I came back to myself with a scream.
Glancing around wildly, I saw that I was still on my back in the middle of the woods. Everything else was different from what I remembered last. For one thing, the Specter that had been stalking me seemed to have disappeared. For another, the building where Gabriel and I had been detained at before was at my back.
The most significant difference had to be the fact that Gabriel himself was sitting next to me, smiling as if his sudden and unexplained appearance wasn’t in the least bit strange.
“Hi,” he said happily.
“Hi.” My own voice was weak by comparison. He looked me over and his eyes narrowed.
“Are all your parts working?”
I gave the question serious thought and shrugged lightly.
“They seem to be doing all right.”
He blew out a relieved breath and I tried not to feel too suspicious about his line of questioning. So instead, I focused on what was bothering me the most about my situation.
“Were we just abducted by aliens or something?”
“No. Why?”
“Because I can’t remember the last few hours. Call me crazy, but my first assumption is always alien abduction.”
“Don’t worry. You weren’t abducted.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“You were possessed though.”
I gave him the stink-eye and he shook his head in wonder, as if too tickled by the sight of me to be offended by my dirty looks. Finally, curiosity got the best of me.
“Was I Linda Blair possessed or Amityville Horror possessed.”
“Little bit of both.”
I groaned.
“Great,” I grumbled, accepting his hand as he helped me to my feet. “Just great. I didn’t hurt anybody did I?”
The pause was barely perceptible before he shook his head.
“Of course not,” he said, and I relaxed. Something dark and squirming in me told me it was a lie, but I dismissed the strange sensation as nerves.
I was just about to question him further, when something exploded. Heat consumed me as the force of the blast lifted me off of my feet and threw me like a rag doll. I hit the ground rolling and by the time I stopped I was so dizzy I couldn’t tell which way was up and which was down. There was a ringing in my ears, and I stumbled and fell as quickly as I gained my feet.
Gabriel knelt beside me and there was soot smeared down the side of his face. His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear him past the ringing. His face contorted and he grabbed me by the shoulders. Since I couldn’t hear him, he reopened the bond and forced the words through the link between us.
For a moment it was like a limb had been returned to me. A part I hadn’t known was missing. It felt good to feel him, strong and clear, on the other end of our bond. Then his words hit me and all pleasure faded beneath a wash of fear.
“Leo must have made it to the holding cells. But if the pack steps out of their prisons—”
That was when I heard it.
It was faint at first because it wasn’t intended for me. The only reason I could hear it at all was because Gabriel could. It was a single note, buzzing in his head like bee searching for its next meal. He couldn’t escape it, couldn’t shake it, and he knelt there for a handful of seconds, shaking his head as if to clear it of the invasion. Then the note seemed to burrow into his brain. It flipped a switch in him and suddenly he was writhing on the ground before me and screaming with no voice. Claws sprouted from his fingertips as he scratched at his face, his chest, his stomach, tearing skin and drawing blood in a bid to dig the note out of his body and destroy it.
Only…
Only this wasn’t some enemy that he could defeat with strength and cunning.
It was a musical measure.
An annoying one, but still nothing more than a note. At least to me it was. But as I watched Gabriel I realized that to the Were’s it was as dangerous as silver bullet. Through Gabriel I could feel the rest of the pack, screaming and struggling to ease the unbearable pressure in their minds. For now they were helpless, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when gunshots began to ring out from the inside of the facility.
Gabriel growled. I felt the sensation deep in my blood. That rolling, grumbling, rage that seemed to fill him and soak into the night air. He began to get to his feet, to struggle back towards the facility and to his pack, but the note grew sharper and he fell, vomiting on the ground. He rolled there, snarling and struggling against an attack I couldn’t see or stop. Then he got to his knees, and to my horror, began to beat his head against the forest floor.
Over and over again until he started to grow soft and dark around the edges. Until night began to bleed out of his skin like blood and the continued growl rising up from his throat was like a physical touch.
I felt it when his hearing sort of fractured, took a backseat to the agony in his mind. Only then was he able to straighten to his full height and began to lope back towards the now burning facility.
I got to my feet to follow him, not sure how I could help, but determined to try anyway. We were nearly upon the building, the flames that ate along the north side shooting towards the sky like dancers dressed in silken scarves, when the doors burst open. The Pack poured out in twos and threes, moving so quickly that it was hard to tell how many of them had already shifted and how many were still in their human forms. From behind them I heard more gunshots go off and the sound of fighting.
“Leo,” Gabriel breathed, steps quickening.
