Kept
Zoe Winters
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2008 © Zoe Winters
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Publisher's Note:
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contact:incubooks@gmail.com
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the following people:
Mary Higgins (aka WorldofHiglet): For the idea for Theriantype.com (I had the name, but the actual site wouldn’t exist without her.) And also for beta reading.
Lindsay Carruth: For brainstorming and help with fonts and cover design and for listening to all my layout whining.
Jon VanZile, R.J. Keller, Natasha Fondren (aka Spy Scribbler), Chaz Thompson, Cara Wallace, Toni, and Cathy Randolph for beta reading.
Random Grammar Consultant (aka The Grammar Police): Kait Nolan
Moriah Jovan: For helping with questions regarding formatting.
If I’ve left someone out, it was unintentional, please email me at:
zoewintersbooks@gmail.com and I will correct the problem wherever possible.
Thanks also to all my supportive blog buddies. We all need a cheering section. You guys rock!
And to my husband, who likes my fiction even though he won’t fully admit he’s reading romance.
Chapter One
The old-fashioned bell jingled over the doorway, and a gust of chill wind swept through Lawson’s Bookshoppe. It was July. Greta shivered, knowing who it was even as her eyes remained focused on the counter she was cleaning. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Anthony. We’re closing up early.”
“We? You look quite alone. Where’s your little redheaded friend? What’s her name? Charlotte?” The vampire licked his lips.
“You know very well what her name is.”
She was beginning to regret sending Charlee home early. The other clerk may have been only human, but Anthony Burgess often struck when people were alone and vulnerable. He always seemed amused when Charlee stood up to him, not knowing he could relieve her of her blood in seconds.
Greta focused on the counter as the Formica gave under the pressure of her hand. She met his eyes and tucked a strand of short, dark hair behind her ear, grateful her kind couldn’t be enthralled.
He wore the standard vampire uniform of basic black, his blond hair pulled back in a low ponytail. A long leather coat flowed out behind him as he strode toward her. All he needed now was menacing background music. Something dark and brooding.
Anthony removed a paperback from the rack beside the checkout without looking at the title and placed it on the counter. His crystal blue eyes glowed and locked with Greta’s dark brown as he inhaled deeply, not bothering to mask his enjoyment of her scent.
“When are you going to stop teasing me and let me have a taste?” He stared pointedly at her neck. “Coming up on twenty-eight aren’t you? Special year. Moon’s nearly full.”
Her hand shook as she passed the scanner over the book’s bar code. Therians, known to the mortals as Weres, celebrated their birthday not on the anniversary of their birth, but on the full moon closest to it. Twenty-eight wasn’t a number to inspire ooohs and aaahs among the human set, but for a shapeshifter, the twenty-eighth birthday was bigger than the human twenty-one. It was a good drinking age for vamps, anyway.
She took his money, made the change, and slipped the book into the opaque green shopping bag. Her eyes widened when she glimpsed the title. “You just bought a book on menstruation, Anthony. Were you aware?”
He shrugged and smiled, revealing the barest hint of fang. “I like blood.” He scooped the bag up, gave her one last meaningful look, then drifted out of the store.
Greta locked the door behind him and leaned against the cool wood. She could do with fewer bloodsucking patrons; they’d increased in number since the last full moon. With her birth moon coming up, she might as well have a neon all you can eat sign posted in the window.
It was thirty minutes before she gathered the nerve to venture outside. Most of the lights in the parking lot had burned out, and no one had bothered replacing them.
With only one human employee and few after dark human patrons, it was deemed an unnecessary expense. The residents of Cary Town might not realize what was out there, but they were shy of the dark all the same.
Greta’s boots clicked loudly on the asphalt, making stealth a physical impossibility. She might as well shout to the vamps from a megaphone. Fresh meat, right here. Come and get it boys.
If Anthony or any of his ilk were lurking, they didn’t take the bait. Nothing black-clad or fanged emerged from the shadows. Anthony had gone home, or hunting, or whatever it was he did at night. For all she knew, he hung out at the all-night grocery store scaring stock boys.
When she got home, her orange tabby sat perched on the stoop, waiting to be let in.
“Hello, Mink.” She bent to scratch the kitty behind her ears and went inside, stopping in the hallway where the answering machine light blinked.
“This is your mother. I need to see you. Be discreet.” Click. Jaden was more abrupt than usual. Be discreet. Translation: be in fur. Something was going down at the Lawson estate. She glanced at the hall clock, 9:45, plenty of time for a shower.
It wasn’t until Greta shut off the water that she remembered she hadn’t done laundry. Shit. No towels. She closed her eyes and focused as images flowed over her mind. Milk, mice, open fields, birds, blades of grass, hunting, moon. Her senses heightened as she allowed the memories to bring forth the change. The room shrank and swirled around her. Her spirit jolted from her body, hovered for a moment, then was pulled back into her new compact form.
She stretched all the way down to the pads of her paws, then shook herself and licked her black fur down flat. There was going to be a hairball situation if she didn’t do laundry soon. She hopped onto the pedestal sink, admiring herself in the mirror. She loved fur. It was so slimming.
While She preened, Mink sauntered into the room and hissed. Greta hissed back. The house cat liked the therian fine in her human form but became agitated whenever she shifted. Tough. It was Greta’s apartment. When Mink could turn into a human and get a job, then she’d have a vote. Greta’s poufy black tail curled under Mink’s chin as she drifted past the tabby.
***
Simon’s silver Lexus stood parked like a sentinel in her mother’s driveway. It wasn’t unusual for the tribe leader to be at the Lawson home, but seeing the car after the odd phone message made the hairs on the back of Greta’s neck stand up.
She slipped through the plastic flap in the kitchen door and kept to the corners, slinking under the dilapidated furniture. Her nose twitched, and she began to salivate as she caught the scent of a mouse. She forced herself to ignore it and edged closer to the family room where Simon and her mother spoke in the hushed tones usually reserved for church and funerals.
