Only After Dark The Boxed Set Books 1 - 4: Shifters Forever Worlds (23 page)

A
sob
, one of pure anger at her helplessness in the situation slipped from Valencia’s lips.

She buried her face against his chest, breathed in his scent, breathed in his manliness, his wolf. And his love, even.

I’m not weak. I’m not.

This fucking situation was getting the best of her. She should have stayed home.

The blanket raised high and Rory’s head slipped beneath it. “I hope Leandra can help.” His voice was filled with empathy, clearly suffering alongside.

She pulled her cheek away from his rock hard body. “We should go. Theo’s waiting.”

“First…” His lips curled into a wickedly sexy smile.

She knew that look.

Oh. My. God. She knew that look way too well, though she’d never seen it in person—in real life.

It made every sensor in her body scream for him. It was much more intense than anything they’d ever done on the computer, anything she’d ever felt with him.

It was the way he looked at her, the look she knew, but more powerful, like having a ball of energy bouncing between them the size of a big-ass meteor.

And it was crashing and ping-ponging throughout her body and mind.

Just when she thought he would be the aggressor, just when he probably thought the same, her tigress, and maybe even her damned vampire blood took over.

Fuck it. Fuck waiting.

This was a chance she never thought she’d have with him.

Ever.

And now she had it.

She grabbed the back of his head and pulled him close.

She dug her nails into his scalp, while her tongue pushed its way past his lips into his mouth.

Except she didn’t plan on Rory’s wolf.

His wolf took over, controlling her tongue, claiming her soul.

Their tongues were locked in that eternal dance that couples do—the dance meant to last forever, no matter what went on around them.

The meeting of their tongues was perfect. It was beyond perfection. The taste of him.

Male. Just male. She couldn’t think of another way to describe it.

All male. All sexy.

A low moan escaped her.

Valencia pulled away, her body on fire, her heart betraying her. And worse than her heart’s betrayal, her tigress’s. The feline had put her paw down, refusing to allow Valencia to shut her emotions off.

Not sure how much I want to anyway.

A slight crunch, rock under a boot, then Theo’s voice. “You two coming or you want to be sitting ducks here in the open? You know better Valencia, as many times as Lézare preached about being in this area at night—especially alone.

She knew. She knew long before that fateful, cursed night she’d ventured here alone. Lézare had drilled it into her brain,
don’t go out to the swamps at night without adequate security.

All it took was that once. After years of her obeying that rule, it only took one night to make her worst nightmares true.

“Coming,” she whispered.

She and Rory followed Theo through the brush, avoiding certain areas.

“Quicksand,” Theo indicated with his head.

He certainly knows this area well for someone who probably shouldn’t.

Thicker and thicker into the brush and cypress trees they went. Theo kept his steps light, treading carefully. She and Rory followed his lead.

Her shifter hearing picked up the sounds of swamp creatures, animals going about their nightly business while the three of them made their way through the humid, dank environment.

They slipped out of the brush, and she found herself standing on a road, not much more than a path, not much different than the one they’d been on.

“Wouldn’t it had made more sense to bring the truck this far?” She brushed off the stickers accumulated on the hem of her pants, a couple slipping into her shoe, chaffing her flesh.

“There’s a reason I came the way I did.” His voice wasn’t even a whisper. Humans couldn’t have heard the decibel level.

She’d love to hear the reason, but before she could tell him, he’d crossed the road and was stepping into another thicket.

I hope she can help,
was Valencia’s only thought.

Four figures stepped out from the brush, blocking their way.

Valencia bit back her gasp. She knew exactly what they were.

And then she saw the wicked grin on one’s pale face.

He’s the one.

The vampire that did this to her. He was here.

Theo froze in place. Rory, did too. Valencia had frozen the moment she saw their shadowy silhouettes enter her line of vision.

Valencia inhaled deeply, picking up no scent of him—or his companions.

A sneer came to her face, one she was glad was hidden by the blanket that still covered her. She felt hatred for this creature. For all of his kind. A hatred like one that had never burned in her before. Pressure erupted in Valencia’s mind.

Her tigress.

The bloodlust.

The tigress wanted their blood.

The tigress wanted their deaths.

The tigress wanted it more than Valencia did, if that was possible.

She pushed her tigress back.

This is not the time. Not yet.

He hadn’t seen her. She studied his features in a way she’d never had a chance to before. He was a strikingly attractive man, in a stark way, the way an iceberg is beautiful, but you know it’s deadly. He was ageless, the way humans thought shifters seemed ageless, but exponentially so for the vampire.

