’t have needed the gun to kill her, though; he could have used his bare hands like he had on his victim.
She gripped her gun tighter in one hand while she used her other to press the call button on her cell. Before anyone answered, she heard the sirens. Help had arrived.
But was it too late? Was he already dead? There was so much blood, pooling like tar beneath his body. She dropped down next to him. His face was to the side, his strange topaz eyes staring up at her. She couldn’t help him. Her only medical training was CPR, and he was breathing. His heart was beating. She couldn’t help him.
“You let a killer get away,” he said.
She glanced around the alley. Even in daylight it was dark between these buildings. Now, close to midnight, the blackness was thick and impenetrable. The other man could have been standing beside her and she might not have seen him. But she knew he was gone. While she’d been distracted, he’d slipped away.
“A killer?” Had she shot the wrong man and let the real perp escape?
“Yes,” he murmured, and blood gurgled from his mouth now. It was amazing he was still alive—given where she’d hit him. But he wouldn’t last much longer.
“Hang in there,” she implored him. “Help’s coming...” Would they be able to find the narrow entrance to the alley? “I’ll get them...”
She moved to stand up, but he caught her wrist in his hand. His incredibly large, strong hand. He could have easily snapped her wrist—if he’d wanted, if he wasn’t near death.
“I’ll get you medical help,” she promised.
“You made a mistake,” he said, his voice a low growl. “A fatal mistake...” He seemed less concerned about his wounds than the fact that the other man had slipped away.
His words—his last words—chilled her. His eyes had closed, and he was no longer breathing. She could administer CPR now, but it wouldn’t be enough to save him. He needed the paramedics and a fast trip to an operating room. She pulled her wrist from his weak grasp and ran from the alley.
It wasn’t until she returned with the EMTs and patrol officers that she realized her mistake.
He was gone.
“No!” As frustration and anger and shock rioted within her, she screamed the word. “No!”
The scream burned her throat and jerked her awake. Her heart pounded furiously, hammering at her ribs. She gasped for breath and clawed at the sheets that had tangled around her thrashing body.
No matter how many times in the past couple of months that she dreamed about that night, the intensity of that encounter never lessened. She relived every emotion as well as every action. But still, she could not figure out exactly what had happened to his dead body.
She had seen the blood gurgling from his mouth to join the dark pool of it lying beneath him on the asphalt. He had stopped breathing and closed his eyes.
He had died.
He hadn’t walked out of that alley. But somehow in the short time that she’d gone to the sidewalk and led the uniforms back to the alley, his body had disappeared. Maybe the other man, the one he’d been beating, hadn’t left the alley when she’d thought. Maybe he’d waited until she’d left.
And done what? Killed a man who was already dead? Dragged off his body? He hadn’t been in any shape to do that.
But how had the body disappeared? The alley dead-ended into a third building; none of the doors opening onto it had been unlocked. There was nowhere he could have gone even had he been alive. But dead...
She had even tracked down the homeless man who’d admitted to living in the alley. Bernie had claimed to not have been there that night. In fact, he’d said that he didn’t often stay in the alley anymore because he was scared that the humans—that weren’t really human—would kill him. Like he’d warned her that they might kill her, too.
Hell, maybe Bernie’s warning hadn’t been so outlandish. Maybe there were humans—that weren’t really human—that could fly. And that man had been one of them. That was about the only explanation for how he’d disappeared.
She shook her head, disgusted with herself for wanting to believe Bernie’s wild, alcoholic dementia-influenced story. But what was the alternative? Angels? If she was spiritual enough to believe in them, they flew. But she doubted the man she’d shot—who had been so intent on killing his victim—was an angel.
“So where did you go?” she mused, pushing her sweat-dampened hair from her forehead. She had gone back to that alley nearly every night since it had happened, but she had yet to figure out how he could have just disappeared. “I looked for you everywhere...”
“Not everywhere,” a deep voice murmured.
Kate jerked upright in bed, one hand clutching the tangled sheets to her chest—the other sliding under the pillow next to hers for her gun. She pulled out the Glock and directed the barrel toward the shadows in the corner of her bedroom.
He stepped away from the wall and moved into the glow of the moonlight streaking through the partially open blinds. His mouth curved into a mocking grin. “What are you going to do, Kate? Shoot me again?”
She shivered and tightened her grasp on her gun. She was too shocked over his appearance to ask any of the questions she should have. Who the hell are you? How the hell did you get in? All she could do was murmur, “I did shoot you.”
Sometimes she had wondered if she’d missed. But that wouldn’t have explained the blood. The crime techs hadn’t been able to explain it, either—except to say that some animal must have been killed in the alley.
The man lifted a hand to his chest and patted it. “Did you?”
“I know I did. I saw you bleeding.” Blood had gushed from the bullet wound in his heart. She swallowed the lump that had risen up the back of her throat.
She hadn’t just shot him; she’d killed him.
“I saw you die.”
So how was he in her room, stepping closer to her bed?
“Then I must be a ghost,” he said. As totally unconcerned about the gun as he had been the night she’d shot him, he settled onto the mattress next to her, his muscular thigh rubbing against her hip.
“I don’t believe in ghosts.” But she couldn’t deny that he was haunting her. With the glimpses of him she had been catching in crowds. With these strangely erotic dreams...
But she was awake. Wasn’t she? So she couldn’t be dreaming.
“Maybe I’m your conscience,” he suggested.
“My conscience isn’t bothering me,” she said. But he was. He had been ever since she’d bumped into him on the street and looked up into those eerie topaz eyes. She had lost herself in that intense gaze of his, and she had yet to find her way back.
She should have already placed him under arrest for his older crimes—assault and leaving the scene of that crime—and his latest crime: breaking and entering. He must have come through her window; she felt the breeze blowing through it and she hadn’t left it open—not this late in autumn.
But if she tried arresting him, he would undoubtedly resist. And she’d have to shoot him. For some reason she didn’t want to shoot him again—because then he might disappear again, like he had that night.
Even now she wasn’t certain that he was real, that she wasn’t dreaming. Thoughts of him and that night had kept her awake for so many nights that she was beyond exhausted. She was probably just dreaming...
* * *
Heat flashed through Warrick James, radiating from where his thigh rubbed against her hip. Only denim and a thin satin sheet separated his skin from hers. The sheet was so thin that it was obvious she wore nothing beneath it. The dark areolae of her full breasts were visible beneath the champagne-colored satin, her nipples peaked on the shapely mounds—probably from the cool breeze blowing through her open window. She couldn’t want him...as much as he wanted her.
His body hardened as blood rushed through his veins, hot and heavy. He would have to be crazy to be attracted to her—the woman who had tried to kill him and obviously felt no remorse. “Don’t you have a conscience?” he asked. He shouldn’t have been surprised that she didn’t. Apparently nobody he knew had one.
“Yes, but there’s no reason for it to bother me,” she murmured, her brow furrowing with genuine confusion. A lock of silky-looking black hair fell across her forehead and skimmed her jaw. Her hair was dark, her skin pale and her eyes a sharp, clear blue.
Hell, maybe he would be crazy if he wasn’t attracted to her. But this attraction did nothing to cool his anger with her.
He barely resisted the urge to reach out and shake her. But she was still holding that damn gun. And while she couldn’t kill him with it—permanently—the bullets still hurt. He grimaced in remembrance of the pain that had burned so fiercely in his chest that he had actually lost consciousness. “Because you shot me.”
“And if the situation was the same, I’d do it again,” she replied. “Shooting you was the only way to stop you from killing that man. Even after I identified myself, you wouldn’t listen to my commands to let him go. And you had this look on your face...” She shuddered.
“You didn’t understand what was going on,” he said. “You should have given me a chance to explain.” That he had been doing her job for her. He had been protecting and serving all the citizens of Zantrax—both human and superhuman—as well as his home village of St. James.
“You were too busy strangling the life from that man,” she reminded him.
“Yes,” he said, frustration gnawing at him that she had stopped him from doing what had to be done, what apparently should have been done years ago so that other lives wouldn’t have been lost and destroyed. Now the bastard, Reagan, had gone underground. He hadn’t been easy to find the night Warrick had chased him into that dead-end alley; he would be even harder to track down now. Thanks to Detective Kate Wever.
“Why?” she asked. “I fired the first two shots into your shoulder, but you wouldn’t stop. You were in such a murderous rage.”
He couldn’t deny that he had been. “I had a damn good reason.”
“You should have stopped beating him when I told you to,” she said, “then I would have taken a report and you could have explained your actions.”
But he had been beyond explanations. Beyond reason. All he’d known was his hunger for vengeance, the exact same hunger he should be feeling for her—just for vengeance. But, despite the gun she held on him, another kind of hunger gnawed at him—and only that thin sheet separated her naked body from his gaze, from his touch. His fingers itched to reach for the sheet, to tug it off. But she would undoubtedly shoot him again.
“Explain the situation to me now. Why were you trying to kill that man?” she asked. “You called him a killer.”
