by Moira Rogers
“The wolves?” She reached for him. “How do you get rid of it?”
“I don’t know. There are rituals…spells, maybe.” The darkest part of his soul protested, and he crushed the rebellion ruthlessly. “Getting rid of power isn’t exactly a common goal, sweetheart.”
“There has to be a way. We’ll find one.”
Sasha walked in and leaned against the open door, one hand tangled in Dylan’s fur. “I only know of one way. Adam…is familiar with it.”
A shudder worked through him, and he was helpless to stop it. “Those were weak wolves, Sasha. Subordinates. Submissives. The only one with serious power was Joan.”
“We have to do something, don’t we?”
Cindy laid a hand on his cheek. “Christ, Adam, you’re burning up.”
“I know.” He closed his eyes and clutched at her shoulders, using her presence to ground him. “It has to be Winston. Someone needs to get him.”
“I’m already here.” A strong hand locked around Adam’s elbow. “Cindy, help me get him to a chair.”
It was all Adam could do to keep from driving his elbow into Keith’s chest. “I’m not an invalid, Winston.” It came out as a snarl.
Keith had no problem snarling right back. “Park your ego at the door and sit your ass down. If you don’t care about yourself, think about Cindy.”
“Yes, think about Cindy,” she interjected. “Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?”
Chapter Nine
Cindy had thought she couldn’t get more terrified than when Mac had been brought to her, torn and bleeding, and she’d had to confront the possibility that it could have been her, or any of them.
It could have been Adam.
But that fear paled next to this, next to him looking half-dead and half-crazy in turn, and Sasha talking about doing something that sounded suspiciously like—
“No.” She knelt in front of him, gripping his hand as tightly as she could. “You don’t have to forge these bonds. You can give it to me.”
His hand came up to cup her cheek, and he managed a weak smile. “No. At least I have practice with this.”
All that wouldn’t matter if it broke him. “Are you sure?”
“No.” His thumb swept over her lips, a gentle, tender touch. “What I have to ask of you is far worse. I only hope you won’t hate me for it.”
She had only one answer, and she meant it with everything in her. “Anything.”
Adam closed his eyes. “With this much power, I can protect the town. If I bind your wolves to me, the way I did it before, they’ll heal a hundred times faster. They’ll be stronger. And with their strength at my disposal, their willing strength, this vampire doesn’t stand a chance.”
A curious numbness unfurled inside her, and she shook her head. “You said you had no business having that sort of power with no thought of how to use it. Does that mean you—you’ve figured it out?”
“No, sweet Cindy. It means I can save your town and your wolves, but I might become a monster.”
The numbness splintered into horror. “Adam—”
“Shh.” He looked up to where Keith still hovered, then shifted his gaze to Sasha and Dylan, who watched in silence. “Can we get a few moments?”
Sasha backed away. “We’ll check on things outside.”
Cindy heard them file out, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from Adam’s face. His lips and cheeks were red with fever, his eyes glassy. “You can’t sacrifice yourself for us. It isn’t right.”
His other hand came up, both cradling her face. “It’s too late, Cindy. I already took the power, and I can’t contain it all. Forgive me. I need you to forgive me, for not waiting—”
She cut off his frantic words with a quick, hard kiss. “Nothing to forgive, Adam. Just…tell me what you need me to do.”
“Stay with me.” He smoothed his thumbs over her cheeks, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I’ll fight with everything in me, darling. For you, for your friends…but they’re not just words. Power corrupts. No vampire I’ve heard of has taken this much power before. You’ll need to bring me back. And if you can’t…”
Her eyes burned, and she couldn’t breathe. Adam would rather die than live that way—out of control, mad with power. A danger to others. She knew that.
She knew it.
It didn’t help. Cindy realized she was holding her breath, and she released it on a ragged sob. Her first instinct was to argue, and her second was to demand that he ask someone—anyone—else to bear this responsibility. To shoulder the burden of killing him.
