Primal Heat Read online

  He ached all over, his head hurting the worst. Maybe he could think more, better, after he rested.

  Rising, he turned around slowly, taking in his surroundings. There were plenty of boulders, and deep cracks in the hillside rocks. He moved toward one deep opening, but the scent of long-ago death put him off making his den in the most suitable spot. He picked a large boulder and padded toward it. It would offer him shade from the coming sun, and concealment as well. He dug out a shallow hole so he could squeeze farther under the rock, then settled into the depression. Sleep came instantly.

  He knelt beside the blond woman. She was scratched and bloody and naked, but she looked at him with defiance, even as the wildness left her bright blue eyes. He wished she hadn’t morphed back to her human shape; it was harder for him to kill a woman.

  “Hi,” he said. He shouldn’t talk to her. He should just do his job. “What’s your name?”

  “Do you really want to know?” his companion asked. “Considering…”

  “You’re going to kill me,” the woman said. Her gaze never wavered from his. She lifted her head proudly, exposing her throat. “Go ahead. I don’t want to live like this.”

  In that moment, he knew he couldn’t do it. It wasn’t her fault the mad bastard had attacked her and turned her. She hadn’t killed anyone yet. How could he punish her for a crime that wasn’t her own?

  “It’s not bad being a werewolf,” he told her. “Not after you learn to control it.”

  She was skeptical. “Control the change? How?”

  “It’s a matter of technique, and practice, and a strong will.”

  “Can you teach me?”

  “You look stubborn enough to survive.”

  “I can’t go on like this.”

  “Then I’ll teach you.”

  “Isn’t that breaking your own laws?” his friend asked.

  “Bending them,” he admitted. Sometimes you had to bend the rules. “You haven’t told me your name,” he said to the woman.

  “Cathy,” she answered. “What’s yours?”

  “Mike.”

  Michael Bleythin.

  He woke up with the memory of his name. And the knowledge that he knew how to morph, that he’d been born knowing. And that he had a friend, a partner named Matt. And he had a pack. Cathy was one of them, back home in San Diego.

  He still didn’t quite remember where he was, or why, but he knew the information was locked in his brain, buried under what had been done to him. He’d figure it out.

  Then he would hunt.

  But he couldn’t hunt until he was human again; not if he had to go into the city. His enemies frequently retreated to the cities, didn’t they? Cities disguised scent. Cities were a place to feel safely surrounded by those who didn’t really believe that werewolves were dark creatures that sprang forth out of the night.

  Which was always a cool thing to do.

  But first he had to morph from black wolf back to Mike Bleythin.

  He stood and stretched and arched his back. He glanced at the pale blue of the early-morning sky and breathed deeply, taking in the scents, faint from the past and sharp with the present, that made up the distinct perfume of his surroundings. His senses were sharp in human form, but not this sharp. He always missed being in wolf form, but right now being in man shape was a necessity.

  Yet for the life of him, he couldn’t remember how to do it.

  He knew it wasn’t something he normally thought about, it was something he just did. Morphing was an act that flowed through the muscles and sinews and bones.

  Only now it wouldn’t.

  For a moment, it frightened him to near panic. Was he crazy? Maybe he was a wolf who thought he was human. Or maybe he was a man having a hallucination that he was a wolf.

  Maybe he was just chasing his tail.

  And that was what the vampire wanted.

  He growled, remembering that it had been a very psychic vampire that had messed with his mind, causing him to be this way.

  When anger helped the panic subside, he found that he was pacing back and forth across the hilltop. Stupid move, to be out in the open like that. What kind of green pup was he, to let himself be silhouetted on high ground in broad daylight?

  He made himself sit back down beside the boulder and tried to think. For a while he was distracted by the scent of a rodent cautiously stirring a little ways away. It made him want to hunt, and it made him hungry. His wolf self came up with a simple strategy to pounce on the poor little mouse, but his human self took control again before he could proceed with the hunt.

