Crave the Night (3 page)

Revulsion was making him sweat. Rafe pulled
off his jacket, hands damp and sticky on the leather. Half of his
brain was already mapping out the next fight, the other half
admitting their efforts weren’t getting them anywhere. He glanced
at Darak. His friend’s scowl said he was thinking the same thing.
They needed a new plan, but what the hell did this macabre puppet
show mean?

“
Enough already. Leave them alone.”
Darak reached for Tom, his big hand engulfing the werewolf’s
arm.

The moment they touched, a blazing light
filled the room, like a thousand cameras flashing at once.

Rafe hurtled backward, tossed over an
unoccupied bed. He landed awkwardly, wrenching his shoulder as he
rolled upright. His ribs ached like he’d taken a roundhouse
kick.

Rafe got to his feet. He heard the
sound of flesh hitting flesh, which meant Darak was already in
action.
He glanced around. Hope flickered when he saw
Lila was no longer there. Tom and Wyatt were gone, too.

Then shock speared through him. Darak
was wrestling with two creatures that had nothing to do with
werewolves. So these were the servants, made visible for the
fight.
Holy frackin’
batwings
.

They were nearly as big as Darak and
equipped with beaks, wings, and claws the length of lawnmower
blades. Their skin was a dark mud color, leathery and pebbled with
sharp spines sticking from each joint. Gargoyles? Godzilla
wannabes? It didn’t matter what they were called. Darak was covered
with slashes that dripped thick, dark vampire blood. A human body
wouldn’t last an instant.

Good thing he had options. Rafe stripped off
his clothes in seconds. It didn’t take a full moon to change. That
was a myth, along with the idea that being a werebeast was
contagious. But it was hard work and not always a sure thing. Not
so easy if a person was distracted.

Like under attack by big ugly reptiles.

He heard Darak scream. Not yell, or bellow,
but a scream of pure rage, and the pungent smell of undead blood
washed through the room.

Rafe’s breath left his body, forcing his
mind to be calm. He crouched on the floor, naked, fighting the
reflex to leap up and fight.

Concentrate
.
The floor was cold and slightly dusty under his bare flesh, the
cracks between the tiles an endless, dizzying path.

A howl, not human, not animal, twisted in
the air.

Shut it out!
The speckles in the tile flowed like waves on a shore,
ripples of dark and light and . . .

His consciousness disappeared down the dark
hole that was his inside place, the part that held his other half.
Mentally, it was like folding himself inside out, like a reversible
garment, and simply bringing his other side to the surface.
Physically, it was just best to surrender. People saw flowing fur
and wrenching bones, but that wasn’t what he perceived from the
inside. Changing felt like a bad charley horse, a terrible cramp
that needed to stretch out.

A bad, bad cramp, like every bone in his
body was sucking itself inward. Like he would splinter, folded by
impossible pressure. The only relief was to pull his limbs back
into shape by pulling, rolling, thrusting claws and fangs from his
flesh and howling his relief with all the might of his lungs.

Then, suddenly, he was shaggy fur and sharp
teeth, with a terrible need to kill and eat. Rafe sprang to his
paws, his ears swiveling to catch the sounds of the fight. Now that
he was armed—or pawed, as the case may be—and protected by his
thick coat, he could leap into it and hope to survive.

In real time, the change was almost
instant. Rafe circled the bed. Moving slowly, his broad paws made
no sound. Colors had faded, but his vision was excellent. He could
smell far more scents now, the traces of people who had come and
gone. And magic.
Fey magic
.
Rafe growled deep in his chest, unable to quell the instinct to
warn off danger.

Darak was barely holding his own. The
vampire swung his fist like a hammer, smashing the reptile thing in
the side of its leathery head. It recoiled with a snarling scream,
wings unfurling to block the faint light in the room. Darak slammed
an uppercut into its beak, snapping its head back, but with a
single beat of the huge, leathery wings the creature rose in the
air, raising its back claws to rake down the front of the vampire’s
chest. Darak went over backward, the gargoyle riding him down. Both
creatures jumped on him, jackals on a wounded lion.

