by Jenna Kernan
“Shit,” he breathed, his insides already rigging up as he prepared to face this woman in tears. Mac drew a long breath. “Well, what should I do with her? Can’t bring her back to our compound. Can’t turn her over.” Mac raked a hand over his hair. “Shit.”
Johnny scratched something in the dirt. Mac tried to read it, but the ground was uneven and Johnny’s handwriting sucked.
“What’s My Bacc?”
Johnny tried again.
“My Place? You have a place?”
He nodded.
“Where?”
Johnny pointed.
“Cameras?”
Johnny said no.
“All right. We’ll move her location. Too much surveillance here anyway. You lead the way. I’ll follow your trail.”
Mac left Johnny and stepped from cover. If she heard him she gave no sign, just sat dejected with her head bowed and her shoulders hunched. He stood beneath the rock, looking up at her. He could have jumped but he didn’t want to startle her.
“Bri?”
She tightened her arms about her knees. He waited and after a few more moment she lifted her head. Mac’s stomach squeezed at the sight of her tear-streaked cheeks and red-rimmed eyes.
“I’m sorry we scared you. Johnny’s sorry, too. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
She unfolded her arms and then she pushed off from her stone island and landed beside him. He didn’t think, just enfolded her in his arms. She buried her face against his chest.
“He’d never hurt you.”
She nodded her understanding then met his gaze. “What about you?”
“He can’t hurt me. I’m already bit, already a wolf.” He looked away. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“What I saw was you protecting me from Johnny. But it wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t here. My presence is making it hard for you to care for Johnny.”
He couldn’t deny it. His life had become infinitely more difficult since her arrival, but he knew that she was also the first good thing to come his way since returning from deployment.
“Maybe he needs your full attention.”
“You want to leave?”
“No. But I can’t stay hidden in your bedroom forever.”
“If you go back to Sacramento, the vamps will catch you.”
“I’m not going back. I’ll just do what my nana taught me. I’ll keep moving. I’ll stay away from people.”
“That won’t work anymore. They are hunting you now and they will find you. If they take you, you’ll be their prisoner, underground for years while they use you, brainwash you until you’ll do anything they tell you. Your only hope is that when they find you, Johnny and I are there.”
He guided her back the way they had come using a hand behind her back as he tucked her against his side. She felt natural there, as if that was exactly where she belonged. Don’t get used to it, he warned himself. He couldn’t have her. If he tried, the flesh eaters would just keep coming, tracking her for her entire lifetime or until they killed him.
But he didn’t want to let her go. Even if it risked his neck and Johnny’s. He wouldn’t. But then he thought what choosing her would really mean, and his breath stopped. He couldn’t bring her home to meet the folks. She couldn’t go out on a double date with his high school buddies. Bringing her into their lives would be like bringing the plague. To choose Brianna was to give up every human connection he had. To protect her and to protect his loved ones, he’d have to choose: Bri or his family.
His breath left him in a whoosh, as if he’d been sucker punched, for in fact, he had.
Was any woman worth that? No. She wasn’t. He had to figure out how to protect her and then teach her to protect herself. And then he’d need to let her go.
“You shouldn’t have to risk your lives for me.”
“Marines are used to risking their lives.” He didn’t want her to know how important she was becoming. Didn’t want to admit it to himself. So he retreated. “Besides, it’s not for you. My colonel wants to catch a vamp. You’re the bait.”
She paused and stiffened. He watched the hurt break across her face.
“I see.”
He wished he’d told her the truth. That he wanted her safe and happy, but most of all he wanted her here with him. He thought of his parents and felt guilty for his need for this woman.
She moved away and he let her stray a few steps before pursuing her. He wished he could lift that sadness that hung on her like a cloak.
“What now?” she asked.
“My commander saw you on surveillance cameras a few days ago.”
Her hands shot to her cheeks and her face went pale so fast, Mac grabbed her elbow to steady her.
“Just a wisp of smoke. But he’s suspicious. And there is a good chance they caught your exit today.”
“Oh, no!” She wrung her hands and glanced about as if expecting tanks to come barreling through the forest at them. She started to vibrate again, and he saw the distortion of light that had preceded her last disappearance. He grabbed her arm and held on.
“Wait. Don’t run.”
She looked back at him, her green eyes huge and round but she nodded and the vibrations ceased.
“Listen now. There are more cameras up. We can’t go back there. But Johnny says he has a place where you can hide. We’re going there now.” Mac followed Johnny’s scent trail, catching a glimpse or two of him. Johnny had kept just ahead of them and out of Bri’s sight.
Mac and Bri walked together in the quiet woods. When he was with her, it was hard to remember that this was a training facility. That just a few miles away from them, men were crawling under barbed wire and practicing various assaults.
