Desert Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  “And I…” she started to say, without finishing the remark. Paxton was thinking over the fact that she had screwed a werewolf. She was considering the possible ramifications of that.

  There was so much he needed to say to her and tons of information to impart, when none of that would have appeased her. Seeing him shift shape in close quarters had been step one in her introduction to the moon’s cult.

  There was no time to commiserate on the fluctuations of reality. Seconds were ticking away and he had a job to do. Paxton wasn’t the only treasure he had to protect. His pack depended on him to help set things straight.

  Would Paxton have understood any of that if he had explained?

  Each cell in his body protested when he backed away from her. He faltered when she stumbled forward as if she’d been caught in his wake, and Shirleen put out a hand to stop her. Side by side the two females watched him tear off what was left of his shirt.

  He dislodged his human countenance for the fifth time that night with a twitch and a series of shudders. When his spine began to lengthen and his bones snapped, Paxton whispered, “No.” She said, “God, no,” as his muscles bunched and began to mound with the sound of raw meat being slapped on a counter.

  “Welcome to my world, little wolf. Our world,” he sent to her as their eyes met.

  He watched Paxton stagger and raise a hand to her head, possibly to feel for an injury responsible for making her see things. With his shift complete, Grant filled his lungs with night scents, searching for the one smell among them he needed to find…the scent of an entity that was taking him away from Paxton because that rogue quite possibly coveted things that belonged to someone else.

  “Impossible,” Paxton repeated, as stone-faced as a statue.

  It was too late now for cover-ups and illusions. Wildness was calling. He’d found the scent he needed, and it was too close to ignore. Grant turned from Paxton, who just might have been the love of his life if they had met some other time, whether or not imprinting chained them together.

  He looked back at her only once to view the stunned, shocked expression he expected to find frozen on her face. Again, he found that he was wrong. Stunned? Yes. She was registering that. Strangely enough, though, Paxton didn’t sway, faint or run the other way. Her expression had turned thoughtful, as if she might have been thinking back and piecing together the events that had taken place since her arrival in Arizona, through the lead-up to this moment.

  He let her have those thoughts.

  Her big eyes never left him. Her attention was focused and extremely hot. But he could not turn back. Didn’t dare. The beast out there was tampering with his pack and this beautiful, as yet undeclared she-wolf, and he was the only barrier standing between them.

  Don’t you see that, my lover?

  Power soared through him. Impatience flared. Feeling strong, fed up, angry over having to leave Paxton and his friends, perhaps at the expense of one or both of those things, Grant let loose a fierce, feral growl that rolled like an aftershock through the dirt beneath his feet.

  Then he was off and running, sensing the beast nearby, determined to end this game of hide-and-seek once and for all.

  *

  “Impossible.”

  The word didn’t begin to describe what Paxton had witnessed, but she kept repeating it anyway, needing to expel the shock icing her limbs.

  Grant Wade really was a werewolf…which led to the possibility of other things he had told her being true. The beast. Desperado. And what about her?

  She might have believed she was dreaming if it hadn’t been for the pressure of a hand on her arm—a real pressure that helped to keep her grounded and belonged to a werewolf named Shirleen.

  God…

  Managing a slight turn of her head, Paxton found an expression of empathy on Shirleen’s pretty face. Gathering words together, Paxton asked, “What is this place?”

  “Our sanctuary,” Shirleen replied.

  “Whose sanctuary?”

  “Beings like us. Like him.”

  “Werewolves.” Paxton had a hard time saying the word out loud.

  “Yes. Werewolves.”

  “And you?” Paxton asked.

  “Not exactly like him, but a close enough rendition to be here with the rest.”

  “How does this happen, Shirleen? How could it possibly be real?”

  “It’s a long story, Paxton. Centuries old.”

  “Then maybe you can start that story now.”

  “I’ll let Grant do the honors,” Shirleen said. “Filling you in is the alpha’s place.”

