by Heather Karn
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Continue for a sneak peek at Second Lineage.
Sneak Peek of Second Lineage
The First Blood Trilogy, Book 2
By: Heather Karn
Chapter 1
Even with the air conditioner running, Raven’s truck still smelled of dog breath. Jackson, the team’s resident wolf shifter, had spent the first six hours of our trip panting at me and Shannon’s feet in the front, and the truck still stunk. Shannon had been patient with her familiar when he’d kept adjusting himself on the floor of the truck, but when he’d set his head on my foot, I almost nudged him away. His pleading, puppy dog eyes kept my foot still. It wasn’t his fault there wasn’t any room in the truck for him in human form, which had led to his current circumstance of being shoved at our feet, his overgrown body taking up what little leg room we’d started with.
Rain pelted the windshield as Raven drove his truck down the interstate toward our destination. All night we’d dealt with wave after wave of torrential downpours to the point where a human wouldn’t be able to see. It was good Raven wasn’t human. The man never slowed the truck once. No one else in the truck appeared to worry about him being able to drive since most had nodded off within the last few hours, leaving me the only person awake with Raven. Mom’s rule growing up was that someone always had to stay awake with the driver, and I was going to obey that rule. Though Raven didn’t appear sleepy, that could always change, and I didn’t want to start off this trip by experiencing an accident.
We had yet to stop for food. I’d thought it a relief that Lee had the foresight to pack a snack bag, but its contents had been raided already by the hungry shifters and my brother, leaving little left for the rest of us. Not that I’d been hungry at the time. I certainly was now that it had been over twelve hours since I’d eaten anything. I’d been sipping from a water bottle for a while to stave off my hunger, and because of that I needed to use the bathroom. Raven’s dark, brooding mood and expression had kept my mouth shut about it, though.
“Dawn’s in a few hours,” Raven murmured, his silky voice soft enough not to wake the others, yet it still held a lethal edge to it. “We should stop for food. And you need to sleep.” My Elite trainer scowled at me.
I didn’t have the energy to glare back, and I didn’t want to comment on his poor attitude, which was usually grumpy. This felt worse than usual. Sitting beside him, my back resting against the flipped up center console, I was much too close to make a comment for him to lighten up. I was in striking range.
“I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”
“Your stomach is going to wake everyone in the car, and we could all use some time out of the truck to stretch our legs. We’re almost an hour to the St. Louis city limits, and there’s no way I’m going in there unless the sun is up. Plus, if we show up to the gate looking like we do, the security detail won’t let us in, even with General Davis’s direction to let us pass.”
He was right. We likely looked like crap. After reading the letter that my dad had written before I was born that told me to go see this Gerald fella, we’d packed what little we could and were in the car within an hour, with me taking extra time because I was too stubborn to allow anyone to help me, even with my injured leg from the cyclops and witch attack. Something about the teardrop shaped pendant my father had left for me, and that was stuffed in my pocket, had spooked most of the team. Raven had told me about the fall of the Third and Fourth vamlure Houses, and apparently the teardrop was the medallion of the Third House. No one knew why my father had sent it to me, if I was from the Third House or whatever, but we all knew one thing: someone had tried to kill me because I had the pendant. Now we were searching for Gerald so he could tell me why.
Our biggest problem was that the address listed in my dad’s letter was somewhere in St. Louis, and the city had been destroyed eight years ago. At first no one knew what was happening. All the news would report was that citizens should stay indoors. Then word reached outside of the city that a few werewolves had gone on a rampage, biting and tearing people apart. Those who survived shifted to the full werewolf form instantly. Local warlocks fought to contain the creatures until help could arrive. In the end, the city was a total loss. Any other details hadn’t made it to the news stations and to the general population, but I had a gut feeling Raven and Avery knew more about that battle than they were mentioning.
Also, Raven was right: we looked like crap. Though I’d changed out of my burned and tattered clothes from the attack at my parents’ house before leaving, I still smelled of charred cloth and blood. My makeup and hair were a mess, and a few others in the group were just as mussed. Even Raven wasn’t looking his best. We needed to stop and regroup.
“Okay. What are you thinking?” I asked him as he signaled and pulled off the expressway on the outskirts of some random city.
“I’ll swing through an open fast food restaurant and then stop at the first hotel we see. I hope you aren’t picky. We’re going for cheap.”
“I’m not picky. How much money do we have?”
He shook his head. “I grabbed what cash I had, and so did the others. We try to keep a bit on hand for situations like this. I’d rather not use credit cards in case whoever came after you has access to our records. So, we’ll be eating and sleeping on the light side until we figure out what’s going on.”
We’d also all left our cell phones back at the team’s mansion, as well as anything else that could be tracked. Lee’s laptop had come along since the smarty pants had software making him untraceable. Even though I had a photographic memory, I still wasn’t as tech savvy as he was.
“I didn’t think to have cash on hand,” I admitted, a bit sheepish for my lack of planning.
Raven rubbed his forehead as I pointed out a restaurant that appeared open. “Don’t blame yourself. I should have mentioned it to you. So far, I’m not the greatest trainer.”
