Darkness Bred (2 page)

G
abriel’s Place, a Whidbey Island eatery and bar near the town of Langley, had a thriving base of regular customers—but not at three in the morning.

The most neutral and safest place the hounds could use for a meeting, Gabriel’s didn’t attract the local werewolves, who had no interest in fraternizing with humans, and other than Dr. Saul VanDoren, vampires did not venture there since they could not enter without invitation. They had never been invited. Saul was the exception because among the humans he was known as an eccentric doctor, not as a vampire.

Apart from Sally, assistant cook at Gabriel’s, and now Elin, both of whom were banished by their Queen, visits from the fae world that was invisible to humans were rare. Occasionally fae disguised themselves so that they could move among the mortal community and there were always those fae, like Elin and Sally, who could pass as humans in their normal states.

Wind roared in the chimney, whipping up flames and crackling sparks from the fire. The log building was tight, cozy, and fragrant with the scent of cedar, but sounds of a storm outside had started in the past hour and scatterings of debris hit the dark window glass.

Only Niles Latimer, alpha werehound, and his sealed mate, Leigh, sat at a large, round table not far from the fireplace. Sally, also included in the early morning gathering, had hidden herself in the kitchen, away from Niles’s mounting irritation. The owner of the place, Gabriel Jones, had left Leigh to lock up. She worked there and pretty much ran the business anyway.

“They should have been here two hours ago,” Niles said, jerking out of his chair and plunking his fists on top of the table to brace his weight.

He stared at the front doors as if he could will Sean and Elin to materialize.

Leigh wasn’t certain he couldn’t actually do that but Niles was not one to interfere with his Team if it could be avoided.

Change the subject.
Say anything, Leigh thought to herself. “At least we managed to talk Gabriel out of painting the inside of this place green,” she said with a hopeful smile. “I love the peeled logs. They smell wonderful.”

Niles stared at her, a bemused look on his face.

“Remember the last time Molly got in a big snit?” Molly was Gabriel’s on-again, off-again girlfriend. “Gabriel bought all that paint because she said she wanted that place green.

“Now he wants to call this a bistro. That would mean changing the beautiful sign Sally had made.” The neon sign was, in Gabriel’s words, a flashing, neon monstrosity.

“What are you talking about?” Niles said.

“Forget it,” Leigh said. “Have patience with Sean and Elin. They have so little time together. A romantic like you should sympathize.”

“I’m not a romantic,” he said gruffly, but he looked at Leigh and sucked in the corners of his mouth. “Except around you.”

She pulled a chair close beside her and patted the seat. “Come here.” If she had her way, they would never be parted, not for an hour. “I need you near me.”

Niles’s wavy black hair reached his collar, more than reached it, and his striking face mesmerized Leigh as much in this early morning as it had when they first met.

He sighed like a harassed man and loped to drop into the chair. Big, huge beside Leigh, Niles was all muscle. At the moment beard stubble darkened his jaw and accentuated the electric blue of his eyes.

“It won’t work for them,” he said, lacing the fingers of his right hand into those of Leigh’s left. He took her hand to his lips and kissed the back softly. “What you think and what you want are more important to me than anyone else will ever know. But you will have to trust me to do what’s right for the Team. It isn’t safe for Sean and Elin to be together.”

“Why?” She already knew his reasons, but perhaps if he had to talk about them aloud enough times, he’d realize they could be overcome.

“It’s too dangerous,” he said.

“That’s what they said about us.”

“We were different, we still are. You aren’t attached to an entire nation of unpredictable whack jobs ruled by a woman who wants to control everyone on Whidbey.”

“There are lots of really good fae. And Elin isn’t attached to their community anymore. She’s been cast out before, but now that it’s gotten around that she and Sean are seeing each other, her separation from Tarhazian is permanent. Why would you want to push Elin out, too? Niles, you’re kind and good, you can’t want her to be alone. And she would be alone. I know she’ll never love anyone else.”

Niles looked sideways at her. “How do you know that? She could meet one of her own kind, the right one, and be just as happy.”

