by L. A. Banks
Quickly unwinding the looping silver chain from her wrist, she shoved the large piece of amber-and-silver jewelry into her front jean pocket with effort. The moment she looked up again, the huge black wolf from the previous vision quest slowly stepped out of the mist and began to circle her.
Their eyes met; Sasha didn’t move. But she was completely prepared to fight, if it came to that.
She turned with the large predator. “Who are you?” she shouted across the divide.
“He’s been poisoned,” the wolf said, standing on his hind legs.
Sasha shivered at the sight of the Werewolf transformation. The demon-infected ones could talk in wolf form, their hind legs bent back unnaturally for them to stand like men . . . it was sickening to see. The moment the realization hit her that a demon-infected Werewolf was in the shadow lands, Sasha drew her weapon.
“I am no trespasser. The one you seek lurks in the demon realms,” the wolf said, eyes glowing gold as he backed into the mist and vanished. “I was slaughtered with right in my soul. Help my second son.”
Sasha almost dropped her gun as her arm slowly lowered at the same time her jaw went slack.
Lei glanced up at the moon as she strolled quietly through the teahouse gardens. The sound of flesh ripping and the scent of new blood perfumed the air, luring her. A pair of glowing eyes met hers as the huge she-wolf looked up. Blood splattered her golden-amber coat, and she growled a warning for Lei to back off until she’d finished with the body. Lei leaned against a granite lantern and waited, staring at the long blond hair on the ground that was now matted with blood and garden soil. A discarded, ripped kimono lay nearby, as though a paper wrapping for the naked body that was being gorged upon. Such a shame . . . so young, but Mother needed to eat.
The female wolf looked up and snuffled the air, her massive fangs glistening with blood. “Where is my son?”
“We both know that it would not be good for Shogun to see you like this.”
A low growl threatened the peace.
“He thinks you’re dead, dear Mother,” Lei said calmly without a hint of fear. “The clan believes the Shadows killed you, too. You know this. So why have you been asking for him of late?”
“Because that bitch that has smitten Shogun just went into the shadow lands, and his father’s spirit dragged mine there to show her the truth. I took the demon oath and made the ultimate sacrifice to strengthen our rule, not to diminish it—but your father was shortsighted and could never understand this, not even after he transitioned to demon greatness from my bite. Fool!”
Lei ducked as the partially eaten human body whirred past her and landed with a slick thud against the small stone path. “What is your bidding tonight, Mother? How do I keep our clan strong and honor your vision?”
“Right now, I need you to find Shogun . . . to dispatch my warrior—my son—to protect his own reign! That whore whom he lusts for cannot be allowed to get to her home pack with my ex-husband’s truth.”
Lei pushed off the stone lantern and leveled her gaze at her mother. “Shogun will never attack her, even though he is the firstborn heir . . . even if he knew that Hunter is the bastard son, the second son, a half-Shadow, half-Werewolf abomination to his pure-blood Shadow pack.” She spat, slowly transforming. “Shogun is like Father, believing in diplomacy and alliances, rather than brute force. Mother, it will be me who ensures that the son who disgraced your marriage will never rule or co-rule with my brother, no matter the mistakes of our father.”
“Good,” the demon wolf snarled as Lei dropped down onto all fours. “I tried to claw Hunter from his mother’s womb, and yet he lived. That fornicating bitch took my husband, your father . . . and now another one like her has two half brothers in her clutches, forming an alliance between my bloodline and my archenemies—when they should be on the precipice of war. Sacrilege! I want her stopped before she delivers the message of mistaken identity and misunderstood intent.”
Lei threw her head back and howled a rallying call, and then looked at her mother. “Sasha Trudeau is as good as dead.”
Shogun’s attention jerked his sightline over his shoulder. He’d know his sister’s rallying call anywhere, and it bristled the fine hairs on his neck. A meditative walk through the semi-abandoned Ninth Ward had come to an abrupt halt. The moon was full, he was alone—in seconds he was pure wolf.
He threw his head back and called his six best lieutenants. Lei was still his sister, still a member of the pack. If something had sent her on a hunt, then it was something that was a threat to their family.