His skin was flawless—not a single pore evident, not even to Valencia’s preternatural shifter vision.

His eyes were a dark red, and that instantly reminded her of what her eyes had looked like when she’d seen them in the mirror during a bout with the bloodlust.

This caused hatred to burn anew, giving her tigress a foothold into a shift.

An excruciating pain in her gums preceded her fangs bursting forth with tiny, audible pops.

Not now,
Valencia snapped at her tigress in her mind.

Her tigress’s response was a threatening snarl.

Valencia closed her eyes, concentrating all her energy on controlling the beast within that wanted nothing more than to feel their blood’s life escaping their bodies.

She may have closed her eyes, but the vampire’s image was burning into her mind’s eye.

His dark hair, longer than was probably fashionable when he was turned, was now perfectly acceptable. His high cheekbones boasted an aristocratic bloodline, his thin upper lip bragged of a cruelty she knew firsthand.

Tall and lean, he was far from skinny, and she knew from experience he was far from weak.

She squeezed her eyes tightly to make his image go away, but all she could remember was
that night.

T
hat night
, all those months ago…

V
alencia should have listened
to Lézare. She made her way through the bayou. All alone, looking for a shortcut.

Each sound made her jump, then it made her giggle nervously.

I’m a shifter. What do I have to be afraid of?

Less than an hour later, Valencia didn’t ask herself what she had to be afraid of as she lay on the ground.

She also knew the answer wasn’t vampires.

The answer was death. The hellish death that she was experiencing as she lay on the ground, covered with pale dirt and caked blood while several vampires stood nearby, one so close she could almost touch his shoe.

Polished and spotless.

How can his shoes be so clean,
a part of her mind wondered, while the other part tried to wrap around the notion she was dying.

She had to be dying, for what else would cause this misery? Bile rose to her throat, then erupted from her lips, spewing messiness onto the hand she’d raised to stop the vomit, and onto the vampire’s shoe.

A half-laugh escaped her at the nasty yellowish green spots on his shoes.

Her mirth didn’t last long as yet another throe of the death she was in seized her.

Anvils were splitting her head open. Or maybe it was big-assed lumberjacks wielding the largest axes known to man. The jerking upward to vomit had caused Thor’s hammer to pound.

Her vision clouded as the area around her turned reddish black with tiny pinpoints of crimson fireworks showering in the background.

A chill ran through her body that had nothing to do with temperature. Her tigress pushed for a shift.

She heard voices and looked at the vampires. The tall dark-haired one with the vomit-splattered shoes was talking to his cohorts.

Then he turned to Valencia. “You’re mine now. We’ve bloodshared.” He turned back to his friends. “Think she’ll do the bloodlust thing? I’ve never seen it. I’ve heard about it though.”

“You should not have done that,” one of the other vampires murmured. “You know better than to bloodshare with a shifter. It’s forbidden.”

“Too many things are forbidden, by damn. I wanted to see what the fuss was about.”

“Rumor has it that the bloodlust is only effective when the moon shines on the afflicted one.”

“And you picked tonight, of all nights, to test this,” a third vampire said. “The night of an eclipse.”

“I wasn’t really paying attention to that. Fate created an opportunity tonight. How often do shifters come through the swamps at night, anyway,” Vomit-Shoes said.

“Tsk.” A fourth vampire, old and white haired, stately, but yet lethal, shook his head at Vomit-Shoes’ protests.

The lumberjacks were back, splitting her head open again. Valencia began to thrash, flopping back and forth like a fish out of water, like a child throwing the worst tantrum ever.

A piercing scream split the bayou’s heavy, humid air. It took a second for Valencia to realize the sound was coming from her.

In her head, Valencia called for her tigress to help, but was greeted only with silence.

Total and complete silence.

—until the moon made an appearance.

At first it was just a tiny sliver.

Lava shot through her veins then traveled, seeming to fill her mind.

Then the sliver grew in size and with it the volume of the lava coursing through her body.

The screaming sound was back.

But now it was joined with snarling.

She looked at her hands. Claws erupted from her fingertips, but they were still human hands.

An excruciating pain in her mouth made her hands fly upward.

Her fangs!

They weren’t her tiger fangs, not like they normally were, anyway, they seemed more…

Human shaped?

The screaming started again. Her screaming.

She felt her face. It hadn’t widened into her tigress’s features, but it wasn’t her human face.

Quicker than she’d ever moved, and eager to make the burning stop, she leapt to her feet with preternatural speed and darted through the thick-treed part of the swamp.

The vampires’ laughter followed her until she’d run so far, and gone so deep that she was almost in complete darkness.

Almost.

