Taming The Shifter

Despite his usually exceptional tracking abilities, he had lost the scent that night. Reagan would have known to put distance—a hell of a lot of distance—between them. And Kate shooting Warrick had given him time to do just that. But his anger with her had cooled. If only his desire could...

Her scent filled him. She didn’t smell of flowers or some other cloying odor. She smelled like she tasted: sweet—sugar and vanilla and some spice. How could such a strong, fearless woman be so sweet?

Sebastian sighed, as if giving up a battle he had waged with himself. “You might be wrong about that.”

Confusion wrinkled the hair on Warrick’s brow. “I thought you warned me off her.”

“I did,” Sebastian said. “I’m giving you another warning now. The reason you came to Zantrax may not have left yet, either.”

“You’re saying...” His heart slammed into his ribs. “He’s still here?”

“The guy you tried tearing apart in the alley?” Sebastian nodded.

“How do you know?”

The dark-haired man grinned. “In addition to managing Club Underground, I fill in at the bar some nights. A bartender hears things...”

“Your surgeon friend treated him, too?” Warrick guessed. How else would he have known what Warrick had done to him? It had been just the two of them—and Kate—in that alley. Sebastian hadn’t come out of the passageway until Kate had left. She’d been getting him help; that was why she had rushed from the alley. But her paramedics wouldn’t have been able to help him—not when he had changed moments after she’d left him.

Sebastian shook his head, probably trying to protect his surgeon friend from Warrick’s wrath, because he wouldn’t meet his gaze. For Kate had let the murderer go and then the special surgeon had treated him...

Of course these people had no idea what Reagan had done—what kind of monster he was. Warrick must have injured the son of a bitch, though. Satisfaction filled him. But like Warrick, Reagan wouldn’t die easily, either. So he would have to try harder.

“Why do you hate him so much?” Sebastian asked.

“Because he took everything away from me that I ever cared about...” Until then Warrick hadn’t hated Reagan; he had actually been foolish enough to care about him, to love and respect him. But he had been an even bigger fool to trust him. It didn’t matter that they were brothers—at least, it didn’t matter to Reagan.

“Then I was right to warn you,” Sebastian said.

“Warn me?” Warrick considered it more good news than bad. He hadn’t lost Reagan’s trail, like he’d worried he had.

“Yes,” the vampire replied with a nod. “Sounds like this man you’re trying to find poses quite a threat.”

Warrick chuckled. “Hell, no. He can’t hurt me anymore.”

“But he could hurt someone you care about again.”

“There’s no one left.” And he had nowhere to go—because Warrick couldn’t go home again until he’d gotten justice for his father’s murder. The son of a bitch had really taken everyone and everything from him.

Sebastian Culver glanced up at Kate Wever’s window now. “No one left?”

Warrick chuckled again but this one was hollow. “The woman shot me. Why would I care about her?”

“I was wondering that myself,” the vampire said. “What the hell were you doing in her place tonight?”

“She shot me,” he repeated. “Her interference allowed him to get away that night.” But not again. Reagan would not get away again. Maybe that was why the murderer hadn’t left Zantrax, either. Maybe even Reagan knew that it was time to end this.

“So you were going to hurt her?” Sebastian asked, anger flashing in his eyes, as he stepped closer to Warrick.

They might not be able to kill each other. But if they tangled, they could do a lot of damage. Inflict a lot of physical pain...

Warrick uttered a weary sigh and quipped, “I’m all about revenge.”

For what felt like so long now...

“She was just doing her job,” Sebastian said in her defense and with great respect. It was unusual that vampires respected humans. But then Kate Wever was an exceptional human.

“I know that.” Logically he had always known that, yet he hadn’t been able to stay away from her. “I’m not going to hurt her.”

Sebastian pushed his hand through his long, dark hair. “Maybe you’re not the one I should be worrying about...”

Warrick dragged in a deep breath. And as he did, he caught another scent. Fear. His own. “You think he might hurt her?”

“I don’t,” Sebastian said. “But do you care about her?”

