Stroke of Midnight (26 page)

I'd been trained to fight, to claw and scratch and bite if I had to, anything to keep a man from overpowering me. Right now every trick I'd been taught fled as blinding lust rocketed through my body.

His mouth was hard; his tongue soft. He bit my lip, yanked my shirt from my pants and scraped his nails across my back. I gasped, bowed, rubbed the front of me all over the front of him.

My hands dived under his shirt, touching his skin, gauging his muscles, skimming his ribs.

He groaned into my mouth, the vibration against both my lips and fingertips a dual sensation that set my pulse pounding. He skated his teeth across my jaw, then latched on to my neck and suckled.

I arched, and he buried his face in my breasts, filled his hands with my ass and lifted me so I could wrap my legs around his hips and ride his erection along another pulsing, pounding, mindless part of me.

The door slammed and we both froze. His breath brushed the damp spots made by his mouth. My nipples tightened. My body throbbed.

"Just the wind," he murmured. "We're okay."

Funny, I didn't feel okay at all.

He let me go, and my legs slid down his. My feet touched the floor, and my cheeks flooded crimson again. I tried to turn away, but he hauled me back into his arms, leaning down and pressing his forehead to mine.

"Maya," he whispered in a shaky voice. "What was that?"

"A kiss?"

Clay let out a harsh bark of laughter that tapped our heads together hard enough to make me blink. "That's like calling dynamite a firecracker."

He ran a hand over my hair, then kissed my cheek. "Bad idea. I'm sorry. I don't know what got into me, except—"

"Except?"

"I've wanted to kiss you since you walked out of the shower and tried to beat the crap out of me."

I smiled. "You get off on that, huh?"

"Looks that way."

"I suppose you'll come if I kick you where it counts."

He lifted a pale brow. "Let's not find out."

I'd lived too many years in a household of males not to be blunt in both my language and my behavior. Probably one of the many reasons I was still alone. Most men found me too much like one of the guys. None had ever found me as intriguing as Clay appeared to.

My gaze lowered to the bulge in his jeans. Yep, he really, really liked me.

I took a step toward him and he stumbled back. "Bad idea, remember?"

"Seems like a good idea to me."

"Maya, no. The last woman I—"

He scrubbed a hand through his hair, making the bright strands stick straight up, then whirled away, leaning over the table full of skins and hanging his head. "The last woman I cared about got killed. Badly."

"Is there a good way to be killed?"

"I suppose not. But Serena—Well, let's just say there wasn't much left of her to bury."

He sure knew how to kill the mood.

"She was a
Jäger-Sucher
like me."

"A werewolf killed her?"

"No. She had a different specialty."

"I don't understand."

"Different divisions, different monsters."

"You're telling me there's more in this world than werewolves?"

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "A lot more."

I opened my mouth to ask what, then decided I really didn't want to know.

CHAPTER 5

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^
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Suddenly Clay straightened. "Uh-oh."

"What's uh-oh?"

"The wolf skin is missing." He pointed to the table in front of him.

I hadn't gotten that far down the display before I'd become creeped out by all the dead things. Otherwise I would have noticed the great big empty space—that had a label. A label that very clearly read "wolf."

"Son of a bitch!" Clay twirled, "Joseph Ahkeah is the skin walker."

"Maybe he just decided to throw on a wolf skin and take a little walk. Traveling a mile in someone's moccasins, so to speak. That doesn't mean he's an evil, soulless killer."

"Just throwing on the skin won't make a skinwalker. Both the skin and the magic are necessary. A man like Joseph would know very well what he was doing."

"You have no idea what kind of magic he'd use?"

Clay had been stalking around the room as if searching for something. He stopped with his hands full of loose newspaper clippings. "Kind?"

"A spell? A sacrifice? Mystic powder? A wand?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to Ahkeah about." He shrugged. "I guess it doesn't really matter
how
he became one. What matters is
when
—he dies."

I rolled my eyes at the line straight out of a John Wayne movie. My brothers talked like that, and it annoyed the hell out of me. Why did I find the same behavior in Clay kind of cute?

Cute? Clayton Philips was a lean, mean, crazy fighting machine. Just because he could kiss better than any man I'd ever locked lips with didn't make him sane.

Still, I had to admit that being in this house, seeing Joseph's collection, hearing the curse of the red moon rising had made me lean a little bit closer to Clay's side of the fence.

