Unleash the Night (19 page)

Even Dante had to admit that was living dangerously.

“Are we to wait until he kills an innocent?” Nicolette asked. “Wait until he shows himself as a changeling to the senator? I have already lost enough children. I will not lose another. I want him out of my house. If I try to force him out, he will kill me or one of my cubs. I know it. He has never been right mentally.”

“He killed both of his parents when he was only twenty,” Zack added. “They were both highly trained and powerful predators. Imagine what he can do now that he has trained, too.”

Savitar passed a disgusted look to Dante. “I'm just an observer in this. At the end of the day, the final vote falls to you guys.” He looked back at Nicolette and Zack. “But remember this, if you're wrong, it will be my wrath you face. Greed is for humans; it's not for the Katagaria.” He gave Zack a gimlet stare. “Force a wrongful hunt and it will come back on you.”

“Wren is a killer,” Zack reiterated. “I say we call out the Strati and put him down.”

“I second that,” Nicolette said.

Savitar let out a heavy sigh. “We have two motions to hunt and kill Wren Tigarian. All those in favor, say aye.”

*   *   *

Wren sighed as he shrugged his shirt off and ran water to wash his face. He was tired, yet all he could think of was going to see Maggie again. The compulsion inside him was like a madness.

“Why do I feel like this?” he said between clenched teeth. It was suicide to pursue anything else with a woman like her and he knew it. It wasn't as if they were mates.

He checked his hand again. Even now, there was no mark. Why did he feel like this? He'd spent all evening with her and still he wanted more.

It didn't make sense.

He washed his face, then turned off the water and ran his damp hands through his hair. As he reached for a towel, he felt a strange fissure in the air around him.…

Wren cocked his head in a very tigerlike pose as he listened and sensed the air around him.

Two seconds later, he smelled the scent of a predator.

Wren turned, but before he could even focus his gaze, something sharp pierced his chest. He cursed as he staggered back.

“Get the collar ready.”

The voices seemed to come from far away. His vision dimmed. Wren cursed as he realized he'd been tranked, but he refused to succumb to it.

“Fuck this,” he snarled, shifting from human to tiger.

He lunged out to find four humans in the hallway.

“Shoot him!” one snapped.

He jumped at the one with the gun. As he made contact, the human turned into a tiger. Wren felt another sting to his back as two of the humans tried to get a holding noose around his neck. If they succeeded, they would have him.

Shifting to the form of a leopard, he knew his only hope was to outrun them. He ran at the closed window and jumped out to the street below. Glass shattered and shards of it embedded his flesh.

His entire body throbbed as he hit the ground hard.

He lay on the asphalt for only an instant to catch his breath before he forced himself to get up and sprint up the back alley, toward the convent down the street. He could hear the others giving chase.

Blood was pouring from his cuts as he raced. He had to get away from them. They would kill him if he slowed down. But at the rate he was going, he couldn't last much longer. Between the trank and his cuts, he was fading fast.

His heart pounding, he knew he'd have to find a new haven or he was dead.

*   *   *

Marguerite was finishing up her dishes when she heard the sound of someone knocking on her back door.

She frowned, half-afraid of going to it. No one should be in her backyard at this late hour, and she'd watched enough episodes of
America's Most Wanted
to know not to even peek outside.

Instead, she reached for her phone to call the police.

“Maggie?”

Her frown deepened as she recognized Wren's voice from outside. Why would he be in her backyard?

Maybe she was imagining it.

“Maggie, please let me in.”

Still clutching the phone just in case, she pushed the curtains aside to see him on the patio completely naked. But more than that, he was covered in blood. His breathing ragged, his face was scratched and bruised. It looked like he'd been in some sort of accident.

“Oh my God, Wren,” she breathed as she opened the door to let him inside. “What happened?”

He didn't speak as he stumbled into her kitchen.

“Wren?”

He fell to his knees and looked up at her as he continued to pant. “I'm sorry, Maggie. I didn't know where else to go.”

Her heart hammering in panic, she knelt beside him. “I'll call—”

“No police,” he said with a groan. “No doctors.”

“But you're—”

“No!” he snapped, grabbing the phone out of her hands. “They'll kill me.”

“Who'll kill you?”

She watched helplessly as his eyes rolled back in his head and he passed out at her feet. An instant later, instead of a man on her floor, there was …

Something.

She staggered back, away from the creature. It looked as if it was a strange mixture of snow leopard and white tiger, and it was huge.

Marguerite had never seen anything like it. Part of her wanted to scream and another part of her was held transfixed by what she saw.

“This isn't happening.…”

She had to be dreaming.

Yet there was no arguing with what was on her floor. She looked to the bloody footprints that led inside her house. They were human.

They were Wren's.

And they stopped at the tigard.…

“I'm having a nervous breakdown. I'm delusional.” That was it. She was having a flashback.

You don't take drugs.

“Well then, mind, please explain this shit to me, huh?”

But there was no explanation. At least not a logical one. Wren had come into her house, looking like someone had beaten him up, and now there was a bleeding animal on her floor.

A
big
bleeding animal on her floor.

“Okay, Marguerite, you live in New Orleans. You read Anne Rice and Jim Butcher. You've seen
Silver Bullet.…
But he ain't no werewolf.”

No, he was something else.

And now she understood what he'd been trying to tell her without saying it explicitly. Then again, he'd told her exactly what he was and she'd stupidly brushed it aside.

Now she understood why he'd been able to jump into the tiger cage and not get hurt. How he had healed from that bullet wound so fast.

He wasn't human.

At least not entirely.

“I didn't know where else to go.”

His words went through her. Most likely, he'd known what would happen the minute he passed out—it was probably why he'd refused to spend the night with her before. Yet he had trusted her enough in his hour of need to seek her out.