  Alpha.

  Hell.

  “Where did he go? Where did they all go?” she asked.

  “I believe you had a run-in with the wolf they’ve gone after. Did Grant tell you about this guy?”

  “He tried to tell me what that trespasser might be. Rogue was the word Grant used. Killing cattle, he said.”

  She couldn’t remember much else with her mind issuing warnings about getting out of there in spite of how dangerous they all seemed to think this rogue was.

  “Rogue. Yes.” Shirleen waved to the closest building. “It would be best to get off the street now.”

  The woman who had just admitted to being a werewolf kept one hand clamped to Paxton’s arm, so that running anywhere was not an option, though Grant’s truck wasn’t far from where they were standing. Besides, where would she go if she could run away this time? As far as she knew, and after what had happened to her with the downed tree, the roads in and out of Desperado would probably now be guarded.

  Look where trying to escape had landed her. Inside a den of wolves.

  The motel in the city now seemed like a stupid place to retreat to, and the airport was too damn far, especially when somewhere between here and there a mad werewolf lurked.

  Werewolf.

  True.

  Several small globes of light winked along the sides of the street. Moonlight on the tips of her shoes made Paxton want to cringe. In all the movies she’d seen, moonlight was the catalyst for werewolf transformation, but the moon wasn’t full tonight, so the woman beside her still looked like Shirleen.

  Grant had told her about that, too.

  This wasn’t how she remembered Desperado. As a kid, she had explored every corner of this town without even once coming across a goddamn werewolf. As far as she knew.

  “Twenty years,” Shirleen said, as if reading her mind. “That’s when Desperado first opened its gates to the likes of us.”

  “That’s right after I left it,” Paxton mused, briefly closing her eyes to try to assimilate that news.

  When Shirleen urged her to move with a strong tug on her arm, Paxton accompanied her to the old general store, where the windows were boarded up and nailed tight. In the past, she had pretended to be the proprietor of this store. When tourists came, she had handed out candy to other kids. Now the tourists were long gone and the town had been taken over by a species of beings that turned furry in the moonlight.

  This was hard to believe. Impossible to believe.

  She was one of them? Could Grant be right about that one little detail?

  They stopped on the store’s threshold. The space inside was dark, but not completely. Paxton saw that it wasn’t only the missing seasonal residents that had changed Desperado over the years. Where there had once been a counter, a woodstove and some chairs, there was nothing but the gleam of cold steel bars.

  It took a minute more for Paxton to understand what she was seeing. Those bars were on cages. The kind of cages that contained wild animals at the zoo. There were two cages, each of them large enough to house a small elephant. On the walls beside them, thick ropes of silver chain hung. Closed metal boxes were stacked near the door.

  “It’s not pretty, but sometimes necessary,” Shirleen said.

  Paxton didn’t ask the question screaming for an answer in her mind. Necessary for what?

  Because, deep in her soul, she already knew.
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br />   Aiding werewolves going through a tough transition is what Grant had said. But the place looked like a torture chamber, and viewing it made her feel ill all over again.

  Chapter 21

  Grant followed the scent of wet fur across the rise just north of Desperado. It wasn’t usual for werewolves to carry an odor when furred-up. Then again, this one ate cows and, on at least one occasion, while nestling in a dank cave, gnawed on human bones.

  Grant grimaced at the thought. He’d never heard of such a thing, yet he knew that bad-guy Weres with grudges against humans existed. He had forgotten to check with Ben about asking the sheriff for a list of missing hikers, and that seemed more important than ever.

  Walking at a swift, purposeful pace, he noted how quiet the night was, and that the sky was filled with stars. Desert heat seeped through the soles of his boots. Too bad there was no time to stop and enjoy any of those things.

  His packmates guarded the fence line. Grant nodded to them as he passed. Those Weres were silent, diligent, watchful and used to seeing him in his current form. In a fight, he could count on any of these Weres to have his back. They trusted him to eventually find the crazy rogue who was twice as dangerous as anything they had encountered to date.