An ear-splitting explosion erupted outside. The ground shook; I swore I heard a flame thrower. I raced Clay to the window and discovered there
were
flames and they
were
being thrown. Toward the sky, from the hull that had once been his SUV.

But that wasn't the sight that made me stare, blink, rub my eyes, then stare some more.

The naked Indian man was still there.

The air wavered with heat. Smoke blew in waves, obscuring, then revealing him again. He stood about fifty yards beyond the flaming car.

His hair was loose, long, and black. He wasn't tall, but he was muscular. He looked as if he'd been lifting small trucks as a hobby.

"Ahkeah," Clay muttered.

The man cocked his hand behind his ear, like a major league pitcher. His black hair swung. So did other, non-black parts a little farther south.

He threw whatever had been in his palm. Something small and dark wafted end over end in our direction. Going by previous experience, I should have started running.

But he bent down and picked up what appeared to be a fur cape, with a snout. He positioned the head on top of his own, and the fur settled over his shoulders. Lifting his hands to the sky, he spoke, though I couldn't hear the words. However, I heard the howl that followed very well.

The sound was so loud it made me blink, and when my eyes opened a wolf stood where the man had been. He was sleek and dark; I'd seen the animal before—outside my cabin. But how could he have gotten here so quickly?

Clay grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the back door muttering, "Another fucking grenade. Do you believe this guy?"

I did now. I'd seen him change with my own two eyes.

Clay shoved me outside. "Run!"

He didn't have to tell me twice. I was getting very good at dodging grenades thrown into the houses I occupied.

We weren't more than thirty feet from the porch when the place blew. The heat was intense. The pressure lifted me up and tossed me several feet before depositing me, face first, into the desert dust.

There was a thump to my right, which I certainly hoped was Clay and not the skinwalker.

I managed to turn my head, open my eyes. Clay was already on his feet, gun drawn. I moaned and closed my eyes again.

"Maya?" He dropped to his knees. His hand touched my neck. "You okay?"

Nothing felt broken. I ached, my palms burned, my cheek too. I'd live. Again.

"We have to move. The fire will spook him for a while, but he'll be back."

That got me up—almost. I made it to a crouch before my head spun. I fell on my butt, and Clay shoved my face between my knees. "Breathe," he ordered.

A few minutes later the ground stopped spinning, and I tentatively lifted my head. "That was the same wolf."

"Yes."

"But it was at my cabin. We drove here…"

"I've heard a skinwalker can run as fast as a car. There've been reports of people riding along desert highways and seeing a wolf race past them, then disappear. Considering what just happened, I'll have to believe the hearsay."

"Why do you think he's coming back?"

"For you."

How could I forget? I was chosen. Special, special me.

"But why… ?" I indicated the fireball that had once been a house and a car. "If he needs me on the night of the full, red moon, doesn't it defeat his purpose to blow me into itty-bitty pieces?"

"Maybe he doesn't need you alive."

I lifted my brow, which felt a little singed. "You're quite the cheery fellow, aren't you?"

Clay shrugged. "I don't know what he's up to, why he needs you, what he's planning. All I know is that I'll make sure he's dead before we are."

I stared into his nearly black eyes, and I knew several things for certain. He meant what he said. I trusted him. And he
wasn't
crazy.

Clay and I were in this together now. No going back. Not if I wanted to live.

"We need to leave, Maya."

Clay clapped his palm against mine and hauled me up without any trouble. When I was on my feet, he kept holding on, and I let him.

His gaze drifted to my lips. I swayed, and I wasn't even dizzy. I wanted to kiss him, right there in the middle of another burning wasteland. We should be running for cover, calling the cops; instead we were staring into each other's eyes and puckering up.

Clay dropped my hand and stepped away. At least one of us had some wits left.

"He'll be back as soon as his people brain overrules his wolf fear of the flames."

He started walking toward a distant butte. I hurried after him. "Where are we going?"

"We can't stay here. We've got no cover. He blew up my car." Clay shook his head. "I really liked that car."

Just as I'd liked my house, my clothes, my computer. But I kept the thought to myself.

"I'd head to another house," he continued, "but this is the middle of the reservation. Joseph is a leader. I doubt anyone would help us."

I considered that they might do worse than
not help
, and agreed with his rationale. We were strangers. Outsiders. We didn't know who our enemy was. He could be anyone or anything.

"We'll find a place to hide. Set a trap. I wish we were near the mountains. I'm better in the mountains than the desert."

