Wolf at the Door

by Christine Warren

  He came to awareness somewhere in mid-thrust, his head thrown back, his lips curled in a ferocious snarl. His first, frantic thought was whether he’d scared her with his animalistic attack, but judging by the way her hands were knotted in the sheets and her body twisted and writhed beneath his, she looked like she’d overcome any sense of trauma.

  Her breath came in ragged gasps and moans, ringing like music in his ears. It spurred him to ride her harder, thrust deeper, take more of what she offered so freely. He wanted to climb inside her and wear her like a wrapping until she could never get away from him. He wanted to drown in her, get lost in her, spend the rest of his life buried in her so that she forgot what it felt like not to be stretched full of him.

  But he was only Lupine.

  While his mind made plans for fucking her into the next century, his body focused on fucking her into the next minute. He thrust faster, slamming into her with bruising force, and she welcomed him with breathless cries and arching hips. He lasted a Herculean forty-two seconds before she clenched around him and threw him headlong off the cliff into climax.

  He hit bottom and bounced a couple of times before collapsing on top of her and sucking in air like a drowning man brought to the surface.

  “Jesus wept,” he gasped, when he could. “I think all my bones have melted into my skin.”

  She laughed harder than she should have had the energy for, and it was like lying on a waterbed in an earthquake. “Not quite, honey. I think one of those ‘bones’ melted into me.”

  She’d called him “honey.” God, he loved his woman. This mate of his. He grinned into the sheet beneath them—heaven only knew what had happened to the pillow—then blew little scraps of cotton out of his mouth.

  Mental note: Buy her new linens.

  “And whose fault is that?” he demanded. He even managed it without gasping this time. “You’re a wicked little temptress to drain a man’s strength in such an illicit and perverse manner.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t a vampire? ‘Cause I haven’t heard a sentence or a sentiment that archaic since sometime in the seventeenth century.”

  Quinn laughed and mustered up just enough strength to wrap his arms around her and roll onto his back with her draped cozily over his chest. She snuggled in with a kittenish yawn and rubbed her cheek against his slowly receding fur.

  “I was a bit of an animal there, wasn’t I?” he mused, lifting his hand up and watching as it shifted sluggishly from monstrous claw to simple, human appendage. Apparently, the force of his orgasm had left his shapeshifting talents as drained as the rest of him.

  “Don’t get carried away. You only had a couple of animal bits.”

  “Well, that’s for the best, isn’t it? You’re a little bit of a thing as it is, Cassie love. If I’d shifted in the middle of all the excitement, I could have hurt you.”

  “I’m a Foxwoman.” She lifted her head, her eyes narrowing in challenge. “I can take whatever you dish out, big boy.”

  His grin flashed, bright and wicked, as he flipped her easily onto her back. “Let’s just test that theory, shall we?”

  Eighteen

  Quinn strolled back to his hotel late that evening, torn between infinite satisfaction and considerable worry. His time with Cassidy had done him a world of good, not only getting him one significant step closer to claiming his mate, but also leaving him with a renewed sense of energy sufficient to take on armies. He figured he’d need the lot of it to deal with the situation hanging over their heads.

  The information they’d collected at Columbia would come in handy, but beyond that, there hadn’t been much more they could do until they heard from De Santos again. Cassidy had placed a call to the student activities office at the university during one of the moments when he hadn’t had her pinned against some flat surface, but they showed no record of a recognized group called “Students for Greater Truth.” That left them with a dead end until the night of the lecture. Unless something turned up in the documents Gregor had sent from Moscow, they existed in limbo. He had checked his mobile phone before leaving her apartment, but somehow he couldn’t convince himself that the fact that he’d missed no calls was a good sign.

  “Quinn!”

  He turned at the sound of the familiar voice and watched Richard unfold his frame from a low easy chair near the concierge’s desk. The Selkie picked up a bulging manila folder and strode toward him.

  “Where the devil have you been?” the Scot demanded. “I’ve been buzzing your room every five minutes for the last hour!”

  Quinn felt a cold rush of fear. “What is it? Have you heard from Gregor? Is it Ysabel?”

  “It’s not Ysabel, though I’ve been back and forth so much on the phone to Russia, I swear to God I’ll be pissing borscht till Thursday.”

  Quinn nodded toward the elevators. “Come upstairs for a drink. You can fill me in while I change my clothes.”

  “It’ll need to be a big bloody drink,” Richard muttered, but he followed his friend into the elevator. “And trust me when I tell you that your sophisticated fashion sense is going to be the last thing on your mind when you hear—”

  Richard’s mouth snapped shut just as the elevator dinged their arrival on the tenth floor. Quinn fished his key card out of his pocket and headed straight for his suite, not noticing that Richard had frozen in place, staring silently at his back.

  “Bloody buggering bollocks!” Richard jogged up to Quinn’s side just as the Lupine stepped through his door and flipped on the light switches. “You did it, you rat bastard. You spent the night with that foxy little redhead of yours, didn’t you?”

  If someone had given Quinn a million dollars and a swift kick in the arse, he couldn’t have contained the smile that grew in response to that question.

