by Judy Teel
A cold chill ran down my back. I felt a moment of unexpected anxiety and wished I hadn't left my Browning at home. "What is it?" I whispered.
"There's a storm coming. I need to track them before it hits." His eyes gleamed at me. "I have to shift."
* * *
"Hey!" I ducked as Cooper's shirt came flying at me followed by his jacket. We'd stepped out into the alley, and he was stripping faster than I could say "stop that". I watched him avidly, unable to stop myself. He looked just like I remembered, all muscles and gorgeous, lean strength and my knees felt weak.
"You'll have to carry my clothes," he said, kicking his shoes and holster my way while he unzipped his jeans.
I spun around in alarm, putting my back to him. My strength to resist felt ready to crumble, and I held on with both hands. I became acutely aware of the rustle of clothing being shed behind me as the thick stormy air pressed down on me. Sweat broke out across my forehead.
"Try to control yourself," he said, sounding amused and growly all at the same time. "You're shooting off pheromones like a Fourth of July fireworks show."
His snug boxers landed on top of my head, and I snatched them off. "Don't flatter yourself," I said crossly, pouring all of my attention into tying his belongings into a compact bundle. It was bad enough my attraction for him was getting worse. He didn't have to rub my nose in it.
I heard a pop and the air fizzed with electricity, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Dropping the bundle, I spun around and went into a crouch as alarm shot through me. I froze with my knife in my hand and wonder stole my breath from my throat.
Cooper was shifting.
I expected cracking bones and horrifying squishy sounds like in all the propaganda shows that the paranormals had seeded into humanity's consciousness in the early twenty-first century. I realized in an instant that it had all been a cover-up to keep humans away, even after they revealed themselves—the original goal, until the more aggressive factions sprung their attack.
I understood why they'd wanted to hide how they shifted. After seeing the truth, I wasn't sure I could think of Weres as anything close to human again.
In awe, I pushed to my feet, staring at the being of pure, silver-white light that stood in the middle of the filthy alley. A shaft of light spilt the air above and below it, about five feet in both directions. As I watched, the split widened and pressed down, compressing in on the roughly human shape, melting into it until only a column of white filled the space.
The limbs of the being pulled in on itself and thickened as it shrank toward the pavement, growing so bright I squinted my eyes against it. Just when I thought I'd have to look away, six scattered bulges bubbled out of the shapeless blob, quickly forming into a preschool-level, Play-Dough shape of a large wolf. As I watched, the shape clarified, turning into a lean body with legs, a tail, head, ears, fur.
There was another pop like a muffled sonic boom and the shafts of light flared above and below the animal shape. I winced, shielding my eyes. When my vision cleared, a two hundred and ten pound silver and black wolf stood in the alley looking at me with intelligent, silver-green eyes.
I stumbled back, my hand gripping the woven leather covering the handle of my knife. It's one thing to know in your head that someone's a Were. It's another to really know.
"Coop?" I whispered, not completely understanding what I'd witnessed.
The huge animal shook himself, making his ears rattle together, and then gave me a doggy grin. Trotting over to me, he bent his head and snuffled my left palm with his cold, wet nose. His back came to my waist, and when he gathered his haunches under himself and sat down, his head was level with my chest. It took everything I had not to react to the deep, primal fear screaming in my brain.
"You're...enormous," I choked out.
The wolf gave me a smug look that I instantly recognized. I rolled my eyes, half amused, half disgusted, and then gave a shaky laugh. This was Cooper all right. Leave it to him to know just how to shake me loose from my shock.
I edged closer and reached out to rub one of his fluffy, triangle-shaped ears. "But your ears are so darn cute," I cooed.
Cooper shook his head to knock away my hand and made an annoyed, huffing sound, and I grinned. Jumping to his feet, he turned and put his nose to the ground and started weaving back and forth across the alley in quick, decisive movements. Across from me and about six feet to my left, he lifted his head, tossed a short, quiet bark over his shoulder and took off for the street.
