Desire Unchained (11 page)

out how they worked for years.

“Got it. This way.” He started moving in the direction from which they’d just come.

“Uh …”

“We’ll be fine. Once we’re inside the gate, we’ll transport to an exit near my place.”

They slipped quickly through the trees. Shade moved like a cat, all sleek grace and light

steps, and if his injured foot troubled him, he gave no sign of it. Her own steps grew heavy as her

body tensed, preparing for the change. Part of her wanted to give the wolf side free rein, a danger

for every warg.

Once a month she battled the desire to become a beast and run free, killing at will and for

pleasure. This was the monster she’d become thanks to the bastard who had bitten her.

And thanks to Shade—something she’d do well to remember.

“We’re here.”

Runa peered into a glimmering space between a boulder and a crumbling stone wall.

She’d seen similar curtains of light before, but she’d written them off as a trick of the eye.

Less than a dozen yards stood between them and the gate. But something wasn’t right.

The air had gone unnaturally still, as though evil had leashed the wind against its will.

Shade must have sensed it, too, because they weren’t moving, and he’d gone motionless,

except for his eyes, which seemed to be taking in everything at once.

“The gate is being guarded,” he murmured.

“By what?”

“I don’t know.”

The rapid thump of multiple footsteps carried to her ultrasensitive ears, and she knew

they were out of time. “We’re going to have to risk it. Bad guys, eight o’clock.”

They dashed toward the gate. Something rose out of the ground, a nebulous, smokelike

creature, and they skidded to a halt, mere feet from the entrance. White wisps of mist wove

together, slowly taking form as a beast about twelve feet tall, with gaping jaws and sharklike

teeth. Red slits formed its eyes. It had no legs that she could see, but what it lacked in legs it

made up for in claws the length of her arms. Runa had no idea what it was, but it smelled like

feces and rotten fish. And it was scary as hell.

“Not good,” Shade grumbled.

“Aren’t you the king of understatement.”

Behind them, three Keepers and the Bathag crashed from out of the brush. Shade leaped

into action, taking one of the Darquethoths down. The Bathag leaped on Runa, her face

morphing into something horrible and vicious, with a mouthful of sharp teeth and a forked

tongue. Runa had trained hard with the Army, and while she was no Special Forces commando,

she could hold her own. More or less.

Less, in this case.

The world spun as they rolled down an incline and crashed into a stone fence. Runa

grunted and plowed her own fist into the demon’s face. Teeth scraped her knuckles, and Runa

sucked air.

“That hurt.” Runa hooked her leg over the demon’s back and flipped her. The female’s

snarl broke off when Runa struck her in the jaw.

The demon froze, momentarily stunned. Runa dragged herself to a thick, dead branch.

The sickening crunch of something hard striking flesh, followed by Shade’s pained curse,

breathed new life into her fight. She leaped to her feet and swung the branch like a golf club.

“Runa! Don’t kill her!”

Too late, the crack of wood on the Bathag’s skull rang out, and the thing went limp.

Runa couldn’t spare a single tear for the bitch, but she did spare a second to feel for a

pulse. Nothing. Why would Shade want the Bathag alive? Wiping her bloodied hands on her

jeans, she looked toward him, but he was fully engaged in battle again. She raced to the crest of

the hill, found two dead demons, and Shade, taking down the last Keeper. Behind him, the

smoke-creature snarled, but it floated back and forth, unwilling—or unable—to attack.

It was shocking, seeing Shade fight like that, a mass of hard muscle and tats spinning like

a tornado. Her impression a minute ago was right; he was built for battle. Battle and danger and

trouble all in one powerful package. He crunched a kick into the Darquethoth’s back. It went

down, a boneless puddle.

Shade didn’t miss a beat as he turned to her. “The Bathag’s dead?” She nodded, a weird

sense of foreboding falling over her when his expression turned grim. “Damn. You ready?”

“For what?”

He took her hand. “We’re going to make a run for it. The vapor wraith is bound to the

Harrowgate, and it’s male, so I can’t seduce it.”