One of the things turned to peer at Rafe
over its shoulder, a curiously ordinary gesture. Rafe sprang,
knocking the gargoyle aside, closing his jaws on its hideous
throat. That gave the vampire the moment he needed. Darak tossed
the creature to its back, twisting the snapping beak away from his
bleeding wounds.

Then, suddenly, Lila was in the room again.
Rafe clamped his jaws tighter on the gargoyle’s neck, holding it
still but waiting a moment before the kill. There was no telling
what such a monstrosity might be worth to its mistress.

Tensed to rend and tear, he tracked the
fey’s movements from the corner of his vision. She was moving too
fast to see clearly, and all he could tell was that she had
something in her hand. She released it with a word, flinging it
into the air. It sailed and Rafe crouched down on his prey, keeping
out of the glittering object’s path.

Darak wasn’t so lucky. The silver net fell
over the vampire, dropping him helpless to the floor. Fey-spelled
silver would rob him of his extraordinary strength. He let out an
angry roar, tearing at the web that tightened even as he
struggled.

The next moment, Lila covered them both with
Darak’s Smith and Wesson.

“
Get this straight, boys.” Her tone
cracked in the suddenly silent room. “I have millennia of magic
bred into my bones. I’m fast, strong and smart and maybe just
all-around better at everything than you are, so don’t mess with
me.”

Oh, yeah?
Rafe itched to prove her wrong. Everyone had an Achilles
heel, he just didn’t know hers yet.
But
I can find out. Wait and watch to see what she hides.
He
wasn’t going to lose to a frackin’ fairy.

Lila had other ideas. Her eyes widened with
pure fury when she saw his teeth on the gargoyle’s throat. She
pointed the gun at the closest sleeping figure. It was Eloise
Lambert, who ran Wolf Creek’s credit union. “Back down, wolfman, or
she dies. I’m not joking.”

Rafe hesitated a moment, wondering if she’d
carry out her threat. The odds were fifty-fifty, but he wasn’t
gambling with Eloise’s life. The fey was too angry. He took his
jaws from the gargoyle’s throat and gave Lila his best wolfish
glare. The gargoyle scuttled to hide behind its much smaller
mistress. Then the gun swung from Eloise’s head to point right
between Rafe’s eyes.

Well, that was sort of an improvement.
Maybe. Now he just had to convince her to start letting people
go.

He had to risk returning to human form if he
was going to talk her into anything. Rafe shifted back without
apology for his nakedness. “You smell like fear.”

Lila’s gaze roved over his body. Pink stole
into her pale cheeks like the rose-pearl light before dawn. Sadly,
her fingers tightening on the gun spoiled the charming effect.
“Maybe, but I’m winning. I had eight hostages; now I have ten. I
lured all the strong members of your Pack here, one by one. The
wolves you have left in your pathetic little town will tuck their
tails and run at the first sign of trouble.”

Her blush contradicted her hard-boiled
words. She also didn’t know a thing about the citizens of Wolf
Creek. They were a tough, independent bunch down to the last pup.
Tinker Bell had a fight on her hands.

“
Points to you,” Rafe said dryly. “But
you’ve got every member of the council here, either asleep or at
gunpoint. If you’re trying to deal with the wolves, who are you
going to bargain with if all the Pack’s leaders are
here?”

“
Who said anything about a
bargain?”

“
I don’t see an army. Or are they
invisible, too?”

He’d never get used to looking down
the business end of a gun, much less one he knew held silver
bullets. Sweat trickled along the small of his back.
We can’t win this by brute force. We need to be
clever. I need to know why the fey are mixed up in
this
.

He put all the lust he felt into his voice.
“Let’s bargain, Lila.”

A spark of interest crossed her face. “Are
you offering to trade yourself for someone here?”

“
What the hell are you doing?” Darak
interjected. They both ignored him.

“
Yes. For the real Alpha. My father.
Let him go.”

