Darius’s words ripped through him like a bullet, reminding him that where he had failed, this lycan had managed to deliver.
Then he remembered one important fact. “Locked up with you is safe?”
“The rest of the world is safe from us, yes.”
“But she’s not safe from you.” Gideon was no fool. He knew what would happen between them in that room once they shifted, and he couldn’t stomach the thought.
“She is what she is. As am I.” He waved a hand at Gideon. “She doesn’t belong with you.”
“But she belongs with you?”
“I’m a lycan. She’s a lycan. You are not. Think about it. I’m offering her a chance, a way out without risk to others or her soul.”
Gideon struggled against Darius’s offer, wanting to deny it, wanting to reject it as a possibility, knowing that releasing Claire meant giving her up—that she would belong to Darius. He couldn’t deny his feelings for her any longer. He loved her. He wanted her to live. Even if it meant living without him. Even if it meant giving her to this lycan.
He lowered the gun until it hung loosely from his fingers.
“All right. Let’s find her.”
“Gideon.” Kathleen Morgan sounded frantic over the phone line. “I’m so glad you called. Have you seen Claire? We haven’t seen or heard from her since she left here.”
The knot in his gut tightened, twisting. “When was that?”
“Tuesday afternoon.”
“Did she say where she was going when she left there?”
“She needed to clear out her room at work,” Mrs. Morgan explained. “The school is using it for summer school classes. And a teacher needed to talk to her about a student.”
His fingers tightened about the phone. “Did she mention the student’s name?”
“Lenny, I think.”
Of course Claire would have gone to hear what the teacher had to say. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her.”
Less than an hour later he walked the halls of Roosevelt High School with Darius at his side. A handful of faculty still roamed the building, but it had the air of an abandoned ship. Most doors lining the halls were closed, the panels of glass next to them revealing darkened caves within. Summer vacation was well under way. He stopped a lone student, a boy lugging a saxophone case, and got directions to Claire’s room.
Her classroom was unlocked. He flipped on the lights, blinking against the sudden fluorescent glare. The room was empty save for the uniform rows of desks. One box sat on her desk and several more littered the floor.
“She never finished,” Darius announced, peering into a box.
Gideon’s gaze swept over the room. “She was interrupted,” he surmised aloud.
Darius lifted a backpack off the top of a desk with two fingers. A Hello Kitty mirror hung off the backpack’s zipper. “Hers?”
“No,” he answered, pulling her chair out from her desk, discovering her purse discreetly stashed on the cushioned seat. “She wouldn’t have left her purse.”
“Now what?” Darius asked.
“Let’s check the office downstairs. Maybe someone talked to her. Saw something.”
Darius pushed himself off a file cabinet and followed. As they neared the front office, they passed dozens of large photos displaying championship football teams, drill teams, and other school clubs.
“Hey, hold on a minute.”
Gideon stopped again and looked impatiently over his shoulder at Darius. “What?”
Darius stared intently into one of the large frames. “You ever see this guy before?”
Gideon moved beside Darius to stare at a district championship photograph of the school orchestra.
Darius tapped the glass above Cyril’s face. “Know him?”
“I’ve met him. Claire introduced me. Cyril Jenkins.”
“He’s a lycan.”
Gideon looked back and forth between Darius and the photograph, his chest constricting, suddenly painfully tight. “It’s just a photograph. How can you tell?”
“I know him.” Darius’s expression grew strained. “It’s been a while, and his name wasn’t Cyril then, but I would never forget his face.”
Gideon could only stare at the bland, unassuming features of Cyril Jenkins and fight back the urge to fling back his head and howl in rage. He’d met the man and had never even suspected. All this time the alpha they sought had been under their noses. And now he had Claire.
“You couldn’t have known. He’s very old—wise enough to know how to disguise himself from agents.”
Claire had dated him—sat across from him at a restaurant. Worked with him every day. The thought made his fists clench tighter. Apparently his hunch that the geeky band director had been interested in Claire wasn’t far off. Damn straight he was interested in her. She was a member of his pack.
