Darkness Unbound (6 page)

I wasn’t sure yet that it was necessary. It was possible my stalkers intended nothing more than to talk to me. They might even be intending to follow me. Hell, I already had a reaper playing tag, so why not four strange-smelling men?

But if these men had intended to do nothing more than talk, they wouldn’t have bothered boxing me in so completely.

They were here to attack. Nothing more, nothing less.

I reached into my pocket as I neared the bike and wrapped shaking fingers around my keys. Doubt skittered through me, but these men left me with little in the way of options.

I couldn’t see the man up ahead, but his scent suggested he was standing behind the cars to the left of the bike. The two to either side hadn’t moved in closer, but the one behind
had
—although he still wasn’t close enough to react to.

Obviously, though, none of them had any idea I was part wolf; otherwise they would have used a scent-erasing soap. Or, at the very least, eaten less garlic last night.

The back of my neck continued to crawl with the nearness of the man behind me. I resisted the growing need to turn around, and flipped my keys up between my fingers so that the sharper ends stuck out like little metal prongs. Just about anything could become a dangerous weapon if you had the know-how—and I certainly did. Then I shrugged off my backpack, holding it in my free hand as I walked on. The air was thick with the scent of garlic and the musk of the man behind me. He was human, not wolf. Not shifter.

I had no idea what the others were. I might be able to smell their body odor, but there was precious little else coming through. And
that
was weird. If I could smell them, I should have been able to tell what the hell they were.

Maybe the garlic was deliberate. Maybe they were using it the same way someone might use scent-erasing soap. And if that
was
the case, it was working.

Although if this was a chance robbery attempt, why would they reek of garlic? Even humans had noses good enough to catch a whiff.

And yet, despite my certainty otherwise, what else could it realistically be? Why would these men be sitting here waiting to ambush me when they couldn’t have even guessed that I’d be here?

No one had followed me from home, I was pretty sure of that. Then again, I might not have noticed given I had no reason to look.

The garlic stink suddenly sharpened and the air stirred with movement. It was warning enough. I spun on my heel, letting the backpack fly, hoping to distract my attacker as I lashed out with a booted foot. He dodged the pack but saw the second blow too late, and my foot took him high in the chest. He staggered backward, arms flailing to keep his balance.

As the other three erupted from their hiding spots, I lunged forward, my right fist swinging upward, hitting the human as hard as I could under the chin. I might be only half werewolf, but that still gave me a whole lot of strength. The keys dug deep into his neck even as the force of the blow threw him off his feet. Blood gushed, but I was already spinning around to meet the next man, and heard rather than saw the first hit the concrete.

The man who’d been hiding behind the car nearest my bike was in the air—literally in the air—his shape shifting, pulsating, becoming something less than human but not actually cat: a panther who retained human characteristics and height. He was grotesque—like something you saw in a bad horror movie—but that didn’t make him any less dangerous.

I dropped under his leap, but as his body flew over mine he twisted, his arm sweeping down, his thick, cat-like claws slashing through the leather of my jacket and down into flesh. Blood gushed—and pain, unlike anything I’d ever felt before, rolled up my arm and through the rest of me in a heated wave.

All I wanted to do was curl up into a little ball and cry, but girlie reactions like
that
really weren’t an option.

The other two were almost on me—and they were also changing, becoming something less than human but not quite animal.

I couldn’t stay here.

I might be able to fight, but it was four against one and three of those four
weren’t
human. Those were odds that would give Aunt Riley reason to pause, and
she’d
once been a guardian.

Fuck, where was Azriel when I needed him most? Why the hell wasn’t he stepping in to help? Even as the thought crossed my mind, I swiped it aside. He’d warned me he wouldn’t interfere, and I had no doubt he was a man—being—of his word.

But running wasn’t really an option, either. I might be part werewolf, but I couldn’t attain that shape and I didn’t have a wolf’s speed. And two human feet wouldn’t outrun these things, whatever they were. Which meant there was only one thing I could do if I wanted to escape.

