Undead on Arrival

by L. A. Banks

  “Ah!” Seeming satisfied, Madame LaMonde sat back for a moment and rubbed her bony chin, then studied the cards. “That’s fair and honorable—just like it says here you are.” Without warning she turned her head and frowned, her gaze studying something to her left as she squinted. “Really?” she said toward the empty space and then nodded.

  “What, ma’am?” Bradley asked, his gaze following Madame LaMonde’s for a moment and then settling on the elderly woman again.

  She pointed down at the worn cards on the table, making Bradley lean in to follow her gnarled finger as he stared at the color-faded images. “See here,” she said in a whispering hiss. “It’s a queen. A female did it. A strong one with deep roots here. There’s gonna be a war behind this, has to be. This just didn’t set right with folks on the other side.” She scattered the cards, flipping over image after image to prove her point.

  Bradley sat back slowly, shock almost making it hard for him to breathe. He knew the Tarot well. Saw it, but Madame LaMonde confirmed it. Sasha was a strong female . . . she’d been with a male of the species who was demon-infected.

  “She’s close, nearby,” Madame LaMonde warned. “Will do anything for her lover. There has been a sleight of hand, something was stolen from you—or from around you. Medicine, something important. Be careful these next two nights as the moon goes full.”

  Bradley closed his eyes. Sasha was close. Loved Hunter, that was obvious. Medicine had been stolen from the lab, and only a few people knew how and where the drugs were stashed. Sasha’s mother was from New Orleans. A soft, pain-filled murmur left Bradley’s lips. “Thank you for your trouble today, Madame. I’ve heard enough.”

  Sasha slid between the trees, shadow-hopping, catching passing shadows at a breakneck speed, her goal singular—she had to get the blood sample to Clarissa. After what had just transpired, she had to know for sure . . . had to get the only link to a possible cure into her best friend’s hands and then had to go north to wait with the pack.

  Winters stared at his computer screen. Warning code scrolled a silent alarm. After he’d almost faced court-martial for high treason when Vampires mind-stunned him and used him for a retina scan to break into NORAD’s labs, he’d layered on so many additional fail-safes that no one could possibly enter the project’s sensitive data banks without leaving a back-door trail. And the back door had just sounded.

  His fingers flew across the keys, following, saving chunks of evidence as he burned it to a flash drive. How could Doc be accessing data from a system here when he was at NORAD? Winters watched the streaming files flying by on the screen—all genetic information going back to the beginning. Then it stopped.

  Fear made him stand up slowly and glance around. He shoved the flash drive into his pocket. Although it was still daylight and couldn’t be Vampires, an infected Shadow Wolf could come out of nowhere and rip him apart . . . or if he ran down the hall to the possible source of the breach, Doc’s office, what if a Werewolf who had yet to transform was there waiting for him? Even in human form the demon-infected SOBs were strong as hell and meat-eaters.

  He looked around again and mopped his brow. Clarissa was nowhere to be found, Bradley was out in the streets gaining intel; Woods and Fisher were on ammo-collection detail and due back shortly. Winters opened his desk drawer and pulled the cool metal of a Glock into his grip. “C’mon, guys, get back here quick . . . where are you?”

  Sasha almost fell into Clarissa’s arms from a shadow jump, but covered her mouth quickly with a hard press of her palm across her mouth before she could scream. She dropped the shopping bag that had her dress blues in it the moment Clarissa relaxed, and then opened her hand to fold the test tube of blood into it.

  “Pure Werewolf blood from an uninfected host.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Trudeau,” Clarissa said in a low hiss, pulling Sasha deeper into the hallway alcove. “How’d you—”

  “If I tell you, I’ve gotta kill you,” Sasha said with a sad smile. “But it’s the real thing.”

  Clarissa just stared at her for a moment.

  “What?” Sasha whispered, becoming more alarmed as she stared at Clarissa’s pained expression.

  “I went back into the NORAD databases . . .”

  “You did what?” Sasha said, now raking her hair with alarm. “If you tip off the brass—”

  “I had to,” Clarissa whispered in a harsh tone without apology. “You’re expecting me to do in two days what Doc couldn’t even do in three decades?”

