Shadow Walker (30 page)

We had to go through a discussion of about how Mick was and what he was doing, and Elena, and my friends, and all my aunts and cousins. Mick had his arms around me the whole time, distracting me by pressing little kisses to my ear, my neck.

My father said, “Gabrielle is doing better. Your sister is . . . interesting.”

I wanted to laugh.
Interesting
was one way to describe her, and I’d never, ever have let her anywhere near my father without my grandmother around. “Yeah, she is.”

I closed my eyes, picturing my father staring at the wall as he always did when he talked on the phone, clutching the receiver in a death grip. “I need to tell you something, Dad,” I said before he could speak again. “Mick asked me to marry him. I said yes.”

“Janet.” I heard his happiness as well as a tug of tears. “I am so very happy.”

My stoic father would never jump for joy, but I could tell he was pleased. I heard my grandmother in the background yelling, “What? What are you so very happy about?”

“I have something to tell you myself,” my dad said, ignoring her. “I too have met a woman and have asked her to be my wife.”

I stopped, words dying in my mouth. Mick had heard too, and he looked at me in surprise.

“Are you still there, Janet?” my dad asked.

“Dad.” I coughed. “What did you say?”

“I said, I have asked a woman to marry me. She consented. We will marry this year. You have never met her, Janet, but I know you will like her.”

“Who?”

My grandmother snatched away the phone. “Her name is Gina Tsotsie, and she’s from Farmington. She’ll do well enough. Now, what is this about you?”

The rest of the conversation was surreal. I’d been chuckling to myself about the bombshell I’d dropped, and Dad had dropped a bigger one on me.

My father, getting married. I told myself that it was about time. He’d never had a wife, not really—my goddess mother seducing him hardly counted. I had to meet the woman who’d worked through Pete Begay’s shyness enough to get him to agree to marry her. It must have taken her some time. So why hadn’t he—or my grandmother, who I now wanted to strangle—
told
me?

“Are you all right, Janet?” Mick asked after I hung up. He lounged against the dresser, his body distracting. We’d done some deep, satisfying lovemaking well into this morning, and the loose feeling of it lingered in my bones.

“Fine. A little anti-climaxed, but fine.”

“Then maybe it’s a good time to give you your engagement present.”

I touched the ring, which I treasured, not only because it contained a piece of Mick’s aura, but because he’d given it to me. “Wasn’t this it?”

Mick grinned, sliding heat up and down my spine. “Not quite.”

His jeans’s dipping waistband showed me the sharp-lined fire tattoo across his lower back as he turned and led me down the short hall outside my bedroom to the back door. Mick took my hand in his, opened the door, and took me outside.

I stopped.

Parked behind the hotel was a gleaming, beautiful, hearttugging little Harley, all shining in the morning sunlight. It was a Softail, customized by Mick, obviously, beautiful black with red flame highlights.

“Mick . . .”

He touched the handlebars. “A little over 1500 CCs, modified to make the ride smooth as silk. I figured you were about ready.”

I’d never forget my little Sportster that had died a violent death in the sinkhole. We’d been through a lot, that girl and me. Losing it had been like losing my closest friend, and you don’t replace your closest friend without grieving for a while.

Mick had known that it was time. And he’d brought me exactly what I needed.

I squealed like an eight-year-old and launched myself at Mick. I threw my arms around his neck and my legs around his hips, and he laughed as he held me. I wiped the smile from his mouth by covering it in kisses.

Mick’s strong hands cupped my hips, his laughter going low as he caught my lips with his. The kisses turned promising, but he lowered me to my feet. “You can thank me later,” he said.

And I would. Later would be the best he ever had.

Before I could grab the helmet and gloves that Mick had included, a Native American woman I didn’t know walked around the hotel, saw us, and came over.

She was tall and broad-shouldered, a Changer, I saw in her aura. Bear, I guessed, from her large build, her dark eyes, her careful but powerful way of moving. She set down the overstuffed suitcase she carried and fixed a steely gaze on me.

