First Bite (The Dark Wolf Series) (21 page)

So all Meredith had to do was wait for the little idiot to show up.

Meanwhile, she was going to test out some of her theories about born werewolves. Blood from her pack acted as a catalyst in some of her spells. Did the new werewolf’s veins contain something stronger, more dynamic?

“Frederick,” she said. Her voice was barely above a sultry whisper, but a balding red-haired man appeared at once in the doorway of her sprawling bedroom. Save for his pupils dilating ever so slightly, he didn’t react at all to her nakedness. He wouldn’t dare. “Have Zarita get a blood sample from our newest guest. No, better make that a pint.”

“Would you like it delivered it to your workroom or to the kitchen, Ms. de la Ronde?”

“Workroom, of course. I have things to do.” He disappeared, and she considered his odd question. Perhaps it wasn’t so odd…After all, she often drank small amounts of human blood, taken from new recruits before she turned them. Usually she called for it to be added to a snifter of brandy or cognac when she’d been on a project in her workroom for hours. Spell casting was a nuanced art, and once started, had to be carried through to its natural end, even if that took
days
. You didn’t take coffee breaks or naps or punch out at a certain hour, no matter how exhausted you were. Real magic couldn’t be hurried or interrupted.

During one of her sessions, she’d discovered that a small taste of human blood gave her an enormous rush. In fact, it was
enlivening, renewing not only her energy but often her enthusiasm. Further experimentation showed that a
full
glass would deliver a burst of amazing power and strength. The kitchen staff would bring it to her in a large crystal goblet as if it was the finest of liqueurs. Only
she
knew that it was much, much better than that. Ingesting blood had helped her to carry her latest spell-crafting project over the finish line more than once.

Sadly, the incredible effects were short-lived, lasting but an hour or so. And as soon as her human conscripts made their first shift to werewolf, their blood became utterly useless to her as a restorative. It was as if the transformation of the body’s shape transformed the blood as well, permanently.

But the blood of a
natural
werewolf…Meredith made a thoughtful little moue at the mirror. That just might be worth sampling. She’d planned to utilize it in tonight’s spells, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a little pick-me-up while she worked.

Beneath his prickly fortress of hawthorn, Baker’s sense of security evaporated when one of Meredith’s trackers picked up on his presence. A grizzled black-and-gray wolf was close, so close that Baker could see its nostrils flare as it studied his scent—and he was certain the creature must be able to hear his heart hammering. Strangely, however, it didn’t raise the alarm. Instead the tracker moved on to cast about for smells elsewhere.
Must be searching for someone else.
Apparently, trussing up the golden wolf like a holiday turkey wasn’t enough for the bitch queen.

Baker didn’t move, or even take a full breath, until his senses told him that all the wolves had left. And then he waited a long time to make damn fucking certain they were gone. Finally he crawled out from the thorny thicket, slowly and painfully. It was going to take some work—and no doubt some bizarre contortions with this animal body—to draw out some of the spines that were embedded in his hide, but the task would have to wait.
Better to get the hell out of here first.

He’d taken note of the direction the bitch queen and her horde had gone, and he made sure to head the opposite way. Baker decided to shadow the highway from the cover of the woods that lined it. There was plenty of brush to hide him, but not so much that he had to push his way through. Which suited him fine, since it was a toss-up as to whether he had more hawthorn spines in his ass or in his muzzle.

He passed a pickup truck, abandoned by the side of the road. Too bad he couldn’t figure out how to return to his upright-with-thumbs form. Unless the truck was out of gas, he could fix almost anything, and he wasn’t above borrowing the vehicle. Strange how his priorities had shifted. It wasn’t like he’d made a habit of stealing other people’s cars in his past life—in fact, he’d have never done such a thing.

Now, however, everything was a matter of survival. His and Riley’s.

Leaving the pickup behind, Baker followed the highway for another couple of miles until a flatbed rig hauling a pair of muddy backhoes slowed to a stop. Since it was headed the opposite way, he gave it only a fleeting glance—until the passenger door opened and it appeared that someone got out. Baker could see nothing with the truck between him and the passenger, and for reasons he couldn’t identify, he stood still until the rig pulled away. Just before the person was revealed, a strange new sense hit him between the eyes. Or rather, between the
nostrils
. Conditions had combined—wind, temperature, hell, even barometric pressure, probably—to bring him a single scent. Werewolf, like him. In human form. And female.

More important than any of that, he knew exactly who she was before his sight confirmed it.

The truck slowly sped up and reentered its lane on the highway, but Neva watched it disappear without really seeing it. Her animal senses were on hyper alert, reaching out for any sign of Meredith and her thugs. Neva could definitely smell them, but only faintly. Of course, the wind was from the wrong direction—and Travis had lectured her on staying downwind of enemies.
Unless she wanted to broadcast her own presence, she needed to make her approach from a slightly different direction. At least she’d had the sense to ask the truck driver to drop her off a couple of miles from the pickup that she and Travis had left behind. If she crossed to the same side of the road as the vehicle and walked down to it using the cover of the woods, then she wouldn’t be detected by her enemies. She hoped.

