Lycan Alpha Claim 3 (37 page)

CHAPTER 31

reckoning

Scott stared at the female werewolf that held Julia.

Their queen.

His
... and growled. He didn't know where that primitive utterance had come from but he rolled with it instinctively. He saw the vamps at the same time the werewolves went after the big red guy.

Lots to do here
. Scott was always game, his body practiced and ready for violence.

It moved forward of its own volition.

William saw the group of Singers and paused. His nostrils flared and he recognized something about the one which led, his scent was slightly different. William was a runner. He was bred to recognize the Rare Blood in Singers. Julia was pure. But this one, he had enough quantum for William to respond, every tracking instinct tingled inside him, even as Julia was in his sights.

Who was he?

William would soon find out as the one he stared at launched himself with the speed of a Singer who was trained, seasoned and in the prime of his life, his direction aimed for Julia.

Julia rose to consciousness as if swimming from the bottom of a pool but without the benefit of alertness. She was in a fog, the fever stealing her cognitive reasoning, making her slow and thick-feeling.

She watched the scene unfold from the cradle of Adi's arms.

Scott came toward Julia in a flash of brilliant color, the tailwind of colors behind him she intuited as the rest of his family. From Julia's left William and the vampire tore toward her, the feral howling in misery, the tone of it told her all she needed to know.

He drove to get to her, kept at bay by Tony and Joseph.

But maybe not for long.

Julia made the most difficult decision of her life but she knew it would solve the current problem instantly. Her mind sought what it needed and when she found it... the metal flashed in the gloom of the forest, making its way to her as if by invisible strings.

She grabbed the hilt of the stolen weapon, her telekinetic ability bringing it to her in a rush of surprise to all. The supernaturals in the forest stilled their movements.

The desired effect was instantaneous.

Marcus watched his utility knife, that he routinely wore at his hip, come unlatched and spin away from his body, lurching toward Julia.

Hilt first.

Julia caught it in her hand, flicked it open, held it to her own throat and screamed hoarsely, “Stop!”

Adi looked down at Julia. “No!”

“Let me down, Adi,” her voice steady.

Adriana did, Julia sliding down the front of her body and swaying on her feet, her head swimming with pain and vertigo.

Julia looked at William, as still as a statue. “Do not,” he whispered. “None of us wish for this end, Julia. This is not the answer.”

Scott stopped breathing when he saw the metal gleaming against the pale throat of the Queen of the Blood Singers. The fibers of his being pulled taut to the breaking point while his soul shrieked inside him. He made a move to step forward and Julia gaze shifted to his. “Don't even try it. I know you hate me,” she hissed, her strength ebbing, her hand shaking from the strain of keeping it steady.

The fibers of his being cinched tighter in discomfort, her safety in jeopardy by her own hand. Scott stood poised to launch himself at her the moment her attention wavered, the pain of not touching her unbearable. It was unlike anything he'd ever known. Every bruise, every battle wound... nothing compared.

Julia backed away from all of them, her back touching the trunk of a tree. They stood, all eyes tracking her progress, knowing that a false move could end her life. Then what would they have? What would she be?

Dead is what.

As the tears began to flow, Julia realized that nothing good had happened to her since Jason's death. Her lower lip trembled and her hand shook as she determined that this was the best answer for her after all. She was tired.

So tired.

Joseph and Tony saw her expression first as they were the closest. But it was the feral who acted, his half-wolf form slipping off him like water sheeting off glass.

He sprang forward, human again for that moment.

The moment of truth.

Julia saw him and her heart stalled in her chest.

She dropped the knife, all thought of death forgotten.

It speared the earth at her feet and she staggered forward without thinking.

****

Kent

Cynthia thanked the nice lady with the sad eyes for the room, nodding in all the right places when she told her it was but a transitional respite. Blah, blah, blah. Cynthia got it. A place to lay her head on a pillow, none of the creatures in sight. They couldn't have followed her all the way to the outskirts of Seattle. She breathed a sigh of relief for the first time in what felt like forever.

She opened the door to the dark room and saw a bunch of plaster repair and the evidence of damage all over the place. The lady turned to her, the chain that hung off her glasses catching the light. “Don't mind the mess, we're doing a touch of remodeling.”