“You’re not the worst either.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” His lips twitched in an almost tiny smile. It was a rare sight that he did anything more than frown, so a twitch was progress in my mind.
“Anytime.”
Pulling into the restaurant’s drive-thru woke up several of the truck’s occupants, but they either moaned and closed their eyes again or sighed and stayed quiet. Lee didn’t even wake up, but I caught him, from my angle in the rear view mirror, snuggle into Avery’s shoulder where his head rested. Avery, our snow leopard shifter, caught my eye and winked. He was our softhearted male of the group, Raven’s opposite and best friend. Avery was also Lee’s trainer, and a much more patient teacher.
“Where are we headed, boss?” he muttered when Raven finished ordering and drove around the building to the designated window to pay and wait for our order. Raven hadn’t bothered to ask what anyone wanted. Instead, he’d chosen three different breakfast sandwiches and ordered enough of each to feed us all.
“A hotel. You and Luella will be our lookouts since you’ve gotten the most sleep.”
Luella, the naiad, had crashed the moment we’d gotten into the car, and she hadn’t woken up since. Well, she’d moaned and gone back to sleep. Avery had made it an hour before succumbing to sleep. Now that Raven was talking, I had a feeling that they’d fallen asleep on purpose, so that some of the team would be rested for an emergency.
“Sounds good, boss.”
With a sigh, Raven sat his head back against the headrest, his eyes unfocused as he waited to pay. It was the first time that I’d seen him look tired tonight. Maybe the thought of a soft, warm bed was as tempting for him as it was for me.
“You should stop calling me that, Avery. I’m not your boss right now, and we have to blend in.”
“You’re still the team leader though,” the shifter chuckled. “Don’t think you’re going to give up that position so easily. No one else wants it.”
An older woman opened the window to the building and requested payment, and her scent drifted to me. When she closed the window, Raven turned his face toward me and gave me a sly grin, which wasn’t the same as a happy smile, so it didn’t count.
“What is she?” he murmured in an even softer voice.
So, even though we were undercover as normal citizens, my training continued.
“Wolf shifter.”
“Good. And the two men with her?”
The two men with her? I hadn’t even bothered to notice them. Slapping a hand over my face, I blamed my foggy brain for missing them.
“I don’t know. I kind of wasn’t paying attention.”
A soft growl escaped Raven’s lips and I whipped my head around to face him. “Use your nose, Koda. Pay attention. It’ll be the difference between life and death. What do you smell?”
Closing my eyes and refusing to think about an irritated Raven sitting beside me, I breathed in again. Grease was high on the scent radar. It permeated everything. Then there was the wolf shifter at the window, who should be giving Raven his change back any second. Breathing again, I searched past the other scents to focus on new ones. They were musky, yet clean, an odd scent that could only belong to one shifter species.
“Bear.” My eyes popped open as the female wolf shifter opened the window to hand Raven his change and to warn him our sandwiches would take just a minute longer. “They’re both black bear shifters.”
“Good. Anything else you want to add?”
“Anything I’m supposed to add?”
Raven shot me a glare. “Seriously?”
I rolled my eyes, my exhaustion and hunger leaving me playing a dangerous game with my less than patient trainer. It left me without much sense of self preservation. Letting my head fall back, I sighed and reached out with all of my senses.
Tinges of conversation met my sensitive ears, and I perked up. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make out a single word, but I could still hear the voices. It was the two men holding a conversation, and it irritated me that I couldn’t eavesdrop.
“Can you hear what they’re saying?” I murmured to Raven, tipping my head toward him and opening my eyes. He was already staring at me, putting our faces inches apart.
“Yes, but I am a bit closer to them.”
“One sounds like he’s from a southern state. He has a drawl.”
“Correct.” Raven cocked a grin at me. “He’s not quite a gentleman, though.”
Arching an eyebrow at him, I was ready to ask if I even wanted to know what that meant when the woman opened the window again, this time with our food. She handed out three bags and bid us a goodnight before going back to her business inside. Shannon shifted beside me at the smell of the food as Raven rolled his window and I dropped a bag in her lap. The heat from the bag and the contact woke her with a start causing the witch to kick out, nailing Jackson in the side. His growl was menacing as he jerked awake, baring his teeth in our direction. When he saw who he threatened, his lips lowered and his ears flipped back to lay against his head, appearing as remorseful as a wolf his size could.
“I’m so sorry, Jacks,” Shannon crooned, leaning forward to stroke her familiar’s head. “I didn’t mean to kick you.” He licked the back of her hand in his own form of apology, then glared at me. Was it that obvious I’d been the cause of this situation?
I shrugged. “Am I really supposed to hold three bags of food? If so, I get to eat them all.”
“Not without me,” Raven grumbled, his sour mood returning as he pulled out onto the highway and directly into a gas station. “Shannon, take your dog for a walk inside and grab us all something to drink. I think he could use some time to stretch his legs and an attitude adjustment. And prepay the gas, won’t you?”
