Dire Needs

by Stephanie Tyler

  The first time they’d met, she’d been fighting and he’d saved her—she just hadn’t known it at the time. Now she didn’t bother to fight any longer—or at all, compared to her old self. Instead, she put her head down and let the wolves lead her into their truck.

  Liam didn’t say a word to her on the drive. She sat in the back next to Jinx while Vice drove with Liam next to him. Liam, the man she’d sworn to love for the rest of her days.

  He’d taken her in, knowing she’d age, that she’d more than likely die long before he did. Made love to her, let her watch him shift. He’d made himself vulnerable to her and, in the end, he’d accuse her of using that against him and his family.

  And he wouldn’t be wrong.

  Chapter 24

  The uncomfortable elephant-in-the-backseat car ride from hell took forever, even with Vice doing close to eighty on the old back roads. He heard the human’s harsh breathing, and it took a lot not to rip her head off for what looked like a major betrayal.

  But she was a human, so he didn’t know what the hell Liam expected. Shit, if he was going to train this kid, he would tell him what his Marine sarge had told him—If you were supposed to have a wife, we’d have issued you one.

  “Hang on,” he told them as he yanked the car on a hard right turn into the driveway and pulled into the Dire house’s garage. Just before he pulled in, he noted Rifter coming at the Were pack surrounding the back property.

  “They’ll come through the woods on the north side,” Jinx said as they raced through the house, leaving Liam to get Max inside.

  “Secure her,” Vice told Liam, “and then come and fight.”

  He stripped his shirt, as did Jinx, and they found Stray standing on the back porch, watching Rifter posture. Granted, the man could so back it up. Since the Weres appeared to forget that, Vice was ready to help remind them.

  “Harm begged me to let him fight,” Stray said, his voice harsh with anger. “I put the silver chain around his neck.”

  Vice clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Good man. We’ll take care of this and then see what Rifter wants us to do with Harm.”

  “He’s Gwen’s father,” Stray said. “I’m thinking he’s going to be sticking around.”

  Jinx remained stoic, watching the Weres approach Rifter, counting and calculating the fight in his head with the precision of a master fighter, which he was. Vice was all anger and rage when he fought, but Jinx—and Rogue—they were both fierce and beautiful during the fight, the way a warrior was supposed to be. Even Stray was prettier than Vice in battle.

  Vice shuddered then, as Jinx watched him. The demon spirits hadn’t exactly left him—he could feel some leftover energy making him hinky as hell. He shuddered a few more times, and then something was burning.

  His skin.

  “Jesus Christ, Jinx…”

  “Hey, you let it in.” Jinx held the bottle of holy water and watched Vice’s body smoke from where the spirits had been. Black smoke rose from him, and he felt the demon slowly loosen its claws.

  “Dude, wait—let it stay and keep an eye on me,” Vice told him, and Jinx’s hand remained poised to throw more holy water on him. “Some of those Weres are spelled too. You need some demon on your side tonight, for all our sakes.”

  As Gwen watched from her hidden position, Rifter roared out of the woods, surprising the twenty or so men who’d been walking toward the Dire house.

  Rifter moved toward the group bare chested, jeans half undone and looking like some kind of primal god on the hunt. She could almost see the swagger of the wolf as man and beast melded to work as one. He wasn’t rushing, gave off the aura of a man who couldn’t be taken down.

  The confidence helped to keep her breathing even, but the enemy was coming toward Rifter now. She counted twenty men on the opposing side, and while they weren’t as big as Rifter or his brothers, they were nothing to sneer at.

  She had a feeling Rifter and his brothers had been outnumbered many times before this… and she had so much more to learn about all of them.

  Wolf… yours.

  Mine.

  Lightning flashed overhead, making Rifter look powerful and giant.

  Invincible. Something inside of her clawed, wanted to run and fight alongside him. It took everything she had to stay put and watch.

  She checked behind her and saw only darkness, turned back to watch the enemy advance.

