Dark Wolf (Shadow Pack Book 1) (2 page)

Several hundred yards away, Katie caught the crack of the gun over the roar of the wind and the smooth jazz from her stereo. Her blood froze at the unmistakable sound. Could
he
have found her again so quickly? Logically, she wanted to believe it wasn’t possible, but she knew
he could have
.
She started to panic.

Her fear and her fury rolled together in her heart as she dropped her brush into mineral spirits and fell back into a chair, her head in her hands, fighting for control. She fought to catch her breath as the room began to spin and the panic attack took hold. She loved the wildness of the woods but suspected her loneliness and fear in these ancient misty mountains were making her crazy. She thought she had seen the impossible several times, and now maybe she was hearing things.

Hateful thoughts rolled through her mind. That
she
could hunt
him
this time…that she could take him down without mercy. That she could face the hunted look of terror that would finally fill his eyes as she tore him apart.

She gasped as she fought for control, the control her mother had so carefully taught her. She couldn’t lose it. She needed time to plan. She needed subtlety. Damn it. If only he could have believed she was dead for a little while longer. Katie looked longingly at the ancient telephone she barely used. No. The law had been useless to her for years—she was not about to call them now. And Uncle Frank? She had been foolish to involve him in the first place.

Katie shuddered, her stomach clenching tightly at the thought of her stepfather’s serpentine eyes. She then contemplated the scene on the canvas in front of her, an angry mix of light and deep greens, blood reds and sea blues that swirled into a picture of a gargantuan house that loomed over all, reeking of evil. Home.

No.
This
was her home now. The log walls and furniture supplied a backdrop of earth tones of browns and greens, while her belongings provided the occasional happy splash of scarlet or sapphire. The air was redolent with the enticing aroma of homemade hot chocolate on the stove, with a delicate, spicy-sweet hint of the pumpkin bread she had baked that morning. She had not had the nightmares in months, dark dreams of being stalked, running through the woods. In her dreams, she knew that if she tried too hard to win the battle, he would ultimately win the war when he took out the frustrations of the hunt on her mother.

The nightmares would not ever go away completely, she knew. Not until she rode into battle with
him
again. But she had to get stronger first. He had made her afraid of her own power, and it was time to reclaim it. She had not the faintest idea how to go about finding her spirit self again, though.

Katie tore off the paint-splattered smock and threw it to the floor. She had gotten home early from her bartending shift at the Laughing Bear Café down in the little resort town of Blowing Rock and had intended to work tonight on her therapy—painting—until she dropped. She had not been able to burn off any energy at work—the bar had been a veritable graveyard this evening with most of the regular patrons wisely choosing to snuggle down with their families and friends in their little houses and mountain trophy homes against the cold of the late November snow.

Katie didn’t have the comfort of loved ones during the storms life threw out. She felt a suffocating surge of fury and fear rise in her throat, her airway swelling once again as the panic threatened to overwhelm her. Breathing deeply, she closed herself off for a moment and let her mind calm, willing waves of peace to flow through her, putting out the familiar flames.

She thought of the frozen woods outside. They held no terror for her. She feared only two-legged animals this night. She glanced at a silver-framed picture sitting nearby on the oak mantle of the lit fireplace. The lovely woman in the picture had the same extraordinary golden eyes as Katie, eyes that seemed to glow in response to her daughter’s glance. She could almost smell the lilting scent of her mother’s perfume lingering in the air.

There was something else in the air tonight, a scent she could not recognize. The sixth sense that led her through life had never before been so vague. Lately, sensing danger had become a problem. She was basically
always
in danger, the shadows never fully leaving her subconscious. But now there seemed to be yet another shadow approaching to join the party. Something different overlapped this shadow, however—she sensed a subtle golden ray that seemed to make her heart lift.

Her stomach flipped again. Maybe she shouldn’t have eaten that burrito for dinner. Or maybe she should at least have washed it down with a cold beer to dull the spice effect. Katie set her shoulders. For once, let it be the wind and the Mexican food that made her stomach churn.
Please let the monsters leave me alone.