“Really?” Leigh intended to sound sarcastic and Niles met her eyes steadily. “I know you’re wrong because I’ve seen how they feel about each other. They’re like you and me. We couldn’t have lived without each other, and neither can they. Once they are sealed—once their flesh is joined—they will overcome anything that tries to come between them.” She held up the palm of her right hand to show the small, circular purple mark that matched one on Niles’s palm and signified that they were joined for all time.

His lips parted and she got ready for some angry retort, but he closed his mouth and breathed deeply.

She must stay focused and not think too deeply of what they were together, how they could close everything out. He was an amazing lover, who took her away from the world as she knew it. Their climaxes were mind eclipsing, and just to think of how she felt then was to wipe out all reason.

“Niles,” she said tentatively. “Have you forgotten how Elin helped us when we needed it so much?”

He pressed his lips together but the crease between his brows gave him away. He knew that Elin, Skillywidden as she was then, the beautiful and strange cat with violet eyes, had carried desperate news to fae Sally, who helped them outwit their enemies.

“Niles?” Leigh prodded him.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he said, and pushed a hand beneath her hair to caress her neck. “My concern is as much for Elin as for any of us. Tarhazian will be merciless when she wants something from her.”

“Sean is a very strong man. In both mind and body. If I didn’t have you, he would be the first one I’d turn to for help.”

Niles snorted. “I haven’t forgotten how you let him rest his head on your thigh.”

“When he sat beside me as Blue the hound, you mean?” Leigh laughed. “But now I remember, you got mad at him for being too near me.”

“I’m told he’s too damned attractive in any form,” Niles said, but he laughed, too.

With a deep breath, Leigh forged ahead. “There’s something I’ve wanted to talk about but I’m afraid you won’t want to believe there’s anything in it.”

He raised his upward-slashing black brows. “Now you’ve got my attention. Come on, let’s have it.” Niles reminded her of a warrior who had ridden down from distant slopes, the wind tearing at his hair and fire in his eyes. Her desire for him never faded.

She gathered her wits. “Would you still have wanted me if I were all human?”

He looked puzzled. “Of course. You’re Deseran but that means you’re essentially human, human with paranormal powers and blood like none other. What does that have to do with this?”

Sally, who had connections to a secret society in New Orleans, had figured out that Leigh was a member of this rare group known as Deserans. They were considered by their supernatural parents to have no useful talents and, therefore, abandoned into foster care in New Orleans. Their numbers had become fewer and fewer until it was thought, wrongly, that there were none of them left.

“It could be the answer to everything,” Leigh said. “I just don’t know if you will listen to me with an open mind, or believe a word I say.”

She didn’t like his guarded stare.

Leigh and her twin sister, Jan—who had yet to exhibit any signs of the Deseran and knew nothing about them—had been two of those abandoned children.

Sally had found Leigh for Niles, who longed, together with the other members of the Team, to be accepted as humans. They were extraordinary warriors who fought on the side of good. For some years they had answered when the call came for contract special operations forces overseas.

The steady loss of both the females of their species and the offspring, who usually caused those deaths when they were born—also dead—threatened the extinction of Niles’s Team and the rare strain of hounds they came from, unless fresh female blood came into the picture. Preferably human blood that would tolerate that of the werehounds. Not all types were thought to be suitable.

It had been Sally who knew that in the realm of the unknown, the Deseran were the closest thing to universal blood donors in existence and might survive mating with this line of werehounds.

Leigh gave him a sideways glance. Some things were in the hands of fate, and she put all her faith in fate being kind.

His features darkened and heat entered his eyes. He leaned to kiss her thoroughly, and nuzzle beneath her jaw. “It’s been too long,” he murmured. “I want you.”

“It’s only been a few hours,” she said, smiling and rubbing her hand over his belly. Instantly, an erection strained against his zipper.

Niles held her wrist. “Later,” he said, grimacing. “And not much later. I’ve got to have a clear head for now. So stop trying to distract me.”

With an innocent expression, Leigh walked her fingers down his thigh and pretended not to see him jump. “
You
stop distracting me. I believe Elin may be completely human. Tarhazian stole her as an infant—from a demon who must also have stolen her—and trained her to perfect the skills she has. But look at her. She could be all human.”

