The Dark Side (27 page)

Silence.

“The truth, Marco.”

“She may.”

My heart grabbed onto that ‘may’ like a lifeline. “Then she could be okay?”

“Apart from the mutation she carries? Apart from not being able to live the life most of us live? Perhaps. But I have been a vampire a long time. I have seen many become our kind. Most do not react this way. Even those who did not choose it. They adjust.”

“Rhi’s different. Her virus is different. Maybe her body needs more time.”

“Perhaps. But she also needs to want to adjust.”

“What are you saying?”

Green eyes met mine and they seemed deep and endless. I wanted to look away but I told myself I could trust Marco. He wouldn’t try for my mind. He was on my side.

“Those who take the change this way—those who are   it to this extent—”I licked my lips and swallowed against a mouth dry as grave dust. “Yes? Just tell me.”

“Those ones. Most often they choose the sunrise.”

* * *

Choose the sunrise
. The words echoed through my head on constant replay. Marco thought Rhianna would kill herself. Would walk out into the sun and let it burn her away rather than live. Would become a pile of stinking acid ash like the vampire outside my office.

Not on my watch.

Not while there was any chance I could get hold of Smith and find a way to fix what had been done to her. Not change her back—I knew that wasn’t possible—but make her a normal noncontagious vampire. So she could feed and be free.

I made them bring her out of the sedation before we left for the Retreat. Just enough so her eyes flickered open slowly.

“Rhi, it’s Ash.” I held my breath, wondering if she’d respond. Or whether we’d get screams or violence.

“Ash?” She sounded tired. “I’m sleepy.”

“You’re in hospital. It’s the medicine.”

“Medicine?”

Shit. She didn’t remember. Well, maybe that was a good thing. I wasn’t going to tell her. “Everything’s fine. They’re taking good care of you.”

“Okay.” Her eyes started to drift close again.

I squeezed her hand before she could fall back asleep. “I have to go away for a while. But I’ll be back. We can talk then.”

She smiled at me. “I dreamed strange things. There was blood.”

Surely it couldn’t hurt to let her think it was all a nightmare just for a little while. “Bad dreams. It’s the medicine. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

I started to rise but she shot out a hand and grabbed my arm. “Careful,” she said. “There are monsters in the dark. Don’t go into the woods today.”

My pulse sped into overdrive. The woods? Did she mean the Retreat or was she just dreaming? With no way of knowing, I nodded at the doctor. “I’m fine, Rhi. Go back to sleep.” The doctor pushed the plunger on the syringe, sending another dose of whatever the heck they used to sedate vampires into her system.

* * *

“Cutting it close, aren’t you?” Ani asked as we reached the front porch of the Retreat’s main building.

I glanced back over my shoulder to where the sun was burning its way down the sky. “Moonrise isn’t for another forty-five minutes.”

“You’re meant to be here at least two hours before, you’re new.” Ani’s eyes narrowed at me.

“Dan’s old.” Old and currently humping our luggage into our guesthouse.

She shook her head, making her red curls bounce around her face, like a pissed off Raggedy Ann doll. “Old won’t help if you leave it too long.”

“I’d be okay with Dan with me.”

“Neither of you will be okay if you suddenly change into wolves while driving a car.” Ani leaned back against the porch post, crossing her arms. She looked at me pointedly as I tried not to flinch. That had happened to Dan and me once, back when he’d been new. In fact it had been the thing that had made me realize I couldn’t be with him and stay human.

That had made me break up with him.

Not my favorite memory. Obviously Ani thought I needed the reminder of how wrong things could go. I sighed. I didn’t want to fight with my Alpha on top of everything else. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. Rough weekend.”

“I heard.” Her eyes were a deep, deep green in the growing twilight. “Are you okay?”

I shrugged. There was no way to answer that question. Not in the time left before the moon came up.

“Go change,” Ani said, smiling at last. “We can talk after.”

* * *

It was pretty much full dark when Dan and I walked toward the stand of woods nearest the buildings. The pull of the moon tingled through me, like being washed in waves of warm, wild energy. But there was a thread of nerves under the anticipation. I hadn’t done this often enough to be blasé.