Houses became a blur; streetlamps, intermittent flashes of yellow light. Lei’s signature drew him to the teahouse. But a dead girl’s body stopped him in his tracks. He recognized the hostess from her hair and scent, which was all he could judge by; gone was her once pretty face. Six strong enforcers skidded to a halt beside him, assessing the damage and scenting the air.
The residue of sulfur told them all Lei had chased whatever it was through the demon doors. If she had, she was lost. Were-demons would shred a solo wolf who didn’t own the contagion. Lei was many things, but demon-infected she was not.
Shogun briefly closed his eyes.
His lieutenants stood in wait, ready for war. This had to be redressed. Another human had been eaten. His courageous sister was now lost to the forbidden zone. There was only one wolf he knew of who had been infected. She must have come to feed here after she’d gone back to her den in the basement of Tulane Hospital. That’s where she’d emerge from the demon doors with his sister’s blood on her hands. She and Lei had always been at odds. It was no secret. She’d go back to her pack, her familiars, to the labs that were working on her cure. That was the way of the wolf, demon-infected or not. That’s where he’d corner her and put her out of her misery. Then he’d take great pleasure in exterminating the bastard that gave her the dread disease.
Even though it broke him in two, Sasha Trudeau was not above pack law.
“Did you hear that?” Fisher said, going to the window toting an M16 loaded with twenty-millimeter silver shells.
“Yeah,” said Woods, silently signaling for Bradley, Winters, and Clarissa to move away from the windows and doors.
Both soldiers sniffed the air. Another distant howl made Woods’s ears lay back against his skull. Clarissa shivered and glanced around the lab with the others. Winters eased back toward his workstations. Bradley crawled to his desk and yanked open a drawer, coming away with wolfsbane to begin making a circle in the center of the floor with the dried leaves.
“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit,” Winters whispered with a squeak. “We’ve got incoming.” He pointed to the crouching images on his flat-screen monitors, which were picked up on the hallway sensors.
Clarissa nodded and motioned toward the windows. “Get away from there and into the circle,” she hissed through her teeth five seconds before Woods and Fisher dove toward safety, sending her sprawling as the doors burst open and glass came crashing in.
Huge, snarling Werewolves thundered into the lab, their massive heads swinging as though on pivots, searching. Monitors, tables, chair, stools, anything in their wake became instant rubble as Woods and Fisher squeezed off rounds trying to protect Clarissa. But they just moved too fast.
Rage-filled beasts were up on a lab bench one second, down the next. Lights were shot out of the ceiling as airborne wolves dodged machine-gun fire, raking the walls with massive claws. Clarissa found a desk to hide beneath and curled herself into a fetal ball. Woods was up on his feet, the muzzle of his weapon now breaking the plane of Bradley’s circle. It happened too fast to stop.
Bradley yelled no. A Werewolf claw reached out and grabbed Woods’s gun, pulling him in a flip out of the circle along with his gun. A beast was on his chest. Fisher couldn’t get off a shot without shooting his own man. Winters took dead aim with a Glock nine-millimeter. The beast that was about to rip off Woods’s face dodged the shot and crashed into the desk where Clarissa had been.
Seven angry wolves surrounded Clarissa. Glowing eyes and pitch-black coats glistened in the darkness. A gaping maw with razor-sharp teeth snarled a low, steady warning to her. Saliva and hot breath leaked into her hair as she cowered on the floor. Fear had slicked her body with adrenaline sweat. Her panicked heartbeat drowned out the sounds of sirens in the distance and pandemonium filling the hall. She slowly opened her hand and held out the vial of blood Sasha had given her. A series of close, fierce barks made her yank back her offering and squeeze her eyes shut.
“Where is she?” a booming voice demanded just behind her skull.
“I don’t know,” Clarissa whispered to the floor, tears running down the bridge of her nose, blinding her. “She left hours ago.”
“Blood is in the air, sir,” a sly Phantom said, whispering in the baron’s ear and then glancing around the blood club.
