Chapter One
At well past midnight on an early summer Sunday, I had time on my hands and a dead man on my mind.
I walked down a darkened gravel road, with only the light of a bone-white moon and its dazzling company of stars to guide me. Surrounded by a familiar blanket of night, I pondered the life of a vampire. Before I’d run away from my life and responsibilities in New York to escape to Southern Manitoba, a vampire named Holden Chancery had helped save me from the brink of certain death. During my recovery, the vampire council we both served handed me his death warrant.
I had successfully completed a seemingly impossible job for the council, and as a reward they told me I had to kill one of my only friends. I wasn’t sure if vampires understood the concept of stress leave, but it didn’t stop me from pulling a vanishing act and crossing international borders.
I stood at the intersection of the gravel road I’d been traveling and the deserted highway it bisected, and hesitated before making my way across the blacktop. I was going to go into the small town on the opposite side of the highway when something caught my eye. It was only a brief flash of movement, but enough to grab my attention.
My whole body tensed. Staying as still as an owl tuned in to a mouse, I listened to the sounds of the night. First I heard only crickets, a distant birdcall and the sway of summer grasses brushing against each other. Then, once I was almost certain I was imagining things, I heard the sound of leaves crunching underfoot and the snap of a dry twig.
I inclined my face to the left and sniffed the air. From my maternal line I had inherited an intriguing collection of gifts. My mother was a werewolf. While I did not have her habit of turning into a wild animal every full moon, I did manage to luck into a few of the less furry traits. Keen senses of smell and hearing were chief among them.
On the air was the pungent stink of cow manure, the wet, mossy smell of damp earthy duff, and from the direction of town the human aromas of gasoline, burnt dinners and stress. I closed my eyes and concentrated.
There. Something animal, but reeking of adrenaline instead of fear. Under that was the unmistakable whiff of humanity. The combination of the two created a telltale perfume. Were. And judging by the familiarity of the animal smell, it was a wolf.
I opened my eyes and scanned the tree line again, my heart pounding with a mix of exhilaration, anxiety and guilt. For a hopeful moment I concentrated on the way my mouth tasted. Had I savored a hint of cinnamon or lime, my heart would have tripped with joy. The first flavor would have meant Lucas Rain, King of the Eastern wolf packs, had come to find me. The tang of lime would have had a much more carnal response, because it would have meant Desmond Alvarez, Lucas’s second-in-command and best friend, was waiting for me in the woods.
The absence of any taste except for the musky one associated with all werewolves told me whoever was hiding among the trees was not one of my wolves. The presence of a werewolf in this area was surprising enough. If it wasn’t someone here to collect me, then who were they and what were they doing here?
Finding a solo wolf out here in rural Manitoba, where I knew there were no other lycanthropes, was a bit of a shock. I needed to know who was in the woods and what their purpose was. If they were up to no good, it was up to me to keep them the hell away from town.
I looked down the road into Elmwood to make sure no other late-night pedestrians were out who might question my next move. Once I was sure I was alone, I sniffed the air one last time to make sure I knew where I was going, then dove off the road and into the ditch.
Sprinting across the field next to the road, it took me a few moments to get my bearings on the uneven ground. My ankle twisted to the side when I stumbled on a gopher hole. Cursing my bipedalism as I crashed down, I brushed the dirt off my palms and knelt on the ground, letting my heart calm itself while I tried to figure out if the sound of my fall had alerted the wolf in the woods that he was being followed.
To be fair, I didn’t know the wolf was a man, but about three quarters or more of all werewolves were male. It wasn’t that daughters refused the Awakening more often, it just seemed like werewolf parents had sons more often than daughters. Maybe it was an evolutionary thing, I didn’t know. But werewolves were predominantly male.
This wolf, male or female, hadn’t been able to ignore the sound of a hundred and ten pounds of clumsiness hitting the ground in a flourish of profanity. I could hear them retreating into the woods.
Some stalker I was. Secret McQueen—half-werewolf, half-vampire, hired gun of the underworld—and I couldn’t even run across an empty field without alerting one solitary wolf. Truly pathetic. Maybe this was the world’s way of telling me I shouldn’t have left my day job.
I stood up, dusted off my shorts and listened, then turned to the south and gave chase again.
I reached the heavy tree cover and ducked under the outstretched branch of an evergreen. Underestimating the height of the branch, my head was jerked back when the pine needles tangled themselves into my hair. Ignoring the tugging as best I could, I took an exploratory sniff to relocate my quarry.
Nothing.