  Once again he tried to make the change back to human, and once again he failed.

  The effort left him in pain and panting. The noise of his ragged breathing caught the rodent’s attention, and it fled. He wasn’t going to panic again, or mourn a missed breakfast.

  What he wanted was—his pack.

  Yes. But the pack wasn’t anywhere near. He couldn’t very well make his way all the way back to San Diego in his current form. He had an image of trying to hitchhike by standing next to a highway and sticking out a paw. If this was a Disney movie or a credit card commercial, that might work, but in reality he was more likely to get shot, or run over by a truck.

  If he couldn’t get back to his pack, what was he going to do?

  Then he remembered the dream. Not only did he have a pack, he had a partner. The vampire had assumed he was in town working the case with his partner. That wasn’t true, but his partner—Matt—Matt was in town, wasn’t he? He was one of too many vampires that had showed up in Vegas for some party, right? Matt and all his vampire relatives’ presence had gotten in the way of Mike’s case.

  But…what was his case?

  The vampire must have blocked that information, along with the knowledge of how to morph. One crisis at a time. One step at a time. First, he’d find Matt.

  Mike started down the hill, toward the city. He had to find Matt. And he hoped to the Moon that Bridger was still in town.

  The problem was staying inconspicuous. In the daylight. In Las Vegas. There were plenty of predators in town, but he was the only wolf in wolf’s clothing out on the morning streets. He was a big guy, six foot three, over two hundred pounds. He had the same mass in either form, so he was a pretty damned big wolf, not likely to be mistaken for a malamute on steroids.

  His little brother Joe always wore a chain with a gold medallion engraved with his name and phone number. That way, when he was morphed, he looked liked he belonged to someone. This helped keep people from being scared at the sight of him, preventing the shoot-first-ask-questions-later syndrome humans had to anything that threatened their top spot on the food chain.

  Mike had always scoffed at Joe’s ID tag, teased the kid about being a good doggie. Now, as he moved with great care through alleys and back lots, he understood just how useful Joe’s gold medallion was for undercover work in wolf form.

  Every now and then he’d duck behind a Dumpster or the cover of a parked truck and try once more to regain human form. It never worked. And it hurt. The blazing headache from these episodes did nothing to help him hang on to sentience. The sensory assault wasn’t doing him any good, either. There was nothing simple about the sights and sounds, or scents and textures, associated with human habitation. Because his brain kept trying to think more like a wolf than a werewolf, he knew that he was more sensitive and nervous because of the chaos than normal. It didn’t help his mood that the day was growing hot, and he was covered in a heavy double coating of black fur.

  Black absorbs heat, he thought grumpily as he moved silently along the back of a building, staying close to the wall. Even though he was in the shadows, the surface of the alley was hot beneath his paws. Why couldn’t I have been born into one of the white wolf packs? Of course, I’d still be hot, stuck in this shape in the desert.

  He was so intent on cataloging his own miseries that for a while he didn’t recognize the almost subliminal buzz as more than just another irr
itation. But by the time he reached the street at the end of the alley, a word for the mental buzzing surfaced.

  Vampire.

  Somewhere nearby was a vampire.

  Mike came to a halt. He kept part of his attention on the traffic pattern of the street he had to cross, and concentrated the rest of his senses on finding the other supernatural creature. There was more than one vampire, he decided after a few seconds. He picked up three distinct vampire auras, and he thought their energy was overshadowing and shielding the presence of one of his own kind.

  If there was a werewolf with the vampires, what were the odds that he’d found the pair that had attacked him? And what was he going to do about it?

  Investigate, of course, the man part of him told the growling wolf. That’s what detectives do. And put your hackles down, you look silly. Or at least scary, and scary was not a good way to look while out on the humans streets.

  Mike concentrated some more, and finally decided on the direction he needed to take. He turned right and began to run. There was no cover to be had along the sidewalk, but there weren’t any pedestrians nearby, and he could move fast. When he reached the corner, he had to leap over a car turning into the street, but he got across safely and ignored the car horns honking behind him. He heard sirens as police cars roared up the street.

