Wolf Born Read online

  Then he found his mother on the back porch step, half in the house, half out, as if she’d been reaching for the moon. The brutality that had been dealt to her washed over him like an icy wave. Nausea threatened. She also had been beheaded.

  “Damn those filthy bloodsuckers!” he cried.

  Two members of one of the oldest Lycan families in existence had been taken out. And the stench of the undead hung over the tidy backyard like an insidious vapor.

  Despite the gnawing ache growing by bounds in Colton’s chest, he’d have to invent a way to cover this up. His pain, great enough to be nearly intolerable, had to be internalized. In order to go on, he’d have to focus elsewhere.

  “Vengeance.” His whisper fell flat. Vengeance was an emotional state Lycans had tried to outdistance as human populations began to rise and the sheer number of humans forced Weres into hiding. Revenge was a reaction Weres had learned to tamp down in favor of more peaceful aspirations and acceptable coexistence.

  Contrary to all that, rage was overtaking him. He felt sick, shaky, pissed off and ready to do something about it.

  As Colton lifted his mother’s limp, desecrated body in his arms, his beast, tucked inside him, trembled with rage.

  * * *

  Aware of the disturbed emotions surfing the air, Rosalind had to move. She ran past the hordes of cops and stopped when she spotted a house that radiated the familiar scent of Were. Silently, she crept up the steps and through the open doorway.

  The front room was dark and empty, but it reeked of both sadness and Lycan damage.

  Not just Were. Lycan.

  The reality of that turned her stomach. Chills covered every inch of her body. Did the brown Were live here? What had happened in this place?

  She rolled a series of throaty growls meant as a warning that if someone was in this house, they now had company.

  No reply came.

  Exploring on bare, padding feet, she found two bodies on a bed in a small room, and choked back a cry. These were dead Lycans. Someone had placed them there.

  The scene seemed insanely surreal, but the room also gave off the scent of the male she had followed. He had been here mere seconds before she arrived. She hadn’t missed him by much.

  Leaping over the furniture, feeling her anger sift to the surface of her skin, Rosalind raced for the back door. Then she was out again, in the moonlight, back in the relative comfort of the cover of darkness.

  Chapter 4

  Vampire tracks weren’t easy to follow. Nevertheless, Colton knew a trail of rot when he smelled one.

  The alley behind the houses snaked through the neighborhood, eventually leading back to the park. Colton started that way without getting far. An icy prickle at the base of his neck made him spin around. He scanned the dark. This section of the alley seemed too quiet. No one was out. Not one dog barked.

  Standing in the open, he allowed moonlight to caress his human hands and forearms as he waited for his senses to skip past the tragedy and delve into the arena of hunter and prey. Red flags waving in his mind told him the vampires had been this way not long before. More than one of them, by the intensity of the odor.

  It was no wonder that the neighborhood dogs had run.

  Rolling his shoulders helped him to gain control of his tension, but his nerves felt like long threads of fire. Inching sideways, closer to a fence, he cocked his head to listen for clues. All the while, his beast pummeled at him, wanting to be free, its desire to take over the hunt stirred by a cop’s ingrained need to catch some killers.

  But freeing his animal side was not doable at the moment with uniforms swarming around a short distance behind. He had to fight the moon and the wulf for the time being and hope he’d win.

  “No movement. No sound.”

  Gazing through the shadows of the alley, Colton felt his knuckles ache from holding back his claws. The sinister stink of these particular blood-drinking intruders was especially bothersome to his beast.

  Colton had never seen a vampire up close, yet his soul seemed to recognize them. The wolf particles embedded in his long-term memory knew the smell and taste and feel of an ancient enemy.

  “Burned toast,” he said, picking a valid description of the sum of all those parts. “Disgusting.”

  The beast gave a rattle that shook Colton to his boots. The closeness of monsters was luring his animal instincts to a riotous state that messed with his hard-won self-control.

