Kindling The Darkness

“A hiker was killed in Deception Gulch near the old mine at Hull Canyon, and a couple of campers were torn to shreds near Woodchute Trail. And there was one more sighting recently at Hogback—the Old Miners Cemetery just south of town. But no contact there.”

“So it’s staying close to Jerome.” Lucy washed down her burger with a sip of root beer. “I wonder why.”

Oliver gave her a wry smile. “Some people like it here.”

“No, I’m sure they do. I mean, why, specifically, would it gravitate toward a small town with limited hunting and few places to hide in an area that’s neither urban nor wooded. Werewolves tend to prefer hunting grounds near large groups of people where they can blend in and stalk at night, or they isolate themselves and hide in undeveloped forestland and hunt small game. But this one—if it is indeed just one—has gone a few miles out, perhaps to hide, but then returned to the center of Jerome, where it made a brazen kill that it could have been caught at.”

“Maybe it isn’t afraid of being caught.” It was an unsettling idea.

While they both concentrated on their food, Lucy pondered where to start her hunt.

After a moment, Oliver set down his burger and took a drink of his porter. “So, how do you intend to catch it?”

“I don’t intend to catch it. I intend to kill it.”

His hard jaw was set even harder. “So you’re judge, jury and executioner.”

“That’s right. That’s what people like you pay me to be. What did you expect me to do, put it in a zoo?”

“Doesn’t your biotech company develop drugs to help shifters lead ‘normal’ lives?”

“We have certain promising pharmaceuticals in development but none on the market yet.”

“Isn’t that your brother’s bailiwick? You both inherited the company, didn’t you?”

Lucy breathed evenly. “Lucien has a lot of responsibilities that keep him from the day-to-day operations. But yes, Smok Biotech is Lucien’s particular area of interest, and the anti-lycanthropy project is one that he’s spearheaded.”

“There are rumors about him.”

Her hand remained perfectly still around her glass, and she kept her expression neutral. “Rumors?”

“That he’s actually at some swanky rehab center in California, and his addiction is being quietly covered up.”

She made a dismissive sound and emptied her glass. “Lucien isn’t an addict. Rest assured, the company is in very capable hands. My brother just happens to be a rather private—and busy—person. You can spread that around your rumor mill.” Lucy set her napkin on the table and pushed her plate away. “I’ll take a drive out to Hogback and see if I can spot anything unusual. In the meantime, a sketch of the creature would be useful in determining what we’re dealing with. Did you get a detailed description from any of the eyewitnesses?”

“I’m afraid not. We have fairly limited resources at our disposal. But I do have this.” He took out his phone and displayed the photo, turning it toward Lucy on the table. “The eyewitness at the Gold King Mine got a picture of it before it took off. I’m afraid it’s not very clear.”

Lucy studied the blurry image, like a photo of Bigfoot through the trees, only this was a large, dark, doglike shape on its hind legs, its muzzle caught in midsnarl. As unclear as it was, there was something unsettling about the image. The creature seemed fully aware it was being photographed, as if it was posing for the camera, the snarl a ghoulish grin.

And it was a dead ringer for the thing Lucy had shot this morning.

Chapter 4

Lucy studied the photo on her phone while she waited for dark. It was blurred—as her glimpse of her attacker this morning had been—but she was certain that if it wasn’t the same creature, it was one of its kind.

After seeing the picture, she’d changed her mind about the sighting in the cemetery. What this creature wanted was prey, and it seemed to prefer getting as close to populated areas as possible. It was likely to try again closer to town. And the creature that had attacked her this morning was intelligent and had sought her out on purpose. She needed to begin thinking the way it would.

Most likely, it knew she was here. And it was probably proud of its kill. It would return to the site of its latest victory to gloat, knowing she’d be there.

As dusk fell, she got out of the car and walked down the embankment where they’d seen the tracks before climbing up the other side of the hill into the area marked No Trespassing. Full dark had hit. It was a new moon. But Lucy had no trouble seeing in the dark. Her cycle was perfectly aligned with the lunar month—and with PMS came the weakening of the drug that suppressed her condition.

