Darkness Bred

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I
t was already too late.

Before the bouncer let him into the club, before the doors closed behind him, before he walked through a crowded hallway toward silver lights pulsing in time to mind-pounding music and a wildly spinning stream of shining reflections around magenta walls—it was too late.

A man hustling a woman up the stairs from the sidewalk outside had looked back at Sean Black and stood still for the beat of one long, triumphant stare. Then they had gone inside.

And Sean had followed like a jumper to the edge of a cliff.

He could never forget that face, the sharp, predatory features, the sneer creased across his almost lipless mouth. In the back room of a saloon in Creed, Colorado, Sean saved the man’s life, and in thanks, the man had as good as taken his.

“Why, Jacob O’Cleary as I live and breathe,” a smoke-stained voice ground into Sean’s ear. “What a surprise to see you. Small world, as they say.” The man had waited for him to follow, known he would. Holding the elbow of a young brunette whose eyes were too big for her face and scoured a puffy purple underneath, he walked ahead into the surging crowd.

Hearing his birth name for the first time in far more than a century jolted Sean.
Jacob O’Cleary
, and that was the only name this ancient werehound knew him by.

Walk the other way, Sean.

Only he couldn’t because it was already too late.

Trolling San Francisco’s Chinatown late on a Saturday night didn’t happen by accident, not to Sean Black. Whispers through his own hidden world that a bad news character known only as Aldo had been sighted in the area and was asking about him had brought Sean to the city. He expected to spend days, maybe even weeks, tracking Aldo—not to all but fall over the guy.

But of course, Aldo had planned it that way. He needed to taste the power of dominating a superior intellect again, and that could only mean that Aldo had started to deteriorate.

Once through the entry hall, the place was bigger than it looked from the outside, with rocking, rubbing bodies mashed together on a central dance floor and tables all around the edge. There were booths for those who wanted privacy for whatever reason, and plenty of stools along a big bar for parties less concerned about their conspicuousness.

Sean looked around and quickly identified a number of vampires and a shapeshifter in drag. What the shapeshifter might be without the curly red wig and four-inch heels would take Sean longer to figure out. The vamp groupies, male and female, were impossible to miss. Their fawning advances on those they desired were sickening, but the often degrading looks, touches, and even painfully administered physical rebuffs didn’t stop them from pleading again to be used.

With the exhausted and scared-looking woman bala
nc
ed on a stool, Aldo stood at the far right end of the bar. A tall, thickset man with oiled black hair that made a heavy blunt-ended helmet curving to his earlobes, he would be hard to miss.

Other patrons, most of them high almost to insanity, gaped but still had enough sense left to give Aldo plenty of space.

Aldo leaned back, bracing his elbows on the bar—staring straight at Sean. And his look as good as ordered Sean to go to him. They hadn’t seen each other in over a century, but the look in Aldo’s hooded red-brown eyes said he didn’t doubt his power over the one he thought of as his escaped slave. Aldo expanded his chest and flexed muscle inside a skin-hugging green T-shirt.

Only he was not as massive as Sean became in his dense blue-black coat, and neither did Aldo share—nor was he aware of—the rare twist that helped bind Sean and the rest of his Team together.

Like his alpha, Niles, and those they regarded as brothers, Sean had even deadlier strength as a human than as a hound.

Sean braced his feet apart and crossed his arms. With his eyes he dared the other one to try proving his superiority.

Aldo pulled the woman off her stool and she winced. Sean had no doubt that her tight-fitting sleeves hid bruising—or that when she was naked, her voluptuous body would be covered with marks of domination.

Tears shone in her eyes, eyes that Sean realized didn’t focus. He took a step toward the couple. Aldo held his companion up. From the way she started to slump, Sean figured she would fall without support.

“How’ve you been?” Aldo said, his nostrils flaring despite the wider grin on his mouth—only on his mouth. He came closer, shuffling the girl along with him. “Let’s see. Where was it we last met?” With one pointed forefinger, he tapped his chin.

“Do you need help, ma’am?” Sean asked the woman quietly. “Just say the word and I’ll get you out of here.”