We were standing on the doorstep of the facility when the note stopped. For a sweet moment in time all was silence. I was relieved until I looked up and over to see the sick horror on Gabriel’s face. We both turned to regard the members of his pack just as another note, different from the last, began to dance through the air. The effect on the Were’s was instantaneous and only Gabriel seemed unaffected. Whether that was because of the beating he’d given himself, his status as Alpha, or the simple fact that this time the notes were specifically aimed for the weaker of his pack didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that one by one the Pack filling the clearing around the burning building, twisted as one to pin both Gabriel and I with piercing yellow eyes. There were footsteps behind us as Agents began stepping from the building. Gabriel grabbed my upper arm and together we retreated to the center of the clearing. Out of the fifty or so Agents that stepped outside, only three of them escorted captive Weres before them. Agent Liam and Agent Benson came out last, and standing between them, head bowed and bloody, was a Were I’d never met before.
Gabriel’s shock filled me, and from his mind I grabbed a name.
Leo Valentine. They’d caught his friend.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
I glanced around us.
Weres at the front and sides, and gun toting FBI agents in the rear.
We were effectively surrounded.
As we watched, Agent Benson fiddled with something, a tiny looking remote and the note currently enthralling Gabriel’s pack grew louder and louder still until even I was grinding my teeth against the nails on chalkboard sound.
That was when the Pack attacked.
Gabriel grabbed my hand and whipped me away just as pair of jaws snapped where my legs would have been. Two steps back, and he was twirling me around, out from under the viciously swiping claws of two male Weres. He stopped, dipped me with one arm, and used his free hand to punch the woman who’d been about to grab me from behind in the throat.
It wasn’t until he whipped me back upright and wiggled his eyebrows in blatant suggestion that I realized that we were dancing. Or rather, he was making saving my ass look like a routine from Dancing with the Stars.
Yeah, I thought breathlessly, I love this guy.
We two stepped out of the way of a charging wolf and Gabriel spun me. I watched him leap, stepping onto the Were and walking across him as if he were a tightrope. He landed beside me and pulled me close, arm wrapped around
my waist and face an inch away.
God, he was dashing.
I giggled like a schoolgirl, and from over his shoulder saw Agent Liam snatch the device from Benson’s hands in a rage. Liam pressed something and now there were two notes instead of just one and something shifted. Gabriel snarled at me, eyes bleeding to full amber before he gave his head a sharp shake and snapped out of it. He looked at the hundreds of Weres stalking around us and I couldn’t help but look as well.
There wasn’t just mindless violence in their eyes now, there was hunger. The ones who’d managed to keep his or her human form shifted until we were surrounded by a sea of fur on all sides. Some of the Agents laughed, a few were talking amongst themselves, but it was Agent Liam who caught my eye and held it.
Before they’d been attacking individually. Frantically. Without thought. But that wasn’t how wolves hunted. They hunted as pack, as a group and when the time was right they brought their prey down together. They’d forgotten that, but now I saw them sending one another looks. Coordinating, strengthening the weak spots in their formation until any chance of escape Gabriel and I had was erased.
It was an ocean of yellow eyes, a sea of death back-dropped by the dancing flames and the treetops touching the horizon. I looked over at Gabriel, feeling the change in the air, the threat and hunger for blood. They’d been clumsy before, but I don’t think Gabriel would be able to dance out of danger this time.
He was smiling. I don’t know why I wasn’t more surprised by that. I watched him tip his head back, eyes closing as the moonlight touched his face. A wolf howled and then they came for us as one. Single minded and deadly in their focus. His grin was wild, his skin bleeding around the edges as the wolf in him struggled to get out. He stalked forward to meet the first wave of attack.
One of the wolves leapt for his throat and he grabbed the animal by the forelegs and spun, throwing it away like trash to crash into the wolves on the other side of me. Another wolf darted forward, low and fast. When it careened into Gabriel with its jaws wide, he stuck his fist in the animal’s mouth. It struggled, whimpering around his wrist, unable to bite down and unable to pull away. Gabriel shoved his arm deeper, smiling madly, eyes alight with amber fire. Grabbing the Were’s snout he ripped the top of the animal’s head off and let it collapse at his feet.
The Pack hesitated at the sight, but it didn’t stop them from coming for us. Slowly, Gabriel turned in a circle, surveying the still advancing Weres coldly. Then his knees bent and the air seemed to shudder around him. His back arched and he threw his head back in a battle cry that drowned out everything else and rose to the heavens on shuddering wings.
That cry?
It shook the very ground.
The wolves froze.
Silence reigned and Gabriel surveyed his pack once again. His upper lip curled back.
When he spoke, he did so softly, but there was no denying his authority of his words.
“I am Alpha.”
That was it. Three words. But it had them sitting back on their haunches. Eyes averting and tails tucking between their legs. Leo Valentine, still caught in the grip of the Agents looked at the unanimous show of submission; Gabriel standing in the midst of them like some avenging, amber-eyed God, and laughed incredulously.
“What the fuck just happened?” This from one of the Feds.
“Is it broken?” Asked another.