But she couldn’t. There was no one else with a fighting chance of breaking through his madness, if it came to that. She had the best chance of holding him there, of keeping him anchored and sane.
She blinked until the tears clouding her vision fell, tracing hot lines down her cheeks. “Tell me how to do it quickly. I don’t—don’t want it to hurt.”
Adam pressed his lips to her forehead. “Sever the spinal cord. But I swear to God, Cindy, I’m going to try.”
“Please.” She held his wrists and closed her eyes. “Does this mean I have to stay outside the spell?”
“Yes. I don’t want you in it.” He kissed her forehead again, then each eyelid. “I can bring the vampire here. Once I have the power, I’ll find him. Challenge him. He’ll know I took what was his, and he’ll come.”
And then, one way or another, it would end. “We’ll be ready.”
“I know.” His mouth covered hers and he kissed her, hard and hungry, so desperate it felt like he was trying to condense a lifetime of kisses into one moment.
But it couldn’t last forever. Cindy heard footsteps, and Abby murmured their names. “No more time. The kid—the leader? He said everyone else was an hour behind them at most, and they’re bound to be in a hurry now. We need to do this.”
Adam released her and lifted his head. “Keith and Sasha.”
“I’ll get them.” Cindy wiped her face as she rose. She had to have a moment to compose herself, to strengthen her resolve.
Outside, Keith was standing with Dylan, who’d shifted and found a pair of sweatpants somewhere. “The kid might have been the strongest one they had,” Dylan murmured as Cindy stopped next to them. “Matthews only let a pack stay in a nearby town if they tithed heavily, and he went in once a year to stamp out anyone strong enough to present a challenge. They’re going to be as helpless as the Helena subordinates would have been.”
Keith shook his head. “You of all people know better than to underestimate a wolf with nothing to lose, Gennaro. You took down Alan Matthews with a handgun after all of us had failed. Maybe we can give them a little hope worth fighting for.”
“Adam’s ready for you and Sasha.” Cindy marveled at how steady and calm the words sounded.
Keith nodded to Dylan. “Go talk to the ones you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
Keith turned to Cindy next and grasped her arms. “You okay, sweetheart?”
“No.” She laughed helplessly. “I won’t be part of it, Keith. The pack bonding. I’m the safety switch, I guess. If things go wrong.”
For one second, he stared. Then he swore viciously as his fingers tightened. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”
“There’s no one else, just me.” It was a truth she could barely fathom. “He trusts me.”
“Cindy, you don’t—” He cut off and cursed again. “Damn it all to hell, we don’t even have time to fight about it. Sasha! With me, and explain what the hell’s going on.”
The witch was there in an instant. “We need to redistribute all the power Adam took from the wolves. He’s going to use me and you to do it.”
“Is this like that spell he used in the thirties?”
“Pretty much exactly.” She frowned apologetically. “I don’t have time to find another way.”
“Fine.” Keith’s hand slid down to curl around Cindy’s hand, squeezing. “Let’s do this. And Cindy, I want
to leave someone else with you, so if something has to happen…”
It might be easier to let someone else be the one to end Adam’s life, but it could haunt her for the rest of hers. “I can do this, Keith. I will, for him.”
There was a moment of silence as they pushed through the door, and Keith nodded. “Sasha? What do we do?”
When she answered, she addressed Adam. “Bind Keith. After that, I’ll draw the bond into myself and thread it out to the rest of the pack.”
It wasn’t showy, though energy gathered in the room until it felt like every molecule was electrified. Sizzling. Keith held out his arm without waiting to be asked, and Adam grasped his wrist in silence. A muscle in Keith’s cheek twitched when Adam bit him, but the vampire’s throat worked only once before he pulled back, eyes squeezed shut and jaw clenched.
The first proof that anything had happened was Keith’s sharp inhalation. Magic wound through the room, but it tasted like Keith, not Adam. It built until Cindy’s ears buzzed, as if all this power was a living, noisy thing, whispering its demands of them all.
