Jace
Page 1
PRAISE FOR
Jared
“A sexy cowboy with bite.”
—TwoLips Reviews
“Rural romantic fantasy fans will fully relish Jared’s tale.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Jared shows that Sarah McCarty is an author you want to read… [She] definitely pushes the imagination with the deviousness of the vampires from Sanctuary. Jared will suck you in with its captivating characters, dramatic plot, and tempting love scenes!”
—The Romance Studio
Promises Reveal
“Few writers can match the skill of Sarah McCarty when it comes to providing her audience with an intelligent, exhilarating Western romance starring two likable protagonists. The fast-paced story line hooks the audience.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Entertaining… Kept this reader turning the pages. I’ve got a soft spot for Western historicals, with their hard times and smooth-talking cowboys. Ms. McCarty delivers on both of those fronts.”
—Romance Reader at Heart
“I absolutely adored the chemistry and witty banter between these two spicy characters, and the sex, as always, was titillating, sizzling, and realistic… I don’t know how she does it, but I want more and more and more. You will too once you read this fantastic tale.”
—Night Owl Romance
“A must-read… Enticing and erotic… I am already craving more!”
—Romance Junkies
“Highly entertaining… Plenty steamy…and a great complement to the series.”
—A Romance Review
“A delightful tale with lots of intense passion… Outstanding! Not to be missed by fans of historical Westerns who enjoy a strong dose of erotic fiction.”
—The Romance Readers Connection
Running Wild
“[Sarah McCarty’s] captivating characters, scorching love scenes, and dramatic plot twists kept me on the edge. I could not put it down.”
—Night Owl Romance
“McCarty…skillfully brings out her characters’ deepest emotions. Three strong heroines and three mouthwatering heroes…will tug at your heartstrings, and the well-written sex scenes will not disappoint.”
—Romantic Times
“Sarah McCarty entices and enchants…and has taken paranormal romance to a whole new level.”
—Romance Junkies
“You are going to love this… Entertaining and passionate… Fast-paced story lines and super-hot sex scenes… Sarah McCarty definitely takes you on a wild ride and…weaves a fascinating paranormal.”
—Lucrezia
“This one is a scorcher. If you’re looking for a romance to raise the temperatures, then look no further than McCarty’s Running Wild!”
—Romance Reader at Heart
“Provide[s] werewolf romance fans with a strong, heated collection. Fans will be Running Wild.”
—Midwest Book Review
More praise for the novels of Sarah McCarty
“[A] pulse-pounding paranormal.”
—Road to Romance
“Masterfully written.”
—The Romance Readers Connection
“Powerfully erotic, emotional, and thought provoking.”
—Ecataromance
“Has the WOW factor… Characters that jump off the pages!”
—Just Erotic Romance Reviews
“Toe curling.”
—Fallen Angel Reviews (Recommended Read)
“Ms. McCarty is a genius!”
—Romance Junkies
Berkley Sensation titles by Sarah McCarty
PROMISES REVEAL
The Shadow Wranglers
CALEB
JARED
JACE
The Shadow Reapers
REAPER’S JUSTICE
Berkley Heat titles by Sarah McCarty
RUNNING WILD
WILD INSTINCT
THE SHADOW WRANGLERS
JACE
Sarah McCarty
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2011 by Sarah McCarty.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
BERKLEY® SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCarty, Sarah.
Jace / Sarah McCarty.—Berkley Sensation trade paperback ed.
p. cm.—(Shadow wranglers ; 3)
ISBN: 978-1-101-51448-1
1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Shapeshifting—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.C3568J33 2011
813'.6—dc22 2011000497
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
1
MIRI was here.
Anticipation thrummed along Jace Johnson’s nerves as he stood outside the Sanctuary stronghold; his fangs cut through his gums; bloodlust filled his veins. The bones in his face ached in pre-morph exhilaration. After a year of hell, he was close, very close to finding her. His mate. Adrenaline surged through his body, both from the battle about to begin and from the hunt about to end. A year ago she’d disappeared. He’d come home from a mission and found her gone, and no one, pack or vampire, claimed to know where she’d gone. It wasn’t until his brother Jared had brought home his mate, a pretty little vamp who they’d all had reason to hate, that Jace had discovered she’d run from him, pregnant, straight into a Sanctuary trap. They’d taken her, kept her prisoner, experimented on her until Miri said there wasn’t much left of the woman he remembered.