“We don’t have to do this. Those are the old ways; surely we’re beyond that now.”
Simon allowed his hand to trail over Jaden’s ass. “You knew this was coming. Greta was marked for sacrifice the moment she came into the world in her fur. I told you not to get attached.”
On hearing her name, Greta scooted further under the chair. Therians were born in human form and died in their fur, not the other way around. Everybody knew that.
She’d read legends about therians born in their fur and having extra powers, but she’d always thought they were just stories. Surely she would have noticed if she’d developed more power suddenly.
Was this the emergency the message on the machine had hinted at? She was to be a sacrifice on her birth moon? She shuddered and tried to rein in her emotions so Simon wouldn’t sense her presence.
Her mother’s voice rose, taking on a more desperate tone. “I thought you’d change your mind. I thought if you loved me, you wouldn’t take her. I should have followed my instincts and sent her far from here when she was still a baby.”
Simon laughed. “The border patrol would never have let you cross. They’re loyal to me. We have one shot and I won’t have you ruining it for the tribe, not like her mother tried to.”
She didn’t have time to process the revelation that her mother wasn’t her mother because Simon’s cell phone started pounding out a sappy eighties ballad. How he listened to that shit and maintained an interest in the opposite sex remained one of the tribe’s greatest mysteries.
“I have to take this,” Simon said, retreating to the far end of the room.
Greta followed Jaden to the kitchen and waited while the older woman scribbled something on a slip of paper, rolled it up, and stuck it in Greta’s mouth.
“Did you get all that?”
“Mrraar,” she said around the paper.
“Go to this place. It’s the only person in the city who can keep you safe.”
Simon’s voice grew louder as he approached the kitchen. Before he could see her, Greta leaped off the table and scurried out the cat door.
Humans had been busy the past several decades tearing down walls that trapped people in their homelands. The preternaturals, meanwhile, had been engaged in building them up. Normally it didn’t bother her so much; but now she could palpably feel the invisible cage that kept her locked inside the walls of the city, making her world feel claustrophobic, where before it had been a cocoon of perceived safety.
There was one person she was close to who wasn’t a member of the tribe. She ran three miles, scratched on Charlee’s door, and nearly jumped out of her fur when the dog barked. A redheaded woman mumbled a few warnings to the dog and flipped on the porch light.
Greta tried to look unassuming and adorable. “Mrarrr.”
“Awwww, aren’t you the cutest!”
Score.
Charlee bent to scoop Greta up and shooed the dog out of the house. “Go play, Sammy.”
The Irish setter ignored her, choosing instead to lick Greta as he normally did, not noticing she was a cat now. Charlee’s brows drew up in confusion. She swatted him on his haunches until he ran off down the dirt road, tail wagging.
“Stupid dog. Doesn’t know he’s supposed to hate cats. That could be good news for you, sugar plum.”
Once inside, Greta sprang from her friend’s arms and bolted for the bathroom. She was thankful for the flimsy door as she slammed it shut with the full weight of her feline body. She hopped up on the counter and pressed the push button lock with her paw, then dropped gracefully to the floor.
Charlee jiggled the knob on the other side. “Well, I’ll be damned. Honey, how’d you lock yourself in?”
In. Out. In. Out. Think of something calming. Waves lapping the shore, rolling green meadows. Moments later Greta was curled naked on the floor. She spit the roll of paper out of her mouth.
Printed in Jaden’s cramped script, was an address in Cary Town. And a name. Dayne Wickham.
For a second, Greta couldn’t breathe and thought she might shift back. It had to be a mistake. Jaden couldn’t mean for her to go to him. Dayne Wickham was notorious. He wasn’t just a magic user. He was a sorcerer. People still talked about the night he’d massacred more than half the tribe.
There was a soft knock on the door. “I don’t know how you managed to lock yourself in there, kitty, but I’ve got tools and I’m going to get you out. Okay?”
Greta wrapped a bathrobe around herself and opened the door. Charlee fell back, her eyes wide, tools spread around her in a fan. She must have found a sale. Or else she was dating a contractor.
“So, yeah, I’m a cat and I need to borrow some clothes.” She hoped she wouldn’t have to do the whole transformation all over just to prove it. Surely, cat goes in, human comes out was enough evidence. Especially with no windows or other exits in the bathroom.
Charlee gawked up at her. “What are you?”
“A therian.”
“A whatian?”
Greta sighed and used the term she hated. “Werecat.”
“You can turn into a cat? Seriously? How? Have you always done it? Did you get bitten by another werecat? Do you have other superpowers?”
“Charlee . . . ” she said with as much patience as she could muster.
By this time Charlee had managed to stand and was prowling around her, looking as if there might be an instruction manual printed somewhere on Greta’s body.
“Clothes,” Greta said, trying to bring her friend back to the issue at hand.
“Sure. Clothes. No problem, but show me the werecat thing.” Charlee moved to the bedroom, Greta trailing behind her.
“Listen, I can’t imagine how I would feel if the tables were turned, but I don’t have time for show-and-tell right now. You’ll be safer the less you know. They’ll use a spell to track me, so I need to be somewhere with strong wards. I just need some clothes to last me a few days.”
“Spells are real too? So then . . . witches . . . and . . . ”
“Charlee!”
“Oh, right. Sure. Borrow whatever you want; I’ll pack you a bag.”
Greta pulled on a pair of jeans and T-shirt from the floor. Her face scrunched in distaste at the outfits her friend was throwing into the bag. Charlee believed in dressing sexy like it was a religion. It was a little more than Greta personally wanted to show off, but it was better than nudity.
“Are you sure this is all I can do to help? I could go on the lam with you.”