“He always was an interfering fool,” Aldo said, leaning down to put his head close to hers. “Don’t worry, Lily. I’ll make sure he doesn’t take you from me.” He tutted. “Still trying to pick off other men’s women, Jacob? I would have expected you to be more mature by now.”

Sean saw it then, what he had feared, the oblivious stare some drugs brought. Lily blinked slowly at Aldo and leaned, her face turned up to his.

“What’s your game this time?” Sean said. “She needs to go home.”

“She belongs to me,” Also said through his teeth, his lips barely moving. “What I want, I own. You know that.”

“Why are you here now?” Sean asked.

“I came for you.”

Sean laughed. “Generous of you, but no thanks. I’ve got all the friends I need.”

“Friends? I need no friends. You and I have unfinished business. I want you and you belong to me.”

Sean forced down the urge to take this vermin by the throat. He ought to get out before he lost any of his control, yet he could not leave this helpless girl with Aldo, and neither could he go without attempting to turn the vicious animal into a toothless joke.

With his fingers sticking into Lily’s thin arm, Aldo made to pass Sean.

“Leaving so soon?” Sean said. “Why did you come at all?”

Aldo’s awful grin split his face again. “Did I say I was leaving?” he whispered hoarsely. “The fun has only just begun. Look around you. Everyone shares here and I must share Lily.” He swept one arm wide. “My entertainment first, then theirs.”

“Let her go,” Sean said. He made sure that although his body might seem relaxed, every muscle and nerve was ready to spring.

Whatever Aldo had given or done to her was making Lily increasingly disoriented and helpless.

“Enough,” Sean said, keeping his voice low but penetrating enough to get to Aldo. “If you want to push someone around, try me.” He beckoned with both hands.

“Who could ask for anything more?” Aldo said and his red-brown eyes turned hot. “But sometimes a man wants to be chased. You come and get me this time.”

The breath Sean drew in took long enough for Aldo to slash a claw down the front of Lily’s body. Sean reacted instantly.

He sliced the side of his right hand into the narrow space beneath Aldo’s nose, and drove hard.

Aldo shook his head, blood flying from his nose, and bared his teeth. “Defending a whore’s honor,” he said. “How touching. She’s here because she wants to be. Do you think I looked for something like her? She wants me and what only I can give her.”

He threw Lily into the arms of a gawking, spotty kid who looked underage. This one held her up and gazed, fascinated. When he parted his lips, a double row of sharply pointed teeth showed and his ears began to elongate. He was some sort of fae.

Sean made a move to grab the woman away, but he felt as much as saw Aldo swing something through the air and whirled around in time to block a bottle heading for his own face.

The powerful hand that held the bottle connected with Sean’s shoulder and glass shattered, hung in the air in a net of glittering shards, then sprayed over the nearest patrons.

Only in the farthest reaches of the club did people continue to dance and laugh, and ply themselves with whatever made them feel invincible.

Scuffles broke out, and shrieks. People bled from glass-inflicted wounds, most of them small, unlike the one on Sean’s shoulder that soaked his shirt.

Sean’s arm would heal soon enough. No time for giving in to pain. He hauled the woman away. Aldo was using her because he knew Sean would intervene to help her. Regardless of why she was here, or what choices she might have made, now she was suffering because of him and she was his responsibility.

The music stopped, but the screaming and panic raging around him rose like a shifting wall of sound. Weight on his back, pressing him down on Lily, infuriated him but he dared not show the full extent of his strength. To do so would mean that too many questions would circulate and an advantage could be lost to his Team forever.

“Two choices,” a familiar, gravelly voice hissed into his ear. Aldo lifted Sean’s head by the hair and slammed it down on Lily’s. Then, under the cover of a confusing scuffle, he landed a kick to the vulnerable spot at her temple.

Sean managed to make enough room to stare at her face, at her glazed, staring eyes. They were the eyes of death now. “You’ve killed her,” he shouted, breathing in blood from his own nose. “You’ve goddamn killed her.”

“How can an upstanding man like you make up such lies?” Aldo ground out. “You attacked her and I’m trying to pull you off. And that’s what the police will believe if you don’t do what I want.”