His life was now in her hands. If she called the police, an ambulance, or even animal rescue, they would lock him in a cage and never let him out.

Or worse, as he'd pointed out, they would kill him.

Her heart pounding, she moved closer to the large cat on her floor. With a shaking hand, she reached out to touch his soft pelt. It was like stroking a thick, silky cat. She'd never felt anything softer. Impulsively, she buried her face in the fur and let it caress her skin.

“Is it really you, Wren?”

He didn't respond in any way.

And he was still bleeding.

Terrified of him dying there on her floor, she tried to move him, only to learn that he seemed to weigh about as much as her car. With no other idea of what to do, she went to her bathroom to get alcohol, antibiotic cream, and bandages.

“What the hell,” she said as she gathered them. “He healed fast enough after the gunshot. All freaky Were-People heal quickly, right?” If she bandaged him up, he should be up and around in no time.

At least that's what she hoped.

But as she returned to his side and started cleaning his wounds, she couldn't help but wonder who or what had hurt him and why. Most important, she couldn't help wondering if whoever had done this would be able to find him.

And her.

Chapter 9

Wren came awake slowly to find a severe, pounding ache in his skull that seemed to be echoed in every single part of his body. His ears were buzzing as he slowly blinked open his eyes and tried to focus them.

The first thing he saw was a dark green sofa.

Where the hell am I?

Suddenly it all came rushing back. The tigers who were chasing him. The people who'd tried to trank him. The mad dash through the back alleys of New Orleans. The car that had slammed into him as he darted across the street to avoid another predator.

The impact had sent him flying into a store on Decatur Street and the ensuing pandemonium of tourists running from a snow leopard, and men with guns, had allowed him to escape his pursuers.

With no other choice, he'd gone to Maggie's.…

His tail twitched.

“Oh God.”

He looked up at the startled sound of Maggie's voice to see her standing in her kitchen, her eyes wide as she watched him. She was terrified. The pungent smell of it called out to the predator inside him.

A predator that had been tamed by her.… For once, the beast within was at peace. There was no desire to attack. No desire to harm.

Instead, it wanted only to feel her warm hand in its fur.…

“It's okay, kitty,” she said in that odd high-pitched voice that humans reserved for small children and pets. “Don't eat the nice lady, okay? She's not going to hurt you, boy. She's only going to step over here so that you don't pounce. Please don't pounce.”

She moved a little closer, eyeing him carefully. Her voice dropped two octaves as she spoke to him again. “Are you really in there, Wren? Do you know it's me?”

Wren took a deep breath to brace himself for what he was about to do and flashed himself back to human form. His pain increased tenfold, but he stamped it down before it dragged him back into unconscious cat form. He focused on her. “I know it's you, Maggie.”

Marguerite swallowed in relief as she finally saw the confirmation of what she'd feared and hoped. Wren really was the cat.

Scared and nervous, she crossed the small distance where he lay facedown on the floor with one of her blankets covering his bare backside and legs. There were scratches and bites all over his back as if another kind of cat had attacked him. His blond hair fell into his eyes, obscuring them as he rose up ever so slightly in a way that reminded her of a cat stretching.

She knelt down beside him and placed a comforting hand to his bare back. He rolled over slowly, groaning softly as he moved, so that he was lying on his back, looking up at her.

Cuts and bruises marred his chest as well. There was one particularly nasty black bruise that practically covered the whole of his left rib cage. The mark rose up, high onto his chest, all the way to his heart. It had to be killing him to just breathe, and yet he bore his agony with a stoicism that astounded her.

His head resting on her pillow, he looked up at her with those searingly blue eyes. They alone betrayed the pain he was in. More than that, she saw his own fear of her rejecting him now that she knew the truth of him.

As if she would ever do such a thing.

“Don't be afraid of me, Maggie.”

She nodded as she reached to brush his soft hair back from his face. In human form, he had a bad fever. His skin was so hot and clammy that it scared her even more. There were still some cuts and bruises on his face, including one cut on his bottom lip, but they were nowhere near as bad as they'd been the night he'd showed up at her back door.

Days of lying on her floor unconscious had left him with a thick dark blond beard growing on his face. Though to be honest, it looked surprisingly good on him.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Like I got hit by a bus that decided to back up a few times and make sure it finished the job.” He wrinkled his nose at her. “I think it must have ground its tires on my ribs during the last run. You know, just in case I might actually want to breathe again in my lifetime.”

She smiled at his misplaced humor as she rested her hand on his chest. His heartbeat was strong under her hand. Grateful for that small favor, she gave a small, silent prayer of thanks. “What happened?”

Wren hesitated. She could see the debate on his handsome face as he wrestled with what to say.

“Be honest with me, Wren. I already know you're a shape-shifter and I haven't freaked out … much. You might as well tell me the whole thing.”

He winced as if something hurt before he spoke. “Yeah, I wish I could have stayed awake long enough to see your face when I changed over.”

“No, you don't. I assure you, it wasn't pretty.”

He cocked his head and took her hand into his so that he could toy with her fingers as they rested on his chest, just over his bare nipple. He rubbed her palm against his hardened nub before he lifted her hand to his chafed lips to place a tender kiss on her fingertips.

“There's never anything about you, that isn't pretty, Maggie. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.”

Her heart pounded at his words as heat went through her. No one had ever said anything so sweet to her before. “I knew you had a concussion.”

He started to shake his head at her, but it ended up as a wince, as the gesture must have hurt him.

“So what happened?” she asked again.

“Nothing major. It's just a group of assholes out to kill me.”

She wasn't sure what dismayed her most, his stoic tone or the fact that his confession didn't really come as a surprise. She'd figured as much. “Who are they?”

“Other Were-Animals.”