Into the Light (3 page)

Tanner doubted Quentin’s allowing him to leave had anything to do with respect. The only one Quentin ever respected was himself. Egotistical bastard. So much so that he never stopped believing Tanner would return someday.

“You’re just sowing your wild oats,” he’d said seven years ago when he arrived on Tanner’s doorstep himself, instead of sending one of his messengers. “You’ll be back. You’re pack. No one leaves the pack. Especially not the future pack master.”

Fates be damned, was Quentin right? Here he was, ten years later, back in the pack and waiting for his father to introduce the fabled lightbearer—and expecting Tanner to kill her.

Tanner’s childhood best friend, Freddy, and his mate, Lisa, stepped up to greet him. Freddy held a young female pup in his arms. Lisa’s belly was fat with their second pup.

“Tanner, it’s so good to see you,” Lisa said warmly, as she awkwardly reached over her protruding belly to hug him.

He embraced her, gave her a squeeze to let her know he was genuinely happy to see her. “Look at you. Freddy managed to make an honest woman of you after all, huh?”

The three of them were once called the Three Musketeers, although Tanner always referred to himself as the third wheel. For as long as he could remember, Freddy and Lisa had been in love with one another.

Lisa laughed and patted her belly. “I finally let him catch me. This is Sofia, our oldest.”

Sofia, in the way only a four-year-old could, nodded solemnly. “Are you going to kill a lightbearer, mister?”

“Sofia,” Lisa hissed, while guilt immediately took over Freddy’s face.

“Don’t tell me he turned you two,” Tanner said darkly. His closest friends. They were some of the very few who had been willing to go with him ten years ago. But Tanner’s mother was right—Quentin would have hunted them down and killed them. If they’d gathered enough shifters to create a large enough pack, they could have stood a chance. But the three of them—Tanner knew they’d never make it, not with Quentin after them. So he’d convinced them to stay. Had he sealed their fates?

“Hell no,” Lisa said. “But Freddy likes to tell our daughter stupid faery stories.”

“Lightbearer stories, Momma,” Sofia admonished. “And they aren’t stupid.”

“What they are is not true,” Lisa said. She turned to Tanner, gave him an earnest look. “It isn’t true, is it? He didn’t really catch one, did he? I thought they were extinct?”

“Afraid he proved us all wrong,” Tanner admitted glumly. “And now he thinks I’m going to kill her so I can inherit her magic.”

Freddy gave him a considering look. “Well, if they really do exist, maybe the legends about inheriting their magic are real too.”

“I don’t give a fuck if they are real or not,” Tanner said hotly. An image of the beautiful, caged lightbearer popped into his head. “I’m not going to kill some innocent magical being just on the off chance I might inherit magic.”

Lisa reached over and covered her daughter’s ears with her hands. “Do you have a plan?” she whispered.

Tanner shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do. But just in case, you guys should stay to the back of the crowd, so that you can make a fast escape. Especially you,” he said sternly, looking at Lisa. “No offense, but you look like you’re about to whelp any minute now.”

Lisa smiled. “I
am
about to whelp any minute. I’m due within the week.”

“You shouldn’t even be here.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “You think a little thing like imminent whelping is a good enough excuse to ignore a summons from Quentin Lyons? You’ve been gone too long, Tanner.” She gave him another quick hug and then dragged her mate away to join the crowd gathered in the wide yard that was shadowed by the mountain protruding from the west.

Quentin stepped out onto the porch of his home. He was dressed for the occasion in a loose-fitting, black, button-down shirt and a pair of black slacks. His silver beard stood out in stark relief against his tanned skin and dark clothing. His dark eyes glowed with anticipation.

He lifted both arms and the crowd fell almost instantly silent. Quentin ruled with an iron fist. No one wasted time before obeying his commands.

He spoke eloquently, reviewing what he considered pertinent pack news, knowing he was building the anticipation within the crowd. The rumor had already spread far and wide. Everyone in the crowd wondered,
Is it true? Has he really captured a lightbearer
?

How I am going to get out of this mess
?