Lucien’s anti-lycanthropy compound had come in handy after their twenty-fifth birthday ushered in the transformation. There had been just one little problem with Edgar’s calculations when he’d sold his firstborn son’s soul to the devil: he hadn’t figured in the fact that Lucy and Lucien represented a rare occurrence of opposite-sex monozygotic twins—genetically identical except for an extra X chromosome—and the curse had affected both of them. Lucy’s change was only partial, but partial was enough. She’d become sufficiently practiced that she could use her infernal enhancements when she needed them, but Lucien’s compound kept her from being a slave to them. It was “shift control.” And like birth control, it only effectively balanced her hormonal cocktail about twenty-one days out of the month, leaving her vulnerable to accidental transformation during that critical week.

Lucy scanned the darkness for movement. She didn’t have to wait long. Along the perimeter of a tailings pond—the slurry from leftover mining waste—something was skulking. It crouched on all fours, stepping out slowly into view, before rising on its hind legs to face her, letting her know it saw her, too. If it was the same creature, it showed no sign of being injured. And this time it laughed. The unnerving sound carried unnaturally, echoing across the hillside, and Lucy made the mistake of reacting, a slight recoil, a barely perceptible shudder. In that split second of reaction, the creature sprang into motion, striking her as it pounced and rolling with her over the ground with its claws slashing.

She couldn’t reach for her gun from this angle. She should have had it ready. Her reflexes and instincts were shit when she was this tired.

Lucy scrabbled left-handed for the knife in her boot while defending herself from the creature’s claws with one arm, her fingers closing around the handle just as the massive jaws clamped onto her left shoulder. With a primal shriek, she grasped the knife firmly and punched upward with it between her attacker’s ribs. The thing howled with outrage and stumbled back, sheer hatred in its eyes.

It was readying for another attack, but this time Lucy was prepared. The shriek and the punch had been impelled forward on the strength of the infernal component in her blood, and as the creature came for her, she jerked the shifting bones at her shoulder blades to unleash her wyvern wings and leaped into the air to meet the creature’s advance head-on, talons extended as they grew from her nail beds.

Weakened by the knife in its gut, it couldn’t match her ferocity, and a final kick to the knife itself drove it in deep. The furious creature snarled and howled again at the dark of the moon before turning tail and loping away into the brush. As it disappeared among the foliage, she saw the distinct shape of a fully clothed man.

Ordinarily, she’d have flown after it, but she’d reached the limits of her second—or maybe third—wind. With the rush of adrenaline fading, Lucy wobbled on her feet, wings and talons retracting. The compound was still working for the most part, but she’d have to get another dose soon or risk transforming at an inopportune moment—and being unable to shift back on her own. In the meantime, she needed to clean up her new wounds and get some goddamn sleep.

Climbing back up to the car took a monumental effort. Lucy leaned back in the driver’s seat and closed her eyes just for a moment. When she opened them, the stars visible through the windshield had shifted significantly. The clock on the dash read two in the morning. Her muscles ached, and her shoulder was killing her. She touched her fingers to the torn cloth over the bite; it was soaked with blood. There was no way she was going to make it home like this. And she knew the address of exactly one person in Jerome. He’d said he lived in the building his shop was in, which meant the upstairs must be his residence.

Lucy drove back to Main Street in Jerome and managed to find parking in front of Delectably Bookish once more. Her head swam, and the ground dipped and swayed as she got out of the car. Lucy gripped the post beside the entrance of the shop to steady herself and pounded on the door.

A light came on above, followed by the lights in the shop a moment later. Oliver Connery appeared, shirtless, salty hair askew and glaring furiously out of those cinnamon-brown eyes as he unlocked the door.

“What the hell is—” He stopped, staring openmouthed as he took in her appearance. “Jesus. What happened? Come inside.” Oliver put an arm under hers and led her in to sit on one of the couches. “The werewolf?”

“I’m even more sure now that it’s not a werewolf.” Lucy rubbed her brow with the back of her wrist. “It’s incredibly fast and resilient—and strong—and it shifts with the wind, like it just decides when it wants to be human.”

