A Place to Run (Trials of the Blood Book 1)

by Becca Lynn Mathis

  My eyes went wide. “Two hundred years?” And Sheppard called him an old friend.

  “If he didn’t have anything to say,” Sheppard replied, “he’d have texted or called right back. Kristos is a straight-shooter, always has been.”

  “Well, here’s to hoping he’s on our team this time.” Matt stood and left the basement. I heard the back door open and shut a moment later.

  Sheppard wiped at his face again. “Every time I push too hard on this one,” he gestured to the cage, “it wakes up snarling and I have to force it back to sleep. I’m going to give it till dawn tomorrow, and if I can’t bring them around, there’ll be nothing to be done.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “You gotta sleep before then! The mind isn’t good with sleep deprivation.”

  A chuckle rumbled from Sheppard’s chest. “The rules of life as a human don’t apply so well to werewolves. We can go for days without sleep or food or water. It’s not comfortable, but our healing can more than make up for it.” He made a shooing motion toward the top of the stairs. “Now, go on, let me concentrate again.” He picked up his chair and set it down again, facing the caged wolf.

  I waited until the rest of the pack had made it up the stairs before following them.

  “Hey Ian,” Jamie said, and Ian turned to face him. “Give me a ride to the shop when you head out to pick up that enclosure?”

  Ian nodded. “Sure. Let’s head out now and then we can work on a speed-run of the first half of Diablo once you get back.”

  Jamie smiled. “Sounds like a plan to me.” He sat on the couch to pull his shoes on while Ian did the same.

  Chastity set the laptop on the dining room table and joined Kaylah in the kitchen, where the two of them methodically clanged pots, pans, and silverware as they prepped meals. At least, I hope it was more than one meal they were prepping, based on the different hanks of meat on the counter. Jonathan flopped onto a couch and turned on the TV. Daniel disappeared upstairs. He was still ironing things out with the insurance company about Sheppard’s other house.

  The fire had only been two days ago.

  Maybe I wasn’t used to the idea that I was going to live for centuries, but so much had happened in just the past week, that it felt like an entire century had passed in just a week’s time. I had been nearly killed, turned into a werewolf, found out I’m part of a protected bloodline, fallen in with this ragtag family of a pack, had my first change where I actually turned into a wolf, found the pack’s home on fire, dug through the wreckage of that fire, fought vampires, learned my friend had never been my friend, and on top of it all, I learned that I can apparently turn werewolves back into people and vampires into dust. Oh yea, and I was apparently falling for some werewolf with mischievous green eyes that I was probably never going to be able to touch again.

  I sank onto the other couch in the living room.

  The Fifth Element was on, and had apparently just started. I stared blankly at the screen.

  Jonathan looked at me. “You’ve seen this one, right?”

  I nodded. “It’s one of my favorites.” But I could barely concentrate on it.

  Sometime soon after I sat down, there was a thumping from the backyard and I looked over the back of the couch. Matt was in the backyard, chopping up a skeleton of a pine tree with a hatchet. It only took him three swings to get through the trunk. Holy crap, werewolves were strong.

  Daniel came back downstairs sometime during the movie. Right around the part of the movie where the Mangalores blow up the ship over Fhloston Paradise, Ian arrived back at the house.

  I grabbed a water bottle from the fridge, dodging around Kaylah and Chastity, though their food prep mad my mouth water. There was a huge pot of what smelled like chili on the stove, and a rack of ribs in the oven. Ribs. Great. I swallowed the little bit of bile that had risen and took a gulp of cool water from the bottle. At the entry from the kitchen to the dining room, I realized that I couldn’t be the only one thirsty.

  “Anyone else need a water?” I asked of the guys in the living room.

  Ian, Daniel, and Jonathan all nodded, almost as one. It was kind of creepy, but I grabbed three more bottles of water. In the living room, I tossed one to each, eliminating the chance that any of them would touch me and curled my feet under me on the couch to watch the tail end of the movie.

  “It lives!” Ian exclaimed.

  I turned to look at him in the dining room.

