Desert Blood (The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch Book 2) (13 page)

There was a chorus of growls, a scream, and then, the vampire before her fell. The wolves were on him in a deadly pileup of flesh and fur. Heather crab-walked backward until she bumped into the tire, struggling to comprehend what was happening. Who was attacking whom?

Two wolves kept her hemmed in against the car. Growls lowered to snarls as they turned their rumps to Heather, forming a living barricade. The tan-colored wolf immediately before her had long, lanky legs. Beside it was another, the darkest tint of brown.

Beyond them was a battlefield where the first wolf raged—the one with golden hair and a nick in one ear. Two vampires ripped at him with claws, fangs, and a blur of speed. Two more wolves stood over the fallen vampires. One wolf had spiky fur and a crooked tail. The other was a giant, bigger than any of the others by a good hand. Brown-black, like the night. Intense. He was watching the fight, growling. Why didn’t he help the sandy wolf, the one taking on the last two vampires? That wolf was locked in the fight of its life, already matted with blood. Why wouldn’t the others step in? Why didn’t they do something?

Without thinking, Heather pushed between the two nearest wolves, holding her hockey stick high. Her mind registered that it was insane, but her body moved forward, intent on a suicide mission.

A growl, a shove, and she was back against the car. The nearest wolf rumbled in warning.

“Why don’t you help him?” she shouted. “Why don’t you help?”

The wolf tipped its head this way and that, those deep, dark chocolate eyes trying to communicate. The second one shook its ruff.

She stared. They wanted her to understand something. She tilted her head at them. What? That it was the golden wolf’s fight, his chance to prove himself—was that it? She glanced up then away as his jaws closed on the neck of one vampire. At the same moment, Alon jumped him from behind, fangs bared.

The others stepped closer as if to intervene then stopped when the sandy wolf shook himself free and whirled to face his enemy. One-on-one now: the wolf against Alon, whose eyes glowed white with a malicious fringe of red.

She wanted it to be over. Wanted it to end. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t back away in the middle of this fight for her life. These wolves were somehow familiar. They had come to her rescue. If vampires could exist, then…

She winced at a death blow that crushed Alon’s neck then shut her eyes against the rest. After moments of sickening tearing sounds, the road fell into silence, broken only by heaving breaths. When she looked again, the sandy wolf was swaying, his head dipping, struggling to stay on his feet. Gold-brown eyes found Heather’s, the nicked ear twitched, and she knew.

Imagine a pack of dogs,
Tina had said.
Better yet, wolves. Our guys are a lot like that.

“Cody,” she whispered.

Cody was a wolf. Those were his eyes beseeching her. Those were his limbs creaking forward, step by pained step. Suddenly, it all made sense. The clan-like organization of the ranch. The fierce privacy. The territorial instincts.

“It’s you,” she mumbled.

The other wolves parted, sniffing Cody and whining in concern. Ignoring all of them, he shuffled forward until his nose was almost touching her toes. He lowered his belly to the ground and regarded her warily. Her move.

Every eye seemed trained on her. Her mind was frozen, but her body acted on instinct, carefully crouching and slowly offering the wolf one hand, palm up. He sniffed. She reached farther and touched the only patch of fur not drenched in blood. The wolf closed his eyes and let a huge volume of air exit his lungs in a long, grateful exhale that prompted one of her own. She ran her hands over him then cupped the huge muzzle. It was him, all right. She could see it all in the eyes. Boy. Man. Lover. Wolf.

“Cody,” she managed, her voice trembling.

Just when she thought she might lose herself in those eyes, a commotion broke out nearby. A different wolf loped onto the scene, and everyone tensed.

Heather yanked herself out of her crouch and lunged forward, stick at the ready. No way was she going to let anyone touch Cody now.

The new arrival, a grizzled old wolf, strode up to her, snarling dismissively. The beast had to outweigh her by a hundred pounds. She tightened her grip on the stick and found herself tempted to snarl back, driven by an alien instinct to protect as Cody struggled to his feet.

The gray wolf’s eyes stabbed her with their intensity. He growled, but Cody growled back. The brown wolf with the sparkling eyes let out a grunt. Heather stared. Was that Tina? The giant one that was muscling in close, taking up position at one side could only be Ty, and the long-legged wolf standing beside him—Lana?—seemed coiled for action.