Oliver had gone to the café counter to grab some towels, and he returned with them, shaking his head as he pressed one to the shredded shoulder. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“I assure you, I’m perfectly capable of handling this thing now that I know what I’m up against.” She was sure of no such thing, but she wasn’t about to listen to more of his criticism of her age and experience. Or implicit criticism of her sex.

“So you didn’t kill it.”

Lucy grabbed the towel from his hand. “It wasn’t for lack of trying. You need to get over this idea that all lycanthropes are misunderstood people who need to be given a chance. This thing is a monster.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” Oliver frowned down at her. “You’re going to have to take that suit off. We need to disinfect the bite, and you’re probably going to need stitches.” He held out his hand. “Come with me.”

Lucy bit back another retort about being fine and not needing any help and instead took his hand to let him pull her up from the couch. Because as much as she hated to admit it, right now, she was not fine.

Upstairs in the bathroom of Oliver’s apartment, Lucy peeled off the torn suit and blood-soaked white shirt—both of them ruined by her transformation before the creature’s teeth had even sunk in—and sat begrudgingly on the covered toilet to let Oliver clean the wound and sew her up. “I can do that myself,” she complained between gritted teeth. “I know how to stitch up a wound.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop trying to impress me. I get it. You’re experienced. You’re tough as nails. You’re a total badass.”

“I’m not trying to—”

“That wasn’t sarcasm.” Oliver glanced up, his cinnamon eyes dark with concern. “I am impressed. I’m also very worried about this bite. If it’s a werewolf—”

“It’s not a werewolf. And... I happen to be immune.”

Oliver’s dark brows drew together. “Immune?”

“One of the perks of owning a biotech firm that specializes in parapharmacology.”

“I see. I don’t suppose that particular pharmaceutical is on the market for ordinary folk?”

“It’s part of a limited trial.”

Oliver’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing else.

As he tied off the stitches in her shoulder, Lucy became acutely aware of the fact that she was sitting here in his bathroom in her bra and underwear while he was wearing nothing but a pair of flannel pajama bottoms. One of the other aspects of her heightened senses at this point in her cycle was unusually intensified sexual desire.

After putting the first aid kit away, Oliver glanced up and seemed to realize her state of undress, as well. “Let me get you a robe.” He slipped out of the bathroom and returned with one in blue-and-black flannel that matched his pants.

“Thanks.” Lucy rose and attempted to slip her left arm gingerly into the sleeve and nearly pitched forward into him.

Oliver steadied her, instinctively avoiding her arm and shoulder, instead catching her about the waist. His hands nearly circled her. Lucy looked up into his intense russet eyes. There were similar-colored highlights in the salt-and-pepper hair, and what she’d thought of as a tan was a matching cinnamon-bark undertone in his skin, evenly warm...everywhere.

Her spine twitched as she resisted a full-body shiver. This was no time to indulge her overactive wyvern hormones. It would be a disastrous mistake. She breathed in his scent—a damp, dusty smell like the desert after rain when the creosote bushes released their resin. She could swear she felt one of her ovaries dropping an egg.

“No, no. Hell, no.” Lucy pushed his hands away and pulled on the rest of the robe, tying it with a jerk. Her hands were sweating.

Oliver blinked and took a step back, his expression mortified. “That wasn’t a move. I was just trying to make sure you didn’t crack your head on the basin.”

“I know it wasn’t a damn move. I wasn’t talking to you.”

He blinked again. “Who...who were you talking to?”

Lucy’s head was starting to throb. She groaned and clutched it in both hands, unconsciously rubbing the spots at her hairline where a pair of ruby dragon horns had protruded just hours ago.

“Are you all right?”

Lucy shook her head and regretted it. “I need to go home.”

“You can’t drive in this condition.”

“Don’t tell me what I can do.”

Oliver sighed patiently. “Your injuries aside, when was the last time you slept?”

“I don’t sleep.”

“You don’t sleep.”

“I don’t have time. I catch a power nap when I can.” The truth was that she couldn’t sleep at this time of month. And she really had to stop smelling his desert-dusty-rain smell right goddamn now.

Lucy pushed past him and headed for the door. She wasn’t sure if it was chivalry or indifference that kept him from trying to stop her as she advanced into the hallway weaving like a drunk. She stumbled and landed on her ass on the carpet runner at the top of the stairs. Good move. Idiot.

