by L. L. Raand
*
Gray finished breakfast crouched on a huge log by the fire pit with some of the other sentries. The warriors sat a little apart, talking in low tones about the way the Alpha had led the attack on the Blackpaw camp—about what they’d all done and how the Blackpaws had submitted. Gray ate without tasting her food, wishing she’d been there to see Barnardo defeated. No one talked very much about the battle at the Vampire club when the Alpha had finally killed the Blackpaw Alpha, but they’d all seen the wounded when the Prima and the medics had brought them back in the Rovers. There’d been a dozen injured at least, some torn and savaged by renegade Weres, others bearing the slashes and razor-thin bites of the Vampires. She hadn’t been with the hunting party that had set out to find Katya and finished with a battle that rocked the Praetern world. She kicked a burning ember back into the pit with the heel of her heavy combat boot.
Katya was gone more than she was here now, mated or bonded or whatever it was a Were did with a Vampire. Gray still couldn’t understand that. How Katya preferred one of them over another wolf Were. How could she, after what had been done to her, to them both? She remembered the way the Vampire had struck at Katya’s neck when she’d been chained, helpless, unable to defend herself. Any predator who would take prey like that had no honor. But Katya didn’t see it that way. Gray rose, surrounded by her Packmates, but feeling adrift. Alone. She and Katya had spent weeks locked in a torture chamber, suffering abuses she could barely recall and that no one would ever understand. Sometimes she’d felt like surrendering to the fear and helplessness, but Katya had been there, giving her someone to hold on to in the pain and the dark. Now Katya was gone, and she had no one who knew what she had known.
For an instant when she let herself into her dark barracks room, she thought Katya had returned. And then she smelled the wolf standing with her back to the window.
“What are you doing here?”
Misha turned from the open window, sunlight striking her ebony hair and making it shimmer like black gold. Her deep brown eyes were haunted, a look Gray had seen in her own eyes before she’d stopped looking in the mirror.
“I’m not sure, really,” Misha said. “I just didn’t feel like being alone.”
Gray leaned with her back against the door and slid her hands into her pockets. They were friends, but a lot had happened to both of them and she didn’t know how to talk to her anymore.
“I can go,” Misha said.
“No need to.” Gray gestured to the bed against the wall. “Katya’s not here and probably won’t be. She isn’t much anymore.”
Misha glanced at the bed but settled on the floor instead and put her back against the wood frame. “She’s with Michel, isn’t she?”
Gray dropped onto her own bed and kicked back against the wall, folding her arms over her chest. “Probably. She hasn’t been back since the night the Alpha went to rescue her.”
“She will be. She won’t be able to stay away from Pack forever.”
“What about…” Gray was about to say the Fae, but thought better of it. She didn’t want to talk about Misha’s bedmate.
“Torren?” Misha let out a long sigh. “I haven’t seen her since the night we tracked Katya to Nocturne.”
“You could ask the Alpha—”
Misha snorted. “Oh yeah. Right.”
“What’s it like,” Gray asked, “being with, you know, one of them?”
Misha half-smiled. “Not all that different except—”
“That’s all right, you don’t have to talk about it.” Gray wasn’t even sure why she’d asked. What did it matter what others felt? She didn’t feel anything, at least not the way she had before. And just as well.
“No, I don’t mind. It’s just kind of hard to explain. It’s physical like you’d expect, intense, good—great, but it’s more too, like traveling somewhere in a dream, a dream you didn’t know you wanted until you were in it. And you can smell and feel and touch everything, and you never want it to end.” She stared down at her hands. “I’m afraid she’s not coming back.”
“Maybe she can’t, just yet.”
“If she doesn’t soon, I’m going to find her.”
Gray didn’t say anything. Misha wouldn’t get very far before the Alpha sent someone after her. What would it be like, to care that much for someone, to risk the Alpha’s wrath? She was glad she’d never know. The only thing she wanted from anyone else was sex. Her wolf demanded it, needed it as much as air or food, but that was all. No bond, no mate, no young. She would live in the Pack, but in her heart she would be a lone wolf.