She eyed the thing, straining to get to them but pulling up short, as though it was tethered

to an invisible leash. “I thought you said that since we’re bonded, you can’t do that anymore.”

“I can’t go all the way with another female, but I still have an excess of incubus charm.”

“Charm?” He had to be kidding.

“Fuck-me pheromones.”

Now,
that
she believed. “Why would the vapor wraith be bound to the Harrowgate? Are

all gates protected?”

“No. This is Roag’s handiwork. To prevent his captives from escaping, and to prevent

enemies from finding him.” He squeezed her hand. “How are you doing?”

She knew what he meant, and almost as if his words reminded her inner werewolf that it

should be starting to shift, her joints began to pop in excruciating bursts of pain.

“We have to go,” she gasped. “But how?”

“We run right through it.”

Voices rang out in the fog. They were out of time.
She
was out of time. She might think

that running headlong into one of the scariest-looking demons she’d ever seen was a bad idea,

but she’d have to trust Shade if she wanted to live.

“Whatever you say,” she breathed.

He cocked an eyebrow at her, and then they were running. Shade threw out his arm as

though to push the thing out of the way, and his
dermoire
began to glow. They hit the beast, and the sensation of a million jellyfish stings exploded all over Runa’s body. She fought the urge to

scream in both terror and agony. Tears burned her eyes, and she stumbled. Shade caught her,

held her upright against the solid wall of his body.

The vapor wraith screeched, and suddenly they were past it. Shade dragged her inside the

Harrowgate. Darkness closed on them, the pitch black broken by glowing symbols and maps

etched into the smooth obsidian walls surrounding them.

Pain still rolled through her body, and beneath her skin, her muscles stretched tight,

tugging on her joints as her body began to morph into her beast form.
Hurry, Shade.

“What happened to the demon?” Her voice sounded rough, guttural, and she knew she

was speaking through a half-formed muzzle.

“I used my gift to scramble its insides. Didn’t kill it, but it stunned the creature enough to

get us through.” He cast her a sideways glance. “Oh, hey … let’s not do that yet. Sit. Stay.”

Oh, he was hilarious. She was going to bite him as soon as the transformation was

complete.

Shade tapped some etchings. A heartbeat later, the gate opened, and they stepped into a

wall of heat and humidity. A jungle. Instantly, the sense that she was going to explode out of her

skin faded. Her blood tingled with the upcoming full moon event, but the immediacy of the

change had vanished. Best of all, her body parts had popped back into place.

“Um, where are we?” A cacophony of sounds surrounded them, bird calls and insect

buzzing, as well as unidentifiable creatures screaming in the treetops.

“Costa Rica.”

“Central America?”

“You know of another Costa Rica?”

Smartass. She jumped at the sound of something hissing. This place was going to give

her a heart attack. Bad enough that demons were after her. Now she had to worry about

poisonous snakes and hungry jaguars.

“Will those demons follow us?”

Shade shook his head and started moving through the brush.

She hurried after him. “What about Roag?”

He halted, his dark eyes scanning the surrounding jungle. “It’s difficult to track someone

through Harrowgates unless you can sense them. You need a hellhound.”

“Okay, so why here?”

“You’ll have a few extra hours of daylight. And,” he added, “my second home is here.

Roag doesn’t know about this one.”

Well, color her stunned. “You never told me you had a second home.”

“It’s not someplace I take humans.”

Lovely. She pictured him bringing his demon sex partners here, to this steamy jungle

where they probably rolled around like wild animals. All the reasons she hated him came roaring

back, along with hackle-raising anger. That, combined with the premoon jitters, made for one

caustic mood.

“It’s not someplace you’re taking me, either,” she snapped.

“You have a better idea?”

“You can do what you want. I’ll move in with my brother until this thing with Roag

blows over.”

Displeasure wafted off him in waves. “Out of the question. You stay with me.”

