“And the Hunters believe they’re the healers who can make this happen.”
“Absolutely. They also see themselves as religious leaders, of a sort. They’re heading their own little inquisition, and they’ve been doing so for centuries. But now they have something on their side that they’ve never had before. They’re actually using magic.”
“The very thing they hate?” Raven asked.
“Indeed. Double standard doesn’t even come close to describing it. It’s like people who hate the death sentence murdering judges who bestow it. It goes against everything Hunters claim to stand for – an end to anything supernatural – but they aren’t above it. Remember, we’re not dealing with sane people here, we’re dealing with brainwashed zealots.”
“What are they using the magic for?” Sam asked. She recalled the warlock at the candy shop in Chicago.
“Well, to be honest, you’d be closer to that information than I would,” said Kat before she took a big swig of her beer. She swallowed and shrugged. “But rumor is that they’ve created a way to make shifters remain in their animal form.”
Raven’s eyes grew wide.
“Holy shit,” said Sam. “They’re responsible for the Stayme outbreak!”
“Stayme?” Kat asked, her brow furrowed.
“It’s short for Staying the Same,” explained Raven. “It’s exactly what you said it is. Shifters, and maybe weres too, I don’t know, remain in their animal form, unable to shift back. Some of them die this way, and their human halves just disappear, wiped off the face of the planet.”
Katherine seemed to digest that. She nodded, finished off her beer, and all three of them cleaned up before Kat saw Sam and Raven to the door of her private office.
“Thanks for meeting with us,” Sam said with a smile.
“It was my pleasure,” Kat said. She was eyeing Sam carefully, and then she tilted her head to the side and narrowed her gaze. “You know, you don’t smell like any other shifter I’ve ever met.”
Sam blushed and looked down. “Well… I’m probably not like any other shifter you’ve ever met.”
“She’s the magishifter,” Raven supplied easily. Clearly, the beer had loosened her lips. Then again, Katherine Dare was someone you automatically felt you could trust, and probably for good reason.
Kat stared at Raven for a while, and then looked back at Sam. “The magishifter… as in the magishifter? The shifter who can become anything, including shit like dragons?” She blinked and then straightened. “Oh my God, was that you in Chicago the other night turning into a dragon?”
“Holy crap, you heard about that?” Raven asked.
“Well yeah… news travels fast in some circles,” Kat said. Then she shook her head and smiled at Sam. “Now I see why you’re going after the Hunters, Thunder Dragon. They’re after you. And the best defense is a good offense, huh?”
“Pretty much,” said Sam. And then there’s the revenge thing, she thought as she recalled how the Hunters had taken her parents from the world. There’s always the revenge.
Sam and Raven took Kat’s information, thanked her for her help, and left the back room to head once more into the crowd of the Hungry night club. Sam’s head was spinning with half-built strategies, burgeoning ideas, and all-out fear when Raven pulled her to a suddenly open spot at the bar and ordered them two drinks.
“Do you really think we can win this fight?” she found herself asking.
Raven turned to look at her, motioning to the bar stool next to her own. “Sit,” Raven said. Then she took a deep breath. “I honestly don’t know. But if we’re careful and quick and plan everything to the last… then maybe.”
“I think we need a plan,” Sam said as she slid onto the bar stool and adjusted her dress. It rode high on her thigh when she was seated, and she had to admit her legs looked long right now, especially wrapped in the red strappy heels she had adorned her feet with. The shoes were Raven’s, but they wore the same size.
“You can let me buy you a drink,” came a man’s voice from beside her.
Sam looked up into a pair of amber eyes, framed by a beautiful face. She could scent the wolf on him at once, and knew he was a were. She did want a drink – she was tense, she was scared, she was probably about to go off and die. Who wouldn’t want a drink? But something about the man bothered her.
It’s not Jack Colton, her inner voice told her. That’s what was bothering her.
She flushed at the thought, and felt a little dizzy. But she didn’t want the man before her right now to think that it was him that was causing this reaction, and she definitely did not want to lead on a werewolf. So she cleared her throat and looked him directly in the eyes.
“No, thank you,” she said firmly but with a friendly smile. “I’m waiting for someone.”
It wasn’t technically true. It wasn’t like Jack Colton was going to suddenly show up at this club that he had no idea they were at and that wasn’t even in the same state that he was currently in. Right?
And just like that, Sam realized it was true. She was waiting for Jack. She was waiting for the man she’d been running from for twenty years. Because now she knew the truth…. And the truth was life changing.
The man next to her nodded, and though he looked decidedly disappointed, he turned away and left her alone.
“Dude, that was nuts,” said Raven. “He was freaking deadly gorgeous.”
“Yes,” Sam whispered. A whisper was all she was capable of. “I guess he was.”
She touched her forehead and closed her eyes. “Raven, something’s happening to me.” Raven didn’t answer, so Sam opened her eyes and glanced up. “Raven?”
Raven was looking at something across the room, but she blinked and turned back to Sam, prompted by the repeat of her name. Sam’s brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“I… thought I saw something. But it’s nothing.”
