My Paranormal Valentine: A Paranormal Romance Box Set

by Michelle M. Pillow

  We soared. As he opened his eyes, that unearthly golden glow stared down at me. For a moment neither of us breathed. We just existed, two people, two beings who had come together and connected in an incredibly intimate fashion. There was something in his gaze, as if he wanted to tell me something, then he closed his eyes and exhaled, dropping his head so that his hair hid his face.

  I reached up and smoothed it aside, pulling him down so that I could kiss his forehead, his eyelids, his cheeks and lips.

  “Thank you for inviting me to share your den,” I whispered. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be tonight.”

  At my words his head lifted, his eyes searching mine. “It’s your den now, Brina. It’s all yours.”

  Chapter Nine

  I woke up in a panic, not knowing what time it was and not wanting to keep Dustin waiting at the harbor. My phone was dead, and inexplicably, Karl had no clocks in his house. Although I guess it wasn’t all that unusual for a guy with no electricity or running water to forgo a time-keeping device. Out here, so disconnected from anything resembling a nine-to-five, a clock wouldn’t be necessary.

  Unless you had a friend spending the night who needed to catch a plane at six in the morning.

  I threw on my clothes, gave a groggy Karl a kiss and ran for the Jeep.

  “Crap. Crap,” I muttered, catching a glimpse of the dashboard clock. I’d need to hustle. And I couldn’t leave a note or say a proper goodbye to Karl as I wanted to. Normally I’d just text him later. Normally I’d call him later.

  This was so not going to work. How the heck could I tell him I’d had a wonderful time and wanted to see him soon? Did the guy even get postal service deliveries for me to send a quick post-booty-call postcard?

  Except I didn’t want this to be a booty call. We were so different. There was something deep down inside him that scared me. The sex was good, but a relationship needed more than sex to survive. Books? And I did like to hunt and fish. Maybe we could meet halfway. I hoped so because I really wanted things to work between me and this bear.

  And if they didn’t…well, we’d just screw each other until the attraction burned out, then go our separate ways. The thought made me sad, but it was what it was. At my age, I’d learned to take these things as they came and not try to force a long-term connection where there was none.

  I made it. The clock hit six just as I pulled into the harbor parking area. I grabbed my duffle bag and locked the keys in the Jeep’s console as instructed, and watched Dustin fly down Tongass Narrows in his landing approach. The guy could fly. Of course, he spent most of his time in this plane. Originally the Swift River Pack had used it, and Dustin, to shuttle their hiking/climbing/hunting tours to various Alaska destinations, but they quickly realized the other two wolf packs in the state needed frequent and reliable transportation. Jake, the Swift River Alpha, was shrewd like that, always on the lookout for a way to increase revenues for their pack. And Dustin was the perfect guy to take charge of this part of their business. He was smart, and had a chill-attitude. He wasn’t what I’d call submissive, but he wasn’t so dominant that there was a constant pissing match between him and his customers. Dustin had a friendliness that made everyone trust him and confide in him. He was like a bartender, only thousands of feet in the air.

  The plane swooped down, a trail of mist in its wake as the pontoons touched down. Slowing, Dustin pivoted the aircraft around and made his way to the dock, expertly pulling alongside.

  “Hey Sabrina!” The werewolf grinned at me, his blond hair spilling over his eyes—which looked tired. If I’d been up early, Dustin had been up earlier. Although I doubted he’d been awake most of the night having sex with a grizzly shifter.

  “Hey, Dustin. Busy day I hear.”

  He nodded, grabbing my duffle bag then helping me into the plane. “You. Then I’ve got to go up to Anchorage to grab a couple of the Denali pack and take them home. Then I’ve got a cold beer and a couple of steaks waiting for me back home.”

  Now that sounded divine. I took the headset Dustin offered and donned it, flicking the “on” switch so we could have a conversation over the loud noise of the propeller engines.

  “You must have caught that rogue pretty fast,” Dustin commented as he turned the plane around. “Although I’m not surprised. I heard you had help from one of the grizzly shifters. Those guys are downright terrifying in a fight.”

