Jared (5 page)

There was just nothing like a bunch of immortals
throwing a hissy fit to upset the natural way of things. And things were
getting pretty upset. If they kept it up, the mortals would figure out they
weren’t alone in the world, that their Halloween tales were actually reality,
and then there’d be hell to pay. And mortals far outnumbered immortals. With
werewolf birth rates down to near zero and conversions failing right and left,
the immortals were fast approaching qualification for the endangered species
list. Which was a hell of an ironic note when a body thought about it.

Jared slid along the shadows of the tree line, slowing
his pace, letting the hunters catch up, feeling their simmer of elation when
they recognized they were closing the distance. They were too confident,
probably relying on the fact that there were four of them and only one of him
to be the deciding factor in the battle. His fingers flexed. That
overconfidence would be the death of them.

The ping of regret that hit him at the thought had no
place in his life. It was a kill-or-be-killed world, more so now than before,
with too much on the line to waste time with a conscience. Especially now that
his sister-in-law’s pregnancy was known. The rarity of the pregnancy had fueled
the latest rounds of Sanctuary kidnap-pings and experimentations. Before they’d
been toying sporadically with the possibility of creating life, something that
rarely occurred with mated pairs of weres and never with vampires—but an actual
pregnancy among the vampires had raised their fanaticism to a fever pitch,
inspiring claims that it was a sign from the creator that their time was here.

Allie’s pregnancy was raising hope and panic among the
Renegade vampires and weres as well. Hope, because there was nothing bleaker
than a future without children and family to build on, and panic because the
pregnancy had occurred when she was only half converted. If that information
got out, no woman, whether immortal or mortal, would be safe from Sanctuary
males. Their conviction that their genes were the foundation for a master race
would ensure that every fertile female would be impregnated, or would end up a
broken shell with screwed-up DNA and a fragmented mind. Jared had seen a few of
those women. It had left him, along with the rest of the Renegades, vowing to
prevent it from happening to anyone else. They might be a dying species, but
that didn’t give them a right to prey on and destroy others to achieve their
ends.

He checked his back trail. The enemy was following,
the original four plus two others who’d been masked before. Either tiredness or
assumption had them not hiding their presence as they should. He shook his
head. Assuming the maximum scanning distance was a constant for all vampires
was stupid. Each vampire had different skills and abilities, making assumption
a dangerous prospect. He made a note to go over that again with his own men.

It seemed to be both human and vampire nature to
become complacent, and complacency was the number one frailty that Jared
counted on to win most battles, mainly because he was a patient man. He could
wait centuries to get his revenge. Had been, in one case. His grip tightened on
the stock of his rifle. The vague image he had of the woman who had turned
Caleb, now fractured and fragmented into a nearly indistinguishable blend of
energy and features, surged in his mind. He made it a point never to hurt a
woman, but when he found that cold bitch, he was going to throw away his scruples.
She’d taken everything from him and his brothers, putting them on this road,
into this war.

If the unknown vamp had walked away from Caleb that
night two hundred fifty years ago, Jared would have married up with Diane, had
a little boy with the Johnson hazel eyes and square chin, maybe even a couple
of daughters with Diane’s bright personality and blonde hair, grown old
spoiling his wife and his grandchildren, died at the end of a natural life
span, and by now be just so much dust in the ground.

He eased his grip on the rifle when the crack of wood
reached his ears. The only thing he’d ever wanted was a normal life. Losing
their parents at an early age had made the bond between the brothers strong,
but it had also made surviving hard. They grew up tough and independent of
everything except each other, but whenever they’d ridden through a town and
Jared had seen the men with their wives and children, he’d felt the ache
inside—that hunger for the normal family life he’d lost. Sometimes all that had
kept him going had been the determination to regain it.

He’d been on the verge of doing just that when Caleb
had converted him. He knew, by rights, he should blame Caleb, but he couldn’t.
He understood his brother too well, had felt the overpowering drive of vampire
emotion that obscured reason until a body learned to control it. No, he didn’t
blame Caleb, but he did blame the bitch who’d converted Caleb when he was at
his weakest.

That wasn’t the kind of thing a body did to a person.
It was as foul as what the Sanctuary did to women, and when he found the bitch,
he’d show her what it meant to betray a Johnson.

Mid-leap over a large boulder, Jared felt it. A surge
of energy joining the other six. It cut through his shields with the efficiency
of a well-honed knife. Every synapse in his brain snapped to attention,
fine-tuning through the shock of the contact with that sweet feminine
vibration. Raisa.

Dammit! How had she gotten past the barrier? He landed
awkwardly on the other side of the boulder and pulled up, erasing his
footprints from the snow as he mentally cast for more information. There was no
change in the energy of the men hunting him. Which meant they didn’t know that
the woman followed. He frowned, the strength of the signal almost deafening
him. How could they be unaware?

Along with awareness came a jangle of emotional
discord so unfamiliar that it took him a moment to place that it came from him.
Panic. And rage. Panic at the fact six vampires were between him and Raisa,
rage at the risk she’d created for herself by not following the mental order
he’d placed in her subconscious to stay put.

Gathering his emotions back under control, Jared cast
out a false trail of energy, sending it forward in the direction he had been
going, trickling it out with a repeating pattern that would feed back to the
energy probing so it would always stay ahead, fading into the distance, keeping
the illusion of distance between the pursued and pursuer.

He settled his hat more firmly on his head. The enemy
would probably figure it out eventually, but by then he’d be long gone, and
Raisa with him. And if he managed to finagle enough time in which to paddle her
ass while he was at it, he’d be indulging himself with the pleasure. The stupid
fool.