“Do tell,” Geoff murmured, smiling at the company of several Vampire females who graced his table.
“Yes, and you heard the hunting-party howls . . . now human sirens.”
Three alabaster beauties with crimson smiles leaned in toward the vaporous form.
“Secrets?” the brunette crooned. “Oh . . . Geoff, I love secrets involving bloodlust.”
“What do you think it could be?” a willowy blonde asked, her pupils dilating to eclipse her pale blue irises, leaving only the depths of pure darkness.
Geoff waved the server over to bring another round of private-label new blood for his guests, and then studied the insistent Succubus. “If you find out what’s happened through the network and bring it to me first, I promise a handsome reward.”
The Phantom nodded and slid against him in lazy repose. “May I join your bed tonight, as well, sir?”
Geoff chuckled. “That was part of the handsome reward. I don’t think any of these ladies would be offended if you shared their bodies while I shared them.”
A breathy kiss sealed the deal, leaving a vaporous trail behind.
“Human death in the district is so titillating . . . ,” an auburn-haired beauty seated to his left crooned. “Do you think the wolves have eaten another one, Geoff?”
“I do hope so, my love. That would be perfect.”
“You saw what happened!” Bradley yelled. “We have to call this in!”
“We call nothing in till we talk to Doc!” Woods shouted back, his finger in Bradley’s face. “Me and Fish almost got smoked by our own in Afghanistan because the brass thought we were contagious. Never again. The only man that saved our asses was Doc, then after that was Trudeau—her contact’s people made it all good . . . fed us, protected us, laid down their lives to make sure it was all good. So we wait for the word!”
“We need a damage-control strategy fast, bro,” Fisher said, looking out the window. “Got tell the civvies something reasonable.”
“Attempted robbery,” Winters said quickly. “Druggies heard we had heavy meds in the labs, we came in here, there was gunfire, a fight, they ran down the fire exits—we covered the contraband.”
Woods pointed at Winters. “Good looking out.”
Clarissa remained numb, staring at the unaccepted vial of blood in her palm. “They weren’t coming for this,” she said quietly. “Didn’t want the pure Werewolf blood back. I don’t understand.”
“What?” Bradley whispered, the low resonance of shock in his voice stilling the group dissent. “You’ve got pure fucking Werewolf blood in here?” His chest rose and fell in hard breaths as his voice escalated. “Are you insane? No wonder we got rushed by beasts—get that bullshit out of here before another search party comes for it. Next time we might not be so lucky!”
“Everything here is destroyed. I have to get this sample back to NORAD to run some tests stat. They didn’t want the blood,” Clarissa said calmly, going over to the destroyed tables in search of anything she could use, without success.
“If they didn’t want the blood, then what the fuck did they want?” Woods shouted, his nerves filleted.
She looked at the group. “They wanted Sasha.”
The moment she hit the soft padding of moss-covered earth, she knew she was home. Sasha breathed in the fresh spring air and allowed it to thread through her body to chase away the eeriness of the shadow lands. Moonlight bathed her in luminous peace. With freedom surrounding her, she longed to move, to run, her inner wolf begging for a chance to dash through the underbrush and hunt wild game, but she needed her human form.
There was a mission greater than releasing her wolf—she had to get word to Silver Hawk, then had to get the pack to grant her an audience alone with Hunter. She only had this night to hear his side of the story . . . or to witness his change on the first true night of the full moon. Tomorrow night, if he was still alive, a tribunal would hear the evidence and decide his fate. Then it would all be over.
Extracting Hunter’s amulet from her jeans pocket, she looped it over her neck, allowing the moon to recharge it as she ran. To sweat and move and leap and stretch her muscles felt divine. Something was calling her wolf harder than she’d remembered in a long time, harder than she’d wanted to admit. But now warning chills were coursing through her, panic easing into what had been an exhilarating run. She saw it in her peripheral vision, a blur in the dark depths of the woods. Her Glock was in her palm as she spun and fired, clipping tree bark. A familiar scent filled her nose. It was demon.
