Primal Desires

by Susan Sizemore

  She closed her eyes and the sensations all came back. “Darkness running through you like a rushing river threatening to flood. Blood—not bloodlust, but…a craving, a craving for human blood.”

  “That is part of my nature.”

  “I don’t understand. You said you’re not a werewolf. What are—”

  “What I was at the time was arrogant but idealistic. The craving was also stronger then; I wasn’t as much in control.” Jason shrugged. “I was very young during that war.”

  She could accept that Jason had psychic powers, but she couldn’t deal with the fact that he liked killing people. She knew she should fear him, but even knowing what she knew about him, her attraction to him was as strong as ever. What kind of sick fool was she? Just how badly had watching her father murder three men warped her?

  “About your father,” he said suddenly.

  “Stop reading my mind!”

  “I can’t really help it,” he answered. “I’m not influencing your thoughts,” he added hastily, “but I am using telepathy to teach you.”

  “I know that,” she snapped back.

  He smiled at her annoyance. “You trust me.”

  It was probably stupid of her, but for some reason she did. “I don’t think you’d abuse your power.”

  “Not now,” he said. “Not ever again, but I have to tell you that I did once. And I was deservedly punished for it. That’s why I want to talk about your father—because I understand his situation.”

  “You don’t understand anything about my father.”

  “I know it hurts you to think about him. I don’t want to hurt you, but—”

  “Then shut up about it.”

  “You mean about him. You don’t know how lonely his life is, how hopeless. But I’ve been in prison; I do know what—”

  “Damn it, you’re a criminal, too?”

  She most definitely did not need a man like this in her life. There was nothing a violent ex-con could teach her. Nothing she wanted from him.

  Except sex. God, what the man did to her in bed!

  But she could and would live without it. The important thing was finding her cousin, making sure Cathy was safe. She certainly wasn’t going to introduce a psychic psychotic werewolf hunter to her nice cousin Cathy.

  “Get out,” she said. “I mean it this time.”

  “You meant it the last time,” he reminded her. He didn’t look like he was going to budge.

  She sneered. “What about all that ‘happy to oblige your every wish’? Or does that only apply to sex?”

  He looked very much like he wanted to argue with her. Anger crackled from him, and for a moment she felt vulnerable and scared.

  Then he sighed and got out of bed. “All right, I’ll go.”

  Once he said it, every fiber of her being ached for him to stay. The thought of losing him devastated her, but Sofia fought off this crazy reaction and bit her tongue. She turned her back on him as he dressed. She stared at the wall until she heard the motel room door close behind him. She wanted to run after him and beg him to come back, but she reminded herself that it was better for her to be alone.

  Once she got herself under control, she picked up her cell phone and tried dialing Cathy’s cell phone one more time.

  Chapter Seventeen

  W ho are you people?” Cathy demanded. “Other than feral werewolves, I mean?”

  Eric laughed arrogantly as he gestured around the warehouse. “We’re the Master Race, of course.”

  He sounded like he really meant it.

  “Of course you are,” she told him.

  His smile disappeared at her sarcasm. “You are one of us,” he informed her. “Your place is by my side. You will be one of the mothers of a new breed destined to conquer the world.”

  The fanatical light in his eyes was nearly blinding, and she decided it was safer not to argue about it.

  He unlocked her cage and brought another chair inside. “I have so much to tell you,” he said once he’d taken a seat in front of her.

  Cathy studied their positions and the distance to the open door behind him. Her chair was bolted to the floor of the cage, and her raw, bloody wrist was proof that the handcuffs weren’t going to come off. About all she could do would be to kick Eric in the shins. While antagonizing him would be fun, what good could it do her at the moment? She’d play along with him for now.

  “I’ve got the time if you want to talk,” she told him.

  “First, let me ask you a question,” Eric said. “How much do you know about your Romany ancestry?”

  She didn’t want to discuss her personal life, but she suspected Eric knew more about some things than she did. “My mother didn’t talk about her family.”

  “I can’t blame her for wanting to deny her bad blood.”

  “You make her sound like a muggle or something.”

  He frowned, obviously not getting the reference. “Your family isn’t from the typical rabble of gypsies. Your tribe have magic in their blood.”

  “So we’re not muggles.”

  “During the war, scientists in the Reich discovered uses for the blood of your tribe. Much of the knowledge about the experiments was destroyed, but I am descended from a man who brought all the information that was left about werewolves to America.” His chest puffed out proudly. “It’s taken decades and three generations of volunteers to achieve the results my ancestor intended.”

  Cathy stared at him. “Let me get this straight—you volunteered to become a werewolf?” He nodded. She was appalled. “Why would anybody volunteer to turn into a mindless monster once a month?”

  “Anyone who loves their race will gladly volunteer to defend it. My men and I are soldiers for our cause.”

  She’d been through a lot in the last couple of years—being turned into a monster, being rescued by a natural-born werewolf, being integrated into that werewolf’s pack, discovering that the world contained not only werefolk but vampires and God knew what other kinds of supernatural beings—but this, this took the cake.

