Crave the Night

Sharon Ashwood

Lori Devoti

Michele Hauf

Patti O'Shea

Copyright © 2011 by Swell Cat Press, LLC.

The publisher acknowledges the copyright
holders of the individual works as follows:

ONE SOUL TO SHARE Copyright © 2011 by Lori
Devoti

CRUEL ENCHANTMENT Copyright © 2011 by Michele
Hauf

HIDDEN Copyright © 2011 by Naomi Lester

ENEMY EMBRACE Copyright © 2011 by Patti
O'Shea

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Sharon Ashwood

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sighed full sore

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep

And there I dreamed – Ah! woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dreamt

On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

From “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by John
Keats

“
Enemy Central,” Rafe Devries muttered
under his breath. From his position crouched in the night-shadowed
trees, he had a good view of the mansion’s front door. He could
smell the place, too, with all a werewolf’s nose for detail. There
were many people inside, some of them Pack.
The hostages are here.

But who had taken eight of his kind and why
they were being held on this hilltop outside of town was a big, fat
question mark. There were few correlations between the missing,
outside of the fact that they all came from ranching families in
Wolf Creek, and they’d each left to keep an appointment and never
come home.

Rafe had been gone from the Creek a while,
and there’d been no time for even the most basic investigation. He
only had scuttlebutt gleaned during a burger stop at Burt’s
Roadhouse. Most of that had been speculation about this house on
top of the ridge, but there was one real fact: All the missing
folks’ cars had been found along this road, keys in the ignition
and pointed back toward town. Someone had dumped the vehicles.

It was their only solid clue. That,
and his father’s voice mail. Dad had left a one-liner:
The Pack’s in trouble, boy. Come home and do
your duty
.

It figured. As heir to his Alpha father,
he’d always been the one in the family to come running, ready for
battle or just to calm everyone down. Except this time the crisis
wasn’t about wounded pride and rustled heifers. This time the
threat was from outside, and that made the danger real.

Especially when his dad had been the next to
disappear.

Which was why Rafe had brought Darak, leader
of the rogue, mercenary vampires called Clan Thanatos. They’d met
when he’d served two tours with the Desert Wolves, one of the few
supernatural military units. If there was a fight, Darak would have
his back, no questions asked.

“
The house is brand new. Your villains
have assets,” Darak said under his breath. The vampire was crouched
just behind him. The approximate size of an industrial
refrigerator, he had once been a Roman gladiator, but now looked
more like a biker thug. “It looks like someone just peeled off the
price sticker.”

Rafe scanned the hilltop mansion high above
the long sweep of Timber Lake. A stone’s-throw from where they
crouched, the house was enormous and ultra-modern, all random
angles, steel, and glass. A hot tub sat in the spot with the best
view of the moonlit water and rolling foothills of the Rockies. A
pool and wet bar were a little to the right of the tub. The lights
from the enormous windows lit a wide driveway, where a new Lexus
gleamed soft, expensive silver. Everything said elegance and hard
cash.

But there was no barbecue, no toys in the
yard, not even a garden hose. The vampire was right. The place was
new and impressive, but it had no soul.

No hidden escape routes, either, if he
remembered the landscape. North and south of the place were woods
so dense a squirrel would need a machete. The east side of the hill
was a sheer drop only a mountain goat could navigate. That only
left the west side approach.

Rafe glanced over his shoulder. The winding
path they had climbed to get near the mansion was choked in a
tangle of pines and poplars, the wild growth cleared just enough
that the Lexus SUV could make it up without scratching the paint.
“How the hell did they get equipment up here to build?”

Darak shrugged. “Magic.”

Frackin’ cow
farts
. Magic complicated anything to a factor of ten.
Rafe straightened a little to look in the front window.

The decor was completely white.
Bet no one ever eats pizza in front of that
TV
. “The boys at the roadhouse swear the fey are
involved. I thought they were drunk.”

Darak cursed unhappily, rubbing his shaven
head. “Fey. Nasty buggers.”

“
That’s why I called you, big
boy.”

Rafe sat back on his heels. They could go
home, get reinforcements, and storm the place. But all he really
knew was that there were Pack Devries werewolves in the house—or
had been recently. Scent caught at a distance was limited intel.
What part of the house were they kept in? Did they need medics?
More information could make the difference between a successful
mission and a train wreck.

For a moment he regretted not bringing some
tech toys—long distance listening equipment, for a start—but then
kicked the notion out of his mind. Magic raised merry hell with
technology. Eyes and ears were best. He’d been out of the service
and wandering the country for the last year, but he was still
sharp.

He ghosted forward on silent feet, the cold
air seeping in through his open leather jacket. The summer night
was clear and clean, full of rich earth scents. Above, stars
jewelled the skies in a thick blanket city-dwellers never got to
see.