“I don’t know her.” But he did care—enough that he didn’t want her harmed because of him. While he had no future with Kate Wever, he wanted her to have a future of her own.

“Does he know that?” Sebastian asked. “If he’s been watching you, what might he think?”

He bit off a curse. The vampire was right, but Warrick didn’t want him to know it.

Reagan had ruthlessly taken away everyone Warrick had ever cared about. And because Warrick had stayed in Zantrax, because he had stayed near her, he might think Warrick cared about her. His obsession with Kate Wever had put her in danger.

* * *

How badly had that human detective’s bullets wounded Warrick? She hadn’t killed him; Reagan knew that or he wouldn’t have left the alley that night.

But because he didn’t know how badly Warrick had been hurt, he hadn’t left the city yet. He should have. No good would come of him and his brother being in the same city—not unless he could make Warrick listen to him. Make him realize that Reagan wasn’t the threat to him.

Guilt tugged at him, though, and the sunrise on which he had been so focused blurred before his eyes despite his front-row seat on a rooftop of one of Zantrax’s highest buildings. He had hurt his brother—far worse than the female detective’s bullets could have. He didn’t blame Warrick for wanting to kill him.

But Reagan wasn’t the only one who would die. Warrick would die, too. And probably so would she.

That was why Reagan hadn’t left yet. He had to make his brother listen to him. He had to—or they would lose more than their father and each other. They would lose even more than their lives...

Chapter 3

The high-rise buildings cast deep shadows, blocking out whatever glow of the moon that might have illuminated the alley. Kate had only her flashlight, which she gripped tightly in one hand, and her gun, which she gripped in the other. The Glock was still holstered, but the leather strap was unclasped, so it was ready to be drawn.

This place, this damn alley, and the club housed in the basement of one of the buildings, creeped her out. Too many strange things happened in this part of Zantrax—around Club Underground. Paige’s stalking, Bernie’s flying people and now his disappearing body...

Last night that strangeness had invaded Kate’s bedroom when his body had reappeared there—alive.

Despite the sweater and heavy jacket she wore and the fact that none of the cool mid-November breeze could blow between the buildings, Kate shivered. She actually would have welcomed a fresh breeze; there was only stagnant, stale air in the alley. It smelled more of the trash in the Dumpster than the crisp scent of burning leaves and roasting pumpkins she usually associated with autumn.

But the ghost that never quite seemed to leave her—he fit in with the season. But he wasn’t really a ghost; she didn’t believe in them.

He had to be real.

But then who had she shot in the alley?

His twin? If so, what had happened to the body? She shone her flashlight beam around the alley, bouncing it off every brick on every wall of the three buildings that backed up to and blocked off the alley. There was no space between the buildings, no way for a body to squeeze out. None of the doors that opened onto it had been unlocked that night—most of them were walled off inside so that they never opened.

Frustration coursed through Kate and triggered her usually long temper, so that she snapped and kicked out, driving her heel into the corner of the Dumpster. Its rusty legs squeaked as it rolled back a couple of inches.

That squeak echoed one she’d heard before, just as she’d been running from the dark alley to get help for the man she’d shot. She had relived that night so many times that she remembered every sight, every smell and every sound...

The Dumpster must have moved that night, too.

She stepped closer to the rim of the rusted metal bin, gagging on the putrid odors that emanated from it, and shone her flashlight beam inside. The circle of light glanced off boxes and torn bags of garbage, from which coffee grounds, old liquor bottles and other food scraps and papers spilled out.

No homeless man.

Had Bernie been there that night? Was he the one who’d moved the Dumpster and the man? He’d claimed he hadn’t been, but Kate knew better than to believe what anyone told her. Too many people lied. Or kept secrets.

But if the vagrant had been there, would he have moved the Dumpster or would he have hidden quietly inside to avoid detection? She had checked the Dumpster that night; she had looked for that body everywhere—except beneath the metal bin. Kate pulled her hand from her holster and shoved her flashlight into her back pocket. She reached out for the Dumpster, pushing at it with both palms.