Become Aedh.

It wasn’t something I did very often—but then, it wasn’t very often I found myself in a situation like this, either.

I reached into my pocket and wrapped my fingers around my phone and keys, then closed my eyes and reached into that place inside me that wasn’t wolf—that was something far more—calling to the powers that were my Aedh heritage. Maybe it was the fear of the situation, because it surged to life immediately, flaring through me—a blaze of heat and energy that numbed pain and dulled sensation as it invaded every muscle, every cell, breaking them down and tearing them apart, until my flesh no longer existed and I became one with the air. Until I held no substance, no form, and could not be seen or heard or felt by anyone or anything.

Except, perhaps, by another Aedh, but none of these men belonged to that race.

I drifted toward the concrete ceiling, out of their way and yet close enough to hear everything they said.

The two who’d been coming in from either side skidded to a halt, and confusion crossed their half-animal features. One was lion-like, the other some sort of dog, and both of them had bodies that were deformed but powerful.

“What the fuck?” the lion one said, his voice a growl and the words barely understandable. “Where’s she gone?”

The dog-like one lifted his nose and sniffed the air. “Can’t smell her,” he said, his voice no clearer than the other man’s. “She’s gone.”

The man whose neck I’d stabbed walked up at that point, wiping away the blood with one hand. “Well, she obviously has
some
form of shifting ability, despite what we were told.”

“Doesn’t matter either way,” the panther-like one said. “She’s gone, and the boss is going to be pissed.”

The human glanced at him disdainfully. “Only if some meathead decides to tell him. She has to come back for the bike eventually. All we have to do is wait.”

“She’ll come back with help.”

The human glanced at the lion. “Obviously, but it won’t matter. We’ll just follow her again and wait for another opportunity. And this time, it’ll be less caution and more speed.”

“A gun might be useful,” the panther commented.

“We need to question her about her father first, remember?”

The panther gave him a disdainful look, then lowered his head, sniffing the droplets of blood briefly before his tongue flicked out. He licked it.

Eeeewwww.

“Graham, Mario, keep an eye on the exits in case she comes through before we can grab our car.” He glanced down at the cat. “Frankie, you lick that one more time and I’ll put a boot in your fucking face. Go get the car.”

The cat snarled in reply, but otherwise did what he was told, his skin rippling as he moved until what reached the stairs was human once more—albeit a human with somewhat torn and shredded clothing. The other two did the same as they walked up the ramp toward the exit level.

The human studied my bike long enough to make me uneasy, then spun on his heel and walked after the panther. I followed, an unseen force of energy that crept along the roofline, flinching at the dust that rained through the pieces of me and hoping like hell they didn’t stick to the particles. Re-forming when grimy was never a pleasant experience, and it usually took days for the muck to work its way out of my system.

The human ran up the stairs and out into the street. Frankie—the cat—was half a block away, climbing into a black Toyota SUV. It wasn’t exactly a nondescript car, but I guess that wouldn’t have mattered, because under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have paid it much attention. And at least now that I knew who was driving it, it made an easier target to spot.

I glanced down at the plate, rolling the numbers through my mind to memorize them, then headed for the rear exit. The other two men were standing near an old gray Ute, one casually smoking, the other drinking a can of Pepsi. Like they had all the time in the world and hadn’t just tried to attack me.

I noted their plate number, then made my way back up to my bike. After making sure no one was on the level, I reached for the Aedh again, re-forming and rebuilding my body particle by particle, until I was once more flesh and blood.

I released my grip on my phone and keys, and dropped to the concrete on my hands and knees, my body shaking and my breath wheezing past my throat. For several seconds it was all I could do to stay upright, and if those men had chosen that moment to come back, I would have been theirs.

Becoming Aedh had its price for those of us who weren’t full blood—and, for me, it was a complete inability to do anything other than breathe for several minutes after re-formation.