“Ready?” Dan said as we reached the trees. He smiled at me, and I knew he felt the same thrum of the moon’s invitation.

I smiled back, knowing that for the next nine hours or so I could let the wolf rule and not have to worry or think about everything that waited for us back in Seattle. “Last one to change is a rotten egg.”

Dan’s laughter turned into a liquid howl as the moon broke over the trees and hit us. Wolves don’t laugh so I had to content myself with yipping at him, to let him know how ridiculous he sounded.

He waggled his ears at me then came over and bumped shoulders with me. “
Wanna run
?”

I leaned into him for a moment, breathing in his scent. But the moon surged in my blood, calling me to move. The wolf wanted action and I wanted to give her free rein.

Rhi’s ‘don’t go into the woods today’ echoed through my head. I ignored it. I was surrounded by the Pack. Dan was here. The Retreat was safe.

* * *

I ran with Dan, dodging and winding through the forest trails, drinking in the night scents as we played, nipping at each other’s heels and staging mock ambushes in a puppyish fit of silliness that reflected the need to let the tension of the last few weeks go.

When we crossed the trail of a larger group, led by Sam, we turned and followed it until we caught up with the group of wolves pelting through the night for no better reason than the sheer joy of movement. I lost track of Dan in the darkness and the flickering bodies of wolves flowing around me.

When someone howled, signaling that a scent had been found, I pulled back.

I didn’t want to hunt. Not tonight.

I stopped on the side of the path until everyone had run past, ears flicking backward and forward as I tried to figure out exactly where I was. We’d run for miles and nothing around me looked familiar. I hadn’t been a wolf long enough to know every twist and turn of the woods that covered hundreds of acres of the Retreat.

I could tell I was higher up than I’d started. That probably meant the main house lay down and to the west of where I stood. I could either go north on the tail of the pack I’d just left or continue upward on a faint trail I could see leading east.

Up sounded good. If for no other reason than it should let me get my bearings if I could find a clearing with a view.

I headed up, following my nose, which promised rock and grass up ahead rather than leaf mold and the damper scent of trees that surrounded me now.

Twigs cracked under my paws and I amused myself pouncing on shadows as the trail grew steeper. The tension riding me started to melt away. Until I stepped out into the clearing at the trailhead and smelled a scent that didn’t belong anywhere in the Retreat.

Vampire.

I froze, half in and out of the tree line, trying to listen and smell and look.

Nothing
.

Nothing but for the distinctive scent of vampire hanging on the breeze.

“Don’t hide in the trees, little doggy.”

The voice came from my right, soft and eerie. Sexless somehow. I turned my head, scanning the shadows, trying to decide whether to retreat or just stay where I was. There might be more than one. If I ran, I might just be running into trouble.

“
Dan
,” I thought urgently.

“I don’t think he can hear you from so far away, doggy.”

The fur on my neck stood on end. The vamp had heard my thoughts?

“I’ll come out if you do,” the voice said. This time it held a coaxing note that made me think female.

“
Fat chance
,” I thought and took a step backward. “
Dan,
hurry.”

“Don’t do that,” the voice said sharply. “Play nice or the other little doggies will be in trouble.
Come here
.”

The last two words cracked like a whip.

I fought the urge to move forward. “
You come out first
.”

Leaves rustled and suddenly a woman appeared in the clearing. A woman where I’d swear no one had been a few seconds ago. She wore a long dark dress but where her skin was visible it glowed like the moon. So how the hell hadn’t I seen her?

A growl rumbled in my throat. “
Who are you
?”

“Oh no, puppy. No names. Not yet. All you need to know is that I’m the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega.”

She smiled at me and I moved uneasily, bracing myself for an attack. There was nothing particularly sane in the expression. It made me glad I couldn’t see her eyes. But crazy or not, there was something horribly familiar about her face. She moved her head a little and a shadow fell across her mouth, turning her lips dark and suddenly I realized who she was. The woman from the club. The one with the muzzled vamp.

