BLACKBERRY WINE
Werescape Book 7
(1st edition)
by
Skhye Moncrief
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PubIt! EDITION
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Blurb:
To drink or not to drink? Either choice just might be the death of Colt because Hell hath no fury like a Raven scorned.
In the blink of an eye, Raven lost it all but regained a future. That's when she was ten. Thirteen years later, she's come full circle. In her breeding prime, attractive, wealthy, and powerful, she's what every Normal and Shifter dreams of possessing. But she's not about to let a man make decisions for her. She can kick-ass with repairing machinery and running a homestead. Then the world stops when she sees him…
Bond by blood and honor, Shifter Colt can't shake the way his Wolf craves Raven. But he must because his brother found her first. And why does she fall into her little awestruck trances whenever her gaze falls upon Colt? His Wolf demands Colt sink his fangs into the salty flesh of the sexy female who can't function when he's nearby.
And everywhere Raven turns, she faces an even worse chapter in the Werescape's Shootout at her supposed-to-be Okay Corral. Well, thank goodness every girl has a few tricks up her sleeve--fast draw, guts, all the muscles of one magnificent guardian Shifter, and a few bottles of her special-recipe brew…Temptation never uncorked a sweeter seduction than 2065's BLACKBERRY WINE.
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Blackberry Wine
Copyright © 2012 by Skhye Moncrief
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
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Chapter 1
Life has gone to Hell in two generations. Extraterrestrials altered the human genome, splitting humanity into two subspecies of humans, Shifters and Normals. Sometimes Shifters and Normals work together for survival in cities or remote villages. Other times they war for dominance. Regardless of the outcome, they must survive and fight against human enslavement. Hunted by aliens for breeding stock, Shifters understand this the most. Especially, Wolf males…
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Colorado Territory, after alien invasion, AEI, Earth, summer 2065 AD
"Gods-damn, Raven, give me a fucking gun," my uncle Thomas yelled at my back over the deafening gunfire that I popped off at the Normals.
Those men, no animals, fell on their faces into the hard-packed earth between me and the destroyed gate of our ColoradoTerritory homestead. Stupid animals. They're everywhere.
And a lot of good giving left-handed Thomas a gun would do after these bastards just blew off his left hand. A tinker without his good hand is a dead man. I lined up the notch of my pistol's site with another one of the fools, pulled the stiff trigger then switched to the pistol in my other hand to plant a bullet between the eyes of one seriously inbred-looking scraggly-toothed Parker running straight for me.
Goodbye, Stan.
It's not like the man had anything left to live for with only the few teeth one could see when he stuck that nasty-ass tongue through the gaping hole where his front teeth had once been. Implying he could use it to please me.
Yes, Stan. Fall into a heap of maggot fodder. Jerk. Leave what's left of humanity a fighting chance against the aliens. I squeezed the solid grips of both guns and scanned the tree-trunk palisade surround of logs, standing on end flanking the twisted gate's sheet metal where the Parkers' bomb blew a hole into our homestead.
No sign of movement beyond the bodies littering the inside of Thomas' little haven in this AEI catastrophe of a drama. And I thought The Odyssey would never end. So much for saving those old tales for long winter nights. I can relive this damned memory forever. But this fight certainly isn't over with the Normal clan of roaches swarming the mountainside.
Something's wrong. Not even a breeze whispered over the silence beneath the baking sun. Baking vermin seems a fitting end for the roaches. Only half of them, the seven I'd filled with lead, were dead though. Where in the hell are the rest?
"I'm sorry, Raven. Just put a bullet between my eyes. You can save yourself if you don't have to worry about me," Thomas said quite calmly.
Ever the rational mind. With my back to the barn's wall and the only person on the planet who couldn't die on me, chances are pretty good I'd live. So will Thomas because I'm not living the rest of this insane life alone. Yes. Even if the Parkers beat us… For me. They won't shoot me--a female of reproductive age. That's what they want.
They'll only drag away my carcass if they take me. Because I'm not giving up on my future. On my choice in the matter. I won't go willingly.
And they're the easiest damned targets. Brainless. Desperate. Looking for nothing more than another woman to add to their breeding harem. And there's no way I'm going to drop on my hands and knees to breed roaches.
"Dammit, Raven!" Thomas snarled.
Hopefully, the tourniquet worked and his stump had stopped bleeding. Must be. If he'd bled out, he wouldn't be shouting curses. That's the Parker way. Not my uncle's. And since I don't see anymore idiots moving, I'd better check the wound.
The windmill managed a squeak.
It's about time the wind kicked in.
Probably warning me to check the tourniquet since part of my uncle's still had flown skyward and clipped the windmill like a flying blade. These machines have a mind of their own and insist on repairs so they can function. I can manage repairs. But apparently, the rest of the world thinks I'm only good for breeding. I pivoted over Thomas' bloodied blue jeans and brown cowboy boots, sidestepped to his left, tucked both pistols into the holsters at my hips, knelt, and studied the almost-clean slash that severed his forearm about two inches shy of his elbow.
"Look's bad," he muttered without moving the limb.