Reagan was. But Warrick shouldn’t have told her that; it was none of her business. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t share his story without disclosing secrets he would really die if he revealed. That story haunted him, like he had tried to haunt her. Since she kept staring at him as though he were a ghost, he must have been successful haunting her. But he didn’t bother correcting her misconception; it was better that she think him a ghost than what he really was. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, but he couldn’t shake off the pain any more than he could the hunger. “Some people just need killing.”
She sucked in an audible breath and adjusted her grip on her gun, steadying the barrel that was still pointing directly at his chest. “That’s not for you to decide.”
“It wasn’t for you to decide that he should live and I should die.” Because she had let that bastard live, more would likely die. Maybe even her...
She drew in a shuddery breath. “You gave me no choice. I couldn’t just stand there and let you kill him.”
“So instead you killed me.”
“But you’re not dead,” she murmured, reaching out the hand not holding the gun toward his face. And as she did, her sheet slipped a little lower and revealed the deep cleft between her breasts.
He sure as hell wasn’t dead, not with the way his heart pounded frantically as desire coursed through him. Then her fingers brushed across his face, scraping over the stubble on his cheek until her fingertips covered his lips. Heat sizzled between them. He uttered a gasp of breath, and she shivered.
“You’re not a ghost, either.”
“No,” he admitted, moving his lips against her fingertips.
She shivered again, and her nipples hardened even more, pushing taut against that thin sheet. “If you’re not a ghost, what are you?”
“Well, I’m no angel.” But if he was, Warrick would be an avenging one. Or he would have been had she not interfered. Because she had, he had lost his chance for vengeance...against his enemy.
Her interference should have made her his enemy, too. He’d told himself that she was. And that was why he couldn’t leave her alone even though he no longer had any reason to stay in Zantrax. Except vengeance. Against her.
Liar.
His tense, aching body called him on his lie. He didn’t want vengeance on her. He just wanted her. Her fingers still pressed against his lips, he didn’t have to speak—to explain. All he had to do was lean closer...to her.
* * *
Kate’s heart hammered against her ribs. He was staring at her mouth with that intense, eerie topaz gaze. He was going to kiss her. And just like she hadn’t wanted to shoot him in the alley, she didn’t want to stop him.
He had broken into her apartment and had been watching her sleep. And instead of shooting him, she was going to let him kiss her? After all of those sleepless nights, she had totally lost her mind. She had no doubt anymore.
Only desire.
She had touched him to see if he was real or if her fingers would pass right through him like mist. But she couldn’t stop touching him, skimming her fingers along his jaw to his lips—which were surprisingly soft and warm. She wanted to taste them, too. She slid her hand to the nape of his neck and tugged him closer so that only a breath separated his lips from hers.
He was breathing. Fast and ragged. And his heart was beating. She could feel the vibrations of it despite the small space that separated his body from hers. His skin radiated warmth to hers, making her tingle in reaction.
He was no ghost. No dream.
“What the hell are you?” she murmured again. “Indestructible?”
“I’m destructible,” he replied with a heavy sigh that teased her lips.
“You weren’t wearing a bulletproof vest,” she said. “I saw the gunshot wound, saw you bleeding.” Her trembling fingers skimmed down his neck to the buttons on his shirt. She needed to see the scar, needed to understand how a man could have survived such an injury. If he was a man...
He caught her fingers in his hand. “If you see my scars, I’m going to have to see yours.”
Goose bumps lifted along her bare shoulders and arms. She had scars, but hardly anyone knew about them. How could he know? The fear she should have been feeling the minute she’d discovered him in the shadows finally coursed through her. The hand holding the gun tightened on the grip.
“Who are you?”
He chuckled and cupped her cheek in his hand. “Poor Kate, you can’t figure out if you want to kiss me or kill me.”
She gasped at his arrogance and his perception. And the desire that jolted her with his touch.
“Remember how well that worked out for you last time,” he goaded her with a wink, his long thick lashes brushing against his chiseled cheekbones. “You can’t kill me.”
“You said you’re not indestructible.”
“Killing someone isn’t the only way to destroy them.”
She knew that better than most. “Is that what you’re trying to do to me?” she asked. “Destroy me?”
Reporting an officer-involved shooting and being unable to produce the body had harmed her career. Seeing glimpses of him everywhere after she thought she’d killed him had harmed her sanity. That had to be why she was so addled, so confused—that she’d asked none of the questions that she should have, that she hadn’t fired her gun.
He sighed again, raggedly, and leaned his forehead against hers. Then his hand slid from her cheek, down her neck to clasp her throat. “Like you, I can’t figure out if I want to kiss you or kill you.”
Chapter 2 (#ulink_08a83ee9-3644-5a0b-b081-b41cb027c6ad)
The barrel of the gun jammed hard into Warrick’s chest. He smiled in anticipation—not of the bullet but of her mouth beneath his, her lips opening for his possession. And he wanted to possess her.
In every way.
A clock chimed, the metallic clang reverberating from the living room beyond her closed bedroom door. He had been out there before, when he had checked out her whole place after coming through her window. The open living area was as big a mess as her clothes-strewed bedroom. But out there newspapers and mail littered the couch, small table and countertop. Only the grandfather clock standing on the wall next to the front door was neat and polished—its wood and brass gleaming. The old clock chimed again.
His skin tightened, tingling and itching. He shouldn’t have made his presence known to her—not this close to midnight. But when she’d awakened with that emotional shout, he hadn’t been able to just walk away—no matter how much he should have. He had been watching her...to see if the man she’d let get away that night was also watching her. Or that was what he’d told himself—that she might lead him to Reagan. Or maybe he’d just liked messing with her because of that—because she’d let Reagan go while she’d shot him.
The chime clanged again.
He didn’t have enough time. Not for what he wanted to do to her. And with her.
The clock chimed for the fourth time. And another, higher-pitched chime echoed it as someone rang the doorbell. Kate’s eyes widened as she glanced from him to her bedroom door.
“You’re not going to shoot me,” he said.
And the clock chimed again.
“No,” she agreed. “I’m going to arrest you.”
“Arrest me?” he asked. “For what?”
“Breaking and entering, for one,” she said. “And assault.”
“I haven’t assaulted you,” he said, flinching as the clock chimed for the sixth time. His scalp tingled, and his jaw grew tight, his teeth aching from the pressure. He didn’t have time to assault her. He had to leave. Now.
He pulled back from the tantalizing closeness of her sensually full lips. And closing his eyes against the sexy temptation of her naked body covered with just that thin sheet, he stood up and stepped back from the bed.
Her doorbell echoed the chime again. And he opened his eyes.
Still clutching that sheet to her body with one hand, she stood up, too, and kept the gun barrel trained on him. “I’m arresting you for the assault of that man in the alley.”
He focused on her face, anticipation of another kind winding through him. Maybe Reagan was still here. Maybe she would lead him to his father’s killer. “He swore out a complaint against me?”
Her lips thinned, pressed tightly together—refusing to answer him.
He clasped her bare shoulders in his hands. “Did he? Do you know where he is?” Maybe he hadn’t completely lost his trail.
She shook her head.
“Then no complainant—no case—no arrest,” he said, as that damn clock chimed for the seventh time.
“I will swear out a complaint.”
“If we hadn’t been interrupted,” he said, trailing his fingers down the bare skin of her shoulder in a caress, “you would have no complaints.” And then, despite the damn chiming clock and doorbell, he leaned down and brushed his mouth across hers.
Damn. Like honey and caramel and all the sweets that had always been his weakness, she tasted just as good as he had known she would. Too good for him to resist deepening the kiss. With gentle pressure, he parted her lips with his and dipped his tongue inside her mouth.
She closed her eyes and pressed her body against his. But he stepped back so that only their lips touched, clinging. He didn’t want to break the kiss. Didn’t want to leave her. But the damn clock chimed again.
* * *
Lips tingling, breath coming in ragged pants, Kate finally opened her eyes. But he was gone. Cool air chilled her skin from the breeze blowing through the open window. Had she left that open? Or had he opened it?
Or had he ever really even been there? She still couldn’t believe that the man she had shot, the man she’d watched die, had been in her bedroom. It wasn’t possible. But then, his dead body disappearing wasn’t possible, either.
Fists pounded at her door, her visitor having abandoned the bell and whatever patience he or she might have possessed.
Kate couldn’t blame them; she had kept them waiting for a long time. But hell, it was midnight. Who would visit her so late—except him?
Had he actually been there—or had she dreamed it all? No, impossible.
She could still taste him on her lips—as dark and dangerous and rich as his eerie topaz gaze and gleaming black hair. Another knock and the twelfth chime of the clock pulled her to her senses.
Still holding the gun, she thrust her arms into the sleeves of the robe draped across the foot of her rumpled bed and one-handedly secured the belt. Then she rushed to the front door before her crazy visitor woke the whole damn apartment complex. “What the hell—”
Palms lifted up, Paige stepped back from the doorway. “Don’t shoot.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t,” Kate challenged her blond-haired friend.