It was a standoff of some kind: Cody was being challenged by the old wolf. That much, she could tell. The others were clearly in support, but let him face his own battle.
Damn them their pride!
Tension coursed off every wolf on the road as Cody’s tail whisked left then right, swatting her legs with the measured strokes of a pendulum.
Mine. Mate.
The desert echoed and amplified the words.

“Hasn’t he done enough?” she cried, throwing the accusation at them all.

The grizzled wolf stared, measuring her up. She stood stiff, gripping her stick, wondering where reality stopped and the desert started. Ready to swing at anyone who dared challenge her wolf.

Her wolf. She must be insane.

Cody was leaning heavily against her calves by then. He was clearly on his last legs, but he wasn’t giving up. God, when would anyone cut him some slack? She clutched her stick tighter and leaned forward, willing the old wolf away.

Finally, he heaved the weary sigh of a martyr, turned with an angry twitch of his tail, and padded into the night, grumbling. Heather let out a long, slow breath and wobbled as headlights sliced the night and footsteps—human and canine—drummed the road. The latter sniffing and licking each other, the former kicking the vampires’ ashy remains.

Then it was just her and Cody—wolf or human, she couldn’t care less right now—wrapped in a tight bundle of fur and flesh. For a long time, all she did was breathe him in. Eventually, though, a woman’s voice whispered and hands guided her to her feet. The next thing she registered was sitting in the back of a truck, hugging Cody close. Human Cody, wrapped in a blanket, murmuring her name.

“Heather…”

Maybe she’d just dreamed it all. She’d had a flat tire, and somebody had come to pick her up. There had been no vampires, no fight. No nightmare on a deserted country road.

Much as she wanted to believe that, one look at Cody’s face told her a different story.

“Let me explain—” he started, voice cracking.

“Not now.” She clutched him tighter. Words wouldn’t make this any less crazy or any more real. She tightened her hug, willing her body heat into him. Closing her eyes to a world she wasn’t ready to see.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Heather made it through the next three days, hunkering down in Cody’s house, alternatively despairing over his wounds and marveling at the speed of his recovery. She made it through his explanation of wolf ways—how they shifted forms, how mates forged a blood bond with a bite, how pack hierarchy functioned. And how it was changing. The older generation was slowly learning that the new one would not accept their matchmaking games. There was no new girlfriend.

“There’s only you,” Cody said, pulling her close.

She even made it through the community dinner on the third night, where a hundred pairs of curious eyes turned to her as one. She pulled up short in the doorway, even as Cody squeezed her hand in pride.

“It’s not every day they see the human who stared down my father.”

Her face must have betrayed her uncertain response because Cody whipped back to the hall.

Eyes down!
he thundered out a mental command that even Heather obeyed. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him scanning each and every face for submission. Only then did he relax and squeeze her hand again.

“Hey,” he whispered, “it’ll be okay. You’ll do great.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. Wasn’t sure about anything, actually. She leaned in close, more for support than to whisper. “You can do that? Give a roomful of people a mental command?”

Cody pursed his lips. “Guess so. Never done it before.”

She could swear the man stood half an inch taller after that, but the unwanted attention made her cringe. Cody covered her hand with both of his and kissed her knuckles even as her nerves continued to flutter anxiously about. He led her to the head table at end of the hall, right beside the massive stone fireplace hung with antlers and knobby chunks of wood that the desert had sculpted into art.

Soon the room went back to a quiet murmur, everyone studiously ignoring the new arrivals. Everyone except the school kids, who bounced and waved. Cody made for what must have been his usual seat to the right of Ty, at the head of the table. But Ty stayed him with a grunt. Their eyes locked, and Heather sensed mutual respect pass between the brothers. Then Ty jutted his chin toward the unoccupied seat at the opposite end of the table. The other head, so to speak.

Cody’s mouth cracked open and a second ticked by. Then he took a deep breath and sidestepped to his new seat, pulling out a chair for Heather on his right. She sank down, eyes on her feet, wondering if she would ever fit in to this world. For all their human ways, wolf hierarchy barreled through, loud and clear.