  He gestured to the laptop, which now had a little black brick attached to it with a cord. “Sheppard’s hard drive is fine.” He looked to Chastity in the kitchen. “I’ll leave it hooked up here, so when you’re done there you can check the two bloodline documents against each other.”

  Chastity smiled at him. It lit up her face and was a nice change of pace from the seriousness that usually resided there. “Thanks Ian,” she said.

  He pulled out his phone and leaned back in the chair, tapping out a message. When the credits rolled for the movie, he stood up.

  “Jamie’s on his way back now,” Ian said. “You guys mind if we pick up on our game?” He picked up his backpack from beside the couch and pulled a game system with cords from it, holding it aloft.

  “Go ahead,” Daniel said, pulling his phone from his pocket and making another call, this time to a bank. He disappeared upstairs again.

  I shrugged. “Sure.” But the tedium was getting to me. There was nothing I could do until Kristos called back. There was nothing to be known until then, other than whether the vamps’ bloodline file was up-to-date. But I could feel that Matt was right—even if it wasn’t, it only spelled death for more people, not less.

  Wow. That was a thought that never would have even crossed my mind a week ago.

  Ian busied himself setting up whatever system it was he had pulled from his bag.

  With a sigh, I stood and looked out the back window of the dining room. Matt dragged another skeleton of a pine tree into the yard from beyond the property line. By himself. There wasn’t even sweat on his shirt from the exertion. He started chopping branches off, tossing them into a pile next to a long stack of firewood that lined the wire fence that separated Sheppard’s lot from the neighbor’s.

  A motorcycle pulled up to the house, its engine more whine than rumble. Some rice-rocket then. A moment later, Jamie came inside wearing matching jacket and pants. He looked bulkier than he should, and I realized the jacket and pants were armored.

  I jerked my chin at him. “What do you need the armor for if we heal so quickly?”

  Jamie looked at me wide-eyed. “Crashing still hurts!”

  “Come on, Jamie,” Ian said, pulling a controller out of his backpack and tossing it to him. “We’ve got a date with the Skeleton King.”

  Jamie caught the controller. “That guy was easy!” He unzipped his jacket. He only had on a sleeveless muscle shirt under that. He plopped the controller on the couch, tossed the jacket on the floor next to Ian’s bag and reached for the top of his armored pants.

  I turned my back to Jamie then.

  Jonathan laughed. “He’s not naked under that!”

  I speared him with a look. Jamie and Ian laughed then too.

  “It’s fine, Lynn,” Jamie said through his laughter.

  I turned back around. “Okay, fine, so he was wearing basketball shorts under his gear, so what? I am still not interested in seeing your brother naked, Jonathan!”

  “Whoa! We’ve kind of all seen each other naked,” Jamie reminded me. “It’s not really a thing?”

  “Maybe not to you guys,” I said.

  “But it still takes some getting used to,” Ian replied.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Y’know, like just about everything else that comes with being a werewolf.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I WATCHED JAMIE AND Ian play their game until I dozed on the couch. I watched Matt chop wood. At some point, Kaylah pulled lunchmeat from the fridge, bringing it to the dining room with breads for sandwiches. As before, I w
as careful not to touch anyone while we were in such close proximity around the table. I felt like a ghost floating through the house. The wait was tedious and weighed on me, keeping me on edge and anxious.

  As the sun sank below the horizon, Jonathan sat on the couch next to me, careful to leave space. “You look more than a little tense. Why don’t we work out some of that tension?”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. Surely he wasn’t suggesting...

  “You get that we’re probably never going to be able to do that again, right? I can’t even touch you.”

  He furrowed his brow at me. “That’s...not what I had in mind. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong on that too, but that’s beside the point.” He shook his head and hooked his hair behind his ear. “I thought maybe we should go on a run.”

  I furrowed my brow. “I did that this morning.”

  Jonathan rolled his eyes at me. “Not that kind of run, a wolf run.”

  A thrill ran through me. “Just you and me?”

  God, please tell me the hopeful tone of that hadn’t come out as desperate as I thought it did.