  The moment he hit the other side of the street, he saw that he’d inserted himself into an already developing situation. He skidded to a halt as three people walked calmly out of the building just ahead. Mike saw them more with a psychic vision attuned to detecting energy than with his eyes, and what his extra senses registered were two vampires and a werewolf. One of the vampires carried a large metal case. They were all wearing dark ski masks.

  Vampires involved in a bank robbery? That made less than no sense.

  The werewolf looked his way, and their gazes met. The werewolf took off his mask and bared his teeth in a way that signaled unmistakable challenge to their kind.

  Mike finally recalled what had brought him to Las Vegas. He was hunting a murderer. And it looked like he’d found him.

  Mike couldn’t help but growl, and start forward.

  Then a trio of police cars screeched to a halt in front of the building, lights and sirens adding to his sensory overload. Officers in Kevlar vests jumped out of the cars, guns drawn. A security guard came rushing out of the building doorway.

  Matt’s going to be really interested in this, Mike thought.

  Then he noticed that one of the cops had a gun pointed at him.

  If I live long enough to tell him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  W hy am I doing this?

  Michele Darabont had a plan to set in motion, but she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here. She stared blankly out the van’s tinted windshield as the afternoon sun beat down on the busy street. The air-conditioning blew cool air into her face, and the others bickered in the back. She felt plucked out of her own life and set down in some strange movie scenario.

  She gasped, and a shudder went through her as though she was coming awake from a nightmare. She tried to grasp what she’d been thinking, feeling, but she couldn’t catch hold of what had been bothering her.

  Which was just as well. She needed to concentrate, now that they were parked outside the vampire’s lair; what they were about to do was highly risky.

  Besides Andrew and Britney, they’d added three more Purist fanatics to help carry out the op.

  “All right, listen up,” she said, turning in the driver’s seat to address her troops. “I want you all to think about the consequences of what we’re doing very carefully. We’re the first hunters to strike a blow against the monsters for a very long time.”

  “It’s long past time!” Britney chimed in.

  “We’re bringing the fight back to them.” One of the others grinned maniacally.

  “They’ll bring the fight back to us if they find out hunters have done the killing,” Michele warned. “This action isn’t sanctioned by our side.”

  “Who needs the so-called official vampire hunters?” Britney demanded. “We’re the only legitimate hunters. We actually hunt vampires.”

  There were murmurs of agreement from the others.

  “Let’s get it on!” someone shouted.

  “The point is, this has to remain a secret op,” Michele went doggedly on. She was trying to give something of a reverse pep talk to the group, and they so obviously didn’t want to hear it. “We’re breaking a treaty.”

  “One that should never have existed,” Britney asserted.

  “I agree. But we all have to accept the threat that hangs over our heads for this. We’ll be hunted by the vampires, and by our own kind, if we are identified. Today we’re striking a blow for what we know is right. With luck, we’ll spark a reaction from the monsters that will bring the rest of the hunters back into the fight.”

  “You’ve been through this before,” Andrew complained. “We know what we’re risking.”

  Michele sighed. She didn’t think they did, but she let it go. “Let’s execute the plan—get in, do the job, get out. Right?”

  “Right!” they answered in unison.

  We’re all going to die. “Let’s go,” she said, and reached for the door handle. “We have a lot of equipment to unload.” What the hell am I doing here?

  “Okay, what you do is purl one row, then on the next row you need to knit two, then slip one knit-wise, knit one, do a yarn over, then pass the slipped stitch over the knit stitch and the yarn over.”

  “You realize that I have absolutely no idea what you just said,” Jo told her.

  Phillipa smiled at her sister. “I knew you were going to say that. How many times have I taught you how to knit?”

  Jo laughed. “The same number of times that I have forgotten. You know, I’ve always thought it was sweet, in a weird way, that a tough street cop likes to knit as a hobby.”