“As much as a part of me would like to crawl under my bed and hide,” she said firmly in the direction of the picture of her mother, “I guess you’d not approve of that. It’s probably that nutty old farmer down the road out looking for a lost cow or pig, and he shot a threatening tree.” Hopefully. At least she would die fighting, a decision she had made when she came back to the States. She would never be a docile and broken captive again.

Katie walked to the large cedar chest beside the door and pulled out a holster. The old-fashioned but well-cared for leather held the pistol her uncle had recently given her. She strapped it around her waist and leg and then pulled on her boots, parka, and gloves. She left her coat partially opened to facilitate the drawing of the gun. She took a deep breath and opened her door to the great dark beyond. If it was her stepfather lurking in the snow, she doubted she would have the chance to take a breath, let alone pull a gun on him. But she would be damned if she would wait for him to come to her. She didn’t need a flashlight in the darkness—her eyes were as attuned to the darkness as her hearing was to the sounds of the woods. Katie strode outside, moving as quickly as she dared while still scouting her surroundings.

The snow had slowed to a few swirling flakes as she slogged through the deep snow. She paused, staring at the broken trail, her heart thumping. Someone had come this way. She followed it across an alarmingly long expanse of ebony and white landscape.

“What the hell made these?” Her voice was shaky as she kneeled, examining the broken trail that was partially obscured by newly fallen snow. Her worry grew as she studied the gigantic prints that had been made nearly indecipherable by the fresh powder. They could have been human. They could have been something else.
No. Impossible.

A low moan startled Katie, and she leaped to her feet. She nearly fell back into the snow at the sight of the large, unconscious, and very nude man lying in the snow bank not five feet away.

She crept closer to examine him. Amazingly, he was alive, although his skin was rapidly turning blue from the cold.

“I don’t know whether to curse or say ‘thank you, God’,” she muttered as she took off her parka and laid it on the snow. She shoved the inert form onto her coat, trying to control her shivering against the fierce wind of the mountainside. Katie couldn’t make out his features, but he was large enough that she knew dragging him was her only option. She began the laborious task of pulling the man-laden coat toward the distant glow of the windows of her home.

An agonizing thirty minutes later, she rolled him into a nest of blankets in front of the fireplace. After she stripped off her sopping clothes and pulled on a long flannel nightshirt, she hurried to examine the man, who was bleeding onto her favorite patchwork quilt. She paused long enough to arm herself with some thick towels and then kneeled to examine whatever injury was causing the mess. She assumed it was a gunshot wound and glanced at the door to make sure she had thrown the deadbolt. Her gun lay loaded and within arm’s reach. Nevertheless, Katie doubted she’d need it. If it had been her stepfather out in the night, he would already be in her home, his meaty hand wrapped around her arm telling her what she was going to do for him. No, it was more likely that the wraiths in the woods were his men checking her out. Finding the lay of the land and who would miss her when they finally took her.

For the first time, she had a good look at the injured man she had dragged into her home. At least six feet five inches tall, he had the body of a professional football player. The tanned planes of his muscles and all other nicely proportioned attributes were on display, adding to her feelings of unreality. But he was not the right age for a professional athlete at his peak. His weathered features betrayed an age somewhere in his late thirties or early forties. As she studied his face, she noted a certain weariness concealed in his features that would not be part of a younger man’s looks. His cropped black hair was sprinkled with silver, which only served to accent his rugged face.

Katie stifled the urge to run her hands over the perfect contours of his chest. She then got a glimpse of the heavy cock that lay between his hard thighs. Her knees turned to water immediately. Her neglected nether regions rocketed nerve impulses to her brain, screaming for Katie to get that thing going and impale herself on it. It had been so long since she’d had her hands on a man’s ass, gasping as he pounded into her, tearing at the skin of his muscular back with her nails. Her face flamed as she became aware that her panties were suddenly damp. God, he was beautiful. Swaying a little, Katie caught her breath in horror.
What is up with my hormones?
She was actually contemplating seducing an unconscious man…a man who heated her up like hurling a gallon of gasoline on a fire.
But will he respect me in the morning? Hell, will he be
alive
in the morning?
She was dizzy with lust. Sighing, she regretfully covered him with a soft blanket, although every cell in her body was at full sexual alert.

