The car stopped so fast, they all flew forward. Gavin turned to her, waiting for her to explain her statement. Skylar saw no place to hide from the confession he wanted, since he could read her thoughts if he tried. However, if the answer drove him away, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. A future without Gavin in it presented a bleak picture… If there was to be any future for her at all.
She and Gavin were connected, with a bond that had snapped into place with the first shared look. She would see him standing at the cabin’s gate, and the way he’d looked at her in that moment, for the rest of her life. The two feet of distance between them in this car were two feet too many. She’d have traded anything to be in his arms.
“I…” Her voice faltered.
Her lover deserved to hear the truth about the dilemma she faced. He deserved to know what Jenna told her, and that she really couldn’t rest until that theory was proved true or false. Gavin had to understand how scared she was to tell him any of this, though that’s exactly what she must do. Right now.
“You can tell me,” he said. “You can trust me, Skylar.”
“Okay.” She gathered her courage. “Apparently, I could be the child of the demon once housed at Fairview. One of its two children. So unless the beast out there is my big sister, who was in Miami the last time we talked on the phone, the creature on this mountain can’t have sprung from my mother’s womb, as far as I know. That’s something.”
Stunned speechless, frozen, Gavin’s beautiful eyes were on her. He didn’t drop his gaze to search her for signs that this could be true, the way she might have if the tables were reversed—something demonish in her outline that he might have missed. A red gleam in her eyes?
After the shock of her answer began to wear off, his blue gaze softened and he said, “I see.”
Just that. I see.
They sat opposite each other, trying to make sense of this information when there was no sense to be had. No one cared to offer up a suggestion about how to prove or disprove her statement, or how proving it mattered. An underlying added stress for Skylar was the fact that if the monster followed them, they were easy prey at the moment, parked by the side of the road. Sitting ducks.
But the beast didn’t show itself, and that, too, was yet another oddity in a long list.
Gavin eventually turned the wheel and got the Jeep back on the road leading away from the cabin, where under the canopy of trees, moonlight dulled to a dim and distant glow. Out of all the other things he could have chosen to say, he chose this one. “So, you have a sister.”
Skylar closed her eyes briefly, thankful to be able to deal with this remark. “Three of them,” she said, despite what Jenna had told her about two of them being adopted.
“I don’t have any siblings. I haven’t seen my parents since…well, you know.”
She got that, all right, and said in a rush, “I want to know everything about you before this. How you grew up, where you grew up and why you became a ranger. What kind of food you like. What sort of bed you sleep in. Your favorite color. Will I get to hear about those things, or is it too late?”
“I promise you will know all of those things,” Gavin said.
Her battered soul required the normalcy of small talk and familiar themes. Her revved-up body craved the werewolf beside her with a nearly out of control passion.
Animal instincts were at work, she supposed, like the ones telling her to run and to howl at the moon. Would Gavin and Jenna let her go if she opened the door? Allow her to find her fate? She didn’t think so, and didn’t have to read that in their thoughts since it was plainly written on their faces.
Gavin’s emotions ran in fiery streaks along her nerve endings. He wanted all those same things and to know her background, too. At that moment they were wounded, desperate souls in search of a good grounding. They were two hungry souls in need of the promise of a good, long future.
It was stupid to imagine the beast wasn’t following, though, or watching without showing itself. Did only she feel its breath? Hear its call? Sense it waiting? Was revenge the reason it was after her?
Who’d hurt it, if not her father, in that silver cell?
Did a Fenris reason, think, plan its revenge with intelligence?
Could her mother have been just like it?
God…can any of this be real?
She said, “Stop. Stop the car.”
Startled, Gavin again slowed.
“Jenna’s right. We need to go back.”
“That’s nuts,” Gavin objected.
“I can’t run away. It will never end if I run tonight.”
Jenna spoke up. “It’s our best bet. Maybe we can capture the demon.”
“Capture it?” Gavin repeated. “No. No way. Then what? Keep it locked up? Do the very thing it might be rebelling against?”
“I didn’t mean that,” Jenna said. “I’d never do that. I meant if we could capture it, we could ask what it wants. Maybe it understands more than we think.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Gavin asked.
“Do you want it to do more damage? No matter what we like or dislike, would you wish a meeting with that demon on any unsuspecting hiker or summer resident?” Jenna didn’t hesitate to tell it like it was. “This is what we do. What my pack and others like us do to keep the peace and keep ourselves safe.”
“What do you do?” Skylar asked.
“Whatever it takes to ensure the future and keep the secrets of our species safe,” Jenna replied. “As harsh as that may seem to you right now, it’s important. Trust me on that.”
Skylar got that, no problem. The sticking point continued to be wondering how a demon like this one could have fooled her father and produced children. Her. And Trish. Then again, maybe her mother wasn’t like this one at all. Maybe she was something else entirely.
“Go back,” she repeated, tired of the speculation and in dire need of closure. “Please, Gavin. Either take me back to the cabin or let me out right here.”
He shook his head as he began a wide turn. “We do this together or not at all.”
He looked in the rearview mirror, at Jenna.