“There’s your alpha,” Darius pronounced, reading Gideon’s mind. “At least we know who has Claire now.”
“Yeah, but not where,” Gideon clarified, looking toward the office and nodding at the secretary talking on the phone behind her desk. “Think she can be persuaded to give us his address?”
“Never question a lycan’s ability to enthrall.” With a tiny salute, Darius pushed through the glass door.
Gideon paced outside the office, trying to keep his thoughts from Claire and what Cyril could be doing to her. Those thoughts would drive him mad and make him useless. Darius soon emerged, a slip of paper in hand. “Got it.”
Gideon nodded, grim determination filling him. Claire, baby, I’m coming.
Chapter Twenty-one
When a dog is hungry enough, it will eat anything to survive.
—Man’s Best Friend:
An Essential Guide to Dogs
G ideon watched the double doors of the gray two-story building impatiently. He understood Cooper was angry. But their history alone should have guaranteed him an audience instead of the desk sergeant’s curt “Yeah, he’s in, but said if it was you not to bother him.”
“He caught you in bed with a lycan,” Darius’s rich, clipped tones rumbled from beside him. “You’re a lycan hunter. Somewhat flies in the face of what you do, doesn’t it?”
“I’m aware of that,” he snapped, not bothering to explain that he and Cooper went way back. Far enough back to make certain allowances.
“Yet you expect him to overlook that? How is he going to react with me by your side?”
Gideon didn’t care what Cooper thought. He would team up with the devil himself if it helped save Claire. Jenkins lived north of Houston on forty acres. They had already cased the property that afternoon. With its thick foliage, the house was undetectable from the road. An ideal setup, a virtual compound for Jenkins’s pack. Who knew how many numbers they were pitting themselves against? It was beyond risky, even with Gideon’s experience and Darius at his side. Their combined skills wouldn’t be enough. They needed Cooper.
“There he is.” Gideon leaned forward in his seat as Cooper made his way to the employee parking lot on the side of the building.
He shifted into drive and rolled out of the parking lot several cars behind Cooper. Cooper lived close to work, preferring a short drive, and that appeared to be where he was headed. A few minutes later, Gideon pulled into the driveway behind Cooper.
“Wait here,” he instructed Darius, swinging out of the Jeep with one hand gripping the door frame.
Cooper stopped and braced his legs apart in the driveway when he spotted Gideon. “You’re suspended, Gid. Go home.”
“I know where she is.”
At this announcement, Cooper lifted an eyebrow, asking flatly, “Where?”
“Her alpha found her and took her to his pack. He goes by the name of Cyril Jenkins—”
“Have you checked the calendar lately?” Cooper cut in, shaking his head and waving a hand at the late afternoon sky. “Tonight’s moonrise. You know they’re ten times stronger once they shift. Forget it. I’ll run surveillance next week and s
end agents to pick them off. Safely. One at a time.”
“Next week will be too late for her.”
“It’s already too late for her,” Cooper thundered, the veins throbbing on his neck. “I don’t know what’s happened to you to make you think you can help this one, but you can’t.”
Gideon clenched his hands at his sides, not bothering to explain whatever it was that had set Claire apart from the start, making it impossible to destroy her, making her the one woman he couldn’t resist, the one woman to infiltrate his heart. It wasn’t something he could explain. It was something he felt, something he could not control. Like the beating of his heart. “I’m going. With or without your help.”
“By yourself?” Cooper’s lips twisted in a semblance of a smile, clearly thinking Gideon joked. “It’d be suicide.”
“I’ve got backup. A partner.” Gideon nearly choked on the word.
“Yeah?” Cooper snorted. “Who? No agent would be stupid enough.”
Gideon jerked his thumb behind him.
Cooper squinted at the figure sitting in Gideon’s Jeep. “Who’s that?”
“A lycan.”