And what was left, Miri said, she wasn’t sure he’d want. Not after what had been done to her. Things she was sure no wolf mate could get past.
Jace slid along the stone wall leading to the bolt-hole from the Sanctuary compound, motioning Derek forward on the other side. Miri had an annoying habit of forgetting she wasn’t mated to a werewolf. There was nothing that could change what she meant to him, and if she had scars, they had forever left to get past them, and they’d do it together. Jace pressed his hand to the wood door, illusioned to look like solid rock. He mentally scanned for energy on the other side, any flicker of light or change that would indicate Sanctuary vampires. He didn’t find any, but that didn’t mean anything. He tightened his grip on his gun. Hell, with the new cloaking devices that Sanctuary had invented, there could be a whole army of Sanctuary vampires on the other side of that door and he wouldn’t know. He smiled as adrenaline rushed through his system like a good friend. He hoped to hell there was. After a year of searching and worrying, he had a ton of frustration to vent.
He glanced over at Derek. The powerful werewolf wore the same smile he could feel on his face. Nothing like the potential for a good fight to perk a man up. Derek jerked his head and raised his eyebrow. Jace shrugged. He didn’t know what they were going to find on the other side of the door. He touched the side of his nose with his finger. Weres had a much better sense of smell than vampires. A second later, the wolf also shrugged. Jace nodded. So be it. Tonight they were going in blind. He scanned again, this time looking for another type of energy. The video feed was easy to find. He mentally threw a subtle cloak of energy over the area before carefully opening the door. It swung soundlessly on its hinges.
The corridor beyond was dark. Not surprising. Vampires didn’t need light to navigate. He sent another tendril of energy through the opening. Still nothing. A quick glance didn’t reveal anything untoward, just a dark corridor stretching into the bowels of the mountain. The slight scrape of claw over metal disturbed the silence as Derek shifted his grip on his gun. It was the only sign the were shared his unease. There should be at least one sentry. Either the Sanctuary vamps thought no one knew about this little bolt-hole, or it was a trap. Either way, they didn’t have any more time. Once his brothers and the Renegades launched their assault on the front of the compound, the chances of getting caught in the bolt-hole by fleeing Sanctuary vamps grew exponentially with the number of cowards in the place. He was betting there’d be a lot of cowards.
Derek gave him the thumbs-up. Jace went in first, and Derek slipped in behind him, a silent, deadly ghost. The wolf was a good man. A McClaren to the bone, which meant he had a very black-and-white philosophy about right and wrong, which probably explained why Jace and his brothers had taken up with the McClarens when they’d turned. The alliance might have evolved by accident when Caleb saved Derek’s life, but it had grown out of respect for the values each held, until now, two hundred and fifty years later, the McClaren pack was family. And in some ways, the Johnsons were pack. The relationship might defy description, but it worked.
Jace paused just inside the door and mouthed, You can still go back.
Derek flipped him off.
Jace shook his head. There was just no talking to some men. And deep inside, he admitted he was glad of it. With Derek along, this mission might work out to be more than glorified suicide. The McClarens were hell on wheels when it came to a fight, and more than a match for most vampires. With Derek along, he might just get his wife back. And his child, who he only found out about days ago. He shook his head at that. Jace Johnson, a family man. It didn’t hit his funny bone as hard as it could have. Over the last few days he’d grown rather attached to the notion.
They made their way soundlessly down the dark corridor. Processed air blew past. A few feet beyond the opening, his night vision kicked in, casting everything in shades of gray. He blinked. He’d never quite gotten used to the switch. Night vision was as detailed as day vision, but he still had the hardest time getting used to the lack of color.
Truth was, he liked color. He liked laughter. Hell, he even liked life as a damn vampire. Of all the Johnson brothers, he was the only one who’d welcomed Caleb turning him. He couldn’t imagine being left behind. It’d always been the Johnson brothers against the world. And when push came to shove he didn’t see the sense of losing his brothers for want of turning. Being immortal definitely had its advantages. He was stronger and faster, and he could fight better and love longer. It had pretty much been wine, woman, and song interspersed with an occasional battle for two centuries. Until Miri. Miri D’Nally, with her witchy eyes, sunny smile, and soft-as-summer-rain ways, had turned the fun into something much more serious. He tightened his grip on his gun. Much more welcome.
They came to a split in the corridor and another camera. He shimmered an illusion of the surrounding wall over himself and Derek and quickly passed beyond its view. Video devices were good against weres and they were good against humans, but they were pretty useless against vampires.