  “Okay, you’re right, you’re right,’ Sasha said, beginning to pace. “What did you find out?”

  “I first looked at mitochondrial DNA, the stuff that’s passed from the maternal side, looking for similarities in genetic markers among you, Hunter, Crow Shadow, and even Doc. That would give me a stable human sample—Doc; a full-blooded Shadow Wolf—Crow Shadow; a half human, half Shadow Wolf—you; and a Shadow who has contagion in his system—Hunter. I was trying to see what genetic code switches were turned on and what were turned off. I knew Doc had to analyze this info, benchmarking it all against the infected Werewolf samples he’d had from Rod on back.”

  “Yeah, yeah, and?” Sasha said, growing impatient.

  “And nothing,” Clarissa said, dragging her fingers through her short bob. When Sasha’s shoulders slumped, she held on to Sasha’s arm. “Then I went the other route, through the markers on the Y chromosome, the male side of the equation . . . that’s where I found a coalescence point that I keep going over and over, but it’s blowing my mind.”

  Sasha grabbed Clarissa by both arms and pushed her against the wall, nerves at the breaking point. “Tell me. How bad is it?”

  “I don’t know if this is good news or bad.” Clarissa met Sasha’s eyes with her own, and the confusion in them made Sasha slowly back off. “I don’t know how this affects Hunter at all . . . it may not even be relevant, and I’m not even sure that I have the right to tell you.”

  Almost ready to shake Clarissa, Sasha hugged herself. “Tell me.”

  “Crow Shadow is your brother . . . different mothers, same father.”

  Sasha blinked. She’d heard Clarissa, but the information took a moment to sink in. Now it made sense, the eerie connection she’d had to him . . . the way she could sense where he’d been abducted, where the Vampires had held him draining his blood in a French Quarter town house. Then pure horror filled her and she grabbed Clarissa’s arms again. “Tell me, oh, my God . . . tell me I’m not Hunter’s—”

  “No, no,” Clarissa said quickly. “You’re not his sister or even a cousin.”

  Sasha let go of Clarissa and then rubbed her palms down her face, breathing into them slowly to keep from hyperventilating. “Okay, okay, I can deal with being Crow’s sister. He’s good people, we know Doc made me in a lab from donor sperm from the Shadow Clan.” She searched Clarissa’s face, seeing there was more.

  Both women stared at each other for what seemed like endless minutes.

  “Sasha,” Clarissa said quietly, “Doc Holland didn’t get donor cells from the Shadow Clan. He’s part Shadow Wolf himself, and is both you and Crow’s father.”

  “How long have we known each other?” Xavier Holland demanded. His voice carried on the cool April breeze and echoed through the mountain clearing. “Silver Shadow or Silver Hawk, whichever form you chose. Wolf or man, you owe me an audience. That at the very least!”

  “You are right, old friend,” a tired voice said behind Doc.

  Holland spun and confronted his friend of many years. He was wrapped in a ceremonial blanket with traditional headdress.

  “Before I die, I do owe you an explanation.”

  “I don’t want you to die,” Doc said, pointing at him and shouting. “I want you to tell me why you pilfered meds from my lab and didn’t tell me! Why you wouldn’t let me help if your grandson was rejecting the cure!” His voice broke and he dropped his arm in defeat. “Why? After all these years.”

  “Even in your righteous indig
nation you use the words softly . . . pilfer, not steal. You and I are like brothers. That I betrayed your trust is something that weighs heavily on my heart.”

  “Then why would you not tell me . . . I could have tried something else, could have—”

  “You are half human. You were raised by them, and incline more to their ways. This blood moon is the business of Shadow Wolf Clans, and I could not bear to see my longtime friend consumed by the tragedy of it. The pain in my spirit is enough to bear alone, but to give that to you would not have been the way of the wolf.”

  “Silver Hawk,” Doc said, opening his arms, “something has gone wrong. I would have helped. Give me a chance! You know my history, you know my honor!”

  “I do,” Silver Hawk said quietly, tears shimmering in his eyes.