  It was then she saw the other men emerge from the house.

  Are all these men… wolves?

  Like you, the rustling whispered, more loudly than ever.

  She would soon find out.

  Rifter’s brothers—Vice and Jinx—were there, along with a third man she hadn’t met before. They were all shirtless as well. Vice was tattooed everywhere—he looked far more deadly than he had last night. You’d never know there was a gentle side to him at all.

  Right now, she was glad to see all their ferocity.

  “Back down,” Rifter warned as the small group surrounded the large one. “Or perish.”

  It was that simple. But the Weres were moving forward despite his words. At first, they met in the middle of the lawn as men, and then arms and legs gave way to fur and claws as the Dires and Weres began their battle.

  The fight scared her… but somewhere deep inside, she felt a thrill of excitement. It was like watching a gladiator match. The men’s bodies, coated with a mixture of sweat and rain, impossibly perfect bodies, muscled and tattooed. And when the transition happened, she could finally watch and know she wasn’t losing her mind.

  It was… fantastical. If she wasn’t so frightened…

  The shift happened instantly—if she’d blinked, she would’ve missed it. One minute, Rifter was running toward the group of men, and the next, the handsome, fierce wolf was in his place, flying through the air.

  One and the same, the rustling told her.

  I have that inside of me. Struggling to get out all these years. She clutched a hand over her heart, which beat so fast she was sure it would burst through her chest.

  One by one, Rifter’s brothers changed. Vice was a shockingly beautiful pure white, and Jinx was a dark auburn, like a slow-burning fire.

  The other wolves were smaller—it was easy to tell them apart, but there were so many more of them than the Dire wolves.

  She watched Rifter with pride.

  He’s mine.

  She felt like she should run out there and fight. Felt as though she could jump in there and put up the good fight. Her skin was tight as she watched from her position of safety behind the tree.

  Rifter’s wolf howled after throwing the broken-looking bodies of two Weres to the ground near where she’d hidden.

  As she watched, the Weres turned back to human—the men were obviously dead.

  They were going to hurt you.

  The sky was so dark, the moon stood out in stark relief, looked like a cutout, and she let the rain pound her nearly bare skin as she watched the fight. There were growls—they sounded like nothing she’d ever heard before.

  When the two wolves came up silently on either side of her, she forced herself to check their eyes. Yellow. Green.

  Cyd and Cain, the young twins she’d met in the kitchen earlier. Their ears flattened, like they were trying to tell her not to be afraid. And then the yellow-eyed one—Cain—moved close and nudged her toward Cyd and the house. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she moved away from the fight and toward the safety of the house.

  They’d come just in time, since the Weres had crashed through the woods where she’d been.

  They scent you.

  She broke into a mad dash for the doors, hoping she’d be safe inside. Liam was waiting by the door, let her in and closed and locked the sliding glass behind her. He had a high-powered rifle in one hand and looked like he’d be more at home in the military than here. His chest was bare and she could see the thin red line where his chest had once been ripped open.

  The heavy stitches she’d put in ea
rlier were dissolved.

  “You all right?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the fighting outside.

  “Fine.”

  “There are towels behind you,” he told her, and she grabbed one and wrapped herself in it. “Can you work one of these?”

  He pointed to a rifle on the table to her right—that one looking more like the standard hunting rifle her uncle used to use to hunt buck. “Yes.”

  She picked it up and held it against her body, her finger loose on the trigger.

  Cyd and Cain remained in wolf form, stood pacing outside the sliding glass door while she remained inside, watching the scene play out in front of her like some CGI monster movie.

  Except—were these men really monsters?

  The Dires had fought as a team since the Extinction, learning early that they needed to stick together. And so they trained, far more stringently than they ever had with their packs, in order to work like a well-oiled machine. When Stray joined them, they worked him into their battles and he integrated well.

  Now, without speaking, the men each took on the wolves in their trajectory—a close-quarters battle. This was in their blood. The fight made Brother Wolf’s inherent viciousness take over both their sensibilities, until Rifter couldn’t see anything but Were.

