Scent of Darkness (5 page)

A strong gust of wind bent the trees and hit them like a blast.

The first human screamed. He lifted the stick over his head and, in a panicked movement, lashed out.

Stranger hit him from the side. The humans rolled in the dirt. The stick flashed and roared. Overhead, branches exploded and chips and needles flew like snowflakes.

Stranger came to his feet, clutching the stick. He swung it in a circle. Smashed it against a boulder. Rock chips and moss flew. The stick broke in two.

The first human leaped up and ran.

Stranger stood still, looked at Leader, and spoke.

Leader didn't understand human-speak, but he understood this man. He recognized this man—he stood naked, with dark hair on his head, and dark brows, long, dark, curly lashes that framed familiar golden eyes, and a tattoo that rippled down one arm from his shoulder to his wrist that matched the marks on Stranger's fur.

"Are you all right?" Stranger asked.

Leader looked down. Blood dripped off his chest. His flesh burned like fire. His alpha female licked it, and Leader knew he would survive.

He inclined his head.

"He won't bother you again." The human changed again. More slowly this time, as if the effort cost him. But when he was done, he was a wolf. A wolf wrong. A wolf damned. But a wolf.

Then he sprinted after the human.

Leader took his pack deep into the forest, and hid. Hid from the humans, from Stranger, and from the scent he now recognized.

The scent of damnation.

The storm broke.

How appropriate.

Ann had broken into Jasha's home. Of course, now an unpredicted storm would trap her here. It was no more than she deserved.

She made it up the stairs and into the bedroom without tripping or dropping anything, and as she unpacked and hung her clothes in the closet, she gave herself brownie points for coordination, for good unpacking skills, for not burying her nose in Jasha's suit and breathing in his scent. . . . Nope, she had to take those points away. Sniffing his sleeve while she hung up her coat constituted cheating.

As she worked, she kept straining, listening, waiting for that whisper of awareness that said Jasha had returned to his home. Nothing. She even walked back to the top of the stairs, but he wasn't here.

Her active imagination created the scenario—he'd gone for a walk in the woods, tripped, and broken his leg. Or better yet, he'd been attacked by a cougar, had fought it off, and was even now calling for her..

And she . . . she sensed his distress and hunted through the night until she found him, cleaned and bandaged his wounds, built a stretcher out of saplings, dragged him back to the house, and nursed him. . . . Unfortunately, she couldn't convince even herself of that story.

Not that Jasha couldn't get hurt. He was a daredevil—he rappelled, he skydived, he participated in the Ironman Triathlon once, but the training took too much time from his surfing. He'd been in a cast for three weeks after that ski accident last winter.

She
was the problem. Wounds made her faint, and anyway, why wouldn't she use her cell to call for help?

Immediately, in her imagination, she found herself garbed like Scarlett O'Hara—but there was still that yucky blood problem.

Nope. If Jasha knew what was good for him, he'd stay healthy.

One thing she knew for sure—if he
was
healthy, he'd be here for dinner—Jasha never missed a meal. And if she hurried, she could shower and be dressed in her wraparound black-and-white silk dress, the one that fastened with a single button at the Empire waist.

Her friend Celia had called it the perfect dress for getting laid.

Ann tended to agree, for every time she took a step, the slit in the skirt opened all the way up her thigh, and when she thought about Jasha's tanned hand sliding up her leg, her skin prickled. But, as Celia was fond of pointing out, only the Carmelite nuns who lived near the beach kept Ann from being the oldest virgin in California, and something had to be done.

In a sudden and violent hurry, Ann grabbed the dress, a pair of panties so minuscule they were nothing but lace and elastic, and black stiletto Betsey Johnson sandals with a hard wooden sole that added an inch to her height, and sprinted into the bathroom.

The rich copper tile shower enclosure welcomed her. She set the land-speed record for bathing with Jasha's shampoo and Jasha's soap—made especially for him, and unscented, as he demanded. As soon as she was done, she ran to the locked door and listened, then cracked it and listened again.

Nothing. No sound. He wasn't here yet.

Her heart raced as she toweled herself dry.

It used to embarrass her, the way she longed and lusted when he was nearby. She used to worry that he would notice the way she stammered when he got too close or the way she blushed every time he looked at her.

But he didn't. To Jasha, she was a highly efficient method of filing papers, producing correspondence, and making phone calls. When he was gone, he left Wilder Wines in her hands, and when his executives complained, he stared at them blankly and said, "But Ann does a better job than you."

Of course she did. She had something to prove.

She had
everything
to prove—but she'd been afraid to live, until six months ago when she'd been blindsided by a blow that woke her to the fact that Jasha didn't even know the two basic facts about her.

She was alive. And she was a woman.

Yet she knew everything about him, including that he liked good-looking confident women. So she set out to remake herself.

And she had.

She blew her hair into a shining, slippery mass of strands, and put on makeup—not too much, because she still wasn't particularly skillful, but enough blush to conceal her blanched skin and enough mascara to turn her lashes dark and her eyes bluer.

But if she was going to get naked with a man, she had one more matter to care for. ...

She twisted so her back was to the mirror, and frowned at her distinctive birthmark. Over the years, it hadn't faded. She'd thought about having it removed, but the idea of showing it to a doctor who would ask questions, be incredulous, maybe see more than Ann wanted . . . she couldn't explain that mark. Because how did one explain the impossible?