“Are you Janet Begay? The Diné who owns this hotel?”

“That would be me,” I said.

Mick watched her, hands on his hips, saying nothing, but subtly readying his fire magic.

“You can stand down, Firewalker,” the woman said, sounding amused. Her voice was contralto, her words slow and deliberate. “I mean no harm to you, or your Stormwalker. I am seeking my ex-husband.”

“Ex-husband?” I ran through a mental list of my guests, wondering which of them had a Changer for a wife. There was always Ansel, my Nightwalker—I didn’t know much about him, apart from his fondness for stamps and old movies.

Coyote walked through my back door, a beer bottle in his hand. Why he’d been coming to my room with a beer I didn’t know, but that was Coyote.

He saw the woman, and stopped dead. The bottle slid from his fingers to shatter on the hard dirt.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered.

“Coyote?” I exclaimed. Even Mick looked stunned. “Wait—you mean
Coyote
is your ex-husband?”

The woman smiled, showing sharply pointed teeth. “I knew I’d find him here.”

“Shit,” Coyote said.

“Coyote,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “You were married?”

“A long time ago,” he growled.

I grinned and leaned back against Mick. “Now, this I gotta hear.”

“In due time,” the woman said. “First you, Janet Begay, will give me a room.” She shot Coyote a look that made him turn brick red. “And then you will tell me
all
about what he’s been up to.”

Dear Reader,

Please turn the page for a sneak peek of
Primal Bonds
, from the Shifters Unbound series I write as my alter ego, Jennifer Ashley.

Twenty years ago, shape-shifters of all kinds were rounded up and made to live in Shiftertowns. They are forced to wear Collars—half-magic, half-tech—designed to keep their violent tendencies at bay.

The Shifters are tamed now, Collared, safe . . . but are they?

Primal Bonds
is the story of Sean Morrissey, Feline Shifter and Guardian of his Shiftertown—the man who sends Shifter souls to the afterlife. When Andrea Gray, a half–wolf Shifter, seeks refuge in the Morrisseys’ Shiftertown, Sean agrees to claim her, sight unseen, so the humans will allow the transfer. He never dreams that the challenging Andrea, with her gray eyes and fearless attitude, will be the woman that stirs the wild mating frenzy within him.

Primal Bonds
, available now, will be followed by
Wild Cat
in January 2012. Also look for
Pride Mates
, re-released by Berkley Sensation in July 2011.

See the Shifters Unbound website for excerpts, book blurbs, “The Human’s Guide to Shifters,” and more:
http://www.jennifersromances.com
. (Choose “Shifters Unbound” from the right-hand menu.)

Allyson James, aka Jennifer Ashley

One

Andrea Gray had just set the beer bottle in front of her customer when the first of the shots rocketed through the open front door. The bar just outside of the Austin Shiftertown had no windows, but the front door always stood wideopen, and now a cascade of gunfire poured through the welcoming entrance.

The next thing Andrea knew, she was on the floor with two hundred and fifty pounds of solid Shifter muscle on top of her. She knew exactly who pinned her, knew the shape and feel of the long body pressing her back and thighs, trapping her with male strength. She struggled but couldn’t budge him. Damned Feline.

“Get
off
me, Sean Morrissey.”

His voice with its Irish lilt trickled into her ear, swirling heat into her belly. “You stay down when the bullets fly, love.”

A ferocious roar sounded as Ronan, the bouncer, ran past, heading outside in his Kodiak bear form. Andrea heard more shots and then the bear’s bellow of pain. Bullets splintered the bottles above the bar with a musical sound, and colorful glass and fragrant alcohol rained to the floor. Another roar, this one of a lion, vibrated the air, and the hail of bullets suddenly ceased. Tires squealed as an engine revved before the sound died off into the distance.

Stunned silence followed, then whimpers, moans, and the angry voice of Andrea’s aunt Glory. “Bastards. Human lickbrain assholes.”

Shifters started rising, talking, cursing.

