by Rider, C. P.
"Good thing you're hot," I returned, smiling blearily at him over the edge of my glass.
"Quiet, Neely. I was talking to the Macallan."
Chandra laughed.
I glanced around the room, noting that Dan and Farrah were now talking to someone at a table near the jukebox. The song was Kiss's Rock and Roll All Nite, so it was good and loud and would drown out anything I whispered. "Are you going to censure Dan?"
Lucas said nothing, only lifted his drink to his lips.
Are you? I asked in his head.
I can't discuss this with you.
Understood. It was frustrating, but I really did understand. I wasn't a group member, and therefore not privy to private group information. Asking him about it was putting him in a bad position and it was a jerk thing for me to do.
"I'm sorry, Lucas. I'd never want to put you in a bad position with your group. I apologize for asking about Dan and for letting it slip that I knew about the convocation." I looked at Chandra. "I apologize to you, too."
"No worries. I didn't realize it was a secret." She lowered her head a fraction. "Apologies, Alpha."
"You can make it up to me by topping off my drink," he grumbled.
"Opportunist," she said, but poured another measure of Macallan in his glass anyway.
"What about me? How can I make it up to you?"
He faced me, leaning in with his whole body, and whispered into my ear, "Oh, I'll think of something." Goosebumps rose on every inch of my skin.
"It's almost midnight," Roberto the cookie-eating, beer-drinking champion called out. "Ten."
The rest of the room, including Lucas and me, joined in. "Nine."
"Eight." The center of my back itched. Someone was staring at me.
"Seven." I spun slowly around to see who it was.
"Six." Dan had moved back to the table by the mural wall, and now leaned against a painted saguaro cactus. I couldn't help wishing that the plants grew in Sundance and that the one on the wall was real and driving its spikes into his flesh.
"Five." He continued staring. So did I.
"Four." We counted along with the rest of the room. We were the only ones not smiling.
"Three." When I didn't look away first, Dan's nose and mouth elongated. I was challenging him, and his coyote was reacting. If he changed here, Lucas would attack him.
"Two." I should look away. It was the right thing to do. The nonviolent thing to do.
I didn't look away.
"One."
The room exploded with boisterous voices. "Happy New Year!"
Dan broke eye contact first when Farrah pulled his mouth to hers.
Lucas spun me around, pulled me off my stool and into his arms, and kissed me. Everyone cheered the new year. Some howled. A few hissed, and one, Chandra, cackled happily.
I twined my arms around Lucas's neck and kissed him back like I meant it. A couple of people catcalled us, someone let out a sexual-sounding growl, and most of the room laughed.
When we came up for air, I went up on my tiptoes, rested my forehead against his, and asked, "Do I still have pajamas at your place?"
"What difference does it make?" He wrapped his arms tighter around my waist, which reminded me that there was too much Tequila in there. "I plan to have you naked and under me ten seconds after we close the bedroom door.
"You make an excellent point." I booped his nose with my index finger, and hiccupped.
He chuckled and pulled me tight against him. Mistake.
I hiccupped again. My forehead broke out with sweat, and the contents of my stomach rolled around greasily. "Um, I'm going to—" Hic! "—grab some air. Oh God." Hic! I started toward the restroom in the back of the bar, but the front door was closer, and my stomach was growing unhappier by the second. "Don't you dare follow me, Lucas."
He laughed. "Don't barf too close to Chandra's door or she'll make you clean it up."
I heard Chandra's response as I raced outside. "Who's barfing?"
The door swung shut behind me and gulped breaths of cool night air. The sweat dried on my face and my stomach calmed. Crisis averted so far.
A deep voice emerged from the darkness surrounding the bar. "Spiker."
"For the love of all that is pure and holy in this world, can't I have one nice evening? Just one?" I directed this complaint to the heavens, as if the gods had anything to do with my life.
"Come with me."
"No." Hic! "Who the hell are you?"
The wolf-like figure that emerged from the darkness was like nothing I'd seen before. Upright on its hind legs, the creature appeared to be male, seven feet tall, with thighs like tree trunks and more sharp teeth than should rightly fit in its mouth.