Swiftly, she used her makeup sponge to dab a splash of foundation over it. Last of all, she donned the panties, the dress, and the shoes.

She stared at herself in the mirror.

How could she look so good, yet feel so much like the Cowardly Lion?

Okay. She was going to go to the great room, get a glass of wine, pose artfully in front of the fire, and wait for Jasha to show up. She could do it. All she had to do was walk downstairs. ...

Above the battering of the storm, she heard a blast of sound from outside.

She knew that sound. She'd grown up in downtown LA.

A gunshot.

Running to the window, she crouched low and off to the side. Warily she separated the curtains and peeked out.

The window faced the front of the house. Late-afternoon sunshine was diffused by billows of storm clouds. Wind blew the rain sideways. Lightning flickered across the branches of the cedars and pines, Douglas firs and rhododendrons, casting them in bleak shades of black-and-white.

She could see the shiny-wet roof of her car, but no one on the driveway or in the yard, no glint of a gun or sign of movement under the encroaching forest.

Yet this was the wilderness. Maybe someone was out there hunting.

She let the curtains fall—and heard a high, distant scream, then another shot. She leaped back from the window and knelt on the floor.

For long minutes, she heard nothing.

Finally, she looked out again, and stared hard at the ground beneath the thrashing trees.

Gunfire, and an inhuman scream. Weren't panthers supposed to scream? Had someone shot a panther?

Were
there panthers in Washington?

Her impression about Jasha's bleak, ominous castle changed—she was nestled inside, safe from the elements, from the beasts, from a madman with a gun. Maybe that was why Jasha loved this place; once inside, he could let down the guard she sensed he kept around him.

Uneasily, she opened the bedroom door.

Someone was moving around downstairs. Someone— or something.

She heard a soft snuffling interrupted by repeated growls.

Had she reset the alarm?

No. She hadn't. And someone in the forest had a gun.

Had someone who was not Jasha—someone crazy, someone Ted Kaczynski—shot him and walked into his house?

She felt silly. Overly dramatic. She was plain Ann Smith, administrative assistant and nerd. Nothing harrowing ever happened to her. Yet she tasted fear. Taking off her stiletto heels, she held one in each hand as she walked quietly down the corridor. She paused on the balcony.

She heard snarling. Panting.

Did Jasha have a dog?

She peeked over the rail.

Yes—a dog stood facing the flickering fire. It was tall at the shoulders, long, and gaunt, yet it easily weighed 150 pounds, with a black and silver coat that gleamed with red and gold in the flames. It was growling, a distinct, constant, bass rumble of displeasure rising from deep in its chest.

Ann wasn't afraid of dogs, but she'd never heard such a menacing sound in her life.

Then the dog turned its head, and its pointed snout, its scarred cheek, and its white-fanged snarl sent her scurrying back against the wall.

A wolf.
A wolf stood before the fire.

Her heart pounded so hard the sound thundered in her ears.

How had a wolf broken into the house? Was the back door open? Had it crashed through a window?

Where was Jasha?
If he walked in on this thing, he could get hurt.

She sidled forward and slid along the rail, examining the room from every angle.

No sign of her boss, but although the wolf's rumblings had subsided, Ann knew it was dangerous. A killer, A predator.

As she retreated, the clear-minded planning that made her such a valuable administrative assistant kicked in.
Return to my room. Lock the door. Call Jasha on his cell and warn him. Then call 911 so they can get animal services out here.
...

She stopped backing up, and stared.

The wolf looked different somehow.

She squeezed her eyes shut. She opened them again.

I'm allergic to something. The new-car smell. . . Jasha's soap
... I
have to be. Because I'm hallucinating.

But no, really.

He looked . . . longer. His muscular shoulders had lost hair, and his ears ... his ears grew bare and rounded, and slid down the side of his head.

The wolf had begun to ... had begun to resemble a man.

The man had begun to resemble Jasha.

Chapter 4

Oh, yes. Ann was definitely nuts. The stress of coming up here to confront Jasha had caused her hold on reality to snap.

Now shock ripped away her good sense. Without making a sound on the hardwood, and drawn by the same fascination that always plagued her in Jasha's presence, she walked toward the top of the stairs.

The wolf stood on its hind paws. Stood erect, like a man.

Her blood stirred. Her skin grew sensitive. The air in the house had grown thick and heated.

She recognized the signs. That
was
Jasha. That , . . that
thing
was really Jasha.

The pelt retreated to the top of his head and became Jasha's black, black hair with a premature streak of silver on each side. His skin absorbed the fur, and she saw his right arm, and its distinctive tattoo. . . . She broke into a light sweat.

He was naked. Nude. Absolutely without covering of any kind.

And apparently she was the weirdest perv ever to walk the earth, for even in the midst of her madness, she found the sight of his bare, toned butt riveting. She wanted to shut her eyes against the sight, to take a deep breath and give herself a stern warning about the dangers she faced.

But as she inched down each step, she couldn't risk shutting her eyes, and she certainly didn't dare take a deep breath.

Don't stumble, Ann.

Don't make a sound, Ann.

The transition was happening slowly, and once or twice, it—he—groaned as if the growth and change pained him. The paws became hands, large hands with Jasha's long fingers, and he used those fingers to push back his hair in a gesture she recognized as one of exasperation and worry.

With each step down the stairs, her frozen disbelief became certainty . . . and fear. The man she adored was a wolf. A beast. Something unholy, unnatural.

She brought the bad -people. She always brought the bad people.