But Sam knew she had lost Raven’s attention yet again when the girl’s eyes shifted from hers to something over Sam’s shoulder, and then glazed over. A beat passed, and the music in the club literally changed.
Heat bored into the back of Sam’s neck. She felt it move through her body, inching its way into every nerve ending before flooding her veins with something somewhere between anticipation and fear.
Slowly she slid off the stool, her mind flashing images again, clear and harsh: bed posts with handcuffs around them, tangled sheets, fingernails digging into taut, muscled flesh. Her breathing quickened as she turned, and the world held still for her. One step, two. Until she stood facing the doorway across the vast, noisy room, and there was miraculously nothing between her and the exit – but Jack Colton.
He was a dark shadow against the night, no small feat but one he accomplished with frightening ease. His suit was expertly, precisely tailored, black and expensive, and it hugged every intended curve of his six-foot-five frame. The collar of his black shirt, crisp and sharp, brushed the dark blonde curls he almost never bothered to cut and set off the equally sharp black image of his leather eye patch. One ice blue eye lit up the shadows, stark and unavoidable.
“Holy hell, sister. That is one beautiful, scary, beautiful man,” whispered Raven beside her.
“He can hear you,” Sam whispered back.
Across the room, Jack Colton smiled. And it was a beautiful, scary, beautiful smile.
“How the hell did he find us?” Sam heard Raven ask. But Raven’s voice, and even her very presence, were becoming distant and unimportant. The entire club was becoming distant and unimportant. The center of Sam’s world was Jack Colton – and he was coming for her.
Chapter Thirty
Jack crossed the room in long, slow, purposeful strides. The crowd parted for him. It seemed to slow down and take note of the newcomer in their midst. They stopped dancing, glanced over their shoulders, and watched him with abject curiosity and barely hidden fear. He wondered if it was the eye patch that first set them off… or something more. Could they sense what he
was feeling? Did they know what was going down?
He could have paid them more heed, but they weren’t what he had come for. Single-minded purpose drove him forward, one step after another. Within seconds, it felt as if the entire club was aware that he was there. They had figured out who he’d set his sights on, too. Of course they had already noticed Samantha. How could they not?
He didn’t recognize the dress she was wearing; it wasn’t one he’d purchased for her, though if he’d seen it, he would have. Sam had come about it some other wonderful, miraculous, drop-dead fucking beautiful way. She was wrapped in a crimson satin cocoon of slim fitting temptation that ended in a slit at her right thigh and revealed miles of curvy, delicious leg. Her feet were strapped into heels that made him think of bondage, plain and simple, and her toe nails had been painted the same color.
Christ, he thought as steaming images made mince meat of his thoughts and sent boiling blood through his veins. His teeth were pressed tightly together, and his gums ached. The beast in him wanted to shift, and it was always his teeth that wanted to go first.
The man who had offered to buy Sam a drink stepped back from the edge of the dance floor, no doubt hoping Jack wouldn’t notice him. But oh, Jack noticed him. He’d noticed him the moment the werewolf had noticed Sam. He watched the man make his way to the bar, where she had just taken a seat. He watched him gain Sam’s attention. He watched him proposition her. And then he watched Sam turn him down.
It was unexpected, to say the least. Jack had imagined all sorts of ways the scene could go. A beer, a glass of wine, some sort of mixed drink. Maybe the werewolf would ask her to dance. Maybe he would even try to sneak in one of those goddamn kisses werewolves used to put their victims into an altered state. Maybe Sam would swoon or get dizzy and the werewolf would take the opportunity to put his hand on her back and hold her up. Maybe she would suddenly get unnaturally sleepy and the werewolf would offer to drive her home. A hundred different things he pictured as he realized there were a hundred different ways the wolf could corner his prey.
Each image that moved through his head heated up his blood a little more. Each second saw the release of more adrenaline into his bloodstream. Jack had nearly decided he wouldn’t quite kill the man, just give him a permanent limp – and suddenly, Sam saved him. In so many ways.
With a simple “No, thanks.”
Jack had never in his entire life felt more satisfaction or more relief than he had in that single pivotal moment.
Now as he passed that man on his way through the crowd, Jack slowed and made eye contact. The man paled and swallowed hard. Jack saw the pulse in the side of his neck quicken and throb. He grinned and turned away, refocusing on his scarlet-wrapped prize.
Samantha’s long, wavy hair fell in masses of thick, silken locks to her waist. He’d never seen hair like hers. Most women grew tired of having to deal with the curls long before they reached this length and chopped them short out of desperation. For some reason, Sam had let them grow… and the result was breathtaking. Jack wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.
But that wasn’t all he noticed. Her cheeks were flushed, her long thick lashes were fluttering, and her lips were parted. Her big brown eyes were like pools of comforting darkness. She stood still and watched him, not a muscle on her luscious body moving. She was shocked to see him there and tensed as if to run, yet she waited. She didn’t run. Instead, she took in quick, shallow breaths, her fists were clenched at her sides, and her heart beat wildfire against her rib cage. He could hear it. Hell, he could almost feel it. It was pounding nearly in time with his own.