“Get out of my way.” Sean heaved upward but Aldo clung to him, his face stretched into its foul, lipless grin.

“Too bad about that,” he said, jerking his head toward Lily’s corpse. “A little collateral damage. All I want is you. We only have seconds. Join me and you’ll never be attached to any of this. Refuse and they’ll get you for murder—if the crowd doesn’t tear you apart first. There are enough of our kind here to do it.”

“I’m not your kind,” Sean spat out. “The answer’s no. I’ll take my chances.”

“Change your mind—now,” Aldo said, his smile gone. “You won’t want for anything, ever.”

“Never.”

“I’ll hunt you, Jacob. No matter what kind of noble little life you think you’ve created, I’ll always be there to take it away. You’ll never be free of me.”

Sean stared into Aldo’s cold eyes. Sirens wailed faintly in the distance. “I’ll die before I give in.”

Seen in San Francisco newspapers the following day:

Reported six months later:

E
lin was the supposed daughter of Tarhazian, Queen of the Fae. In fact, Tarhazian had stolen Elin as a baby. Tarhazian’s excuse was that even then it was obvious Elin was uniquely talented and she needed the best of training to reach her potential. That was all Elin knew of her beginnings—all she had to tie her to who she had been, other than the few anonymous mementos Tarhazian passed off as evidence of her wish for Elin to know everything about herself.

But after asking only once for information about where she came from and who she had been with, Elin had known better than to ask a second time. Tarhazian had muttered, “You are
my
ungrateful child. You were in the hands of a demon and you’ll return there if you question me again.”

She wanted to know who she was, and living Tarhazian’s imaginary perfect life, perpetually kept like a bright plaything to be displayed from time to time, was over. She was a woman, a passionate, independent woman.

For many months, since Elin had made Tarhazian angry enough to so-called banish her from the kingdom, Elin had lived with Sally, also a banned member of the fae community. Elin knew Tarhazian had not expected her co-opted child to actually leave her and the Queen made frequent overtures to get her back. That couldn’t happen, or not willingly on Elin’s part. She was moving on.

Sometimes that thought was exciting, sometimes frightening.

In Sally’s magic shop on the outskirts of the pretty town of Langley, Elin slept among purple-lighted trees, buckets of wands, masks, shoes that promised to make you go far or keep you where you were, spells and costumes, books humans didn’t know existed, and secrets in every tiny nook and cranny.

Whenever Elin considered the human community, she felt conflicted and confused. The kinship she felt with them didn’t make sense but it was there nevertheless and grew stronger since Sally had tentatively suggested Elin might be more human than she knew.

She took a deep breath and grabbed the floral silk messenger bag Sally had made for her. The bag had been Sally’s seal-of-approval gift before she left Elin earlier that evening.

Tonight Elin was to start a new life. She was certain she loved the man, the werehound Sean Black, and they intended to find out if they were destined to be mates.

Elin’s and Sean’s fascination with each other had been what angered Tarhazian so much to begin with. “You must choose between that hound and me,” she had threatened. Elin had chosen not to risk turning her back on Sean and regretting it forever.

The horrible threats Tarhazian had since added were constantly at the back of Elin’s mind, but she couldn’t give up now.

Loud purring stopped her for a moment. She had expected this but that didn’t make it easier that Pokey, her very small pet guinea pig, was furious that her buddy Elin was up to something different. Or perhaps frightened by it. Pokey hated bags—she had traveled in one from the fae reservation, but she preferred to be safe in Elin’s pocket.

“You’re right,” Elin said, “I’m leaving and I’m not sure where I’m going. I won’t be until I’ve seen Sean. We don’t know what comes next. Just hang with me, kid. I’ll look after you.”

The purr only got louder.

“I don’t have time to cuddle you,” Elin said, even though she couldn’t see Pokey in whatever bed she had already chosen for the night.

Elin packed a little cloth doll, and her tattered blanket went into the bottom of her bag. The doll she had always had, or for as long as she remembered.

Pulling the floppy little creature out again, she kissed her faded, embroidered face and felt stupid at the tears that started. She never cried—Tarhazian didn’t like it if her little darling cried.