I drew energy from the shifters in the bar, taking nothing from the strange wolf—the power he exuded was sickly, and I didn't want it in me. I focused the energy I'd drawn toward the creature, and attempted to sync my ability with the electrical impulses in his brain.
"Who I am is unimportant. I work for a higher authority, a greater purpose." He extended one long, sinewy arm toward me. "You are needed to support our cause."
"What cause is that?" I was in the creature's mind now but was unable to spike past the wall of noise masking the thinking part of his brain. A desperate buzzing, like flies or bees, blocked me. It was not a diversion for my benefit, either. This is what the wolf carried inside his head at all times.
"The elimination of the paranormal race."
"You're paranormal." Hic! My voice shook a little from the effects of the alcohol, and from undiluted fear. His words reminded me of my demented captor in the sanctuary, Garrett Harris.
"I am." From his matter-of-fact tone, I took it that I was supposed to instantly understand why he would want to destroy a race to which he belonged.
"Who are you?" I edged toward the front door as I hammered at the wall of noise in his head with my ability.
The creature lurched forward. "My name is Legion. For we are many."
"Where are you from? Who sent you?"
"Everywhere," Legion said, "and nowhere. I was sent to you by the leader." He smiled, mouth stretching wide to reveal two bristling rows of sharp teeth. "Come. You will be poured into the hand of our leader, sifted into his furnace. As with lightning-struck sand that becomes glass, you will be forever changed. Once you have metamorphosed into your true form, the leader will take his almighty hammer to you again and shatter you, collect the shards, melt them into an idol to serve the cause."
"No." Terror ripped through me and I lost my place in his head. Flashbacks from the sanctuary flashed in front of my eyes. Where I was held captive, forced to spike my own kind for a crazed human’s benefit. Where I was held down and bitten, over and over, in an attempt to change me into a telepath-spiker-shifter crossbreed. Where I was told I was already a crossbreed, though that wasn't true—couldn't be true.
"Your will doesn't matter." The wolf's golden glowing eyes twitched, and he shook himself as if cold. "You don't matter, spiker, and neither do I. There is only the cause."
I recovered from my moment of remembered terror and reached for Legion's mind, searching for a foothold. His brainwaves clanked against mine, a tuneless jangle played on a demonic instrument.
"Poor thing. You're so weak," the wolf cooed. He held out a massive paw with claws like curved blades—beckoning, reaching. "The leader will make you strong."
Panic electrified me and I reacted without thinking. I didn't have a proper hold on him, and I knew that if my spike didn't work, I risked angering him and triggering a violent response. He was stronger than me, faster, and he had something all shifters did that I didn't—the ability to heal himself.
Still, I had no choice but to try.
With the energy I'd drawn from the shifters in the bar behind me, I spiked the wolf creature. He howled in pain, growling and snapping and whining as I spiraled inside his skull, twisting ineffectually in the buzzing cavern that was his mind, searching for something to grasp.
There was nothing. His brain was an endless pool of futility. An infinite emptiness.
I fell to my knees on the dusty sidewalk, coarse grit digging into my skin. The harder I tried to spike through the buzzing, the weaker I felt. Pain roared through my brain and body, and blood oozed from my eyes like tears.
My only consolation was that the wolf creature was hurting, too. He howled one last time as his claws scrabbled on the asphalt, then fled into the desert winter night, severing the connection.
Chapter Four
"I should leave Sundance."
It was one a.m., and five of us had gathered in Lucas's living room—Lucas, Chandra, Dan, Amir, and me. Dan had dropped Farrah off on his way over, so I was spared having to tolerate both of them.
"Not on your life, and I don't want to ever hear you say that again." Lucas stood in the middle of the room, glaring at me. I'd scared the hell out of him tonight, he'd said on the drive home, and the way the color had drained from his complexion when he burst through the bar door and saw me on my hands and knees on the dirty sidewalk, blood pouring from my face, I believed him.