  He smiled that stupid smile of his that lit up the Colorado sky.

  “Just you and me,” he said in conspiratorial tones.

  “You know there’s probably vamps out there just waiting to get us alone,” Daniel said.

  Jonathan nodded. “Just a run. We’ll head straight back if we even smell trouble.”

  “I can do a run.”

  I stood and headed to the bathroom down the hallway to change somewhere not so awkwardly in the middle of everything. I pushed the door mostly closed, but didn’t latch it. Wolves don’t have thumbs, and doorknobs were hard to operate without them. I stripped down, piling my clothes in the corner behind the door, and watched myself in the mirror for a moment. There was a tone to my muscles that I hadn’t noticed before. The corner of my mouth pulled up and I shook my head. Well, fat lot of good it was going to do me anyway. Maybe I looked better naked now than I ever had in my life, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to get to enjoy that again.

  I wiped at my face and concentrated on changing. The familiar breaking pain overtook me, bringing me to the floor with a loud grunt as my limbs rearranged themselves. I nosed the door open and met Jonathan in the hallway. He shoved his clothes across the floor with his nose and I pushed them into a pile with my own, reveling in the woodsy scent of him as I did so.

  Kaylah opened the back door for us, and Matt turned as we stepped into the backyard. He wiped his forehead where a sheen of sweat had gathered and watched us. Jonathan paused at the wire fence and met Matt’s eyes for a long moment. I think he was watching to be sure Matt didn’t follow us?

  “Hurry home if you smell a vamp,” Matt said. “Where there’s one, there’s many.”

  Jonathan nodded and stepped through the wires of the fence. I followed his lead, being careful not to trip myself or get tangled. As soon as I was clear, he broke into a run, and like a pistol shot starting a foot race, I followed, the exhilaration singing through my body.

  The scents flew by in a blur: rock, detritus, pine, dirt, animal. Animal. We chased a couple of startled squirrels up their tree. As dusk turned to full dark, we came across a small family of raccoons, who chittered as they scurried away in random directions. We chased after one or two, but as neither of us had any inclination to eat or kill one, it was easy prey, exciting only for the novelty of it. Jonathan trotted ahead, and we smelled some kind of large animal, but he steered us away before I could catch a glimpse of anything that could tell me what it was. Once we were away from the big animal scent, he broke into a run again and I followed, reveling in the feel of the cool night air through my fur. The fall wind rushed past my ears and filled my lungs with the night. Words failed me. I just felt so very alive.

  Six metal canisters sailed over our heads, smoke trailing from one end. Jonathan turned to look at me as they hit the ground, bouncing trails of acrid smoke that made my eyes blur and thickened the air. What the hell?

  He started to bark at me, but the sound came out more like a cough. He jerked his head forward and darted ahead. I followed suit as the choking smoke engulfed us. As I cleared the smoke, its effects immediately receded.

  Jonathan yelped in pain. There were four vampires attacking him. I took a couple of steps toward him when two more vamps appeared from the woods. They moved so fast it was a blur.

  Kill them.

  Remembering my fight with Matt, I went for the closest one's leg, but he dodged. He was blindingly fast. I saw the glint of a sword streaking toward me and I tried to dodge, but it bit into my shoulder hard. I yelped in pain and jumped back as the two vampires came between me and Jonathan.

  Kill them!

  I lunged at the vampire again, going for its leg once more, but as the vampire brought its sword down, I redirected and grabbed it at the forearm, close to the wrist. My jaws crunched through bone as the skin fell away to ash. I sneezed the dust from my nose as the brittle bone fell to the ground.

  I didn’t have time to process the disgust.

  I spun to face the other vamp. It had circled around behind me, but his form blurred away through the trees.

  I wanted to chase it, but Jonathan snarled, pulling my attention toward him. One of the vampires sank his blade to the hilt right through Jonathan's back leg, who yelped in pain. It jangled in my head louder than it had for Matt. The one in front of him raised his sword, aiming for Jonathan’s head. I pounced on the latter, sinking my teeth into his upper arm. I rode the pile of bones and decaying flesh to the ground, but the slimy texture of gooey rotted flesh in my mouth made my stomach turn. The vamp on my left turned to me then, as Jonathan tore the throat out of the one who had just stabbed him.