The first drop of rain hit my nose as I sheathed my knife in my boot. It wouldn't be long before it came down hard, obliterating any scent Marla and her boyfriend had left. We didn't have much time. I grabbed Cooper's bundled clothes and sprinted after him.
I expected to find following a timber wolf that was three times the size of a German Shepherd easy. I couldn't have been more wrong. Cooper moved like smoke, darting from one scent to another as we left the alley, and headed down the street to the right. I made a good showing of myself for the first three minutes, but lost him two blocks east of the club. When the rain went from spitting fitfully to a steady, light drizzle, Cooper shot off into the darkness.
Shoving my hair out of my eyes, I came to a stop in front of what looked like an old community center. "Damn it, Cooper," I hissed into the deserted darkness of the street. "Where the devil are you?"
"Miss me?" he said, slipping up beside me.
"Hey, hey, hey," I sputtered, jumping back from his extremely naked state. "Geez." I thrust his clothes at him, making sure I aimed low to cover up what I did not need to see.
"Did you lose their scent?" I asked, pointedly staring at the plain brick front of the building behind us. A weathered sign with a faded pentagram painted on it hung over the reinforced entrance.
"Eventually. But not before I found their mark on that door."
I wiped rain from my eyes, and my gaze traveled over the building. A feeling of triumph rose into my chest. Laiyla and Keith's killers might be in there. I was more than ready to bring them down.
"You feel like catching some bad guys?" I asked, risking a glance at Cooper.
A fierce, predatory smile flashed across his face as he shrugged into his shoulder holster and clipped it on. "I think I can find an opening in my schedule."
* * *
Thunder bitch slapped the air above me as rain poured down, dimming visibility to the boarded up grocery store on one side and the empty lot on the other. The deteriorated elementary school across the street was nothing but a hazy, low slung blob hunched behind a fifteen foot chain link with common barbed wire running through it.
I huddled closer to the front of the old community center, wishing it had more of an overhang. Not that it mattered. I was soaked through, my skirt a soggy mess plastered to my legs, my tank top clinging to me like a second skin. I was glad I didn't have the Browning. It never would have survived this dunking. At least I didn't have to worry about Wizard going out on a night like this. She hated the rain as much as I did.
A few feet away, Cooper knelt in front of the door and worked the tip of my hunting knife under the edge of the bottom hinge. He'd already loosened the other two, and as I watched, he popped up the last screw, gave a grunt of satisfaction and handed the knife back to me. "Say what you want about pre-strike technology." He wedged his fingers under the bottom hinge, got a grip on it and snapped it free. "It was made to last. Hard as hell to break into quietly, too."
"Or quickly," I muttered, the itch of impatience crawling across my shoulders. "They could be miles away by now."
"We're only thirty minutes behind them." He snapped off the other two hinges.
"How can you know? The rain probably broke up their trail."
Cooper flattened his palms next to the broken hinges and pushed the door with a slow, steady pressure. His biceps bulged beneath the edge of his sleeves, and the four-inch thick metal of the door groaned and squealed as it slowly gave way. When the gap widened to abo
ut twelve inches, he gestured to me and squeezed inside.
I slipped in behind him and blinked at the sudden lack of rain and faint light from the city. The dim glow from the crack in the door faded just ahead of me into pitch blackness. Cooper was nowhere in sight.
I rubbed my arm across my forehead where streams of water dripped from my hair and squinted into the nothingness. "Where the hell are you?" I hissed, my stomach tensing as the rest of my senses strained to locate him.
"Here," he whispered from the darkness. I heard a muffled footstep, and then his hand and arm thrust into the watery light. His fingers wrapped around mine, strong and warm. "This way."
He tugged me forward, and I stumbled, hampered by my wet skirt and lack of night vision. Being soaked to the skin and led blind was definitely not in my comfort zone.
"We're in some kind of vestibule," he said, his voice low and soft, barely skating along the edge of my ability to hear him. "There's a door across from us."