  These were trained men, but not the leaders of the outlaw pack. They were sent in as a sacrifice, and that upset Brother more than anything. He ripped the head off a Were who’d grabbed his back leg in his teeth and threw the body away. Held the head in his teeth before shaking it off into the woods.

  Some Weres were easy to kill, but some of these wolves were different. Off. Spelled.

  Vice was taking on several Weres at once, his white wolf speckled with the blood of the enemy, his silver eyes lighting the night. Now, as a Were flew straight toward Rifter, it was met by Vice—large, snarling—and it hit the first wolf hard, slamming it far from Rifter and right to the ground.

  Rifter knew that, for Vice, this call to excess during his fight could be terrifying and exhausting, and that was just for his brothers watching him. Vice was an out-of-control killing machine. Harm’s singing could probably soothe him, Rogue’s voice definitely would, but right now, there was neither. His Brother Wolf was so pulled to anger, there would be no stopping him until the job was done.

  Vice’s Brother Wolf roared over Rifter again—now his fur was muddied with red blood, since he’d caught the Were by the throat and rolled him the way a croc would its prey.

  After the death roll, there was no doubt the Were was dead. The white wolf howled as two more Weres came toward him.

  These wolves were beyond spelled—they were demon bound. Vice had a demon inside of him as well, and it was pissed. Rifter hoped to high hell Jinx had holy water available.

  Chapter 25

  Twenty minutes later and Gwen could still feel the static electricity along her skin. Liam’s anger washed through the room in waves. She could literarily smell his anger and frustration as he pressed a palm against the glass. “They won’t let me out there, and this is my fight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re here for me,” Liam growled. “They didn’t finish the job the first time.”

  But they were also here for her, according to Rifter. She kept that to herself and continued to watch the massive fight outside. The howls chilled her—the thunder rocked the solidas-anything house, and she fought the rising fear to stand her ground.

  “No one’s coming in here,” Liam told her, and she believed him. But she didn’t lower her weapon.

  There had been at least fifty of the outlaws at first, although their numbers were greatly reduced now. “Why are they after you?” she asked Liam.

  “I’m next in line to be king of the New York pack—alpha of all werepacks. The outlaws killed my father. When you helped me, I was recovering from nearly dying at their hands. And now there’s a war among the Weres. It threatens all of us. Makes us too public, and we have no desire to come out to the humans.” He raised his chin proudly. “I didn’t mean to bring this trouble here.”

  “Neither did I,” she said with a quiet dignity she hadn’t been sure she could muster, let alone truly feel.

  Liam nodded and looked back out at the fighting. There was blood and dirt everywhere—the smell would forever be embedded in her nose, and although she was used to it from the ER, this was different. There was a mystical quality to it, and she knew for sure she’d passed somehow into another world, a portal, thin as it may have been, between the rational world of science, where none of this existed, and the supernatural one, where all of this was possible.

  Suddenly, shots rang out in the air.

  “Teague,” Liam said fiercely. “He was a sniper before he got dishonorably discharged from the Marines. He’s hiding in the trees.”

  She put her hands against the glass like she was about to push and leap through it. Palms flat, she scratched helplessly against the glass as Rifter’s Brother Wolf sustained a bullet wound that ripped through his side.

  She was so busy staring out at the fight, which was finally waning, when the Were literally came out of nowhere. Maybe he dropped from the roof, but when he landed between Cyd and Cain, she took a step back and Liam moved forward as the two young wolves who’d saved her went at him. The Were was gray, its fur matted, and it looked at her through the glass with eyes more demonic red than anything she’d seen from the others.

  It was up close and personal, bloody and vicious, and she’d never been more grateful in her life. And when Vice’s white wolf joined in the fray, the red-eyed Were met a quick end.

  Cain and Cyd howled, a whooping sound that echoed through the trees, as the Dires did the same, celebrating the spoils of victory.