Jared circled around and headed back, doubling his
speed, taking particular care to mask his presence, fighting the need to
abandon protecting himself in order to protect Raisa. He was too far away to
project an energy shield over her, but everything primitive in him, everything
ruled by the vampire, ordered him to try. To guard her at all costs. The urge
was damn hard to ignore.

He was so focused on Raisa that he almost ran over one
of the Sanctuary vampires. Jared came to a halt just five feet away. It was a
rookie mistake and if his natural shielding hadn’t been a reflex rather than a
conscious endeavor, he’d be dead. Instead, he was undetected, two arm lengths
away from his enemy. His fangs exploded into his mouth. His talons extended.
The man was studying the snow, tracking the energy trail Jared had laid down,
his frown indicating his level of concentration.

It would be so easy to kill him. A swipe of Jared’s
talons across his neck and his head would separate from his body, and there’d
be one less fanatic cluttering the world. The bloodlust surged. The Sanctuary
vamp looked up, sensing the threat.

Jared controlled the energy, controlled the wildness
flaring inside. Killing the SOB would only alert the others, and until he got
Raisa to safety, he couldn’t risk a confrontation. Just another thing to add to
the list of things she owed him.

He glided behind a tree, waiting out the man’s
suspicion. After a few seconds, the man continued on. Jared made another note
to his mental list. Train the men in trusting their instincts. In his
experience they were never wrong, and if this man had trusted his, Jared
wouldn’t have been able to slip behind their line. Considering the prize the
slip was costing the Sanctuary, relying on what only could be seen or obviously
felt was a damn expensive habit in which to indulge. Raisa’s energy increased
its call, reaching out to his, slipping along invisible channels to hook deep,
raising his vampire and a primitive response. His cock hardened along with his
anger. Jared stayed where he was, letting another Sanctuary vampire glide past,
holding his position through sheer force of will as the storm inside raged for
action. As soon as the last of the patrol was a safe distance past, he came out
of hiding, streaking back toward that feminine call, every beat of his heart, every
pass of his breath, blending into a savage thirst for dominance.

SUDDENLY, he was just there. A big black force
blocking her path. Raisa swallowed her scream and ducked as Jared reached for
her arm. He had her before she was halfway into the move, his lean fingers
wrapping around her upper arm, the sheer strength behind the grip making her
attempted escape laughable. Raisa very carefully settled her weight into her
boots and adjusted her pack on her shoulder. Only when she had the wild flare
of her senses under control did she look up into his face.

Jared’s anger hit her like a blow, hard enough that
she flinched away before she got a grip. She was no longer a servant who had to
fear a man’s anger. She glanced at his face. It was a long way up, and when her
gaze got there, all she could do was blink. Not a speck of the anger she could
feel surging off him showed in his face. Every lean angle, every hard plane was
set in an impassive wall of neutrality. Apparently, he was a master at hiding
his emotions, but the man was angry, savagely so.

Raisa pinned a welcoming smile on her face and
pretended she didn’t feel the violent energy seething around hers, probing the
edges, looking for weakness. “Hi.”

Jared yanked her into the shadow of the trees. “You,
little hell-cat, have a nasty habit of not staying where I leave you.”

“I got claustrophobic in that little cave.”

And she had been hoping to get out of his reach before
he came back.

“Uh-huh. Claustrophobic or not, that barrier should
have held for at least another six hours.”

Well, at least she knew he hadn’t intended to bury her
alive, which had been her first horrified thought when she’d woken up alone in
the cave, locked in stone. “Well, it didn’t.”

His grip on her arm eased. She stepped back, resisting
the urge to rub the strange tingles lingering there. His gaze dropped to her
arm, those potent blue-green eyes of his narrowing. “Did I hurt you?”

She was tempted to say yes, just to see what he’d do.
“No.”

“How’d you get past the barricade?”

“I unlocked it. It wasn’t hard.”

His brows snapped down and the flames flickering at the
edge of his gaze flared.

“What?” she asked. “Don’t you like hearing you’re not
all powerful?”

“I don’t mind hearing that at all.”

“Then, what’s your problem?”

“That wasn’t a flimsy protection.”

She took a step back, putting some distance between
herself and all that seething energy. Jared had an uncanny curiosity to go with
his uncanny face, uncanny power, and unnatural strength. Even for a vampire.
And she’d intrigued him. That was not good. She did not need him fixating on
her. The Sanctuary’s obsession was bad enough, but having Jared tail her would
be the ultimate complication in a life already complicated beyond belief.

She stretched her smile a bit and widened her eyes
just a fraction, going for vapid. “You’re right. It was a wonderful barrier,
well constructed and complex.”

The only problem was he’d left his prints all over the
important parts. He really needed to work on clean up.

Jared’s right eyebrow went up. “You wouldn’t by any
chance be humoring me would you?”

“Absolutely not.” She was lulling him into a false
sense of security. “That goes against every one of my principles.”

“Then why exactly are you praising a barrier that
obviously didn’t work?”

She looked around for a way to escape. There were
woods on two sides, a meadow behind Jared, and a cliff behind her.

“Because you’re bigger than me, faster than me,” she
answered honestly. “And I’m hoping that if I put you in a good mood, we’ll be
able to shake hands and part friends.”

“Really?” There was something in his voice, and it
wasn’t making her rest any easier. “You think a little sucking up will get you
all that?”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt to try.”

That “something” spread to a note she recognized as he
drawled, “No, it doesn’t.”

Humor. The irritating man had a sense of humor, and
her honesty was apparently stroking it.

“But in this case, you’re doomed to disappointment.”
His drawl stretched a bit to accommodate his amusement. “No amount of honesty
or sweetly feminine placating is going to convince me to let you strike out
alone.”