Sasha stepped forward, and the buzzing grew louder. She held out one hand, her fingers hovering just shy of Keith’s skin. The electric atmosphere intensified, and magic began to lash through the air.
Cindy closed her eyes as energy zipped around her, questing. Searching. She waited for it to envelop her…
But it never did. When Sasha finally dropped her hand and opened her eyes, Cindy stood alone. The magic had solidified, webbed around her, but she was untouched. She shivered. “Is it done?”
Keith’s voice seemed to echo. “It’s done. Christ. If this is what Brynn feels like half the time, no wonder she starts so many damn fights.”
“Power can make you reckless.” Adam came to his feet. There was something graceful and almost predatory about the way his gaze drifted across the room and fixed on her. “You should gather the wolves. If I challenge the vampire, it should be one-on-one, but I doubt he’ll hold to the rules once he realizes I have what he wants.”
He was watching her, so Cindy blinked. “You—you want me to do it?”
Keith had already started for the door. “Stay with him. Sasha, you too.” His voice brooked no argument.
The door slammed behind him, but Adam still watched her. Darkness stirred in his gaze, and he held out a hand. “Cindy.”
She couldn’t look away. “Adam.” His hand was hot under hers, but steady.
He seemed oblivious to Sasha’s presence as he pulled Cindy forward until her body stretched out against his. “Tell me you’re not afraid of me. Tell me you’ll still want me if we make it through this.”
Perhaps he could feel her fear—not completely, but enough to misunderstand it. “I’m terrified, but I want you, Adam, always. If we make it through this…” She lifted her hands to his face. “Even if we don’t.”
He shuddered under her touch. “I’m too damn old to fall in love, and too damn smart to fall this fast. But hell, Cindy, if we don’t… I would have—”
Her chest ached, and she had to press her fingers over his mouth to stop the words. “Tell me in a while?” Outside, she heard distant, threatening howls. “Just a little while now.”
Adam jerked her hand away and claimed her lips in a kiss so hard his fangs scratched her lips. Cindy met it eagerly, glad for the tiny wounds she knew his teeth would leave. It was a little more of him she could have for a bit longer, even if things went badly.
When the howls rose again, he tore himself away and spun, striding for the door with jerky, abrupt steps, as if he had to force himself to walk away. And walk away he did, out the door and into the street, where his voice rose along with the borrowed power in a challenge that must have echoed off the hills. “I challenge you for blood rights to the state of Montana and every wolf within its borders. Show yourself or forfeit.”
Adam didn’t even know the enemy’s name.
It was a trivial detail to be concerned about when the mountains around them vibrated with the roars of challenging wolves. Magic thrummed in his veins, magic he’d stolen mixed with power freely given, and the world lay crisp and sharp around him, connected to him in a way he’d never imagined.
He could number the pine needles on distant trees and count the grains of sand in the rocky gravel stretched out before him. Somewhere on the edge of town a furious force gathered, the vampire marshaling death and life as he screamed a wordless response to Adam’s challenge. Too far gone to remember the rituals, or too lost to madness to care.
Recco’s wolves streamed down the street, healthy and hungry for a fight. The real warriors, the ones Red Rock would have to defeat in order to live free. Safe.
A small gray wolf shot past him and stood in front of him, snarling, legs stiff and trembling. He could feel the others, but not her. Not Cindy.
She launched herself at the first attacker to head his way, jaws snapping in ferocious, protective rage. The wolf yelped and went down, and Adam shuddered and fought the need to draw more power, to take it from Red Rock’s defenders and channel it into a weapon to protect Cindy.
Cindy didn’t need his protection. She fought like she’d been trained, which she had been, knowing Keith and Joe. Another wolf fell before her and still the vampire didn’t appear, though his presence weighted the air, left it heavy.
So much magic, so many bonds, but no bridge between them. Without a link, there was no way to force his enemy to show himself. Not before the situation was dire and lives had been lost. No way except—
A wolf got past Cindy and lunged for Adam’s throat, and he twisted fast and wrapped both arms around its body. Sharp teeth snapped shut an inch away from his face, and arrogance grew inside Adam, reckless and unchecked.
