Clay's Instinct (BBW Paranormal Romance) (Wolf Call) (5 page)

When he finally pulled out of her, she was filled with his seed. She rolled over to face him and he collapsed next to her, one arm across her belly as he lay beside her breathing hard.

Lucinda stroked his hair and closed her eyes, enjoying the moment.

What they had just done had felt like more than just sex.

It had felt like a mating.

CHAPTER SIX

Intrusion

Lucinda woke up before Clay the following morning. While he lay sleeping, she slipped out of bed and went naked to the kitchen area to make coffee. She got two mugs out of the cupboard and went to set them next to the kettle when she felt a cold chill in the base of her spine. She froze, the mugs dangling by their handles for her fingers, unable to move. 

The chill crept up her spine like an icy spider. When it reached the spot between her shoulder blades, Lucinda felt a grip of panic. What was going to happen when it reached her brain? She struggled to move but something had paralyzed her. She tried to call out to Clay but her lips wouldn't form the words.

The icy touch slid up the back of her neck. When it reached her head, her mind was filled with a vision of a dimly lit stone room. There were men there, dressed in dark purple robes, and they were kneeling in a circle. Inscribed on the stone floor was an intricate set of symbols and words in languages Lucinda didn't recognize. Then a voice filled her head. A whisper so loud she was sure it would wake Clay before she understood that it was only in her own mind and not being spoken aloud.

'Lucinda, where are you?' The voice was male but it sounded like a number of different men all speaking the same words at the same time. 

'Lucinda.'

She tried to block it out but her mind was just as paralyzed as her body. The only thing she could see in her inner vision was that terrible stone room and the men within.

'Lucinda, look around.'

She realized what they were trying to do. Just as she could see them, so could they see through her eyes. They wanted her to look around so they would see where she was. They knew she was with Clay and they wanted him for their dark purposes. She tried not to move but felt her head turning as if it was on a string being pulled by someone else. They made her look at Clay, still in bed asleep, at the cabin interior and out of the window at the mountains.

A sudden crash broke the connection and Lucinda felt a jolt of pain then the icy feeling and the vision were gone. One of the coffee mugs lay shattered on the floor. It had slipped from her finger.

Clay was awake and out of the bedroom immediately. 'What's wrong?'

'They know where we are,' she said, feeling weak. She leaned against the wall. 'They...there was a connection...they could see us.'

'Clairvoyance,' he stated matter-of-factly. 'We need to leave here. Now.'

She nodded, feeling fear rise within her. Were they ever going to be free? Couldn't they just be left alone? 'Where will we go?'

'I don't know yet but we can't stay here.'

They got dressed hurriedly and left the cabin, moving into the cover of the trees as quickly as they could. When they were a mile away, they heard the distant buzz of helicopters approaching. Lucinda gasped but Clay put his hand on her arm and the touch seemed to comfort her instantly.

'They aren't going to find us,' he said, 'they're going to go to the cabin before they realize we're gone. By then we'll be safe.'

The sound of the choppers got louder and Clay said, 'We're going to need to move faster.' He began to take off his clothes.

Lucinda knew what he was about to do and she was afraid that when she saw him in his shifted form, it would bring back a flood of memories of her parents' murder. Clay handed her his clothes and shifted instantly. Lucinda stood rigid but the fear she expected never came. Clay was a huge wolf but when he looked at her, there was a gentleness in his green eyes. She climbed onto his back and gripped his fur tightly as he set off through the trees. 

By the time the choppers came into view, Clay was running.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Logan

Two Weeks Later

The Tired Driver's Diner was a small dingy establishment located just outside Helena, North Dakota. Lucinda and Clay sat in a booth eating a breakfast of eggs bacon and toast. Their life on the run was stressful and Lucinda wasn't sure how long she could go on constantly looking over her shoulder and suspecting everyone they met was a member of the Temple of Thul. Being with Clay felt so right, like it was where she was meant to be, but this life wasn't good for anyone.

She looked over at Clay. He had stopped eating, his fork suspended midway between his plate and his mouth. His brows furrowed slightly and he looked as if he was sniffing the air intently.

'Is everything okay?' she asked.

He placed the fork back onto his plate and held up a hand to silence her while he continued to breath in the various scents in the diner. Lucinda had no idea what fragrance he had detected in the air. All she could smell was fried eggs and bacon but she knew Clay's sense of smell was a million times better than her own.

'There are two shifters in here,' he whispered. 'A male and a female.'

Her eyes widened. 'Really?'

He nodded then looked around the place. His eyes came to rest on a couple sitting in a booth in the corner. Lucinda cast a glance in that direction. The woman was pretty with short blonde hair and pale blue eyes. But it was the man who demanded Lucinda's attention because a scar ran down the entire left side of his face and seemed to disappear beneath his sweatshirt. He looked fit and muscular and now that Lucinda knew he was a shifter, she recognized something in the man that she also saw in Clay; a wildness that seemed to lurk just below the surface. The inner wolf. She could sense something similar from the woman but it was not so evident. The man was obviously an alpha like Clay.

The two came over and slid into the booth with Clay and Lucinda. The man sat next to Lucinda and she could feel the same sense of power radiating from him that she felt from Clay.

It was the woman who spoke. Her accent was Canadian. 'My name is Sarah Cooper and this is my partner Logan James. It seems we have something in common.'

'A common enemy,' Clay observed. 

Logan nodded. 'We wouldn't be in this place otherwise.'

'On the run?' Clay asked.

Logan nodded.

'So are we,' Clay said.

Sarah lowered her voice to a whisper and leaned in over the table. 'The Temple has agents everywhere.'