She cried now; silly sobbing choked into hiccups. A few items of clothing went in on top of the doll. Sally had promised to get more things to her once she knew where she would be.

Another forever possession was the carved bamboo bird that burbled when you filled the bowl beneath the beak with water and blew through the stem. Just looking at its frayed little head made her smile again. She had taught herself to make the bamboo warblers but her old one was precious.

A car passed on the street outside, its tires grinding on gravel, and Elin held her breath for fear someone would come to the door. The car paused, as they often did when passing Sally’s shop, but then the engine took off once more.

In a blue velvet bag lay a fine gold bracelet too small for any adult wrist. She only had it because as a child she had seen Tarhazian looking at it and begged to try it on.

“I thought I had shown it to you,” Tarhazian said, feigning surprise. “You can have anything you want, my dear. Here, let’s put it on.”

The bracelet, adorned with a single circular disk, fitted snugly. “Well, wear it for a little while,” Tarhazian said. “Then we’ll put it away again. It’s not really big enough for you.”

But Elin never gave it back although she doubted it was forgotten. One word was engraved on the disk: Wise. She held it in her palm now and felt the familiar tingling it brought every time. Without any chance of finding out the truth, Elin was convinced this bracelet had been on her arm when Tarhazian first took her. She replaced it in its blue velvet pouch and pushed it deep into her bag.

Already late, if she didn’t go now, Sean might think she’d changed her mind and leave without her. He must have heard how uncertain she was about a total break with her past.

What sounded a lot like “whee,” but was actually Pokey squealing, preceded the animal’s plop on top of Elin’s possessions in the bag. Curly whiskers wiggled and red eyes glowed up at her before Pokey worked her stiff orange and white fur between the clothes.

Elin let herself out and ran around to the back of Sally’s house to a hidden garden where she would never be seen taking off to fly south.

She held the bag in her arms and left on her journey.

The expected rush of wind beat around her, tossed the many points at the hem of her silk dress, and wrapped them around her legs. Her long hair blew straight back. Elin had come this way many times before and needed only to think of the path to take it.

Humans can’t fly.
Of course they couldn’t, and whenever she entertained the idea that she could perhaps be human, she soon remembered how foolish it was.
They also don’t shapeshift.

Sean Black waited for her in a forest on the south shores of Washington’s Whidbey Island. He offered her the hope of her own future—with him—even though they were still strangers in so many ways.

She quickly reached the place they had agreed on and hovered far above the small clearing in dense trees.

Sean was there, waiting for her. She felt more than saw him and concentrated on the changes he’d made in her.

With her ebony hair streaming across her face, Elin settled where a limb joined the massive trunk of a towering Douglas fir and watched him, wondering what he was thinking. Sean’s thoughts were closed to her but she felt his turmoil. Smiling, she reached out with her senses to touch him, and closed her eyes at his tensed reaction.

Tonight she was glad she could fly, and even shapeshift into the little cat, Skillywidden. The combination allowed her freedoms she would miss if they were taken from her.

When they first met while Sean’s alpha werehound, Niles, had been pursuing a mate and Elin became the go-between for all parties, she had appeared as the small, gray, violet-eyed Skillywidden. Sean was in his very large, very intimidating werehound form, Blue, a huge, blue-black animal with golden eyes, the same color as his human eyes. As Skillywidden and Blue, they had become the go-between for all parties.

Even then the unlikely pair seemed compatible. In the following months the hound and the exotic cat met only as humans. They were not lovers, although Elin longed to join with Sean. He would only say that he could not lie with her unless they were to become mates.

And tonight they had come to tell each other what decisions they had made about the future—to go their separate ways, or risk suffering Tarhazian’s threats by beginning a life together.

The woman she had called her mother had made the ultimate threat. She could bind herself to Sean if she must, but unless she wanted them both to live in the pain of separation forever, separation from the worlds they knew and separation from each other, Elin must become Tarhazian’s spy on the Werehound Team.

The Queen, her delving eyes seeking Elin’s innermost thoughts, left not a shred of hope for reprieve. “Fail me and you shall still never truly have him. You will see him and he will see you, but your skin will not touch his, your flesh will never join with his, and when your voices cry out, begging for solace, the words will be like dust falling on snow.”