Ignoring the battle around them, he lifted his arm and shoved it into the wolf’s mouth. Those deadly teeth tore into his skin, shredding his arm as the startled beast bit down. Hard, almost hard enough to snap bone, and pain ripped through Adam like shattering glass, burning away everything but his goal. “Drink, you flea-ridden fucker.”
Crazed though the wolf might be, it clearly recognized danger. As it should—over time Adam’s blood would poison the wolf, death magic festering until it consumed the creature from the inside. It tried to pull back, but wrenching its head only carved deeper paths in Adam’s arm, and the blood ran freely.
Too freely. It wasn’t the easiest way to forge a connection. There was no gift here, no willing participant. Adam used the excess magic thrumming inside him to force the bond into place with brutal strength before releasing the wolf, letting the creature fall to the ground in a whimpering, confused sprawl. Adam ignored the hot slick of blood running down his arm and closed his eyes, tracing that tentative bond back to the wolf.
Without the power surging inside him it would have been impossible, but it was so easy to reach out and draw in a little from Red Rock’s defenders. Savage, willing magic rose at his slightest thought, and with it he seized energy from the wolf at his feet, wrapping himself in its aura as he found the second bond and followed it back to its source.
The vampire sat at the center like a bloated spider, huddling in the protective web he’d made from the wolves’ life force. Magic didn’t carry thoughts easily, but intentions were clear enough. The coward meant to use his wolves, use them up if he had to, anything to drain the reserves of the defenders.
Fear permeated the connections, the fear of the attackers, whose opponents healed faster than any wolf should, and fear from the vampire himself, who couldn’t understand why Adam’s circle of power shone strong and controlled where his was a chaotic mess.
It was such a mess that the vampire didn’t even notice when Adam stole the first wolf from him. He snatched the bond as easy as breathing, and added it to the endless reservoir of strength building inside him. The second came to him just as easily, but with the third a roar split the air, and the attacking wolves went wild as the vampire lost his grip on sanity and charged.
Adam opened his eyes to find Cindy hovering, her fur streaked with blood, and none of it hers. She’d obviously heard the roar, the challenge, and she lunged only to draw up short. She wouldn’t leave him, but she didn’t have to.
The vampire would come to them.
Then he did, a pale specter who charged down the street, knocking people and skirmishing wolves out of his path. He was past his prime, the evidence of too much magic twisting his frame, leaving him physically weak.
The power inside him was another story. At any other time, Adam would have been wary of it. Now, he welcomed the chance to extinguish it, like a licked fingertip on a lit match head.
“You can’t have them.” Even his voice was unholy, an echo of itself rasping free of his throat. “They’re mine!”
Adam laughed, let the sound ring out and echo off the surrounding buildings. Words came, stiffly formal and dripping with disdainful challenge that felt more real than he intended. “You’re a mewling, pathetic boy trying to play a man’s game. I invented the rules, you fool. You think to best me?”
“I know about you.” The vampire smiled viciously. “You spent the last century hiding from this power like a little girl. You don’t deserve it.”
The words should have hurt more, but what could possibly hurt him now? He was fucking invincible. “I may not deserve it, but I’m the one who’s got it. You couldn’t quite pull it off, could you, you sorry bastard.”
“Your way is weak. You give them too much power.”
“And your way is working out for you?” Adam spit on the ground. “Let them go, or I’ll take them from you. Every last one.”
Cindy snarled, and the vampire looked at her. “Or I’ll take yours from you,” he murmured.
Faces flashed before his eyes. Women and girls, young wolves who had been taken from him, tortured and killed to teach him his place in the world. They’d been his to protect, his to hold safe for all that they’d given their loyalty to Joan. They’d been his—
—and not one of them had touched him as deeply as Cindy.
For the first time in his too-long existence, someone had stirred the embers of affection until love simmered just beneath the surface, ready to burst into flames. Cindy was life. Cindy was everything.