"Not permanently. Only for a while." I shivered as I sat on the sofa, tucking my bare feet under me. "Lucas, I'm attracting dangerous people. Putting your people in danger."
Dan made an unkind noise of agreement.
"I can handle this Legion asshat. Don't forget, there aren't many things in the world scarier than me when I'm pissed off." Lucas pulled a blanket from the back of the sofa and wrapped it around me. Then he strode over to the fireplace, where he proceeded to load it with wood from the pile stacked on the floor beside it.
"Only Neely," Chandra said, with a smile, as she handed me a damp cloth.
Once the wolf had gone, the margaritas in my stomach had decided they liked it better on the outside of my body than the inside. I'd cleaned the blood from my face and brushed my teeth in the bathroom when I arrived, but the coolness of the cloth against my overheated face felt like heaven.
If only the rest of me would warm up.
I shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. "Thanks, Chandra." I meant for the cloth, but it covered the compliment, too.
"Yes, only my mate." Lucas hit the emphasis on that last word hard.
Really? I said inside his head. Is the attitude necessary?
Yes. Lucas tossed the last log onto the pile he was making on the fireplace grate, lit the starter, and tossed it onto the wood. He stood, and his shoulders rose and fell with every heaving breath. He wasn't fatigued; he was furious.
"Why do you think you were unable to properly spike the creature?" Amir asked.
"In order to spike someone, I have to sort of latch on to their brainwaves. It's usually an instantaneous thing, but this wolf creature was … different. The energy coming from his brain was discordant. Wrong. Trying to lock onto it was like trying to thread a needle on a sewing machine while it's running."
Dan grumbled under his breath. I did my best to ignore him, but it wasn't easy. Tired and sick to my stomach, with a throbbing ache blooming in my head, I'd just about had my fill of his attitude.
"Did you not have enough energy to spike?" Chandra sat on the arm of the sofa nearest me. "Could that be it?"
"No. I had more than enough. There was an entire bar full of shapeshifters to pull from."
"Did you ask permission before you pulled energy from us?" Dan's expression was pure hatred. "Or did you just take it like you always do?"
Lucas's eyes flashed gold. He gave Dan a look I'd never seen him give anyone before. "Shut. The fuck. Up. Winters."
Dan swallowed, ducked his head. "Yes, Alpha."
"You speak with respect to my mate or you don't speak." Whoa. The alpha growl underlying his words made me want to genuflect.
"Yes, Alpha." A fine sheen of perspiration coated Dan's downturned face. "I apologize."
No one spoke for a good minute after that. Finally, Lucas faced me again. "I felt you drawing energy from me."
"Yes. I drew from everyone, because when I do that I take less from each individual, but I drew more from you due to our … uh, connection. I should add that I drew from everyone except the wolf creature."
"You told me once that you can draw from anyone, including your attackers," Chandra said.
"I can, but his energy nauseated me. I didn't like it."
"The buzzing you described is intriguing." Amir, who had missed the party but had flown to the bar in eagle form after Lucas called to him, perched on the other arm of the sofa in human form. "You said it was like a wall of sound blocking you. Buzzing flies? Bees?"
"Bees, I think. Could have been flies, though. The noise made me think of spoiled food, of things decaying and dying. Emptiness so vast the wolf welcomed the crazed buzzing sounds. I felt it with my ability—there's no satisfying way to explain it to you." I thought about it for a moment. "I could probably spike it into you. Just that one scene, so—"
"No, thanks. It sounds awful." Amir shuddered. "I'll take your word for it."
"That's probably a good idea." I opened the damp cloth and draped it over my face, cooling the skin there. "It was unpleasant, to say the least."
"So, what's the plan?" Amir asked, and from his inflection, I knew he was directing the question to Lucas, not me.
"Tighten the defenses. Increased patrols, staffed checkpoints. Neely, you go nowhere alone. Chandra, Amir, Carter Reid, or I are to accompany you at all times."
I pulled the cloth off my face and peered around the room. Everyone noticed Dan was left out of my security detail. No one commented on it, not even Dan, but he looked damned uncomfortable.