The men and women who’d come out of the facility turned to look at Agent Liam for an explanation. He didn’t notice their attention at first. He was too busy jabbing the buttons on the device in his hands. The air filling with random note after note. A cacophony of sound. No matter what he did though, the Weres ignored it. There was only room for one song in their minds, one voice, and it was Gabriel’s.
Agent Liam’s hair was in wild disarray and through Gabriel I could smell the stink of his fear fouling the air. Beneath the fear, however, was rage. Hatred. Dark and consuming. He was like a wild animal caught in a trap, which made him even more dangerous than he’d been before. He threw the device to the side in disgust and pulled out his firearm, arms shaking as he stalked forward, as if coming closer would punch the bullet he so desperately wanted to fire more cleanly through Gabriel’s flesh.
“What are you?” Liam barked. His arms steadying as he aimed down the barrel of his gun.
Gabriel cocked his head to one side and his smile was a flash of brilliant white.
“You know the answer to that.”
The human’s lip curled. “Why don’t you spell it out for me anyway?”
Gabriel tsked. He took a step closer to the group of humans and the pack followed.
“There are things that go bump in the night,” he said, eyes trained on Liam, but words for all of them. Fear was a perfume in the air. “Things that lay in wait beneath beds,” he continued voice hypnotic and mocking. “They skulk in closets. Hide in shadows.” He licked his lips and his head lowered so that he could regard them from beneath his lashes. “Then, there’s me. I am no bogey little human, I am no nightmare. I am so much more than that. I am fear and I was named of Angels.”
Agent Liam roared, eyes bright, crazed, and pulled the trigger.
The shadows that had been drifting from Gabriel, the part of him that made him so much more than your everyday Were, had him disappearing in a swirl of black smoke. He appeared directly before Agent Liam, and as I watched, he pulled the man close and ripped out his throat. The man fell in a spray of arterial blood and Gabriel wiped the blood from his chin with the back of one hand.
He met my eyes and I could feel the same thoughts that had occurred to me swim to the forefront of his brain. We were at war now with the government and letting the remaining Agents go would simply guarantee that they came back for us, harder and faster than ever before because now they knew what we were capable of.
They had to die, and Gabriel wanted me to be the one to give the order.
Not because he couldn’t, but because this was the choice I’d made. To stay. And if I was going to stay and fight, if I was going to be his mate, then I had to start acting like it.
There is a law of the wild and it is written in bloodshed and unmarked graves.
I shuddered and I knew he could read the knowledge in my eyes. Feel it in our bond.
I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t cross that line.
He opened his mouth to do it for me, only no words came out.
Instead he stared down at the blossoming red stain on the front of his shirt and fell to his knees. I felt the bullet tear through his internal organs and my head whipped around, searching desperately for the source of the gunshot, even as I pushed through the pack to reach his side.
I saw him through a haze of red.
Marcus, standing at the tree line, lowered his rifle and met my eyes. Then, blowing me a mocking kiss, he disappeared into the woods, six of Gabriel’s wolves in hot pursuit. The agents chose that moment to scatter. If I had been in my right mind, I would have told them not to run. That running makes them chase you. But I had nothing left in me, nothing to give a group of humans that had wanted us all dead or in chains.
Us.
Humans.
When had I started thinking like that? When had I started thinking of myself more as a member of the Pack than as a human being?
Didn’t matter now.
Nothing mattered now but reaching him.
I slid to his side, my hands already reaching, searching, smearing in his blood before I’d fully registered the sight of the bullet hole. My breath was coming too fast and there were spots in front of my eyes. Leo came to my side and he was saying something that couldn’t register through the blind, animal panic that was filled my mind.
“I can help.”
The voice was sly, foreign, but at the same time strangely familiar.
“Help, help, help. I can help, I can.”
The voice was coming from within me, and in my mind’s eye I saw something, a shadow on my soul. A dripping, screa
ming nightmare with a smile like death and a voice like razor blades.
The Specter.
Gabriel looked up at me, and I saw a spark of recognition in his eyes.
“Thought-thought I killed you,” he choked, blood filling his mouth.
The voice in my soul cackled, clearly pleased with itself, and beside me Leo shied away.
“How can you help me?” I asked it, and Gabriel’s eyes closed in defeat.
“Don’t,” he whispered. Already knowing that it was no use.
The bond told me what common sense had already noted.
He was dying.
I was running out of time.
So I ignored him and his warning and the Specter inside of me grinned and drug its claws across my soul. The world went dark as the knowledge filled me. In my mind I saw them. Saw them riding, hunting, running. The world bowing at their feet and the sky breaking beneath the sound of their horse’s hooves. The Specter showed me the Wild Hunt of old, the Hounds as they once were.
Then, with just a word, it gave me the song I needed to call them to me.
The Call of the Hunt ripped through me, a tidal wave, a collapse of will and reason. Sanity was beaten back, chaos reigned, and in the span of a heartbeat I died a thousand small deaths.
I opened my mouth and howled.