Scarlet Heat (Born to Darkness) (39 page)

“Why should I bother when we’re just going to
change again in a minute?” LeeAnn said. “I mean, when Victor gets here.”

“I don’t think we should be here when he gets
here,” the other wolf, Tozer, spoke up for the first time.

“And why not?” Celeste demanded. “Am I or am I
not paying you for this?”

“Yes, of course, Mistress.” He bobbed his head
in a nervous bow. “But back when I first got on your payroll, I didn’t know the
guy you were after was cursed.”

“You’re
all
cursed,” Celeste said
dismissively. “You turn into furry, drooling animals at the full moon.
Honestly, it’s
disgusting.
Now get back down the hill and watch for
Victor. He should be arriving at any moment.”

“That’s what we came to tell you,” LeeAnn
said. “He’s here—him and a bunch of other people just pulled up behind the
casino. They’re on their way.”

“A bunch of other people, hmm?” Celeste
frowned and looked at Shadowlock who shrugged.

“They can’t get in unless they’re weres. And
once they get in, they can’t get out again.”

“What do you mean, can’t get out again?” Tozer
looked absolutely panicked. “You mean we’re going to be stuck on this hill with
the cursed one?”

“Will you stop that ‘cursed one’ nonsense?”
Celeste snapped. “You’re here with a three-star vampire and a very talented, if
somewhat acerbic, warlock—your hairy hide will be just fine.”

LeeAnn cocked her head to one side.

“They’re coming—I hear them.” She looked at
Celeste. “I get to help with the killing—right? I want that son of a bitch dead
for what he did.” She glared at me. “And I want
her
to see me do it.”

My heart sank as Celeste laughed unpleasantly.

“My, my—you’re not exactly the forgiving kind,
are you? Don’t worry, my dear, you’ll get your chance. As long as you remember
that Taylor here is all mine.” She pointed the tip of the silver athame at me
and smiled.

I just glared back—there was nothing else I
could do. Overhead, the moon finally moved into position and I thought I could
hear familiar voices coming from the bottom of the hill, drifting up on the
cool night breeze.

Victor,
I thought futilely.
Please don’t come up
here. Please turn around and save yourself.

But I could already hear him coming. We were
both going to die here tonight, on top of this hill and I would never get a
chance to tell him how sorry I was or how much I cared for him. How much I
loved him.

It was too late.

* * * * *

Victor

We hit an invisible barrier at the bottom of
the hill. At least—the others did but it took me a full minute to realize they
weren’t with me anymore. I smelled Taylor’s scent, tinged with silver and
blood, and the moon was bearing down on me like a huge silent weight, urging me
to change. The brand at my back was burning and my vision was red with rage. To
say I was a little distracted would be an understatement.

“Victor! Hey, Victor!” I finally heard Addison
calling. I turned around and saw that she and Corbin and Gwendolyn were
standing at the bottom of the hill. But they weren’t just standing there—they
were
leaning
inward, almost like they were pressed against an invisible
wall.

“What the hell?” I snarled, taking a step back
toward them. “This isn’t a very good time for the three of you to practice your
fucking mime impressions.”

“We’re not,” Addison said impatiently.
“There’s some kind of barrier here—we can’t get through it.”

“It’s magic—dark magic and very strong.”
Gwendolyn was actually doing the invisible wall thing, running her palms across
the unseen barrier as though trying to discover its dimensions. She looked up.
“I recognize the signature—whoever is casting this is the same person who
cursed the trap. And probably the lash you were whipped with last night too.”

“Can you break it?” Corbin asked her.

“I can try.” She opened the huge purse she’d
brought with her and began pulling out magical paraphernalia. “It’s going to
take some time though.”

“Time is what we don’t have. They could be
killing her now.” I turned to go again but Corbin called me back.

“This is a trap set specifically for you,
Victor—you know it is,” he said quietly. “In all probability, you are going to
your death.”

