Into the Light (2 page)

She had long blonde hair that was tangled and matted and looked as if she hadn’t been captured easily. Which made sense, because otherwise, Quentin would have found one before now, right?

Her eyes were bright, bright blue, the opposite end of the spectrum from Tanner and many other shifters, who tended to have pale blue eyes. They were large in her small, heart-shaped face. Her torn dress was white with gold and silver designs sewn into it. The dress clung to a body that was slight, with small breasts, narrow hips, and thin legs.

What was most intriguing, however, was the faint shimmer of magic that danced around her body like a thousand tiny sparks. He could see it, even in this dimly lit basement.

“Yeah, can you believe it?”

Tanner turned his head to the left and studied the shifter who had been awarded the privilege of bringing him down to the basement. The kid stared at the caged lightbearer, panting slightly, a fox studying its prey in the hen house. Tanner subtly stepped to the right, bodily putting himself between the young shifter and the caged lightbearer.

“Aren’t you the asshole who killed four humans in cold blood just recently?”

The kid affected a defensive look. “I thought they were lightbearers.”

Tanner waved at the woman crouched in the cell. “Did they look like this? Remotely? Did magic spark off their skin?”

The defensive look turned mulish.

“I thought you were in the human jail?”

The kid shrugged. “I just waited until no one was around and then I shifted into the form of a rat and snuck away,” he boasted.

Tanner felt disgusted. Four lives, wasted, just because Quentin’s poison had seeped into the entire damn pack. Sometimes he felt like the only shifter who did not support his father’s evil ways. And he was blood related to the man. If anyone should feel obligated to believe in him, it should be Tanner. Yet he was the only one willing to defy the pack master. He’d moved away from the pack ten years ago and only came back on the rare occasion that Quentin pulled some stunt like this to lure him back.

Not that he’d ever managed to quite pull
this
stunt before.

“Get out of here,” Tanner snapped. He was relieved when the kid slunk away with only minimal protest. Technically, Tanner had no pull within this pack, not since he left and walked away from his birthright. But shifters were a hardwired lot, and it would be difficult for any of them to defy him, despite his standing—or lack thereof.

Once he was alone in the basement with the silently observing lightbearer, Tanner walked closer to the cell and leaned against the iron bars. Iron did not affect shifters the way it affected the fae—and lightbearers, apparently. He was pretty certain the petite woman shrank away from the iron more so than him.

She was attractive, he decided, despite the tangled hair and torn dress. But not his usual type. When he looked at the shimmering magical creature, the words
elegant
and
refined
came to mind. Not words that would describe his lifestyle—or the women in it.

Tanner liked women who had only one expectation and understood that they were not invited to stay for breakfast. Women who looked like this lightbearer were not the sort who understood the rules of that particular game. She was the type of woman Tanner would admire from a purely masculine standpoint and then walk away from—as he headed to the nearest nightclub.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Are you really a lightbearer?”

She still refused to answer.

He stood there for a while, studying her, as she studied him back. She looked defiant, determined not to give him anything, especially answers.

“I’m not like the rest of them,” he said. “I don’t believe all that crap about killing lightbearers to gain their magic.”

He did not imagine the look of cautious relief in her eyes. So she knew the legends as well.

“Are you worried it’s true?” he asked.

“I am more worried that you’ll try to find out.” Her voice was soft, with an accent that was part Midwest, part something else, something…magical.

He cocked his head. “Do you live here in this world?” he asked curiously. A magical creature with a Midwestern accent?

Her chin lifted a notch and she refused to answer, but that was answer enough. Tanner whistled.

“Hot damn, not only was my father right about your continued existence, but he was right about you living in this world. Where do you live?”

Not surprisingly, she did not answer.

“I’ll find out from the ones who captured you, so you might as well tell me,” he pointed out.

“Vegas,” she finally ground out. She wrapped her arms more tightly around her legs and rested her chin on her knees as she continued to watch him with those overlarge eyes.

