Chosen Mates (Beasts of the Bay Bundle)

by Bell, Lilith T.

  “Alpha female of the Leones pack.” I knew she hadn’t killed anyone, but it would be like her to come and attempt to investigate as well. It was her territory, after all, and she had clearly been concerned about the murders. That she had thought for even a moment I could have committed them still stung.

  “They weren’t killed by any females.” Tien still had that hollow sound to his voice, but there was certainty in it as well. I watched him closely as he began to circle the spot where I had crouched, holding his hands out, fingers feeling through invisible currents. “There were twelve males.”

  “Twelve?” I echoed. “Twelve males to kill two people?”

  “Three did the hunting. The others kept watch. This was...” His eyes fluttered shut and he swayed on his feet before straightening up again. “This wasn’t about food. It was some kind of death magic.”

  I rose to my feet and looked around us for some signs of the occult. There weren’t any special stones here, no markings on trees. I had never bothered much with magic, though, so wasn’t entirely sure what I could expect. “Like a human sacrifice?”

  “Like vampires feeding.”

  My head turned back to Tien and I stared at him for a moment. “This wasn’t wolves?”

  “It was wolves who killed the joggers,” Tien said carefully, “but I know what I’m feeling. This is vampiric feeding. They took flesh, but they took more than that. They fed on the lives of their victims.”

  “Shifters can’t be vampires. We’re too closely tied to life. Every time a vampire’s tried to turn one of us, all that happens is a lot of dead meat,” I explained. He was a necromancer and so I could trust him to know a bit about death, but he wasn’t a shifter. He’d clearly gotten something wrong.

  Tien only shook his head slowly. “They weren’t dead or undead, but they were definitely using vampiric power. I know what I’m feeling.”

  I looked down at the ground again, which had so little to tell me now that the scents had been washed away. Killing Marcus and stopping whatever this was would be the logical choice, but how could I do that if I didn’t know what Marcus himself was?

  “Can you track them? Does the vampiric power or whatever leave a trail?” I asked, hopeful.

  Tien moved his arms through the air again, fingers feeling whatever it was that flowed between them. “No, sorry. Once they were done feeding the power faded.”

  “Damn.” I fell silent again as I thought over what to do next. “You have any experience dealing with vampires?”

  “Eh, some. The ones in Louisiana tend to be try-hard wannabe fangers or older ones taking advantage of the young morons. There’s not much history there, but books and TV shows have made the wannabes go flooding in and then there was a power vacuum.” Tien shook out his hands, grimacing as if he’d done something far more strenuous with them than literal spirit fingers.

  I tried imagining that. “Vampires are subject to trends?”

  “Oh, sure. Everybody is. It’s like shifters and the Pacific Northwest.”

  “How is that a trend?”

  “Books, TV shows, movies. I heard Portland didn’t even have a local wolf pack until a couple of years ago. Now they’ve got a pack with cats and everything.” Tien shrugged. “Anyway. Vampires don’t tend to like necromancers much, so I got the hell out of there when they started taking notice of me.”

  We started back for the car as we spoke, my senses still on alert for some sign of Marcus or his pack. There wasn’t any and I didn’t expect there to be, though. Not much sense in returning to the scene of a meal.

  “Why don’t they like necromancers?” I asked.

  “We can sense them, but we just come off like ordinary people to them. Until they bite us.” Tien got a horrible, sadistic grin. “Necromancy is blood magic. We can use our blood to raise zombies and make them do our bidding, so just imagine what that would do to a vampire.”

  I watched him for a moment before looking away to open the driver side door on the car. “So once they’re aware of you, couldn’t they just not bite you?”

  “They could, but their worry is that some other vampire will. Paranormal blood has different properties, see, and while they run the risk of becoming enslaved to a necromancer, it also gives them a lot more power. They’re immune to sunlight and dead blood as long as they have any necromancer blood still in them.”

  I waited until he had joined me in the car and shut his door before I asked, “Dead blood?”