“You can get off me now, Sean,” Andrea said.

Sean lingered, his warm weight pouring sensations into Andrea’s brain—strength, virility, protectiveness—
you’re safe with me, love, and you always will be
. Finally he rose to his feet and pulled her up with him; six-feet-five of enigmatic Shifter male, the black-haired, blue-eyed, Collared Feline to whom Andrea owed her freedom.

Sean didn’t step away from her, staying right inside her personal space so that the heat of his body surrounded her. “Anyone hurt?” he called. “Everyone all right?”

His voice was strong, but Andrea sensed his worry that he’d have to act as Guardian tonight, which meant driving his sword through the heart of his dying friends to send their bodies to dust and their souls to the afterlife. The Sword of the Guardian leaned against the wall in the back office, where Sean stashed it any night he spent in the bar. Since Andrea had come to work there, he’d spent most nights in the bar, watching her.

She’d also seen in the two weeks she’d lived next door to Sean Morrissey that he hated the thought of using the sword. His primary job was to be called in when there was no longer any hope, and that fact put a dark edge to his entire life. Not many people saw this, but Andrea had noticed.

Andrea was close enough now to Sean to sense his muscles relax as people assured him they were all right. Shifters climbed slowly to their feet, shaken, but there was no one dead or wounded. They’d been lucky.

The floor was littered with glass and splintered wood, the smell of spilled alcohol sharp, and bullet holes riddled the dark walls. Half the bottles and glasses behind the bar had been destroyed, and the human bartender crawled shakily out from under a table.

A wildcat zoomed in through the front door and stopped by a clump of humans not yet brave enough to get up. Feline Shifters were a cross between breeds: lion, leopard, tiger, jaguar, cheetah—bred centuries ago from the best of each. The Morrissey family had a lot of lion in it, and this wildcat had heavily muscled shoulders, a tawny body, and a black mane. It rose on its hind legs, its head nearly touching the ceiling, before it shifted into the tall form of Liam Morrissey, Sean’s older brother.

The human males at his feet looked up in terror. But what did the idiots expect if they hung out in a Shifter bar? Shifter groupies baffled Andrea. They wore imitation Collars and pretended to adore all things Shifter, but whenever Shifters behaved like Shifters, they cringed in fear.
Go home, children.

“Sean,” Liam said over the crowd, eyes holding questions.

“No one in here got hit. How’s Ronan?”

“He’ll live.” The anger on Liam’s face mirrored Sean’s own. “Humans, a carload of them.”
Again
, he didn’t say.

“Cowards,” Glory spat. Eyes white with rage, the platinum blonde helped another Shifter woman to her feet. The Collar around Glory’s neck, which she wore like a fashion accessory to her body-hugging gold lamé, emitted half a dozen sparks. “Let me go after them.”

“Easy.” Liam’s voice held such calm authority that Glory backed off in spite of herself, and her Collar went silent. Liam’s Collar didn’t spark at all, although Andrea felt the waves of anger from him.

One of the Shifter groupies raised his hands. “Hey, man, it had nothing to do with us.”

Liam forced a smile, stuffing himself back into his ostensible role as bar manager. “I know that, lad,” he said. “I’m sorry for your trouble. You come back in tomorrow, why don’t you? The first round’s on me.”

His Irish lilt was pronounced, Liam the Shiftertown leader at his most charming, but the humans didn’t look comforted. Liam was stark naked, except for his Collar—a large, muscular male, gleaming with sweat, who could kill the men at his feet in one blow if he wanted to. As much as they pretended to want the thrill of that danger, Shifter groupies didn’t like it when the danger was real.

Ronan staggered back in, no longer in his bear form. Ronan was even bigger than Liam and Sean, nearly seven feet tall, broad of shoulder and chest and tight with muscle. His face was sheet white, his shoulder torn and covered with blood.

Andrea shook off Sean’s protective hold and went to him. “Damn it, Ronan, what were you doing?”

“My job.” The amount of blood flowing down his torso would have had a human on the floor in shock. Ronan merely looked embarrassed.