"You're the expert," I said. "Let's just steer clear of that canyon-of-the-dead thing. I don't suppose you have a map."

"In the car. Along with my rifle and extra ammunition."

I stopped. Clay kept walking. More had been lost than some of my hearing. We were in the desert with nothing but a Beretta, a Ruger, the bullets still in them, and each other.

How would I write one of the heroes in my action-adventure novels out of a situation like this?

I had no idea. My muse was still deathly silent.

"What are we going to do?"

"I told you. Set a trap. Kill him. Then file a report."

I giggled, and the sound held a tinge of hysteria. Clay must have heard it because he cut a quick glance in my direction, though he never faltered.

"I've done it before, Maya."

"You said this was your first skinwalker."

He shrugged. "A werewolf's a werewolf."

"You sure about that?"

"No."

I suppressed the return of the hysterical giggle. "Don't sugarcoat it, Clay. I can handle anything."

His face creased in concern. "Don't worry. I can."

"Worry?
Moi
? You can't be serious."

How did Clay know that worry was my middle name? Because he knew everything about me, or so he said. I wanted to know everything about him, or at least as much as he'd tell me. Besides, talking passed the time and might make me forget to look behind me every few seconds so I could see the wolf before it snapped at my heels or tore out my throat.

"Why are you better in the mountains?" I asked.

"I'm from Appalachia."

I recalled his use of "y'all" when we'd first met, but other than that, I'd never heard a trace of an accent.

"When did you leave?"

"Long, long time ago."

"Why?"

"There was nothing left for me there."

His words fell into a deep silence. I understood what he meant. I'd left behind family, friends, a condo. Still, there'd been nothing for me in Chicago either.

"Your family?"

"Dead."

The way he said it made me wonder, but the strained expression on his face wouldn't let me ask. I should have known he'd answer anyway.

"They were killed by werewolves. All of them."

"And you?"

"I wasn't."

"So you became a hunter."

"I was always a hunter. We needed to eat. I was out hunting the day—" He took a deep breath and walked faster. "The day they died. I came home and followed the tracks. I thought it was just wolves, though wolves don't behave like these did."

"How's that?"

"They were an army. Alpha general, foot soldiers, military movements."

I frowned. "How old were you?"

"Sixteen."

"And you knew what they were doing?"

"Not then. I learned later how common the behavior was—in regular werewolves out for a little fun and food."

"Regular werewolves? Isn't that an oxymoron?"

He smiled, but the expression held little joy. How could it when he was recounting something so horrific? I was tempted to take his hand, but after the flare that had passed between us the last time we'd touched, I was scared to, as well.

"There are countless monsters. Some you've heard of, some you couldn't even imagine. Then there are variations of them—mutations, new strains and old. The skinwalker is ancient. A lot of the monsters are. Then there are the ones made by the Nazis."

"Nazis? I hate those guys."

Clay laughed at last, which made me smile. He'd been so sad, I'd been contemplating ways to make him happy—each involving various sexual practices I'd only read about.

"My boss, Edward Mandenauer, was a spy during World War Two. He discovered a secret lab in the Black Forest where Mengele was doing a lot more than experimenting on the Jews. But, by the time Mandenauer reached the hidden laboratory, all the monsters were gone. He formed the
Jäger-Suchers
, and he's been hunting them ever since."

My smile faded. "You expect me to believe there've been monsters engineered by the Nazis spreading throughout the world since World War Two?"

"You saw the skinwalker."

"He wasn't made by the Nazis."

"True. But if you can believe in him, why can't you believe in the others?"

I did believe, and it only made me want to glance over my shoulder all the more. Safety girl had just discovered that her cacophony of worries were minor when compared to the supernatural terrors she'd never even known about. It's hard to accept that the little bubble of security and harmony you'd been constructing since your mother hadn't come home one day was only an illusion.

Amazingly, I was a lot less upset about my bubble bursting than I would have thought. Perhaps because Clay was by my side. So far, he'd kept me alive. And while I'd never been much for adventure, except on the page, he was fast becoming the best time I'd ever had.

We reached a set of low-lying indigo hills as the sun met the western horizon. I'd been sweating like a sow beached in the desert sand. The instant the sun disappeared and shadows spread across the land, everything went gray, still, and cool.

A rumbling growl was my only warning an instant before something slammed into me from behind. I kissed dirt, again, but I had bigger worries than a fat lip.

This wolf meant to kill me.