Awesome. She was shopping Walmart with a sarcastic, asshole werewolf.
She reached the back wall where the ammo was stored. It was, of course, in a locked cabinet.
Damn.
She spied an employee slinking down an aisle in camping, trying to pretend that he didn’t notice her and her hulking companion.
“Hey! Excuse me. Hey,” she said.
The guy was probably a couple of years younger than her, an adenoidal teenager with an unfortunate complexion. He pivoted with visible reluctance.
“May I help you?” his mouth said.
Oh, shit, that’s a big dog, his eyes said.
“Yeah, we—I need some help with the ammo, please,” she said. “Have you got the keys?”
“Yeah?” he said, as if he was hoping that was the wrong answer.
Harper nodded impatiently toward the cabinet. The wolf sat back on his haunches. As the nervous teen approached, Levi gave a great yawn, showing a row of long, white teeth and ending with a visible snap that made the sales clerk jump.
Harper kicked Levi as inconspicuously as possible with the toe of her boot and gave the guy a big smile and an encouraging nod.
With another panicky look at Levi, the clerk produced a fistful of keys and unlocked the cabinet. “You’re not blind, are you?” he asked. “I mean of course you’re not. How would you shoot if you were blind?”
“Maybe I’m buying it for someone else.” She reached past him and scooped up three boxes of nine mil Luger and the last two of .38 special cartridges.
“I’m sorry miss—ma’am,” the guy said. “Customers can only buy three boxes of ammo each.”
She smiled sweetly. “That’s fine. There are two of us.”
The clerk looked from her to Levi and back. He opened his mouth, and Levi made a soft warning noise. Eyes going wide, the clerk closed it again and swallowed visibly. “That’s all right, then, ma’am.”
She paid for the ammo at the hunting and fishing desk with Levi’s prepaid debit card, which provoked a noise from the wolf that she silenced with another casual prod of her boot. The sales clerk finished the transaction and hightailed it out of the department as if his pants were on fire.
Harper was just turning toward the camping section to find the paracord when Levi’s low growl stopped her in her tracks.
It was a deep, chilling rumble that hit her in the most visceral, animalistic part of her brain. She looked down to see the wolf standing with his ears pricked forward, his head lowered slightly below his bristling shoulders. His entire body radiated tension, all of it directed at the object upon which his eyes were fixed.
Inevitably, Harper’s gaze rose to follow his. There, in the aisle only half a dozen yards away, was an impossibly beautiful man, impeccably dressed in a blazer, turtleneck, and slacks. Where had the other shoppers gone? Harper wondered.
But really, what did it matter when there was a man that interesting in view. He looked so...nice. Yes, that was the word, coming to her almost as if it were being drummed into her head. Nice. Nice, nice, nice. He was so very nice.
He smiled, and Harper felt herself step toward him, her body moving almost of its own accord.
So that’s what a vampire’s like, a distant part of her mind thought.
And then Levi exploded in a streak of muscles and teeth, bounding forward, crashing into him and bearing him down under his mass.
The vampire’s hold on her broken, Harper screamed as loud as she could because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Then she ran, the cart braced ahead of her like a battering ram, heading straight for the tangle of bodies, furry and man-shaped. Just before her cart struck, the vampire surged to his feet again, streaming blood from a wound on his throat that was healing as Harper watched. His fists moved so fast they were a blur, slamming into Levi’s body over and over again.
But physics won. Harper had been going fast, and she threw all her weight behind the cart as it slammed into the vampire’s back. The vampire went down, and her stomach was thrown hard into the cart handle.
Now what?
She hadn’t planned past the point of impact, and now the cart with all their supplies tangled with the vampire’s legs. Before she could decide whether to cut her losses, Levi broke away and bounded against the cart, knocking it free.
“Smooth,” she said as she launched herself up the aisle without looking back.
The cart’s wheels spinning madly, Harper ran in a dead sprint toward the exit that led out to the fenced yard of the outdoor department as Levi kept pace. Surprised shoppers leaped away at the sight of the redhead and the huge wolf bearing down on them. At least, all the legitimate shoppers did, because as she ran, Harper saw men drop hand baskets and abandon carts to come after them.
She cursed under her wheezing breath, her boots slapping against the tiled floor. She was a strong runner, but she wasn’t a fast one, and those musclebound men would be able to chase her down easily even if they were all merely human. Hoping to slow them down, she yanked things into the aisle with one hand as she passed, flinging down fans and trash cans and sweeping an entire row of solar garden gnome lights to crash behind her.
How many were there? It hardly seemed to matter, because there would be more than enough, she was sure, to overpower the two of them. And then what? Would they kill her and Levi right there, in plain sight of everyone? Or would they haul them away to do their dirty work?
She didn’t know, but she knew that she and Levi would be goners either way. She cast a look back as she neared the automatic doors that led out to the outdoor living yard. The vampire was pacing behind, keeping his distance.
Smiling.
The bastard.
One of the men got too close, lunging for her, but Levi was there, and with a snap of his jaws and a strangled scream, the man was crumpled on the floor, bleeding, and Harper was past and free—for the moment.