  Richard shook his head and threw himself down into a well-padded chair. “You did. I can’t believe it, you shite. Here I’ve been slaving away trying to do a bloody job, and you’ve been locked up in some love nest somewhere trying to spawn a new generation of fwolfs. Or wolxes, or something.”

  Quinn sent his friend a warning look. “Whatever your gutter mind might be thinking, the truth is that Cassidy and I spent quite a bit of time on the clock ourselves. We found some interesting information that might tie in to the local cell of the Light of Truth.”

  Briefly, Quinn told Richard about their theory on the sect’s recruiting practices and about the upcoming lecture he and Cassidy planned to attend.

  “I think it’s a good lead,” he concluded. “We should at least be able to identify some of the key players in this cell, and hopefully exchange a few words with them. We might get somewhere with this.”

  “And I’m sure you’re not even thinking about the chance it will give you to get the fox horizontal again, eh?”

  “It’s not about sex,” Quinn growled as he crossed the room to the small bar where he had stored a fifth of Black Bush whiskey. Cassidy was his mate, and he didn’t like having her thought of as nothing more than a pleasurable diversion.

  Then again, he couldn’t deny that he did want to get her horizontal again. At the first available opportunity.

  He poured two glasses of the liquor and turned back to Richard. “All right. It’s not just about the sex.”

  “There you are.” Richard accepted his dram and raised it in toast. “Now, does that mean the sex wasn’t all that good?”

  That idiotic smile returned full force. “Sweet Mary, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

  “That’s what I thought. When is this lecture again?”

  “Tuesday. And we’ll be having dinner beforehand.” Quinn swirled the golden liquor in his glass and watched it coat the heavy crystal. “I’ve a plan in mind.”

  “I find it’s always best to keep things simple. Trousers off first, then knickers.”

  That brought a scowl to Quinn’s face. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of Richard talking about Cassidy’s knickers. Or thinking about Cassidy’s knickers
. Or really even being aware of the existence of Cassidy’s knickers.

  “What do you say you keep your mind on business, eh?” Quinn snapped. “Leave Cassidy out of this.”

  Richard’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Well, well. That certainly explains a lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cristos and I have been wondering what the bee in your bonnet has been the last couple of days. You’ve been acting too strangely for it to just be the job. Cristos is the one who pegged it. You’re taking the little fox to mate, aren’t you?”

  Quinn’s head jerked in a nod, and Richard raised his glass in a toast. “Congratulations, then, man. Though considering the family you’re mating into, maybe I should offer good luck instead.”

  Wincing, Quinn decided Cassidy’s family was the last thing he wanted to think about just then. “Fill me in on what you came here to tell me. You made it sound important.”

  Richard raised his glass and downed a healthy measure without blinking. “It is. I won’t bore you with all the details of the hours Cristos and I spent as De Santos’s clerical slaves, sorting through reams of paper, cross-referencing names and numbers. The man made us use color-coded highlighters!”

  “You said you wouldn’t bore me.”

  “Right. Then you’d better take a look at this.” Expression now serious, Richard picked up the manila folder he’d brought with him and handed it to his friend.

  Quinn took the sheaf of paperwork, brow wrinkled in curiosity, and opened it. He noticed there were indeed about five shades of highlighting marker decorating the pages. But the interesting part was what the colors revealed.

  For several minutes, the only sound in the room came from the papers Quinn flipped through at a faster and faster pace. The amount of information here staggered him, but the volume didn’t even begin to compare with the content. He skimmed through the first few pages in their entirety, trying to absorb information that didn’t immediately make much sense. There were photocopies of banking receipts and account statements, as well as invoices from several firms for everything from courier services to plumbing repair. Quickly, his attention focused on the recurring flag of the green highlighting.

  It appeared first on several financial transactions from a numbered foreign account to an account owned by someone named Daniil Yukov. The name meant nothing to Quinn, but the trail that led from it did.

  He swore and looked up. “Who is this Yukov character?”

  “According to Gregor’s sources, he’s a Ukrainian national and a deacon in the Light of Truth organization. One of their prelate’s—Heinrich Berger’s—right hands.”

  “These records indicate that Yukov relocated from Kiev to Moscow eighteen months ago.”

  Richard nodded.

  “And that a year after that, he withdrew a substantial amount of money from his Russian accounts and used them to open a new one at Manhattan United Banking Company on East Fifty-seventh Street.”

  “Two new accounts. One in his own name, one in the name of the Lumos Corporation.”

  Quinn’s curses got more creative. He looked back down at the papers, and his eye caught something else. “The records of his New York account, which I won’t ask how we obtained, say that among the first transactions made in the Lumos Corporation’s name was a check written to Kaplan Long Realty.”

  “For a lease on a commercial property located on East Eleventh Street. A basement storefront, apparently.”

  “What did you find when you went by it?”

  Richard gave his friend a slow smile and pushed to his feet. “Now, Quinn, old chum, did you think we’d leave you out of all the fun? Cristos is going to meet us at a coffee shop near the location at two A.M.”

  Feeling his own, predatory smile forming, Quinn set aside the folder and stood. “Then, as the Americans say, let’s get ready to roll.”

