Darkness Bound

by Stella Cameron

  “The last one what?” Despite Sally’s cryptic tone, Leigh didn’t feel nervous, just intensely curious.

  “I’ve said too much.” Sally gave a secretive smile and left again. Lunch patrons were dribbling in and she went to pour coffee and take orders.

  The two men at the bar slid off their stools and turned to leave, but before they could Leigh told them what they owed in an overly cheery voice.

  Both of them swung back, amazement in their eyes. “You’re new,” one said at last. “Just put it on a tab—Jerry’s or mine. Don’t make no difference.”

  “Can’t do that.” It took Leigh all the courage she had to keep a smile on her face. She had looked up the prices on a list and was ready. “Wouldn’t look good if I messed up on my first morning.”

  “Gabriel carries it in his head,” Jerry said. “You let him know later.”

  “Just a minute.” She wrote the amount on a sheet in a receipt book, tore off the top copy and passed it to them, still smiling brightly. “I hear we’re thinking about putting in a regular customer discount. Kind of like an ice cream store where you get a punch card toward a free something eventually.”

  At some point the two men saw they weren’t getting around Leigh. They each pulled money from their pockets and slapped it down on the counter. “Have one yourself,” the man called Jerry said grudgingly, but he didn’t give her enough money. They turned and left, grunting and grumbling all the way.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Leigh laughed to herself as she put the payments in the cash drawer and the coins supposedly for her drink in a glass behind the front bottles of whiskey.

  Making a difference to the business, helping to turn it into a financial success, was what she was setting out to do, and it looked as if she would have to do more than stay in her office to get that done.

  She was still feeling warm from her triumph with the reluctant payers when two boys of about twenty appeared and started setting tables. They nodded at Leigh and she noted at once that they were almost identical. These would be the twins.

  “I’m Leigh,” she said in a loud voice.

  One boy nodded, the other inclined his head to let long, straight brown hair slide away from one eye. “We know,” he said. “He’s Cuss and I’m Jim. We’re twins.”

  “Ah-hah,” Leigh said. “Nice to meet you, Cuss and Jim. I’ve got a twin, too, a sister. I like it, how about you?”

  They both shrugged but tipped up the corners of their mouths.

  She served three more customers before she got another set of tab masters and followed the same routine as the first time. Fortunately, the two men and one woman were too busy arguing to notice the hilarity among several nearby customers who were listening in.

  A few minutes later she prevailed, although this time she didn’t get a tip. But she did when a man came in on his own and showed signs of leaving without paying. Once more she put the extra money in the glass.

  She began to glance at the doors, watching for Gabriel to return, but it was another hour before she saw him and by then the cash register was looking healthy and her “glass for extras,” as she called it to herself, was half full.

  Unfortunately, when Gabriel returned he didn’t look like a man on the hunt for cheerful news. He joined her behind the bar, planted his hands on his hips, and stared off into space.

  He served the next couple who came in and didn’t say a word when they started to leave without paying.

  Leigh caught the expectant eyes of two women who had watched her for a very long time, their delight evident.

  Right, she thought, now or never. “Excuse me,” she called after the couple. She had heard Gabriel call the woman Merna. “Merna, can I have a word before you go?”

  Apparently irritated, Merna turned back and her companion came with her. They both had the florid faces of perpetual barflies.

  “You forgot this,” Leigh said, passing over the bill she had hurriedly prepared. She waited for Gabriel to say something but he kept quiet.

  Merna glared, first at Gabriel, then at Leigh. Without another word, her friend forked over the money and off they went.

  The two-woman audience laughed until they almost fell out of their chairs. “Got yourself a shark there, Gabriel. About time, too, from what I hear.”

  One evil stare from Gabriel and the women decided it was time to go. They left, chuckling all the way out.

  “What are you doing?” Gabriel said to Leigh.

  She threw up her hands. “Oh, my, I forgot Jazzy. I’ve got to take him out, then I’ll get back to the office.”

