First Bite (The Dark Wolf Series) (33 page)

At the second-to-last door, the girl was about to put the key in the lock when the knob began to turn in her hand. “Oh, it’s not locked,” she said in surprise.

“I’ll take it from here,” Neva said quickly. “I need some time to study the decor, and I require absolute silence in which to concentrate. Take your towels and leave this floor.”

“Right away, Ms. de la Ronde.” The relief in the housekeeper’s voice was undeniable, and she wasted no time leaving.

As the light footsteps died away, Neva took a breath and opened the elegant door. Reaching for the light switch proved unnecessary. The light from the hallway behind her spilled into the room and illuminated Travis Williamson—

And the brunette in his arms he was currently lip-locked with.

Travis’s eyes were closed, not in bliss, but in an effort to distance himself from the creature he was kissing. The sudden change in light made him crack open a lid, however—and then both eyes shot wide.
Meredith!
Her long blonde hair tumbled to her waist, and her red, red lips were open in a perfect O as she stared at him from the open door. He froze, unable to make sense of the rabbit hole he’d just fallen down.

“Travis, what the hell are you doing?” she demanded, and it was Neva’s voice.

In his arms, the creature/woman/monster/whatever sprang behind him and tugged hard at his arm. “She’s found us! Run!” She had Neva’s voice, too—but not her taste.

For Christ’s sake, did he have to go around kissing
everyone
to figure out who was who?

Travis cursed the absence of his alter ego, knowing that his wolf would recognize the real Neva no matter what, because it knew her wolf. And maybe neither one of these women was Neva. But there was something about the blonde at the door, some elusive quality that called to him in spite of the fact that she looked like their worst enemy. Suddenly his shocked brain kicked into
gear.
Travis! She called me Travis!
He hadn’t revealed his name to anyone in this house,
especially
Meredith. Immediately he leaped for the door—

And was yanked almost off his feet by something around his neck. He clawed at it, his fingertips identifying the silken thread as Fenrir’s Cord. High-pitched laughter behind him chilled him to the bone, and he glanced back to see exactly what he had seen in the forest bower—Neva’s face bearing Meredith’s mocking expression.

“Oh, my goodness!” She giggled, and it reminded him of her delight over the demons she’d conjured. “I simply can’t keep up the charade any longer. You should see your faces! Too, too funny.” She was holding the other end of the scarlet cord in her hands, but only loosely—it was moving on its own like a live thing. As Travis choked, the rest of the cord undulated around him like a python, squeezing until he was brought crashing to the floor.

“No!” shouted the real Neva. She ran toward him, but she was knocked back by some invisible force just as his vision started to gray at the edges.

“Oh,
yes
, my dear, darling little sister. And don’t bother trying that again, I’ll just finish strangling him and save us both a lot of trouble later.”

“Let him go, Meredith. It’s me you want, isn’t it? Aren’t I at the center of some grand plan of yours? You don’t need him.”

“
Au contraire, ma soeur chérie
, I need him very much, because he means something to you. It’s just like when you had a doll you liked and I came and took it away from you. I didn’t want it, you know. I didn’t ever want your silly things. I just got such a kick out of seeing how upset it made you.”

“I already knew that. You like getting a reaction out of me. That’s what you always want, isn’t it?”

Meredith walked in a circle around him, but Travis only knew that by the sound. He couldn’t see her. His vision had tunneled down to the size of a nickel, as if he was looking in the wrong end of a telescope. Christ, he was going to pass out, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Most of all, there was nothing he could do to help Neva.

At that moment, however, Meredith snapped her fingers, and two things happened. One, the cord loosened from around his neck, and two, as he sucked in welcome air, he began to Change. Connecting with his wolf at last should have been a good thing, except it was nothing like the shape-shifting he was accustomed to. His body contorted violently as if resisting the transformation, as if he’d never done it before in his life. And it was painfully, agonizingly slow, taking long minutes to accomplish what was normally instantaneous.
Goddammit, what the hell is happening?

“Stop it,” Neva yelled.

Her twin clapped her hands. “See? Some things never change. I still love getting a rise out of you.”

“You sick, twisted bitch! All you do is use people to amuse yourself. Let him go.”

Gasping, Travis hunched on the floor as his spine rearranged itself, his fingernails tearing up chunks of the expensive carpet and underlay—until his fingers shortened into toes.
Don’t piss her off, Neva
, he warned, focusing his thoughts narrowly in spite of the searing pain that was exploding throughout his system.
She’s not stable.

Jeez, ya think? I told you that a long time ago. Are you okay?

Sure, fine. Gimme a few minutes and I’ll come up with a heroic plan to save us.

In other words, I’m on my own.

Unaware of the silent conversation, Meredith only laughed at her twin. “You’ve seen how things work around here, Geneva.
I’m in charge, and that means I do whatever I like.
Of course
I use people. I tell my pack when to walk on two legs and when to walk on four. And I’ve decided that I’d like your boyfriend better in a fur coat.

“Mind you,” she pretended to muse, “I could decide he looks better without balls, too. You know, I’d never have believed it if I hadn’t gone to the woods myself—imagine my baby sister mated
for life
to a werewolf she hardly knows.”

“Cut the crap, Meredith. First of all, being born ten minutes ahead of me doesn’t make you older, and it sure as hell doesn’t make you any wiser.”

“No? Then why do I know things about this man that you don’t? You’ve never been impulsive in your life. Always playing by the rules. Never taking a risk. Never really living at all, so what do
you
know about anything? Oh, and you’re
so
squeamish about spilling blood and taking lives.” Meredith shook her finger at her. “You’ve judged me very, very harshly because I dare to do these things. So imagine how hurt I felt when I discovered you’d suddenly mated with a murderer!”