  “I’ve been kidnapped by a gang of white supremacist werewolf bikers? Oh, for crying out loud!” she shouted. “There’s only so much a woman can be expected to put up with, and I’ve had it up to here.”

  Eric merely smiled.

  Cathy got herself under control. Just because the situation was ridiculous, that didn’t make it any less dangerous.

  “What did you mean, about the Hunyara having magic?” And how do I use it against you?

  He grinned enthusiastically. “There’s so much I have to tell you. How long does it take for a bitten werewolf to learn to retain sentience during the change?”

  “We bitten can learn to control the murderous rage eventually, but that’s not the same as being sentient in wolf form. Only natural-born werefolk are sane and themselves in human or animal form.”

  “And yet you are already starting to come out of the moonchange easier and faster than a normal feral, aren’t you?” He grinned again. “And how long does it take a bitten to learn how to change form at will?”

  “Never.” Only those born as werefolk had the skill to change from one form to another whenever they chose. “A mortal who’s bitten by a werewolf is infected with a disease, not blessed, like you seem to think.” She lived with the disease every day, and it was this bastard’s fault. Her fingers curled, and she fought down a snarl.

  “Your natural-born friends have told you you’re cursed. They are wrong, but they aren’t lying to you. You see, the natural-borns don’t know about the Hunyara strain of werewolf.”

  “Strain? That does sound like a disease.”

  “Perhaps I should have said the Hunyara breed. Your family has gone to great lengths to hide themselves from the natural-borns—who would destroy them. Ironic, isn’t it, that you found yourself in the clutches of Michael Bleythin, the werefolk’s fearsome Tracker? He’ll execute you without a moment’s hesitation if he finds out who you really are. He’s a ruthless, pitiless def
ender of his own kind.”

  How dare this bastard talk about Mike like that? Mike had bent werefolk rules when he killed her maker but let her live.

  “You’ll be safe with us,” Eric assured her. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you.”

  She was chained and in a cage, so it seemed as if he was more interested in keeping himself safe from her. “And in turn for this protection, I give you what?”

  He gave her a salacious once-over. “Offspring.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “And the other Hunyara gifts you don’t yet know you have. The Hunyara and the Movement have so much shared history.”

  She feigned enthusiasm. “Tell me about the Movement.”

  “Of course, much of our research was lost because of a partisan raid of our facility during the war. Your ancestors who were being used as specimens escaped during that raid, and mine had to start looking for viable subjects all over again, in a new country with very little support. We had to hunt your family for decades. The Movement wasn’t even aware of the existence of natural-born werewolves when research began in America. We had to learn the same caution as the Hunyara to keep our efforts secret from the natural subrace.”

  Cathy didn’t think this guy had any clue how disturbing the things he said actually were. He was so proud of the current success of these experiments, and the means and results obviously didn’t matter.

  “The natural-borns will be the first subrace we destroy. There can only be one dominant wolf pack.”

  She understood pack hierarchy and territoriality with every fiber of her being. She also knew deep in her being that this loser’s pack wasn’t going to be the one that came out top dogs.

  “You have a great-aunt Maria,” he went on.

  “Never heard of her.”

  “Your family thinks she died in a car crash. She was the first werewolf we managed to capture. I should say that she was the first Hunyara; we succeeded in capturing a feral in the early seventies. We began to build our army from this stock. Your aunt managed to teach all the recruits to obey orders while changed into wolves. But only the offspring she bore learned the ability to change at will. We needed more Hunyara, so Maria’s three sons took on the task of tracking down more of your family. They found the Hunyara living in Los Angeles.”

  “Sofia’s family,” Cathy guessed.

  Eric nodded. “Our men would have brought Sofia to us when she was still a child, but it turned out that one of the old wolf tamers was still alive. Our people died, and Sofia and her family disappeared.”

  What a shame.

  “But we were patient. A new generation grew up; we learned more. And now we have you. Soon we’ll have Sofia. Then a new day will begin for the Master Race.”

  One of Eric’s minions came up to the cage. “Walt’s here.”

  Eric’s manic smile grew even wider. “Now we can get started.” He stood and gestured a newcomer over.

  Cathy didn’t like the looks of this Walt at all. He was big and blond and gorgeous, about six feet four inches of hard-muscled Teutonic perfection. Worst of all, he had the burning gold eyes of an überalpha wolf. There was nothing natural about his scent. Walt reeked of deadly danger, and cold calculation. If Eric was the brains of this operation, Walt was the enforcer. Walt sent a jolt of terror through her.

  “What do you mean by ‘get started’?” she asked.

  Eric pulled her cell phone out of his pocket. “Show her,” he said to Walt.

  While Eric pressed buttons on her phone, Walt took off his clothing.

  A fear worse than of being raped gripped her when he did something completely unexpected. Before her eyes, the huge human male turned into a yellow feral werewolf.

  She’d often watched natural-born werewolves shift shape, but seeing a bitten do the impossible brought a scream to Cathy Carter’s throat.

  Chapter Eighteen

  J ason stood outside Sofia’s room for a few minutes before he knocked. He would have heard her frustrated shout even if his hearing wasn’t better than a mortal’s.