The hairs along her arms and the back of her neck stood up and her belly tensed. She jumped to her feet. “The Alpha is coming.”
Misha lurched up. A sharp knock on the door was followed by the creak of hinges as it pushed wide and the Alpha strode in, the Prima at her side. Power flooded the room and Gray’s clitoris tensed.
“Misha,” the Alpha said.
“Yes, Alpha!” Misha straightened to attention.
“Do you know how to reach Torren?”
Misha blanched. “No, Alpha.”
“Do you know where the Faerie Gates are located?”
“No, but…”
“Speak,” Sylvan said.
“I…I’m not sure, but I might be able to sense her if I’m close to where she has been recently.”
The Alpha glanced at the Prima. She didn’t say anything, but the Prima nodded.
“We’ll start at Nocturne,” the Alpha said. “We need to reach Torren.”
“Come,” the Prima said. “We’ll get the Rover.”
“Yes, Prima.” Misha hurried to the Prima’s side.
Gray shivered, waiting for the Alpha to speak.
“I have a job for you.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
“I’m putting you in charge of the training of a new sentrie recruit. You’ll both obey the orders of your lieutenants, but you will be responsible for her.”
Gray frowned. “Alpha?”
“I’m releasing the Blackpaw from confinement today. See that she doesn’t try to escape.”
Chapter Four
“Let the human sleep,” Francesca said, stepping naked from the tangled sheets and catching a sheer pale blue silk dressing gown in her fingertips. She slipped it on and headed for the door. “Come.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Luce rose in one fluid motion and followed soundlessly in Francesca’s wake through the twisting halls of the lair beneath the old mansion on the outskirts of the city. “Do you hunger still? Shall I call for a servant?”
“Not just yet.” She drew a deep breath and smiled at the scent of blood and arousal growing stronger with each step. A handful of her faithful had followed her when she’d escaped the carnage at Nocturne. The servants and blood slaves, human and Praetern, provided blood, and the handful of guards secured them during daylight hours. Still, she would need to recruit more fighters and more food sources before she and her Vampires exhausted their blood supply. Hunting in the open now would be dangerous.
Francesca threw open the door to her private quarters, luxurious by human standards but pitiful and small compared to the elaborate quarters she had occupied for decades beneath Nocturne—the lair now occupied by her previous senechal. She hissed, imagining Michel in her boudoir, surrounded by her blood slaves, her human servants, her guards; imagining Zachary Gates ruling the Dominion that had been hers for centuries. She wasn’t sure which was the greater insult, Gates usurping her position or Michel—her enforcer, lover, and confidant for millennia—betraying her for the fleeting pleasure of a young Were in her bed.
Katya. She would be one of the first to die.
Fury seared her breast as she pictured Michel feeding mindlessly from the throat of the beautiful young—truly young—wolf. She comforted herself in the knowledge Michel would soon lose interest in the pitiful weakling, and then where would she turn? To one of the traitorous Vampire guards who’d remained behind, a nameless la
ckey with a tenth of her power? Of course, by then, Michel would have far more to concern her than the source of her next feeding. Francesca would soon regain control of what was hers, and Zachary Gates, his treacherous daughter Jody, Michel le Clare, and all those who had turned against her would die. Slowly, and by her own hand.
She glided into the marble-floored room, its walls draped in thick velvet brocade, with Luce by her side. Daniela, ever faithful, waited for them naked in the oversized four-poster bed, the thick silk coverlets thrown down to expose her lush body. She was recently Risen and had not yet been honed to the razor-like sleekness of an older Vampire. Her auburn waves spread out on the pristine pillow covers, her milky breasts full and flushed a lovely rose. Daniela had fed, from the looks of the high color in her cheeks, but she hungered for more than blood. She was young and her control fragile, especially now with her sexual potency at its peak after feeding. The scent of need was heavy in the air, but she would have to wait.
“We must be careful with Dr. Standish,” Francesca said as she settled onto a mound of pillows next to Daniela. “We need her to continue her work. If she is too weak or too addicted, she won’t be able to complete her work on the contagion.”
“She should be easy to control now.” Luce stretched out by Francesca’s feet. “She’ll do whatever we want as long as we feed from her.”