  He flinched as the ligaments in his shoulders and knees began to stretch, and exhaled some air as the skin covering his biceps began to bubble. The whooshing sound he heard was a claw bursting through his skin. Another claw appeared. Then more, until all ten fingers were lethal.

  Did this minimorph mean that the wulf knew something he didn’t? He was willing to bet that it did.

  A shout came from behind, untimely as hell because it came from a cop who had no doubt seen something in the alley. Colton was in uniform, but his body was half in transition and burning badly with the need to chuck the binding accoutrements tying him to a human’s sense of justice.

  “Hey! You!” the uniform said from the other end of the alley; a cop who couldn’t help here or offer moral support. A human, either in or out of uniform, would in fact be easy pickings for any walking undead hanging around.

  He had to remove the cop from this equation.

  “Killion,” he shouted back to the officer, his voice gruff. He coughed, unlocked his throat and added, “Metro PD. I’m on it. All is clear. No sign of anything back here.”

  “Okay,” the cop shouted back.

  “Killion?” Davidson’s familiar shout followed the other one.

  “Yeah. It’s me,” he said.

  “You’re one fast son of a bitch. You actually beat me here?”

  “Pays to be in shape.”

  “Not if that doesn’t include pizza.”

  More footfalls, then Davidson’s final remark. “We’ll go around the other way. The bastards had to come and go from somewhere.”

  After agonizing seconds spent waiting for the men to disappear, Colton’s internal heat finally overwhelmed him, and his clothes ripped apart at the seams.

  * * *

  Rosalind watched the brown-furred werewolf hurdle the wooden fence as if it were nothing as soon as the humans at the head of the alley had gone. She covered the length of that alley in twelve huge strides. One good leap after that, and she, too, was over the fence.

  She had seen the beautiful Lycan before and after his shift, but this time she had been close enough to take stock—a second rare occurrence in the highly personal world of werewolves and only, she supposed, because he had been distracted to the point of not recognizing the presence of another wulf in the area.

  Her brown wulf had been incredibly handsome as a man. His face was angular. Tanned skin stretched over high cheekbones. His mouth was wide, his eyes deep-set. Dark, slightly wavy hair framed those features, long enough to cover the tops of his ears. Each strand glinted like gold in the moonlight.

  The man side of the Were was tall, his physique leanly muscular, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He had spectacularly molded thighs that hinted at a Were’s hidden strengths. Rosalind guessed him to be in his late twenties, though it was hard to gauge werewolves, especially since she had met so few of them.

  This one had been not only beautiful, but naked. Her first naked male of any kind. And he was definitely a perfect specimen that she imagined most women would call mouthwatering.

  The skin of his bare back and buttocks had shined with a tanned tautness that suggested he saw a lot of sun without wearing clothes. No white lines traversed the flowing, golden flesh. Nor did he bear tattoos, other than the ring of scar tissue on one upper arm in the shape of a wolf’s bite that all true Lycans possessed.
r />   Rosalind passed a clawed hand over her own similar mark, taking this as a further sign of an unmistakable bond with whoever he was.

  She had held herself back so he couldn’t see her when he’d turned. She had observed how a light drift of masculine hair ran the length of his powerful chest and over his sculpted abs to become even darker as it nestled between his legs. The feature that had been momentarily displayed between those thighs made Rosalind flush.

  And then there was the werewolf.

  The beast that unfolded from all that glorious humanness had brown-auburn fur the same color as the man’s hair. Denser than his human form, and heavier with tension-loaded muscle, this werewolf was also damn near perfect, and too magnificent to be real.

  Rosalind fielded the arrival of a full-fledged hunger for him. Battling sensations that were new, instinctual, primal, she wanted to wrap her arms around him and lick his golden-brown neck.

  Her sexual appetite intensified with each ripple of his incredible Lycan muscle. But Rosalind also sensed a pain-filled anger that would prohibit him from shifting in such close proximity to others. His body visibly shook with that anger.