“You live in Vegas?” He was surprised by this information. Vegas did not seem very far from where his father’s pack lived, considering how far and wide he’d sent scouts to search for her species.

Although, in reality, Vegas made perfect sense. It was sunny nearly all the time, and eclectic enough that even magical creatures would be able to blend in fairly easily. He wondered how many of them lived in Vegas, and how his father had finally figured this out.

She shook her head. “That is where they caught me.”

“And what were you doing in Vegas?”

“Gambling. Playing. Enjoying myself. At least, I was until your stupid guard dogs figured out what I was,” she spat.

So she didn’t live in Vegas. “Not my guard dogs,” Tanner reminded her. “I’m not pack master here. Trust me, you’ll know him when you meet him.”

“I already have.” She shivered. Yep, she knew Quentin.

“Are there others in Vegas?”

She paused and then shook her head.

“Are there others in this world?”

“If you think I’m going to give up the location of the coterie, you are sadly mistaken. Even if I wanted to or was coerced to do so, I could not. We are all under the influence of a very powerful spell. It does not allow us to disclose the location, even under duress. You would simply have to kill me.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Tanner spat irritably, and then he frowned. “What’s a coterie?”

“Where we live. A secret place that no one has discovered for five hundred years.” Her voice was slightly boastful.

“But it’s not in Vegas. So why were
you
in Vegas? Presumably alone?”

She hesitated again, and then apparently decided she had nothing to lose. “The coterie is like a tiny village. We are self-sustaining, all inclusive. We live our lives exactly as the king instructs us. It can become terribly oppressive.”

She complained like a petulant child. Tanner couldn’t help smiling. “And you prefer to have fun, regardless of the potential danger.”

“There hasn’t been a shifter attack in centuries,” she pointed out.

“You just said your coterie is so well hidden no one has found it in five hundred years.”

The woman frowned and said nothing.

“My name is Tanner Lyons. What’s yours?”

“Why do you care? You’re only going to kill me.” The shimmer of magic surrounding her body brightened for a moment. Tanner’s eyes flared briefly as he felt the impact as if she’d touched him instead of simply glared at him.

He shook his head and made an exasperated sound. “I told you I’m not going to kill you.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think like the pack master. I didn’t even believe you all existed, let alone that you can share your magic.”
And it would be a damn shame to kill someone so pretty
.

“Then set me free,” she challenged.

“Shh,” he said as he cocked his head to listen to a sound only he could hear, thanks to his intensified shifter hearing. “Someone’s coming.”

The lightbearer shrank into herself, curling her body into a tighter ball as she watched the basement stairs with growing trepidation. Quentin had obviously made quite an impression on her.

Then he was there, the man himself. Tanner’s sire, not that he was particularly pleased or honored by that fact. Long, pitch-black hair, a well-groomed beard shot with silver, and muscles to rival any twenty-year old, Quentin Lyons was without a doubt a force with which to be reckoned. If not for the silver in his beard and the fact that his eyes were black, whereas Tanner’s were a pale blue, the two men could be twins.

Tanner knew the only reason he’d been able to defy the pack master ten years ago was because he was Quentin’s only legitimate offspring, and his father was under the delusion that he would step up and take over the pack someday.

Not likely.

“Ah, the prodigal son returns,” Quentin drawled, his dark eyes sweeping over Tanner, as if searching for an indication that he’d decided to change his ways since the last time the two men met.

Tanner fought, as always, to remain passive in front of the dominant shifter.
Do not let him know he gets to you
.

“Mickey made it difficult to say no this time.”

Quentin chuckled. “As I knew he would. I told him it was his life or you. I am pleased he chose you. How did he do it?” At least he didn’t pretend Tanner wanted to be there.

“Produced a bit of fabric from the woman’s dress,” Tanner said as he thrust his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the lightbearer in the cage behind him.

Quentin nodded thoughtfully. “The boy is smarter than I gave him credit for. Perhaps it is time for a shift in the ranks.”