I smelled the air a little more deeply, urging my suppressed werewolf nature to engage so my combined abilities could help me locate the mystery wolf. Still, the scent was gone.
“Impossible,” I hissed.
Wolves couldn’t vanish into thin air. Yet all I could smell was pine, dirt and the cool scents of night. I listened, holding my breath, hoping I had missed something. But I was alone in the woods. Whoever I’d been chasing was gone, taking with them my misguided hopes of some message from home.
I slumped down into the damp moss and kicked the pine tree out of frustration. The tree rattled from the force, shaking some pinecones loose, where they fell to the ground—plop, plop, plop. The fragrance of pine now overwhelmed everything else.
No longer able to use the unknown werewolf to distract myself, my mind returned to the thoughts I’d left behind on the road. Holden was now the only thing I was able to focus on. I was going to have to come to terms with the warrant I’d been issued. It was only a matter of time before the Tribunal grew tired of my very un-vampire-like hissy fit and assigned the task to someone else. Someone like my human partner, Keaty, who would have no qualms about killing Holden.
But I couldn’t believe Holden had turned traitor. This time I would need a why. Holden had dedicated his afterlife to being one of the lowest-ranking vampires in the council, a warden, for over two hundred years. He’d been given the thankless task of being my liaison, a job no one envied him. And he’d done it all without complaint. So what would cause him to go rogue now? It made no sense.
I got up with moss sticking to the backs of my bare thighs. I flicked it off and started in the direction of the road. Before the chase, I had planned on going into town to waste some time and money at the only bar, but I was no longer in a social mood.
Instead of taking the road north into town, I set my sights south and back towards my grandmere’s house.
Chapter Two
I didn’t bother turning on the basement light as I followed the stairs to the lowest level of the house. All the windows that had once been installed had long since been removed and bricked over, so the light of the waxing moon did nothing to illuminate the darkness. I didn’t need light to find my way through the familiar hallways, passing the laundry room and small bathroom, running my fingertips over the wood-paneled walls until I arrived at the doorway of my own bedroom.
The dark was a comforting blanket to me, and I let myself collapse backwards onto my unmade bed. The cotton was a cool embrace against the heavy heat that had begun creeping into the summer nights. I sighed, and my breath was hot on my lips as I exhaled. Dawn was still an hour away, but I found myself unusually tired. The chase through the woods and the sudden disappearance of the mystery wolf left me dumbfounded and cranky. Plus, chasing anything without catching it was always frustrating.
I stared at the low ceiling, imagining what might bring a lone wolf into my territory, and what motivation led him to be in Elmwood of all places. I chided myself for letting my guard down and not paying better attention during my evening runs for the telltale signs and smells of a new wolf. I shouldn’t have relaxed my constant wariness for a second, but being back in Elmwood had caused me to take my safety for granted.
If this wolf was one of the dissenting pack formed under Marcus Sullivan, the wolf I dispatched to an early grave three months earlier, they might be here to do me harm. Meaning Grandmere and the whole town could become collateral damage in a war that had nothing to do with them. As far as I was concerned, the war was over. Lucas’s position as king was secure, which I’d guaranteed by killing Marcus.
I fell asleep to the nagging thought of how many times I’d been wrong about these things before.
I hadn’t dreamed since the night I’d almost died. My daytime sleep usually passed in a comatose stupor, the near-death state of dozing vampires. On the few rare occasions I’d had dreams in the past, there’d been an overtone of premonition to them. Which isn’t to say I’m psychic, I sure as hell am not, but when I do dream, it’s for a reason.
It had once saved my life.
Because I dreamed so infrequently, and because my dreams were so lucid, I often had difficulty differentiating my dreams from reality. Unless, of course, my dream involved a wedding dress. That was always a dead giveaway to it not being real.
However, in the dream I found myself in that night, I wasn’t wearing anything at all.
The first thing that caught my attention, aside from my missing clothing, was the presence of satin sheets. The departure from my familiar cotton bedding was noteworthy.
I splayed my hand out, palm down, and felt the smooth, almost-liquid texture of the sheets. I burrowed my face into the pillow and let out a contented sigh. I could handle dreams about fine bedroom decor.
Then my wandering hand met up with skin that was most definitely not my own. I sucked in a breath and held it. Nothing here smelled like either of my men. There was no taste in my mouth, and nothing triggered the alarm of wolf in my brain. So, who…
Tentatively, I turned my head and opened one eye. I let my gaze follow my arm down to my hand, where it rested on the pale curve of someone’s lower back. Pale. So, so pale. Their skin was as white as mine, and mine had never seen the light of day.