  I didn’t ask when Dustin had ever seen grizzly shifters fight. “I did the tracking, and Karl did the rest,” I admitted.

  “Karl?” Dustin shot me a quick glance before turning the plane for our take-off. “That guy is more than terrifying. He’s like hell on earth. I saw him get into it with a polar bear shifter once. The guy was a smear on the pavement when they were done. I swear, I don’t even think Karl is a grizzly.”

  I leaned back in the seat as Dustin accelerated and we rose above the water, the plane tilting as it came around to head north. “I don’t think he’s a grizzly either,” I admitted. “He said his mother was. He won’t talk about his father.”

  Dustin nodded sagely. “Lots of people won’t talk about their fathers. Not everyone had a great childhood, Sabrina. Although, I gotta say, I’ve always wondered if Karl wasn’t secretly a Nephilim.”

  Me too. “He says he isn’t. He says all he can do is bear and human forms. But there’s something in his eyes…” I didn’t know why I was discussing this with Dustin. Bartender. I swear the pilot was just like a bartender. Or hairdresser.

  Dustin shrugged. “Maybe his father was a Nephilim. Most second generations don’t have anything more than other shifters beyond enhanced fertility, but he could be the exception. All I know is I’m glad he’s a pretty chill dude most of the time. Seems like it takes a lot to get him riled up, but when he gets riled up, I don’t want to be anywhere near him.”

  I thought back on the last few days with the grizzly shifter. He’d said he’d never hurt me, that I could trust him. And I believed him. As frighteningly powerful as Karl was, as much as the darkness behind his eyes scared me, I got the feeling I was somehow precious to him.

  The thought brought a smile to my face. “Do you mind if I sleep a bit? It was a long night.” I told Dustin.

  He shot me a perceptive look. Yeah. I’d not had time to shower even if Karl had indoor plumbing, and I probably smelled to high heaven of sex-with-grizzly-shifter. Dustin knew very well what I’d been doing all night.

  “No problem. I’ll wake you when we land.”

  Brent paced back and forth in his kitchen. I was sitting on a stool at the center island. Ahia and her angel, Raphael, were leaning against the counters, watching Brent.

  “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all,” the Alpha declared.

  Neither did I. “So what do we do? The police won’t get involved unless we can prove people aren’t acting in self-defense, which means we need to counteract the forced shifting and stop the rogue attacks.”

  “Basically negate what the bullets are doing,” Raphael said.

  “Yes. It’s not just a matter of hunters targeting us anymore. We’ve got a public relations nightmare looming. And we need to get human law enforcement what evidence they need to be on our side. If we can prove that they’re shooting us when we’re in human form, then it’s a matter of assault with a deadly weapon, or attempted murder. Until then, there’s a whole gray area of self-defense for them to consider.”

  Brent growled and slammed his fist into the countertop, denting the surface. “Why is it our responsibility to come up with an antidote? We’ve coexisted peacefully with the humans for generations and they don’t believe us on this one? Humans go crazy taking ice or LSD and they’re victims. We’re not even voluntarily taking this, and we’re blamed.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m with you, boss, but we’re on our own with this. We need to play by the human rules and get out the warning so our pack members and other shifters don’t get shot with these tainted bullets. Let’s work this side of th
e situation, cooperate, communicate, and find an antidote as quickly as we can. Then behind the scenes we’ll take it to them. I’m not saying sit on our hands and let the police do all the work. We can track them down, destroy their supplies, and possibly deliver our own justice toward those responsible.”

  I couldn’t believe I was proposing this. But the alternative was bleak. There was no way I wanted to stand aside and bide our time while shifters went rogue, and others were killed and mounted on walls as trophies. No way.

  Brent ran a hand through his short, dark hair. “So we have this SharpShooter guy posting on forums and riling people up. Then we have this Hit-The-Mark place that supposedly sells a solution to the rampaging werewolf problem.”