Cody was uncharacteristically quiet as Tina, Lana, and Rae took over with light conversation that covered everything but vampires and wolves. Little Tana helped lighten things up, too, showing off her food art: mashed potato carvings and green bean smiley faces. Heather was just starting to relax when she saw Cody’s father enter the hall. She sank in her seat, praying the man wouldn’t come to their table.

Tina patted her hand, reading her alarm. “Don’t worry; he sits with the old curmudgeons over there.”

She made it through all that, a baptism by fire into the inner circle of the wolf pack. She made it back to Cody’s house afterward, calm and collected. Then the reality of it all exploded in her mind.
Vampires. Werewolves. Cody. Mate.

Don’t worry?

That’s when she lost it and ran from the house, insisting Cody drive her home—her own place, back in the human world. She passed the excruciating drive with her head buried in her arms. Her mind was ready to shatter; her heart wouldn’t be far behind. Cody started to follow her into the house, but she pushed him back out and shut the door in something just under a slam. She couldn’t help it; her body was shaking that hard.

And he was gone. Sort of. She could swear she saw the shadow of a wolf patrolling the street after that. She drew the curtain on it. There. She had her peace, her space again.

The reality, though, was crushing.

For the next two days, Heather cried, flailed, pretended. She kept every door and window locked against the outside world and all the supernatural beings she didn’t want to understand. She hugged herself against the pain of knowing it would never work. No matter how much she loved Cody, it would never work.

In the wee hours of the third day, she shoved her few possessions into the car, left a month’s rent on the kitchen counter with no forwarding address, and fled. Aiming to escape, fast and far. A replay of her flight from Pennsylvania, blind and desperate.

She drove and drove as if an unseen enemy were still on her tail, heading west so fast, she wondered if she’d run out of continent before the urge to flee was satisfied. But slowly, gradually, her mind collected itself and her foot eased off the gas pedal. Eventually, she pulled over to a stop and turned off the engine. She sat in silence, staring at the landscape, letting the grandeur of the desert soothe her. What was she doing? Closing her eyes, Heather reached deep inside.

When she’d fled the East Coast, she thought she’d lost everything.

When the vampires caught up with her in Arizona, she had been a hair’s breadth away from losing her life.

But she hadn’t lost anything, except maybe her ignorance. She’d found, instead. A new life. A good man. A tight-knit community.

So what exactly was she running from?

A breeze made the nearby bushes dance and wave, drawing her attention to the landscape that had fascinated her from the very start.

A minute later, she gunned the engine to life and made a measured turn east. Her breathing steadied along with her pulse as she followed an inner compass, and every mile filled her with certainty. By sunset, she was wiping the last tear from her eye and gazing up at two overlapping circles, swinging in a friendly breeze. There it was, the ranch brand, hanging proudly above the gate. She turned her face to the streaked sky with a faint smile.

This. This place was home.

The music led her right to him after she parked the car and wandered a few steps—east, toward the schoolhouse. Toward a familiar, yearning tune.

It was getting dark quickly, but the schoolhouse lights were on. When she got closer, she pulled up in the path. Something was different. There was half a pile of shingles by the corner and a ladder propped against the roof. The walkway was different, too. The scattered gravel had been raked into a neatly delineated path lined with solar garden lights that spilled cones of light at her feet, inviting her onward. Slowly, she stepped closer, swung open the south side door, and stepped inside, holding her breath.

Her pulse beat harder as she looked around the room. There was no one there, but someone had been in recently because the music was playing, the lights on. And something was new here, too.

Slowly, she picked out the changes, flushing a little with the discovery of each one. The dusty old blackboard was gone; a brand-new whiteboard stood in its place, facing the classroom. The water cooler wasn’t dripping any more. The back right window with the broken pane had finally been fixed, and over on the left…

She got stuck on the next breath. The crooked bookshelf was gone, and an unused desk had been taken away to make space for an aquamarine rug and two beanbags—one green, one blue. A treasure chest stood in the corner, propped open to show the books inside, and the wall was painted with an undersea scene, including… Yes, an octopus reading eight books. She covered her mouth with one hand because it was just as perfect as she’d imagined it. The kids would love it. Even Timmy might sit still in a reading nook like that.