She found a large, hollow log, and dropping to her hands and knees, she lay on her belly, crawling into the log for refute.

A snake hissed at her.

Unsure if it was venomous or not, uncaring, and unwilling to leave the protection of the log, she’d slashed at the snake beheading it with one quick swipe.

Blood spurted from the snake’s decapitated body, splashing her in the face.

One drop rested on her lip, and as if not in control of her own tongue it slipped out and touched the crimson life giving blood.

The taste was salty but the effect was heady, soothing the wild beast within her.

And so her bloodlust was sated, and her body kept safe from further bloodlust that first night.

And her hatred for the vampires grew with every passing night. Every night and every day she spent in isolation, her hatred for the mocking vampires.

And some nights, she even wanted vengeance.

T
hat was then
. This was now.

And Valencia was much different than she’d been then.

Then, a mere shifter female, alone, surrounded by vampires, threatened and turned into a toy by them.

Callously shared blood to turn her into a monster. A monster that destroyed her life.

Now she wanted to destroy those who destroyed her. Her eyes flew open, and she knew she didn’t need a mirror to see that hers matched that of the vampires.

“Shifters,” the vampire on the left hissed. Stocky, with a blond crewcut, he seemed the least experienced of the bunch, as if he’d not been a vampire as long as they had. “Shifters on our territory again.”

“You’re back.” The vampire next to the blond vampire pointed at Theo. “Back to see your lover again?”

Theo’s eyes narrowed.

“Oh, yes, we know all about that.” The third vampire took a step forward, looked at Rory. “You were here last night—wait, no.” A confused look crossed his face. “You’re not the same, but you are.”

Valencia processed this, though her tigress and bloodlust yearned to burst forth, she grasped that Reese had been here the night before. A flicker of curiosity rose in her mind. She’d have to make it a point to ask Alexa about this.

“What’s under the blanket?” This came from the vampire that had done this to her.

Valencia wished she’d been able to control what happened. Bloodlust married to impetuousness compounded by her tigress’s fury and need for revenge made a situation turn from subtle to explosive.

She threw the blanket off, let the moon fuel her anger, let it drive her lust for their blood, for their very lives.

So much happened in the next few seconds that she barely managed to process all of it.

Three vampires gasped. The fourth, the one who’d done this to her was the only one that didn’t. He merely stared at her. His eyes became slits, the crimson appeared almost black behind semi-closed lids. The cruel tilt to his mouth turned slightly upward, a mocking smile crossing his face.

Moonlight crisscrossed her flesh like a laser light show—but one with deadly consequences.

A searing sensation followed wherever the moon made contact with her body. It spread throughout her with the violence of a tornado.

Valencia was no longer going to push her tigress back, no longer fighting to keep the change from happening. She would harness the curse. She would wreak its havoc on her enemies.

“It’s her. She’s back.” The words came from his human appearing lips, but the tone wasn’t human at all. It pierced her shifter senses, set its hooks in her, pulled at her. “Did you miss me?” His expression was mocking.

There came the point where Valencia ceased being herself, and turned into nothing more than the instrument of death, the curse she’d been given by the dark-haired, sardonic being in front of her.

It was of no consequence that she went through the shift. She ignored the agony of stretching into her tigress, only to be halted by the vampire’s blood mid-shift. She pushed past the blood that boiled for her to feed it.

With a roar that punctuated her change, she flew at the beings, her claws extended, her body half human, half tigress, her hunger all vampire.

She knew this time, she would not be the loser. She would win the battle. She was far stronger than they were.

At the very least, she’d die trying.

Glancing back at Rory and Theo, she growled words that were distorted by her half-shift. “Stay back. Do not let their blood touch you.”

“No.” Rory was beginning to shift.

Theo put his hand on Rory’s shoulder. “There is nothing you can do but make this worse by going in there. You’ll distract her.”

Rory pushed Theo’s hand away. Valencia snarled at him and turned back to the vampires.

She catapulted herself onto the blond, stocky one. He bared fangs, grabbed her shoulders.

Valencia’s combined tigress speed and vampire strength made her formidable. Her own body moved with such blurry speed, she couldn’t focus on her own hands. She sunk fangs into his neck, ripped his throat, shredding his essence, then glanced back at Rory.

Shifting into his wolf, Rory’s eyes were trained on her and what she’d done. His pupils dilated, as though this was a surprise.

Maybe it is. Maybe he didn’t fully realize what she’d done to the two men in the clearing.

Or maybe it’s just hard as hell to get accustomed to a creature that looks like me and behaves like a killing machine.

Valencia immediately turned her attention to the next vampire in line.