Greta hid a smile. She wished she could take her up on her offer, and for a moment a fantasy of Thelma and Louise-ing it through Cary Town caught her imagination. But Charlee wasn’t prepared to deal with what was out there, and Greta couldn’t protect her.
She watched as her friend tossed some makeup and a couple of trashy romance novels into the bag. Only Charlee would think running for your life was the time to read romance and wear lipstick.
Greta decided she should have told her friend about her double life long ago. If not for the ridiculous loyalty she’d felt for the tribe that now intended to strap her down to a stone altar she probably would have.
Chapter Two
Dayne Wickham sat hunched over his computer. His posture showed his age even as his face and physique refused to. He brushed a clump of dark hair out of his eyes and stared at the twitchy screen in front of him. Technology was a beautiful thing. He’d found a most reliable supplier of were-blood on the Internet.
Theriantype.com had a cross-referencing index matching the correct were-blood type to specific rituals. It was almost enough to make a sorcerer pack all his musty old books into storage and move everything to the computer. Almost.
He’d met Alistair Cranze on a magic user’s message board. The wizard had recommended the site, and for the past year Dayne hadn’t had any trouble. He couldn’t remember how he’d managed to get by before. Werecat was considered the most magical of all were-blood types. And for this working, even more so.
The mythology claiming a witch’s familiar to be a cat was rooted somewhat in fact. Werecats without a tribe had sought witches, wizards, and occasionally a sorcerer or two. They’d traded blood for shelter for centuries.
Things were different now. These days, Weres in desperate situations and in need of cash donated anonymously to one of the blood banks, and various magic users just ordered what they needed from occult shopkeepers or online. It was much cleaner this way.
Weres could be more trouble than they were worth. Most magic users had learned that the hard way, as there seemed to be a certain level of idiotic stubbornness that came with the territory of wielding magic.
Dayne rolled his mouse over the send button and clicked, then leaned back in his chair, interlacing his fingers behind his head. He smiled as the animated GIF wand waved, and purple digital glitter sprinkled over his computer desktop, indicating his order was being processed. The site was on the cheesy side, but a reliable company was a reliable company, cutesy bells and whistles notwithstanding.
That was one thing about the white lighters. You could trust them. They lived their entire lives according to a mission of goodness and honesty. It made Dayne want to hurl, but with few exceptions, they wouldn’t betray you.
He’d just shut down the computer when a rap sounded on the front door. No one knocked on his door anymore. Primarily because he was known as the city’s darkest evil and everyone was too scared to try to overthrow him. The postman had long ago learned the wisdom of quietly leaving packages by the door. Dayne didn’t know what the fuss had been about. The man’s hair had regrown in a mere matter of months.
“Just a moment, please.” Whoever was calling after midnight could only be bringing trouble with them.
For a while, after what was later called the tribal massacre, the lone hero had darkened his door, convinced Dayne was up to something nefarious and had to be taken down. Or another Cary Town villain decided to rise to infamy and needed Dayne out of the way to do it.
He’d eventually managed the right formula on the wards, and most steered clear, deciding it wasn’t worth it. It had been quiet for the past decade. Either the wards were working or he’d been deemed irrelevant. Either way was fine by him.
The wards dropped as Dayne opened the door to reveal a diminutive black cat with bright golden eyes sitting primly on the middle of his front stoop. She blinked up at him full of rehearsed pet store innocence, her tail wrapped around her tiny paws.
“Mrarrr.”
“You must be kidding me. I don’t take in strays.” He slammed the door. Did the werecat think he couldn’t sense the magic crackling around her? Was she that naive? Perhaps a junior wizard still under apprenticeship would have been fooled, but not someone with his level of experience.
He drained the last dregs of coffee from the mug in the microwave. There was a second knock.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” He was going to zap the little miscreant halfway across town and let the preternatural border patrol sort out the pieces.
Dayne opened the door this time with a spell ready on his lips, but stopped short. She was breathtaking, not that this was uncommon in a Were. They tended to have a certain magnetism. She had short, dark hair, and she was leggy. A personal weakness of his.
Black leather pants encased her legs as if they’d been stitched onto her. It seemed only magic could have gotten those pants on and would be required to get them off again. A red silky top plunged to reveal ample but not overpowering cleavage. The werecat had a large duffel bag slung over one shoulder and balanced against her hip as if she’d planned to move in.
He held up a hand before little Dayne could cause him to do something colossally stupid. “The wardrobe change doesn’t alter my position, princess.”
“I thought you’d be old,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
He gave her points for not stammering that opening line. “What leads you to believe I’m not?”
“I need help.”
Well, she got right down to it, didn’t she? Such a Red Riding Hood. It was intoxicating. In a different mood, with a different species, he might have let her into his lair.
“Not interested. Try the Salvation Army.”
The brunette wedged one high-heeled boot inside the door. “Please. I’ll be killed. The tribe plans to sacrifice me.”
Desperate, frightened eyes.
“And somehow I can’t work up any feeling on that topic. Good-bye now.”
“Wait! You can use my blood.”
Dayne arched a brow. Not quite as naive as she appeared.
“I get my were-blood online. I have no use for you.” In truth, he could think of many uses for her, none of which required the promise of her potent magical blood.
The phone rang, preventing little Dayne from taking over. “If you’ll excuse me.”
***
Appearance-wise, Dayne was nothing like she’d expected. She’d expected an old man with long robes and a beard, dark beady eyes, and a sinister thin mouth. A beak-like nose and long age-gnarled fingers would finish the look. Dayne was none of these things. For one thing, he was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt.
For another, he was hot, debonair even. Except for the evil. Despite the danger he exuded, Greta turned the doorknob and slipped into the cottage. It wasn’t bravery or stupidity that drove her, but desperation.
“Don’t do this to me, Mick. You know I need this blood.” Dayne stood at the other end of the room making a pot of coffee, his back to her. A cordless phone was pressed between his ear and shoulder.