  “They feed on life, so getting the blood of the dead in them can really fuck them up. It’s similar to what silver does to you guys. Interferes with their abilities, limits what they can do, massive amounts of pain and weakening. Sometimes it can even kill them.”

  The new wolves in the city were not, according to Tien, the undead, but it was valuable information to know anyway. I filed it away for later. “And it is possible for someone to engage in vampiric feeding off of life without being a vampire?” I verified.

  “Well...” Tien trailed off, his face scrunching up with a frown. “It depends on your definitions. Your general run-of-the-mill vampire is an undead creature that feeds on blood. Psychic or sex vampirism are possible and show up in the undead breed at times, but it’s also possible for somebody to learn that kind of magic without being turned. I’d consider them sort of part-time vampires.”

  Part-time vampires. Jesus Christ, what fresh hell was this? I shook my head, sighing. “So we’re dealing with werewolves who are part-time vampires? They use this magic to feed and then stop showing up as vampires at all?”

  “That would be my best guess, yeah.”

  My fingers drummed on the steering wheel. Whether she wanted to hear from me or not, I’d have to talk to Sofia. She needed to be warned that it was doubtful Marcus was just an ordinary wolf looking for new territory.

  I glanced at Tien out of the corner of my eye. He was turned to watch out the passenger side window and what I could see of his profile and the reflection of his face in the glass looked troubled. “Why would someone want to feed like a vampire if they weren’t undead?” I asked.

  He turned toward me, still frowning. “Power, mostly. It beefs up any paranormal abilities that were there to start with. If someone is sick or dying, it can cure that. Under the right ritual circumstances it can even prevent ageing and basically make somebody immortal without having to be turned. That means they don’t have the weaknesses of vampires outside of rituals and feeding either.”

  I worked that over in my head slowly, considering what it meant in a real world context. If Tien was right, these new wolves would be more powerful than any of the rest of us while also lacking vampiric weaknesses. Not unless somebody happened to have a whole lot of sunlight or dead blood on hand while they were feeding.

  “Fuck,” I breathed.

  “Pretty much, yep.”

  Chapter 6

  Sofia

  Ed Stone was the other veterinarian at the clinic and he took things over when he got in at eight in the morning. The puppy had made it through the night and still seemed to be doing well enough for a vet tech to take home, much to everyone’s relief. Any animal dying was sad, but the ones who had been neglected or abused were always the ones that tugged at our heartstrings the most.

  Another bonus to Ed coming in that morning was that he was an ordinary human and was completely unaware of what had happened there the night before. I’d sanitized the desk and managed not to blush when Dr. Stone dropped his newspaper right where Hunter had bent me over it. Another shifter would have been able to pick up Hunter’s scent lingering in the air, since there hadn’t been anyone else coming through to muddy the trail.

  I went home to take shower, do my hair, change my clothes, and eat breakfast. Instead of my usual braids, I decided to flat iron my hair for a change of pace since I had the time to devote to it. I still had appointments and two surgeries in the afternoon, but was happy to leave the morning to Ed. Leggy and I took a quick walk over to the apartment building mos
t of the pack still lived in and I went to my grandmother’s door, which was on the third floor. She was still active in her mid-sixties—complaining regularly that she wasn’t yet a great-grandmother to any wolf pups—and didn’t seem to mind about all the stairs.

  Of course, cats always did enjoy taking the highest ground.

  Mama Marie opened the door before I knocked, which wasn’t that unusual among shifters. Unless someone was attempting to sneak around, we normally heard them approaching the door before they knocked. Her dark curls had gone almost entirely white before she was out of her fifties and like most shifters she hadn’t bothered to dye them. The stink of chemicals on our heads usually bothered us, so we tended to keep our hair as natural as could be. The white puff of her hair made most people overestimate her age, though her face wasn’t very deeply lined. Her nostrils flared slightly as she looked me over, then smiled.

  “Were you with Hunter last night?”

  “Mama,” I complained as I stepped inside her apartment, then let Leggy off of his leash. “I took a shower and put on perfume, twice. How can you tell?”