Her muscles strained in her shoulders, arms and stomach, but the metal crate barely budged, skidding inches across the asphalt. It creaked and squealed in protest of every bit of distance it moved. Gritting her teeth, Kate pushed harder. Then she reached for her flashlight again and shone the beam beneath where the Dumpster had been.

If she could find a trail of blood, she could prove that she hadn’t imagined what had happened that night. But a couple of months had passed. The blood could have washed away or degraded enough that she wouldn’t be able to find it with a flashlight. She would have to bring in a forensics crew. Would the department authorize it when they’d already gone over the alley once and found nothing but blood they claimed they couldn’t even prove was human?

Doubtful. So she had only herself and her own investigative skills to prove what had happened that night. That she had killed a man. She shivered, jiggling the flashlight so that the beam bounced around the asphalt and glinted off the metal of a manhole cover. She hadn’t noticed that before.

Could someone, perhaps his twin, have dragged the body down into the sewer? That made more sense than any alternative. Kate always needed to find the sense in even the most senseless of acts. Rationalizing the irrational was the only way she managed to keep her sanity with her career. And with her life...

She had seen and done many irrational, senseless things over the past forty years of her life. And this was probably another—but still she reached for the manhole cover, after setting her flashlight down on the asphalt, its beam directed toward the opening to the sewer.

But when she reached for the cover, the light moved off it. The beam rose, shining into her eyes—blinding her. She squinted against the light. “Who’s there?”

She hadn’t heard anyone enter the alley. Had felt no other presence. But, like last night in her bedroom, she was suddenly not alone.

“Is it you?” She reached for her holster—and the gun—even though it had done nothing that night. If she believed her late-night visitor, he had survived the bullets she’d fired into him. If she believed him, she couldn’t kill him. “What do you want with me?”

But she received no verbal reply. Her only answer was physical, as the beam swung down, and the heavy metal flashlight struck her head. For a moment she glimpsed a shadow behind the beam—tall, broad-shouldered. Dark.

It could have been him.

But then everything else went dark as Kate fell and her body struck the asphalt.

* * *

She was going to die. She was actually surprised that she wasn’t already dead—especially given what she had done to the pack—the dissension she had caused. But there was a reason they hadn’t killed her yet. They intended to use her as bait to draw Warrick and Reagan back to St. James—the village their father had founded in a remote area of the upper peninsula of Michigan.

But to draw them back, one of them would actually have to care about her. She glanced around the log and fieldstone cabin—empty but for her and the memories she had made there. Good and bad.

No. Reagan and Warrick weren’t coming back. And she couldn’t stay—because once the others realized that she served no purpose, they would kill her.

Sylvia’s fingers trembled as she struggled with the zipper on her suitcase. She had to hurry because time was running out. Warrick and Reagan had already been gone too long.

Maybe they had already killed each other, or maybe they had been killed. Grief and guilt struck her like a blow, and her eyes stung from the pain, tearing up. But she had already shed too many tears—of guilt and pain and loss and, if she was to be honest, self-pity. She blinked away the moisture and ignored the sting.

And wouldn’t she know if he was dead? They’d had such a strong—almost otherworldly—connection. Their souls had called to each other. But if that connection was real, he wouldn’t have left her.

That relationship hadn’t been real; it had been only a fantasy. But something real had come of that fantasy.

And so she had to be strong now—because her life wasn’t the only life she needed to save. She pressed her shaking hand over her swelling belly. She had to leave before the others figured out that Warrick and Reagan weren’t coming back. Dragging the suitcase off the bed, she turned toward the door and finally she realized that she wasn’t alone.

And that it was already too late...

* * *

Warrick was too late. He could already smell her blood, the scent—so thick and sweet—burned his flaring nostrils. He rushed into the alley. Blind in the darkness until his eyes adjusted to the deep shadows, he could have been jumped—had whoever attacked her still been present.

But he cared less about his own safety than he cared about hers. And with good reason. She was alone in the alley, lying on the asphalt. Her hair tangled across her face, the ends of it falling into the blood pooled beneath her head.