Levi made a whining noise as she took a hard right through the doors and into the fenced outdoor area, yanking off the sunglasses and sticking them in her purse. It wasn’t until she was well inside that she realized why. The big metal gates were chained shut for the night, and the fence was far too high to climb.
She’d steered them right into a dead end.
Levi came up beside her as she stopped. With seconds to spare, she jerked her purse open and pulled out the guns, jamming them into her waistband, then shoveled the ammo, the hoodie, and the SD card reader inside. She left the empty cart and ducked down an aisle, using the tall screen of shrubs to hide from the view of the double doors.
“If you’ve got any ideas, now would be a good time to shift back and let me know,” she whispered to the wolf.
Levi broke off staring intently through the foliage to nudge the nine mil with his nose.
“Yeah, I could figure that out myself,” she whispered, pulling the gun from its holster as a silhouette appeared in the doorway that led back inside. “I was hoping you had an idea that wouldn’t get us killed.”
Levi nodded his head. She looked at him, trying to figure out what he meant. He did it again, in a more exaggerated way. She turned the way he was facing—toward the locked gate. He wanted her to go toward the gate.
“It’s locked,” she whispered at him. Shooting off locks worked great in movies, but in real life, that was a very good way to get yourself hit with a ricochet—and maybe not open the lock at all. But he nodded again, even more forcefully, so, casting a look at the six men who were warily standing just inside the yard with guns drawn, she started to edge cautiously toward the fence.
Levi set out in the other direction, shaggy head low to the ground, stalking slowly between the aisles. Harper hoped that he knew what he was doing, because she was already at the edge of the gondola display and couldn’t go any farther without being seen—and probably shot. She crouched low, her chest and stomach pressed to her thighs, and watched.
The doors slid open, and one more man came out. The vampire. He cast a contemptuous g
lance around the yard, and Harper swore that his gaze rested on her for an instant before sliding past again.
There was a sudden clatter in the depths of the yard, and several of the men jumped and started to head after it.
“Stop,” the vampire ordered. They froze. “We keep together. They’ve got guns, and the werewolf can rip any one of your throats out. You split up, you sign your own death warrant. Capisce?”
“Sir,” they muttered, forming up around him.
The vampire stuck to the middle of the group, and they walked slowly into the darkness of the yard, beyond the reach of the indoor lights. They kept to the edge of the overhang, their backs to the tall display rack there.
Harper tensed as they passed her hiding place, the vampire’s head turning this way and that, scanning the aisles. As soon as they were past, she moved quickly, running across the aisle with her body bent double. Her boot scraped on the concrete just as she reached the shelter of the next display. She froze, hardly daring to breathe. The vampire’s head snapped around, but he didn’t order his men to stop, and after a moment, he looked around again. Harper dropped to her hands and knees and crawled for the gate.
She was almost there when a shout made her look back just in time to see the huge rack, piled high with boxes of furniture and bags of fertilizer and soil, totter outward and begin to fall. The men yelled with alarm, scattering, and the vampire reached up and caught the edge of a shelf, stopping the rack in its descent.
But that did nothing to stop everything that was on it. Bags of soil came sliding off in a heavy avalanche, huge boxes slamming into the men as they tried to duck away.
Levi was a blur of fur and teeth, bounding up the aisle behind the rack he had just toppled. He was still running as he shifted, the huge red-gray wolf changing to a man between the time his front paws left the ground and his back ones landed—as feet.
He snatched the gun from Harper’s hand as the vampire heaved the rack aside.
“Stand back,” he ordered, throwing his body between her and the lock on the gate.
Harper started to protest, but the gun went off, and Levi gave a sharp yelp of pain before yanking the chain, now loose, from the gate. Harper swallowed her objections and lifted the bolt that was now the only thing that held the gate closed, putting her shoulder against it. The gate swung open, and Levi grabbed her by the arm and ran toward the car, the pistol in his other hand.
Cursing, Harper dug blindly in her purse for her keys, coming up with them just as they reached the car. She fumbled for the right one, but Levi didn’t stop, balling up his fist and punching through the glass, then yanking the lock up to swing the door open.
Harper squawked, but there was no time now to protest. Levi dove across the bench into the passenger seat, and she swung in right behind him, slamming the door and jamming the keys home. The headlights illuminated the vampire, standing in the middle of the parking lot.
Harper didn’t hesitate. She slapped the car into gear and floored it, aiming straight for him even as he started to raise a gun at her through the front windshield.
“I’m sorry, Baby,” she said, and she braced.
There was a thump, and the vampire rolled up her hood, across the windshield, and over the roof of the car as she roared out of the parking lot.
She looked over at Levi, who sat bloodied and panting against the vinyl seat.
“So. I think they definitely know who I am now.”
Chapter Five
“Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a safe bet,” Levi said.
“Oh, God, my car,” she groaned. “The window. Dammit, Levi, the hood!”
But Levi didn’t answer. Instead, he grabbed a handful of her hair, dragged her mouth to his, and kissed her, hard, pushing past her surprised lips and teeth and into her mouth. And just then, she tasted like the best thing he’d ever had in his life....
For a moment, she went stiff, then she relaxed, kissing him back until the sudden sound of the rumble strip under the tires made her jerk away and correct the car’s course.