Oliver stood watching her, arms folded, from the doorway of the bathroom. “Would you like the double bed or the queen?”

She let out a low growl of defeat. “Can I just sleep here? Maybe put a grave marker on it and call it done.”

He laughed, his right cheek dimpling in a way that made her want to growl more. “I’ll get you a blanket.” He crossed to the linen closet and took one out. “Of course, the queen room is right here if you prefer.”

Lucy followed his glance to the open doorway on the other side of the bathroom. A high, fluffy-looking bed with a down coverlet posed invitingly beneath a sloped ceiling. “Why do you have so many rooms?”

“It’s just three bedrooms, actually. But I’ve been planning to turn it into a B and B since I bought the place and took over the bookstore. I’m thinking of calling it Bed, Book and Candle.”

“Nice.” The bed really did look enticing. “Maybe I could catch a few winks.” She got to her feet, steadying herself against the wall, and accepted the blanket. With a questioning look, Oliver offered his arm. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she touched his bare skin right now, but she knew it wouldn’t be good. “Thanks. I think I’ve got this.” Somehow, she managed to pull off a semblance of normalcy, making it inside the bedroom and closing the door before she collapsed gratefully into the downy oasis.

She was almost asleep after all when something she’d been aware of in the back of her mind came to the fore. Oliver’s bare chest had been notable for more than its exquisite form. He had four puckered scars, impact craters with jagged starred edges that looked distinctly like the kind made by bullets. It meant nothing, probably. Maybe he’d been in Afghanistan or Iraq. But they had the pale pink color and sheen of a recently healed injury. And they were placed almost precisely where the shots she’d fired into the hell beast would have landed yesterday morning. And lycanthropes were known for rapid healing.

Chapter 5

Lucy was gone in the morning. Oliver hoped to God she’d gotten some sleep. His sleep, on the other hand, hadn’t been good. He couldn’t get her off his mind. For an instant last night, when he’d caught her from falling, she’d looked at him with what he could have sworn was naked desire. It had shocked him. And the next instant, the look had been gone, leaving him wondering if he’d imagined it.

He worried the ring on his right hand with his thumb. Vanessa’s ring. She’d been gone for more than five years, but he still couldn’t take it off. Transferring it from the left hand to the right was the most he’d been able to do. It reminded him not only of his loss but also of his part in it. He was responsible for Vanessa’s death.

Oliver imagined what she’d say to him. You can’t take credit for the failures and ignore the successes. But the raid that day had been more than a failure. Darkrock had no business going into an unsecured nest without doing the proper reconnaissance first. And Oliver had gotten cocky, imagining that despite the disadvantage of not knowing how many vampires were holed up in the meth lab or how organized the vamps were, he had what it took to handle whatever they found. Darkrock had sent him, so Oliver had gone.

Vanessa had been his partner, in life and on his Darkrock team. Their team was first, positioned in a side alley near the den, and Oliver and Vanessa had scaled the fence into the weeds and garbage. Oliver had kicked in the back door while the other members of the team made a frontal assault. They’d expected a handful of meth addicts sharing needles and sharing each other’s depleted blood. They’d expected any vampires, at least, to be sluggish with the daytime hour. What they hadn’t expected was an ambush.

A very sophisticated operation had been overseeing the nest—a nest of donors, not vamps. They’d fed Darkrock an anonymous tip about the place, one that seemed reasonable on its face. It was a known hangout for meth heads, and meth heads were often mixed up in the trafficking of blood. Because of that symbiotic relationship between addicts and vampires, a house full of addicts often ended up breeding a house full of low-rent, weak vamps. And those that remained donors had only a short shelf life, so the siring vamps would move on once the supply dwindled.

When Oliver and Vanessa and the rest of the team had busted into the house, they’d expected to round up the victims and vamps with little resistance. Instead, they’d been set upon by very healthy, bloodthirsty vampire lords. One of them had Vanessa before Oliver even knew what had hit them, and the rest of the team was dead. The vampire lord holding Vanessa had smiled at Oliver, reading his mind, knowing what Vanessa was to him, before taking a drink.