“It’s not much of a plan, though,” he muttered. “So we have about three minutes to make one.”
Skylar said, “I just want to see this thing up close and tell it how sorry I am if in fact my family hurt it.”
“Then what?” Gavin’s frustration showed in his tone. “You’re best friends?”
“No.” Skylar was deadly serious. “That beast and I acknowledge that we’re family.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Gavin eyed her instead of the road.
“Hate to break it to you, Gavin, but I think she’s being sincere,” Jenna said.
Chapter 33
No demon waited for them on the road, in the driveway or the yard. Instead of relief, Gavin experienced a flush of new adrenaline that made his muscles dance as he faced the cabin. He had wanted to find this demon for a long time, and when he finally had the chance there were two women by his side with beastly tales of their own to contribute.
Well, not women exactly, though at the moment they were reasonable enough facsimiles.
Every nerve in his body was edgy and on full alert. After switching off the engine, something he didn’t really want to do, the night became eerily quiet. Moonlight reflected off the hood of the car and shone through the windshield without reaching his thighs. He noticed Skylar pressing herself against the seat as if that light contained incinerating properties and, in fact, it kind of did.
“It’s still here,” Skylar said, studying the cabin through the windshield. “Close.”
Though he couldn’t really determine the truth of that in any tangible way and felt very little beyond the pull of the moonlight waiting for him, Gavin went along with Skylar’s assessment.
His breath came in shallow puffs too inadequately timed to keep pace with his racing heartbeats. Instinct told him to get out of the car and find the sucker hiding from them
for the moment, but he was too worried about Skylar to open the door.
Jenna made the first move. Tossing off the blanket she’d draped around herself, she stepped out of the car, and with a soft sighing sound again flowed incredibly smoothly into her werewolf form.
Something in the way she did that tugged Gavin into following her lead. Never easy for him, his bone-breaking shift doubled him over. His body convulsed, still fighting the change rather than fully accepting it, but this shift came faster. He rallied in less than a minute.
Jenna growled. Rolling his muscled shoulders, Gavin growled back. From different sides of the car, they focused their attention on the cabin, though neither of them made a move in that direction.
Skylar finally got out of the car and looked at him over the hood. Her eyes met his greedily. Then, without showing so much as a twitch toward a shift in form, she took off toward the cabin on her long human legs.
He went after her with the auburn she-wolf on his heels. Up the steps, across the porch, Gavin chanted, Slow down, Skylar!
Her heat was high and her anxiety level through the roof. She’d feel she had more at stake here in facing the beast than they did, when that was far from the truth.
Through the splintered front door, into the living room, they ran. No sign of the monster remained there except for the scattered remnants of that front door, though Skylar paused in a frozen stance, looking over her shoulder at the bedroom.
No demon jumped out at them in the bedroom when they entered it. Gavin supposed that any creature once kept in a cage probably wouldn’t like to linger within four square walls.
Skylar spun around to stare at the window they’d broken and used as an exit. Raising her pale face, she sniffed the air—a strangely spooky action for someone in human skin. Then she lunged for the window and dragged herself over the sill. He followed her with Jenna on his heels, not sure what was going on, other than his guess that Skylar was using some kind of special radar to zero in on her prey.
He almost laughed at that thought, fairly close to his limit on patience. The night had been crazy from the get-go, and he felt pumped-up. His thoughts turned to the gun with its silver bullets, which he couldn’t have picked up with his wolfish hands anyway, if Skylar hadn’t dropped it somewhere on that mountain. He wished things weren’t moving so fast and that he could transition back and forth as easily as Jenna. His stamina was already suffering.
Maybe with time he’d become more adept at exchanging one shape for the other.
If he survived.
Outside the cabin, Gavin began to scent the trail the demon had left. By then Skylar was heading for the path leading up the mountain. Other than planting himself in front of her, he doubted anything would stop her from confronting her destiny, and he couldn’t fault that wish. In her place, he would have wanted the same thing. He’d need to find the truth.
As he moved after Skylar, he watched her for signs of the moon forcing her to change shape, wondering how she had so far avoided the silvery call that twisted through him.
Higher and higher they climbed: one semi-human demon and her two furred-up companions on a mission that surely would lead to someone’s death. He’d be damned if it would be Skylar’s.
Gavin’s thoughts raced, producing clear images with each breath of moon-filled air. In his mind, he saw the beast, massive, dangerous as hell. But could it be a real demon? Was there any way Skylar’s blood could possibly be tainted by a relationship to such a thing?
Then again, if Skylar did have demon blood in her, they were in the same boat. If the beast they were after actually turned out to be a demon, its curse had also fallen on Gavin. That beast’s blood had mingled with his, and that’s what forced him to change. In that respect, he and Skylar were blood compatible. So again, the question became one of why Skylar wasn’t morphing now.
Halfway up the hillside, she stopped, breathing hard, trembling big-time. Gavin closed in, pressing his body to hers possessively. What do you see?
She wasn’t able to speak, and didn’t try. Her eyes held a wild cast and were again black with fear. By her side, Jenna growled an encouraging rumble and continued to survey the area, also having noted the heavy weight of the burdened atmosphere. Jenna’s thoughts were clear. She was wishing her pack were here to help.