More like grim. And the arm's got to hurt. He doesn't deserve to hurt after saving me from the auction block when my parents died. He'd brought me out here into The Wild. He'd given a ten-year-old girl with nothing but breeding or prostitution for a future a safe home to finish growing. To learn all of his tricks with engines and electronics. To have a fighting chance for a something…And the raw meat of his wound might look bad but won't be the death of him. Killing a man who people journeyed across Territories to trade with isn't easy. He's got everything here. Every supply a person could want. So many things that my mind still boggles after thirteen years of wandering through the thick of it all. Add that Thomas was born with the hardiest stubborn gene I'd ever seen in a Normal and his pleas for a quick death made no sense.
"Do it, Raven."
What? I slid my gaze up the bloodied faded blue sleeve that had also been sliced when a Parker had reached the moonshine still and sent shrapnel flying with a second hellacious explosion, sliding my gaze onward up to my uncle's cleanly-shaven squared jaw, to his firmly-set straight-lipped grimace, stopping at his commanding blue gaze. "Do what?"
"The bullet."
How I'll get him to swallow the antibiotics is my next bloody battle. Where's a Parker when a girl needs something to shoot? So, I'll just ignore the man. Get him up to the house. Inject him with some morphine. Try to pour tea with antibiotics down his throat, without drowning him while he slept off the pain meds.
"I don't like that look in your eye," he said.
Must be the distant look of a determined woman ca
lculating her next mission. "Well, get used to it. I'm in charge now." I scooted over to thrust an arm behind his back and the hard wooden planking of the barn wall.
"Oh you are?" he patronized.
Without leaning forward to help me. "Come on, Thomas. Lean." I avoided the unyielding stare I knew he had anchored on me and shoved at his equally unyielding muscled shoulder. "Only Parkers die today." I sucked in a deep breath and heaved.
He snorted and shoved the healthy weight of a well-fed Normal, one who never missed a meal and moved heavy equipment, all one-hundred and seventy pounds of him, backward to pin my palm against the barn's smooth wood. "You're still a kid. I've lived sixty long years out here. Don't tell me what to do."
Fine. Assert your authority and lean forward before the pressure from your body cracks my knuckles.
He leaned forward.
Good thing he hates hurting me. Hopefully, he decided I needed him to survive. Alone out here, I'd attract every useless good-for-nothing male, toting his prized possession in his pants, within a month's ride. I'd probably become a legend. The abandoned woman ripe for the picking.
Well, until I learn what fate has planned for me. And something tells me, I don't want to know by the looks of the surrounding chaos.
"Hello-o, Raven," the familiar voice of Keagan Parker called from behind me.
Every hair on my body stood on end.
"One-hundred and thirty-five degrees," Thomas muttered the man's location for me to turn and fire.
But what did Keagan want now? Why call me out when he could take me?
"Kick the shotgun to me while you turn and face him," Thomas mumbled clearly.
The black barrel laid on the other side of his body. There's no way I could nonchalantly pull that off. And even if I could, would Thomas hit anything with the spray of fire other than me?
"Come on, Raven. I promise to take good care of you myself," Keagan practically droned.
Right. If I could count on him claiming me, I might have a chance at something down the road. But Parkers share. And Keagan isn't about to rock the boat and risk being killed to a replacement who'd play nice and share. I looked deep into Thomas' brown eyes.
Eyes staring back with a most determined command. Eyes filled with fear and insistence. Time to move. I shoved up from the hot hard earth, twisting, pulling both pistols into the silent air, and searched the torn gateway for the tall lanky bastard's brown leather duster.
Gone. Where in the hell did he go?
"Shit," Thomas hissed.
My uncle's uncharacteristic cursing still makes me wish I could hide in the root cellar.
"Don't move," the other Parker voice I could identify in pitch-black darkness and a howling wind warned where Rowdy stood behind me.
Keagan is the charmer. Rowdy is Keagan's snake. Sneaky. Deadly. A diamond-back rattler…Shaking the tip of his vile tail. Probably has a weapon trained on me.
"Rifle," Thomas mumbled the answer.
"Don't make me finish the job, old man," Rowdy growled.
I'd already killed half of them. Surely, there's no way they'd keep me alive longer than to rape me. Or worse. The way they break women…A few had starved on their diet of semen. Women really mean nothing to these animals. Besides, they're surely going to kill Thomas. We've got one chance. Kill the snake. And I'm the sharp shooter. I spun.
A weapon boomed.
Something punched me in the shoulder.
Hard.
"No," Thomas howled.
I couldn't breathe. Froze. Stood there with the sharpest pain stabbing through one side of my upper back.
My heart frantically pumped like it could push the pain away.
All I could do was stare at the twisted sheet metal of gate where it curled around the base of the log wall surrounding our little piece of heaven in The Wilderness.
"You Gods-damned sons-of-bitches," Thomas snarled.
The blue sky and dark wall swayed in an eerie dance, then everything went black.
Something hard and flat hit me.
Flat. Stable. The ground. God I'm tired. And it's so quiet here. I tried to lift my head so I wouldn't suck in dust with each breath.
An ungodly roar ripped me away into the darkness.