Greta dropped the duffel bag on the floor without a sound and tuned her amplified hearing in to listen to his phone call. The other man’s voice trembled over the phone.
“I . . . I . . . understand that sir, but we have a f-firm policy of only delivering to those who follow our code of ethics and it’s been b-brought to my attention that you . . . don’t.”
“I’m very unhappy about this. It was Alistair wasn’t it? That little shit was my bestest best friend until he found out I wasn’t out saving the world every night.”
“Please, Sir, I’m just doing what my boss told me. He said to tell you it’s a conflict of interests to continue delivering your shipments.”
“I see. Well, don’t think I won’t be reporting you to the Board of Magical Merchants for discrimination. There are laws against this sort of thing.”
Greta heard Mick’s sigh of relief over the phone. Someone like Dayne Wickham reporting him to a board of magical anything was minor, the equivalent of an angry shopper threatening never to return.
Dayne stabbed his finger against the button to end the call, then flung the phone across the room. Greta froze. His back was still to her when he spoke.
“I thought I told you to leave. Or was my dismissal not clear enough? Perhaps it would help if I spelled it out with catnip.” He turned to face her. “Or I could carve the message.”
His glance shifted to a gleaming silver ritual knife balanced precariously on the edge of the desk. Silver wouldn’t kill her necessarily, but it burned like hell and was much harder to heal.
Dayne blazed across the floor and grabbed Greta by the wrist, hauling her back to the entryway. “Have you any idea the danger you put yourself in when you trespass on a sorcerer’s property? Shall I enlighten you?”
Greta wrenched herself free of his grip. “You don’t have a supplier now. I’ll give you the blood you need if you’ll let me stay until after the full moon. I won’t cause any trouble.”
She wasn’t sure why she was still asking to stay. He’d just made a not-so-subtle hint about using her skin as a carving block. Hiding in a hollowed-out tree for the next several nights was sounding like a more sane option than remaining with the unhinged sorcerer.
He crossed his arms over his chest, his stance wide, and to the human eye, relaxed. But Greta could smell the tendrils of controlled anger coming off him. She’d always been able to smell emotion, but the scent seemed sharper now.
“They send one of you, all pretty and in distress, and I’m supposed to fall all over myself trying to protect you? Let’s get one thing clear. I’m the bad guy. I don’t rescue fair maidens.”
She flushed at the pretty part, glossing right over the bad guy part.
He muttered something in Latin with his arm outstretched, and for a moment Greta thought she was about to die. Instead, the cordless phone floated from behind him to his waiting hand. His eyes remained trained on her as he punched the numbers into the phone.
“Clarissa, I’m sorry to wake you, love, but I was wondering if you might be persuaded to set aside a pint of werecat blood for me. I need it by the full moon.”
“Mr. Wickham, um hi,” a sleepy voice on the other end answered. “No, it’s okay. You’re our best customer. We actually don’t have any therian cat blood in stock. We can get some, but it’ll take six weeks; our supplier’s backed up. You could try a local therian.”
“Meow,” Greta said, still in human form.
“I see. Well, thank you anyway.” Dayne clicked off the phone and glared at Greta, as if she’d somehow personally gummed up the works.
“So, then I can stay?”
“I’ll have to erect stronger wards. Please keep in mind, you are here for my convenience due to inventory troubles. I’m not your knight in shining armor. I don’t care about your personal problems. And if you wander from the protection of this house, I will not be lured into the trap to save you. I don’t get involved with Weres.”
“Therians,” Greta said, returning his glare.
“If I were you, I would remember that although I would like to do my ritual this full moon, there are infinite full moons available to me. You might not be so lucky. I’ll be in my study gathering supplies for the wards.”
His footsteps receded down the hallway, and Greta made a face. She spun in a slow circle taking in her surroundings.
She’d expected a medieval-looking castle equipped with a full dungeon, or some austere mansion. His home was neither. It was . . . cozy, though larger than the average cottage. The fireplace crackled with dying embers that had recently warmed something in a small iron cauldron.
The main room was lined with dark oak bookshelves and rows upon rows of books. The walls were stone but emitted a sense of warmth, the direct opposite of Dayne.
Maybe it was a timeshare.
Greta suppressed a giggle as she tried to imagine Dayne Wickham, the hapless victim of a timeshare scheme. It would explain his sour demeanor.
Two windows on either side of the fireplace were open with long, lightweight crimson drapes hanging in front of them. A storm was brewing. As the wind howled outside, the curtains were sucked into the screen, then puffed back out as if the wall were breathing. She was still staring at the windows, mesmerized by the sensation of the house breathing, when Dayne returned.
“Come with me. I’ll need some of your blood, since you seem to be in a donating mood.”
Her eyes drifted back to the knife on the table.
“If I were going to harm you, I would have already done so. I grow very quickly bored with the practice of building trust in others only to crush it at the last possible moment. Unlike some species.”
Greta flinched at the look he gave her. But when he turned, she followed. The dwelling went deeper than it appeared from the outside, and it occurred to her that the floor was sloping downward as they worked their way to an underground part of the house.
The hairs on the back of her arm stood at attention as the passageway narrowed until it was only big enough for two people. Then it began to spiral more steeply down, and the smooth slope became stairs. It was such a gradual transition, she wasn’t sure if it was the architecture itself, or magic.
At the bottom of the stairs was a large stone room with shelves of books lining the walls, as well as potions, pots, wands, and grisly items in cloudy jars. Cobwebs had grown over much of the area.
There were a couple of unlit torches on the wall, though the room’s illumination came from a dome light in the ceiling. A steel cage stood in the back, its purpose most likely not on the up-and-up. Greta shivered. So much for Dayne not having a dungeon.