"Look for a light switch," I muttered as we crept forward.
"Don't like holding my hand?" he teased. "I'll know if you lie."
I clamped my teeth together and did my best to calm the delicate joy doing its best to blossom in the middle of my chest. I couldn't let it. I wouldn't. Caring about someone gave you a weakness. A soft spot that could be exploited. I couldn't afford that. No one could with the way the world had gone.
"You're an idiot, Cooper Daine," I muttered.
He stopped, and I bumped into the hard muscles of his back. "Do you smell that?" he asked quietly.
"I'm not a—" And then it hit me; the heavy, sharp stink of blood and fear. "It's ahead of us," I said, anger and worry closing in on me.
He took a right and his pace quickened as the smell grew stronger. Next a left and I was running blind, pulled along by Cooper while I focused my full attention on my feet so I wouldn't trip.
He skidded to a stop and then moved forward more cautiously. "We're in a lobby cluttered with potted plants and old furniture. Watch your step."
"You'll have to do that for me. The best I got is dark shapes against a dark background," I said. "There was a faded pentacle on the door. Is this a practitioner meeting hall?"
"Based on the artwork of moonlit women with power animals cluttering the hall I'd say, yes." He came to a stop and I tensed as the loud, metallic clank of a gymnasium door bar being pushed in rattled into the silence around us.
"I have a bad feeling about this," I said as he eased open the door. The soft, golden light of hundreds of candles flowed into the lobby and the air stirred.
"Rotting jasmine," I whispered, nauseous that we were too late.
Cooper gave an ominous growl. A chill vibrated down my spine and my hand was suddenly empty. In a blur of movement, he streaked across the open floor of the gymnasium heading straight for the body of a young man sprawled on his back across a bloodied alter.
* * *
A practitioner's altar was never meant for sacrifice. Do no harm tended to preclude violence, so simple offerings of flowers and fruit were generally the order of the day. That didn't mean large groups of practitioners couldn't indulge in their love of the ornate in other ways, however.
The setup in the gym was a perfect example. Woven tapestries featuring moonlit woods, sunny meadows and mystical symbols covered the walls. Fat white candles in tall, looping stands stood in abundance near the corners of the room and along the walls. A white arbor covered with live flowering vines arched over the carved marble alter and what it held.
Fists clenched with helpless rage, Cooper towered over the body.
The young Were lay at an angle across the top, his blonde head thrown back, eyes blank and staring. Thick, dark blood trailed down the sides of the white stone and pooled on the polished wooden floor below his head. The slit across his throat was deep and gaping, bone and ligaments showing in painful detail.
Horror, anger and sorrow welled up from my gut into my chest in a sickening rush. Against the wall behind the arbor, a tapestry lay heaped on the floor. A dagger shape had been drawn pointing toward a clumsy star with the sunburst and cursive Z drawn above it. Seeing that symbol made the bile climb up into my throat, and I looked away. At least this time there wasn't any leftover nasty magic oozing out of it.
A shuffle of movement came from behind me and Cooper's head snapped up. My intuition prickled, and I pivoted to the left just as the bloodied silver blade of a jeweled knife pierced the air where I'd been standing.
"Marla!" I shouted as she came at me again.
"Whore! I won't let you have him," she hissed. She lurched toward me, hammering the knife at me with choppy stabs while I danced out of reach.
Cooper hit her full force from the side. They slammed into the floor and slid along the polished wood for several feet. Marla screeched incoherently as Cooper straddled her, grappling with her flailing arms to gain control of the knife.
He latched onto her wrist and pinned it along with the weapon to the floor while his other hand wrapped around her neck. She fought wildly, her beautiful exotic face twisted with insanity. Cooper squeezed down on her throat, a feral snarl tightening his mouth.
"Cooper, no!" I pulled my knife from my boot and sprinted towards them. "You can't kill her!"