I nodded shortly. “Yeah. I don’t care about
that.”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “I salute your
courage, my friend. Try to hold out—we will be there to back you up as quickly
as possible.” He looked down at Gwendolyn. “Hurry, witch.”

“Going as fast as I can,” she said tensely.
“I’ve never felt this level of power before. It’s going to be incredibly hard
to penetrate.”

“Good luck with that,” I said and turned
toward the hill. I could smell Taylor, though I couldn’t hear her voice. I just
prayed she was still alive and that I was in time to save her. If I lost her, I
didn’t know what I would do.

Lose myself, probably,
I thought as I made my
way quickly but stealthily up the hill. In all probability if Taylor died, my
curse would overtake me and never let go. I was struggling right now to keep
the beast inside me in check but only because I was afraid I might kill
everyone—Taylor included—if I let go and gave in to the change.
Have to keep
it together,
I told myself, lifting my head to scent the wind.
Just long
enough to save her and see her safely back to Addison and Corbin. Then I can
change and hunt…hunt down every single fucker who hurt her.

That was my goal anyway but the burning at my
lower back made me wonder if I would achieve it.
Have to,
I told myself.
I have to—

Suddenly, I saw someone up ahead, crouched in
the underbrush. The moonlight was bright enough to let me make out that it was
a male and my nose told me it was a vampire. Clearly, Celeste had sent him to
wait for me but I didn’t think he’d seen me yet.

I circled warily around and came up from
behind him. Then, as silently as possible, I pounced. I had no weapons but the
beast inside had forced a partial change, just as it had the night before. My eyes
felt hot and my fangs were long and sharp and hungry for blood—I ripped his
throat out before he could even struggle.

The tang of cool, metallic vampire blood
filled my mouth making me want to gag. Disgusting—it tasted like meat that was
just about to spoil. I spit it out and was lowering the vamp to the ground when
what felt like five more jumped me from behind.

“What the
fuck?”
I roared, trying to
throw them off. But there were too many of them—a confusing mixture of vamp and
were, according to my nose.

“Just exacting some justice, sugar.” LeeAnn
suddenly popped up in front of me and slipped a thick silver chain around my
neck. The caustic metal burned me at once, making me throw back my head and
howl. The others who had grabbed me looped silver chains around my arms,
binding them behind my back.

I was trapped.

I wanted to change, wanted to let the beast
inside out and rip them all to shreds but I couldn’t yet—I had to free Taylor
and get her to safety first. Somehow I stayed human—mostly, anyway. I had no
idea how the other wolves were managing to keep in human form during the full
moon night. They must have already changed and satisfied the call of the moon
in order to manage it. The fact that they were both buck naked except for thick
hide gloves to protect themselves from the silver chains, seemed to confirm my
guess.

“Look at him,” another were muttered
nervously, staring at me. “His eyes are fucking
red
. Damn, I wish I
never woulda got into this. No money’s worth messing with a cursed one.”

“Shut your fool mouth, Tozer, and let’s get
him to Celeste,” LeeAnn snapped. “The sooner she does her little spell on his
fanger girlfriend, the sooner I can kill him.”

“You’re the one who’s going to die tonight,” I
told her, my voice dipping down into a growl.

“Oh, please,” she scoffed as they started
dragging me up the hill. “I know your type, Victor—you’d never break the pack
laws and do violence to a female.”

“I
wouldn’t,” I said. “But the thing inside
me—the beast—it doesn’t care, LeeAnn. All it wants is blood. And if I can’t
control it…”

The wolf called Tozer went pale.

“You hear that, LeeAnn? We need to get up
out
of here.”

“We’ll be fine,” she said, giving him an
exasperated look. “All that talk about cursed ones is just superstition and
foolishness.”

“That’s what you think,” he said darkly.
“That’s 'cause you never seen what a cursed one can do. Your daddy has—that’s
why he told you to leave this guy alone.”