“Think again.” She crossed her arms over her chest, trying to ignore the trickle of sweat

running down her back as the tension between them grew thicker than the sticky air. “I’m not the

naïve, spineless little twit I was when we were dating.”

“I liked you a lot more when you were spineless,” he muttered.

“Yeah, well, I liked you more then, too.”

“Dammit, Runa. The thing with Roag won’t blow over. You killed his female. He will

stop at nothing to get at you. And once he has you …” Shade’s hands fisted at his sides, and he

swallowed hard.

Her imagination took what he hadn’t said and went to all kinds of horrific places as she

cast a worried glance back at the Harrowgate. The shimmering arch hung between two rocks,

identical to the one they’d entered in Ireland. Except this gate didn’t have a creepy demon

guarding it.

“Why can’t I sense it?” she asked, more to get her mind off the reality of what Roag

would do to her than to satisfy her curiosity.

“Newly turned werewolves are still too human. As your humanity fades with time, your

nonhuman instincts will sharpen.”

“How long? I mean, it’s been almost a year.”

He shrugged, a tense roll of one shoulder. “We have a warg paramedic on staff at the

hospital who can sense them, and he’s a hundred years old, was turned in his twenties. So he

started sensing Harrowgates somewhere in that eighty-year time frame.”

She shot him an irritated glare. “How helpful.”

“Come on.” He grabbed her hand, the one that had been shredded by the Bathag’s teeth,

and she winced. “You’re hurt.” He drew her knuckles closer to his face, bringing her body in as

well.

“It’s nothing.”

Shade ignored her, running his fingers lightly over the raw, torn skin. A breeze rattled the

trees, bringing with it Shade’s scent, a potent mix of earth and sweat, battle and sex. Dirt and

blood streaked his chest, and a bruise darkened one cheek, but he was all the more gorgeous for

it. She hated her primitive response to the way he’d fought for her, hated
him
, in fact. But she couldn’t stop staring any more than she could stop her heart from beating.

“Let go of me.” She bit the words out viciously, desperate to get away from him, but he

held her with his hypnotic gaze and slow, soothing passes of his thumb across her knuckles.

When a low-level buzz shot through her hand, she gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Speeding up the healing process. I can’t do what Eidolon does and heal you on the spot,

but I can nudge your body’s natural curative abilities into high gear.” His voice was husky,

reminding her of the way he sounded when he was inside her, murmuring sexy, naughty things in

her ear.

He must have been reminded of the same thing, because he cursed and dropped her hand.

“Follow me.” He moved off without another word.

Frustrated by both her mercurial feelings for him and his unpredictable behavior, she

watched him go, tempted to try the Harrowgate on her own.

“You won’t be able to work it,” he called out, and dammit, how had he known what she

was thinking?

He led her along an overgrown trail, his movements swift and sure. Leaves sliced at his

skin and branches clawed at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

She didn’t know how far they’d walked with her jumping at every noise, but she sensed

at least an hour had passed when he began to slow. The sound of rushing water reached her ears

about the same time as a swarm of mosquitoes attacked her.

“God, I need a shower.” She slapped her neck, squishing one of the bloodsuckers. “How

can you stand living here?”

“The native wildlife doesn’t bother me, and only the most extreme temperatures affect

me.”

She remembered how, in the cold dungeon, he hadn’t so much as shivered after he’d been

stripped of his clothes. She, on the other hand, had thought she’d freeze to death at times.

The thick weave of mossy trees and lush plants thinned, opening into a clearing bordered

on one side by a sheer rocky cliff and a massively tall waterfall, a sparkling paradise in the

middle of hell.

“Let me guess, the entrance to your cave is behind the fall?” Too cliché.

He said nothing, merely kept walking. She followed, slapping mosquitoes and brushing

aside branches that snagged her sweater and tugged at her hair. They passed between the cliff

and a giant rectangular stone, the path angling sharply upward for about thirty feet, until they ran

into a dead-end tangle of brush and vines. Shade reached into a section of vegetation, fumbled