Tanner hoped not. A shift in the ranks was meant to be an honor, but to get there, Mickey would have to fight one of Quentin’s strongest guards in a dogfight that would probably kill one of them. Tanner’s money, unfortunately, would not be on Mickey to survive.

Quentin’s eyes shifted to the lightbearer. “I did it,” he murmured, sounding reverent. “I was right.”

“You were right that lightbearers still exist,” Tanner said carefully. Be that as it may, Tanner still could not accept the idea of killing this woman in cold blood, just on the off chance that Quentin might inherit her magic.

“Can you see the magic, son?” Quentin’s eyes had begun to glow, a steady, dim light that was indicative of his level of excitement.

“It’s
her
magic,” Tanner said. “If you kill her, you kill the magic as well.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You don’t know that you will inherit it, either.”

“The legends were right about their existence,” Quentin pointed out. “Why would you think they wouldn’t be right about the magic?”

Tanner shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. No magical beings have ever had the ability to share magic. Ever, in the history of magic. Leave her be. Let her go.”

Quentin’s eyes shifted to focus on Tanner. “You aren’t leading this pack yet,” he growled.

Tanner bit back his own growl. Telling his old man that he had no intention of ever ruling his pack would send the man into a rage, as Tanner well knew from past experience. And if his father flew into a rage, the petite lightbearer was most certainly as good as dead.

“You won’t inherit her magic if you kill her,” he tried again.

“You’re right,” Quentin surprised him by saying. “You will.”

Hell of a way to figure out his father’s grand plan. Quentin didn’t want the lightbearer’s magic for himself—he wanted it for Tanner. In a stroke of shocking genius, Quentin had at some point come to the realization of his own mortality. The magic would be wasted on him, he determined, because he was growing too old to manage this large pack of carnivorous shifters.

So give it to Tanner instead. Made perfect sense.

The process would also cement Tanner’s position within the pack, and would prove to the world that he really was Quentin Lyons’ prodigy in every sense of the word.

Tanner wanted nothing whatsoever to do with the plan. He considered simply leaving again, but he felt honor-bound to stay. If he left, they would kill the lightbearer anyway, and she’d done nothing to deserve such a fate. Nothing other than escape from what she considered her boring life, at the wrong time, in the wrong place.

Damn it, he had to stay.

This wasn’t how he intended for his life to play out. In truth, when Tanner left the pack ten years ago, he’d gone just far enough to be out of his father’s reach, just far enough that he could integrate himself into human society and separate himself from the pack. His intention had been simple: to live his life, on his own terms. Without the pack, without the psychosis of his father’s beliefs hanging over his head.

They found him periodically, over the years, just as they had today. Until today, Tanner had steadily refused to return to the pack, and just as soon as the messenger left, he packed up and moved. Again.

It was hard for a shifter to leave the pack. Shifters were by nature pack-like creatures. They did not like to be alone. They thrived in an environment that lent itself to close quarters, to regular intrusions by other people.

But Tanner made it work. It was better than turning into his father. Except now that was exactly what his father intended for him to do.

Quentin waited until just before dusk to pull the lightbearer out of her underground prison. “She’ll have a little light to regenerate her magic,” Quentin explained. “But not enough to escape before you kill her.”

Despite his verbal assurance, Quentin ensured her wrists were bound by iron chains. Just in case.

The pack master summoned his pack to a mandatory meeting. While they waited for the pack to gather, Tanner stood off to the side, next to the manor house, and watched his family and friends pour onto the grounds. Some caught sight of him and hurried over to welcome him back. Others averted their gaze, probably feeling guilty for accepting his father’s ways. Shortly before he left the pack, Tanner had tried to convince those he felt closest to, to come with him, to start a new life out from under Quentin’s thumb.

Not even his own mother would take the chance.

“He’ll kill us all, Tanner. You go. He’ll let you go, because you are the one person in this world he remotely respects. But the rest of us, we don’t have that choice.”