  “Now that I’m somewhere with decent internet, I’m going to try to see if I can arrange a purchase from Hit-The-Mark and see if they’re truly supplying the tainted bullets. That will get us one step closer to whoever is making these things. That’s the guy we need to take out. We’ll never get ahead of this tracking down hunters, or humans who bought these bullets out of fear.”

  Brent shot me a narrowed glance. “You’re a werewolf, Sabrina. I don’t like the idea of you going in this Hit-The-Mark place. If they’re selling bullets coated in magic, they might have a way to detect what you are, and then you’ll be trapped.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. My whole life I’d walked among humans, and unless I confided in them, they’d never known I was any different than they were.

  “You need a human to make the buy for you,” Ahia chimed in. “Isn’t Kennedy coming back from Anchorage today? Maybe she can help with the detective work.”

  Brent froze, tension in every muscle. I grimaced, knowing exactly what was going through his mind. Kennedy was completely capable. She was an ex-Army medic, a trauma surgeon, an amazing woman who was deadly with a rifle, who mountain climbed and hiked not in the least bit hindered by the fact that she was an above-the-knee amputee. But in spite of all that, she was human, and she was Brent’s mate. His every impulse was to keep her safe. And that warred with his realization that she’d kick his ass and walk away if he tried to swaddle her and keep her safe. When Kennedy had mated with Brent she’d become a part of our pack, and she’d embraced every responsibility that entailed, even if she was human.

  “She’ll want to help,” I told him. “And I’d be right outside, with my werewolf hearing, ready to intervene if necessary. Not that I think it will be necessary. I’ve seen her fight. You’ve seen her fight. She’s saved both you and Leon. She’s just as capable as any wolf in this pack.”

  Ahia shrugged. “Besides, would these guys harm a human? It sounds like their whole business is built around the idea that shifters are monsters and humans need to be able to protect themselves.”

  I eyed Brent, knowing that I was about to add to his fears. “If it was just the hunters up in Kenai, I might think that, but from the videos, it looks like they’re causing shifters to go rogue and siccing them on humans to prove their point. Five people died down in Ketchikan.” Although I got the idea that those five weren’t supposed to die. Maybe the bullets worked better with werewolves than grizzly shifters, and the manufacturers didn’t know that.

  “You’re right,” Ahia nodded. “Besides, if they knew she was part of a pack and was there doing reconnaissance, they might not care that she’s human.”

  Brent scowled. “I’ll ask her to help, but she just makes the buy, then she’s out. Once it’s confirmed where they’re manufacturing these things, I’ll want to work with the Swift River Pack to go in and take them out. We need a united front on this and I promised Jake I’d keep him in the loop. One of his wolves was shot too, and the hunting that happened up in Kenai was in his territory.”

  “Let’s not jump the gun then. If we take out their supply, it might just drive them underground,” I warned. “Maybe we should wait until we know who’s spelling the bullets and go for them. Otherwise I worry that these guys will go stealth on us and we won’t be able to dig out whoever is behind this whole thing.”

  Brent thought for a second. “I don’t like the idea of leaving supply on the market for people to buy. If we take out their stock, we can slow them down.”

  “Or not,” I countered. “Hit-The-Mark might just be a storefront. If we take out that store, they’ll just set up shop somewhere else the next day, or do internet sales. Selling bullets isn’t illegal. Let’s take out their supply if we can do it without them tracing it back to us. Otherwise I think we need to wait.”

  Brent leaned forward, resting his hands on the kitchen island. “Okay. I’ll defer to your judgement on this one, Sabrina. It’s your project, and I’ll trust you to make the call. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll phone Jake and let him know what’s going on. Then I’ll call Kennedy. In the meantime, we figure out what exactly the magic is on these bullets, and see if we can find an antidote.”

  Which was my cue to pull the bullets out of my pocket.

  “You need us to look at these, Sabrina?” Ahia turned her wide smile to me, and I couldn’t help but grin back.

  “Why, yes I do. I could really use your angel mojo on this one. This,” I shoved the one bullet in front of her, “is a bullet that that feels tainted.”