  “Then remember the shunning that had a pain you can never imagine. I was denied a wife in this pack because of my heritage—half human, half Shadow Wolf . . . the kind that could not turn—likened to a damned familiar! Impotent to the change.”

  Silver Hawk closed his eyes as Doc’s voice fractured in the forest.

  “My own Shadow father abandoned my human mother, ashamed, and slipped into the shadows and was gone . . . years it took me to find my way home. Years! And based on my mother’s so-called delusional outbursts that landed her in an institution, I followed the legend—I had to understand DNA. I needed to break the code in it for the sake of my own sanity. There’s always a good outcome from the pain levied by the Great Spirit, you once said . . . and my knowledge helped this pack at an auspicious time, when your newborn grandson was convulsing. Tell me that wasn’t Divine Providence of the Great Spirit! Tell me that was not my role as a familiar!”

  Silver Hawk turned his face to the sky but did not open his eyes, allowing a rivulet of tears to leak from the corners of them. “So much pain, so many mistakes.”

  “My loving Shadow Dove was not a mistake while I was here working on your grandson. That is my job, yes, as a human doctor, but also as a member of this pack—to save a clan heir to the North American alpha was my responsibility. Is still my responsibility! But I was betrayed then, as now . . . My son was passed off as a beta, my mate was so ashamed she’d been with me. She would have rather seen Crow raised as a beta male, lied and said he was created by a full-blooded beta Shadow Wolf rather than a half-breed like me . . . a Shadow who couldn’t shape-shift—and therefore shunned. All that intrigue so she could keep Crow with her. In the long run, I didn’t blame her; in fact, I eventually applauded her guile once my ego got out of the way, because it saved my son from my fate. So I listened, I understood, and I bled from that truth told too many years too late to correct. We’ve known each other a long time, Silver Hawk. But you swore to me after I learned that truth that never again would you keep me in the dark about clan politics. You promised!”

  “This isn’t clan politics,” Silver Hawk said quietly. “It is not an attempt to keep you an outsider this time. It was a foolish attempt to spare you the grief of the ugliest part of our job as demon hunters. To put one of your own to death . . . with Sasha as your daughter, her my daughter-in-law, will break your heart three ways.”

  Silver Hawk leveled an empathetic gaze toward Doc. “You lost them both—Shadow Dove and Sasha’s mother . . . one to a pack, one to an infected Were. Now you should break your daughter’s heart and have to accept what her mate has become? Now you would have to know and live with the knowledge that another infected wolf could slaughter your daughter—who would not leave him until the last . . . until maybe it was too late. This would not be a lab accident at NORAD, the way Sasha’s beloved mother died, Xavier. You and I both know this would probably happen when Sasha was alone with Hunter, trying in vain to help him to the bitter end. I had to give my grandson the medicine to stave off the inevitable long enough to keep her safe and to have him contained, while saving your sanity. This very thing drove your mother out of her mind—the human psyche is a fragile thing. And you wanted me to tell you all of this to break your heart again? No. After all you have endured, I would spare you that as your friend.”

  Doc looked away as the tree line around Silver Hawk became blurry. He was no longer angry, just suddenly very, very tired and his voice a mere rasp. “It was my decision to endure it, just as it is my sanity to lose. If Hunter was asking you to steal meds for him, then Sasha was already at risk. Don’t you see that now?”

  “Hunter never asked me to steal the medicine; I knew he needed it and did so on my own. He is no thief. I lied and told him that I had your permission when I saw that it was not working. Therefore, know that it is because I love you as my dear friend, who fought valiantly with human medicine and saved that boy’s life, that I tried . . . but things have gone too far. I will deliver the death sentence, not his enforcer, not his mate, not his doctor, not the human military or a tribunal of Vampires. Me. I will take his life in the honorable way, and then I will leave my heartbreak in the mountain snow.”

  Tears stood in Doc’s eyes and then fell. He shook his head. “Until the final silver bullet goes into his skull, let me try.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Numb, Sasha watched Clarissa slowly walk down the hall in the opposite direction from the locker rooms. It took all of her strength to finally push her body off the wall where she’d slumped. She had to get to the hospital employee showers, put on her own clothes, ditch the telltale outfit from Chaya, and then put on the amber-and-silver amulet that would protect and guide her over the great distances she needed to travel through the shadow lands to reach the vast Uncompahgre forests.