“Quit admiring him and get to saving him, Katie,” she whispered, and bent to examine his head wound. She gently blotted away the bright blood with a warm damp towel. He moved a bit and moaned, making her jerk away. She stared in amazement at the wound in his scalp. It had stopped bleeding and looked too innocuous to have caused so much blood loss. It seemed to be healing already. She shook her head, hard. The idea that started to form in her mind as a possible explanation was impossible. She simply refused to let that thought grow. There had to be a more plausible explanation. Of course. The blood stopped flowing because of the cold. The poor man was frozen. His body shook uncontrollably under the blankets she had wrapped him in.

She finished cleaning the injury and applied antiseptic and a couple of butterfly bandages to hold the wound closed. Katie then picked up another towel and pulled back the blankets to better dry his skin.
Just an effort to get the circulation going again
, she assured herself, sneaking another peek at his magnificent body.

She sat still for a moment in an effort to settle herself. Katie finished with the towels but folded and refolded them before she went to toss them in the washing machine in the closet pantry. She returned to sit on the floor nearby to stare at her guest, her stomach twisting, not only from the fear of whoever had shot the man, but also from the worry of having dragged a large, powerful,
naked
man into her home. She could take care of herself and had dealt with men much more malevolent looking. Her fear was not of what he would do when he woke up but rather what she wanted to do when he woke up. It had been a long time since she had been near a man this attractive and a longer time since she had seen one like this in the buff. The only time she had seen anyone this built before was an ancient Greek statue of a wrestler. Her guest was sex personified, and she, God help her, was frightened, lonely, and horny.

“My, but you are a muscular one, aren’t you?” Katie murmured as she eased his head onto a goose down pillow in front of the warming flames of the fireplace and lay down beside him. She stared at the man’s incredibly long black eyelashes that lay against his cheek. There was, strangely, no fear in her heart of this man—she felt almost a kinship with him for some reason, which was nuts, but there were many things she had felt and thought and witnessed in her life that others would call nuts. She should call the cops, call an ambulance, or call her uncle, Katie thought to herself. But the same instincts that had driven her out into the darkness to find her naked friend told her that he would no more appreciate the police getting involved in his injuries than she would.

It wouldn’t hurt to sleep near him. As long as she could refrain from molesting his unconscious body, she wryly mused. A picture of her last boyfriend flashed in her mind. Free-spirited Nate with the ocean-blue eyes, long dead now. It was her fault, as it would be her fault if this man died from associating with her for one night. No. This one moment was hers. All she wanted was a warm body near her.
I’ll
never see him again after tomorrow,
she promised herself. In a complete departure from her usually cautious habits, she fell into an exhausted sleep, one long-fingered hand lying protectively on his bare chest. The rest of her body curled up against him, obeying an instinct to share her healing warmth.

Night engulfed the secluded island lab, the darkened windowpanes effectively blocking out any view of the hard-etched Outer Banks landscape. The darkness also kept outsiders from seeing the monsters within. The would-be monster king examined the report he had been handed as the trembling scientist stood waiting for judgment.

“So, you
think
you can do this? Speed is imperative at this point, man.” Hugh Ambrose’s voice was laced with menace. His made-for-bullying bulk swallowed the rest of the room.

Dr. Ralph Williams, who had been told he resembled a blond weasel, stuttered his answer. “It-s-s-s seems to be linked to a virus. The records you brought me, that we have managed to decipher, tell of some kind of druidic ceremony. They make a pact with God to keep the evil spirits from entering the Were as they make the Change, but there was very little practical information. However, this problem can be solved by science, of that I’m certain. We need Kane to locate more subjects so we can be sure. We will link your genes and produce the heir you desire, or…we’ll infect you and give you the abilities and longevity that you want.” As he finished, a muted roar of unspeakable agony sounded from behind the white-painted cinderblock wall to their left. The scientist cringed, but the other man did not lift an eyebrow.