Sasha turned 360 degrees in a quick blur of motion. Glowing eyes lit up the tree lines around her. She was surrounded. A huge golden-amber wolf lunged, its demon-infected, gnarled jaws snapping as she ducked and came up firing. A yelp told her she’d gotten it, but she knew it wasn’t dead. Instantly she was rushed. She knew two of the wolves—the huge amber creature was Lei; the smaller auburn-hued one was Dana. Sasha drop-rolled out of the way, blew away two females with timber markings, and was up in a flash, hauling ass.
Deft footfalls broke fallen branches behind her. The angry pants of the hunt drove her forward, sweat slicking her palm, human fatigue making her gun heavy. A flash of glowing eyes and a blur cut her off with a lateral move. Two seconds too late, and she went down in a skid right toward the jaws of the beast—but she went down squeezing off rounds that flung it out of her way with an agonized howl.
A dead click from an empty magazine put her up on her feet just in time to see two blurs barreling toward her. The amulets came off, one in each fist; swinging them like nunchucks, she was able to silver-stun both female attackers, adding a flying kick to their heads to back them off.
A pump-shotgun report made all combatants go still. A rallying howl from the Shadow pack narrowed Lei’s gaze and sent the injured demon-wolf into the shadows with Dana.
Silver Hawk burst through the clearing, leveling his gun and turning in a full circle before acknowledging Sasha.
“The amulets never lie,” he said out of breath.
Sasha nodded and rested both hands on her knees.
“Bring me a human body,” Lei’s mother demanded, clutching her side as they limped through the demon doors. “Here, to be injured means to be cannibalized.” She looked at the intense moonlight in the passageway. “I cannot hide in here until I am healed, but must eat before the disk of transformation goes down. Then I can return. Avenge me once and for all, daughter. Once and for all!”
“How many were there?’ Silver Hawk asked, helping Sasha collect her weapon.
“Four females. I got two,” Sasha muttered, still gulping air while stashing her spent weapon in the back of her waistband.
“Four infected she-demons?” Silver Hawk said, retracing their steps through the brush as though he was still tracking them. “No wonder they were bold enough to cross into Shadow territory.”
“No,” Sasha said, holding Silver Hawk with he
r gaze. “There was only one infected female . . . the others were clean Werewolves.”
“Those are very serious charges, Sasha,” Silver Hawk said. “You must be sure.”
“I am,” she said lifting her chin as several pack enforcers came through the stand of trees toting heavy artillery. She gave them a look that told them they were very late to the party. They lowered their weapons and their eyes, ashamed, but said nothing. “We need to talk, privately. A lot has gone down.”
Silver Hawk nodded. “I know, Shadow-daughter. Yes. I know.”
CHAPTER 11
He’d heard the call to arms. Knew he wasn’t hallucinating. Sasha’s voice was unmistakable, her howl was a chill that ran through his skeleton and shook him to his core. His mate was in battle, outnumbered. Werewolves were in the glen. The pack was on the hunt; his grandfather had transformed from his human form as Silver Hawk into his wolf-self, Silver Shadow. There was another howl that he’d never forget, one etched into his cellular memory. The bitch that slaughtered his mother. Gunfire. A full moon. Hunter’s wolf would not be denied.
Silver-coated bars be damned. He was Wolf Shadow, stronger than he’d ever been. His guards didn’t understand. Doc’s voice was becoming distant, their conversation murky. Bear Shadow’s eyes told of his confusion. It wasn’t Sasha! That wasn’t the female he smelled. Sasha wasn’t a demon-infected Werewolf breaching the shadow lands or the pack’s borders with other female Weres!
Chaos. They had to lower their weapons. He was suddenly wolf and hadn’t remembered even shifting. No, he wouldn’t allow Doc to inject him—the meds made him fuzzy, lethargic, sick! A warning snarl ripped up Hunter’s throat. The scent of gunpowder wafting off silver shells stung his nose. Doc was so close to the bars. The others were yelling as he moved in toward the opportunity. Yes, old man . . . Just a little closer . . . Hunter’s ears lay back against his skull. That’s right, Doc, reach out . . .