“Because we’re your friends,” Paige replied. Their other friends stood behind her. Brown-haired Elizabeth “Lizzy” Turrell, the red-haired assistant DA Campbell O’Brien, and Dr. Renae Grabill, the trauma resident with her short, dark hair and haunted gaze. Like Kate, Renae saw too much tragedy on the job.
“You woke me up,” Kate said. That alone had to be a shooting offense, especially when the dream had been as real and erotic as the one she had been having. But if it had been a dream, it had been the most vivid one she’d ever had.
“Looks like you were having one hell of a night,” Campbell perceptively remarked, lifting an auburn brow above one of her green eyes. “Is he still here?”
Lizzy snorted. “When’s the last time you saw Kate with a man?”
“Yesterday, but she was handcuffing him,” Campbell admitted. “Maybe she’s into that kinky stuff, though.”
“I’m into getting my sleep after a shift,” Kate said and feigned a yawn. “And you know why I was cuffing that guy—I was on duty.”
“You’re never off duty,” Paige said.
“You need to take a break once in a while,” Lizzy added.
“That’s what I was just trying to do,” Kate pointed out, “when I was sleeping.”
“Sleep sounds good,” Renae agreed. As a trauma surgeon in a crime-ridden city, she never got enough herself. “But you were supposed to meet us at Club Underground.” She had agreed to meet them this Friday since none of them had to work the next day.
Kate shuddered.
Even though Paige owned the place, Kate hated it for so many reasons. When Paige had first bought the club, someone had relentlessly stalked and terrorized her at the place.
That had been years ago. Paige’s stalker was gone now, but Kate still didn’t know the whole story. She just knew that her friend was safe and happier now than she had ever been. The investigator in her wanted to find out exactly what the hell had gone on at the creepy underground club. But because Paige was her friend, Kate hadn’t pressured her for details. She hadn’t wanted to disturb Paige’s happiness.
Now Kate had her own worries. Her own stalker.
That was another reason she hated Club Underground. Him. She had shot him in the alley behind the building. But she hadn’t killed him, like she’d thought. It wasn’t his ghost haunting her; it was him—gaslighting her.
“Hey,” Paige said with a chuckle. “That’s my place you’re disparaging.”
“Not disparaging,” Kate said.
“Just avoiding?” Paige probed, her blue-eyed gaze narrowed with concern. “You’re lucky Sebastian gave up on waiting for you to open the door. He took off when you didn’t answer the bell. He’d be quite upset that you’re not patronizing the club anymore.”
Sebastian, Paige’s younger brother and the long-time manager of Club Underground, had talked his sister into buying the place after she’d given up the law profession years ago. With his movie-star good looks, he could talk anyone into anything. Usually he talked women into his bed.
“He probably realized that waking up a detective is not a good idea,” Kate said, tapping her lowered gun against her thigh.
“He probably realized that there was somebody more welcoming waiting for him,” Campbell said.
“Since you wouldn’t come to happy hour, we brought happy hour to you,” Lizzy said.
Paige held up a bottle of white wine, and Kate snorted in disgust. Then Campbell raised another bottle, of liquor nearly the same amber as the man’s topaz eyes. Whiskey was Kate’s drink—when she drank, which wasn’t often. Just during happy hour, which was whenever the busy women managed to get together.
“You’ve been so busy the past couple of months,” said Renae who was equally, if not more so, busy but always made time for her friends, “that we’ve missed you.”
“So let us in,” Campbell said.
“Sorry,” Kate murmured as she stepped back so her friends could enter her messy living room. She had one couch, which was littered with clothes and newspapers, and a coffee table that was buried under plates and fast-food containers. If she’d known she was having visitors...she still wouldn’t have had time to clean up. Not with the shifts she worked and not with all the time she spent off duty trying to solve a case nobody believed was a crime—because they hadn’t seen the body.
But she’d seen the body. That night and again in her bedroom.
“Kate?” Lizzy asked, her soft voice full of concern. She was the mom of the group—having raised four kids on her own. She tended to mother them, too. “Are you sure everything’s all right?”
Kate nodded and lied, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Her place was small, hardly enough room for herself. But she picked up and tossed stuff aside, making room for her friends just as she had made room in her life for these women; their friendships were vital to her sanity. She had never needed them more than now.
Renae and Campbell dropped onto the floor while Paige and Lizzy squeezed together on the couch, making room for her to join them.
“I’m really glad you guys came over,” she said with gratitude for their friendship and their concern.
But she dare not tell them about her other late-night visitor, or they might think her as crazy as she already thought herself. He couldn’t have really been in her bedroom—in her bed. She couldn’t really have kissed him.
He was dead. She’d killed him.
* * *
Warrick hit the ground on all fours then glanced over his shoulder at the leap he’d taken off the fire escape outside Kate Wever’s fourth-floor apartment. “Damn...”
“You’re lucky you didn’t kill yourself,” a deep voice murmured.
He tensed and cursed. He couldn’t be discovered. Not like this...not after he had already turned into the form he took every night from midnight till dawn. But the man was too close for Warrick to disappear, unseen, into the shadows.
“But I already know that you don’t die easily.”
Finally recognizing the voice, Warrick whirled around, claws drawn—teeth bared as he uttered a warning growl.
“And neither do I,” Sebastian Culver reminded him. “So you can put those away.”
Warrick had just been messing with the other guy. He felt no hostility—only gratitude. He sheathed his claws and grinned at the dark-haired man. Well, actually, Sebastian wasn’t a man—or not just a man. Either. “I’m glad to see you again.”
“I can’t say the same,” the vampire replied, his voice and pale blue eyes cool. “I thought you would have left Zantrax by now.”
“I have unfinished business here,” Warrick said, tensing at the other man’s unfriendly tone. Why was the guy hostile toward him now? Had Reagan gotten to him somehow?
“She,” Sebastian said as he gestured toward the bedroom window four floors up, “better not be your unfinished business.”
Warrick had been in Zantrax long enough to hear the underground gossip. Sebastian Culver was quite the playboy. Had he been involved with Kate? Or did he want to be? Warrick’s guts knotted, jealousy twisting them. “Why?”
“Because if she is,” Sebastian replied, “it’ll make me regret saving your sorry life.”
“I appreciate your help that night.” Warrick had wanted to thank the man for a while for pulling him into the underground passage to the club when Detective Wever had briefly left the alley after shooting him. Sebastian hadn’t brought him into the club but to a secret room between it and the passageway—and to a special surgeon. “But you can’t actually save a man who can’t die.”
“You can die,” Sebastian said. “Same as I can die.”
“But I wouldn’t have died that night.” The surgeon, Dr. Ben Davison, had eased his pain, though.
“But your secret would have been discovered,” the vampire pointed out. “And to men like us, that’s worse than death.”
“And will lead to death.” Someone’s death...
He glanced up to that dimly lit window, too. She hadn’t turned on any lights in her bedroom, so she must have left the door open to the living room. What was she doing in there? Maybe someone other than Sebastian had been ringing her bell. Who?
“She’s a smart woman,” Sebastian said. “She’ll figure it out.”
“Your secret or mine?”
Sebastian gestured at him—in his changed form. “Your secret is more obvious. You cut it close.”
“Cut what close?” he asked, feigning innocence.
“I saw you jump out the window,” the other man informed him. “You were with her.”
“Jealous?” he couldn’t resist goading.
Sebastian uttered a sigh of such weariness that it revealed he was much older than his physical appearance would lead one to believe. “I’m concerned.”
“For her or me?”
“I don’t know you.”
Yet the man had been compelled to help a stranger—a strange creature, no less. Fortunately one legend—the one about vampires and werewolves constantly being at war—was myth.
“How well do you know her?” Warrick asked, that insidious jealousy winding through him again. He hadn’t been a jealous man until the people he’d loved the most had betrayed him. But he’d been a fool then. Their betrayal had made him much wiser.
“Kate is a friend,” Sebastian replied. “A good friend.”
“Does she know your secret?” Warrick asked. “Does she share your secret?” He didn’t think so; he had felt no fangs when he’d kissed her—only softness and warmth.
“She’s human,” Sebastian said. “And unaware of the Secret Vampire Society.”
“For now,” Warrick said, worry joining his jealousy. “But if she’s as smart as you think, she will figure it out.”
“You’re not one of the society,” Sebastian said, his light blue eyes narrowed as he studied Warrick. He must have noticed his concern because he added, “But you know its rules.”
“Our pack shares many of those same rules.”
“If a human learns of the secret society, she becomes a threat that must be destroyed,” the vampire said.
Warrick sighed with regret. “That’s one of the rules we share.” A rule that was necessary to protect the pack.
“The society has an amendment to that rule,” Sebastian admitted. “If a human learns the secret, he or she can avoid death if they become a member of the society.”
“A human can only become a member of the pack by mating with one of the wolves...” He swallowed hard, choking down bad memories and a pain he had once thought he would never survive. It had been much worse than the bullets Detective Kate Wever had fired into his shoulder and his heart. “For life.” There was more to it than that, like with vampires—biting was involved. But it was more a brand than a feast.
“The society’s rule is supposed to be the same,” Sebastian said, “but too many exceptions have been made to it for it to be stringently enforced.”