When the debilitation finally started to ease, I cautiously rocked back on my heels. And that was when the headache hit like a knife through my brain and I closed my eyes, fighting not to cry out. I had no idea just how keen my attackers’ hearing was, and the last thing I wanted to do was give them warning I was back.

At least my arm had stopped bleeding, even if the wound was still raw and it hurt like hell.

Several more minutes passed, and the stabbing pain settled to a more durable ache behind my left eye. I took a deep, shuddering breath, then climbed carefully to my feet. The pain remained, constant yet bearable.

The other bad thing about becoming Aedh was its effect on my clothes. They disintegrated just fine, but re-forming them was trickier, as the magic didn’t always delineate bits of me from other particles. And like the dirt that clung to my atoms when in Aedh form, I often ended up with a dust-like sheen covering my skin rather than fully formed pieces of clothing.

This time, the leather jacket had come back almost complete—aside from the hole under my right elbow and the slashes caused by the cat’s claws—but the dust from the missing elbow clung like second skin to my arm, and the sweater underneath all but fell around me in shredded bits. My jeans were also a mess, peppered with holes. My boots, like my leather jacket, had basically come through unscathed, although the Kevlar lining showed through in patches. Once I hit any sort of speed on my bike, I was going to end up half naked. And wouldn’t
that
thrill the passing motorists. I guess it was just as well I had a change of clothes with me.

Of course, before I went anywhere I needed to check my bike. Those men were intent on following me, and I was pretty damn sure they would have ensured they had a means of tracking me if they lost sight.

There had to be a bug on my bike.
Had
to be.

And the thought that those bastards had dared to put their grubby little hands on her had anger rolling though me.

A pretty useless reaction, really, but I still couldn’t help it. I might be rich enough to buy anything I liked, but this bike had been earned through sheer hard work. She was my present to myself the first year our restaurant made a profit.

I retrieved my backpack, then walked back to my bike and double-checked the area before I stripped off and changed into the clothes I’d worn into the hospital. They were cold and damp, and smelled of antiseptic and death, but I guess they were better than rags.

I retrieved my keys and phone from the remnants of my jeans, then tossed them away. I shoved my phone into the pack and my keys went into my jacket pocket. Metal and plastic weren’t affected by the shift into—or back out of—particle form, but unless they were touching skin, they wouldn’t actually change. Which was why I’d wrapped my hand around them before I shifted. I knew from experience that there was nothing worse than metal and plastic bits stuck in the middle of your particle form.

Maybe they needed to find a way to make bras and panties out of soft, breathable plastic. At least then when I came back out of an Aedh shift, I’d be wearing lingerie. Right now, there were just annoying bits caught in unmentionable places.

I flicked off the alarm, then bent and studied the bike. There was nothing out of place—nothing that jumped out and screamed
Bug
. But I knew enough from hanging around Riley and her brother Rhoan to realize that bugs and trackers could be wafer-thin and virtually invisible.

And the only way to find them was to feel them.

I knelt and carefully ran my hands over the bike’s sleek silver frame. I found one on the front suspension, and another on the inside of the left turn signal. Both were little bigger than a toenail, and thinner than a piece of hair. If I hadn’t known every inch of the bike as well as I did, they would have been easy to miss.

I carefully peeled them both off, then jerked around—my heart going a million miles a minute—as the elevator dinged and the doors swept open. An elderly couple stepped out and headed left, not even glancing my way.

I looked at the sliver-fine pieces of plastic in my hand, then smiled and rose, quietly following the old couple. They stopped at a small brown Toyota about halfway down the ramp, the woman glancing at me as I strolled past. Her gaze swept me and her face pinched with disapproval. Clearly, she thought I was up to no good—and in that, she was right. I gave her a smile as I continued on, my hand brushing against the rear of the car and sticking the two trackers to the paintwork. Then I loped down to the next level and took the stairs back up to my bike. The knife inside my head swung back into action and I blinked away tears as I shoved on my helmet, then jumped on my bike and gunned the engine to life.