Oliver slammed his fist down on the counter, jarring the coffee cups. He didn’t need to go down that road again. That was a dead end. In more ways than one. As he got the coffee started for the morning, his phone vibrated on the counter beside him, skittering across the slick shellac. He was on call for the Jerome Volunteer Fire Department this week, and they were calling him in.

After shutting down and locking up, he headed over to the firehouse, expecting some cat in a tree or a kitchen fire at the burger place, but a two-alarm fire was in progress at the newly built storage facility off State Route 89A on the road down the mountain toward Verde Valley. Oliver’s crew was assigned to search and rescue while the first crew fought the blaze. The storage units were brick and metal, but the summer had been dry, and maintenance hadn’t been kept up to clear weeds and brush from around the facilities. And some clever asshole had thought treated wood-shingle roofing would be a good idea for a storage facility on a mountainside. In a town that had burned down more than once.

Since most of the units were locked up, scanning for occupants was simple enough, but after calling in the all clear on his section, Oliver caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He thought at first that he’d seen a coyote or a stray dog, but it had withdrawn into the shadows among the trash bins at the back of the rear units where the yard ended in a high cement fence. An animal might have been skittish around humans, but animals weren’t generally good at hiding—particularly when they were trapped near fire.

“Hey,” he called. “Anybody back there?”

Silence answered, but there was movement behind the bins.

Oliver moved closer cautiously. If it was a trapped animal, it could be dangerous. And if it was a person, it could be an arsonist. Why else would someone hide nearby during a blaze? He switched on the flashlight on his shoulder strap as he stepped around the industrial bin, illuminating the dark corner. Huddled beside the bin, a wide-eyed, sandy-haired youth stared up into the beam of his light, frozen in terror.

Instinctively, Oliver knew the boy was “family.” It was the term he used in his head for Jerome’s not-quite-human residents. And just as instinctively, he knew better than to call this in. No one helpful was looking for this boy.

He made sure his radio was off before crouching down to the boy’s level. “Hey.” He kept his voice neutral, his body relaxed. “I’m Oliver. You need some help?”

The kid’s eyes widened a bit farther, as if he hadn’t expected kindness. He shook his head, lowering his eyes under Oliver’s continued scrutiny.

“You hungry?”

The dark eyes darted up once more, the answer obvious in them, though the boy didn’t speak.

Oliver took a protein bar from his pocket and offered it to him. After glancing past Oliver as if to see if this was some kind of trick, he snatched the bar from Oliver’s hand and tore it open, gobbling it down in two bites. As the boy looked up hopefully for more, Oliver took inventory of the dirty T-shirt, torn jeans and bare feet. The kid had been living on the street—or in the wild—for a while.

The boy jumped and scrambled back at the sound of Oliver’s radio crackling with an announcement from the team leader that the fire was contained.

“It’s okay,” Oliver assured him. “Everybody’s going to be leaving soon. I won’t tell anyone you’re here.”

Looking only slightly less mistrusting, the kid nodded.

“So you can understand my language, yeah?”

Another nod.

“Can you speak it?”

No answer.

“Okay, forget about that for now. Do you have a name?”

The kid blinked at him, understanding but clearly having no words. Whether it was because he didn’t have a name or simply couldn’t speak at all, Oliver wasn’t sure.

“Can I give you one? Just to make it easier for me to talk to you.” When the boy didn’t shake his head, Oliver pondered it for a moment. “How about Colt?” He reminded Oliver of one, skittish and wild.

The boy considered it and seemed to recognize its meaning, as a shy smile spread slowly across his face, and he nodded.

“Okay, Colt. I have to go right now, but I’m going to come back in a little bit. Will you stay here and wait for me? I can bring you some proper food and some water, give you someplace warm to sleep—but I’m not going to take you anywhere, don’t worry,” he added as Colt looked alarmed at the last bit. “I’m not going to bring anyone, either.”

Colt’s demeanor relaxed to his previous level of vigilance, and he hugged his knees, resting his chin on them with a slight, wary nod.

Oliver’s radio went off again, his partner wanting to know where he was.

He straightened and responded before nodding to Colt once more. “Be back in a bit.”