“That means they are,” Jinx said grimly. “We’re late to this party.”
“Betting our invite didn’t get lost in the mail.”
“Really not good,” Jinx muttered. “Necromancy. Black magic in its worst form.”
The apparition persisted, repeating, “Son, you need to rescue your kind.”
“From what?” Jinx pressed.
“We’re being raised.”
“For what purpose?”
“To fight our own kind. It’s an army.”
“Just like Rifter’s dreams,” Vice said quietly. An army of the dead—how very Lord of the Rings of them. These spirits were being brought back unnaturally and forced to fight—bound by an afterlife contract Seb was no doubt controlling. “Have they succeeded?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
Vice felt certain he would be the one to find it out the hard way, but he let Jinx try things his way.
“When’s this army coming?” Jinx demanded.
“Start of the blue moon,” his father said, his voice an eerie echo in the dark.
Vice knew what it felt like to not be in charge of his own body and its urges, but he could get it all under control most times.
The army of the dead… they had zero say. Had they never been resting comfortably?
“You must not go where you’re led,” Jinx told him.
“We are bound by him who has raised us. We have no recourse, unless Rogue—”
“It cannot be so,” Jinx said in the old language, slipping back into the vernacular easily.
What a hell of a ghost story this was turning out to be. Especially when Jinx’s father morphed into something far more disturbing.
Vice heard the gargle and then the growl, unlike any wolf he’d ever heard. Instinctively, he backed up, but it did no good. He and Brother Wolf felt the spirit well up inside of him, and, fuck, it best have some damned good intel.
Dark storms swirled the sky—electric lightning pierced the windows, making the air smell like the sizzle it left behind.
“Man-made,” Jinx confirmed, and Vice felt the energy run through him, tingling his piercings with an electric shock that turned him on as much as the air freaked him out.
He could smell ghost and witch and wolf, the supernatural world rising to revolt the way it often did at night. But this was extreme—and unnatural, even for unnatural beings like themselves.
“The spirits aren’t happy,” Jinx muttered, backing up and pushing at an invisible force with both palms, like he was being surrounded.
The chill hit Vice like a brick wall. He barely had time to draw a breath, never mind warn Jinx that he’d been invaded by something big and bad.
Talk to it, Rogue would tell him, but this thing was attempting to make him walk toward the mausoleum.
“Vice, no.” But Jinx’s voice sounded far away.
Don’t fight… too late… we need you, son.
Vice let the thing continue to invade him, take him over until he could barely think straight. But for Rogue and Jinx’s parents, Vice would do it, because from everything he’d heard about them, they weren’t total assholes.
Jinx and Rogue had been doing this shit from the time they were ten—they were performing exorcisms by the time they were fifteen. This seemed the goddamned least he could do.
Vice felt the cold air of the demon rush through him—the thing hung on long enough for him to get a read on the type, which was the not-good kind. Seb had used black magic to raise the Dire spirits and would no doubt put a demon in charge of them, the fucking, fucking bastard. Vice’s temper surged, until he wanted nothing more than to find Seb immediately and rip his head off. He could barely restrain himself from running off to hunt the witch.
You want to die, Vice… you’ve always been an aberration of your kind. Why don’t you end all your suffering now that you know you can?
Yeah, yeah, the demon knew all his doubts and fears and would use them against him. Vice was stronger than that shit. “You’re going to have to do much better than that.”
The one you love will never love you back.
Okay, ouch, motherfucker. His anger pushed the demon out—the holy water Jinx threw on him helped. Burned the fucker, but it didn’t go back to hell where it belonged. It lingered, and Vice wondered if he should let it or not.
But tonight, it was a drop in the bucket. And as he tried to catch his breath, the sky broke open with a deluge of biblical proportions.
“We’ve got to get home,” Jinx called over the rushing water, and Vice held his hands out and let the water soak him in seconds flat.
“You do that,” Liam told them. Vice had almost forgotten the young wolf was there, witnessing everything. “I’m going to get Max. If we don’t grab her, we don’t know what part she’s playing in all this. She could have intel.”
Jinx glanced at Vice, wiping the hair from his face. No deterring the young prince. “Hospital, then home,” Vice yelled over the din of the water.
“I’ll call Rift and tell him to stay inside,” Jinx said as they hustled back to the hidden truck. Liam grabbed towels for them and they dried off as much as they could. Jinx dialed Rifter as Vice drove through the rapidly rising water.
“Stray, what’s going on?” Jinx listened for a moment and mouthed, Fuck. “Well, find them and get them inside. There’s gonna be trouble tonight for sure.”
He hung up and turned to them. “Gwen ran—she and Rift are somewhere on the property.”
“Does she know?” Vice asked.
“I’m betting she will by the end of the night,” Jinx said.
“What about Gwen?” Liam was concerned. “Is she okay?”
Jinx glanced at Vice and then admitted, “She’s a wolf.”
“A Were?”
“A Dire,” Vice corrected. “Half a Dire.”
“Holy fuck.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself, wolf. And if you tell any of your little pack this, I’ll break you in half. Literally.”