  The one facing me lunged to my right, sweeping his axe down toward my spine, but I darted forward, sinking my teeth into his thigh before his axe could connect. His skin turned to ash, and the axe buried itself in a nearby tree.

  By my count, that left one more, but he was gone.

  Jonathan worked the knife from his flank as his remaining wounds closed and jerked his head in a direction as he took a few steps. I started to take off, but slowed to match Jonathan’s pace back toward the house. We made a wide circle around the smoke cloud, Jonathan’s pace quickening as the wound near his leg healed. The smell of vamps was still in the air, and we ran as fast as we could back to the glass house.

  In the backyard, Jonathan barked.

  Kaylah swung open the back door for us. “You two stink to high heav’n!”

  I ran down the hall to the bathroom to change, but Jonathan stopped in the kitchen.

  In the bathroom, I pulled my clothes on.

  “Yea,” Jonathan said from the kitchen. “We got ambushed by vamps. They used tear gas again.” Matt harrumphed, but Jonathan continued, “There were six of them. Lynn killed at least two, but at least two got away.”

  I hurried back to the kitchen, carrying Jonathan’s clothing in one hand as I tugged my shirt over my head with the other.

  Jonathan was standing in the kitchen, naked, his fists on his hips. Of course he was. No one else seemed to notice or care.

  I tossed his clothes at him. “How did they know we were there?”

  Jonathan pulled on his sweatpants, but held the rest of his clothes in a ball.

  Matt snorted. “Those bloodsuckers probably have eyes on the house.”

  “Do they always just know where the pack lives?” How freaking frustrating.

  “It’s not like we’re particularly hard to find,” Jonathan said. “Not if you know what you’re looking for.”

  “And they can smell us almost as well as we can smell them,” Matt added.

  “So this is just my life now?” My eyes were wide. “This is business as usual for you guys?”

  Matt smirked at me. “Pretty much.”

  “And you handled it just fine,” Jonathan said. “You took out at least two vampires on your own.”

  The basement
door opened, and the sound of a buzzing phone made its way to us.

  Sheppard appeared in the doorway. “Lynn.” He showed me the screen.

  Kristos.

  I took a couple of steps toward him as he tapped the screen.

  “You’re on speakerphone,” Sheppard said.

  “Alright Sheppard,” came a deep smoky voice, “fill me in.” He sounded like an old jazz singer with an accent I couldn’t place, but there was an odd emptiness to his voice.

  Sheppard took a breath and told Kristos all that had happened starting with the attack on Frederick’s cave. The line was quiet for a moment after he finished.

  “And I just killed three more with just a bite,” I added.

  Sheppard raised his eyebrows at me.

  I shrugged and looked to Jonathan.

  “She’s faster than you might expect in a fight, with good instincts,” Sheppard said, pride in his voice as he smiled a gentle smile at me. “But other than the dusting and turning the crazed wolf back to human, she’s not anything outside of the realm of normal for a wolf.”

  I crossed my arms over my belly. The thought of the slimy rotted skin from the one vamp in my mouth turned my stomach.

  “The dusting and turning is pretty well outside of the realm of normality,” Kristos replied.

  There was something about the emptiness in his voice that bothered me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  “I never saw this power in person,” he said. “But I have heard of a consanguinea that could do what you describe. Just one.”

  A thrill went through me. Someone had actually heard of this before. I leaned closer to the phone.

  “The church called it purgatum,” Kristos continued in his odd accent. Maybe it was European? “Means ‘purified.’ They cleansed the blood of those they encountered, turning older vampires into desiccated corpses, and fresh-turned vampires back to their human selves, though those humans went mad shortly after. When they turned a werewolf back to human by happenstance, the church took action.”

  There was a grim tone to his last phrase. I gasped. “You mean they killed them!”