“That might be the rule that the pack enforces most stringently,” Warrick said. That was why he had lost so much. The love of his life, his family, his pride, his trust...
And now, dallying as he had with Kate Wever, he must have lost his damn sanity, too. He hadn’t really wanted vengeance against her; he had only been telling himself that so he’d had a reason to stick around. He’d also told himself that Reagan might not have left. But he wouldn’t have known because after she’d shot him, all Warrick had been able to see was Kate.
She was beautiful, but there was something else about her—a strength and an integrity—that attracted him.
But why would Reagan have stayed? If he was as smart as Warrick had always believed he was, he wouldn’t have stopped running yet. He was probably far, far away by now.
“You don’t have to worry about Kate,” Warrick assured the vampire. “I will be leaving Zantrax.” There was no reason for him to stay now. But he caught himself sneaking another glance up at her window.
“Going home?”
He shook his head. Just as he had no family, no mate, no honor—he had no home, either. “I still have unfinished business. I just don’t think it’s here any longer.”
Despite his usually exceptional tracking abilities, he had lost the scent that night. Reagan would have known to put distance—a hell of a lot of distance—between them. And Kate shooting Warrick had given him time to do just that. But his anger with her had cooled. If only his desire could...
Her scent filled him. She didn’t smell of flowers or some other cloying odor. She smelled like she tasted: sweet—sugar and vanilla and some spice. How could such a strong, fearless woman be so sweet?
Sebastian sighed, as if giving up a battle he had waged with himself. “You might be wrong about that.”
Confusion wrinkled the hair on Warrick’s brow. “I thought you warned me off her.”
“I did,” Sebastian said. “I’m giving you another warning now. The reason you came to Zantrax may not have left yet, either.”
“You’re saying...” His heart slammed into his ribs. “He’s still here?”
“The guy you tried tearing apart in the alley?” Sebastian nodded.
“How do you know?”
The dark-haired man grinned. “In addition to managing Club Underground, I fill in at the bar some nights. A bartender hears things...”
“Your surgeon friend treated him, too?” Warrick guessed. How else would he have known what Warrick had done to him? It had been just the two of them—and Kate—in that alley. Sebastian hadn’t come out of the passageway until Kate had left. She’d been getting him help; that was why she had rushed from the alley. But her paramedics wouldn’t have been able to help him—not when he had changed moments after she’d left him.
Sebastian shook his head, probably trying to protect his surgeon friend from Warrick’s wrath, because he wouldn’t meet his gaze. For Kate had let the murderer go and then the special surgeon had treated him...
Of course these people had no idea what Reagan had done—what kind of monster he was. Warrick must have injured the son of a bitch, though. Satisfaction filled him. But like Warrick, Reagan wouldn’t die easily, either. So he would have to try harder.
“Why do you hate him so much?” Sebastian asked.
“Because he took everything away from me that I ever cared about...” Until then Warrick hadn’t hated Reagan; he had actually been foolish enough to care about him, to love and respect him. But he had been an even bigger fool to trust him. It didn’t matter that they were brothers—at least, it didn’t matter to Reagan.
“Then I was right to warn you,” Sebastian said.
“Warn me?” Warrick considered it more good news than bad. He hadn’t lost Reagan’s trail, like he’d worried he had.
“Yes,” the vampire replied with a nod. “Sounds like this man you’re trying to find poses quite a threat.”
Warrick chuckled. “Hell, no. He can’t hurt me anymore.”
“But he could hurt someone you care about again.”
“There’s no one left.” And he had nowhere to go—because Warrick couldn’t go home again until he’d gotten justice for his father’s murder. The son of a bitch had really taken everyone and everything from him.
Sebastian Culver glanced up at Kate Wever’s window now. “No one left?”
Warrick chuckled again but this one was hollow. “The woman shot me. Why would I care about her?”
“I was wondering that myself,” the vampire said. “What the hell were you doing in her place tonight?”
“She shot me,” he repeated. “Her interference allowed him to get away that night.” But not again. Reagan would not get away again. Maybe that was why the murderer hadn’t left Zantrax, either. Maybe even Reagan knew that it was time to end this.
“So you were going to hurt her?” Sebastian asked, anger flashing in his eyes, as he stepped closer to Warrick.
They might not be able to kill each other. But if they tangled, they could do a lot of damage. Inflict a lot of physical pain...
Warrick uttered a weary sigh and quipped, “I’m all about revenge.”
For what felt like so long now...
“She was just doing her job,” Sebastian said in her defense and with great respect. It was unusual that vampires respected humans. But then Kate Wever was an exceptional human.
“I know that.” Logically he had always known that, yet he hadn’t been able to stay away from her. “I’m not going to hurt her.”
Sebastian pushed his hand through his long, dark hair. “Maybe you’re not the one I should be worrying about...”
Warrick dragged in a deep breath. And as he did, he caught another scent. Fear. His own. “You think he might hurt her?”
“I don’t,” Sebastian said. “But do you care about her?”
“I don’t know her.” But he did care—enough that he didn’t want her harmed because of him. While he had no future with Kate Wever, he wanted her to have a future of her own.
“Does he know that?” Sebastian asked. “If he’s been watching you, what might he think?”
He bit off a curse. The vampire was right, but Warrick didn’t want him to know it.
Reagan had ruthlessly taken away everyone Warrick had ever cared about. And because Warrick had stayed in Zantrax, because he had stayed near her, he might think Warrick cared about her. His obsession with Kate Wever had put her in danger.
* * *
How badly had that human detective’s bullets wounded Warrick? She hadn’t killed him; Reagan knew that or he wouldn’t have left the alley that night.
But because he didn’t know how badly Warrick had been hurt, he hadn’t left the city yet. He should have. No good would come of him and his brother being in the same city—not unless he could make Warrick listen to him. Make him realize that Reagan wasn’t the threat to him.
Guilt tugged at him, though, and the sunrise on which he had been so focused blurred before his eyes despite his front-row seat on a rooftop of one of Zantrax’s highest buildings. He had hurt his brother—far worse than the female detective’s bullets could have. He didn’t blame Warrick for wanting to kill him.
But Reagan wasn’t the only one who would die. Warrick would die, too. And probably so would she.
That was why Reagan hadn’t left yet. He had to make his brother listen to him. He had to—or they would lose more than their father and each other. They would lose even more than their lives...
Chapter 3 (#ulink_2aa431a2-af77-51af-ac5e-0cf0cb7e5b94)
The high-rise buildings cast deep shadows, blocking out whatever glow of the moon that might have illuminated the alley. Kate had only her flashlight, which she gripped tightly in one hand, and her gun, which she gripped in the other. The Glock was still holstered, but the leather strap was unclasped, so it was ready to be drawn.
This place, this damn alley, and the club housed in the basement of one of the buildings, creeped her out. Too many strange things happened in this part of Zantrax—around Club Underground. Paige’s stalking, Bernie’s flying people and now his disappearing body...
Last night that strangeness had invaded Kate’s bedroom when his body had reappeared there—alive.
Despite the sweater and heavy jacket she wore and the fact that none of the cool mid-November breeze could blow between the buildings, Kate shivered. She actually would have welcomed a fresh breeze; there was only stagnant, stale air in the alley. It smelled more of the trash in the Dumpster than the crisp scent of burning leaves and roasting pumpkins she usually associated with autumn.
But the ghost that never quite seemed to leave her—he fit in with the season. But he wasn’t really a ghost; she didn’t believe in them.
He had to be real.
But then who had she shot in the alley?
His twin? If so, what had happened to the body? She shone her flashlight beam around the alley, bouncing it off every brick on every wall of the three buildings that backed up to and blocked off the alley. There was no space between the buildings, no way for a body to squeeze out. None of the doors that opened onto it had been unlocked that night—most of them were walled off inside so that they never opened.
Frustration coursed through Kate and triggered her usually long temper, so that she snapped and kicked out, driving her heel into the corner of the Dumpster. Its rusty legs squeaked as it rolled back a couple of inches.
That squeak echoed one she’d heard before, just as she’d been running from the dark alley to get help for the man she’d shot. She had relived that night so many times that she remembered every sight, every smell and every sound...
The Dumpster must have moved that night, too.
She stepped closer to the rim of the rusted metal bin, gagging on the putrid odors that emanated from it, and shone her flashlight beam inside. The circle of light glanced off boxes and torn bags of garbage, from which coffee grounds, old liquor bottles and other food scraps and papers spilled out.
No homeless man.
Had Bernie been there that night? Was he the one who’d moved the Dumpster and the man? He’d claimed he hadn’t been, but Kate knew better than to believe what anyone told her. Too many people lied. Or kept secrets.
But if the vagrant had been there, would he have moved the Dumpster or would he have hidden quietly inside to avoid detection? She had checked the Dumpster that night; she had looked for that body everywhere—except beneath the metal bin. Kate pulled her hand from her holster and shoved her flashlight into her back pocket. She reached out for the Dumpster, pushing at it with both palms.