His heart kicked his ribs as fear and concern jolted him. He had once wanted to see her like this—in those moments after she’d shot him and he had writhed in pain on the asphalt. He had wanted to see her lying in her own blood, like he had been. But that killer vengeance had lasted only for those pain-filled moments. As he’d told her vampire friend, he knew she’d only been doing her job that night.

He dropped to his knees beside her and skimmed his fingers across her face, brushing her hair from her eyes. They were closed. Because she was unconscious or dead? Blood oozed from a deep gash on her forehead, staining her skin red on the path it had taken across her face to the asphalt.

“What were you doing here tonight?” he wondered. “Doing your job?” Or looking for him again? But she considered that her job, finding and arresting him for assault. If she only knew the circumstances...

She probably still wouldn’t condone his vigilante justice. She wouldn’t understand that he had to reclaim his honor to reclaim his position in the pack.

His fingers trembled as they trailed down her cheek to her throat where he felt for her pulse. It stirred beneath his fingertips, faint but steady.

“That’s my girl,” he murmured. “Hang in there.” He glanced around the alley, but unlike the night Sebastian had come to his aid, no one stepped from the shadows—or the sewer—to help. Dare he move her to that secret clinic? Or would moving her hurt her more? It couldn’t hurt her any more than leaving her alone and vulnerable in the alley.

If any of the other creatures of the underground caught the scent of her blood...

She wouldn’t survive the feeding frenzy.

He slid his arms beneath her and gently lifted her limp body. Her head lolled back, blood dripping from her wound. He grasped her closer and cradled her neck in one hand.

“How the hell did I get to that clinic?” he muttered. He’d blacked out for a while and had just briefly regained consciousness in the passageway beneath the alley.

His attention zeroed in on the manhole cover near where she’d been lying. Was that what she had been investigating when she got attacked?

“Oh, God, you have to let this drop,” he implored her—even though she couldn’t hear him. But learning about the Secret Vampire Society would get her killed for certain. So if he took her down that manhole, he was risking her life. But if he didn’t get her help...

She was human. She would really die. And that was something that he couldn’t just watch happen. Hopefully, she would not regain consciousness in the sewer. He kicked the cover aside and stepped into the hole, feeling for the rungs with his feet. Careful of her head, he maneuvered her through the opening and descended into the passageway that led from the alley to the basement clinic.

Holding her close, he knocked—using his foot—on the riveted steel door. “Someone’s gotta be here...”

She hadn’t stirred, hadn’t even murmured, and her body was so limp, so lifeless. Maybe it was already too late. Maybe she had already lost too much blood...

He kicked harder at the steel, so that the door vibrated in the jamb. “Come on! I need help!”

The knob rattled as a lock turned and finally the door opened. He breathed a sigh of relief while Dr. Davison cursed. Shoving past the surgeon, Warrick carried Kate to the table.

“What the hell did you do to her?” Dr. Davison asked, his dark eyes hard with suspicion and anger. The doctor wasn’t old—at least not by vampire standards—but gray liberally sprinkled his dark hair.

“I didn’t do this,” Warrick hotly denied. Maybe he’d once considered hurting her, but he wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to actually do her harm. Now the person or creature that had hurt her...

Even the special surgeon wouldn’t be able to save that animal after Warrick got done with him.

“Then what the hell happened to Kate?” The doctor grabbed up some instruments.

“You know her?”

“She’s my wife’s best friend,” Dr. Davison shared as he leaned over her and examined the gash on her head. Then he checked her neck, too, probably for puncture wounds. “So tell me how she got hurt.”

“I don’t know,” Warrick replied. “I found her like this, lying unconscious in the alley.”

“She never came to?”

“No.”

The doctor opened her closed lid and shone a light into her eye and then repeated the action on her other eye. “Her pupils aren’t blown.”

“That’s good?”

The doctor nodded as his fingers gently probed her head wound.

“Do you work on humans, too?” Warrick asked, wondering if he had brought her to the right doctor. Maybe he would have been smarter to bring her to the local emergency room, but the clinic had been closer.

Davison nodded again. “I started with humans and still work on more of them than the other creatures.”

“So you can help her.”