Chapter 11
It was twilight by the time they came to Johnny’s place, as he had called it. Mac recognized it as a supply drop used in winter maneuvers. Now, in early April, it was all but abandoned and as far as Mac could tell from his recon there were no cameras in the vicinity. Johnny had torn off the lock and gathered supplies, much of the supplies that the colonel insisted that Johnny had been stealing from various outfits and of which Mac had denied having any knowledge. Johnny had sleeping bags and blankets and mattresses and crates of food padded with more mattresses to make a raised seating area. His gunner had made his own man cave. Or wolf cave, Mac thought.
“It’s nice in here,” said Bri. Then she turned to the woods. “Thank you, Johnny.”
He must have heard her, but he did not appear. Mac and Bri moved outside. Bri sat on a crate while Mac got a fire started in the fire pit before venturing into the woods to find Johnny, but his gunner could not be convinced to join them. He indicated he wanted to run. Mac warned him to stay in bounds this time, and he nodded his understanding before departing at a lope.
Mac returned to find Bri warming her hands. The evening air held a chill as the temperature began to dip with the approaching night. Bri untied the hoodie from her waist and slipped into the tight-fitting sweatshirt as he rummaged through the crates for MREs, meals ready to eat, choosing the mac and cheese for her because it was vegetarian and not as terrible as some of the others. For himself, he chose the beef stew, which was pretty bad, but he was hungry enough that it wouldn’t matter. He heated them in a pail of water from the stream, keeping the little packets sealed as the water came to a rolling boil.
Bri divided her time between watching him work and watching the woods. “What if they come when you aren’t here?”
The vampires or the Marines? he wanted to ask. But instead he told her that he’d get the radio but he feared that he’d never get back here before they took her. She seemed to know it as well, for she held his gaze for a long moment and then nodded, flicking her gaze to the fire.
“I can run. I outran them once.”
She glanced to him. “You really think you can stop them?”
“Bloodsuckers? Already did. Do it again, with pleasure.”
“Then what?”
He met her gaze. “Then I catch them if I can and kill them if I can’t.”
“After that?”
“I’m going to teach you to defend yourself. Teach you how to kill them.”
She hugged her knees tighter and glanced away. “I’m not a killer. I might run, but I don’t think—”
“You’d be defending yourself. There is no moral dilemma.”
“Maybe not for you.”
“You’d rather be captured?”
She rested her chin on her folded arms. “I’d rather be human and still unaware that monsters are real.”
“That’s not going to happen for either of us.”
She met his gaze. “Yes. I know. But even if I do survive this, I will never be free.” She watched the sky now. Did she see the stars beginning to twinkle to life, visible as the daylight released the earth to darkness? “It’s strange to have your whole life seem like one thing, and then it tips on its axis and you get a new perspective, and you realize it was something altogether different all the time. I thought I was helping people. I thought I was a good person. I thought my nana was just very stern and the fairy tales were just stories. But I’m not good and she wasn’t cold and it’s all real. I’m like Typhoid Mary. Everyone I touch gets sick.”
He moved closer, forcing her to shove over on the crate.
“Not everyone.”
“What will Jeffery think when I just disappear?”
“He’ll look for you, I suppose. But he’ll get better and he’ll move on. There’s no other way, Bri.”
She blew out another breath. “He’s a chemical engineer and has been working on some big research project. They’ve been stuck for months. But the team he’s heading just had some big breakthrough. He was so happy. Management made him their golden boy, and he said I was his lucky charm. But I’m not.”
Mac’s ears pricked up. Maybe she was. He thought of what she had said about her father: a brilliant musician, famous, wealthy. How often did that happen? What had the website called her—a muse? A suspicion began to form in his mind.
“What did the other one do?”
She stared at him. “What other one? Do you mean Matthew? He was a writer. Mostly freelance for various magazines. He wrote feature stories.”
“Did that change when you two met?”
“Yes.” She paused and her brow furrowed. “He took out the novel he’d written in college and completely rewrote it. I read it. It was marvelous. He got an agent, and then two publishers bid on it. It will be published soon.” She dropped her head and her shoulders rounded.
“So it’s true then.”
She stared at him, her face golden now in the firelight and her hair blazing more brightly than the flames.
“I looked up that fairy name, Leanan Sidhe. It says that they’re a fairy muse. That when she chooses a man, she kind of makes his energy burn faster or more brightly. I don’t really know which. She is like fuel to his talents, feeding them.”
“While killing him.”
“The price, yes. The site said that their chosen ones lived brilliant lives, but short ones.”
“But I’m not a Leanan Sidhe. My mother was. I’m a soul sucker. Isn’t that right?” She lifted her trembling chin.
“Maybe you don’t draw energy. Maybe you make a man’s life run faster. Make his brain run faster, too.”
She shivered at this, and he wrapped an arm around her. “I don’t know why you agreed to help me.”
“You can’t hurt me, Princess. That’s what they tell me. It’s why we can get up close and personal with bloodsu...vampires.”
He realized that he wanted to help her, he could help her. She was not like his squad, now planted in Arlington. Bri was alive and in danger. It gave him hope again, because unlike Johnny’s issues, she had a problem that he might actually be able to solve. Up until this very minute he never realized how much he needed that hope.