  “If you keep pushing people around like that, we’ll lose customers,” Gabriel said.

  Leigh took her glass from behind the whiskey bottles and emptied the money on the counter. “Tips,” she said. “Give them to the rest of the staff. And what’s the point of customers who don’t pay?”

  chapter SIX

  NILES WAS CRUISING from Gabriel’s Place to Sean’s cabin on his motorcycle when he got a general alert from Island Emergency Services on his radio. A man called Cody Willet had gone missing from Langley in midafternoon.

  The missing persons report had been made by one of Cody’s fellow workers at a local government office.

  Within minutes another announcement said that Cody’s wife called off the alert because, she claimed, Cody was only having a tantrum following a “domestic.”

  Three definite kidnap victims so far, and all had been women. Niles had started to wonder if Cody was the first male, but with his return they were back to female victims. Gabriel’s Molly had been missing for three days and then turned up with no recollection of what had happened to her. Violet, another missing woman, had also returned with some infuriating amnesia, but she seemed happy enough to be back driving her small aluminum trailer from which she sold sandwiches, coffee, and whatever her imagination came up with.

  Only Rose, who worked for a used book store on Gulliver Lane and as a relief school bus driver, was still missing.

  A short communication from Sean wiped out all thoughts of the kidnappings. A forceful “scramble” warning was his message. Scramble was their no-questions-answered alert code. It wasn’t a question of whether Niles was needed by his brother werehounds, but of how fast he could get where they wanted him to be. A bad day was turning into a worse night.

  Sean had already left his cabin when Niles arrived. Niles quickly stripped off his clothes. This was the first time he had gone hound in many weeks, but he changed easily and rapidly, and there was little pain.

  Shaking his russet brown fur and stretching his back, he leaped out of the open cabin door and immediately took cover in dense trees. “Sean,” he called mentally. “Which way?”

  No immediate response came, leaving Niles to prowl back and forth, raising his head to catch shifts in atmospheric mood from miles around. What drifted to him was a nerve-scrubbing odor of roiling fury.

  “Niles,” Sean finally slammed into Niles’s mind. “Fully engaged here. Three of Brande’s pack. They’re guarding something they aren’t letting us see, but they drew us here.”

  Niles focused intently. Brande, leader of the renegade werewolf pack on the island, and the hounds’ sworn enemy, usually worked out of sight. For him to emerge, or to have members of the pack emerge, signaled inevitable violent action ahead.

  “I’m coming now,” Niles said, pounding a zigzag track through the trees. “Is Brande with them?”

  “No. There’s Booker, Seven, and Mark. They’re looking for a fight.”

  “Don’t engage them. Stand off.”

  Niles scaled a giant fir and threw himself from tree to tree, staring down, searching for signs that would tell him where his hounds had first encountered Brande’s wolves. With the steady shrinking of safe territory and gradual loss of pack members, inbreeding had weakened the werewolves, but they remained sly and deadly.

  “They’re trying to keep us distracted while they move something,” Sean said. “Innes and Ethan are wit
h me. Should we alert the others?”

  “No. We’ll call them if we need them. Can you make out what they’re hiding? Anything about it at all?” Speeding up, he hurtled his sinuous body in the direction of the others.

  Rain began to fall and quickly turned into a torrent.

  “Niles… ”

  His body prickled. Horror was something he didn’t expect to hear from Sean. “Still coming your way,” Niles said.

  “I’m sure they’ve got a human,” Sean said, very low.

  “Can you see who it is?”

  “No,” Sean said. “But I think they’re using her to pull us into their territory.”

  Her? It took all Niles had not to check his stride. Who was it? He couldn’t allow the possible answer to get in his way.

  His fear from the moment he had decided to pursue a mate was that Brande would find out and try to stop him. If the wolves knew about Leigh—and it could only be a matter of time before they found out—they would do anything to stop a mating. Anything that made the hounds stronger, or even worse, put them on the road to complete human acceptance, was a deadly threat to Brande’s kind and their plans to control the island.