Cynthia looked around her. Looked like more than a touch. The window looked the worst. She walked over to it, seeing the remnants of hand-blown glass, wavy and warped, encased in a solid wood frame. Hairline fissures scattered about the center were taped so they couldn't splinter further. She turned her head and saw the old lady's face in profile. “What happened?”

The woman shrugged her shoulders, hauling the shawl she wore more firmly around her hunched shoulders. “We're not sure. But there was a young woman who stayed here a few months past...” she looked down at her sensible shoes, the pantyhose an unnatural tan color and suddenly looked up, guilt and a muted horror, contained like a stuffed sock riding her eyes. “She uh... we think she was taken.”

Not much of a shelter!
Cynthia thought, looking at the damage of the room more closely. She asked, “By who?”

The woman shrugged, backing carefully out of the room and giving her a nod as she left, closing the door softly behind her. Conversation closed.

Cynthia looked at the windowsill more closely.

Her chest tightened in a gut clenching clutch of pain, her breath leaving her body.

She traced the marring left in the wood of the sill with a hand that shook so badly she grabbed it with its mate to steady it. She gave a shaky exhale.

It wasn't
who
took the girl.

But what.

Cynthia snatched her hand back. She looked outside, beyond the glass and the unkempt yard below to the forest. It was dark and quiet.

A perfect hiding place.

For
them
.

Cyn backed up until her legs hit the mattress and sat down. She stared at the window. It looked like she might have escaped one horror for another.

Breaking her stupor, she rummaged in her backpack until she found what she was looking for. She laid down on her back, her finger running over the one photo she had, a habit of comfort these almost two years past. She never missed a night without looking at them.

It was Vegas. Just the four of them: Jason and Jules, she and Kev.

Before.

She looked at Jules, dressed up for once, Jason's arm slung comfortably around her shoulders, like it belonged. Her eyes stung with unshed tears, hot and unwelcome as she looked at Kevin. When they ran down her face she didn't wipe them away, but pressed the photo against her chest.

Her heart.

She missed them so much, she felt like her heart would never stop breaking. That's why her chest hurt so damned much all the time. A crack that wouldn't mend.

Her heart broken in shards inside her.

Cynthia covered the photo with both hands and put her head to the side of the pillow, stifling her sobbing from the other inhabitants of the women's shelter.

*

Truman

Truman looked at Alexander, their eyes meeting a final time. “I can't believe this. I know you're telling me all this but I can't...” Karl tapped his head.

“Wrap your head around it? Yeah, tell me about it!” Alexander responded, nodding.

Karl Truman fought the habit to take his small note pad out of its home in the upper pocket of his button down and clasped his hands together instead. “So they're...”

George Alexander nodded. “They're big suckers, standing on hind legs,” he made his palm flat and put it a foot above his head, “that makes these guys about seven feet.”

Truman whistled. “So, they're dexterous?”

“Very. They had no difficulty pawing through this apartment, turning knobs, unlatching windows. No,” he paused, not a hint of humor in his voice, giving Truman the full weight of his eyes, “they used the doors and windows, they have higher reasoning, no doubt.” George tapped his temple.

Truman paused, thinking about his words instead blurting just anything out. “How high?”

Alexander paused for a beat. “Maybe like us... maybe,” he scratched his head and turned his back on Truman, pacing off to the window, gazing at the forest that stretched interminably beyond their position, “... they are something else.”

“What are you saying George?” Truman walked up to him, getting right in his grill. He was going to spill this info if it killed him. His green eyes met Truman's.

“I'm saying we have real life werewolves.”

Truman staggered back a step. “No,” he denied, getting a physical reaction of heat climbing his body uncomfortably. His mind had spun around the possibility of it, eventually dismissing it as too unreal.

Alexander paced toward him, ticking off the facts on his hand, “Canine genome, DNA match, size, aggression, higher reasoning...” then after a pause, he let the final bomb drop, “the saliva tells us the final piece.”

Real enough.

Truman leaned forward despite not wanting to, his heart in his throat, the evidence warring with his disbelief over anything that was not concrete, normal.

Sane.

“Human genome,” George Alexander said quietly.

Truman stared at Alexander and he returned it, the moment swelled with portentous knowledge, belief solidifying.

Half human, half wolf.

Werewolf.