Skylar surprised them both when she called out “I’m here,” as though she perceived something he didn’t.
It quickly became obvious she had.
The beast he’d been searching for, the monster that had made his life a living hell, appeared ahead of them on the path as if Skylar had simply conjured it out of thin air.
Or called it to dinner.
The giant beat with life, its body visibly vibrating in the dappled light. This was no bit of overworked imagination, Gavin’s gut told him. The fact that he’d met this abomination a few times already didn’t dull the effect of this sighting. The thing ahead of them on the path was too big and too otherworldly. Everything about it screamed for him to run.
In that loaded silence, no one moved. The demon didn’t advance. Unlike their prior meetings, it failed to circle its prey or even acknowledge Gavin’s presence.
It was too busy staring at Skylar.
Her thoughts had stopped reaching Gavin some time ago, replaced by a buzz of static in his ears. Panic gripped him. Jenna stood as though she’d been turned to stone, her unwavering attention on the demon.
“I know what you are,” Skylar said to the creature. “And why you’re here.”
She was fighting to get the words out, squeezing them through her constricted throat.
“You’ve met my father, I believe. I’m Skylar Donovan, and they tell me I’m the child of one of you.”
The red-rimmed eyes across from them were unblinking and remained fully trained on Skylar. Gavin’s internal heat flared against the threat, the fires stoked by his nearness to the creature that had made him what he was. But the beast’s restraint truly plagued him. Perhaps some demons picked and chose their victims, and then took all the time they needed to attend to that singular objective.
Did this one understand human speech?
When would it pounce?
“I didn’t know about you,” Skylar went on. “No one I knew did. I’m not sure if my dad hurt you or if someone else might have, but I’ve come here to tell you how sorry I am for any hand my family might have had in seeing you harmed.”
She waved to include him and Jenna. “I don’t think I’m like them.” Her hand moved toward the moon. “So maybe what they say about me being like you is true. Do you see a connection?”
The beast slid forward, stopped, sniffed with its big head lifted, and then lowered its face until it was level with Skylar’s from a distance of five feet.
“Maybe,” she said, pushing the limits of Gavin’s tolerance for dangerous standoffs, “you knew my mother. Her name was Greta.”
Gavin had called this thing a beast and an abomination, but he saw now those things didn’t begin to describe what faced them. It had to be a demon that cocked its long-snouted head, straightened to its full and substantial height, and roared with a bellowing blast of anger that sent Gavin and Jenna stumbling sideways. Gavin pulled Skylar with him, his claws embedded in the back of her jeans.
“Do you understand me?” Skylar asked, righting herself, struggling out of Gavin’s grasp to face the creature. “Have you come here to hurt me?”
Another great howl went up, filling the area with a harrowing echo. Thing was…that sound hadn’t come from the monster across from them.
Thrown off-balance by the sheer surprise of the sound, both Gavin and Jenna whirled toward this new threat without considering the consequences of turning their backs on a demon.
Chapter 34
Skylar was knocked off her feet and flung to the side, but somehow, with the grace of a cat, managed to land on her feet.
The night filled with the sound of deep, menacing growls and snapping teeth as a great weight d
escended from behind her, bending her forward and cutting off her air supply.
Face in the dirt, heart pounding at a disastrous rate, she saw shadows darting around her, heard Gavin’s burst of exhaled breath and Jenna’s protesting yip. An iron-like odor of blood saturated the ground. The lights went out. No. She had merely closed her eyes. The moonlight hadn’t gone anywhere.
Coarse, wiry fur smelling of damp, dirty places, brushed across the back of her neck, just above her collar. She shivered and cried out as a scrape of bony claws pierced her shoulder, cutting right through the cloth of her shirt.
A cry went up that wasn’t hers, and was immediately answered by another. Dark paws passed in front of her eyes, inches away, scrabbling for traction, attracted to the blood seeping from her wound.
To her right, Jenna was up and moving, encouraging her to do the same. Hunched over, fighting off an onslaught of swiftly moving bodies, Skylar curled into a ball and rolled away from the nightmare in front of her, only to be confronted with yet another nightmare once she got to her knees.
Gavin, fierce in his werewolf form, pulled animals off her and tossed them aside. Jenna jumped in front of Skylar, growling, doing her share of damage, but not before Skylar saw what those animals fighting Gavin and Jenna were. Wolves. Real ones. No human in them.
They kept coming. Gray blurs with their teeth bared. Some of them called out when Gavin fought through them. Others yowled as if they were not only starved but mad with a rage that knew no bounds. The sight of two werewolves didn’t deter them because the smell of blood promised a delicacy too good to pass up.
And maybe they just didn’t like what they saw.
Wild animals…
Skylar had time for just that one thought before she was grabbed from behind. Two massive arms closed around her, lifting her off her knees and out of the dirt. The scene in front of her began to fade as she was dragged backward, away from the fight.
She kicked out without connecting with her aggressor. The grip on her waist was tight and growing tighter, a discomfort that made it impossible to cry out.
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