Darkness Bound (35 page)

“But perhaps Leigh’s confidence is all we need,” Saul told him. He had grown almost transparently pale. “I must ask you to go now. Please, Niles, watch this woman carefully.”

“I intend to,” Niles said.

“And pray the wolves make a mistake,” Saul added, stretching out on the green sofa and pulling a black satin coverlet over him. “I am on your side, hound. And I’m ready to fight.” He pulled the coverlet over his head. From beneath it he said, “The ultimate answer may be to win the humans’ trust. Together, forces for good overcome all the odds.”

R
EAD
I
T
A
GAIN WAS IRRESISTIBLE.
Floor-to-ceiling book stacks, cozy if threadbare chairs, a big potbellied stove hissing and popping in the center of the room, and hot cider and chocolate standing ready with home-baked cookies. Niles saw the moment of pleasure on Leigh’s face and wished he could make sure she always smiled.

And he would, dammit. There might be dangerous times, but he would never doubt his power to control them, and neither would Leigh, if he could build her trust.

She pulled on his arm.

“Hey, shorty,” he said, looking down his nose at her. “I need to be alone with you.”

“We’ve been busy,” she told him. “It isn’t over yet but we’ll be alone soon. We’ll make sure we are.”

“Your sister and Phoebe are comfortable with each other.”

“Jan needs some good friends.” Leigh’s grip on him tightened.

“What about Jan?” Niles said. “Is she Deseron, do you think? She’s your twin.”

“When she’s ready, we’ll find out if the two of us are alike in every way.” Leigh massaged his arm and kissed his hand absently.

“Jan’s going to come and stay with me,” Phoebe announced from the center of the room. “And be a bookseller now and again when I can trick her into it.”

Murmurs of approval followed.

“She wouldn’t come to me, but perhaps that’s just as well.” Leigh stared at Niles. “Where is Sally?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t see her anywhere in the big room.

“Something’s coming,” Leigh said. “I can hear it.”

He shook his head, listening, hearing the wind rattle windows and the familiar sounds of his own hounds, whom he could always contact. But nothing unusual was coming toward the shop that he could tell.

A rush of cold swept in as the door opened, setting the brass bell jingling.

Violet almost fell into the shop, but she was laughing rather than showing any distress. “You won’t believe what we’ve been through,” she said. “I hope we haven’t worried everyone. The van broke down in the middle of nowhere. It’s a long story but we’re all fine.”

“Violet! Thank goodness!” Phoebe exclaimed. “Did the others—”

“They’ve gone home,” Violet broke in on Phoebe. “They all have work to get back to.”

She should be windblown, Niles thought. Or at least more visibly ruffled if there was some long, dramatic story to be told.

Tall, brown-haired, and pleasant to look at, Violet threw down her big purse and opened it wide. “Come and look at all this.”

Bars of candy, packets of chips and gum, wrapped cookies, they all spilled out. “These are what we’ve been living on.” She shoved her hands in her pockets and sighed. “We would have starved if he hadn’t found us.”

He?
Niles looked toward the door again and stopped breathing.

The man who stood there was very familiar, but ought to be a ghost. Maybe he was a ghost. Niles turned to Sean, who stood, motionless.

“My God,” Sean muttered.

“Is it him?” Niles said, his vision blurring. Shock immobilized him.

“Niles. Sean,” the man said. “Damn, I’ve missed you guys.”

Gary, the werehound they all thought had been kidnapped and killed in the Middle East many months earlier, exuded vitality. Blond with light blue eyes, a square jaw and athletic body, he looked the all-American guy. And that’s what he had been before he’d been turned into a werehound. Niles didn’t remember the exact circumstances of his transformation. Those details hadn’t mattered during combat.

“It’s me,” Gary said. “I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

“It’s great,” Sean said, but without a lot of enthusiasm. “It’s a shock. We thought you were dead.” Niles could see him trying to think his way through this development.

“Where have you been?” Niles said. He shouldn’t want to take this man by the throat and shake him, but that was his immediate impulse.

“Escaping one group of captors after another and making my way back from the most Godforsaken pit of a place in Pakistan.” He went to Niles with his arms spread wide.

It was Sean who dragged Niles into a bear hug with Gary, while silently warning Niles to keep his cool and wait for Gary’s explanation.

“Who’s the lady?” Gary said, indicating Leigh. “My mate, Leigh,” Niles said. “We are sealed.” He heard the challenge in his own voice.

More slapping of backs followed and Gary said, “Congratulations—both of you.” He smiled at Leigh.

“We’d better call all the hounds together,” Niles said. He forced himself to keep the tension from his voice. There were many more questions about where Gary had been, and why it had been impossible to get a message to his team.

Mind track should have been possible, at least while they were all still in the same area, yet none of the hounds had been able to reach Gary.

“Give me a little while to settle down before you get the others,” Gary said. “I’m beat. This hasn’t been easy, any of it. But I’m glad to be back.”

“Try some hot cider,” Phoebe said, all warmth as usual.

Gary accepted a mug and walked to the far side of the room where he sat heavily in a chair and leaned his head back. He closed his eyes.

“This is too much,” Sean said. “How could Gary just happen to find the missing women? That’s one hell of a coincidence.”