“
How filial of you.” Her hands shifted
again on the grip of the gun. She was nervous—which could be good
or bad. Her gaze kept drifting down his body, then jerking away.
“At the moment, I have ten captives. If I accept, then I lose a
hostage. I don’t like that.”

Darak muttered, but the second gargoyle was
sitting on him and the sound was muffled.

“
You lose two. Darak isn’t a wolf,
he’s not involved, and I need someone to make sure Dad gets home
safely. And I want Dad awake and healthy. If you want to negotiate
for the town, he has to be competent.”

She stalked up to Rafe, hovering just beyond
his reach. Now the muzzle of the gun was pointed right at his
forehead. He suddenly felt as naked as he actually was.

Her green gaze raked over him. “Your father
will awake one hour after your vampire friend puts him back in his
own bed. Satisfactory?”

“
Yes.”


“Then I agree on one condition.”

“
Name it.”

“
Give me your oath you won’t try to
leave the house.”

“
Don’t!” barked Darak from beneath the
gargoyle. “Never give your word to a fey. You’ll always regret it.
No exceptions.”

The gargoyle pressed a leathery hand over
the vampire’s mouth and gave a rattling hiss, forked tongue
flickering.

Rafe glared at Lila, but his words were for
his trusted friend. “I accept the terms. Just get my father out of
here.”

Lila wasn’t sure what to do with this latest
wolf creature.

She marched into her office, her jeans still
uncomfortably wet from the spilled ice water. At least she was more
comfortable than whatshisname now chilling in the caged room in the
basement.

It had been unpleasant to watch her
gargoyles drag him from the room. They weren’t the gentlest when it
came to transporting reluctant prisoners and, despite what had just
happened, Lila wasn’t a fan of brute force.

The office was dark, but she fell into the
chair behind her desk without switching on the lamp. There wasn’t a
lot to see in the white-on-white room. Desk, chairs, a couch and a
TV she occasionally watched to ensure her activities hadn’t hit the
nightly news. So far, not a peep. She’d been both careful and
lucky.

Lucky
. The
word echoed mockingly in her mind. She stared for a moment at the
starry sky outside the large office window to her left. This side
of the house faced the cliff and the view was breathtaking. So was
the zillion-yard drop to a rocky death below. Unlike most fey, she
couldn’t fly. Tonight, that seemed as much metaphor as fact.
My luck is dropping like a
stone
.

She turned away from the skyscape and
planted her elbows on the desk, resting her face in her
hands.
Wolves. Big, bad, bloody
nuisances.
Weariness washed over her, leaving her
feeling as bleached as driftwood. Ralph? Rafe. That was his
name.
C’mon. You knew that. You don’t
forget the name of a guy with abs—and stuff—like that.

He’d walked right into the enemy camp
armed with nothing but a handgun and a vampire. Something about his
defiance had broken through her studied calm.
Not good
.

She should really put him to sleep with the
rest. Curiosity was a fey’s greatest weakness, and Lila knew
herself too well. In more carefree times, she’d been all in favor
of unruly naked men. But that was then. Now was not a time when she
could afford indulgence. There was oath-magic at work.

Three vows had been made, each dangerous
enough on its own, but piled together they made a precarious house
of cards. The first and most serious one she’d made was an oath to
save her people, whatever it took.

Second, she had made a bargain with the man
who threatened them. No ordinary human, he had the backing of a
powerful corporation, wealth, and the law. He’d promised to leave
the fey alone for a year and a day or until she gave him something
he wanted even more than their annihilation.

The third vow hinged on the second. Her
sisters had agreed to help her. The price for their generosity had
been high, for magic never gave without taking away. In order to
empower Lila, they had traded their exceptional beauty to become
gargoyle servants for the term of her quest, or until her mission
failed.

Three vows. One tangled web.

She’d used the energy from these three
spells to do a lot of things: she’d found Wolf Creek and its
riches, and then built the opulent house calculated to reassure her
wolfish visitors—right before she hit them with a sleeping spell.
Most of all, the triple-spell magic kept her activities cloaked in
secrecy. That had been part of the bargain: Lila had to keep the
whole affair out of the news and invisible to the eyes of human
law.