Travis’s Change was slowly nearing completion, but a brand-new pain knifed his heart. Christ, he’d known the bitch would use his accidental confession against him.
Neva, don’t listen. Please, please don’t listen.
He couldn’t tell if he was talking mind to mind or just praying like hell. It felt about the same.

“Uh-huh, sure, sis.” Neva folded her arms and regarded her twin. “Like I’m going to take your word for it.”

“You don’t have to take my word, darling Geneva. Ask
him
about it sometime. Ask how he slaughtered seven helpless humans, young and old. Tore them into little tiny bloody pieces.” She knelt and put an unwelcome arm around his neck, but he couldn’t control his body yet, couldn’t stop her. “My, my, just look at these big teeth,” Meredith said as she struck
a provocative pose, stroking his giant fangs with a manicured finger.

Keep it up
, Travis thought to himself, furious and frustrated that the Change was taking so goddamn long.
Stay right there until I’m fully wolf, and I’ll enjoy chewing
you
into tiny pieces.

“These are the very ivories that bit and slashed without an ounce of mercy—” She cut her fingertip on the razor edge of one of his giant carnassials, the meat-shearing teeth that all wolves possessed. “Oopsie.” She giggled. A normal human being would pop their finger in their mouth and suck on it, or run for a Band-Aid. Or both. Instead, the bitch had it poised over Travis’s tongue and was milking drops of her vile blood into his mouth. He fought to get away, even to just close his jaws—hell, he didn’t care if he bit his own tongue off in the process—
anything
to get away from that foul substance. But his body still wasn’t listening to him. He couldn’t be more paralyzed if he was frozen in a block of ice.

For some crazy-ass reason, the memory of his grandfather popped into his head.
Make your thoughts quiet,
he had instructed.
See. Hear. Feel.

I’m not exactly able to do anything else right now.
Travis forced himself to relax, to let go, to reach out with his senses, and just
feel
. He certainly felt something dark and evil—that had to be Meredith. He felt something oily and almost venomous on his tongue—her blood, for sure. But then there was something else, something that pulsed like a live thing, vibrating as powerfully as his grandfather’s crystal had vibrated in his hands all those years ago…

Suddenly something large and heavy struck Meredith in the side of the face, jarring her from her loathsome task and smearing her ever-perfect lipstick. She shrieked as a second object hit her
squarely in the head. Neva was standing over by the bookshelves, hefting a third volume in her hand. “That’s the trouble with spells, dear sister,” she said. “They’re very, very specific. You’ve put up a shield against me, but apparently not against these.” Neva fired off the book, and this time her twin ducked.

Meredith rose up in a fury, forgetting Travis completely and turning her back to him. “You’re protecting this
killer
?” she shouted, putting up her hands, palms out, to ward off any more projectiles. “How fair is it that you love him, and you don’t love me?”

Neva threw another book, but cursed as it bounced off an invisible shield without even striking her twin’s hands. “First of all, I never said I loved the guy, and second of all, you’ve done nothing but make my life a living hell since I was born. You called me, remember? I came here in good faith, Meredith, hoping you were serious about reconnecting and making a new start, but you lied. Like you
always
lie. I can’t love a liar
or
a killer, and you’re both.”

The devastating words fell on Travis’s heart like sledgehammer blows.
You did this
, he said to his wolf.
I told you we would never have a mate.

His alter ego, maddeningly practical as always, simply addressed the situation at hand.
Wolf here. Cord gone.

Travis looked down. Distracted, Meredith had let go of her end of the cord—
and it had simply fallen off during his transformation.
With the Change complete and his body finally under his control, he used each of his paws in turn to push the jumble of scarlet coils behind him and under the bed. The bedcovers fell back in place as if they had never moved. Next, Travis subtly gathered himself as he trained his attention on the back of Meredith’s neck, where the dark ponytail swung from side to side as she spoke.

“There’s no such word as
can’t
around here, Geneva. I
can
make you love me. Just like all my wolves love me. You’re going to stay right here with me, and either be my adoring little sister or my obedient little sidekick,” Meredith hissed, and fisted her hands, her voice gaining volume until it bounced from the walls all around them. “You’re going to worship the ground I walk on right up until it’s time to visit my spell-crafting room. And then you’ll
thank me
for allowing your blood to be part of—”

Travis sprang.

The great golden wolf knocked Meredith down with such force that her face slammed against the floor, stunning her. Neva gasped as his enormous jaws snapped shut at the back of her twin’s neck. There was no blood and no bite, however, and the big animal didn’t linger. Within a nanosecond of his teeth ringing together, his powerful hind feet pushed off of Meredith’s body, driving the air from her lungs as he launched himself for the door. Travis’s voice filled Neva’s mind with a single word:

Run!

Startled, Neva spun and shifted to wolfen form, then raced beside Travis down the long hallway.
I know a way out.
That is, as long as Sonje had been telling her the truth, or this would be a damn short trip…In her mind she could hear her twin screaming for her pack to
stop them
. Meredith’s voice increased in volume and power, a stabbing, twisting knife in the head, and Neva felt sorry for the wolves who could not resist such a painful compulsion.

As the terrible voice ceased, she couldn’t help but be glad that Meredith wasn’t going to lower herself to chase them herself. Of course, it also meant she had total confidence that they couldn’t escape.

Neva veered to the right, straight into the grand reception room where Meredith had once held a fake party in her honor—and instead, had changed her life forever. This time, however,
she wasn’t hanging around for her deranged twin to grab her. Running full-out, she crossed the expansive floor in a handful of bounds and lowered her head to ram the glass doors leading to the patio. Travis was there a heartbeat ahead of her and broke the glass for both of them. It exploded into a shower of beads that clung to their fur, but they didn’t slow down.
This way
, Neva said as she ran to the edge of the stone balcony—