Chapter Three
He had to admit, she was a good little actress. Almost as good as Jaden had been. The werecat stood at the bottom of the stairs barely inside the cavernous room where Dayne performed his more complicated rituals. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her, a protective barrier against him, no doubt.
He didn’t want to be paranoid, but he wondered if the tribe had been responsible for his were-blood supply being cut off. The timing was too coincidental for his liking. There had been rumblings that the tribe leader was getting more powerful these days. Could Simon know Dayne planned to act against him on the next full moon?
It had been thirty years since his last encounter with Cary Town’s werecat tribe. Dayne had nearly died thinking he was saving Jaden’s life, only to be led into a trap. If he hadn’t fortified himself with so much magic, he would’ve been killed.
He’d gotten lucky. Shapeshifters, though made of magic, didn’t know how to wield it. He’d taken out most of the tribe and managed to escape, sustaining several injuries, including a few to his pride.
Now they were sending this little number to lure him away. Didn’t they have any new material? His eyes drifted to the cage in the back corner. One never knew when one might need such a contraption.
He ran his hand idly over the bit of stubble growing on his chin as he contemplated the cage. He should lock her up until the ritual, use her blood, then throw her out.
If anything, such an act would send a message to the tribe that Dayne Wickham was not to be fucked with. He was suddenly glad he was acting against Simon now, rather than later. He’d put it off far too long.
For whatever inane reason, Jaden loved Simon. It had taken years for Dayne’s love for her to diminish to the point that he could dispatch her lover without guilt.
He considered taking the Were’s blood now and getting rid of her. Except, even he wouldn’t stoop to that level of dishonor. It had nothing to do with anything the tribe might plan to do to the girl.
“Are you cold?” he asked. Dammit.
She shook her head.
Eventually, a pouty-lipped woman, like this one, was going to get him killed. Prudence would dictate he wait for another full moon, but the effects of the spell wouldn’t be nearly so strong at any other time. Simon was ready to end this now, and Dayne might not get another chance.
“Sit.” He motioned to a painted white circle in the middle of the floor.
She bit her bottom lip and slowly moved into the center of the circle.
“Are you having second thoughts about being here?”
She nodded.
“Good.”
Dayne crossed to the far wall and selected a large and well-worn book from the uppermost shelf. He took a small needle from the desk drawer nearest the bookcase and opened the book to the correct page.
He pricked her finger, ignoring her indignant cry, and squeezed several drops of blood into the center of the circle. When he released her hand to say the incantation, she sucked on her finger. It took every ounce of willpower for his eyes not to linger on her pretty little mouth.
He focused more intently on chanting.
When he closed the book, the werecat stood and placed her hands on her hips. “I didn’t want to come to you for help. You were my only choice. You’re the strongest magic user in the city, and we dislike the same people. I don’t know what your problem is, but I don’t want to die. My moth . . . Jaden gave me your address. I was in cat form so I couldn’t exactly ask questions but . . . ”
Before she could finish the sentence, she was lying on her back, Dayne’s hand wrapped around her throat. He stopped squeezing when he registered the look in her eyes. She’d clearly forgotten she was stronger than he was. Something he could use.
“Who did you say sent you?” He poured menace into his voice, intent on keeping her on edge and pressing his advantage.
“Jaden . . . I . . . Please . . . ” Greta’s fingernails dug into his arms in panic.
He released her. “Forgive me. I have trust issues.”
“Yeah, no shit.” Greta shot back to her feet, the slight crouch of her body showed she was ready for him. She rubbed her throat.
“Did I hurt you?”
“You scared me. I almost shifted.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“I can’t fight worth a damn in my fur.” She crossed her arms defensively over her chest.
“I’m sorry.”
Her face flushed in anger. “Are you? Because the way it looks to me, we both have a problem and we both have a solution. You need blood; I have blood. I need protection; you have protection. This doesn’t seem all that complicated to me. Does it seem complicated to you?”
Dayne crossed his arms over his chest. “I have ground rules, Were.”
“Fine. I have a ground rule, too.”
One brow rose. “Oh? Do tell.”
While it was indeed true that she could kick his ass without blinking if he suddenly developed laryngitis, he would wager he could chant faster than she could drop kick him. Not every spell required books and herbs, candles or circles, or any of the million and one accoutrements the magical set swore by.
“Don’t call me Were. If you’re really that old, you know that’s offensive. Whatever your therian issue is, put it aside. I’m not whoever did you wrong. I would prefer to be called by my name if that wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
He cocked his head to the side and studied her. She alternated so quickly between timid and smart-mouthed, he thought he might be dealing with a multiple personality. It wouldn’t be the first time in his long existence. Dayne’s mouth curved in a genuinely amused smile before he caught himself and returned to his former cold expression.
“Very well, and your name?”
“Greta.”
“Is that your only rule, Greta?”
She nodded, the wind going out of her sails as she returned to being the frightened kitty. He wondered if she was aware of these highly irregular mood swings.
“My rules are as follows: You will not leave this house until after the full moon. If your tribe truly plans to sacrifice you, the wards will keep you safe as long as you remain inside. If you leave, you will not be allowed back in. Since I can’t keep an eye on you 24/7, when I can’t watch you you’ll be locked in the guest room. For my own personal safety, of course.”
She stood perfectly still for a moment, the tension radiating off her body as she clenched and unclenched her hands at her sides.
“I won’t let you lock me up.” She said it calmly, her tone completely even, but she turned and ran up the stairs. Moments later, the front door slammed.
He shook his head and sighed. The spell hadn’t lied. He had. He hadn’t needed her blood to strengthen the wards. The wards were fine as they were, barring his bad habit of voluntarily opening the door without looking through the peephole first. He’d needed her blood for a truth spell.
The light that had glowed around her immediately after he’d finished the incantation should have left no doubt to her honest need. Though again, he wasn’t running a charity service. So why he should feel the need to help random Weres in distress like some sort of magical halfway house, he couldn’t be sure.