He scanned again. There were people in one of the rooms ahead to the right. Not moving. Prisoners? He was too far away to tell and the energy too weak to read. No telling whether they were wolf, vamp, or human, but his gut twisted with a hard clench. It had to be Miri. He signaled for Derek to cover him and pointed down the corridor. Derek nodded. Jace moved forward, curling his finger against the trigger guard, itching for a target. He wanted to kill someone for burying Miri in this glorified grave. Just being this far beneath the earth must have driven a woman like her mad.
Miri was a woman of laughter and joy, a werewolf who loved to run in sunlight and dance in moonlight, who gloried in her connection to nature. Forbidden to him by her pack law, given to him as a mate by fate, he remembered her as he’d last seen her: relaxed and sated from his lovemaking, her lips parted and swollen, her breath panting, her long black hair a fan of contrast against the white sheets. She’d stared at him as he’d told her he was leaving, disbelief slowly replacing the bliss in her soft golden-brown eyes when he’d told her he was coming back the following week, creating a nagging unease that he was missing something. An unease he’d ignored. To their detriment. Truth was, if he’d spent more time understanding her out of bed, he’d have known how devastating his casual announcement that he was leaving had been to her, but he’d been thinking as a human and she’d been thinking as a wolf. Not a good combination in any circumstances. Damn near terminal when it happened in the beginning of a relationship. It’d taken longer than a week to come back. Civil war had a way of messing with a man’s schedule, and when he had returned, Miri had been as gone as if she’d never existed. And there hadn’t been a whisper as to where. And when all his efforts to find her had come up empty, he’d braved direct confrontation with the D’Nallys. While he’d accepted the D’Nallys’ right to put a bounty on his head for touching a were female, he hadn’t accepted their statement that his Miri was dead. Not when his gut told him she wasn’t. Not when, every time he closed his eyes, he went quietly crazy because her cries haunted his dreams. And then Raisa had come to the compound and he realized those nightmares were real. For a year, his wife had needed him, called for him to save her, believed he would come. Goddamn! For a year she’d suffered while he’d hunted in all the wrong places. For a year she’d kept believing until, Raisa said, she finally couldn’t believe anymore and she’d given up, forced by Sanctuary plans into a final act of desperation to save their child. Something that had her living on borrowed time. And now the clock was ticking.
Rage flared as he moved deeper into the mountain. If her pack hadn’t been so insular, so stuck on tradition, Jace might have found her sooner, but the D’Nallys were real particular about their women and no doubt one of their women hanging out with a vampire from the wrong side of immortality did not float their boat. He moved down the corridor, studying the energy coming from the room, slowing as it became more distinct. He couldn’t afford a mistake. Derek growled a low warning. He was flaring
out of control. Jace stopped, taking a breath, steadying the wild fluctuation of energy that surged at the thought. Legend was, vampires were sterile beings that could only be made, not born, but apparently the Johnsons were the exception to the rule, because Caleb’s wife, Allie, was pregnant and he… Shit! He had a child.
The wonder of that tempered his rage, giving him something positive on which to hook his excess emotion. Once again under control, he moved on, logging the information coming at him as he did. About a hundred feet ahead, the corridor veered off. He probed the left hall. There was the hollow thunk of machinery and the consistent hum of fans but no sense of life. Maybe a security room? If there was one, the occupants were cloaked or it was unmanned. He was betting unmanned, since the hairs on the back of his neck weren’t standing on end. Derek paused against the opposite wall, his eyebrows raised, gun sitting easily in his hand, the butt resting against his hip, looking for all the world like he was out for a picnic, while from somewhere down the maze of corridors came the muffled sound of a single shot and an explosion. Vibrations from the blast vibrated through the floor and wall, adding to the tension in Jace’s muscles. They only had a short time to find Miri and get out. Sanctuary leaders were notorious for blowing up compounds if the battle went south. And this battle was definitely going to go south. The Johnsons had a score to settle.
Don’t be influenced by what you see. Use your senses.
Caleb’s words came back to him. Jace closed his eyes, going deep into his vampire senses. Instinct told him this area was where he needed to be and the direction he needed to go was…right. He needed to go to the right. The walls came alive with echoes of the past as he concentrated, expanding and contracting with the embedded energy that only came from extreme suffering, seeming to writhe with the agony of the screams of those who had suffered in the Sanctuary’s bid for power.