Alexander was reminded of one of the first precepts he had learned in med school,
when you hear hoofbeats behind you, don't expect to see a zebra.

In this case, that's all he heard.

Zebras.

CHAPTER 32

Jason.

Maybe her eyes deceived her but Julia's heart knew.

She had watched as the feral melted away and a nearly naked Jason ran to her, staving off her killing blow.

She crashed into him, her arms snapping around him. His body felt at once shocking familiar and foreign in her embrace.

It was a moment before she knew something was wrong as pandemonium broke loose all around her. The different factions came together at once in a collision of claws, talons and speed.

Julia was prone on her back before she could move, breathe. Jason's now-human hands encircled her throat, her feverish skin burning against his cooler flesh. She frantically searched eyes that didn't know her, crazed and full of heat and hate.

Who was he now
? Julia shrieked inside her head.

Her head swam and she began to grow dizzy, her stomach cramping as Jason... her husband from another life, another time... began to choke her to death.

Scott saw the feral return to his human state and launch himself at Julia. Scott bounded toward the feral werewolf just as he began to strangle Julia. The feral's mind was obviously broken.

William understood who it was the instant the red Were changed into human form. He had seen photos of Julia's former husband. But this was no longer the husband she knew, his mind was gone, the wolf in control even while human. Few Singers could overcome the transition to Were or vampire. It was never attempted, the results at this moment a confirmation of the dangerous consequence. The theory borne into fruition.

William charged Jason Caldwell at the precise moment as Joseph and Tony.

The vampire and Were collided and the forest grew still except for the sounds of flesh tearing and the battering of one against the other. Scott landed on the back of the Singer, aiming a blow to stun him, the vamps and Were fighting behind him, his siblings making a protective wall around him.

Jason felt the blow on the base of his neck, numbing in its accuracy and force, he began to slide away from the woman who he'd been strangling.

He recognized her too late.

Jason fell beside her, meeting her eyes.

Puzzle pieces of memories coming from a blizzard that twirled without pattern to a solid stream of consciousness.

This was not any female.

This was his wife.

Julia.

What had he done? He moved to get up and one of his kind leaped on his chest, knocking the wind out of him.

But not before her eyes had met his and Jason saw the one that had hit him pick Julia up as the Were and vampire beat each other into the forest floor, blood covering everything under five feet in a spinning tornado of gore.

Black and red ran together like a poisonous lake. He watched the blood of his kind and that of his enemy run together, his consciousness slipping away, the blow's accuracy successful in its intent.

Jason's last memory was Julia being taken from him in the arms of a large man, others like him surrounded them in a cocoon of protection, the vampire and Were dying and worse all around him.

He turned his head and looked at the female Were above him as his eyes closed, exhaustion from the Change and the revelation of what he'd done and who he was dropping him like a stone in a tumultuous sea of nothingness.

Jason fell away from her and Julia sucked in a lungful of precious air, a hitching sob the next sound that escaped, her abused throat on fire.

Jason had tried to kill her!
It was worse than his death. He lived but wasn't him!

Two palms cradled her face and forced her to focus on the one who had saved her from certain death. First by her own hand, then the death that had been promised by a kiss of hands that had once loved her.

The electric shock of Scott's hands against Julia's skin instantly cooled the fever and stopped the internal turmoil of her stomach's roil. She felt him lift her from the ground, strong arms wrapped her against his body and he turned, a silent command which felt like intent rose from him like a sigh and the others gathered around him like soldiers.

Julia's head burrowed against his chest, her eyes just clearing his strong arm where they met the stare of Tony, dead vampire at his feet. William was nowhere to be seen.

Joseph was dead as well.

Tony was the new Alpha.

Fear rose in her instantly. Scott ran in the opposite direction and the group they left behind became smaller in her vision, Jason and Adi on the forest floor together. Jason unconscious and unaware, his head held by Adi.

Adriana's eyes were all for Tony, the victor over the vampire, his sights solely on Julia.

Tony threw his head back and howled into the still air of the forest, his rage filling Julia's ears, reverberating inside her soul like a discordant note of music.

Scott's arms pulsed around Julia once, tightening with protection.

Scott picked up his pace. The mongrel would never touch her again.

He'd stake his life on it.

THE END

Read More:
Blood Song,Book #2

OR

The Blood Bundle, Books 1&2