  Phillipa gestured at the framed tour T-shirts that lined one wall of the room. “It’s no weirder than your collecting Def Leppard memorabilia.”

  Jo smiled fondly. “Marc gave me those.”

  “Excuse me? I know I gave you the one from the Hysteria tour.”

  “But I lost it, and Marc replaced—”

  “How? When?”

  “During that wildfire I got caught in out in the desert, when Marc and I met.”

  “You’ve always been a little sketchy about how you met.”

  Jo totally ignored her curiosity. “Show me how to do that stitch again.”

  Phillipa was perfectly content to do just that, and their needles clicked in contented silence for a few minutes.

  They sat close together on the couch in the Cages’ living room, finally sharing some quiet sisterly domesticity. Brandon was sleeping in a carrier set on the low coffee table in front of the couch, looking all sweet and warm and peaceful. A huge flat-panel television set was playing across the room, muted for the sleeping baby’s sake. Some workers in white coveralls were on a metal scaffolding suspended from the roof outside the condo, washing the wide penthouse window, but otherwise Phillipa and Jo were alone.

  “Wasn’t it nice of Dad and Mom to take the Cages off your hands and fly them back to their respective homes?” Phillipa asked.

  “Very nice,” Jo agreed. “And now you’re going to stay in the guest bedroom, right?”

  “Don’t you two want some privacy?”

  “I didn’t say we were going to be here, did I? Marc needs to get back to New York tomorrow to cater some red-carpet thing.”

  “I thought he was supervising the food at some red-carpet thing here.”

  “He is, but that’s tonight. So we’re heading out in the morning. You can stay here as long as you’d like.”

  Jo gave her a hopeful look. “Or maybe you’ll want to move in with your friend Pete? It might not be good for you to be alone.”

  “Are you talking about monitoring my blood sugar, or something else?” Phillipa asked suspicious
ly. She had no intention of moving in with Pete, or any other man. How could she, after…“Damn,” she muttered.

  “You were with him last night, weren’t you?”

  Phillipa couldn’t pretend her sister was talking about Pete. “Yeah, I was with Matt,” she answered. “But don’t worry about it; I left him at the airport before I came here. He’s long gone from my life.”

  Except that she could still feel his hands on her, and taste his mouth—but the memory wouldn’t be so sharp with the passing of time. She should hope it would, but she didn’t.

  “Unless his flight was delayed,” Jo grumbled. She glanced briefly toward the window washers. “Those guys must be new at the job. They’re awfully jumpy.”

  “Jumpy might not be a good term to use,” Phillipa told her empathic sister. “Considering that they’re hanging on the outside of a very tall building.” She gave the workers a quick glance, but the sight made her uncomfortable, so she turned firmly away. “That’s definitely not a job I’m going to be applying for.”

  “I think it might be fun. Lots of fresh air. Nice views.”

  “Daredevil. You survived a plane crash and went right back to work.”

  Jo gave another fond, dreamy, sloppy-in-love smile. “That’s because Marc convinced me to give it a try. I didn’t think I’d ever want to fly again, but he knew I needed to.”

  “I’m going to throw up any second now.” Phillipa looked at her watch. “Or at least demand that you feed me lunch. If my blood glucose wasn’t starting to get low from hunger, your syrupy adoration of the big fellow might send me into a coma.”

  “I love the guy. Hey, what’s that?” Jo’s attention was suddenly on the television. “Is that a wolf?”

  Phillipa looked toward the screen as Jo picked up the remote and turned up the sound. The picture on the screen was in grainy black and white, and tilted at an odd angle, but Phillipa could make out a huge dog amid the chaos.

  “This footage of the attempt to halt the bank robbery, shot several hours ago, is from a traffic camera on the street corner,” the announcer said. “The animal accompanying the robbers was shot, but it and the robbers somehow managed to elude capture by the police.”