  She flung the door open with such force that it bounced against the wall and flew back to hit her in the shoulder. “Ow! Don’t you understand the word leave?”

  Despite Sofia’s very real fury, her eyes were happy to see him. He refrained from kissing her, putting his hands behind his back to fight other temptations as well.

  “I do understand, and I will go,” he told her. “I need to explain something first. May I come in?”

  “No.”

  Had he been the traditional vampire of fiction, that one word would have kept him from crossing her threshold. He stepped inside.

  “I want to tell you something.”

  She backed up, and he saw her considering throwing the phone in her hand at him. Instead, she tossed it on the bed and rested her fists on the lovely curve of her hips. She’d gotten dressed, which he thought was a pity since he loved her naked body. Still, her tank top did a very nice job of outlining her bosom and slender waist.

  “If you’re done looking at my rack,” she said after a long pause and a significant rise in the room’s temperature, “I suggest you say what you have to and go.”

  “I’ll never be done looking at you,” he told her.

  His response caught her between a smile and a grimace and he took another step closer. Stop that bonding! he ordered himself.

  Jason forced down the lust and said, “I want to explain to you why I’m protecting you and teaching you, and generally interfering in your life.”

  “It’s something about keeping a promise, right?”

  “I’m a Prime of my word.”

  “What the hell’s a Prime, anyway?”

  “First things first.”

  With that, he moved forward and touched her.

  “This month has to be better than last month,” Jason said to Grigor. “We lost three during the last moonchange, and I’m sorry for it.”

  “What an odd Prime you are,” was Grigor’s answer. “Those beasts could never live as men; I’m not sorry for their deaths.”

  “I don’t mind killing,” Jason said. “I relish what I can do to the enemy. But I do hate having to destroy those who have already been victimized.”

  Grigor nodded. “My father made a wise choice when he chose to reveal our secrets to you.”

  “I may be a friend, but I’m not as effective an ally as I’d like to be.”

  “You’ve been a great help in training the ferals. I’m certain Maria and Yaros will be able to control the change on their own this month. We’ll find out come sunset, I suppose.”

  Tonight was the first night of the full moon. Jason had been with the Hunyara for three months now.

  “And,” Jason continued, “my most pressing concern is that I didn’t get all of the Nazi bastards responsible.”

  “We burned down the camp, and the bodies of every German that was there.”

  Jason nodded. “But partisan intelligence thinks that the top-ranking officers weren’t in camp that night. I didn’t notice any of the bodies wearing a uniform with a higher rank than captain.”

  “Half of them were in their pajamas.” Grigor chuckled. “Though I suppose German officers would be the sort to wear their medals to bed.”

  “I’m not sure the civilian scientists were—”

  “You have trouble, my friend,” Grigor’s father said as he came into the hut.

  Jason knew instantly that he wasn’t talking about werewolves. “He’s found me.” He stood. “I have to go. I’m sorry, but I can’t be of any more help to you.”

  “You don’t think we can stand against a vampire?” Grigor asked.

  “No, you can’t. And there is no reason for you to. I won’t put anyone else in harm’s way because of something I did.”

  “Very noble,” Grigor said, putting a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Are you sure you’re not a Clan Prime?”

  He shook his head. “I almost wish I was. Then maybe I wouldn’t be
in so much trouble. How close is he?” he asked the Rom patriarch.

  “I’ve had my people searching for a vampire’s scent since you arrived and today is the first sign we’ve had. How he got this close without our knowing, I don’t know. I wanted to give you an early warning.”

  “I’m grateful.”

  “After all the help you’ve been to us, do you think we’d let you just run?” Grigor asked. “We’ve planned for this.”

  Jason was appreciative of his friends’ loyalty and kindness, but he had no intention of putting them in danger. “It’s only an hour until sunset. I better go.”

  “You can’t travel now,” Grigor protested.

  “It’s a cloudy day and the woods are thick,” his father said. “If you’re careful, you’ll be all right, Jason.” He spoke to Grigor. “We’ll set up our ambush to cover Jason’s retreat.”

  Jason looked from one Rom to the other in shock. They looked back with stubborn determination. He knew they couldn’t stop a vampire, and so did they. He also knew arguing with them would do no good. There was no way he could express the gratitude that filled him.

  “What’s your plan?” Jason asked.

  “To buy you as much time as we can,” Grigor answered. “Come nightfall and the moonchange, we’ll set the German ferals free on your hunter. If he kills them, he’ll be doing us a favor.”

  The enemy soldiers who’d allowed themselves to be bitten by captured werewolves and brought out of the camp with the rest of the moonchanged pack weren’t interested in the training the Hunyara and Jason offered. The Hunyara were being kinder to these prisoners than the Germans had been to them, but kindness could only go so far during wartime.

  “Crazed ferals won’t slow a vampire down for long,” Grigor went on. “But the sane members of the pack can lead him on a long dance after the ferals have tired him out a bit.”

  “We’ll give you at least a few hours’ start,” the old man said.

  “I’ll take whatever you can give me,” Jason answered. “And I want you to know that if you ever need my help again, I’ll do whatever I can for your people.”