Tanner noticed his mother wasn’t present. He’d gone to visit her earlier in the day, after Quentin informed him that he would be the one to kill the lightbearer. She had her own suite in the manor home, on the opposite end of the house from Quentin’s own elaborate suite. Tanner had been shocked to find her bedridden, pale and thin as a starved child. Her hair had gone white and her face was sallow, her pale blue eyes shadowed by great, deep circles.

“Mom,” he had gasped as he fell to his knees next to her bed. “What happened to you? Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?”

Ariana Lyons had lifted her frail, veined hand and petted her son’s thick black hair. “I hoped I would be gone before you came back. I thought that might ensure you never did.”

“What are you talking about? What’s wrong with you?”

Ariana had shaken her head and refused to tell him. “Go,” she commanded, although her voice had been too weak to hold much force. “Leave here now and never come back. That man is cursed. I do not want you to turn out like him.”

“I’m nothing like him,” Tanner had insisted, even as he wondered,
am I?

Ariana had reached out to her son, squeezed his hand with her own. “I know. And I want you to stay like that. Go away from here, Tanner. Go back to your life with the humans. Find a girl. Mate with her. Give her sturdy, strong, happy pups.”

Tanner had given his mother a wane smile. “Humans call it marriage. They birth babes, not pups. And I doubt very much I would ever be able to convince one to mate with a shifter. Which is okay, because I don’t want to find a mate.”

I don’t want to take the chance that I really might turn into Quentin
.
My bloodline ends with me
.

“You deserve to be happy.”

“So do you. I’m going to get you out of this place. Take you to a human hospital. I’m sure they can fix you.”

“No,” Ariana had insisted. “No. It’s too late for me. I’ve made my bed. I’ve protected you, my one and only pup. But you aren’t a pup anymore. You can protect yourself now. I can die in peace.”

“Don’t talk like that, Mother,” Tanner had pleaded.

He did not want to think that his leaving the pack did this to his mother. The guilt would surely kill him. How many times over the years had he wondered,
Did I do the right thing by leaving
?

His thoughts returned to the present, just as Quentin began to hint at his great surprise. With a flourish, Quentin motioned at the front door of the manor home, and it opened from the inside.

The lightbearer walked as if she was royalty, Tanner thought. She held her head high and refused to avert her eyes, while the crowd of shifters stared at her as if she was a freak show at the circus. Her blonde hair was still disheveled and dirty, her face and arms were scratched, indicative of a fight before she’d been subdued, and her dress was torn and stained. Yet she walked as if she were walking on a plush velvet carpet, as if she wore an elegant gown and headed toward her rightful place on a throne.

Tanner’s respect level ratcheted up a notch.
I have to save this woman
.

The gathered shifters gasped and made small shrieking noises before they began chattering amongst themselves. The noise rose to the level of a low roar, until Quentin called for quiet.

“Yes,” he said with great pomp and circumstance. “It is what you think it is. A lightbearer. All these years I have searched. I have never given up. And I was right!” His voice rose to a shout as the excitement level of the crowd increased with his words.

Quentin expounded some more on his decades-long search for the lightbearers. Through it all, the lightbearer remained stoic, standing with her back ramrod straight, her eyes staring into the crowd, her face a blank mask.

“My son,” he said as he waved his arm in Tanner’s direction.

Tanner’s only acknowledgement of the introduction was to step up onto the wide front porch. He walked over to the lightbearer and stood next to her. She did not even glance his way.
Stubborn
. As far as she was aware, he was her only friend among a pack of wolves—literally—and she didn’t even give him so much as a frown of acknowledgement.

His respect level rose again.

“My son, my blood. My heir. Tanner Lyons is to be your next pack master. But first, he will demonstrate his loyalty to the pack by killing this lightbearer. And when he does, he will inherit her magic. He will be the most powerful shifter of all time. My son!” His voice rose to a shout again as the lightbearer jerked her head around to finally greet Tanner with an angry glare.

This wasn’t my idea
, he wanted to shout at her. Instead, he stepped closer to her, so that they were an arm’s length apart. The pack of shifters, encouraged by Quentin, were clapping and shouting their encouragement for Tanner to kill the lightbearer.

“I don’t suppose you have the ability to disappear, do you?” he asked in a low voice that only she could hear over the din.