Cooper went rigid, the lines and angles of his narrow face tightening. “You’ve totally lost it. This goes beyond breaking code—”
“Hear me out—”
“That’s a lycan sitting there calm as you please?” He shook his head, face screwing tight. “Man, you think I’ll team up with one of their kind to help you?”
“Cooper, listen—”
“Get the hell off my property.”
Gideon held his ground, reining in his temper. “Cooper, we go way back—”
“Which is why I don’t shoot your ass and that son of a bitch right now.” He threw his arm wildly in the direction of the driveway. “Didn’t I teach you anything?”
“Yeah, you taught me. A lot. You taught me how to think, not just follow dictates mindlessly when they don’t make sense.”
Cooper’s eyes bulged, his face dangerously red. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “What doesn’t make sense about killing the bloodthirsty fuckers?”
“It’s always been NODEAL policy to destroy the infected. Without even trying to save them. Without even considering other alternatives.”
Cooper stared at him for a long moment. “What alternatives?”
Thinking of Darius’s special room, he said, “Come with me. If we don’t kill Claire’s alpha, I’ll show you the other alternatives.”
For a moment, something flashed in Cooper’s eyes. Uncertainty. Consideration for what Gideon was proposing.
His gaze steady and unblinking on the man he called a friend for half his life, he appealed one last time. “Help me. Together we can save her.”
“And him?” Cooper pointed a damning finger to where Darius waited in the Jeep. “Something tells me that cold-eyed bastard watching us can’t be saved. So what are you doing with him?”
Gideon frowned. “He’s not your run-of-the-mill lycan. He doesn’t have a pack and he doesn’t kill.” Even as Gideon said the words he winced at how unbelievable they sounded.
Cooper snorted. “Right. And he’s helping you out of the goodness of his heart.” He choked out a derisive laugh. “Come on, Gid. You’re not that gullible. What’s in it for him?”
Gideon swallowed and confessed, “He wants Claire.”
Cooper threw back his head and laughed. “Priceless.” He turned and cut through his lawn with swift strides, calling over his shoulder. “You two called a truce in order to save a woman you’re going to duke it out over later.”
On his front stoop, Cooper turned to face him. He stared right through Gideon, his look quelling. “I don’t help lycans.” He turned around and unlocked his front door, calling out just before the door slammed behind him, “Or their friends.”
The waning afternoon simmered all around him as he fought through the thick growth of trees and brush. The air hugged him, dense and moist as Gideon swung himself over the fence. Locusts roared dully to each other in the trees, their calls growing in frenzy. He inhaled deeply, trying to steady his pulse and clear his head. Hard to do when his thoughts were full of Claire and what she must be enduring within the lycan’s compound.
The tang of pine was sharp in the steaming air, making his skin itch. Sweat trickled down his spine as he led the way, leaving the road and world behind.
It was a prime piece of real estate. Close enough to commute to the city but remote and private enough that no one would note any suspicious comings and goings. Leaving the property uncleared had been a deliberate move. It took half an hour to reach the house through the heavy undergrowth.
The woods finally gave way to reveal a rambling structure that looked more like a dormitory than a house.
Gideon dropped to his stomach and crawled as close as he dared to the compound. “There.” He pointed to a second-story window positioned above an outside air conditioning unit. That was their way in.
Darius crawled up beside him and nodded in unspoken agreement.
Two lycans chatted beneath the front portico—one male, one female. They looked almost normal, pushing back and forth on a swing, chatting companionably. At one point the female laughed, throwing back her head in delight. The sound rose over the locusts and slithered through the air.
Darius tensed beside him. He pointed to the woman. “That’s Jesslyn.”
Gideon eyed Darius, noting his stony expression. The tight compression of his lips said it all. “Old friends?”
Darius nodded. “She was a prize breeder for the pack three hundred years ago.”
“Doubtful she still is,” Gideon observed, knowing a female lycan’s fertility had a limit. It varied, but most were purported to breed for only two to three hundred years.