  It was over, at least for now. Four naked men stood in the field, surveyed the bodies littering the ground. Several Weres had run off, and she watched Cyd and Cain bound away through the trees, governed by some unspoken command to check the property, as the Dires walked back toward her, stopping outside the house and pacing restlessly, waiting for the young wolves to come back.

  “None if this seems… normal. I mean, beyond the wolf thing,” she said, more to herself than to Liam.

  “There’s some kind of spell at work. The magic dissipates when the sun comes up,” Liam explained. “A lot of it, anyway. And a Were shifting to fight during the day is rare, anyway.”

  “Because of the moon?”

  “Because of the police.” He stared past her, his eyes on the sky, brow furrowed. Checked his watched and looked out again. “Six in the morning. Even with a storm, that sky’s not normal.”

  Not for daytime, she agreed. It was still pitch-black out there, the sky a mix of heavy clouds and clear spots with no stars. No sun either, and still the hint of the moon, which she was sure could not be good for beasts pulled to it and by it.

  You’re one of those beasts, she reminded herself.

  The dead Weres’ packmates would have to come pick up and bury their own. Until then, the bodies would remain in the woods as fresh kills, trophies to show the Weres and witches and trappers that you couldn’t fuck with the Dires and not expect to die in the process.

  But the Weres had definitely been spelled. Rifter wasn’t sure if it was the weather giving them their demonic edge or if he was still off from the second mating, but they were much harder to kill than they normally were. And he knew he wasn’t getting weaker.

  Fucking witches.

  Jinx probably already had some idea of it, because he’d already said, “We need to talk,” as soon as what was supposed to be dawn rolled around and the men shifted back on the lawn under the too-eerie cover of night to recoup and assess their injuries.

  Thunder and lightning still reigned in the sky, the moon barely visible, and yet still her pull was indescribably strong. And when he’d finally gone inside, satisfied the battle was over for now, Gwen had been talking to Cyd and Cain, and the young wolves looked pretty damned enthralled
with her. A look from Rifter made them back off, albeit with the cocky grins only teenagers could get away with. Liam had been there too, rifle in hand, ready to strike.

  Now Liam, Cyd, and Cain remained downstairs with Gwen. She wanted to talk to him, but Rifter knew he needed to find out what the hell was going on with the witches and trappers first, and that took priority.

  The Dires gathered upstairs, wet and partially clothed, having grabbed towels from the linen closets in the hallway. Rifter wrapped a towel around his waist, pressed another to his bleeding side and listened to Jinx’s story about seeing his father’s spirit as they sat among the ruins of Rogue’s room.

  They always held meetings here out of respect for him, but this time, Jinx looked uncomfortable. He paced as he spoke of what he’d seen in the cemetery, and Rifter tried to process all of it as the storm raged outside.

  Rifter’s throat tightened. “Seb’s raised—and enslaved—our dead Dire packs?”

  “Appears he’s trying. He hasn’t fully succeeded yet, but he’s getting close. All of this”—Jinx turned to wave at the sky—“is part of it. A supernatural pull. Seb’s behind it.”

  Jinx hadn’t stopped pacing since his return. Rifter fully expected him to shift and run any second, but the man remained in human form. Muttered a prayer in the old language, and they all bowed their heads out of respect.

  If successfully raised, would the army of passed Dires be forced to fight their own kind? Would they know what they did but remain helpless against that kind of magic? It sounded that way to Rifter, and Jinx agreed.

  “I think it’s been in the works for a while,” Jinx continued and then stared at Rifter as the realization dawned on him—on all of them, judging by the dead silence.

  Finally, Rifter said, “My dreams. Fuck.” Bits and pieces of the nightmare flashed before him—his father asking to be saved—the battle, the souls rising.

  “They never passed over?” Vice asked. “Wouldn’t Rogue have known that—or you?”

  “It’s not like they’ve ever visited,” Jinx said.