“But Johnny needs you, too,” she said.
He let his arm slip from her shoulder and moved to check their meals. She was right about that. And his family—what about them? Was he prepared to drop off the planet for this woman? She was beautiful and alluring, but really she was just a woman.
“It’s hot.” He tore open one of the packets and offered it to her. “Just wait until it cools and then tip it up, like you would if you were drinking out of a milk carton.” He handed her a bottle of water from Johnny’s larder and a tube of crackers.
She did as he instructed and for the next few minutes they ate in silence. When they had finished, he burned the containers, watching the plastic twist and shrivel on the logs, writhing like a living thing.
Bri cleared her throat and then spoke. “Do you have a sweetheart, Mac?”
He wondered why she cared. Was she considering his offer? His body twisted like the collapsing plastic on the flames.
“No. Had one. Cut her loose when I signed up. She’s engaged now to someone who will stay put.”
“I’m sorry.”
“My choice.”
She nodded. “Have you had contact with your family since...?”
His smile turned to a grimace. “They think I’m still in-country. Made a few video calls. My dad had some trouble with his heart. Seems okay now. But...” He shrugged and then went cold as he thought of what meeting Bri might do to his father’s narrowing arteries.
“They must worry.”
He rubbed his jaw. “Yeah.”
“And you must miss them.”
“Well, I can see them online, call them every week, but...” He glanced toward the scent trail that threaded through the dark woods. “I have responsibilities.”
“Johnny.” She squeezed his hand. “Will you tell them what happened?”
“Can’t. Top secret.”
She took the hand that rested on his knee. “Then will you tell me how it happened?”
For just a moment he thought that her appearance and the vampires’ attack were all just a setup to learn about how he became a werewolf. But then he remembered the intel they got from Israel. The vampires knew how to kill werewolves. But they preferred to run rather than face the chance of dying. That made them as smart as they were ugly.
He poked at the fire with a stick, recalling the night he turned and not wanting to go back to that dark place in his mind.
“Mac, I’m half fairy and I’m some kind of a monster. Surely if anyone can understand what you are going through, it would be me.”
“It’s rough,” he warned.
She nodded her acceptance of that.
He sat across from her, fixing his gaze on the flames as he traveled back to the Sandbox in his mind and recalling the distress call he’d received from his second Fire Team. Sometime in the remembering he began to speak. He described the mission, to clear the road and perimeter so they could use the route for transport to the combat outpost. The COP had been cut off by heavy engagement, and they were low on everything. They’d pushed their enemy back, but not before the retreating force had littered their escape route with improvised explosive devices. The IEDs and mines were being handled, but in the meantime a new road was going in and the buildings along the way needed to be cleared of the enemy. They could permit no snipers on the rooftops taking shots at their guys.
* * *
Staff Sgt. Travis MacConnelly stared through his infrared goggles at the ground before them. The lifting of his forearm and the closing of his fingers signaled his men to halt. No light spilled across the small courtyard inside the enclosure on the moonless night. But he could see everything clearly in green and black. Kabul, Afghanistan, at zer
o three hundred, and nothing stirred not even the hot wind that deviled them, blowing sand into all their gear. But appearances were deceiving, because his first two Fire Teams were already in positioned, one clearing the building and one standing by.
Mac waited with the men of the third and final Fire Team for the agreed-upon time. His heart jackhammered in his chest as the silence seemed to collapse in on him. Too damned quiet. His first command since his promotion to staff sergeant, and now the responsibility of all twelve souls in this squad rested with him. They were good Marines, and he was proud of them already.
His watch ticked off the seconds.
At zero two fifty-six his sharpshooters neutralized the watchmen on the roof, and his teams moved in. His first Fire Team used silenced .22s to take out the guards at the front entrance, the only noises their footsteps and the next round being chambered.
His team moved inside the wall. He watched the first team enter the building in tight formation. Now the way was clear for his third team. Their grenadier was a corporal named Lam. Hell of a name for a Marine, but his team respected him, and from what Mac had seen he was more lion than lamb.
His Fire Team leader checked his watch and then glanced to Mac, who nodded. He signaled his men and they ran the distance to the entrance.
Lam was the first man in. By the time Mac cleared the archway, Lam was dropping a body on the foyer. The man’s blood made a dark pool against the pale tile floor. The first team had missed him, so he wasn’t here when they came through. Mac signaled for them to check the ground level, knowing the first and second team had the higher two floors.
Systematically they searched each room and then hit the corridor still in formation, his men searching for targets as they climbed the narrow stairs. A shooting gallery for anyone above. The quiet was deafening. Where were the gunshots? With three guards so far, there had to be more.
From above them came the first report of gunfire, a spray of bullets and then the shouting of his men. More gunfire and shouts followed. Then high-pitched screaming echoed down the narrow stairs with frantic shouts to pull back. Fire Team One requested backup, and Mac sent them the second team. They could then hear the second team charging up the stairs ahead of them.