Liam wouldn’t—the Dires knew they had his complete loyalty. He didn’t understand the significance of what had happened, but he certainly knew parents coming back from the grave was no good. Shit, they’d all studied Hamlet in school, and look how things had turned out for that dark prince.
Chapter 23
Lightning and thunder roared overhead, but they were protected under the cover of the thick trees and the hunter’s blind overhead that Rifter had made sure to roll them under.
The storm was nowhere near as dangerous as he was to Gwen. He watched lightning strike the air like a hot ripple of ribbon, snaking down to earth with a hard touch.
Supernatural storm for sure. The snow melted; the temperature was closer to sixty than the normal twenty. And right now, he didn’t give a shit—was prepared to take Gwen, right there on the grass under the moon.
But the mating…
Brother Wolf howled. Father Wolf wanted the mating, would not want it to happen this way. Anything could go wrong.
I wouldn’t be chained. And we don’t know if the old ways apply, Rifter told his wolf.
The shift could kill her, Brother Wolf snapped back.
That was the only thing that stopped him. Churned his gut, actually, as he lay tangled with her, a thin sheen of sweat along his body—a glow on hers. Mating made Dires stronger—mating would ultimately give Gwen the strength she needed to survive. It was too dangerous to try to mate with a new wolf: The shift would be too hard and new wolves were uncontrollable, and after the shift—if they even survived—they could kill their mates.
He saw a few bruises on her from the other night and he moved to check her back again.
The pattern of the wolf was clearer now that he knew. This meant her shift was imminent; usually a week from bruising pattern to full glyph of her Sister Wolf—something exclusive to the Dires—and then the change would occur.
He brushed a hand down her bare back and she shivered a little. “Did I h
urt you?”
“No, you didn’t.”
You didn’t because she can handle you—because she’s like you.
If he couldn’t believe this was happening, he couldn’t imagine what she was thinking right about now.
She started hesitantly, “What you said before… about me being like you…”
“It’s true. I didn’t want to see the signs… never thought it could happen. But the fact that you survived the explosion, the seizures smelling like a shifting wolf.”
“It’s true, then?” she asked, rubbing her arms like her body was a stranger to her. And, in many ways, it was until she acclimated.
“You’re a Dire wolf, Gwen—just like me. Except you’re half human. And you’re the first one of your kind. The first Dire female for centuries.”
She blinked—hard. To her credit, she was remaining calm. “But you’re…”
“Human? No, this is just another form my wolf takes. I’m the product of two Dire wolves.”
She nodded like she understood, but she wouldn’t yet. “Is it true—that you want me dead?”
“No.”
“But Vice and Jinx do,” she said. “I told you I wasn’t going to the police—that I can’t…”
“It’s not about that, Gwen.”
“Then what?”
How could he tell her what kind of harm she posed to them?
How can you not?
Not now—it was already too much for her to bear. “Let’s get you inside and I can explain more.”
But she wasn’t making any moves. “I was born this way?”
“Yes, but Dires don’t shift until they’re twenty-one. Because yours was held off so long with the drugs, that’s why you’re having the seizures.” He had to be careful here because he honestly didn’t know all the implications of what would happen to her when she did shift.
“And Dires are different from… other wolves?”
“Yes. Liam is a Were. We’re Dires—me and Vice and Jinx, Rogue and Stray.”
“And the man chained?”
“Harm,” he said tightly. “Yes, he’s a Dire. Until you, that’s all we had—six Dire males.”
“The rest are extinct?”
Rifter looked up at the moon and thought about his creation—wondered if Hati was up there chasing his moon… wondered if the Elders still cared.
How could they not, when they were once like him and his brothers?
He told her about the Elders and the Extinction of his kind—her kind. She listened carefully as he spoke of the old legends, and his heart grew heavy, as it always did when he thought about the past.
“The Elders council was created six years before they instigated the Extinction, and they told the Dires to revere the abilities found in some young Dires, not fear and destroy them. They were told that Harm would be their new king and that they should not harm any more humans. But the Dires didn’t heed the warnings… and the Extinction was put upon them.”
He couldn’t talk about what that actually entailed now. And thankfully, Gwen didn’t push that, simply asked, “So you were left alive because you have… abilities?”
He turned from the moon and looked at her. “We were spared because the Elders asked Hati to do so. We work with the Elders to keep the Weres in line and to help the humans our kind once hurt—and we also keep Hati happy. The Weres were created to continue to worship Hati and chase the moon with him. The Elders would remain in place, watching over the remaining Dires and the Weres.”
“This is a lot to take in,” he said, moved off her slightly, and she sat up, her body glistening in the moonlight. “You’re so fucking beautiful, I can’t stand it.”
She blushed, but she didn’t cover herself, not even when his eyes raked hers. There was so much more to explain, but for right now, there was other, more serious business to attend to, as the hair on the back of his neck stood up and a chill ran down his spine.
Brother Wolf alerted him to Stray’s presence outside first, but Stray wasn’t alone. No, there were Weres here. Maybe weretrappers too, but Rifter was too turned around from the second ritual mating to tell immediately.