He’d felt the fear pouring off her and conceded no one was that good an actress. He’d watched her eyes flash between brown and yellow as she’d tried to stop from shifting. Still, he wouldn’t put it past Jaden to be using her.
Dayne shrugged. It was no longer his problem. Let someone else handle it. He wasn’t going to become a hero; they didn’t normally survive long.
He climbed the stairs and found Greta’s abandoned bag beside the front door. Sorting through it, he found makeup, clothes, and a few tacky books with shirtless men and women with heaving breasts.
He crossed back to the computer, loaded the web browser, and typed, “sacrifice,” “therian” into the search box. Several sites popped up, most about werecats. This breed liked their sacrifice.
Dayne clicked the link that looked most helpful. The screen filled with morbid drawings of beautiful women, sometimes men, chained down to stone slabs, blood being drained from them into a type of moat around the altar as the others shifted into their animal form.
The images showcased a type of twisted sadism that most reserved for those not of their kind. Further down the page were photographs. One in particular caught his attention.
The woman’s hair was longer than Greta’s, but the same shiny dark brown. Otherwise, she resembled her enough that Dayne could almost see Greta on the slab instead. He scrolled the mouse over the arrow to leave the page.
A warmth prickled over his senses. The kitty was still in the house. He should have been angry, but after the photos what he felt was relief that she was still safely ensconced in his well-warded fortress. Somewhere. Cats were experts at hiding. If not for his ability to sense magic, he might never have known.
And now she was terrified of him. Had he worked the evil persona so strongly that he’d become so? He wasn’t all fluffy goodness and light, but he hadn’t thought he’d sunk to mustache-twirling levels of evil.
He focused on the bookcase, causing one of the books to fly off the shelf into his hand. He flipped to the appropriate passage and whispered the incantation necessary to lock all the doors and windows, then he allowed the book to fly back to its place.
He needed to get out and socialize more. Even ten years ago, Dayne never would have made a speech like the one he’d made in the basement about locking her up. It sounded like it had come out of Evil for Dummies. A less insane sorcerer would lock up the books he didn’t want her in, not lock her up. Or perhaps a sorcerer would lock her up.
He started down the hallway, his footfalls light and measured.
“Here, kitty kitty.”
Chapter Four
Greta huddled under Dayne’s bed, her fur pressed flat against the wall. She’d barely maintained her form in the basement. Now she was too keyed up to shift back and climb out the window. Footsteps thudded and stopped with heavy finality just outside the door.
Please don’t find me. Please don’t find me. Her heart beat erratically in her tiny chest, in tempo to her silent pleas. She wondered if a cat could hyperventilate. If it had been Simon outside the door, he would have heard her panting and it would have been all over.
She tried to stay focused on the plan. Of course, Dayne would return to his room. That was the point.
He’d finally go to sleep and she could slip out and eat something, then keep out of sight until after the full moon.
After all, what kind of idiot hides in the bedroom of the bad guy? It was probably a bad question given her current circumstances, but it had seemed halfway brilliant at the time she’d thought of it.
She couldn’t be sure why she’d slammed the door earlier without first going through it, except that Dayne was her only hope.
Without magic to cloak her, she was at the mercy of the tribe. And no one else in Cary Town was strong enough to counteract the magic of the few witches in the tribe’s employ. If Jaden thought Dayne was her only chance, then he was.
The bed dipped above her and the bed springs creaked as Dayne laid back and sighed. “You can come out now. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Yeah right. She remained hidden, though she was sure he could use magic to bring her out. She couldn’t be that difficult to levitate at house cat weight.
“Greta . . . ”
The bed creaked again as his weight lifted, then his eyes were level with hers. He held out a hand. She hissed.
“I’m not having a conversation like this,” he said, his voice sounding so reasonable she almost trusted him. “You have to come out eventually.”
She wished she could ask him to back away so she could come out on her own, but her cat-shaped mouth wouldn’t form human words, and it seemed unlikely he was fluent in the subtle nuance of the meow. When she finally edged out, he picked her up.
She reacted.
“Ow!” Dayne howled, dropped her, and cradled his bleeding arm. “Fuck!”
Greta scrambled onto the bed and burrowed underneath the pillow, her little black face poking out at him. Her eyes widened at the long, bright bloody trails she’d left. Didn’t Dayne know anything about cats? It wasn’t like she could shut that instinct off.
She inched out from under the pillow, arched her back, and hissed. She expected to see anger in his eyes, instead she saw . . . guilt? She settled on top of the feather pillow and wrapped her tail around her as he disappeared into the bathroom.
When he returned, his arm was bandaged. She could smell the hydrogen peroxide he’d used to disinfect the cuts as if he’d been wounded on a battlefield instead of getting a few cat scratches. Men could be such babies.
“I don’t like blood,” he said.
“Mrarr?” Greta cocked her head to the side. He’d taken her blood not an hour ago. He didn’t seem to have a problem then.
“My own blood. I have no trouble with the blood of others.”
Those calmly spoken words should have had her fleeing back under the bed to the safety she’d just left, but she remained frozen in place. She would have felt better if she could shift back to a form she could fight in. But she couldn’t, not with him there.
“If I sit next to you, are you going to claw me again?”
She shook her head, and Dayne settled beside her.
“I apologize for my earlier behavior. I was nearly killed because of Jaden many years ago. So I have a hard time trusting Weres. Especially Weres from your tribe.”
Greta growled.
“Therians,” he corrected. “However, at this point I don’t believe you’re lying to me. Ordinarily I wouldn’t get involved, but you’re right. I need your blood. This is how it used to be done. None of this ordering blood off the Internet nonsense. Magic shouldn’t be so sanitary. It has no right to be.”