“Oh please.” LeeAnn rolled her eyes. “Daddy’s
just trying to scare me so I’ll take the wolf he wants as the next pack master.
Problem is, the only one I wanted was
Victor.”
She yanked viciously at
the chain around my neck until I choked.
“
But
he
turned out to me
a lying, cheating sack of shit.”

“I never cheated on you,” I said hoarsely.
“Because we were never together. Because
my
dad taught me not to dip my
dick in crazy.”

“Shut up,” she snarled. “You would have been
lucky to have me—any wolf would!”

“That kind of luck I can live without,” I
growled. “Thanks but no fucking thanks.”

At that point we got to the top of the large,
flat hill and I saw Taylor for the first time. She was wearing a thin white
gown that whipped around her legs in the night breeze and she was gagged with
silver. I saw her eyes move as she looked at me and a knot I hadn’t known I had
suddenly loosened inside my chest. She was alive—thank God, she was
alive.

My heart leapt when I realized she was okay…and
then sank down to my shoes. She was chained to a big old oak at the center of
the hill—completely helpless. If I let the curse take me, if I gave in to the
call of the moon, she would be a sitting duck. Way too easy to kill if the
beast went on a rampage. I knew the wolf inside me recognized her as mine but I
wasn’t sure the beast could be trusted.

A sudden image surfaced in my mind—a memory I
had done my best to suppress. When I was younger, I’d had a pet, a dog called
Champ. He was a mut—a lab/golden mix with a little terrier thrown in—the best
pet a kid could have. Champ was with me during my first change. When puberty
hit and the wolf came forward for the first time, we ran together under the
full moon and I woke up the next morning to find him licking my face. After
that, he always came with me on full moon nights—just a boy and his dog, happy
as they could be.

That was until the first time the curse took
me.

The beast didn’t care that Champ was a friend,
a much loved pet I’d had for years. The morning after that change I had woken
up to find Champ’s severed head lying in the grass at my feet and his
disemboweled body a few yards away. I wanted to believe that some other animal
had gotten to him but there was blood on my mouth—Champ’s blood. Apparently the
beast had seen him as either a competitor or prey.

I had been horrified by what I had done and I
mourned Champ for months afterward. The combination of guilt and grief had been
damn near crippling and to be honest, in a way I had never really gotten over
it. I started distancing myself from my family and it wasn’t too long after
that I admitted to my father what was happening to me.

I didn’t expect compassion or understanding
from him—he wasn’t that kind of a male. But his choice to brand me as cursed
before he drove me away still hurt. It hurt but I understood it. The brand was
a warning to others of my kind.
Not to be trusted,
it said.
Violent.
Unpredictable. Dangerous.

Was it any wonder, then, that I fought so hard
to keep myself from making a complete change to the mindless beast that lived
just under the surface? I couldn’t risk letting that part of me out—couldn’t
risk waking up to find Taylor lying in pieces on the grass around me with a
look of terror and pain on her face.

I’ll die first,
I told myself.
I’ll
let them kill me before I change.

Little did I know how close I was going to
come to having that promise come true.

“Tie him to the stake,” Celeste said, coming
forward to gloat. “Where’s Carl?”

“Didn’t make it,” one of the vamps said
shortly.

“A pity.” She sighed. “I hated to use him as
bait but what could I do? Some losses are always inevitable.” So the vampire
I’d killed had been merely there to lure me in—great. Corbin had been right
when he said it was a trap set with me in mind. And I had walked right into it.
Speaking of Corbin, where was he? How much longer was it going to take to get
through the barrier?
I could use a little help, here guys!

As I was kicking myself for being an idiot and
wondering if I was going to get any backup, the vamps and weres who had jumped
me fastened my chained hands to a thick metal pole. It was driven into the
ground right across from where Taylor was tied to the tree. I could see her
hair whipping in the wind and her eyes, big and blue and full of sorrow. She
was less than ten feet away from me but it might as well have been a thousand
miles—I couldn’t reach her. Couldn’t hold her and tell her how sorry I was or
how much I cared. But at least I could talk—they hadn’t gagged me like they had
her.