Fuck.

“I said, come here,” she repeated and the urge to move blossomed within me.

More vamp powers. Double fuck. I needed to shield. I reached for the knowledge Ani had implanted in my head but it was still a mostly confused jumble of impressions and feelings. So I went with the glass cage image, trying to imagine the moonlight solidified around me. For a moment, the need to walk toward her lessened and I thought I’d succeeded.

Then she just laughed. “Don’t be rude, puppy. You don’t want to annoy me. Come
here
.”

I couldn’t resist the words this time. The glass in my head shattered and my paws moved without me willing them to. One step. Two. Three. Then I sank my claws into the dirt and held on for grim life, snarling at her. “
I’m not a pet
.”

“He said you would be difficult.” She sighed theatrically. “I had hoped he would be wrong.”

He? Who was he? Smith? Tate? Esteban?

“
Difficult? You don’t know the meaning of the word. But you will once the pack gets your scent.
”

“I think your pack may be otherwise occupied.”

As she spoke the crack of a gunshot echoed through the night. It was far away, but a barrage of furious protesting howls rose immediately.

Furious but not anguished. I strained my ears, trying to catch every nuance of the sound. I heard only anger, not distress. There’d be more than anger if the bullet had found a target. I had to believe no one was hurt. Which meant my most immediate problem was making sure I didn’t get hurt either. I turned all my attention back to the vampire. “
What do you want
?”

“You have something of mine. Several things.”

“
I really don’t
.”

“I want her.”

“
I have no idea who you’re talking about
.”

Anger twisted her face. “She is mine. We made her. You have no right to keep her from me.”

Made her? Was she talking about Rhianna? No way was I handing Rhi over to some lunatic vamp. I tried to lunge at her but my paws were suddenly rooted to the grass.

The vamp leaned toward me and her breath—old blood and something that made my hackles rise even more stiffly—blew across my face.

“My child. I want the child.”

Child? Well, I guess Rhianna was a child to a vampire. A growl rumbled through me. “
If you’re talking about my friend then sorry, I know both her parents and neither of them is called alpha or omega
.”

“They will be called dead if you cross me.”

“
Try it
.” I snapped my teeth, straining forward, though I got nowhere. She danced backward, the skirt of her dress swirling around her. Fabric brushed my mouth and I snapped again, felt teeth engage as the smell of vampire and violets and soap flowed into my nose. A piece of the skirt pulled free and I spat it onto the grass. “
Just set one foot across Caldwell’s border
—”

“Give me the child,” she shrieked. Then, as the sound of howls rose again, closer this time, her face suddenly wiped clean of expression. “Last warning, puppy.”

“
Bite me.
”

She smiled, teeth gleaming almost as white as her skin in the moonlight. “Oh, I will. Eventually. The taste of your blood will be sweet.”

Another snarl boiled out of my throat. “
The last vamp who thought that found the price a little too high
.”

“I am not McCallister Tate.”

“
You’re doing a pretty good impression of being as batshit crazy as him
.”

“Do not presume, puppy,” she snapped. “I told you last warning.”

“
I heard you the first time
.”

The howls were closer still and she looked behind me at the tree where I’d been standing.

“I have to go,” she said.

“
Really? So soon? But I wanted you to stay and meet the family
.” I bared my teeth at her, wanting to throw my head back and howl like my packmates but still not able to move.

“You need to learn respect,” she said softly. “Consider this a lesson.”

Her hand slashed toward me, there was a searing pain in my head and then everything went dark.

* * *

I woke to the sensation of something warm and wet brushing the fur on my face. Dan’s scent surrounded me, sharpened by anxiety. I cracked open an eye just as his tongue swiped my face again.

“
Ew
,” I thought, protesting. “
What are you doing
?” I was lying in the clearing, pretty much where I’d been when the vamp had put the whammy on me. I could smell other wolves. Sam and Ani. They stood behind Dan, watching me, ears flicking backward and forward between me and the noise of the pack howling in the distance.

Dan nosed my ear. “
You were unconscious
.”