  In spite of all the possible repercussions of empathy with a stranger, as well as a fair amount of misplaced erotic hallucinations, Rosalind followed him when he moved, as if she were his shadow.

  He had ignored her in the park, not because she was a stranger, she now knew, but because he had been needed elsewhere. He hadn’t rejected her out of choice.

  Picking up her speed when he started to run, she raced in his wake, keeping back apace, watchful, careful, realizing that she was going to pay for this in one way or another when she got back to Judge Landau’s place.

  Then again, surely her father would understand the situation once he heard about the Lycan killings, and comprehend her need to help this wronged Were. Maybe she could lead this male to the Landau retreat, where he’d be safe and among friends, even if Were packs were private and didn’t usually mingle.

  At that moment, she was willing to place her own life and secrets in jeopardy for the chance to offer comfort and support to the first young Lycan she had ever come across, one who made her feel viciously alive.

  Silent words tumbled in her throat.

  You are not alone.

  My strength will come in handy. I give my strength to you.

  As Rosalind sprinted after him, she felt the chill of a terrible premonition about what awaited them both in the cover of darkness. The night rippled around them as though tugged by an unseen force.

  If werewolves had pockets for cell phones, she’d have sent an SOS to her father. Still, in whatever faced them out there, two Lycans were always better than one.

  Pity the poor soul, she growled, who finds this out firsthand.

  * * *

  Colton ran like a fiend, working with each stride to maintain enough humanity to keep his reasoning powers functioning. He couldn’t afford for Otherness to overtake him completely—or for his pain to overwhelm him.

  Once he was through the last of the suburban homes, his vision sharpened. He sped across open ground on the west side of the park, heading for the trees, calculating how many buildings rose in the distance on the eastern and southern sides.

  He knew the night creatures hadn’t headed toward those buildings, toward civilization. Rationalization told him that perhaps they hadn’t been randomly hungry, but on a mission. There had been plenty of opportunities in the surrounding neighborhoods between here and his house for a freak’s blood buffet, and yet they had picked his street.

  So, where are the murderous vipers headed?

  North of the park lay the posh estates of prominent Miami citizens wealthy enough to enjoy the luxury of space and privacy. Big houses protected by security gates. Lycan presence lay in at least one of them. The famous Landaus, head of their own pack. Surely no fanged monsters existed near there.

  His knowledge of the habits of vampires was insufficient, and that was a snag. Did they have clans, packs, dens? Did the presence of these few mean, like cockroaches, there were others in the area?

  What sort of weapon would de-animate a creature already dead? The mythology listed wooden stakes, exposure to sunlight and beheading. Thinking that holy water could do the trick had, so rumor said, always been a mistake. Garlic as a deterrent was laughable.

  The only question remaining was about how many vampires a werewolf could handle at once with his bare hands.

  No matter. Have to try.

  Finding his rhythm in much the same way that real wolves chased down prey, Colton took in great gulps of night air that were like candy to a beast so hot inside and out. Apprehension was in itself a kind of narcotic.

  He ran, driven by what may have been his own kind of bloodlust, able to tell he was getting closer to the vampires. The mood in the park changed, darkened, intensified, along the park’s edge.

  Movement.

  Rustling in the shadows.

  Don’t vampires know that Lycans can hear?

  Colton veered to his right with his nerve endings blazing in time to see an outline of whatever was out there coming on exceptionally fast. A fuzzy blur.

  His senses all but exploded. He had time for just one more breath and to bare his teeth. Then they were on him.

  Too many of them, maybe, Colton acknowledged as his claws began to swing.

  * * *

  Stunned for a moment by the sight ahead of her, Rosalind slammed to a halt some distance away from the disturbance to get her bearings.

  These weren’t humans the Were had gone after. She didn’t immediately recognize the scent, but the odor of maliciousness these creatures gave off saturated the otherwise spring-flavored night with something similar to the iron-like taint of blood.