Sean got to the man’s other side. “In the back, lad. Now.”

“I’m fine. It’s just a bullet. My own fault.”

“Shut it.” Sean and Andrea towed the bigger man to a door marked “Private,” and Sean more or less shoved him into the office beyond.

The office was ordinary—cluttered desk, a couple of chairs, a storage cabinet, shabby sofa, and a small safe in the wall that only the bar’s human owner was supposed to know the combination to. Andrea knew good and well that Liam and Sean knew it too.

The Sword of the Guardian leaned against the wall like an upright cross, and threads of its Fae magic floated to Andrea from across the room. Andrea had no idea whether pure Shifters could sense the sword’s magic as she, a half-Fae, half-Lupine Shifter could, but she did know that the Shifters in this Shiftertown regarded the sword, and Sean, with uncomfortable awe.

Sean pushed Ronan at a chair. “Sit.”

Ronan dropped obediently, and the flimsy chair creaked under his weight. Ronan was an Ursine—a bear Shifter—large and hard-muscled, his short but shaggy black hair always looking uncombed. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. Andrea wasn’t used to Ursines, having never met one before moving to Austin. Only Lupines had lived in her Shiftertown near Colorado Springs. But Ronan had proved to be such a sweetheart he’d quickly overcome her uneasiness.

“I can’t stay in here,” Ronan protested. “What if they come back?”

“You’re not going anywhere, my friend, until we get that bullet out of you.” Sean snatched a blanket from the sagging sofa and dropped it over Ronan’s lap. Shifters weren’t modest as a rule, but maybe Sean thought he needed to protect Andrea from a bear in his naked glory. Ronan, admittedly was . . . super-sized.

“I thought I’d be away from the door maybe a minute.” Ronan’s deep black eyes filled. “What if someone had gotten hurt? Or killed? It would have been because of me.”

“No one got hurt but you, you big softie.” Sean’s voice took on that gentle note that made Andrea shiver deep inside herself. “You frightened away the bad guys before anything worse could happen.”

“If I’d been at my post, I would have blocked the door, and none of the bullets would have gotten inside.”

“And then you’d look like a cheese grater,” Sean said. “And be dust at the end of my sword. I like you, Ronan. I don’t want that.”

“Yeah?”

Andrea set down the first-aid kit she’d fetched from the cabinet and perched on the edge of the desk, her hand on Ronan’s unhurt shoulder. “I don’t want that either.”

Ronan relaxed a little under her touch—he needed touch, reassurance, all Shifters did, especially when injured or frightened. Andrea wanted to give Ronan a full hug, but she feared hurting him. She kneaded his back instead, trying to put as much comfort as she could into the caress.

Ronan grinned weakly at her. “Hey, you’re not so bad yourself, for a Fae.”

“Half Fae.”

Anyone else mentioning her Fae blood made Andrea’s anger rise, but with Ronan it had turned into friendly teasing. Ronan squeezed her fingers in his pawlike hand.

“This is going to hurt like hell, big guy,” Sean said. “So just remind yourself who you’ll have to answer to if you turn bear on me and take my head off.”

“Aw, I’d never hurt you, Sean. Even if I didn’t know Liam would rip my guts out if I did.”

“Good lad. Remember now. Andrea, hold the gauze just like that.”

Andrea positioned the wad of sterile gauze under the ragged hole in Ronan’s shoulder as Sean directed. Sean sprayed some antibacterial around the wound, reached in with the big tweezers he’d dipped in alcohol, and yanked the bullet from Ronan’s flesh.

Ronan threw his head back and roared. His face distorted, his mouth and nose lengthening to a muzzle filled with sharp teeth. Blood burst from the wound and coated first the gauze, then the clean towel Sean jammed over it. Ronan’s hands extended to razorlike claws, which closed on Sean’s wrist.

Sean pressed the towel in place, unworried. “Easy now.”