  “Because you’re wearing so much perfume you’re obviously trying to hide something.” Her laugh was loud and carefree, often catching others up in it. I had to smile, even if I didn’t like being caught. “I just guessed it was Hunter because Paul and Jay had been concerned about him,” she clarified.

  I sank down onto the couch, absentmindedly touching the mark on my neck. “Did Paul tell you it was a werewolf who killed those joggers?”

  “Jay did when I spoke to him earlier.” She pulled a dog biscuit out of the cookie tin on her counter, then tossed it to Leggy, who caught it in midair. “It wasn’t Hunter, though.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I agreed. “There’s a new alpha in the area and it’s an awfully big coincidence not to be connected.”

  “Messy, public deaths in a new territory are just asking for trouble.” Mama frowned thoughtfully as she took the chair across from me. The dog immediately went over to rest his muzzle on her lap, watching her with adoring eyes. She stroked a hand along the top of his head and down his neck. “But that does seem more likely than it being anyone we know.”

  I didn’t really like the way that she put that. “Killing anyone, anywhere, is asking for trouble.”

  Mama shrugged. “Sometimes some people need killing.”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  Mama gave me a smile. “You’re a sweet girl.” She looked down at Leggy while she continued petting the dog. “What do you know about this new alpha?”

  I sighed, closing my eyes to try to think. “He wants one of the alphas here to join him. Hunter seemed to think I was the next he’d come calling on, but I think most of that was just jealousy.”

  “And what will you do if this other wolf asks you to join him?”

  I opened my eyes again to frown at my grandmother. She was a wonderful, supportive woman, but one of the most frustrating things about her was that she never took anything for granted. Everything was there to be questioned. She wouldn’t just assume that someone would do the reasonable thing. “I won’t join him.”

  “Yes, that’s what you’re not going to do,” Mama said patiently, “but what is it you will do?”

  The police couldn’t do anything about it, I reminded myself. No one would ever be able to link what looked like a human being to an animal attack without any real animals. That didn’t leave many options that I liked. Ignoring Marcus meant more people would probably be killed. Trying to stop him would almost certainly end in violence.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, hating every syllable out of my own mouth. “The right thing to do would be to try to find him and stop him.”

  “And will you?”

  I intertwined my fingers as I fidgeted. The sound of the clock ticking away on her wall seemed unusually loud. When I looked at her there was nothing but nonjudgmental curiosity in her eyes, not the disappointment I feared. Not yet.

  “Yeah. I will,” I said.

  My grandmother smiled warmly and nodded, which eased some of my tension. Before she could say anything more, there was a loud knock at the door. I started with surprise, since someone sneaking up on the door like that was unusual. Leggy rumbled a growl as if working up for a bark, but quieted when I shushed him.

  Mama went to the door and let my brother in. Aidan was so tall that he automatically ducked his head when he came through the doorway, though there was still space between it and the top of his head. His hair was kept in one of those generically fashionable short cuts: not too trendy but not unattractive. It was the sort of hair a person could forget existed at all. His eyes were the same deep, dark brown as mine and our features were clearly cut from the same cloth, but his had a rougher, more masculine look to them.

  Aidan didn’t greet Mama. He just looked across the apartment to me with an exasperated look. “Can we talk?”

  The way he said it made it sound like he didn’t want witnesses, which didn’t sound especially good to me. My eyes darted over to Mama, who had a neutral look on her face. I gave a small nod and got to my feet, patting one thigh for Leggy to come with me.

  “Sure. I’ll come by to see you on Sunday, Mama.” I gave my grandmother a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek, then stepped outside with Aidan.

  Once the door was shut behind us my brother touched my elbow to guide me away. He kept going until we were in the courtyard and theoretically out of earshot of anyone else who was at home.

  “You’re friends with that witch cop. Does she know if it was one of our kind who killed those joggers?” he asked quietly.

