by Judy Teel
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright
Series
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
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by
Judy Teel
To my readers and fans and to my husband, Kelly — you all share many of the same stellar traits, not the least of which is patience and generosity of spirit.
This book's for you.
Acknowledgments
As always, my heartfelt thanks goes to all my beta readers: Rebecca (a fab editor in her own right), Jana G., Angie W., T. Hammond, daughter Zoe and my wonderful sis-in-law, Joyce. Also a special thanks to all the amazing and supportive ladies of Magical Shifters who are the best readers, fans, and street team that any author could ask for.
And special thanks to my editor, Christie Stratos for her kindness, insight and unprecedented professional skills.
Published by Judy P. Mills
Copyright © June 2015 by Judy P. Mills
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the author, Judy P. Mills.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual business establishments, inventions, items, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Find Judy Teel on the web!
Webpage: http://judyteel.com/
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Cover by For the Love of Reading Cover Design
Shifty Magic Series:
Shifty Magic
Undercover Magic
Savage Magic
CHAPTER ONE
Blue Ridge Mountains, NC — 2033
Being a Were who wasn't allowed to shift was hell. For one thing, you had to climb trees.
I was a city girl. Trees weren't really my thing. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of the woods in the mountains of North Carolina, and after sneaking off with Cooper to have a little Adam and Eve fun, he decided that I needed to work on my wilderness skills.
He went one way and I went the other. Whoever could successfully sneak up on the other had to do the dishes after dinner. Agent Luke Miller wasn't known for neatness in his cooking; I was very motivated.
Taking a deeper breath, I watched the thin ribbon of trail below me and noted the sharp tang of earth and musk that marked werewolves with regular access to hundreds of acres of wild forest. In particular, the scent Cooper and I'd picked up not long after Cooper, Miller and I had left Lake Lure and the coven of practitioners who lived there.
I pulled in a second breath of fresh air and caught the hint of blood on the breeze...Cooper's blood. Whoever was following us had apparently decided to step up their game. I clenched my teeth, getting my urge to fight under control and focusing it on dealing with whatever was about to come down the path.
So glad to be invited to play.
I reached for the modified Browning BuckMark that was usually strapped snugly against my jeans-clad thigh and remembered that Cooper had made me leave it back at camp. He didn't want me too dependent on my go-to defense move, and I wasn't too happy about being without it.
I also knew he was right. We'd been working on strengthening my Were abilities in ways that still kept them hidden, so I pushed down my feeling of vulnerability and focused on regulating my breathing the way he'd taught me...in through the nose nice and slow, out through the mouth. Control your Were nature, don't let it control you.
Easy for him to say. He wasn't brand new to the whole "you're not human" gig like I was. He also wasn't some kind of freaky monster who was supposed to be extinct — one of the many unanswered questions I had about myself. That's how life rolls when you're abandoned as an infant on the steps of a church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
For most of my life, I thought I was like any other foster kid in the city. Until nine years ago when paranormal terrorists attacked major cities around the world and almost brought human civilization to its knees. That's when things we thought only existed in books, movies and stories around the campfire stories turned out to be real. When the terrorists hit Charlotte, my foster family panicked and fled the city, forgetting to take me with them. That's when I learned to survive.
The strange Weres' scent caught my attention again, and I ducked farther back into the leafy cover, tightening my grip on the branch above me. I wasn't sure who or what I was going to see coming down the trail, but I doubted it would be friendly.
There were plenty of both kinds of paranormals in the world now; those who saw humans as food or at best slaves, and those who wanted an inclusive society and lived under the new laws. It was the last kind that had swung the war our way, coming out of hiding to help what was left of the human population beat back the bad guys.
Still, things would never be the same again, and for the most part I was okay with that. Once the schools reopened, I graduated high school and then started my own business as a private investigator with a knack for fighting monsters. That led to a couple of jobs with the paranormal division of the FBI, and it wasn't long before Cooper and I were an item, albeit a secret one thanks to old prejudices and laws that frowned on interspecies relationships.
Then about three months ago, I discovered that I wasn't human and my life took on a whole new level of complexity. The biggest being that Cooper and I became what Weres called bonded. According to Were legends and customs, that meant we were fated to be together or something. We could even feel each other's feelings if they were intense enough, which most of the time I considered a bonus. Not being able to let anyone know what I really was...that was just a pain in my ass.
The scent of blood got stronger, pulling my thoughts back and making my heart pound a little harder against my chest. Slipping a knife from the sheath inside my right boot, I watched the flutter of shadows on the path below where it turned and disappeared behind a thick wall of laurels. Slow breath in...Silent breath out...