As he moved, he kept one eye on the picture
window, watching for movement. Surely there would be guards? For a
bad-guy fortress, it looked completely undefended except for a
single security camera covering the front door and parking pad.
Apparently intruders were supposed to drive up, park, and ring the
doorbell.

Then again, maybe that lone camera was a
decoy. Did the fey actually use CCTV? Or just magic mirrors and
dragonflies with helmet cameras? Damned if he knew.

Rafe skirted to the right, Darak on his
heels. They passed the kitchen window, and Rafe took a glance
inside. It looked perfectly ordinary, if expensive and maniacally
clean. Stainless steel glimmered in the soft glow of recessed pot
lights, granite and pristine white tile adding to the arctic
wasteland color scheme.

He dove for the ground, instinct
acting before his brain caught up.
Someone’s in the kitchen
. Rising to a crouch,
he peered over the window sill. To his left, Darak was plastered to
the wall, as if anything could make his huge frame
smaller.

“
What is it?” the vampire
mouthed.

“
A woman,” Rafe returned.

That description didn’t cover what he saw.
Not by a longshot. She was standing with her back to the window,
pulling a glass down from the cupboard. Then she paused at the
stainless steel refrigerator and ice chunked into the glass. Even
from that angle, Rafe could tell she was a beauty, and definitely
not a werewolf. His people were dark and compact. She was tall and
slender, with hair so pale it was almost silver. It fell to her
hips in a smooth, thick curtain that shimmered in the subdued
lights. Like pretty much everyone in Wolf Creek, she wore jeans,
but there all similarity ended. Rafe was no fashionisto, but even
he could tell the silky white shirt would have cost a week’s
pay.

Then she turned toward the sink, and Rafe
ducked out of sight. He only caught a glimpse, but it was enough.
Her face was small and neatly sculpted, with slanting eyes beneath
winged brows. Her skin was so pale, it seemed pearlescent.

One of the light fey.
I wasn’t expecting that
.

He was more familiar with the trickster dark
fey, who lived off human settlements like exotic parasites. Light
fey kept to themselves, as far from cities as they could get. They
were seldom seen by anyone outside their own tribes. Suddenly, that
seemed a crime.

So the rumors of their
beauty are true
. Rafe actually felt shaken.

The kitchen window was open a crack, and he
caught a crisp, lemony perfume that must have been the woman’s
scent. Then the tap shut off. He didn’t hear footsteps—she moved
too gracefully to make a sound—but eventually a door closed nearby
in the house. Cautiously, he rose to his feet. The kitchen was
empty.

“
Tinker Bell got an upgrade,” Darak
said under his breath.

Rafe nodded, still mute with startled
wonder.

The vampire gave a soft laugh. “Enjoy the
view, but remember she’d as soon eat your eyeballs with a pickle
fork.”

The words stung, as if the fork had found
tender flesh. “And you never went into the greeting card business.
What a shame.”

“
Just call me the Anti-Cupid. And I’m
not kidding. They snare their victims by some kind of hypnosis.
Light fey woo their victims and then do what they want while you’re
knocked senseless with lust.”

That could have been me
two seconds ago
. “Kind of like vampires.”

“
They make us look like rank amateurs.
The most common cause of death in fey-human encounters is wasting
disease. After the fey’s dumped them, there’s no reason to go on
living.”

Rafe felt a wave of nausea. “Let’s just get
this over with.”

He led the way around the corner of the
house. Halfway along was the next window, blocked by Venetian
blinds.

“
Interesting,” said Darak. “You can
see in every place else. Think they’re hiding something
here?”

“
I’ll fix that.” Rafe pulled out his
Leatherman pocket knife and wiggled it into the space between the
window and sash.

“
What about a security system?” Darak
asked blandly.

After a long minute of cursing, he pried the
window up until the slider lock cleared its hole. He then slid the
window open with barely a sound. For a brand-new place, it had
crappy locks. “No security system.”

“
That you know of,” Darak countered.
“Could be silent. Could be something other than regular technology.
Could be booby-trapped with silver bullets.”

Silver was one of the few things that could
injure both werewolves and vampires. Rafe was taking a huge risk,
but the stakes were high. He found the cord beside the blinds and
slowly reeled them up, trying to be silent. The room beyond was lit
by a dim floor lamp in the far corner, but it was enough for a wolf
to see what was in the room.

“
Fido’s balls,” Rafe swore under his
breath, pulling his Beretta.

It was a large space, plain and
sterile-looking. Thirteen single beds stood in double ranks of six,
with one larger bed crosswise at the end of the rows. It looked
like a hospital ward, except here there were satin comforters and
mounds of snow-white pillows. Eight of the beds were occupied.

There were eight missing Pack members. The
sound of soft breathing filled the room, indicating the figures in
the beds were all asleep.