Destiny United (34 page)

“What are you doing in Yellowstone, vampire?”

She arched a brow. “Feeling territorial?”

“Answer the question.”

“Do you really think it will be that easy?”

“So you
will
make me
torture you?”

Her eyes narrowed into her best threatening glare. “Fair
warning. I
really
don’t like being tortured. It
puts me in a foul mood.”

“Let me guess.” His mouth curled up in mocking amusement.
“Bad things happen when you’re in a foul mood?”

“Let me put it this way, the last time someone tried to
torture me, I fed his balls to a pack of wild dogs.” The werewolf had had it
coming. He hadn’t been her intended revenge but he had sufficed until she could
catch up with the man she really wanted to castrate. Her mate.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” was his only response to her
gruesome threat. “So, Natalie, huh? A very nice American name.” He stood in
front of her, his arms folded over his massive chest. “But you’re not American,
are you?”

“Perceptive,” she said, “for a dog.”

He shook his head slowly, disapproval written all over
his face. “You’ve got a lot of nerve. Here you are, tied up with
my
rope, in
my
territory, and you’re mouthing off?”

“Nerve, I have an abundance of. What I don’t have is my weapons.”

“Nor will you get them. Did you forget you tried to kill
me?”

“You started it.”

Impatience flared in his eyes. “You were about to take
out that lone wolf!” The amused arrogance was gone when he took another step
towards her. “How did you hear about the wolves’ blood? Who sent you?”

I guess fun time is over
. “What
wolves’ blood? I have no idea what you’re talking about. And that wasn’t a lone
wolf. It was a dangerous rogue werewolf. Can’t you tell the difference?”

“Answer the question.”

“
You
answer the question.”

Two blonde brows darted up. “Who has who tied up?”

She looked at her binds. “Irrelevant.”

He laughed.

She stared at him. When his chuckles faded she asked,
“What’s the name of my temporary captor and soon to be dead man?”

He hesitated only a moment. “Cristian.”

She couldn’t hold back a mocking smile. “Cristian?
Cristian the werewolf? That’s rich.”

He smiled, his teeth white against his lush lips. “My
mother was human, just like yours…” he paused to look in her wallet, “Natalie
from Wisconsin.” He snorted.

She shrugged. Well, as much as she could with her arms
tied behind her back.

“You don’t look like a Natalie.” He stooped down so they
were eye-to-eye. “You changed it, didn’t you? To sound American.”

Since it was none of his business, she ignored him.

Using a knuckle he stroked her cheek. Her eyes widened.
To her own surprise she didn’t snap at him with her fangs. But why did she like
the feel of his skin on hers?

“What’s your real name?” he asked in a buttery voice.

She had to purse her lips to keep the answer from
spilling out. What the hell was going on? It was almost as if he had some power
over her.
Must be the wolfsbane
, she reasoned.
She’d been near it too long.

“You’re too beautiful to be Natalie. Won’t you tell me
your real name?” He smiled warmly and tucked a loose strand of her hair behind
her ear.

She couldn’t comprehend the strangeness of the encounter.
Werewolves wanted her dead. All of them. They wanted to beat her, stab her, cut
out her heart, burn her alive, etcetera, etcetera. She knew this because they’d
told her so. On more than one occasion. In fact, there was probably a blog
somewhere out there on the web sphere dedicated to the ways she should die. But
never,
ever
did they want to caress her. Was this some kind of trick?

“Is it Natasha? Nathalee?” When she didn’t respond he
guessed again. “No? What about Nata? Natalene?”

She bit down on her tongue until she tasted blood. Her
body yearned to answer him. This was no ordinary werewolf. Good news for the northwest
pack, bad news for her.

“Natalia?” Her face must have given her away because he
grinned. “Natalia then, isn’t it?”

She didn’t bother to confirm it.

“Natalia,” he said, trying it on with satisfaction.
“That’s much better.”

“You’re not really a bounty hunter,” she accused.

“Never said I was.” He stood up and walked back to his
spot on the log. She could barely see him through the haze of the fire.

“Why didn’t you use silver to subdue me?” If he had,
she’d have been free before she even opened her eyes. What most werewolves
didn’t know was that Natalia was the only vampire immune to the effects of
silver. She’d been locked in cages, hung from ceilings, handcuffed, and
stabbed. But she’d always escaped because the deadliest agent in the
supernatural world had no effect on her. Actually, that’s wasn’t quite true.
Silver hoops did look lovely dangling from her ears.

“You’re no ordinary vampire,” he said. “Or else so many
wouldn’t have failed.”

“Maybe I’m just a good fighter.”