“Exactly,” Niles agreed. “I don’t get it that he just
walks in like this. We haven’t heard a word about him since the day he was kidnapped.”

Niles shoved aside thoughts of the emotional hell he had been through.

Leigh could sense Niles’s discomfort, and she took him in her arms. “You never told me the full story about Gary.”

“It isn’t a subject Niles likes raised,” Sean said. “He blamed himself for what happened.”

Violet chattered on about being marooned in the wilderness, and Phoebe led her to a back room where they could talk alone. Curious about the returned hero who didn’t seem as wildly welcome as he should be, Leigh disengaged herself from Niles and went to sit on the arm of the man’s chair.

Gary opened his eyes and smiled at her.

“Do you mind if I ask how were you captured?” Leigh knew such a bold question might normally be considered rude, but normal was a concept that no longer seemed to exist in her world.

Gary’s blue eyes, much paler than Niles’s, were troubled. “I thought my brother hounds would be asking that question by now. It was bizarre and it happened so fast.” He bent forward to look around. “Sorry, but is there a restroom?”

“It’s through the storeroom,” Leigh said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

I
N THE FRONT OF THE BOOKSTORE,
Niles paced. Why couldn’t he just celebrate Gary’s returning from the dead and stop feeling resentful of his own pain?

Because something didn’t sit right.

He crossed his arms and stared at the floor. He just couldn’t get his mind around the idea that Gary had survived and lived to get back—without an apparent mark on him. Why wouldn’t he have made contact as soon as he got away, or as soon as possible after that?

And how did he happen upon Violet? She also unsettled him with her vague story of mashed tires and no way to get in touch. Everyone had a cell phone.

She was another of the kidnapped group. Who knew for sure what she was now?

“Where’s Gary going?” Niles asked Sean as he watched Leigh lead him from the room.

“Back with Phoebe and the others, I guess,” Sean responded.

Tamping down the urge to run, Niles calmly headed for the back, catching Sean’s eye on the way.

Sean followed. Part of a window showed between stacks of books. Niles looked out of the windows and grabbed Sean.

“Son of a bitch,” he ground out.

For an instant Niles had seen nothing but a snow-covered field with stands of firs in the distance. Using the full capacity of his sight, he made out an oversized werehound with Gary’s distinctive black and ginger markings, running among the trees.

Leigh hung from his jaws like a rag doll.

They came together at the fringe of the forest.

Niles, Sean, Innes, Ethan, and Campion stood with Piers and Renny, who had made it in from their lone stations on neighboring islands, and Simon was on his way from a more distant point.

Gliding over the snowy field came Saul, with two other men in dark clothes. They joined the hounds. “Can you see anything?” Saul asked Niles.

“A gathering of the wolves on a hill surrounded by sparse trees. They must want to be seen or they would stay in the forest. I’m going to get Leigh back now.”

“We will help you,” Saul said. The only introduction he gave his two companions was, “These are friends of convenience. Reliable in return for favors we all understand. We need every one of us here.”

He and the two other vampires spread out, keeping slightly behind the hounds and distributing themselves as evenly as they could.

“Let’s go.” Niles started to run.

“We have to change,” Campion called out.

Niles wanted to; more than almost anything he wanted to change, but he was stronger as a man than as a werehound and he needed that strength. It no longer mattered if his enemies knew it. “I will go as I am,” he told the others, who made no comments. Not all of them had greater power as men, but they had all chosen to use their hound forms to cover their identities when they were forced to attack.

Around Niles, the running men—with the exception of the vampires—became great, muscular dogs with bared fangs, and the animals gathered speed.

In trees close to the hill the wolves gathered, nine of them by Niles’s count, and Gary.

“They have the advantage,” Niles said. “They intend to kill us as we go up that hill.”

Clenching and unclenching his fists, he watched while Gary, with Leigh on her feet now, pushed her face down in the snow. She looked helpless among the wolves.

“I’m going to push them to react.” Niles walked out of the trees, cupped his hands around his mouth, and yelled, “D’you feel safer hiding behind a woman, Brande?”

“Don’t forget I know you,”
came Gary’s familiar voice in Niles’s head.
“I know how your mind works. You’re soft. You’ve killed but you hated it.”

“I was talking to Brande,” Niles said.

“Talk to me. Brande has made me military leader here. I have a proposition for you. An exchange. You for the woman. Walk up to us slowly while the rest of the team backs away.”

Niles started to walk immediately, trying to formulate a plan as he went.

“Don’t do it,”
Sean snarled into Niles’s mind, leaping
beside him. He ran in front of Niles.
“He doesn’t intend to let Leigh go. They want to kill both of you.”

“I know that.”
Niles turned to the rest and said,
“Stay where you are.”
He exchanged glances with Sean and then with Saul. Their struggle was obvious but they nodded and Saul whispered, “Have it your way.”

Once more Niles turned and leaned into the slippery incline. He went steadily uphill until he was within feet of Gary and Leigh.

“I’m here,” Niles said. “Leigh can go down now.”

Gary continued to stand with the claws of one paw holding Leigh where she was.

“Go back!” she cried. “What difference does it make which one of us dies?”