It was a longer hike than it looked, however. Thankful there wasn’t much traffic at this time of night, Neva crossed the four lanes of pavement without encountering any vehicles. She had to veer around a flattened raccoon on the center line, however. The
ew
factor was bad enough, especially with a Changeling’s intense sense of smell, but she had to admit that the creep factor was worse. The spillage of blood and guts reminded her too much of things she wished she could unsee from her time at Meredith’s mansion.

The gravel shoulder led to the steep edge of a wide ditch, and
of course
there was water at the bottom.
Crap.
She was soon picking her way through cattail clumps and starting every time a frog jumped out of her way. She’d soaked her shoes for the third time when a car slowed down. It sped away quickly after she gave the driver a smile and a thumbs-up.
Probably didn’t reassure them
, she thought.
I’ll bet they left because I look like a crazy woman.
Heaven only knew when she’d last brushed her hair.

Above the rotted-vegetable smell of stagnant water and the tangy mix of rubbery asphalt and fuel and dead raccoon from the highway, the scents of Meredith and her pack continued to dissipate. Her sister had definitely been in the area, but she had just as definitely left. Neva thought she could detect Travis’s scent, but it, too, was faint. Why?

Neva slogged up the opposite side of the ditch in squishy shoes and set out for the forest beyond. Road maintenance crews
kept a hundred-foot swath cut down and cleared along this section of highway. The stiff, dry stubble of brush was maybe six inches high—enough to stab mercilessly at her ankles—and she remembered when she’d foolishly insisted Travis help her Change back to human form. She’d ended up shoving her way through the bushes that lined the trail, naked and barefoot. He’d been pissed at her, but he hadn’t left. Instead, he’d stayed just out of sight, only to come running when she needed him. And his wolf—the great tawny wolf that lived within him—had been oh so gentle with her poor bleeding feet.

It’d be great if Travis popped out of the brush right about now.
She’d be genuinely glad to see him, even if he was a pain in the ass at times. She trudged into the cool, dark shelter of the trees with relief. A well-worn game trail beckoned, undoubtedly smoothed by countless herds of deer over the years, and she took it gratefully. Her thoughts were divided between missing Travis and contemplating removing the wet shoes that were even now rubbing blisters into her feet. Suddenly the path before her sprang to impossible life. Heaving up from forest floor, the path buckled and shed leaves and earth as if a full-grown tree was emerging. Instead, a huge wolf shook itself free of the debris and faced her, its drawn lips exposing merciless teeth that gleamed in the shadows.

Travis’s stomach lurched as dizziness threatened to send him reeling back into unconsciousness. He held himself motionless, breathing through his mouth, fighting to stay awake as if trying to keep his head above water. Finally the vertigo receded and his equilibrium settled. He opened his eyelids to scant slits in case he was being watched, and heaved a sigh when his wolfen senses assured him that he was alone.

There wasn’t else much to be relieved about.

Travis was lying on a metal bench in a smooth concrete cell. There were no windows, only a small grate set at eye level in a heavy steel door. A tiny fluorescent light buzzed and flickered in a cage set into the twelve-foot ceiling. He didn’t know where he was, but he was certain of who was responsible for his captivity. Neva’s crazy-ass sister, Meredith, was behind this.

Christ.
The only way this could be worse was if Neva was a prisoner, too. Just as he’d gone down beneath the hostile pack, Travis had tried to warn her. He had no idea if the message had gotten through before he’d been hit with—

He frowned.
Magic.
He’d been hit with the genuine article, impacted as surely as if someone had clubbed him with a fence post. And it certainly wasn’t the clumsy work of an amateur. Just another little detail that Neva had failed to mention. In a world where true magic had become scarce, her sister wielded a stunning quantity of raw power with ease and finesse.
Might have been good to know.
That, and one other tiny piece of info that hadn’t been revealed to him:

Meredith wasn’t just Neva’s sister. She was her fucking
twin
.

He’d made the biggest confession of his life, laid his soul bare, not to the woman he was falling hard for, but to someone who was most likely his worst nightmare. Goddess help him, not only did it turn his stomach to think of this vicious lunatic knowing his most intimate secrets, but he knew damn well this was going to bite him in the ass one way or another.

He had to get out of here.

As he sat up, another wave of dizziness washed over him, and he gripped the edges of the bench until his knuckles whitened. Eventually his head cleared—then a new realization had him ice cold and sweating at the same time.

I was a wolf when I passed out. Why the hell am I waking up on two legs?

Changelings didn’t revert to human in their fucking sleep—that only happened in old B movies. His wolf wouldn’t leave him vulnerable like this, even if it could. In fact, he had the opposite problem, a wolf that was too damn protective. Travis reached deep, searching, calling. The creature he’d shared his existence with since he was born was AWOL.