“No doubt. But I don’t trust things I haven’t made myself.”

She looked at the bindings around her legs. “You make
your own rope?”

He nodded.

“Tedious, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Some people knit, I make rope.”

“I guess everybody needs a hobby.”

“I think you can see it’s more than just a hobby, Talia.”

A nickname? This was getting far too personal. Time for
damage control. “Talia? We’re on a nickname basis now. Good to know,
dog
.”

“Careful, Talia,” he warned. “I’m a patient man but I’ll
only tolerate so much from a prisoner. Best tread lightly.”

Actually, best tread on out of
here.
Time for the most important part of an escape plan. The
actual escape. Her gaze rested on Cristian’s pile of weapons. Using her gift
she extended her senses, searching for the one thing she needed to escape. But
there were no swords, no daggers, not even a switch blade. A bow and quiver of
arrows rested against a tree. Next to that was a whip. She sighed. Of course
she would get caught by the one man in North America who doesn’t use metal
weapons.

“A whip?” she asked. Maybe she’d pegged him for Robin
Hood too early.

“Also homemade.”

“Are you planning to raid the Temple of Doom, Mr. Jones?”

He chuckled.

“It’s not a very useful weapon you know.”

“You’d be surprised. But, yes, mostly it’s for
intimidation.”

She snorted. As if a werewolf could scare her.

“I see you are immune. Which means you are either very
old and experienced or very young and stupid.” A soft gaze landed on her,
heating her more than the fire only a few feet away. “Which is it, Natalia?” He
was using that seductive voice again. “How old are you?”

Ignoring him, she put her feelers out again, searching
for her own weapons. On average she had at least a dozen weapons on her at one
time. All metal. It was her essence. She had the unique ability to manipulate
it. That was what made her deadly. Well, that and combat skills that rivaled
the Navy Seals.

“Where are my weapons?” she asked.

“At the bottom of the river.”

“Bastard,” she hissed, letting her emotions get the best
of her for a moment.

Cristian grinned.

She used all her power this time as she reached out
around her. Usually metal was easy to find. It was everywhere. Clothing, shoes,
hair clips, jewelry, wallets, phones, almost everything contained metal of some
sort. Surprisingly, the area she was currently bound in was almost void of it.
Almost.

Picking up the essence on Cristian’s belt buckle she
smiled inside. Normally, she wasn’t one to gloat. She preferred to just get the
job done. But she couldn’t deny a certain satisfaction in escaping Cristian’s
handmade bonds.

She started with a little tug and his belt buckle began
to change shape. The corner of her mouth twisted up into a smug smirk. With a
big mental yank the buckle pulled away from his pants and molded into a shiv.
It took exactly three seconds to make it to slice through her bonds and free
her arms. One rip with her claws and her legs were free too.

Oh yeah, metal was her bitch.

She shed the ropes and jumped up from the ground facing
her captor. He grabbed his whip while she put out a hand and her makeshift
knife flew into it.

“Wanna see why the bond is so high?” she asked, circling
Cristian in a defensive crouch.

“I can see how you’ve managed to evade them for so long.
But I wonder, how long would you last without your special…gift?”

She’d seen that trick before. He was trying to bait her
for a fair fight. She shrugged. “Too bad we’ll never know.”

She threw the knife but he dodged it easily and it
thunked
into the tree behind him. With an arrogant
smirk he flicked his wrist and the whip lashed menacingly towards her. He was
playing. And that was his first mistake.

Natalia always “missed” the first shot. A simple thought
and the knife unloaded from the tree and stabbed into Cristian’s back, cutting
through muscle and lodging into his spine. She struck him in the stomach with
the heel of her boot. When he lurched forward she grabbed his head and twisted.
A snapped neck would put a werewolf out for just long enough to get a good head
start. The only thing that would kill him would be to sever his head from his
body.

If she was smart, she would have sliced through his neck
like she’d done to so many werewolves before. No one had ever come so close to
truly capturing her. And now that he knew she could manipulate metal, he
wouldn’t make the mistake of wearing a belt buckle around her again.

Once he was unconscious, Natalia studied him. His
scraggly blonde hair was just long enough to touch the tops of his shoulders.
It matched the scruffiness of his unshaven face. He had a wild look about him
that made her heart flutter.

Maybe it would be the biggest mistake of her life, but
she didn’t kill him. She left him a clear message not to mess with her – one he
would heed if he had any common sense. But she doubted very much that he did.

She chuckled and brushed back a piece of hair from his
face. “Cristian the werewolf.”

Also by Leia Shaw:
Destiny Divided

http://www.leiashaw.com