Sean Black felt the beat of his heart.

He heard it. And the shallow in, out, of his own breaths.

Awareness tightened the muscles in his shoulders. Not for the first time, his skin registered a light stroking, as of fingertips brushing across him.

Night had fallen, but from the forest clearing where he waited for Elin, he could see the moon’s sheen on a blue-gray sky far above his head where the swaying crowns of giant firs seemed to prick the heavens.

Sean drew in the scent of those firs, the scent of their sap, of the thick carpet of fallen needles beneath his feet.

Heaven or hell.

If he defied the orders of his alpha werehound, Niles, and the wishes of the rest of their Team, and failed to break with Elin, he could be cast away from his own kind.

For the first time in the five years since the horror of being used as a killing weapon in San Francisco, Sean had true hope. In the black hours when sleep wouldn’t come, he imagined Aldo appearing on Whidbey and trying to destroy what Sean had built with the Werehound Team. He wasn’t foolish enough to feel too safe from the werewolf who had promised never to give up hunting for Sean.

To turn from Elin would mean the loss of the only woman he could love, the woman the other werehounds said had enchanted him, cast a spell on him. She would, they insisted, use him to spy on the hounds for their werewolf enemies, or for the local vampire scourge, who could sell the information to the wolves for blood. Almost worse, Elin could become the ultimate tool of the seething fae community bent on outwitting all of them.

Tonight he must make his choice.

Without a sound, they touched. Sean shuddered and closed his eyes. She could do that, arrive silently and set him afire with nothing more than a fleeting caress with her fingertips. Sometimes all he had to do to feel her was to think about them being together.

Then he heard her.

Elin cried softly and he reached for her dark shape in the gloom. She evaded his hands and slipped from his sight. She slipped away only to layer herself against his back, her floating silk gown no barrier between his naked skin and her soft breasts.

He could not move. Since they met, their meetings had been stolen moments to talk, haltingly in whispers, while something deep wound them more and more tightly together until this time for decisions came.

No commitment had been made. There was so much they didn’t know about each other yet, but the fusion of their hearts had become a thing of beauty and pain, and a point where Sean feared that to break away forever would be like death.

Her body, from her cheek, to the pressure of her hips, her slender thighs, and her toes against his heels, inflamed him until he was so tense he gritted his teeth to remain still.

Sean found her arms and wrapped them around him, trapped them to hold her tight against him, and looked up at the sky again.

When they met alone, it must be in darkness and he came in his hound form, with the excuse that he needed to make sure of his ability to shift. Before he saw Elin, he always changed into a man who could not help being aware of his size and power when he was with her diminutive form.

And as a man, he had no choice but to be naked after he shifted. Another reason to meet in the darkness and keep himself mostly hidden from her. She seemed so young to him, young and unworldly, yet more unconsciously seductive than he could have imagined in any female, no matter how experienced. And so often she spoke with a wisdom that surprised and pleased him—and puzzled him. Her mystery, the dichotomy between innocent girl and wise woman, intoxicated him.

Her tears were wet on his back but she dropped kiss after kiss along his spine.

“Come here,” he said, keeping his voice soft but steady. “Let me see you.”

Effortlessly, he pulled her around him until he could gaze down into her face. The bag she carried pleased him. He could hope it meant that she would agree to come with him.

She looked at the ground, stepped back a little, and stared at him through the shield of darkness as if she saw him clearly. He believed she did and smiled a little.

When she reached for him again, she stroked his chest, his sides, his belly, before she popped up to her toes and passed her lips fleetingly over his.

Seeking to capture her mouth and deepen the kiss, Sean reached for her. Elin evaded him and sank rapidly lower to play the satiny tips of her fingers over his pulsing flesh as lightly as a feather made of burning breeze.

While he could still think, Sean caught her hand. “Not yet,” he said. “Perhaps never. The decision will be ours eventually, and it will be forever.”

“But the punishment may be inevitable,” Elin said. “Whatever we decide, they intend to sentence us to a living death.”