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The old tinker finally calmed down enough to explain what had transpired before we arrived to send the Normals running with their tails between their legs. The Parkers tried to kill Thomas and kidnap his niece. Admitting I'd had similar thoughts about the sinuous curves of her limp tranquilized form when I first saw her might be unsettling for the injured man though. So, I just stood back in his lodge's shadows and let Buck do the talking. Grant it, I'm the alpha here. But Buck had a relationship with these Normals. And that would be just more reason for Thomas to trust us. Long enough for the beautiful woman to burn off the tranquilizer and come out for Wolf to make his presence known. I leaned my shoulder blades back into the biting beautifully-planed wood of the log cabin's interior wall and watched my youngest brother Stag ladle out a portion of whatever waited in the hearth's large pot at the other end of the equally large main room of the Tinker's home.
Filled with things most Normals didn't possess.
Gadgets. Dinner plates covered in a variety of patterns displayed on a wall like fine art I'd seen back East. An enormous mirror with an intricately-carved wooden frame reflected light across the room above the Tinker's graying brown head of hair. A green bicycle rigged for grinding grain still had an almost-pristine coat of paint where it sat pushed back into the corner of a room. Pampered. No, deified.
The enormous room's mismatched collection of upholstered furniture is another sign of wealth. Anything cushioned, even this hodgepodge of wooden-legged chairs with armrests, still remains a pretty popular item nobody could afford to keep on hand in The Wild because of the cost of transportation. People only transport things they need to survive. Comfortable furniture takes up far too much space when it comes down to hauling necessities like food, clothes, medicine, pots, and tools. And bio-fuel is so hard to come by that nobody wastes using it on frivolous items. This has to be the wealthiest Normal male west of the Mississippi. So damned rich he carved a fortress out of the wilderness and lives like a warlord with nothing but a niece to help him rule his roost.
Stag turned back to the pallet Thomas conveniently kept on a far wall and headed for the seated man.
"Just eat now." Buck patted Thomas' shoulder and rose. "Get your strength back so Raven won't worry when she wakes up."
"My strength?" Thomas scoffed with his unusual formal English. "I need to grow an arm, son."
Buck chuckled politely and casually leaned a shoulder against the wall at the end of the Normal's bed, facing the man. "You're the only Normal I know who calls me son."
Thomas arched a gray shaggy eyebrow at my other brother. "You know as well as I that you're almost genetically identical to me. Just because the other Normals are morons doesn't mean I'll fancy myself inferior to those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to take care of themselves without weapons and thick protective walls."
A bit of a challenge lay cleverly embedded in that declaration. Maybe it lurked to feel us out to see what we really have planned.
Buck smacked his lips and shot me a what-do-I-say glance.
Even though we Guardians wore our standard military camouflage pants and shaved our heads to prove we Shifters are the more civilized of the humans on Earth, something told me touching that Normal's comment would set off all sorts of trouble. I slid my gaze across the floor's wooden planking and back to the large fireplace's flagstone masonry.
All fashioned from perfectly-matched pleasant pale stone.
Hours. She'd been out for hours. Well, it's probably best she wasn't in the way while I cleaned up and sutured Thomas' stump. But if she'd just wake up now, I could decide if that's my Wolf's woman.
Mine, Wolf yapped deep inside my chest.
So much for curiosity and decisions.
"So
you were up on Elk Ridge when you heard the initial explosion?" Thomas asked with a touch of enthusiasm.
"Yes," Buck replied, "hunting."
The soft dragging sound of a spoon scraping the bottom of a bowl noted the old Normal decided to eat.
"I didn't know Shifters hunted in packs."
"Sometimes," Buck said.
"Hmm," Thomas hummed thoughtfully as if his mouth was filled with food. "You get bored up at the outpost?"
Smart man.
Buck and Stag chuckled.
Why? There's another point to ponder.
"You've done far too much for me today for me to ask anything else of you. But I must beg a favor," Thomas added.
A little too carefully. I turned to the man who conspiratorially eyed my brothers.
"I need you to take Raven back East. My cousin lives out in Old Atlanta. A woman. She's quite wealthy and can look after Raven until Raven finds a place for herself."
Mine, Wolf whined.
The girl isn't going East. Not happening. The tinker can sit there and beg all he wants. And even if my sire orders me to do it, Raven's not heading back East.
Buck sucked in a deep breath and studied the old Normal's crossed brown hiking boots where his heels were propped atop an upholstered footrest. "Do you think Raven will agree to leave?"
Thomas snorted and didn't bother shooting Buck a dismissive glance while he scraped the spoon across the base of his dish again. "I'm in charge. She'll do what she's told." He tucked a mounded spoonful of food into his mouth and chewed.
Like the motion would make his words gold. Force the female to do his bidding.
Buck smoothed the neatly-trimmed golden circle beard around his mouth with a finger and thumb. "You know Raven is old enough to make her own choices, Thomas."
Buck never really was much of a fool. The fingering of his beard noted Buck tried to think of the right way to say what's on his mind. But our sire learned early on to just let Buck say what haunted him or there would be no peace until Buck blurted those thoughts. Even with Thomas who obviously meant what he said. With the glint in the old man's eyes, this standoff will definitely be priceless to witness.
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