Darius cut him a sharp glance. “You’ve done your homework.”
“It’s part of the job.”
“Saving would-be lycans part of the job, too?”
Gideon shrugged, uncomfortable discussing Claire with a lycan who wanted her for himself. He felt the old familiar scorn surfacing. He didn’t fully understand why Darius chose to lead an atypical existence, but it was too late for him. Darius was damned. He had murdered countless innocents. There was no redemption in store for him.
“Jesslyn was a particular favorite of Cyril’s. At least when I—” Darius stopped and shook his head.
A sneaking suspicion began to take root that Darius’s past was tied up with Cyril and this pack.
To verify, he asked, “Anything you need to tell me before we go in there?”
“Yes. I want to take her and Cyril out myself.”
Gideon cocked a brow. “Bad blood, huh?”
“I owe them.”
“How’s that?”
Darius’s dark brows drew tight over his pewter gaze as he gazed at the female lycan he wanted to kill. “For almost a thousand years the beast ruled me. I lived to feed. Then, one day, I met a girl—a woman. The daughter of an Indian shaman. She had her father’s gift. Though she was still young, untried, she used her powers to try to break my curse.” He shook his dark head, a tinge of awe in his voice as he murmured, “She was not afraid of me. Even invited me in among her people. Can you imagine that? She knew me for what I was and was not afraid. She wanted to help me.”
“You loved her?”
“I could have,” he allowed, jaw clenching. “The pack never let me.”
“They killed her?”
“No.” Darius turned silver eyes on him. “But they forced me to.” Turning, he faced forward again.
Gideon stared at the lycan for a long moment, seeing him perhaps for the first time and realizing that they had something in common. The curse had cost them. Something more precious than their own lives. The lives of people close to them, loved ones that died horrible, undeserving deaths while Gideon and Darius remained behind to suffer the memories.
A blue conversion van with tinted windows pulled up in front of the house the
n, drawing his attention. Doors slammed. Three lycans exited the van and walked to the back, opening the rear doors. The two on the porch joined them. Although they moved slowly, calmly, an air of eagerness simmered just beneath the surface. One by one, they hefted several unconscious bodies into their arms. Gideon counted a total of five. Three girls and two boys.
“Looks like they’re dining in tonight,” Gideon pronounced grimly.
“With only five bodies to feed on, they can’t have more than half a dozen lycans inside. The rest probably ventured out to hunt, leaving the others behind to keep an eye on Claire.”
Darius grimaced as if struck by a troubling thought.
“What?” Gideon prodded.
“The first time—” Darius paused, clearly uncomfortable. “The first few times a lycan shifts, things can get out of hand. They can wreak a lot of damage, lose control. It’s often pack custom to mate with the initiate after they feed.”
Gideon’s hands dug into the earth in front of him, the moist soil slipping underneath his nails and filling his palms. The thought of Claire shifting, turning into one of them and enduring orgy sex filled his throat with bile.
The image of his mother fully shifted flashed across his mind—the gore on her face, his father’s blood on her monstrous hands. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider Claire actually shifting before. Not in reality. It was never supposed to come down to this. He had meant to either save her or destroy her. Now it appeared neither might occur. He shook his head and cleared his thoughts of all emotion, zeroing in on the mission at hand, slipping into his familiar role of hunter.
His gaze drifted back to the house, sizing up the lycans as they carried the bodies of their victims inside.
Gideon motioned to the window at the side of the house. “Let’s go.”
Darius grabbed hold of his wrist, stopping him. “It grows late,” he announced in that oddly formal speech of his.
Gideon followed Darius’s gaze to the purpling sky, the brilliant streaks of red and gold a painter’s dream. The sun had already disappeared below the treetops, forsaking them to the coming night.
Darius’s voice was no less firm for the quiet solemnity with which he spoke. “If we’re not out of here in time—”
Marked by Moonlight Page 24