Her muscles strained in her shoulders, arms and stomach, but the metal crate barely budged, skidding inches across the asphalt. It creaked and squealed in protest of every bit of distance it moved. Gritting her teeth, Kate pushed harder. Then she reached for her flashlight again and shone the beam beneath where the Dumpster had been.
If she could find a trail of blood, she could prove that she hadn’t imagined what had happened that night. But a couple of months had passed. The blood could have washed away or degraded enough that she wouldn’t be able to find it with a flashlight. She would have to bring in a forensics crew. Would the department authorize it when they’d already gone over the alley once and found nothing but blood they claimed they couldn’t even prove was human?
Doubtful. So she had only herself and her own investigative skills to prove what had happened that night. That she had killed a man. She shivered, jiggling the flashlight so that the beam bounced around the asphalt and glinted off the metal of a manhole cover. She hadn’t noticed that before.
Could someone, perhaps his twin, have dragged the body down into the sewer? That made more sense than any alternative. Kate always needed to find the sense in even the most senseless of acts. Rationalizing the irrational was the only way she managed to keep her sanity with her career. And with her life...
She had seen and done many irrational, senseless things over the past forty years of her life. And this was probably another—but still she reached for the manhole cover, after setting her flashlight down on the asphalt, its beam directed toward the opening to the sewer.
But when she reached for the cover, the light moved off it. The beam rose, shining into her eyes—blinding her. She squinted against the light. “Who’s there?”
She hadn’t heard anyone enter the alley. Had felt no other presence. But, like last night in her bedroom, she was suddenly not alone.
“Is it you?” She reached for her holster—and the gun—even though it had done nothing that night. If she believed her late-night visitor, he had survived the bullets she’d fired into him. If she believed him, she couldn’t kill him. “What do you want with me?”
But she received no verbal reply. Her only answer was physical, as the beam swung down, and the heavy metal flashlight struck her head. For a moment she glimpsed a shadow behind the beam—tall, broad-shouldered. Dark.
It could have been him.
But then everything else went dark as Kate fell and her body struck the asphalt.
* * *
She was going to die. She was actually surprised that she wasn’t already dead—especially given what she had done to the pack—the dissension she had caused. But there was a reason they hadn’t killed her yet. They intended to use her as bait to draw Warrick and Reagan back to St. James—the village their father had founded in a remote area of the upper peninsula of Michigan.
But to draw them back, one of them would actually have to care about her. She glanced around the log and fieldstone cabin—empty but for her and the memories she had made there. Good and bad.
No. Reagan and Warrick weren’t coming back. And she couldn’t stay—because once the others realized that she served no purpose, they would kill her.
Sylvia’s fingers trembled as she struggled with the zipper on her suitcase. She had to hurry because time was running out. Warrick and Reagan had already been gone too long.
Maybe they had already killed each other, or maybe they had been killed. Grief and guilt struck her like a blow, and her eyes stung from the pain, tearing up. But she had already shed too many tears—of guilt and pain and loss and, if she was to be honest, self-pity. She blinked away the moisture and ignored the sting.
And wouldn’t she know if he was dead? They’d had such a strong—almost otherworldly—connection. Their souls had called to each other. But if that connection was real, he wouldn’t have left her.
That relationship hadn’t been real; it had been only a fantasy. But something real had come of that fantasy.
And so she had to be strong now—because her life wasn’t the only life she needed to save. She pressed her shaking hand over her swelling belly. She had to leave before the others figured out that Warrick and Reagan weren’t coming back. Dragging the suitcase off the bed, she turned toward the door and finally she realized that she wasn’t alone.
And that it was already too late...
* * *
Warrick was too late. He could already smell her blood, the scent—so thick and sweet—burned his flaring nostrils. He rushed into the alley. Blind in the darkness until his eyes adjusted to the deep shadows, he could have been jumped—had whoever attacked her still been present.
But he cared less about his own safety than he cared about hers. And with good reason. She was alone in the alley, lying on the asphalt. Her hair tangled across her face, the ends of it falling into the blood pooled beneath her head.
His heart kicked his ribs as fear and concern jolted him. He had once wanted to see her like this—in those moments after she’d shot him and he had writhed in pain on the asphalt. He had wanted to see her lying in her own blood, like he had been. But that killer vengeance had lasted only for those pain-filled moments. As he’d told her vampire friend, he knew she’d only been doing her job that night.
He dropped to his knees beside her and skimmed his fingers across her face, brushing her hair from her eyes. They were closed. Because she was unconscious or dead? Blood oozed from a deep gash on her forehead, staining her skin red on the path it had taken across her face to the asphalt.
“What were you doing here tonight?” he wondered. “Doing your job?” Or looking for him again? But she considered that her job, finding and arresting him for assault. If she only knew the circumstances...
She probably still wouldn’t condone his vigilante justice. She wouldn’t understand that he had to reclaim his honor to reclaim his position in the pack.
His fingers trembled as they trailed down her cheek to her throat where he felt for her pulse. It stirred beneath his fingertips, faint but steady.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured. “Hang in there.” He glanced around the alley, but unlike the night Sebastian had come to his aid, no one stepped from the shadows—or the sewer—to help. Dare he move her to that secret clinic? Or would moving her hurt her more? It couldn’t hurt her any more than leaving her alone and vulnerable in the alley.
If any of the other creatures of the underground caught the scent of her blood...
She wouldn’t survive the feeding frenzy.
He slid his arms beneath her and gently lifted her limp body. Her head lolled back, blood dripping from her wound. He grasped her closer and cradled her neck in one hand.
“How the hell did I get to that clinic?” he muttered. He’d blacked out for a while and had just briefly regained consciousness in the passageway beneath the alley.
His attention zeroed in on the manhole cover near where she’d been lying. Was that what she had been investigating when she got attacked?
“Oh, God, you have to let this drop,” he implored her—even though she couldn’t hear him. But learning about the Secret Vampire Society would get her killed for certain. So if he took her down that manhole, he was risking her life. But if he didn’t get her help...
She was human. She would really die. And that was something that he couldn’t just watch happen. Hopefully, she would not regain consciousness in the sewer. He kicked the cover aside and stepped into the hole, feeling for the rungs with his feet. Careful of her head, he maneuvered her through the opening and descended into the passageway that led from the alley to the basement clinic.
Holding her close, he knocked—using his foot—on the riveted steel door. “Someone’s gotta be here...”
She hadn’t stirred, hadn’t even murmured, and her body was so limp, so lifeless. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe she had already lost too much blood...
He kicked harder at the steel, so that the door vibrated in the jamb. “Come on! I need help!”
The knob rattled as a lock turned and finally the door opened. He breathed a sigh of relief while Dr. Davison cursed. Shoving past the surgeon, Warrick carried Kate to the table.
“What the hell did you do to her?” Dr. Davison asked, his dark eyes hard with suspicion and anger. The doctor wasn’t old—at least not by vampire standards—but gray liberally sprinkled his dark hair.
“I didn’t do this,” Warrick hotly denied. Maybe he’d once considered hurting her, but he wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to actually do her harm. Now the person or creature that had hurt her...
Even the special surgeon wouldn’t be able to save that animal after Warrick got done with him.
“Then what the hell happened to Kate?” The doctor grabbed up some instruments.
“You know her?”
“She’s my wife’s best friend,” Dr. Davison shared as he leaned over her and examined the gash on her head. Then he checked her neck, too, probably for puncture wounds. “So tell me how she got hurt.”
“I don’t know,” Warrick replied. “I found her like this, lying unconscious in the alley.”
“She never came to?”
“No.”
The doctor opened her closed lid and shone a light into her eye and then repeated the action on her other eye. “Her pupils aren’t blown.”
“That’s good?”
The doctor nodded as his fingers gently probed her head wound.
“Do you work on humans, too?” Warrick asked, wondering if he had brought her to the right doctor. Maybe he would have been smarter to bring her to the local emergency room, but the clinic had been closer.
Davison nodded again. “I started with humans and still work on more of them than the other creatures.”
“So you can help her.”
The doctor sighed. “I don’t know...if anyone will be able to help her if she regains consciousness here.”
Warrick shuddered as he worried that in trying to help her that he might have put her in more danger. But the society’s wasn’t the only secret he risked exposing as his watch buzzed out a warning that midnight was only minutes away. Already his skin was beginning to itch as hair rushed to the surface. His jaw ached as the bone stretched—his face was changing shape.
“I hope Kate doesn’t wind up like me,” Davison murmured as he reached for a syringe.
“How’s that?” Warrick asked.
“I stumbled onto a secret I wish I had never learned.” A muscle twitched in the doctor’s cheek. “And it nearly cost me everything...”
“But you learned the secret and lived.”
“Extenuating circumstances. They needed me,” the surgeon explained. “But now I’m one of them.”
Kate as a vampire? It was easier to imagine her as that than as a werewolf, though. His muscles expanded, ripping through his jeans and his shirt, as his body took its other form. This was the only life he had ever known, having been born and raised in the pack.
He had only imagined turning one human into what he was, and he had lost her...just as he had lost everything else that had ever mattered to him.
Just as he might have lost Kate tonight...