Jackson raised his upper lip in a silent snarl, which I would never have dared to turn on Raven, but my trainer shocked me by chuckling as he climbed from the truck. The wolf shifter soothed under Shannon’s hand as she ran it along his back before she opened the truck door.
“He’s tired, Jacks. And hungry. Maybe next time you all should remember to leave something for the rest of us to eat, especially the person who’s driving.” While Shannon’s tone was gentle, her words had the desired effect. Jackson deflated as Avery agreed, shaking Lee to wake him.
“You’d better go grab something to drink before Raven finishes,” Avery murmured to Shannon. “You know he won’t be too pleased to wait for you.”
“On our way.”
The witch slid from the truck and waited for Jackson to finagle his way out as well. In the end, he shifted to his skin without warning, giving me an undesired view of him before I could slam my eyes shut. His chuckle followed him out of the cab, and when it turned to canine chuffing, I opened my eyes a fraction to glare at him. Jackson gave me a toothy grin before turning tail to follow Shannon into the gas station.
Avery leaned forward in the middle seat and set a hand on my shoulder. “How are you holding up, Koda?”
I shrugged. “It’s pretty clear that chances of us finding anything are about half a percent at the most. Considering that, I’m fine. Don’t hold out hope is my new motto.”
“And what about the attack? Now that you’ve had some time to adjust to your friend Clara allowing the witch and chameleon near you and all of that?”
Craning my head so I could barely see him, I drew my eyebrows low over my eyes. “Did Raven put you up to this train of questioning?”
“Nope. It’s all me.”
Luella jumped in after a loud yawn, and from my angle, I couldn’t see her. “Raven is good at making sure we’re all physically safe, but sometimes he isn’t as intent on our psychological welfare. Not to say he’s cold, but our Captain isn’t as breakable on the inside as most people. At least that’s how he portrays himself.”
“He’s not emotionless,” Avery hissed back as the pump finished filling the gas tank. “He’s just had more practice holding back his emotions and not falling apart, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t dealt with loss and suffering.”
“I didn’t say he was emotionless. He’s always grumpy,” Luella snickered. “Or at least he was until Koda drank his blood.”
The truck door opened before I could retaliate against her implication. Focusing my attention out the windshield after sitting straight forward again, I was jostled a little as Raven pulled himself back into the driver’s seat. Now that I’d drank blood, I was a bit more graceful and strong, allowing me to not have to crawl into the tall truck. Shannon, on the other hand, wasn’t gifted with my height, and as she and Jackson returned with our drinks, she appeared quite small.
“Remind me again why I have to sit in the middle where there’s no leg room?” I grumbled as Shannon handed the bags up to Luella before coming back to her seat beside me.
“Because your legs are too long to sit here with Jackson at your feet.” The witch winked at me from where she stood waiting for Jackson to leap into the truck. “Plus, you’re the only person Raven can bite in frustration who won’t die.”
“Doesn’t mean I won’t lean over her to bite you,” Raven grumbled, sticking his hand inside one of the bags on my lap to dig out a breakfast sandwich. While we waited for the witch and wolf to find their seats again, Raven inhaled the meal. Luella passed a water bottle up from the back and he took it from me when I handed it over as we rolled out of the gas station.
A few blocks later he turned us into a hotel that I wasn’t sure was even open anymore, but then I caught sight of the neon open sign near a dimly lit office. The building wasn’t completely run down, but it certainly needed a new paint job. Raven had been right when he said we’d be conserving our money.
“And I’ll cut your tongue out,” Raven shot back. Someone desperately needed some sleep.
The small glimpse he’d given me of fatigue earlier hadn’t resurfaced, but Raven was moving much slower than normal as he climbed out and moved to the truck bed to grab his duffle bag. Then again, we’d all been cramped in this truck for hours without moving. We’d been given one bathroom break but half of the car had slept through it, and I hadn’t needed to go then. I did now.
“Hurry up,” I whined at Jackson as the others crawled out of the truck. “I have to pee.”
“Koda, you always have to pee,” Avery chuckled, sliding down from the truck. His shock of blond hair reflected off a nearby streetlamp, and again I was reminded that Raven was right that we needed to stop for a few hours. The snow leopard’s short hair was a mess. Whatever he’d used to style his hair had it standing at every angle as well as being plastered to his head in various spots.
“Well it’s not like it hasn’t been twelve hours.”
My grumbling fell on deaf ears as the team made our way to the hotel office to check in. We were in various states of disarray and the male clerk behind the desk took in our appearance right away and asked what accommodations we wanted. At least we were in luck that they still had a room available. However, that was where our luck ended. It held a king bed and a couch, and the hotel didn’t even have cots.
Without blinking, Raven paid for the room and led the way to our room for the night. Or what was left of it. All the while I looked for signs of who had the bed and who got the floor. No one was claiming spaces. Either they’d done this so many times that they knew where they’d sleep or none of them cared.
“Okay, Luella and Avery, you’re on guard duty,” Raven announced the moment the door closed behind Lee as I surveyed the room. Thankfully it didn’t stink, and it appeared far nicer than the outside of the building. “If you notice anything out of the ordinary, I mean anything, wake me.”