Clay nodded. 'We've been on the run for two weeks and I can't see any future for us except more running.'

Logan said in a low voice, 'That's what we thought too but now we've found you. There may be others.'

'Possibly. Those who have escaped like us or are living in fear of the Temple. But how does that change things for us?'

'Strength in numbers,' Logan whispered.

'Are you suggesting we form a pack?'

Logan nodded. 'If we want to strike back at the Temple, it's the only way. Otherwise, we'll be on the run for the rest of our lives. And they will capture us eventually.'

'A pack of wolves,' Clay said, sitting back against the red vinyl upholstery and thinking.

'Not just wolves,' Logan said, 'vampires too.'

Clay raised an eyebrow. 'Have you ever met one?'

'No, not yet. But we know they exist. And they are enemies of the Temple just as much as we are.'

Lucinda shivered. She had no desire to meet a vampire. 'But how could we ask them to join us' she asked, 'if we don't know where they are?'

'We have to track them down,' Sarah said. 'I'm a private detective. I can find anyone with the right resources.'

'Resources we don't have,' Logan reminded her.

Clay seemed to be thinking. After a pause, he said to Logan, 'If she's a private detective, what's your skill set?'

'I was a Ranger.'

Clay nodded. 'So we have a private detective, a soldier, a cop and a reporter. Three shifters and one human. I'm sure that between us we can find a way to contact the others who are out there living in fear of the Temple. We can't go on running. We need to strike back. We can only do that if we have a pack.'

'I have a sister, Amy,' Sarah said, 'and she's in contact with our dad. He's a detective too. He can help.'

Clay leaned in over the table. 'It's not much but it's a start. At least we'll be doing something other than running.'

Amy looked out of the window at the morning sun. Just a couple of weeks ago she had hated shifters and blamed them all for the murder of her parents. Now she was helping them raise an army of werewolves and vampires to take down a secret society. She had spent a decade searching for a story on shifters and now here she was living the story of the century. She was a part of it. 

An idea came to her. Of course, that was it. Her stories.

'I know how we can reach the others,' she said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Message

Dave Weber, editor of the Montana Bugle, fell heavily into his desk chair and rubbed his eyes. It was too goddamn early to be at work. But he couldn't sleep as usual so there was no point lying in bed wide awake, his wife snoring away next to him, when he had a newspaper to get out. So here he was at the office feeling like shit and probably looking like it too.

He sighed and looked at his 'In' tray. Despite the fact that this was the age of email, people still wrote to him with stories they thought the paper should cover. They were kooks mostly. People who lived sad little lives and wanted to believe that aliens had landed in their back yard or that they had discovered a government conspiracy. 

Dave leaned forward and picked up a padded envelope. At least this looked like it had some content inside and wasn't just some crackpot's theory.

The envelope contained a CD packed into a plastic wallet and a single piece of paper. Dave recognized the handwriting. Lucinda Everett. The werewolf lady. What the fuck was she up to now? 'You disappear off the face of the planet and now you send me a CD,' he muttered. Lucinda had called the office almost three weeks ago saying she wouldn't be in that day because she was working on a story. After that, nobody heard from her again and she didn't show up for work.

'So what the hell is this?' Dave asked himself, inspecting the DVD in his hand. The handwritten note didn't explain anything either. It just said, 'Dave, you need to see this. Lucinda.' Great. She was almost as kooky as the members of the public who wrote the letters.

He slid his chair across to the TV and slid the DVD into the player.

When he saw what was on the screen, he rolled his chair back across to the desk and picked up the phone, calling his assistant. 

'Joanne, you need to come in to the office. Now. I don't give a fuck what time it is, get in here now!'

He looked back at the TV. Who would have thought that Lucinda Everett had been right all along?

*

The news report showed three huge wolves padding through a forest while the camera followed them. The animals changed course and came directly to the camera, one of them suddenly changing into Clay while the other two remained in wolf form. The camera panned up to Clay's face and he looked at the viewers. 'The stories you heard about werewolves and vampires are true,' he said, 'but we aren't monsters. There are some who hunt is as if we were but that is going to change. We won't run any longer.'

Lucinda's voice, off camera, said, 'Do you have a message for others who are like you?'

He nodded. 'Don't be afraid. You've probably lived most of your lives in hiding. But we have a common enemy and we need to fight that enemy together. You are not alone. We will find you.'

The picture on the TV switched back to the studio and the anchor man smiled. 'Well there you have it folks. Werewolves. Many sources are saying that this footage is an example of the computer CGI effects that are available to just about anyone these days while others are saying it's real and werewolves do exist. Only you can decide for yourself.' He smiled again and went on to the next story.

Lucinda turned off the TV in the hotel room and shook her head. 'No one believes it.' She went out of the room to the balcony, staring at the night sky and the bright lights of the city.

Clay came out to join her and placed a hand on her shoulder. 'It doesn't matter if it's treated as a hoax by most people. The people who are like us will know it's real. That's all that matters.'

She looked at him and sighed. 'But they don't know how to contact us so what's the point?'

'The point is, they know they don't have to live in fear. They know they aren't alone. Maybe they'll make themselves easier for us to find now.'

She watched the people on the street below, the cars on the road. 'Can we really do this, Clay?'

'Yes, we can. There are people out there who need our help. And we need their help. This is a fight for freedom. I believe that good will triumph over evil. I know it in my gut.'

'In my experience, reporting on tragic stories for most of my life, evil gets away with a lot of things. Your belief could be wrong, you know.'

He shook his head. 'It's not just a belief, it's an instinct. And my instinct is never wrong. Now come to bed.'

She followed him into the hotel room. Tomorrow they would begin the search for the creatures who hid themselves from the world of men.