But Kate didn’t matter to him. She was a stranger, a human who had thwarted his plans. He needed to leave her to the doctor’s care and get the hell out of Zantrax.
“You’ll be able to help her?” he asked the surgeon for his assurance.
“I won’t be able to go home if I don’t save Kate,” Davison replied. “Now get out of here. She can’t see you like that.”
A moan emanated from Kate’s throat as she shifted on the table, reaching for her head.
It was too late for Warrick to hide.
* * *
Images flitted through Kate’s mind. Bright lights and searing pain and dark alleys and sterile rooms...and a man who wasn’t a man. Her head pounded as she tried to sort out those brief images. But they were like old photographs, the colors faded and washed-out, so that she could barely make out the subjects.
Like old dreams that she could barely remember...
Dreaming. She had to be dreaming. Her eyes were closed; the lids so heavy she could barely lift them. After some effort she managed to blink them open and blink away the grit of deep sleep.
Then she focused on the room. Sunlight streaked through the blinds at the window, casting a warm glow onto the hardwood floor where her clothes lay in a heap. She fought against the sheets tangled around her, but as she sat up, the room spun. Her head lightened and the bright glow dimmed.
“Easy,” a familiar deep voice murmured. “Not so fast...”
He was back.
Instinct had her reaching under the other pillow but her palm skimmed across the satin sheet to the edge of the bed. The gun was gone.
“You don’t need it,” he said as he approached the bed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Someone hit me...in the alley.” That had happened, hadn’t it? She’d been in the alley, searching for...him. But he must have found her first.
“It wasn’t me,” he said and just as he had that first night, he settled onto the bed beside her—as if he was familiar with her bedroom. With her.
She snorted. “As if you’d admit it if it was... I would arrest you for assaulting an officer.”
“You’ve tried once to arrest me for assault.”
But he had disappeared, like those images from her mind. She couldn’t remember now exactly what she’d seen. What had been real and what a dream. Was he a dream?
“How did I get here?” she wondered. Not just in her apartment and in her bed, but naked beneath her sheets. Just how much of the night before had she forgotten? Had he taken off her clothes? What else had he done to her? She shivered as she imagined him touching her and more...
“I found you in the alley,” he said. “I got you some medical help then brought you back here. Don’t you remember anything?”
She reached a trembling hand toward her head, and her fingers skimmed over a gauze bandage. Stitches tightened the skin beneath it, which throbbed with a dull ache. “No...” she murmured. “I don’t remember anything after I got hit.” At least she didn’t remember anything that seemed real—that could have actually happened.
“You have a concussion,” he said as he gently trailed his fingers along the edge of the gauze. “Someone hit you really hard. Did you see who it was?”
“Only the bright light...” And the shadow behind it. The tall, broad-shouldered shadow. It could have been him.
But then why was there so much concern in his eerie topaz eyes? “Your pulse was so weak...” He shuddered. “I thought you were dead or nearly dead.”
“Why would you care?” she asked. After all, she had shot him. Or so she’d thought...
He shrugged those mammothly broad shoulders. “I don’t know...”
“You’re mad at me for not letting you kill that man,” she reminded him. He certainly had seemed more upset about that than her shooting him.
“Yes, I am,” he freely admitted.
“Was that really you?” she asked. “That man in the alley?”
“I told you I didn’t hit you—”
“Not tonight...” She glanced to the sun-streaked blinds. “Not last night. That night a couple of months ago. The man in the alley—the one that I shot. It couldn’t have been you. Was it your twin?”
He reached for the buttons on his shirt, undoing them so that the dark gray material parted and revealed the hard muscles of his chest, dusted with silky-looking black hair. But something marred the masculine perfection—a jagged scar over his heart. He shrugged off the shirt and revealed two more puckered, nasty-looking scars in one of his broad shoulders.
She gasped and reached out, running her fingertips over first the scars on his shoulder and then the one on his chest. The scars weren’t makeup or theatrics but real skin—so warm that her fingers tingled from the contact. The very air between them heated. Her breathing slowed and grew shallow, so that she nearly panted. Her pulse raced, pounding harder and faster than that faint ache in her head.
“It was you.” She swallowed the rush of emotion and desire. “I shot you.”
“Yes, you did.”
So he’d had every reason to want to hurt her back, every reason to have struck her in the alley. But he touched her gently now, his fingers trailing from her bandage down the side of her face and along her throat. “Are you sorry?”
She shook her head, but pain reverberated inside her skull with the motion and she winced and whimpered.
“Shh...” he said. “Take it easy. Go back to sleep.” He reached for his shirt again.
But she grabbed his shoulders. “Don’t leave...”
His body tensed, and his topaz eyes dilated. “Kate...?”
“Don’t leave without telling me your name.”
His mouth, with those sexy sensual lips, curved into a slight grin. “Warrick.”
“Warrick?”
“Yes. Warrick James.”
“Warrick James,” she repeated, loving the sound of it—the feel of his name on her lips.
He leaned closer, as if she’d drawn him nearer. “Yes, Kate?”
“You’re under arrest for assault—”
He laughed at her now. “You never quit.” He moved to stand up.
But she clutched at him, holding him down on the bed. Holding him to her. “You’re not disappearing again.”
She needed to bring him in to the department, needed to prove her sanity to her coworkers. Especially the one who had been most vocal with his disdain for her story about what had happened that night.
“How are you going to stop me, Kate?” he asked. “You have no gun. You’re hurt. You’re weak.”
She winced—not in pain but in self-disgust. “I’m not weak.” She wasn’t that same scared woman she’d once been. She was older, wiser and stronger now than she had ever been. And to prove it, she launched herself at him, wrestling him down to the mattress.
He sprawled on his back without a fight, his arms wrapped loosely around her waist. Her breasts nestled against his hard, scarred chest. “You’re not weak at all,” he assured her. “You’ve overpowered me.”
“Because you let me,” she suspected.
He nodded. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You did.”
“Not anymore,” he said, lifting his head to close the distance between his mouth and hers. His lips skimmed across hers. “Now I just want you...”
And she wanted him, her skin heating and tingling everywhere they touched. The sheet had slipped down, so that her breasts were bare against his chest. His hair, which covered his impressive pecs, tickled and teased her nipples, bringing them to tight, sensitive points.
“And I want—” she struggled free of his loose grasp and grabbed up the sheet again, holding it between them like a shield “—to arrest you.”
“I’m not a monster, Kate.”
One of those dreamlike images rushed back to her mind—of a man that wasn’t a man. Of a man who was a monster—a mammoth, heavily muscled, hairy beast.
She didn’t believe him; she didn’t believe anything Warrick James said. She had been fooled once before and had believed a man to be a hero when he was really a monster.
So what could a monster be...but a monster?
Chapter 4 (#ulink_0888c583-7858-58a2-8844-c7f420cf87fb)
The human detective hadn’t killed Warrick, but what she’d done might have been far worse. She had bewitched him.
“Poor bastard,” Reagan murmured to himself as he sat alone at the bar in Club Underground, staring into his drink. He, too, had become besotted with a woman—so besotted that he’d lost himself in her. He had lost his honor and his integrity. He’d also lost his father and his brother.
Even if he could talk to Warrick and could actually get through to him, their relationship was destroyed. Reagan had destroyed it and maybe because of that, he deserved to be destroyed, as well. But Warrick didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve any more pain.
And neither did she. Reagan glanced down at the picture he’d set on the bar next to his untouched drink, and he sucked in a breath at her beauty. With her silvery blond hair and mesmerizing green eyes, she was beyond beautiful; she was ethereal. Reagan needed to get back to St. James—to her—before something happened to her. If only he’d had time to bring her with him...
But everything had happened so quickly—had gone so wrong. There hadn’t been time. And after what he’d done, he wasn’t sure she would have gone with him. Like Warrick, she would probably hate and distrust him, too.
And, he assured himself, nothing would happen to her—until he was dead. Then she would be of no use to the pack anymore. They couldn’t bait a dead man.
“You’re about to break that glass,” the bartender warned.
Reagan hadn’t even been aware how tightly he’d been gripping it until Sebastian Culver commented on it. Then he glanced at his hand and noticed how his fingers had gone white. He forced himself to release the glass.
“It’s not like you’re going to drink it anyway,” the vampire bartender remarked. “You just sit here every day until midnight—waiting for him to show up.”
And after midnight, he took to the rooftops, so that he could watch the city. So that he could watch Warrick.
The bartender shook his head. “I don’t get it...”
“What?” Reagan asked.
“He wants to kill you,” Sebastian told him what he already knew. “You should be trying to avoid him. Instead, you’re trying to find him.”
He had been trying to find him—to make sure that the human detective hadn’t wounded him too badly. But now Reagan knew where to find Warrick—near her. And he’d chosen to avoid a private confrontation that would probably end as badly as the one in the alley had. With them both wounded...
“I want him to find me,” Reagan corrected the bartender’s misassumption. “Here—in a public place.”