The doctor sighed. “I don’t know...if anyone will be able to help her if she regains consciousness here.”

Warrick shuddered as he worried that in trying to help her that he might have put her in more danger. But the society’s wasn’t the only secret he risked exposing as his watch buzzed out a warning that midnight was only minutes away. Already his skin was beginning to itch as hair rushed to the surface. His jaw ached as the bone stretched—his face was changing shape.

“I hope Kate doesn’t wind up like me,” Davison murmured as he reached for a syringe.

“How’s that?” Warrick asked.

“I stumbled onto a secret I wish I had never learned.” A muscle twitched in the doctor’s cheek. “And it nearly cost me everything...”

“But you learned the secret and lived.”

“Extenuating circumstances. They needed me,” the surgeon explained. “But now I’m one of them.”

Kate as a vampire? It was easier to imagine her as that than as a werewolf, though. His muscles expanded, ripping through his jeans and his shirt, as his body took its other form. This was the only life he had ever known, having been born and raised in the pack.

He had only imagined turning one human into what he was, and he had lost her...just as he had lost everything else that had ever mattered to him.

Just as he might have lost Kate tonight...

But Kate didn’t matter to him. She was a stranger, a human who had thwarted his plans. He needed to leave her to the doctor’s care and get the hell out of Zantrax.

“You’ll be able to help her?” he asked the surgeon for his assurance.

“I won’t be able to go home if I don’t save Kate,” Davison replied. “Now get out of here. She can’t see you like that.”

A moan emanated from Kate’s throat as she shifted on the table, reaching for her head.

It was too late for Warrick to hide.

* * *

Images flitted through Kate’s mind. Bright lights and searing pain and dark alleys and sterile rooms...and a man who wasn’t a man. Her head pounded as she tried to sort out those brief images. But they were like old photographs, the colors faded and washed-out, so that she could barely make out the subjects.

Like old dreams that she could barely remember...

Dreaming. She had to be dreaming. Her eyes were closed; the lids so heavy she could barely lift them. After some effort she managed to blink them open and blink away the grit of deep sleep.

Then she focused on the room. Sunlight streaked through the blinds at the window, casting a warm glow onto the hardwood floor where her clothes lay in a heap. She fought against the sheets tangled around her, but as she sat up, the room spun. Her head lightened and the bright glow dimmed.

“Easy,” a familiar deep voice murmured. “Not so fast...”

He was back.

Instinct had her reaching under the other pillow but her palm skimmed across the satin sheet to the edge of the bed. The gun was gone.

“You don’t need it,” he said as he approached the bed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Someone hit me...in the alley.” That had happened, hadn’t it? She’d been in the alley, searching for...him. But he must have found her first.

“It wasn’t me,” he said and just as he had that first night, he settled onto the bed beside her—as if he was familiar with her bedroom. With her.

She snorted. “As if you’d admit it if it was... I would arrest you for assaulting an officer.”

“You’ve tried once to arrest me for assault.”

But he had disappeared, like those images from her mind. She couldn’t remember now exactly what she’d seen. What had been real and what a dream. Was he a dream?

“How did I get here?” she wondered. Not just in her apartment and in her bed, but naked beneath her sheets. Just how much of the night before had she forgotten? Had he taken off her clothes? What else had he done to her? She shivered as she imagined him touching her and more...

“I found you in the alley,” he said. “I got you some medical help then brought you back here. Don’t you remember anything?”

She reached a trembling hand toward her head, and her fingers skimmed over a gauze bandage. Stitches tightened the skin beneath it, which throbbed with a dull ache. “No...” she murmured. “I don’t remember anything after I got hit.” At least she didn’t remember anything that seemed real—that could have actually happened.

“You have a concussion,” he said as he gently trailed his fingers along the edge of the gauze. “Someone hit you really hard. Did you see who it was?”

“Only the bright light...” And the shadow behind it. The tall, broad-shouldered shadow. It could have been him.

But then why was there so much concern in his eerie topaz eyes? “Your pulse was so weak...” He shuddered. “I thought you were dead or nearly dead.”