Deeper shadows emerged and took shape — a man and a woman, both dressed for living outdoors and blending in. And there was Cooper, complacently allowing them to roughly pull him along between them, his nose and a cut on his cheek seeping blood. Weird. Cooper was built like an early twenty-first century Olympic gymnast and I'd seen him take out opponents in less than ten seconds without a single blow landing on him. How had they managed to subdue him?
I watched them come closer and pass below me. The woman on one side of Cooper was medium height with light skin and dark red hair that she'd pulled back into a short ponytail with a strip of leather. The man on the other side was tall and muscular with tanned skin, his bright red hair in a military cut.
Cooper had spent the last two days of our trek into the mountains telling me about the two werewolf Clans that shared the land that had once been a national park. Weres tended to keep similar coloring when they were humans as when they were in animal form, and red wolves equaled Blood Clan. Along with the other two werewolf Clans in Virginia, they shared a comprehensive treaty that had been unbroken
for over twenty-five years.
Was that why he hadn't fought back? Because of the treaty? Then why had they attacked him? A chill slid across the back of my neck. Were they rogues?
In my experience, paras outside of their species' laws were the most dangerous creatures on the planet. Whatever they had planned for Cooper, it wasn't going to be pleasant.
I adjusted the soles of my logger boots against the branch under me to give myself a more solid launch, judged the distance — and jumped.
"Travis, look out!" the woman shouted, leaping back and drawing a pistol from the shoulder holster underneath her camo jacket.
I landed on her just as she got off a shot, the bullet buzzing past my ear like a giant hornet. We went down, my knee on her chest, my left hand wrapped around her wrist. I squeezed down on the bone while her free hand went for my right wrist in an attempt to keep my knife off her throat.
Behind me, a grunt and then silence. I didn't know if Cooper was up or down and I didn't have time to check on him. Reversing the downward pressure I'd put on my knife hand, I pulled up, letting the force the woman was exerting work for me. Her arm shot up with the grip she had on me, unbalancing her as her shoulder went with it.
Using her half-second of surprise, I slammed my forehead into the socket of the vulnerable shoulder. The joint dislocated with a muffled pop.
She gave a startled yelp and her grip on my wrist gave out, gifting me with another second to drop my knife and bear down with both hands on her gun. I broke her hold on the weapon and tore it from her fingers.
Grabbing my knife, I leaped off of her and aimed her Glock at her head. "Who are you?"
Her gaze skated past a spot over my left shoulder, and the back of my neck tingled. I focused my attention just enough to open my senses the way Cooper had taught me and heard a quiet hiss of breath about five yards back, overlaid by the scent of anger, but not fear. That told me that her friend, Travis, was about to use some kind of Were bulldozing attack designed to awe and frighten the poor little human.
I did a quick tune-in on Cooper, noting that he might look knocked out where he sprawled in the leaves, but he was feeling ridiculously pleased with himself. I relaxed my stance, bending my knees slightly in preparation for the next attack. "Who are you?" I repeated.
The Were on the ground met my gaze and tried to hold it but couldn't. "Go to hell." She kept her gaze clamped on the ground at my feet as the feeling of hostile, predatory eyes boring into a spot between my shoulder blades amped up.
A single, nearly silent crunch of a leaf and I dropped to one knee, sweeping my knife from left to right above me as I did.
The blade sliced through the shirt and into the stomach of the man as he passed over my head. His momentum carried him about four yards past me where he landed on the ground, curling around the wound as he rolled to a stop. Blood seeped between his fingers and dripped into the dirt as he winced.
I gave Cooper my best scowl. "Thanks for your help."
Off to the side, he opened his silver-green eyes and sat up. "You're getting better." He gave me one of his swoon-worthy smiles as he leaned against the tree behind him. The light dappled through the branches and across his thick brown and black brindled hair, making the threads of silver running through it shine. "I might consider graduating you."
"And spoil your fun?" I took a step back to give myself a better view of our new friends. "At least now I know why you let them capture you."
The gash on Travis' stomach didn't look too bad. In about fifteen minutes it would be on its way to being a line of pink new skin, and then in another thirty look as if nothing had happened. Maybe faster, if the evil eye he was giving Cooper and me was any indication.
"Don't you two know it's impolite to sneak up on people?" I commented. Keeping the gun on them, I wiped my knife off on a patch of moss and slipped it back into the sheath in my boot.
Pulling in a breath, the male Were took in my scent, and I did my best to pretend not to notice. You'd think I'd be used to that particular Were practice, but nope. Maybe that was why I was still having trouble using my own enhanced sense of smell to read people. Going around sniffing everyone was too gross for words.
"You're human," Travis accused as if his getting out-smarted had been some kind of accident.