“Then see that she returns to her laboratories.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“What about restoring our forces—have you begun recruiting?”
“Yes, Mistress. I’ve sent our human servants to make contact with a number of midlevel Vampires in the other Clans. Ones whose chances of advancement are slight. They should be eager to move up by joining us.”
“Good. Let it be known that we will be especially generous to anyone who leaves Chasseur de Nuit.”
“It shall be done.”
Francesca had already begun to mobilize the financial reserves she’d sequestered over the centuries for just this kind of emergency. No Vampire in a position of power ever expected to hold it without a fight at some point, and she had secreted funds to rebuild her power base in the eventuality of a setback. Fortunately, she was owed many favors and intended to call upon all of them. But she had to move slowly to avoid detection until she was at strength again.
A knock sounded at the door and Simon, one of her human servants, requested entrance.
“Come,” Francesca said.
The door opened and a svelte young male entered. His gaze jerked to Daniela and an erection sprang up in his tight black trousers. Wisely he instantly diverted his attention to Francesca.
“What is it?” Francesca asked impatiently.
Simon started, a cloud of lust lingering in his eyes. “Forgive me, Vice…ah, Mistress, but a cat Were requests an audience.”
Francesca trailed her fingertips down her breast and over her nipple, enjoying the tightening as she anticipated her visitor. “Send her in. And Simon, wait outside. We may have need of you.”
His eyes gleamed and his erection lengthened further. “Yes, Mistress.”
She flicked her fingers and he stepped backward, out the door. An instant later, a leonine female in brown leather pants and a body-hugging tan shirt strode in. Her green eyes swept the room, passing over Daniela with only a second’s hesitation before fixing on Francesca. Her tawny skin was coated in a gleaming shimmer of sex-sweat. Powerful musky pheromones surrounded her.
“Dru,” Francesca purred, “have you been hunting?”
“Yes, my Queen.”
“And do you bring us news?”
“I do, but I would rather serve you with my body before words, my Queen.”
Francesca laughed, delighted at her arrogance. She rarely employed Weres but still remembered a time when wolves and cats were hers to call and command. Dru resisted command, but that was part of her appeal. That and her insatiable lusts.
“Approach.”
Dru strode past the end of the bed and planted herself beside Francesca, legs spread wide.
“Tell me.” Francesca leaned over on one elbow and slowly unbuttoned Dru’s shirt, making sure her razor-sharp nails etched a faint blood trail over the inner curve of Dru’s breast. Pain was foreplay to a cat like Dru. The muscles in Dru’s belly separated into hard squares and golden pelt streaked the centerline between the etched columns, disappearing beneath the waistband of her pants. Francesca leaned closer and licked the tawny fur. Dru’s hips jerked and Francesca purred again.
“I’ve been…scouting, my Queen. I saw several small groups of cats moving north along the border between the Catamount Pride lands and the Timberwolf territory.”
Francesca licked her way upward to the undersurface of Dru’s breast and bit lightly. “Why?”
Dru’s claws burst from her fingertips. “I suspect the bitch Alpha is calling the cats to her, organizing them or trying to.”
“Is that of any concern to us?” Francesca found a nipple and squeezed. Dru snarled softly.
“Possibly,” Dru said, “especially if the mercenaries who had previously hired out to the humans join her. Or word of them comes to her.”
“Do they know of the laboratories?”
“Some of them.”
Francesca opened Dru’s pants and pulled them down to midthigh. She licked the base of her extruded clitoris, letting her incisors glance over the blood-filled shaft. Dru shivered. “Then we must see she doesn’t succeed.”
“She is allies with the wolves,” Dru said, her voice gravelly.
“Then we must find a way to drive a wedge between them if you cannot find a way to dispose of her yourself.”
“As my Queen commands.”
“Your Queen commands you join me.” Francesca reclined on the pillows, her gown parting to expose her breasts and belly. “Luce, bring in Simon to serve Daniela. Then you may serve me.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Luce slid from the bed like water over smooth stones, not even disturbing the air.