  Near the section of fence where Paxton had encountered her second fright of the day, Grant halted. Ben had been there and gone, but the place reeked of another, more feral presence.

  That elusive sucker hadn’t disappeared after all. He was still here.

  “Come out,” Grant sent.

  A response came in the form of a deep, guttural growl, reminiscent of a wolf’s stern warning to back off.

  “Can’t do that,” Grant said. “Since you’ve been hanging around for a while, you know why.”

  The next growl was louder and more menacing than the first one, and raised the hair on the back of Grant’s neck.

  “Come in and set things right,” Grant sent. “You’re causing too many problems that can’t be overlooked. Half of the residents in the area are looking for you. We both understand why they can’t actually be allowed to find what they seek.”

  Sounds came to him of something heavy being dragged over the sandy soil. Christ, had the bastard tagged more cattle?

  Waves of chills met with Grant’s elevated body temperature. He swore inwardly and turned in a tight circle for a good look around.

  “Show yourself. It’s not as if I haven’t seen the likes of you before.”

  The voice that responded to his invitation echoed in his mind with the muffled clang of a rusty bell. The surprise for Grant was how old and weary it sounded.

  “You believe that, wolf, about having seen the likes of me?”

  Contact.

  Grant ran a clawed finger across his left thigh, slicing through his jeans in a show of anger as he spoke.

  “I’m guessing you’re more like me than I’d care to admit, though I’m leery of your fetish for thievery and teething on things that don’t belong to you.”

  “Then, as I said earlier, you know nothing,” was the reply.

  “I know this can’t go on,” Grant warned.

  “Who is going to stop me? You?”

  “I’m here now for just that reason.”

  Another growl came from the bushes beside Grant. His muscles tensed, readying for whatever this guy was going to do. Another round of chills rapidly melted behind the heat of his revved up metabolism.

  “In a fair fight between us you would lose,” the invisible bastard taunted.

  “Why don’t we test that theory?” Grant raised his hands to prove his willingness to try.

  “You have never been my target. If you had been, you would not be here now to defend your little pack of wolves,” the trespasser said.

  “All the same, you’re bringing unwanted attention that none of us can afford.”

  “Shall I take my hunger elsewhere, then? Bother someone else?” the cheeky bastard said.

  “Wouldn’t the consequences be the same wherever you went, if stealing animals is your MO?” Grant suggested. “Not to mention your nasty habit of pouncing on the occasional human. That was you, I assume?”

  Silence fell for several long minutes before the beast spoke again.

  “You know about that kill and still believe we’re alike?”

  “I can smell the power in you,” Grant said. “But I claim no kinship. Your actions sicken me.”

  “All wolves once hunted in the wild.”

  “Until some of us evolved,” Grant countered.

  More silence, then the rogue said, “The difference is that you try to fit into a world that would kill you as soon as they found out what you are.”

  “Yes.” Grant nodded. “So I’m curious about how you’ve existed this long, given that you don’t seem to give a damn about how anyone might react to your actions.”

  “My actions aren’t completely selfish, I assure you.”

  “Prove it. Show yourself. Come in and accept our help.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then, with so much at stake, it will have to be a fight,” Grant challenged.

  “Perhaps some other time,” the beast said.

  Grant shook his head. “After you’ve satisfied your need to bring more trouble down on us? Do you even know what we do here?”

  “I know what you do,” the beast in the bushes conceded.

  “We help our kind deal. We give Weres a place to land when they spin out. Why do you think we can’t help you?” Grant asked.

  “Because,” a human voice said, as if the beast had shape-shifted in seconds to press home the idea of how much power he truly did possess, and to get these last words in, “no one can help me now.”

  The scent of this newcomer dissipated along with his words, as if the sucker had simply blown away on a stiff breeze. After a minute, nothing of its presence remained.