Cooper got to his feet smoothly and sauntered over to the fallen woman. "If Addison weren't, you and your friend would be dead." Gripping her elbow and wrist, he slowly pulled her forearm away from her body as she grimaced in pain. Lifting the female's upper arm to align the shoulder, he then leveraged her wrist back toward her stomach. A dull thunk came from the shoulder as it reseated. "Why did you attack us?"
Flexing the fingers of her reset arm, she looked at Cooper. "Our Alpha's orders—"
"Don't, Sharon," the man gritted out. He pushed himself to his hands and knees, one arm clutching his stomach. "Trust no one."
Cooper crossed to Travis and hoisted him to his feet by the front of his T-shirt. Pulling the Were's arm away, he yanked up the hem. A nice pink scar was the only evidence of his encounter with my knife. "They're healed," Cooper said, shoving him away. "Collar them."
I unclipped both of my Paranormal Restraining Collars, or PRCs, from my belt. PRCs were designed toward the end of the war to help level the playing field where humans versus paranormals were concerned. I used them regularly in my line of work. Glad I'd refused to leave them behind when Cooper took my Browning.
The gray tube was only as thick as my little finger and had a narrow code box attached to the front. On the back was the lock. The code box displayed a seven-digit keypad that opened the collar if the right code was punched in. If the wrong code was entered or anyone tried to get the collar off by force, it generated a contained laser sweep that decapitated whatever was wearing it.
Even better, the collar was locked on, the indicator light next to the keypad changed color depending on what you'd disabled. In my opinion, one of the better post-paranormal inventions.
I handed the PRC to Travis. "Try not to break it," I said, when his fist tightened around the smooth gray tube. "I don't think even a Were can grow back severed fingers."
He snarled and snapped the collar around his neck, flinching as the shock of the device suppressed his Were DNA. The resentment burning in his golden-brown wolf eyes never faltered as they turned an unimaginative, and very human, brown.
"You're next," I said to the female Were, Sharon. She gave me the same sour expression but clamped the collar on without comment. As her fancy yellow wolf eyes turned a pale hazel, I checked the clip on the Glock and tried not to miss my Browning.
When I went into business for myself, I'd had the gun modified by a talented friend of mine named Falcon. In addition to bullets, it held an arming chamber that shot hollow glucose-based dissolving needles that were filled with some special and illegal formulas of my own — one for vampires and one for Weres of any kind that nature could come up with.
What I shot out of it depended on what I was aiming at. It was possible to stop paras with bullets, but if you weren't an excellent shot it took a whole clip to do it. Taking the time to squeeze off that many rounds wasn't a great option when you were fighting things that moved as fast as they did.
I gestured with my borrowed gun for our new captives to follow Cooper. With another set of resentful glares they complied, and we started down the path toward camp. I wondered what Miller would think of two more mouths to feed.
* * *
We were about three hundred yards from camp when I realized something was wrong. Granted, I was still new to the Were gig thanks to the suppression spell laid on me by the mother who'd abandoned me, but I knew what the urge to fight, snarl or shift meant when it slammed into me — trouble.
That, and Cooper bristled up, coming to a stop on the path in front of us.
He turned suddenly and shoved Travis down, forcing him to sit on the ground. Our eyes met and I repeated the precaution with Sharon. Then, in a smear of motion
, Cooper was gone.
Pushing away my worry, I stepped back to give myself plenty of clearance in case Travis or Sharon tried anything. I leaned against a tree, prepared to give Cooper a good twenty minutes before I decided he needed backup. Of course that might mean our prisoners would make a run for it and frankly, if they didn't at least give it a try, I'd have a hard time respecting them in the morning.
Travis seemed to be thinking along the same lines, faking being sick from the PRC by resting his arms on his bent knees and letting his head hang between them as sweat dripped from his face. I couldn't fault his reasoning. As far as he knew the odds were two humans to one, even if the one was armed. With his Were arrogance still fully functioning, he probably thought they had a pretty good chance.
Up the path, I heard the whisper of something brushing up against the green leaves of the laurels we'd passed on the trail a moment ago. "Attacking random people in the woods can be a bitch," I said, focusing on the soft touch of a light step on dark, damp dirt, this time to my left. "You never know what kind of welcome you'll get."
An explosion of movement from the woods skimmed across my skin and I dove for the ground, rolling as I fired. The bullet from the Glock grazed the gray wolf's shoulder as he sprang at me, and I jumped to my feet. I backpedaled to give myself more maneuvering room as his paws hit the trunk of the tree above my prisoners and he pushed off, landing on the path in front of them.
"You won't stop him," Sharon said, her eyes lit up with anticipation.
"We'll see."
The wolf's lips curled away from his teeth, showcasing long sharp fangs as a low, threatening growl rumbled in his chest. Tightening my finger on the trigger, I waited for his next move and hoped it would give me a clear shot of his heart. With a groan, the man behind him fell over into the leaves.