  “If they’re trying to get us onto their land, they won’t move away unless we follow,” Niles told Sean.

  For a werehound to trespass on werewolf territory was to risk the temporary paralysis the pack could cast on intruders. The wolves routinely used it to capture human prey and make them submit to pack rule.

  Niles felt the proximity of both hound and wolf. “I’m here,” he told Sean. “Innes, Ethan, do whatever I tell Sean to do.”

  Congested, constant movement showed up ahead. Niles scaled a taller tree, launched himself to the next one, and looked down. At least he knew his hounds would do as he told them. In the Middle East they had learned the perils of breaking protocol—the hard way—when they lost Gary.

  All three of Brande’s wolves were visible. Booker’s distinctive white ruff shone in the darkness and the others crowded in beside him. The hounds, always smarter, had ranged themselves behind several big, jagged trunks of fallen trees.

  “Hold it where you are,” Niles ordered and backed down to take a closer look at a twisted little heap behind the wolves. It was obviously a body—a body with light hair.

  His control chipped. Leaping as a hound could and a wolf could not, he flew, clawing his way through the air to land yards from his enemies. “Innes, show yourself but keep your distance from me. All of you; I will attack Booker to draw the other two closer to him. You know the drill. Back of the neck and hang on. Expose the spine.”

  “No,” Sean yelled. “Wait. We’ve got to think. What if the others come?”

  Even as Sean argued, Innes moved into Niles’s peripheral vision. “I’m going in now,” was all Niles said before exploding onto the scene and throwing himself on top of Booker.

  Both of the other wolves went for Innes, leaving Sean and Ethan the seconds of advantage they had to have. Sean’s blue-black coat glinted in the night. He took off and landed on one of the wolves. Niles was too engrossed to see which one but he heard a bellow and the crack of an opening jaw. He could only hope it was Sean’s jaw and not that of the wolf he had attacked.

  Booker convulsed beneath Niles, folded himself into a ball, then flung out his limbs with mighty force. Niles feared he would be dislodged, but his teeth had found muscle and pierced deep enough to drag a scream from Booker.

  Niles bit deeper and felt when he passed through muscle to the softer tissue beneath. There was the scrape of bone on bone… his incisors on Booker’s spine.

  Blood spurted, momentarily filming Niles’s eyes, but he blinked his vision clear and the battle raged all around him. He did see the moment when one of Sean’s back legs dislocated and hung, useless, but there was nothing he could do to help. Sean fought on, attacking with more viciousness than ever despite the crushing agony he must feel.

  Niles felt the seconds and minutes passing. He heard only panting, rasping breath and cries of pain. This was taking too long. At any moment more wolves could appear, and the longer the woman lay on the ground without help, the less likely it was that they could save her.

  Suddenly, from the darkest depths of the forest, a tall, winged creature burst through the dense trees.

  A hoarse female voice called out, “Take the wolves,” and Niles was knocked aside by the anonymous being.

  Closer now, Niles could see that it wasn’t wings, but an all-enveloping hooded cloak that streamed behind the newcomer. He threw the hounds away from the fray and took on all three wolves.

  Snarling shredded the night. Again and again, a wolf lunged at the figure in black, great teeth glittering, eyes red with rage. A geyser of blood spurted from the tall creature, the newcomer. But it diminished and stopped almost at once.

  There was a moment of utter motionlessness when the wolves, their sides heaving and jaws loosened in readiness for the death strike, faced the thing they must kill before it wiped them out.

  Seven broke the deadlock first, snarling, gray fur on end, extending claws like scythes and blasting himself into the air.

  He exposed his belly, and in a flash Niles soared to tear him open from neck to groin, shaking him, all but turning him inside out, while the dark one whipped to face Booker.

  The third wolf grabbed the back of Seven’s neck and dragged him after Booker, who was already backing away toward the pack compound at the north boundary of the forest.

  For a moment, silence fell like an impenetrable layer from the skies.

  The creature moved again, started after the wolves.