Wild eyes gone completely wolf drilled into mine and a low, warning growl bristled from deep in his chest. I grabbed a handful of his hair in my fist and pressed the blade of my knife to his throat. A drop of his blood slid along the edge. "Stop," I ordered.
The choice between killing Marla or going after me ricocheted around in the feral depths of his eyes.
"Stand. Down," I ordered. I tightened my grip on his hair and tugged his head back, exposing more of his throat. "I will kill you if I have to." And in that moment, I meant it.
His nostrils flared and his gaze gripped mine, making my heart pound and my stomach twist. Then sanity seeped in around the edges of his eyes. The wolf in them softened and suddenly his humanity flooded in. He let go of Marla's neck and she started coughing.
"You wouldn't," he said, his voice still rough with the taint of the hunt.
I released his hair and stepped back. "I'd rather neither one of us find out."
Cooper lowered his chin and stared up at me a moment longer, hunger and anger heating his gaze. A chill skated down my back. "Get off of her," I said. "If you hadn't freaked out, you'd see that she's been drugged."
He twisted the knife out of her fist and stood up. Coughing fitfully, Marla rolled away from him and curled in on herself. "She attacked you," he said.
"I was handling it."
"She murdered at least three people."
"Including your kin, I know. But her eyes are solid black, just like the vamp that attacked me at Morrocroft. I don't think she's in control of herself."
Cooper pushed to his feet. "Drugs?"
I shrugged.
"I'll kill you," muttered Marla. She rolled over and looked up, her pupils swallowing all the color in her eyes. Their bottomless shadows spewed hatred as she looked from one to the other of us. "You took him away from me. I caught you. Saw you with him on that alter." She crawled into a crouch and her gaze nailed onto me.
"Watch it," Cooper said, moving to intercept.
I shook my head as I switched my knife to my left hand. "She's incoherent and so are you. Back off."
"He's mine," Marla snarled, her coffee-colored skin darkening with a flush of emotion as her features twisted into a hideous parody of beauty. "None of you can have him. Not that witch. Not anyone!"
"Did you kill them, Marla?" I asked, bracing my legs under me as she gathered herself to spring.
"You're dead," she spat. "You'll all pay!" She jumped toward me, hands reaching for my face like claws.
I stepped aside, slamming the base of my right palm into her jaw and delivering a quick, hard strike. The vibration of the blow rolled up my forearm and it went numb; nothing compared to breaking a few fingers from using a closed fist.
/> The hit snapped back her head and her body followed, landing Marla on her butt on the hard gym floor. She crashed onto her back, dazed from the blow, but still conscious. "That's weird," I said, rebalancing my stance in case she came at me again. "She should be out cold."
"Like she should have been after I tackled her?" Cooper commented.
He knelt down. Rolling her onto her side, he produced a wide pink ribbon from one of his pockets. I wondered where in the community center he'd found it. Marla gave only half-hearted resistance as he pulled her hands behind her back and secured her wrists with the ribbon. She wasn't unconscious, but at least I'd knocked some of the fight out of her.
"It's over now," Cooper said.
I shook the feeling back into my arm and tried to ignore the nagging suspicion that we were missing something.
"I hope so," I said. And I meant it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Watching the crew scour the murder scene made for an unsettling déjà vu experience. No wires to cut this time, no spooky smoke roaming around, but other than that, the process was the same.
Not long before, Marla had been bundled off, strapped to a gurney while she sobbed hysterically. Cooper stood to the side of the gym talking quietly with his team, his face a stiff mask of barely controlled emotion. Lingering in the back of the room beside one of the candle stands, I struggled to control the stinging pain around my heart at seeing another life wasted.
When the lights were brought up, we discovered the same circle of symbols around the alter and the white powder mark a few feet away. A walk around the parameter of the gym had also revealed a second, smaller containment circle, but I seemed to be the only one who found that to be strange. As far as the FBI was concerned, the pattern matched the other murders, and all that remained was to gather evidence to present in court when Marla went to trial.