  Later, she and Doc could square up history. Before she said a word to Crow Shadow to acknowledge him as her biological half brother, she needed to understand just how much of this whole travesty Doc had revealed to anyone else, much less her. Things were spinning out of control; her entire life was yet again a series of half-truths. But she couldn’t dwell on any of that now.

  Sasha forced herself to hurry into the locker room, where she flung open her private locker to shove in her uniform and extract jeans, a T-shirt, Timberlands, and a gun. The outfit from Chaya went in the trash as she balled up her clothes on a bench, hiding the weapon. She jumped into a hard, hot spray of water and lathered quickly with shower gel.

  Right now, she had to get to Hunter. Clarissa could reach her with a mental shout-out if anything critical had been discovered in Shogun’s blood sample. Sasha walked forward on unsteady legs, grabbing a fresh towel from the wire hospital rack. Life as she’d known it had changed again.

  She slipped into the teahouse men’s room, a quiet blur of stealth. The scent of Shogun’s sex wafted from the bamboo trash hamper where, upon inspection, she found his discarded khakis. A low growl of fury coated her throat and narrowed her gaze. She carefully rolled the pants in the plastic hamper liner to take with her and then left as quickly as she’d come in, but this time through the window.

  “Dear brother, I trust from your change of attire that your diplomatic talks with the she-Shadow went well?” Lei said with a droll smile, watching her brother enter their suite and head straight for the bar. “Or not.”

  “Sometimes I despise you, Lei,” Shogun said with a low, warning growl.

  “I’m hurt,” she said in a falsely contrite tone. “Although you despise me at times, I have always had your best interests at heart as your sister, and for you as our respected alpha leader. It is I who ensures your best interests and the best interests of the clan at all costs . . . I was even the one who suggested a meeting between you and Sasha Trudeau . . . now I am the culprit for any unfortunate circumstances that occurred during your meeting? How so? What went wrong?”

  She looked him up and down and knit her brows until he looked away. “Did the she-Shadow attack you? Did you two fight? Is this the meaning of the change in clothing?’ Lei bowed and lowered her gaze, hiding a sly smile. “Dear brother, no wonder you are annoyed at me. I apologize for the misunderstanding. And here I had so hoped she’d allow
you to love her to strengthen the alliance.”

  Shogun turned away from his sister, abandoning the drink he’d been preparing, and stalked into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

  “Holy shit,” Winters said wild-eyed as Bradley came through the door of the lab. “Where’ve you been, dude? It’s getting dark outside.”

  “Gathering intel, like I was ordered,” Bradley said in a flat tone. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Somebody downloaded a shitload of classified project files while Doc was gone, and I can prove it wasn’t Doc,” Winters said nervously glancing around.

  Bradley approached his workstation setup with caution. “You tell Clarissa, Woods, or Fisher yet?”

  “No,” Winters said, blotting his brow with a swipe of his arm. “But I’d feel a whole lot better if Sasha or our guys with the big guns were here right now.”

  “Sit down,” Bradley said with a pained expression. He landed a heavy palm on Winters’s shoulder. “Raise Woods and Fisher on comm. Rissa, too—but not the captain. At least not yet. I heard some things in the street from a fairly reliable source. That, and what you’ve just told me, gives me the shivers.”

  Sasha looped the thick silver chain over her neck. As an afterthought, she briefly ran the pad of her thumb across the ancient etchings that were cut deeply into the huge hunk of sacred amber dangling from it. Just staring at it made her sad; Hunter hadn’t been able to come near the amulet in the last week as he fought off the contagion—a piece of history from his clan handed down to champion alpha leaders throughout the generations. If he could no longer wear it, she had to return both amulets to Silver Hawk. Maybe she was no longer worthy to wear hers, either. In fact, after what had transpired at the teahouse she knew she wasn’t.

  “Great Spirit guide me,” Sasha whispered, folding her free palm over the amulet she wore. “Take me to someone who has Hunter’s best interest at heart, someone in the shadow lands who can show me the way, make me know the truth, and help save his life.”