She glared up at him and said, “Hardly,” in an impressively haughty voice.

“Can you create a gun? Bomb? Smoke screen? Anything we can use as a distraction so we can get the hell out of here?”

Her eyes widened. “You don’t want to kill me?”

Tanner’s eyes narrowed. “Of course I don’t want to kill you. I thought we’d already established this?”

“I’m not quite in a position to believe such a thing at the moment.”

“What’s your name?” he asked abruptly.

She glared silently for a moment, and then apparently deciding she had nothing left to lose, she murmured, “Olivia. Olivia Bennett.”

“Well, Olivia Bennett, I promise you, I do not want to kill you. Unlike the pack master, I happen to have moral issues with killing people in cold blood. And I don’t really give a rat’s ass about your magic. You have about three seconds to choose to believe me.”

She took a deep breath. “I can produce light. A great deal of it. Enough to make everyone shield their eyes or else become temporarily blind. It will exhaust me to the point of near passing out, though, especially since I’ve been locked in that damn basement all day.”

“Fair enough. When I give the signal, shine the light and then run like hell. Go back through the house to the back. Don’t stop until I catch up with you.”

“What’s the sig—” He didn’t give her a chance to ask. He could tell Quentin was growing impatient. It was now or never.

He grabbed the iron chain and pulled it from her wrists. Olivia gasped as if she had been underwater for too long.

“Now would be good,” Tanner growled at her. The crowd of onlookers had not yet comprehended that he meant to set her free, not kill her. But Quentin was coming to that conclusion—fast.

“Now!” he shouted at the lightbearer. A moment later, he shifted into the form of a lion and lunged at his father. Just before he made contact, Tanner squeezed his eyes shut. The light the lightbearer produced was so bright, Tanner saw dark spots in front of his eyes, despite the fact that he’d closed them just before making contact with his father.

Quentin gave a yell and then Tanner landed squarely on his chest, knocking him to the ground. There was more yelling and screams and shouts of confusion, as the crowd of shifters tried to figure out what just happened. People shuffled about, arms outstretched, as their eyesight was temporarily robbed from them. Parents snatched children into their arms and began to run, clumsily, as they tripped over shrubbery and bumped into trees in the process. Others blindly bumped into one another and then reacted in anger and frustration. Small fistfights broke out, almost comical in appearance, as shifters struggled to punch one another through blurred vision.

Quentin shook his head to clear his eyesight. He roared, loud enough to rattle the windows on the manor home. Then he shifted into the form of a great black bear and threw Tanner from him. Tanner’s lion form rolled several times and like the cat he was, he landed on his feet. A quick glance around indicated that the lightbearer was good at following directions. Either that or she’d already been swept away by someone else.

Tanner charged at Quentin again, and the two of them crashed together, claws and teeth snapping. Quentin rolled away, into the remaining small crowd of confused shifters. Shifters scattered like bowling pins after being struck by the ball. Tanner leaped to his feet, shifted back into human form, and rushed into the house.

When he burst through the back door, there was no lightbearer to be found. “Son of a—”

“Tanner, over here!”

He whirled around and only just leaped out of the way of the SUV bearing down on him. The vehicle came to a screeching halt. Freddy was at the wheel, and Lisa was in the passenger seat.

“Get in.”

“I can’t. I have to—”

“She’s in the back.”

Tanner glanced into the SUV. Olivia slumped in the backseat, next to little Sofia, who stared at her in fascination, clearly unaffected by the stress of the moment.

“What did you do to her?” Tanner demanded, instantly bristling.

Freddy shook his head. “Nothing. She stumbled out onto the back porch and collapsed there. I figured you had some kind of plan, so I grabbed her and stuffed her into the car.”

“How come you’re able to see?” he asked Freddy.

Lisa answered. “We were already sneaking away, around the back of the house, when that light-bomb or whatever it was went off.” She glanced at her mate. “Freddy said you made him nervous when we talked to you, and he was worried something like this would happen.”

“I need to go get my mother,” Tanner said.

Freddy reached out the window and grabbed Tanner’s arm. “You can’t. If you go in there, you won’t come back out again.”