Niles shook his head in disbelief. “How long did it take you to come up with that? Elin is fae and she’s a shapeshifter. Square that with being human.”

“I will. I doubt Tarhazian had any idea Elin might be human. And she still doesn’t know. Many of the fae look human. Second, Elin doesn’t really miss being in the fae community. She fits in with humans perfectly and she’s comfortable with them. I tried to suggest she might be human but she thought I was making a joke.”

“So do I,” Niles said, but he gave her a slight smile to take out the sting.

“But she seems more human than fae.”

“Is that why she hangs out with a werehound?” Niles said. Then he added, “Forget I said that.”

“She loves our house,” Leigh said, getting desperate to find her way past Niles’s resistance to Elin. “And the cottage. She didn’t grow up in a house but she’s so comfortable in them.”

They lived in Niles’s house built on concrete bulkheads immediately above the waters of Saratoga Pa
ssa
ge—part of Puget Sound between Whidbey and Camano Islands. But there was a cottage on top of the bluff behind Niles and Leigh’s place, Two Chimneys, which had been left to Leigh by her dead husband.

“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” Niles said.

“Do you know a case where a woman who was all human died after becoming pregnant by a werehound?”

“No.” He didn’t look amused.

“You don’t know of a werehound who mated with a human, do you?”

“No.”

 “Then how do you know a human wouldn’t be a perfect mate for Sean? They could probably have babies together successfully and that would help us increase our number and become more integrated with the humans.”

Niles’s sigh was becoming too familiar. He was afraid she would mention having a child again. Since their joining, he had become increasingly protective of her, and without hearing it from his own lips, she knew he feared that a pregnancy with him might hurt her—kill her.

Leigh understood but she would not, could not let him make this decision for both of them.

He cleared his voice. “If you expect me to swallow all this, you’ve lost your mind. What would Tarhazian want with a human? How could she train one to do what Elin does?”

“I’ve told you, more than once now, I don’t think she knew what she’d stolen when she took Elin,” Leigh said, jutting her chin at Niles. “But Tarhazian is an incredible paranormal talent and she could probably teach Jazzy to bend iron if she wanted to.”

Jazzy was Leigh’s blond, black-eyed part sheepdog, currently asleep in front of the fire.

“She got Elin exactly the way she wanted her to be, and now all she wants is to stop Elin from being with Sean because Tarhazian hates the hounds. She hates everyone but her own kind. If she can’t stop them, she will do her best to use them. But you are not without defenses.”

“You are really reaching,” Niles said.

“And you are a stubborn man.”

“Have you mentioned this to Sally at all yet?”

Leigh felt herself blush and knew her freckles would stand out on top of white patches against the rest of her scarlet skin. “Well, um—”

“I just bet you haven’t.” Niles smirked. “You know she’d laugh you out of town. What’s more, that’s just plain dangerous subterfuge, sweetheart. We’ve got to protect Elin—mostly from herself—not give her more excuses to keep going after Sean.”

Leigh brought her fists down on the table. “She is not going after Sean any more than he’s going after her. But think about this: Why would Sally go out of her way to introduce Elin to Sean if she didn’t think Elin could mate with him? She wouldn’t.”

“Then why didn’t Sally tell us?”

“She doesn’t have to tell
us
anything. Perhaps she wanted to have them find out if they’re a match all by themselves. She did with us.”

“Sean and Elin are off their heads,” Niles muttered.

“This is as good a time as any to tell you I’m loaning Two Chimneys to Elin. She has no place of her own. Sally loves having her, but unless she shifts into Skillywidden every night, there is nowhere but a cat bed for her to sleep.”

“You what?” Niles looked amazed. “Why didn’t you talk to me about it? She wouldn’t be safe there on her own.”

“I’ll tell her you don’t like the idea if you want,” she said with a sniff. She had actually asked Sean to tell Elin she could use the cottage and by now she would know. “And Sean, too. He intends to be there to watch her, the way he watched me before you and I were sealed.”