  Ahia caught her breath and exchanged a concerned look with Raphael.

  “The wound didn’t heal and the rogue didn’t smell right,” I added. “Karl said he smelled infected. Rotted tissue. And his blood was cloyingly sweet. Karl said that he’d fought enough bears in his life, killed enough rogues, that he knew this guy wasn’t right.”

  Raphael reached out and took the bullet before Ahia could, shooting her a worried look. I wasn’t sure if angels could be affected by whatever coated the bullets. Werewolves were descended from angels, but I’d assumed our relatively weak supernatural powers made us susceptible. I could understand Raphael’s concern, though. Ahia was only five thousand years old—very young by angelic standards. He wouldn’t want to take the chance.

  “I can tell right now that this isn’t exactly the same as what was on the bullets Kennedy dug out of Leon and Brent. It’s similar, but there’s a slight difference.” Raphael placed the bullet at the edge of the counter so only the front half protruded over the edge. A white light bloomed from his fingers, surrounding the bullet. After a few seconds, the light vanished and the angel slid the bullet back. “There’s definitely a spell there, but there’s also a natural, botanical component to it.”

  “So a mage, then?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “An elf. This isn’t just herbals used in a spell, the plant matter is actually a part of the spell. That’s one of the differences between elven magic and what the human mages and sorcerers do.”

  An elf? I’d been assuming the person behind this was a human killer, perhaps a mage. I’d never considered an elf. I’d never seen an elf in my entire life, wasn’t aware that there were any in Alaska. Was this guy, or gal, working elsewhere, shipping the bullets up here? The prospect of hunting all over the world, among seven billion humans, for one elf seemed an impossible task.

  “What about the biologic?” I asked.

  Ahia ignored Raphael’s scowl and pulled the bullet over toward her, examining it. “Foxglove. Lilac. White pine. Thornapple. And larkspur, but that’s only on the edges.”

  I didn’t know if that was the sort of thing that combined together would affect shifters. We’d been around for thousands of years, and although there were some herbs and chemicals that made us sick, none of them had the same dramatic effects that they had on humans. We didn’t get ill, we didn’t need antibiotics. We didn’t get cancer. And if we took cyanide, we’d be down for several days, but not dead.

  “But those plant essences are the catalysts for the elven spell,” Raphael added. “Slap them on a bullet by themselves and they do nothing. Add in elven magic and that’s what makes it deadly.”

  “Who can we ask about countering the magic on the bullets? Do either of you know an el
f?”

  “Not any who would cooperate at this time. They’re not all that pleased with the angels at the moment, and the few who are on our side don’t have the skills to do this kind of magic,” Raphael said. “There is a mage who is elven trained, and might recognize the spell, though. He’s a friend of a friend of a friend, and he’s in Hel, so it might take a while.”

  “Think this friend of a friend of a friend might also be able to come up with an antidote?” I asked.

  “It depends. There might be a counter spell he could put together if what’s on the bullets is within his area of expertise.”

  “Maybe ask him to work on a counter spell or antidote, or something like a protective amulet? Something that would block the magic, neutralize it before it took effect. That way we’d only need to deal with the bullet wound, and not the other effects.”

  A plain bullet we could cope with. It was the magic tainting them that was the problem.

  “Or perhaps something that blocked the bullet entirely.” Brent stopped pacing. “I feel like an idiot for not thinking of this before. We can’t provide protective vests for every shifter, and it’s not practical to wear them twenty-four-seven, but that might be a starting place.”

  I picked up the bullet and examined it once more. Outside of the magical coating, it was a regular bullet. I was touching it and not affected beyond the ick factor. If we could keep the bullet itself from physically penetrating our skin, then we wouldn’t have to deal with the magic aspect of it.

  “I agree,” I told the Alpha.

  “Good. Then let’s get a dozen vests in different sizes for pack use and I’ll authorize payment to this mage for any information he can provide as well as any magical item to counter the effect of the bullets.” Brent turned to Raphael. “How much do you think he’ll charge?”