  Of course he’d ask. I had hoped that he wouldn’t and I could avoid the entire issue, but things like animal attacks would catch our interest when they came up in the local news. They could mean that one of our own had hurt someone, but more likely they meant that the normal population was going to get paranoid and it could be dangerous for anyone to go out shifted until things died down.

  “She took me to where the bodies were found. It smelled a little off and the scent was messed up from all the cops who trooped through there, but I thought it smelled like a werewolf,” I said. “Not anybody I recognized. I just heard there’s a new alpha wolf in the area. I don’t know if it’s connected or not.”

  “Who’s the new wolf?”

  I glanced up at the sky as I heard the soft rumble of thunder. I wondered if I’d be able to make it home again before the rain restarted. “He called himself Marcus. I haven’t met him.”

  “How did you find out about him?”

  Shit. When I looked at my brother again he was watching me with a frown. Lying would only make things worse. While my brother wasn’t as good as I was at spotting them, he was good enough. “Hunter showed up at my office last night. He was worried that Marcus might try to make one of us join him.”

  As soon as I said Hunter’s name, Aidan’s entire demeanour changed. The tension spread through his body visibly as he stiffened. “How long have you been in contact with Hunter?”

  “Just last night.” I rubbed a hand over my face, suddenly feeling very tired. “He just showed up last night. That’s it.”

  “He can’t come back to the pack,” Aidan pointed out.

  “He showed absolutely no desire to come back, so I don’t think it’ll be an issue.”

  “Oh.” My brother relaxed slightly, though his brows remained furrowed and he had a faintly offended look on his face. “Keep me posted on what you find out. If that guy Marcus is the one behind it, the pack can go out together to chase him off.”

  My lips pursed in thought before I shook my head. “I don’t think he’s alone. If they don’t go peacefully, that could start a war and draw dangerous attention to all of us.”

  “I wasn’t asking your opinion.” He stepped away from me, apparently dismissing me from the impromptu meeting. “Just keep me posted.”

  “Fine.”

  I kept Leggy’s leash short as I lef
t, hurrying before anyone else caught me to talk. While I loved the pack—they were all like extended family to me—I was happier with the privacy of my own house. With our sensitive ears and noses it was next to impossible to keep anything to myself when I was at the apartment building. That my brother had realized I was there and in our grandmother’s place hadn’t been a surprise.

  He and I hadn’t been especially close throughout our lives, but the constant tension and power struggles were new. Only since our father died and I started openly questioning Aidan’s choices as alpha had things changed. I knew I could make most of it go away by just accepting his decisions, but I couldn’t do that. He wasn’t as bad as our father, at least. He was kinder.

  ***

  “Is wine appropriate for something this geeky?” Frankie asked me as we walked up toward the house.

  My surgeries and office visits had all gone by without incident at work, so I was able to get out and get ready for meeting with Dawn and her new boyfriend. When I had called Dawn to ask if I could bring Frankie, she had been delighted. In truth, I felt a little better having a witch with me in case things got ugly when I walked into the home of a strange shifter. One who likely didn’t realize his girlfriend had invited a werewolf over.

  “Geeks drink wine,” I assured Frankie. “Usually we had beer when we played in college, but we’re all grownups now.”

  The door was answered by an Indian American man, so strikingly handsome as to verge on pretty if he hadn’t exuded masculinity in the same way that the scent of tiger surrounded him. I saw his nostrils flair and his eyes widen as he recognized me for what I was. Because felines tend to be solitary creatures, they don’t have the same pack dynamics as wolves. A grown male tiger with a mate was automatically dominant, then. I could feel the pull of power around him, that aura associated specifically with alphas among my own kind.

  I smiled, careful not to bare my teeth as I did, and turned my eyes from his to the side. If I had kept my eyes down to avoid his gaze entirely it would have been a sign of submission, but meeting them and then looking away was showing that I wasn’t a threat and I didn’t consider him one either. Having a grandmother who was a feline herself had at least prepared me for this. Being a multicultural shifter had its advantages.