  They were a kind of creature new to her, and they moved too fast to see details, or get a head count. Ten of them, maybe twelve, she figured. Fifteen?

  Dropping from the trees like winged bats falling on an insect, they had either been waiting for some other poor, unsuspecting soul to trespass here, or else they had laid a well-planned ambush for the brown Were, having expected him to pursue.

  She gave a soft roar of sympathy as she carefully studied the scene.

  The big Were rushed through the blur of monsters. The beautiful werewolf who had been a golden-skinned man not long before this tore into the attackers with aggressive, fluid skills and a look of pure madness on his face.

  She caught a word from the brown Were’s mind without knowing how she could do that. Vampire. That’s what this werewolf faced.

  Her blood began to pound in her veins. Some distant part of her recognized the concept of bloodsucker even if she didn’t fully understand it. What she did realize was that a masterful, powered-up Were didn’t stand much of a chance here without the aid of several more like him. There were just too many monsters in this fight.

  Also clear was the realization that she truly couldn’t leave him to fight alone.

  I’m here.

  Moving in from the werewolf’s left side with the fury of a black tornado, Rosalind plowed through the haze of bodies, wielding her claws like the weapons they were originally intended to be, slashing at everything in her way.

  The shockingly gaunt, fleshless creatures targeting the brown Were shrieked when hit, and came back at her baring long yellow fangs. Up close, their faces were spectral and expressionless. Dull red eyes sank deeply into bottomless sockets. They had Lycan blood on their breath.

  The brown Were, too busy to acknowledge her help or toss her a look, had felled two monsters by landing well-placed swipes to their necks that cut cleanly through to the bone. When those monsters sagged, their bodies exploded into a rainfall of foul-scented gray ash that drove the remaining creatures into a frenzy.

  Only two down
—out of too many.

  Using the Were’s technique as an example, Rosalind aimed for their necks and exploded one bony mass of her own.

  Her first kill.

  An odd sensation flowed through her, as though she had swallowed the wind and it continued to churn her insides. As gray ash clouded the area, her beast’s energy began to blaze. Surging ahead like a caged animal that had finally been freed, she felt a new and terrible energy take her over; it flowed through her muscle like a river of fire, and left an icy residue.

  She doubled her efforts.

  More vampires came on, each of them fighting with ungodly speed and an unearthly agility of jaws that housed far too many gnashing, needle-sharp teeth.

  The new, crazed kind of energy fueled Rosalind’s fury. An unrecognizable thrill for battle made her fight on without thinking of the consequences. She was fast, strong and good at fighting. She felt as if she were made for this.

  She wanted to kill them all.

  Driven by that objective, she whirled, bit and clawed at the corpselike flesh around her. As she took another vampire down, Rosalind howled.

  The air trembled with her silent battle cry.

  Death comes to all who oppose me!

  * * *

  Colton fought with all his might. To the right. To the left. Coming from behind. Dropping down from above his head.

  He barely heard the sounds over his own rattled breathing. He was moving so fast, he’d lost some control over his actions. His arms were tiring. He’d lost count of how many vampires he’d taken down, but had taken several vicious blows himself.

  He smelled blood, and knew it was his. His face was damp, and it wasn’t sweat. In five years on the police force, he had garnered a reputation for fearlessness, driven by a werewolf’s need to protect innocent citizens and the knowledge of how fast he would heal if he were ever to be injured on the job. But this was no street gang or worrisome mob. This was a nest of particularly bloodthirsty monsters, attacking with intent.

  More of them arrived. Each kill was replaced by another set of snapping teeth. Another Were had arrived from who knew where, but he had no idea what was happening to that beast, and had no opportunity to look. He thought he could hear that other Were close by, making growling sounds that mirrored his own. But the fight had gone on for so long, with no end in sight, that Colton wondered if they’d make it out of this one.