“You think that’ll stop him from trying to kill you?” Sebastian glanced around the crowded bar and snorted derisively. “Gunshots to his shoulder and his heart didn’t stop him from trying to tear you apart. I don’t think anything will stop him.”
Reagan sighed in resignation and reluctant agreement. “Not even the truth...”
“You’re wasting your time here,” Sebastian said.
“Not if I can save his life...” Then it would all be worth it. Even leaving Sylvia...
“Then you better find him,” Sebastian suggested.
“I know where he is,” he said. “With the detective.”
Sebastian shook his head. “He’s not with Kate.” He chuckled. “Maybe she’s done what she tried that night. Maybe she arrested him.”
Alarm slammed through Reagan. If Warrick was in custody and changed...
More than just his life would be lost.
* * *
Warrick stared through the bars, his hands grasping the old brass rungs. “Glad you’re here.”
“Glad I found you, boy,” the old man said. “You’ve been gone for much too long.”
“I can’t go back.”
“Not until he’s dead,” Stefan James agreed. His hair was more gray than black, his eyes nearly the same steely gray. But his age didn’t indicate weakness; if anything it represented the reverse. The older and wiser Uncle Stefan had grown, the stronger he had become. He was a good leader for the pack, but he wasn’t Warrick’s father. That was whose advice Warrick really needed, but he could never speak to his father again.
Because of Reagan...
Warrick’s hands slid from the rungs and he walked around the partition wall that separated the tellers from the vault area of the former bank. Or it would have had the bank still been operational but it had been deserted...until a few months ago when someone had taken up residence to hide inside the vault. As if that would have prevented Warrick from picking up his scent...
“You tracked him here?” Uncle asked, sniffing the air.
Warrick nodded.
“His scent is old, his trail cold,” the old man remarked. “But you’re still here. Why?” That steely-gray gaze narrowed as Uncle totally focused on Warrick.
“He’ll come back,” he claimed. But he wasn’t sure. He had only the vampire bartender’s word that Reagan hadn’t left the city. And why should he trust a vampire who didn’t trust him, either?
“You thought he would come back home, too,” Uncle Stefan reminded him.
“For her...”
“But he left his mate alone,” Uncle remarked, watching him closely—probably for that flash of jealousy and rage that Warrick had always exhibited when it came to her. “And he keeps running.”
“Because he knows I’m chasing him.”
“You’re not chasing him,” Uncle said with a disparaging snort. “You’re chasing your honor.”
“My honor or vengeance?” Warrick wondered now. And his hunger for vengeance wasn’t as overwhelming as it had once been. Probably because his hunger for Kate was greater. He shouldn’t have left her...
“Both, in this case,” the old man asserted. “You cannot lead the pack if you cannot claim justice for crimes committed against it.”
“I’m not leading the pack,” Warrick pointed out. “You are.”
Stefan shrugged as if the leadership role meant nothing to him. “It was always your father’s wish that one of his sons take over for him when he was no longer able to fill the role of leader.”
Warrick flinched, remembering how he’d found his father. All that blood spilling from his wounded heart, leaving nothing but the corpse of an old werewolf as, even dead, he turned at midnight. None of his power or intimidation had remained—nothing of the spirit of the fearsome leader and father.
But now another memory haunted Warrick more, of Kate lying alone in that alley in a pool of her own blood.
“Perhaps you are the right one to lead the pack, Uncle,” Warrick said of the role he, himself, had wanted to fill since he was just a pup. But as the younger son, he had never been groomed for the role—had never really been considered a possible candidate by anyone but his uncle.
Uncle Stefan shook his head. “I am an old man,” he said. “I have no sons now. No one to carry on when I grow too weak to lead. You are the future, Warrick.”
“Only if I can reclaim my honor.”
“You set off on this quest for justice,” Uncle reminded him, his brow furrowing with confusion. “Your belly burned with the desire for it.”
Warrick remembered when the heat and hunger of his rage had consumed him. Rage had ruled his life, had blinded him to anything but vengeance. Blinded him so much that he hadn’t even noticed the woman in the alley until she’d fired those shots into his shoulder.
It ached still, all these months after the shooting, just as his body ached for hers days after they had touched skin to skin—lips to lips. Now the desire burning in his belly was to possess Kate Wever in every way. She was so beautiful—all silky skin over sleek muscle. As he had once tried to haunt her, she haunted him now.
“What has changed for you?” Uncle asked. “Did he get to you?”
He had tried, that night in the alley—had tried to spew his lies and manipulations. That was when Warrick had threatened to rip out his throat, so that he wouldn’t have to listen. He shook his head. “Not him.”
“But someone has?”
He shook his head again, unwilling to tell his uncle about Kate for fear of sounding like a fickle boy instead of the decisive man necessary to lead a pack. It wasn’t as if he and Kate had a future anyway. She wanted to arrest him now for assault. What would she do once he’d committed murder?
He sighed. “Perhaps I am just wearying of the chase.”
Maybe Warrick had finally realized that his quest had been more about vengeance and pride than justice. But now, after finding Kate bleeding in the alley those few nights ago, it was less about vengeance and more about Kate.
How could he leave Zantrax when she was in danger, especially when he might be the reason she was in danger?
* * *
Blood stained the cement floor of the secret surgical room. Was some of that Kate’s blood? Paige shuddered to consider it, to remember that her friend had been that badly hurt. That strong, fierce Kate had been lying unconscious and vulnerable in an alley.
“Are you sure she’s all right?” she asked her husband. “She didn’t come to happy hour again.”
Ben nodded, but there was concern in his dark eyes. “As long as she doesn’t remember being here, she should be all right.” He poured a bottle of something onto the floor that dissolved the blood and cleaned the cement, but it couldn’t remove every trace of the horrors that happened in that room. It was as if screams of pain hung in the air with the pungent scent of the cleanser.
“She doesn’t remember,” Paige said. “She didn’t even mention getting hurt when I called her.” And Paige hadn’t been able to bring it up for fear that Kate would remember who had treated her injury and where.
“She has to know she was hurt,” Ben said. “She has stitches and a bandage.”
“Then why didn’t she mention it?” Maybe Kate had remembered more than she was willing to admit to Paige.
“Because she’s Kate,” Ben replied. “She’s proud and independent. And she wouldn’t want you to worry. And she especially wouldn’t want you to fuss over her.”
“Or she didn’t want me to know what she remembered and warn you,” Paige said.
Ben glanced at the security monitor that showed the video feed from the cameras outside both reinforced steel doors. One led to the hallway to the club; the other to the sewer. Both had been reinforced so that vampires—or other creatures—couldn’t get inside unless Ben let them in. It wasn’t just for his protection but for the protection of whatever patient he was treating. She looked at the monitor, too, and breathed a sigh of relief that both the hallway and the sewer were empty.
“She’s not out there,” Ben said. “And she would be if she had any suspicions about this place.”
“She has suspicions,” Paige reminded him. Kate had wanted inside this room back when somebody had been stalking Paige. But Sebastian had convinced her that the entrance to the sewer had been sealed off and the door led to nowhere.
If Kate ever found this room, Paige would lose her best friend. The society would order the human’s death.
As if he’d read her mind, Ben reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. But because he knew her so well he offered her no false assurances. He only offered his love as he held her closely.
“I don’t want to lose her,” Paige said.
“Maybe we can talk to the society,” Ben said.
She looked up at him and arched a brow. As if the society would listen to her. She had no way to negotiate—not the way the society’s special surgeon could.
“Maybe I can,” he amended his comment, his sexy mouth curving into a slight grin.
“But the society isn’t the only danger she’s in,” Paige said. “What about this other creature or creatures? You’ve said there are two of them.”
Ben groaned. “I shouldn’t have told you about them.”
“We promised,” she reminded him. “No more secrets.” At least not between the two of them. But they kept secrets—the secrets of the society—from all their human friends. “Are they a danger to her?”
“The pack has the same law the society does,” Ben reminded her. “But the one she shot—he was the one who brought her here for me to treat.”
“You think he cares about her?”
Ben shrugged. “I don’t know what to think about Warrick James. The night I treated his gunshot wounds he was furious with her.”
“So he could have been the one who attacked her in the alley,” Paige said. She wanted to meet this creature who was threatening her best friend.
“I don’t know if he attacked her, or if she was attacked because of him,” Ben said. “But I feel like he might be more responsible than the society.”
Or was that only what he wanted to believe because he and Paige and the child they’d adopted were all members of the society? It could have been a vampire who’d attacked Kate. And if that was the case, she was lucky she had only taken a blow to her head instead of a fang to her throat. But if she kept investigating, Kate was too good a detective to not figure out the secret and get herself killed.
* * *
Goose bumps lifted on Kate’s skin as she stepped into the thick darkness of the alley. Not even her flashlight beam could chase away the shadows this late at night. The anonymous call, promising to reveal everything she wanted to know, had lured her back to the alley. She had considered that it was just a ploy to get her here—to hurt her again. Yet she hadn’t been able to ignore it. Zantrax PD made it a policy to follow up on every silent observer tip. Maybe this tip was even better since it had come into her direct line and had been traced back to a public phone near Club Underground. A real witness could have made that call. Maybe Bernie.