There was something decidedly different about Samantha in that moment, something imperative. It was in the air around her, like a sudden aura he hadn’t been able to see before. It was a scent. It was a vibration, like a drum beat so low you could only feel it rather than hear it. And it was there, in the blood that flowed through her veins and reddened her lips and cheeks. It was a darkness, that sheltering, enter-the-night change that happened when things came to an end, to a culmination, and it was now or never.
That darkness called to him like a song he’d always heard but never loud enough. Always in the background, always there in the shadows of his thoughts. But now the rhythm played loud, and the moment was clear.
“Good evening, Sam,” he said softly when he finally came to stand before her. The entire club heard his words.
Sam didn’t say anything. Or maybe she couldn’t. So Jack offered her his hand.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
She glanced hesitantly at his hand, and he noted the pulse in her throat. His gums were aching. Blood was on his mind. But he waited with insurmountable patience as the woman of his dreams decided whether or not to trust him… and put her hand in his.
Sam straightened a little, licked her plump lips, and then raised her hand, placing it ever so gently on top of his. Jack’s fingers curled over hers, and fireworks exploded in his mind as he helped her re-take her seat at the bar. He then glanced at her guardian, who was watching him like the keen raven that she was. He smiled at her, but it was hard and tight and its message was clear.
Raven took a deep breath that he could hear the anger in… but she must have accepted the odds were not in her favor, and maybe she knew that ultimately allowing this to happen was the right thing to do. Because she nodded, just once, and slid off her own stool to disappear into the crowd.
Jack left the stool empty for someone who might need it more and slid between them, turning toward Raven to effectively close her in. Little by little people began conversing again. The music and lights grew busier, laughter rang out before long, and the floor re-filled itself with the writhing bodies of drunken dancers.
Jack waved the bartender over, who was at his side in an instant. He ordered their drinks and then turned to Sam, fixing her with that bluest of blue eye. “I have to admit it was clever the way you slipped past my men.”
He watched carefully as she reacted: A quick glance away and back again, a quiver of her bottom lip, a nervous flutter of her eyelids. Then she shrugged, and he watched the beautiful play of muscles appear across her chest. “Couldn’t have done it without Raven.”
“Ah yes,” he said softly. “The guardian’s Waypiece. It was rather foolish of me not to confiscate it.”
“So that’s what it’s called,” she said. “And you assume she would have been willing to part with it.”
Jack shrugged. “True. She’s a tough bird, that one.”
Their drinks arrived, and Sam hurriedly reached for hers as if she couldn’t give her hands something to do fast enough. Jack tried to keep the smirk off his face. It was hard for a predator not to gloat when he’d cornered his prey.
“Why did you run from me, Sam?”
Samantha blinked and paused with the drink half way to her lips. He could sense it then – the panic. The heat.
Was he talking about her escape from the underground mansion? Or was he once more referring to her life-long flight from him in general? He knew she was trying to figure it out. But she wouldn’t. Because in truth, he wasn’t sure which he was talking about himself.
“This is my fight,” she finally told him, settling the matter. It was the mansion then, not the lifetime of running. And he was proud of her. Her voice only shook a little.
“I won’t argue,” he said. “But…” he leaned forward a little as he reached for his own drink, “did you think I wouldn’t follow you?”
He sensed her go still beside him. He heard her breath catch, held tight in the jail of her lungs. He lowered his voice, turning his face toward her so his words whispered across her lips. Their proximity was electric. “Did you really believe I wouldn’t find you?”
They were inches apart now, so close it would have driven a lesser man mad. Time held still for them, and the periphery of the world blurred into nonexistence. There was only him… and his prey.
She swallowed, and he watched her throat work. She cleared it,
nervous and small. “Never run from the beast…” she whispered helplessly, quoting the ancient adage that shifter parents had taught their children since time immemorial.
Jack finished it for her with a smile. “He’ll only follow faster.”
Chapter Thirty-One
So close… he’s so close.
Sam hadn’t taken a breath in a while. She seemed to have forgotten how. But that made sense, didn’t it? She’d been swimming in the blue of his gaze and now she was drowning. No one breathed when they were drowning. Not really.
“Samantha,” he said, his words like soft brushes against the taut flesh of her lips. “I think you should come with me outside.”
Outside? her mind fumbled. Out in the night... alone… with him?
That would be foolish.
Her skin was on fire, her body felt flushed.
It would be reckless to go anywhere with him.
Those images that had plagued her before were back, but they were clearer now. Red material tearing, a strong hand fisted in hair, sheets helplessly tangled around long legs.
Don’t do it, Sam….
But she was already half-way through the club, Jack’s arm around her waist, his grip both tight and possessive, yet just shy of painful. And then they were moving through the door, except it was the back door this time and Sam had no idea how they’d gotten there. The man standing guard simply nodded at Jack as they passed him by. He was a shifter. Sam recognized the scent as they left him.
Behind the club was a wide sidewalk abutting the bay. The night’s wind sent sea-salt waves crashing into the cement partition that separated Sam and Jack from the cold and the deep. The partition was bi-level, one part about three feet tall, the other about two.