Dru pushed off the rest of her clothes and climbed onto the bed, moving between Francesca and Daniela at a wave of Francesca’s hand. A moment later Simon, naked and rampant, settled onto the far side of the bed beside Daniela. Francesca parted her legs so Luce could lie between them. Daniela, her eyes simmering pools of lava, opened her thighs and Simon knelt between them, his face a grimace of need. Francesca gripped him and slowly guided him into Daniela, whose incisors gleamed, her hunger a living beast.
“You may feed,” Francesca decreed, and Daniela struck Simon’s throat. His hips jerked and his face went slack. Luce’s mouth closed around her, and Francesca turned to Dru as the orgasm built inside her. “The first time I will take your throat, then your breast, then your thigh. And if you are as strong as you pretend, I’ll finish with your essence in my mouth.”
“I am all that and more,” Dru hissed. Her face had partially shifted, her expression stark and brutal, her beast a feral creature hungry for release.
Laughing, Francesca struck deep, not bothering to blunt the pain. Dru arched as if electrified and spent against Francesca’s thigh. Francesca drank, savoring the rich nectar of Were blood. Yes, an army of Weres would be very useful in more ways than one. All she needed was a way to control them, and what better way than the threat of extinction?
*
“I should go to Nocturne,” Drake said as Misha and the centuri went to get the Rover.
Sylvan planted her feet and shook her head.
Drake ignored the silent no, expecting resistance and understanding the cause. Still, she had to be an equal partner—Sylvan needed that, and so did she. “Both of us should not be out of the Compound at once, and you have already been absent for too long.”
“We don’t know how secure Michel’s power is, and the place is filled with Vampires and Weres of uncertain loyalty.”
“I’ll take guards. Besides, it’s daylight, and Michel and the other Vampires won’t be at full strength.”
Sylvan’s ja
w set. “I should be the one to go.”
“You’re needed here. The warriors need to be organized, we ought to contact Jody and find out how the Vampire Clans are reacting to the transition, and the wounded will fare better with your strength to draw on.”
“You seek to outmaneuver me, mate,” Sylvan said, an edge to her voice.
She was the Alpha, and not used to compromising. Drake caressed her chest. “I know. But we have young and there will be times when we will have to fight this war separately. If I find the Faerie Gate, I’ll contact you. I’ll be safe enough.”
“I don’t want you in danger.”
“I’ll have guards. And I have proved myself in battle, have I not?”
Sylvan’s lip curled but she didn’t argue in the face of truth.
Drake kissed her. “I won’t be gone long.”
“Two hours—and then I’m coming after you.”
“I’ll be fine. Trust me.”
Sylvan yanked her hard against her chest, the heat of her body a furnace searing Drake to the bone. “I do trust you. But I need you more.”
“Then I won’t go far.”
Sylvan let her go and Drake climbed into the Rover. Jace, one of the centuri assigned to her, was behind the wheel. Misha sat in the rear behind her next to Jonathan, Jace’s twin.
“Let’s go.” Drake didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. Sylvan watched her until the Rover passed out of the Compound and moved off into the forest. Even when out of sight, Drake could feel their connection, a tie between their hearts that never weakened.
Jace maneuvered the Rover along the rough single track hidden from aerial view by the thick forest canopy and eventually emerged from Pack land onto the interstate heading south. Thirty minutes later they reached the city and entered a warren of abandoned factories and refineries along the highway bordering the river. Nocturne crouched by the water, separated from the highway by a huge expanse of concrete parking lot, long abandoned to the elements. During daylight the lot was empty, but after dark it would be filled with luxury vehicles and limos side by side with pickup trucks and motorcycles belonging to the patrons who sought out the club for sex and blood. Jace pulled the Rover behind the building, where it was hidden from passersby. Drake and Misha slipped around to the front door set into the windowless plain black facade. Jace and Jonathan followed on either side. Drake tried the door and it swung open. Inside, the cavernous club was shrouded in semi-darkness. A short-haired blonde wearing a leather halter and low-cut black leather pants stood behind the bar. A spiraling red and green tattoo climbed from beneath the black leather covering her breasts onto one shoulder and down her arm. Bite marks decorated her throat. She watched them expressionlessly as Drake crossed to her.