"No need to drag Carter, Chandra, and Amir into this, Lucas."
"Yes, there is a need. You are my mate, and my group will protect you. I command it."
Command it? Take that possessiveness down a notch, pal. And stop saying 'mate' like that. It's weird.
You're my mate. It's not weird.
You know, we don't even know that for sure. We haven't confirmed it.
Jesus, Neely, what do you want? A tracking number? There is no formal confirmation. We are mated. Do you think this kind of mental conversation is normal?
He spoke his next words aloud. "Chandra and Amir, take charge of security detail for Neely. Contact Carter tomorrow and tell him the safety of my mate takes priority over everything."
Dan wisely said nothing, though I felt his resistance. I hadn't told Lucas about my restroom conversation with Farrah, and he hadn't asked. It seemed to me that my mate had something planned for his third-in-command, and whatever it was, it was going to take place at the convocation this week. If I were a bad friend, I'd read Chandra's mind to find out, since I couldn't read Lucas's unless he allowed it. He was good at blocking me.
Unfortunately for my curiosity, however, I was a good friend, and good friends didn't read their friends’ thoughts no matter how badly they wanted information.
Well, mostly.
This time, definitely.
I excused myself from the room after that, since Mr. "I Command It" wasn't listening to me, anyway. Yet another reason why I was conflicted about eventually joining his group. If he was this bossy now, I could only imagine how obnoxious he'd be if he were my alpha leader, too.
Ten minutes into a shower that rode the line between deliciously hot and boiling lava, the shower door slid open. "Everyone left. You planning on coming out of there anytime soon? This is the desert, you know. Water doesn't just fall from the sky."
Although I hadn't heard him enter, Lucas had let me know mind-to-mind that he was coming in. I was still a little jumpy after my torturous time in the sanctuary, and he made a point not to sneak up on me, since the first time he'd startled me after I came home from the sanctuary, I'd whirled around and punched him in the nose. I'd burst into tears when I saw what I'd done, and he'd dried my tears and told me he loved me over and over as he healed his nose and my broken hand.
It was the little thing
s like that, the sweet things, that made me overlook his heavy-handed treatment of my safety. He did it because he loved me, not to be a controlling jerk.
I bent over and combed conditioner through my hair with my fingers, gently detangling as I squeezed water into the bouncy strands. "No."
"No?"
I finished with the conditioner and stood. "No, I don't plan on coming out soon."
"Mind if I stay?"
"Suit yourself."
A lock of dark blond hair fell over his forehead as he leaned against the shower wall. He'd toed off his shoes and socks at the door but hadn't taken off anything else. The enthralled smile on his face as he watched me shower did what ten minutes of hot water hadn't been able to. It warmed me, body and soul.
"If you're going to stay, you might as well get in, Alpha Blacke."
"I'm not your Alpha."
"Mr. Blacke, then."
Lucas stripped out of his dress shirt and jeans while I watched, each snap released, button slipped from its hole, zipper lowered, revealing another beautifully sculpted part of him. When he was nude, he stepped into the shower, those whiskey-colored eyes assessing. Anticipating. Considering.
He was bigger than me, yet he didn't intimidate me with his size. He wasn't a threat—to me, at least. I might not want to be beholden to him as a group member, but deep in my heart I trusted him, and in his presence I could rest.
He held out his arms.
Tears clouded my eyes as I dove into his hug. The man was sex personified, and if he'd come at me hot and heavy, I'd have climbed him like a mountain. Instead, he came at me sweet, and I crumpled.
He held me for a while. I didn't cry after all, but I was wound up tight from my confrontation with the wolf creature and needed to come down. When I was calm again, I smoothed my hands down his back, my fingers feathering over his ass and down his thighs, then making their leisurely way up again. He tightened, every muscle shivering as I stroked, his erection warm and hard against my stomach.
Are you up to this? You weren't feeling well earlier.
I smiled and squeezed his ass again.
He laughed softly. Question answered.