Ronan withdrew his hand, but not before a blue snake of electricity arced around his Collar, biting into his neck. He howled in pain.

Damn it.
Andrea leapt to her feet, unable to stand it any longer. She batted the surprised Sean’s hands aside and pressed her palm directly to the wound. Folding herself against Ronan, she held her hand flat to his chest.

The threads of healing spiraled in her mind, diving through her fingers into Ronan’s skin, swirling until she closed her eyes to fight dizziness. She sensed the threads of Fae magic from the sword across the room drifting toward her, as though drawn by her healing touch.

Ronan’s skin knit beneath her fingers, tightening and drying, slowly becoming whole again. After a few minutes, Andrea opened her eyes. Ronan’s breath came fast, but it was healthy breathing, and the blood around the wound had dried.

Andrea drew her hand away. Ronan probed his injury, staring at it in amazement. “What the hell did you do to me, Andy-girl?”

“Nothing,” Andrea said in a light voice as she stood up. “We stopped the blood, and you heal fast, you big strong Ursine, you.”

Ronan looked from Sean to Andrea. Sean shrugged and gave him a small smile, as though he knew what was going on, but Andrea saw the hard flicker in Sean’s eyes. Oh, goody, she’d pissed him off.

Ronan gave up. He stretched and worked his shoulder. “Slap a bandage on me, Sean,” he said in his usual strong voice. “I need to find my clothes.”

Sean silently pressed a fresh wad of gauze to the wound, secured it with sterile tape, and let him go. Ronan kissed the top of Andrea’s head, clapped Sean on the shoulders, and banged out of the office, his energy restored.

Andrea busied herself putting things back into the first-aid kit. Sean said absolutely nothing, but when she turned from tucking the kit back into the cabinet, she found him right behind her, again invading her personal space.

It was difficult to breathe while he stood over her, smelling of the night and Guinness and male musk. She had no idea what to make of Sean Morrissey, the Shifter who had mate-claimed her, sight unseen, when she’d needed to relocate to this Shiftertown.

A mate-claim simply meant that a male had marked a female as a potential mate—the couple wouldn’t be officially mated until they were blessed under sun and moon by the male’s clan leader. All other males had to back off unless the female chose to reject the male’s mate-claim.

When Andrea had wanted to move to Austin to live with Glory, her mother’s sister, Glory’s pack leader had refused to let Andrea in unless she was mate-claimed. The pack leader had the right to disallow any unmated female to enter his pack if he thought that the female would cause dissention or other trouble.

Andrea, a half-Fae, illegitimate Lupine, was considered trouble. When Andrea’s mother, Dina, had become pregnant by her Fae lover, Dina been forced from the pack. That same pack now didn’t want her half-Fae daughter back. But Andrea had needed to flee the Shiftertown in which she’d been living in Colorado, because a harassing asshole, the Shiftertown leader’s son, had tried to mate-claim Andrea for his own. He hadn’t taken her answer—
no way in hell
—very well.

Glory had turned to Liam, the Austin Shiftertown leader, as was her right, to appeal her pack leader’s decision to keep Andrea out. Apparently the arguments between Glory’s pack leader and Liam had been loud and heated. And then Sean had cut the arguments short by claiming Andrea for himself.

Why he’d done it, Andrea couldn’t figure out, even though Sean had explained that it had been to keep the peace between species in this Shiftertown. But if that was all it was—a formality to satisfy a stubborn pack leader—why did Sean watch Andrea like he did? He’d not been happy with Liam for hiring her as a waitress, and Sean made sure he was at the bar from open to close every night Andrea worked. Didn’t the big Feline have better things to do?

Sean was tall and blue-eyed, and he radiated warmth like a furnace. Andrea loved standing close to him—
How crazy is that? I’m hot for an effing Feline.
She’d thought that after what Jared, the harassing asshole, had done to her, she’d never have interest in males again, but Sean Morrissey made her breath catch. To her surprise, Sean’s mate-claim had awakened her instincts and made her come alive. She’d never thought she’d feel alive again.