  Even at two o’clock on a Monday morning, the streets of the East Village weren’t quite deserted, but they were about as close as they could get. Far fewer people wandered about to witness the bit of judicious breaking and entering that Quinn and his merry men had planned. Quinn gave thanks for the small favor as he and Richard tried to look nonchalant. Behind them, Cristos fiddled and swore at a stubborn lock.

  “Will you hurry it up, man?” Richard hissed. “Or were you hoping more than one of the bloody neighbors would be calling the police?”

  The impatient Scot stood up on the sidewalk, carrying a backpack and leaning casually against the iron railing that blocked the basement entrance to the Lumos property. A couple of feet away in his wolf form, Quinn tried to look as much like an ordinary dog as was possible for a two-hundred-pound timber wolf. Fortunately, no one was out walking a real dog at this hour. The only other animal he’d seen hadn’t been an animal at all, but a wererat who had given him a curious look before darting away into an alley. Hopefully, said Racine wasn’t also an off-duty police officer gone for backup.

  Cristos ignored Richard’s comment, gave one last sharp twist to the slender metal pick in his hand, and grunted in satisfaction. “After you, my cantankerous friend. Unless you’d like to invite the neighbors to join us?”

  Richard let his glare answer for him.

  Silent as wraiths, the three slipped through the unlocked door, shutting it tightly behind them. All of the shifters saw almost as well in the dark as in daylight, so the dim interior didn’t faze them. Cristos glanced around the room, while Quinn shifted back to his two-legged form and pulled out the clothes Richard had stashed in the backpack.

  “I think our friends may be overpaying on their lease,” Cristos said, surveying the dingy, nearly empty room.

  Quinn finished zipping his jeans and pulled a black T-shirt over his head. “We’re not here to analyze their investments, Cris. We’re looking for information.”

  The space Yukov had rented might be listed as a commercial storefront, but Quinn saw no evidence the zealot planned to use it that way. Instead of goods lining the walls, someone had taken to decorating with religious icons and artwork that consisted mainly of saints and sinners in various stages of violent deaths. Lord, how could a man get any work done when a dozen martyrs watched him day and night?

  Other than the artwork, there didn’t appear to be much in the small room. Quinn saw two stacks of battered-looking chairs, the kind usually found in church basements and at AA meetings, and a small but new-looking photocopier. In one corner, there was also a narrow, three-drawer filing cabinet and a dented metal desk topped with a shiny new computer.

  Richard had already made himself comfortable and was booting up the system. “You lads take a better look around. I’ll see what I can dig out of their files here.”

  Confident that the Scot knew more about electronic information than he ever would, Quinn looked at Cristos and jerked his chin toward the door in the rear corner of the storefront. If this had been a commercial space at some point, there had to be a back room for storage and inventory.

  The Ursa nodded and led the way, easing the door open and peering into another dark room. Confident no one lurked in the shadows, he pushed open the door and both men stepped through.

  Clearly, the space had been used for storage at some point, because a set of tall metal shelving units had been pushed into one corner and sat empty out of the way. In their place, someone had set up a small living area, complete with a narrow, foldaway bed with rumpled blankets, a crucifix hanging above it. Beside it was a small nightstand topped with a rickety lamp, and another old filing cabinet had been drafted into service as a dresser. A sock hung over the lip of a half-open drawer. Against the back wall, Quinn spotted a deep old utility sink and, next to it, a card table covered with clutter and a small hot plate.

  “All the comforts of home,” he muttered, and Cristos grimaced. “Shall we?”

  They worked quietly and efficiently, rifling through drawers, checking under the mattress, and even sorting through a couple of piles of junk that looked as if it had been left
by the previous tenants. They found nothing.

  Disgruntled, they made their way back into the storefront where Richard still sat before the glowing monitor, tabbing through a series of windows.

  “There’s nothing back there,” Quinn said, leaning against the edge of the desk and trying not to think about where he’d rather be at three in the morning.

  “Unless you count what is likely the illegal residential use of a commercial property,” Cristos added.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Richard never took his eyes off the computer screen. “What I’ve got here is more than enough to make this little criminal escapade of ours worthwhile.”

  “What is it?”

  “The idiots apparently think password protection is the log-in window the operating system makes you use to start up.” Richard had made a fortune in the technology stock boom several years ago, partly because he invested wisely and got out early, and partly because he was a computer genius. His tone indicated the Lightheads weren’t. “They’ve got way more incriminating documents on here than is remotely wise. Or even remotely not stupid as shite.”

  “What kind of documents?” Cristos asked.

  “The kind that give us a much better idea of how their organization works and tell us we’re in even more trouble than we thought,” he said, finally looking up at his friends. “According to what’s on this system, the Lighthead cells all seem to be independent operations, each led by a deacon trained in Germany under the Prelate before hiving off to ‘shepherd his own flock.’ Brother Daniil Yukov is the Shepherd of Manhattan.”

  Quinn scowled. “We already knew about Yukov, and could probably have guessed the rest. That’s not news.”

  “No, but the fact that the cell in Manhattan is being fed information about the Others by someone in the know, is.”