He’d started absently stroking Greta’s fur, a soothing rhythmic motion from the tips of her ears to the end of her tail. It was causing an inappropriate response, and before she could stop herself, she’d shifted.
***
Fur changed to soft flesh under his hand. Greta rolled onto her side, her legs curled into her, trying to cover her nudity. Warmth flared in Dayne’s stomach at the action. It was a strange and oddly endearing quirk for a Were. Usually they flaunted whatever they had to flaunt, in their skin or in their fur.
“Could you go get me some clothes out of my bag? Please?”
“Of course.”
As he made his way down the hall, a visual came unbidden of those beautiful legs on his shoulders, and Greta moaning and writhing beneath him. He had to shake himself physically to loosen the thoughts from his mind.
If she’d been a dog, no pun intended, he might not have had such a problem. His resolve with her would be melted way before the moon reached fullness. And if history was choosing to repeat itself, by the time he needed her blood he’d contract a full-blown case of stupid. Dayne retrieved a pair of faded blue jeans and a flimsy T-shirt that barely qualified as clothing.
He returned and tossed them to her, then looked away. He heard her catch the garments and bit the inside of his cheek as he listened to the fabric slide over her skin.
“Okay,” she said.
He turned. Clothing did nothing to help the situation. The jeans hugged the curves of her hips too enticingly, and the shirt was cropped to reveal a small expanse of golden stomach. Without a bra, her nipples protruded through the thin pink material.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“The gardens are warded as well,” Dayne said, searching for anything to say so he could stop looking at her nipples. His eyes darted up to catch hers as she nodded. Her cheeks were flushed. Who knew a werecat could blush? Jaden had been shameless.
“Will you be sleeping in the guest room?”
“Are you going to lock me up?” Her eyebrows rose in challenge as the pink faded from her cheeks.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not used to being around people. I’m sorry.”
This was an understatement and a testament to how much the tiny creature unnerved him. Once he’d had time to think, he’d realized how extreme his threat to lock her up had been. All the dangerous books required extensive magical knowledge to decipher. It wasn’t as if she could cast a curse on him or destroy any of the wards he’d built.
“We’re going to have to try to trust each other.” He watched her lips draw into a tight line at the hypocritical comment, but she nodded again.
He wondered if she felt the room charge as he did. He wanted to shove the jeans past her hips and bend her over the bathroom counter. He wanted her in his bed.
“I’m hungry,” Greta said, interrupting his fantasy.
His hand, of its own accord, reached out and brushed a strand of hair off her face as she passed him. She flinched.
“Sorry,” he said.
“You’ve said that a lot today.”
He didn’t know why he’d touched her. He had no right. There were no strong wizards or good witches she could go to in the city. She must have been very desperate and afraid to come to him, and he hadn’t done anything to put that fear to rest.
He followed her down the narrow hallway. A picture on the wall of his uncle Arthur reflected oddly in the domed hallway lighting. The photograph showed Arthur with a disapproving look on his stern features. The camera had never captured him without that look, not once in his 443 years of life. Nevertheless, Dayne felt the old man stood in judgment of him now beyond the grave, seeing how far Dayne’s humanity had slipped in recent decades.
Greta moved ahead of him with an animal grace, each step precise. It was difficult to understand how normal humans couldn’t sense what she was. Dayne could feel the magic pulsing off her, just as intoxicating as the last time he’d felt it thirty years before with Jaden.
It called to him, begged him to take a taste of that raw natural power, that elusive something trained magic users just didn’t have. A sorcerer, witch, or wizard just knew how to manipulate the magic around them; shapeshifters were made of magic.
He kept to the corners of the room, doing an old trick he’d learned in his apprenticeship days to make himself fade into the background. It wasn’t full invisibility, more like unobtrusiveness. He wasn’t sure of its effectiveness on a shapeshifter, but at least it would keep his presence from spooking her further.
He had to restrain himself as Greta took the milk from the fridge and drank it straight from the carton. At first, the restraint was because she was no doubt spreading germs all over the container. Then it became about something else as he felt himself grow hard.
A few drops of the creamy white liquid dribbled around the sides of the carton and down her chin and long neck. She arched back, and some of the milk dripped down to dampen her shirt.
She moved on to a steak Dayne had planned to grill for dinner the next day. He couldn’t bring himself to protest as he watched her carefully unwrap the meat and make a show of eating it. A woman eating raw meat wasn’t generally a turn-on. It was the kind of thing seen in a traveling freak show, but somehow the werecat managed to make an act that emphasized bloody death into the most erotic teasing.
When she finished, she dumped the empty meat tray in the garbage and stretched her arms languidly over her head. She paused by the door on her way out of the kitchen.
“Goodnight, Dayne,” she practically purred.
He shed the useless glamour. “Nice kitties don’t tease.”
“I never said I was a nice kitty. Nice sorcerers don’t stalk.”
“There are no nice sorcerers.”
He frowned as the confidence slipped off her face like a mask. She turned and scurried off to the guest room without a backward glance, the spell she’d woven, broken.
He didn’t know what kind of game she was playing, but he was disappointed to be the winner.
Chapter Five
Over the days that followed, a routine and tentative truce formed. Dayne stopped threatening Greta and tried to stop suspecting her of trying to destroy him. Mostly he suspected Jaden. He’d once allowed Jaden’s musical laughter and shapely ass to cause him to lose sight of everything he’d learned as a sorcerer, something he was in danger of doing again now with Greta.
Jaden had been beneficial in her way. The slaughter in the tribe’s sacred space had ensured the reputation he now enjoyed. It was a reputation he’d cultivated and cared for like a garden full of delicate seedlings. The consolation prize for losing the girl.
Overall, it had significantly reduced the hassle in his life. Now everything was “Yes, Mr. Wickham,” “No, Mr. Wickham,” “Please don’t kill me, Mr. Wickham.” That suited him fine.