  For Grant, this newest disappearing act was not going to cut it. He moved several paces north, then south and west, inhaling deeply, striving to gain an awareness of where the rogue had gone. He felt like the being he chased wasn’t as insane as he’d imagined. In fact, that Lycan had seemed lucid and in control of his faculties.

  Grant couldn’t fathom why the creature had not wanted to fight. There had been no challenge for the leadership of the desert pack, when if that beast had won, a new alpha could have walked into town that night. The creature he still thought of as a monster hadn’t harmed Paxton near the fence, either, which made the tally three for three in benign Paxton sightings.

  “What the hell do you want?” he sent far and wide in frustration.

  Perplexed, unsatisfied with this meeting, Grant went after the other Lycan. He swept through the area looking for anything that might lead him to the rogue’s whereabouts. Eventually, his search paid off. Kneeling down, he ran a claw over the thin red trail that had appeared almost out of nowhere and ended several feet ahead. The blood trail was puzzling, but didn’t offer up any real clue as to the Lycan’s actual direction.

  “Who the hell are you? Houdini?”

  Standing, scanning, barely breathing, Grant let out a howl of irritation that was answered by every coyote between where he stood and the ghost town behind him. The blood on the ground didn’t belong to any missing steer. Not this time. So what poor, unsuspecting human being had lost it?

  *

  Paxton shrank back with a shoulder to the doorjamb. The room, and what it contained, was scary. What were the cages for? What was going on here? Worse still, in terms of causing a hair-raising adrenaline rush, was the way Shirleen suddenly bolted for the door, nearly knocking Paxton over in her hurry to get outside.

  Loath to be alone with those ominous cages, Paxton followed Shirleen, supposing the woman was tuning in to a sound Paxton couldn’t hear. Two others joined them in the street. People? Weres who hadn’t shape-shifted tonight? They were large guys, tall, relatively young, very well built—and examples of a world that had gone mad.

  All t
hree of her new companions were facing west, so Paxton whirled to stare in that direction, fighting the desire to duck in case more bad news was coming.

  “He found something,” Shirleen announced, and the men beside her backed into the shadows hugging the buildings.

  Anxious, Paxton said, “Grant?”

  Shirleen nodded, then turned again toward the entrance to town, visibly tensing. “Shit,” she whispered.

  If Shirleen’s body language hadn’t caused Paxton’s nervousness, that one word would have done the trick. It didn’t take a psychic to understand trouble was in the air and headed their way, although Paxton had no idea what kind of trouble everyone here was expecting.

  By the time she began to consider this, strange feelings began to take her over. She couldn’t have described them. In spite of the fact that she couldn’t see anything past the old saloon, she somehow knew…yes, she knew Grant was returning.

  His nearness brought unexpected heat. A spot deep inside her began to quiver, as if Grant would again soon touch her there. Limbs began to quake, as they had when wrapped around Grant’s waist. Her stance wobbled. Her head hurt. Grant was coming back and she wanted to run out to meet him, but couldn’t.

  Grant wasn’t a man in the strictest sense of that word. He was something else.

  Beside her, Shirleen spoke. “Now isn’t the time to distract him.”

  Paxton had seen Grant go from man to werewolf and still hadn’t been able to grasp the full meaning of that. She had seen the claws and the face that, though changed, still had the same baby-blue eyes. Not a mindless monster’s eyes, but eyes glowing with an intelligent gleam.

  He appeared at the end of the street now, as if she had conjured him. As Grant walked, he began to change back to the man she recognized. But truthfully, his alter ego wasn’t so far removed from the human persona’s glorious package. It was somehow more of the same.

  As he headed toward her, Paxton’s knees weakened. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Grant was coming for her and something had upset him. He was broadcasting concern in ways she easily understood.

  “Paxton.”

  She was sure she heard him say her name.

  “Yes?” She inched forward.