Or the person who’d struck her that night...
She was a detective. Whatever risk it took to learn what she wanted to know was a risk she was willing to take. Of course she wasn’t usually foolish enough to go into a potentially dangerous situation without backup. But this was the second night she had taken that risk. Third, if she counted that first night when she’d chased Warrick James into the alley. But then she hadn’t wanted to risk his killing that man.
And now, she hadn’t requested backup because she didn’t want to risk her reputation. Her “missing” body case had undone the respect she’d fought for years to gain in the department. He had ridiculed her the most. Not the man she’d shot but the man from her past, the man she wished she could leave in her past— forgotten only to surface in rare nightmares to remind her to never make that mistake again.
To never trust.
But they worked together. He worked nights, though, and she worked days. Except now when she was off the clock but not really off duty.
Tonight she was more prepared, though. Her gun wasn’t in her holster but clasped tightly in her right hand while her left grasped the flashlight. She shone the beam around the alley, illuminating only one small circle of darkness at a time. Nothing moved in the shadows, though.
Well, nothing human. Small feet scurried across the asphalt. Confident she was alone, Kate gave in to a shudder of revulsion over the nearness of the rats.
“Hello?” she called out. “Anyone here?”
Why call her if the person had no intention of showing up? He or she had gone to the trouble of disguising his or her voice so that it was unrecognizable. Maybe it was just a joke. Since that night when they had all searched for a body no one had been able to find, her coworkers had subjected her to many jokes. Like the bloody dummy left in her desk chair. And her locker and even her car...
If only she had been able to arrest Warrick the other night...to bring him in to the department and show his scars. She could have proved that she hadn’t imagined it all. That she hadn’t imagined him. He was real.
But too strong for her to have overpowered without her gun. Hell, when she’d had her gun she hadn’t been able to stop him. At least not permanently. He had survived injuries that would have killed anyone else.
Was he real?
He had disappeared from her bedroom just as quickly as he had the first night she’d discovered him there. One minute he had been there, almost as if he’d been watching over and protecting her after her concussion. Then the next minute he’d been gone...before she’d been able to find her gun or her cuffs. Before she’d been able to arrest him.
Or make love with him...
She wasn’t sure which she’d wanted more. Or at least she wasn’t willing to admit which she’d wanted more.
“Warrick?” Could he have been her caller? Somehow she doubted he would have gone to the trouble of altering his voice, though.
Who would have gone to the trouble of luring her here only to not show up? It had to be a joke. She sighed over her wasted time. But it didn’t have to be wasted. She could finish the investigation a concussion had ended those few nights ago. Instead of putting away her gun and putting down the flashlight, she leaned her shoulder against the Dumpster and shoved.
The metal creaked and squeaked as it edged slightly across the asphalt. Hell, she hadn’t entirely gained back her strength after the concussion. But the Dumpster seemed heavier tonight. It certainly smelled as if it was full since mingled putrid odors wafted out and overwhelmed her.
One scent—sweet and metallic—was new.
She rose up on tiptoe and shone the flashlight inside the Dumpster. The beam illuminated a man’s face, his skin pale but for the dirt and grease smeared across it and his beard.
“Bernie!” She recognized the homeless man from whom she had taken the statement about the people he had seen flying from the alley.
Maybe that was how Warrick disappeared so quickly from place to place. Usually she would never consider such a fantastic explanation, but at least it was an explanation. And that was more than she had managed to discover on her own.
She waved the flashlight in the homeless man’s face. “Bernie!”
The vagrant’s eyes were closed. Had he passed out drunk? She could smell the liquor, too, that saturated his clothes and oozed from his pores. The beam of light shining in his face didn’t even stir him.
Her pulse quickened and she moved the flashlight down. Horror, over what she saw, rushed up to gag her. But she choked it down just enough to scream.
* * *
He had already been tracking her scent, not surprised that it was leading him to the alley, when he heard her scream. The sound of the terror in her voice raised all the hair on Warrick’s body. She needed him.
But could he come to her like this?
It was after midnight, so he had taken his other form—the form he was from midnight to dawn every night. The form that might frighten her more than what was already in the alley with her. Unless...
He ran to her, legs straining to close the distance between them before she could be hurt again. Before he could hurt her...
But when he burst into the alley, he found her alone, staring into the Dumpster. What had she discovered this time that she shouldn’t have?
Then she turned and discovered...him. Fear had already drained her face of all color, leaving her skin deathly pale in the dark. Now her eyes widened, and another scream rose to her open lips. But she bit it back, as if afraid of startling him. “Stay away,” she murmured, cowering from him.
But the Dumpster was at her back, and he stood between her and the only exit. He was down on all fours, hoping to resemble more dog than werewolf. But dogs weren’t this big, this powerful, and she knew it.
“What are you...?” she asked the question, but he doubted she expected an answer.
She did not know that he could speak in the same voice he used in his human form. She didn’t know anything about werewolves, and she could never learn because the rules of the pack were as strict as the rules of the Secret Vampire Society. Perhaps stricter, because no exceptions were ever made within the pack.
At least they hadn’t been when his father had been the leader. His uncle was unlikely to make exceptions, either, as his pride demanded he be as fearsome a leader as his brother had been—even though he was not nearly as ruthless.
“Get back,” she said, her voice soft but the command unmistakable. “I’m not going to let you finish him off.”
Finish him off? Who? Just what the hell was inside the Dumpster?
He moved closer, hoping to catch a glimpse. But on all fours, he could not see inside the metal bin. He wanted to talk to her, wanted to ease the fear that had her gripping her gun and flashlight tightly as if she was ready to use either as a weapon. But his speaking to her, in his present form, would only scare her more—and put her in more danger.
“Get away!” she said, her voice rising and cracking with her panic. “Leave me alone!”
If only he could...
Every time he left her, trouble found her. Usually here in this damn alley. He moved closer to the Dumpster, needing to know what she had found this time. He needed to know which secret she was at greater risk of discovering.
But in moving closer to the Dumpster, he also moved closer to her. The gun shook as she trained the barrel on him. “I know you can’t understand me,” she said, “but I’m begging you to just leave me—and him—alone.”
Just as he had that first night they’d met, he ignored her commands. And he surged up on his hind legs. With his front ones braced on the edge of the Dumpster, he peered inside. And now he understood her horror and the scream she had probably involuntarily uttered.
He didn’t recognize the man, but he recognized the wound. Someone had torn out the throat of the victim—as he had threatened to do to his enemy. But this man was not his enemy. Neither was Kate.
But she didn’t realize that. Trembling with fear, she stared at him—her eyes wide as if she was afraid to blink in case he attacked.
He wanted to say her name, wanted to soothe her fears. But she probably thought he’d done this— either in his present form or his other one. She had been there the night he’d made this threat to Reagan; that was why she’d shot him.
She looked about to shoot him again. But instead of backing away from her, of leaving her alone, he stepped closer. If only she could see that he was no threat to her...
That he wanted to soothe her fears.
But she breathed fast, in frantic pants. “Please, don’t make me do this...”
He wasn’t growling, wasn’t snarling—wasn’t doing anything to intimidate her but being. And that, with his mammoth size, was intimidating enough.
“Please...” The plea slipped through her lips with a whimper.
She didn’t want to shoot him tonight any more than she had that first night when she’d broken up his fight in this very alley. He understood that now. That he had left her no choice.
He had a choice—he could speak to her, could explain what he was. He wasn’t sure that she would understand, but he was sure that knowing the pack’s secret would put her in danger. No, he had no choice, either. He would rather endure whatever pain she might inflict on him than put Kate’s life at risk. But that urge to comfort and protect her had him moving closer to her.
“Stay back,” she yelled at him, as if raising her voice might make him understand—if he really was just the creature she thought he was.
He had moved too close to her—so close that he’d backed her right up against the Dumpster behind her—the Dumpster she thought held his last victim. And she was scared that she would be his next.
If only he could assure her...
But he had no choice. And neither did she.
She’d shot him once to protect another man. Tonight she lifted the gun and she shot him to protect herself.
The bullet seared through his pelt and then his skin, burying deep in his flesh. He dropped to the asphalt as blood gushed from his wound.
And he heard her scream again...
Chapter 5 (#ulink_9d9e3409-8beb-5cd2-be14-fe4c9e416c9d)
His blood had been spilled again. Even in his human form, Reagan’s sense of smell was extrasensory. It was past dawn now, but no light shone into the alley. If his vision wasn’t extrasensory, too, he might not have noticed the crime scene tape cordoning off the entrance. He’d seen it as he’d stepped right over it.
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Lisa Childs
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A werewolf’s need for vengeance…When Detective Kate Wever shoots a man in the chest, she expects him to die…and to stay dead. But it seems that Warrick James is not like other men. What he is, though, is a mystery that can only lead her deeper into danger.As she learns about Warrick’s all-consuming quest to stop whatever monster killed his father, Kate realises that things in the underworld of Zantrax City are not as they seem. And it isn’t long before Kate is swept up in a passion unlike any other…