Whatever Jaden’s plan now, Greta at least believed she needed to be saved. And he needed blood. What was it they said about a gift horse?
He’d made a trip to the grocery store, stocking enough to feed an army. Weres had quite the metabolism. She could pack it away, but where she put it all, he had no idea.
It wasn’t just raw meat and milk she liked. She ate cooked meat and vegetables, if baked potatoes counted as a vegetable.
He was certain the nutritional value of the average baked potato was so low they should have their own food group called “nutritionally deficient starches.”
He could watch her eat raw meat with no trouble, but when she dug into a baked potato loaded with butter and sour cream, he got squeamish. She’d requested an unnatural amount of chocolate, popcorn, and ice cream, along with every werewolf film ever made. She’d insisted that if she was going to be stuck in the house, she needed entertainment.
When Dayne questioned her, she’d said, “Hey, I don’t blame them for portraying the wolves that way. All the bad press is their fault.” Then she’d started on another tub of popcorn.
The next day he’d caught her in the basement rolling some of his herbs in rolling paper and smoking them. Then he realized it was catnip.
He’d wanted to be angry. He had a few spells he needed that for and the good stuff was expensive, but she’d rolled around on the stone floor giggling like a maniac. They’d had the briefest of moments when he was sure he could have gotten her into bed with no trouble, but he’d let the moment pass.
That had been a mistake, Dayne thought now as he lounged in a wingback chair in the den. He did most of his guilty pleasure reading here, though there were books all over the house crammed onto every bookcase and stacked on most available surfaces.
There were spell books, of course, but also books on science and history, as well as several books on gardening. He had an impressive garden encased in a stone wall. Climbing vines and roses created a magical effect over trellises, gates, and the garden wall itself. He’d spent many hours the past few days watching Greta in her cat form running around the garden chasing things.
Then he’d grown hard as he’d watched her shift and sunbathe nude, still cursing the missed catnip opportunity. She must not have realized he had a window with a view. It was easy to lose track of the possible peepholes when the garden felt so remote from everything else. It had been designed that way, though he couldn’t have foretold the current benefit he was getting from it.
The first time she’d sunbathed, he’d thought she was teasing him as she had with the milk and meat, but her manner was different. Unaffected. She was graceful and sultry as before, but there was an innocence that had been missing from her earlier purposeful seduction, and one he had a hard time admitting turned him on even more than the show she’d put on to entice him. He still hadn’t managed to determine what that had been about. Greta wasn’t a seductress; it wasn’t her style.
Something was off, he just couldn’t figure out what.
He got up to check the window again. He was a dirty old man for peeping at her, though he couldn’t very well warn Greta of the window now. It would only embarrass her and create an uneasiness he didn’t want to see in her again.
Satisfied with the rationalization and disappointed to find no naked Greta outside, he went back to his chair and horror novel. Three pages into chapter thirteen, he looked up startled to see her standing in the doorway with an odd glint in her eyes.
He could hear her purring from his chair. She leaned with one arm over her head to support herself, her body so relaxed and loose it looked like liquid in suspended animation. Her eyes were dilated, her lips parted.
Damn. Dayne knew this. Her lips were parted so she could breathe in the pheromones on the air around her. She was in heat. She’d found him by scent and she wasn’t going to be refused. Suddenly her erratic mood swings made sense.
She slunk into the room, and it was then he noticed she was wearing one of his T-shirts and nothing else. The shirt grazed the tops of her thighs. Her nipples formed points in the fabric, making her arousal evident, in the event he’d missed it before.
She stalked him, and he couldn’t move. For the first time since they’d met, he was her prey.
He’d been insane if he’d thought she was dangerous to him before, back when danger was a cute theory. She let out a soft, breathy sigh, and the book slipped from his hands to the floor. She bent beside the chair to pick it up, her ass raised delectably in the air. He sucked in a breath. Sweet mother of God, she wasn’t wearing panties.
He ran a hand over her bare ass. Greta shivered and turned toward him, straightening with the grace of a preternatural dancer. He felt pinned to the chair by a force stronger than those he usually wielded as she arched back and peeled the shirt from her body, tossing it to the floor.
“Touch me.” Her voice was throaty. Whoever or whatever this was, it wasn’t her.
“I think it’s a bad idea.” Why the hell was he growing a conscience now?
“I have to sleep with someone now,” she said. “If you don't do it, I’ll have to find someone who will.” She made her way back toward the door, her exit as much a seduction as her entrance.
Like hell, she was. “You aren’t going anywhere. You promised your blood to me, and I will collect.”
She didn’t seem bothered that he’d reduced her to nothing more than a magical blood donor. She stood in front of him, gloriously naked and pulsing with desire, her body vibrating with the purrs he knew were more from painful need than contentedness.
“Please,” she said, rubbing her breasts against him. The action was so feline she might as well have been in her fur.
Dayne gripped her by the shoulders. “How much of you is still in there? Because I promise if you regret this afterward and think you’re running off, I will lock you in the cage downstairs. I’m not having your heat cycle screw this up.”
She was unfazed by the threat, too lost in elevated hormones. “Don’t you want me?” She pouted prettily and then turned in his arms, her ass grinding against his erection. “Mmmmm I see that you do.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Well?”
His hands slid around to her front, running smoothly over her belly and up to her exposed breasts.
“Are you coherent enough to talk to me?” He was in the process of losing his own powers of coherence.
“Don’t wanna talk. Wanna fuck.”
He gripped her by the shoulders again and shook her. “How long does this last, and how often does it happen?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Exposure to eligible mates.” She moaned. “Don’t stop touching.”
“You can’t possibly live like this.” He found it hard to believe Weres were running amuck having heat cycles and getting anything done in the real world.
“I take a pill. They’re in my apartment.” She sped the pace of her grinding.