He scanned the property, saw Stray by the sliding back door near the house. The Weres were coming through the south side. And no doubt Vice and Jinx weren’t home—it was the only reason Stray would leave Harm alone.
It was problematic at best to leave Gwen out here unprotected, but there was little choice. He wouldn’t get her to the door in time.
He signaled Stray to send Cyd and Cain out as soon as he distracted the outlaw Weres. Turned to Gwen and helped her pull what was left of her shirt on. Her pants were destroyed and he smelled the cloying scent of a potential first shift, that scent always more potent than for the shifts that followed.
“Gwen, you can’t…” What? Can’t shift? Because he knew that’s what her body was telling her to do, and the second mating hadn’t helped. “You have to be strong.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“Just stay in between these trees and don’t move. Cyd and Cain will come for you—as wolves. Both dark brown—one with yellow eyes, the other, green. They’ll get you into the house safely.”
She nodded, biting back the fear he saw etched on her fine features, and goddamn it, he wanted to wipe that pain from her forever.
But his fear was that it had only just begun.
“You’ll come back?” she asked as she glanced between the men that had begun to emerge on the lawn and him.
“Always. It’s not easy to get rid of me.”
“I’m beginning to realize that,” she murmured, touched his cheek with her palm and kissed him. A send-off to battle.
His blood surged—the battle was a part of him as much as the wolf. He backed away reluctantly, wove through the woods behind where the Weres came in so he wouldn’t give away Gwen’s position, and then he prepared to kill the outlaws threatening his way of life, his family… and most important, his mate.
Max worked her usual double shift. The amount of death and destruction—and crazy people—coming through the ER was twice what it normally was, and it was well past the full moon.
She knew far too much about the underbelly of this town—this world—and her connection to the supernatural one used to not freak her out like this. But she’d lost so much and she could possibly lose so much more if she wasn’t careful.
She didn’t want to be careful, wanted to run from this place, to find Liam and beg forgiveness. But he’d never understand and there was no way she could blame him.
She’d been recognized tonight—had denied it and got a laugh from the on-call resident as the older man insisted he knew her from the neighborhood.
When he left, she’d stared in the mirror and realized that hair color and makeup did nothing to cover up her sins. They never had, but she’d fooled herself for the past year.
Inside, she was still that same street punk, a mobster’s kid who’d left Brooklyn when she was twenty to avoid marrying into that same lifestyle.
Running from your fate never worked—she was living a prime example of that fact. And she’d tried it twice now.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Teague. She took it behind one of the curtains as she restocked a cart.
He didn’t wait for her hello. “Cordelia’s dead.”
Her mouth went dry and she tried hard to pretend she cared. “What happened?”
“Liam happened.”
Liam killed the witch and she was happy. Cordelia made her blood boil—it had been so hard for Max not to slam the woman across the room earlier, witch or no witch.
They knew she was Liam’s mate. They also knew about her past. So many ways to blackmail her, and they all made her furious.
In the past, no one would’ve dared to screw with her this way. No, they would’ve paid dearly.
Her thirst for blood back then scared her now. Some nights, she’d look in the mirror and wonder who she was, why her conscience would wake
her up at night with a pounding heart and a pending panic attack.
As her temper grew, so did her need to control it. Liam understood so much, had from the very first night they’d met in the Were bar last year.
Funny, she’d always referred to her temper as the beast. To watch men and women shift into real ones… to have that undeniable freedom stirred jealousy in her.
She wished becoming a Were was as simple as the movies made it out to be, that all it took was a bite.
She was human. Mortal. Fragile. And Liam loved her anyway.
She’d never learned how to accept love without screwing it up. This time would prove no exception.
“I’m sending Weres for you now—be ready,” Teague said, and he was her future whether she wanted him to be or not.
She knew it was time to go for good. But she’d walk out of the hospital like it was simply change of shift and not her last day. And so she pulled a black hoodie over her blue scrubs, put her bag over her shoulder and went out the back exit.
Tried to, anyway. The man waiting for her in the shadows of the hallway was pierced and tatted and huge. She pulled a knife from her pocket, knowing it was completely useless despite its pure silver blade, and he smiled. Widely.
“Sweetheart, don’t bother. Just come with me.” His voice was rough gravel, and it took her a mere second to realize which of the famed Dires he was. Vice. Perhaps the most dangerous of the grouping—and the most legendary. Even standing near him, she could feel the pull of desire, thanks to him.
She knew all about them from Liam, who’d coached her on Were—and Dire—culture, trying to help her fit in. “You don’t understand—I can’t. They’re waiting for me.”
“The Weres? Not anymore.” He smiled then, and she noted the change in his eyes, the canines lengthening. The smell of a fresh kill enveloped her, and she wanted to celebrate, but she’d gain nothing from that. She wanted to beg but the words died in her throat as the brutally handsome man shook his head slowly. Held out his hand and told her, “Come on, now; don’t be afraid of the big, bad wolf.”
The door opened behind him and another large Dire said, “Cut the crap, Vice.”
She looked out the door behind the second wolf and saw Liam standing there, watching her.
Dire Needs Page 16