“What the hell was that about?” she said, but she looked more turned on than outraged, her pupils unnaturally wide.
“Sorry,” he said, not really meaning it. “Some of the wolf hangs on for a while after a shift.”
“And the wolf wanted to kiss me?” she asked incredulously, her brows shooting up toward her hairline.
“Not exactly.” He didn’t want to explain then how the minds of the man and the wolf blended, how the smell of her had gone straight into his brain, the smell of woman and sex. Worse, the smell of him on her stirred thoughts that had been quite foreign to his existence up until this point.
Sure, werewolves formed strong bonds, sometimes instantly. That’s where packs came from, after all. Most people had thought that pack structure was something rigid among wolves, a collection of different individuals brought together under a powerful male and female alphas, overturned only when a younger wolf fought and won supremacy over the male alpha.
But that was merely an old misunderstanding of human researchers. Werewolves knew better. Always had. A pack was a rough-and-tumble extended family, the alpha couple the parents—or, more rarely, the grandparents—of the rest of the wolves. The bonds of relation and devotion kept the couple together and also kept their children around for as long as five seasons after they’d reached maturity as they helped in the raising of their younger brothers and sisters.
Until the other call grew too strong, and they wandered off to face the world on their own—or to find their own mates and start their own packs. And while wolves, like dogs, had their liaisons, when they finally settled down, it was for life.
But werewolves weren’t wolves, not really, and Levi treasured his rootless status, without care and without anything or anyone to weigh him down. If he wanted, he could wander back to the family home, where he was always welcome as long as he followed the rules. But families were a weakness, even the family he already had, never mind one of his own making. It was better that he lived alone, staying away from his brothers and sisters and most especially avoiding any romantic entanglements that might lead to something more.
Because the world was full of evil people who wanted a pet werewolf of their own, and they weren’t above using any means to make it happen. Levi had seen the results of such ambitions too many times—his own body bore the scars of it. The young and, most especially, those in whom the werewolf blood didn’t breed true were so often made the victims of unscrupulous aethers in their pursuit of control.
Especially vampires.
No, Levi had no interest in adding his own pack to the clan. As long as he was alone, no one could ever have a hold over him. That meant that the attraction he felt for this woman—this amazing, marvelous woman, who was as cool under pressure as her body was hot—was just that, attraction, and nothing more.
But he didn’t say any of that.
Instead, he said, “They’re going to be following.”
“The vampire, too?” Harper asked, a crease forming between her eyebrows. “I hit him pretty hard.”
“Yeah, definitely the vampire,” he said.
“So they have that magical insta-healing, too.”
He laughed. “Theirs is way better than mine. Speaking of which, I’ve still got some issues to deal with from that last encounter.”
The bullet at the barn had been a through-and-through, but the one he’d shot at the lock had fragmented, four separate pieces hitting his chest and legs.
“You might want to look away,” he added, fishing in his pants for his knife.
Harper’s gaze turned curious as she saw it. “What are you—” She cut off abruptly as he laid the blade against his naked flesh.
“Got some bits of lead in me that need out,” Levi said. Jaw set, he cut the skin to pop them out, one after another, then picked out the two tiny fragments of laminated glass that had managed to penetrate his skin.
“Uh. That doesn’t look comfortable,” H
arper said. She was watching with a frown on her plump lips.
He cleaned the blade on his t-shirt and flipped it closed. “Ever dug a splinter out of your skin? It’s like that, but worse.”
“So what do we do now?” she asked. “Where do we go?”
“Doesn’t matter. We just need to stay out of reach of those guys long enough to get the SD card’s contents uploaded.” He blinked, suddenly realizing that they weren’t driving down the same highway as before. Instead, they were on a narrow, winding road, one with a center stripe but no shoulder and trees pressing close on each side. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Some of my relatives have property around here. My great-grandparents had a farm and some woods backing up to Juniata River, and the cousins sold the farm but kept the woods for hunting and fishing and stuff. They’ve been building a cabin out there for, oh, probably fifteen years now, but only the trailer’s got plumbing and stuff. There won’t be anyone out there this time of year. I figure we could hide out there while you got the data uploaded or whatever.”
He blinked at her. She was full of surprises.
“That’s perfect.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Back there, I mean, going out the wrong door. You knew the gates were locked, right? You were trying to tell me not to go in. I didn’t understand.”
“What’s past is past,” Levi said, dragging on his pants. “We got out of there alive, which probably wouldn’t have happened if we’d tried the front door.”
“Still, I didn’t know what you meant,” she said. “Is there some kind of wolf sign language? Morse code? Psychic communication? Something?”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’d make things a whole lot easier. Body language is all you get, babycakes.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said absently, frowning as she opened her value meal bag and pulled the hamburger out. “Your repair bill is really mounting, I’ll have you know.”
“What, are you going to hold me responsible for the hood, too?” he demanded. “I wasn’t the one who ran over a vampire.”
“I’m holding you responsible for absolutely everything that happens to Baby since you hijacked my car,” she said.
Voracious Vixens, 13 Novels of Sexy Horror and Hot Paranormal Romance Page 126