  “Let ’em go.” The hoarse voice, the same female voice they had heard before, came from the cover of thick bushes. “You’ve done your bit.”

  In a sweep of flowing garb, the creature turned and Niles saw what he had expected—fangs withdrawing beneath the hood. What else had such strength, but a vampire?

  He seemed to dissolve.

  “Vampire,” Innes muttered. “When did vampires start siding with werehounds?”

  Niles didn’t answer. He went directly to the woman the wolves had left behind. From the corner of his eye he noticed a movement in the bushes, but it gave him no sense of threat, nor did the appearance of a plump female figure swathed in purple.

  He sniffed the fallen woman and gently caught at her shoulder to turn her over. Relief gladdened and shamed him. It wasn’t Leigh. Slowly, Sean walked over to Niles, his injury already mending.

  “It’s Rose,” Sean said, “they’ve killed her.” He shook his head as he spoke to Niles. “This is part of a bigger plot. Brande wants something we haven’t even guessed at and it’s deadly.”

  “I believe they want to control us, all of us, including the humans,” Niles answered. “They want to have this island all to themselves.”

  Without warning a tiny silver-gray cat streaked toward Rose’s body and prepared to attack Niles. It rose to its hind legs and spread long claws like curved needles. Niles looked into violet eyes that radiated a warning. He wasn’t fool enough to dismiss this cat because it was little bigger than a guinea pig.

  “Skillywidden! Stop!” Sally called from where she stood near the bushes.

  This was only the second time Sally, who worked with Cliff at Gabriel’s, had acknowledged her fae identity to Niles. The first was when she told him about Leigh’s existence.

  Leaning against Niles’s immovable shoulder, Sally knelt beside Rose and lifted matted hair out of the woman’s discolored face. Bending over the dead body, Sally sniffed Rose’s mouth. “It’s a poison,” she said. “A poison of the blood.”

  The cat’s eyes narrowed to slits and it backed off, looking from one to the other of the hounds. She sidled up to Sean and rubbed against his legs. “She’s looking for a sympathetic friend,” he said, laughing, and the cat instantly slunk away to hide herself in the folds of Sally’s purple robes.

  “What kind of poison?” Niles asked. He could communicate with
the fae while he was a hound, something impossible with humans other than those with paranormal gifts.

  “A poison of incompatibility,” the woman said. “Rose was given blood she couldn’t tolerate. This will happen again—the wolves are using humans to experiment.”

  “We’ve got to warn everyone,” Ethan said.

  “We’ve got to be smarter than Brande,” Sally said. “Panic would play into his hands. Those who have returned without harm must be watched but not yet alerted to what we know. Am I right, Niles?”

  He nodded. “Yes, absolutely right. But Rose’s body should be found, to make people more cautious.”

  “That depends,” Sally said, and there was no mistaking the sadness in her eyes. She stood and produced a sheet of sparkling gossamer, which she spread over Rose’s body. Sally bowed her head. “Go away now, all of you. You’re finished here. Don’t say anything unless someone else tells you Rose is dead. Now go, and protect the vulnerable. There could be more like Rose before this is over.”

  Niles wanted to ask about the vampire but Sally and Rose had disappeared.

  chapter SEVEN

  YESTERDAY HAD BEEN ROUGH. Leigh had hoped Niles would come by last night, or call to ask her how she had made out the rest of the day at Gabriel’s maybe. He had done neither and there had been no sign of him this morning.

  It shouldn’t matter whether he came by or called.

  One of the twins, she thought it was Cuss, knocked and put himself halfway into the office. “Molly says you’re wanted out front,” he said, looking edgy.

  “Did she say why?”

  He swallowed. “Nope. But she’s in one of her… moods.”

  Leigh didn’t like being ordered to do anything but she disliked confrontation more. “I’ll be right there,” she said.

  When Molly saw Leigh coming she pointed to a table in the bar as if she were giving an order to a dog.

  Leigh muttered, “Down, boy… Over there, boy—” under her breath as she followed the other women.