Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (2 page)

The Shifter wildcats—Fae cats, they called themselves—had been bred to mix the best qualities of big cats, but individual Feline clans tended to favor one species or other. Leopards, jaguars, cheetahs, and mountain lions were most common. Tigers were very, very rare—so rare Bree knew about only one of them.

And then there were the lions. The Morrissey family, who ran the Austin Shiftertown, were black-maned lions. She’d seen photos of the men of that pride on the Internet, but she’d never seen this Shifter.

He cranked around in his seat to look behind them. “It’s not safe to stop here,” he said in an accent that sounded faintly ... Scottish? Irish? Bree was no expert on accents other than those around her hometown. “Keep going.”

Bree didn’t answer. She was staring at his neck, more of it revealed when he’d turned his head.

He wasn’t wearing a Collar.

All Shifters wore Collars. It was the law. Collars had some kind of chip in them that triggered a series of nasty shocks when the Shifter who wore it became violent. There were those who claimed that the Collars also contained Fae magic, meant to control the Shifters, though Bree was a little skeptical about the magic part. But then, shape-shifters had turned out to be real, so who knew?

This Shifter had no chain of silver-and-black links around his neck, no Celtic knot at his throat. No red line around his neck to show that he’d pulled his off either—the Collars were embedded into the skin for life.

Bree was terrified at the same time her insatiable curiosity rose and demanded to be satisfied. It would get her killed one day, that curiosity, her mother always said. Well, maybe today was the day.

“Are you feral?” she asked cautiously.

Feral Shifters were those who had left any civilized behavior behind and were becoming wild animals, nothing more, no matter what their shape. Bree had heard they usually stopped bathing and wearing clothes, and this guy was definitely dressed—jeans, T-shirt, and motorcycle boots. Though she saw black smears on his skin, he didn’t look like he’d missed many showers.

He stared at her with those golden, lion eyes, and said, “Maybe. Not yet. Now,
go
.”

“Or,
I
can go, and you can
get the hell out of my truck
.”

“Damn you,” he said, his voice quietly desperate. “I’m dead the minute I hit the ground.”

Bree’s heart pounded sickeningly, but she remained in place. “You weren’t at the bar. Are you from one of the Shiftertowns around here?”

He was over the seat and right next to Bree before she could blink. His foot slid alongside hers and pushed the gas.

The truck leapt. Bree grabbed the steering wheel, cranking it around before they slid into the ditch. The pickup hit the pavement, shimmying until Bree righted it and sent them down the road in the correct lane.

At least the Shifter had moved his foot once she’d got the truck going.

“I don’t care where you take me,” he said. “Just get me away from the hunters.”

Bree peered down the dark road, a straight stretch, empty this late. They were a long way from Austin, a long way from anywhere, really.

Lights appeared behind her. The hunters? Hard to tell, but the lights were coming up too fast. The Shifter next to her twisted in the seat to look back at them. “Hell—
go!
”

The headlights got larger, far quicker than they should have. Bree’s breath came too fast, her blood pumping. She’d been chased before. She hadn’t liked it then, and she didn’t like it now.

“All right, all right.” Bree shoved her foot down on the gas, the truck rushing forward. The speedometer crept past sixty, seventy, eighty.

“Who are you?” she repeated over the engine’s noise. “What Shifter clan are you with, and why aren’t you wearing a Collar?”

The man said nothing. Bree risked turning her head to find herself pinned by his golden stare.

“Why do you know so much about Shifters?” he demanded.

Bree waved her hand at her made-up face as she focused on the road again. Her eyeliner had started to run, forming black tears. “Hello? I’m a Shifter groupie. We know
everything
about Shifters. The clans, the prides and packs, the family trees. What you can do and can’t do, where you live, who your mates are, what the Collars do. I’m not as into it as some of my friends back home—they would know
exactly
who you were and where you came from. Kind of creepy, right?”

He kept scrutinizing her, like a big cat trying to decide whether or not to pounce on a gazelle. “My name’s Seamus.”

“Nice Irish name. You Irish?”

“No.”

He snarled it. Bree let out her breath. “All right. No need to bite my head off.”

More scrutinizing. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned biting—he was the most predatory Shifter she’d ever met. Probably because he didn’t have a Collar.
Why
didn’t he? What …

The black truck in her rearview put on a sudden burst of speed. The crazy driver shoved the truck between Bree and the right-hand side of the road, on the very narrow shoulder. One wrong bump, and they’d both flip.

Apparently, the driver didn’t care. Three guys in the bed of the other truck had shotguns, and they lifted them and pointed them at Bree and Seamus.

“Shit!” Bree yelled. Her instinct was to slam on the brakes and let the other truck shoot forward, but the truck might hit her, and they’d all be whirling across the road to likely death.

“Pull over and give us the Shifter!” the driver called through his open window.

“No way in hell!” Bree shouted back. Only one thing to do. “Hold on,” she told Seamus.

Seamus must have seen something in her expression, because he stopped snarling and closed his hands around the seat.

What the hunters didn’t know was that this truck had belonged to Remy Fayette, Bree’s brother, before his military stint in the Middle East had ended his life. A missile had taken out the helicopter he and his team had been in, while carrying out a rescue mission. The army had given Remy a hero’s burial, and their mom a flag and a little money in the bank every month. Bree kept the truck in his memory.

Before Remy had given up his wild life for the discipline of the army, he’d spent his time modifying cars and trucks and racing them—legally and not so legally. Bree sent him a silent blessing as she flipped a switch to deploy the nitrous oxide boost.

The pickup shot forward, jerking Bree and the Shifter. The truck following them dropped instantly behind. Ninety miles an hour, a hundred. Bree hung on to the steering wheel for dear life.

The headlights behind them swiftly grew smaller. Seamus was clutching the seat so hard his fingers tore the upholstery.

“Whoo—hoo!!” Bree yelled. “Eat that, dirtbags! Thank you, Remy Fayette. I love you!”

As usual, when Bree thought of her brother, her eyes filled with instant tears.
Not now
. She had to drive, to see the road.

She also had to get them to ground somewhere. Bree couldn’t keep this speed without attracting every highway patrol in the county, but if she slowed down, the guys chasing Seamus might find them.

Nothing for it.

“I’ll take you to a Shiftertown,” she said. “Which one are you from?”

Seamus’s gaze was on her again, unrelenting. “
No
. No Shiftertowns. Just put enough distance between us and them.” He had a hand on the door handle, as though contemplating when it would be safe to jump out.
What the hell?

Something bad was going on here. At the same time, Seamus was a Shifter, and those guys chasing him were ready to shoot him. He’d be safe in a Shiftertown, where hunters didn’t dare go—they weren’t allowed to bother Collared Shifters. But if Seamus refused to go to a Shiftertown, then where?

“I have an idea,” Bree said. “I know a place you can lie low. Not the best choice, but no one will think of looking for you there.”

Seamus didn’t answer. He glanced behind them again, and his body finally relaxed. The headlights were gone.

Bree turned off the extra juice. The truck slowed abruptly, rattling and bumping. Remy had taught her how to drive a rod though, and Bree maneuvered the truck to handle the sudden change in speed. She took the next corner, heading off into the darkness of the back roads.

“Where?” Seamus asked, his voice harsh.

“You’ll see,” Bree answered. “I’m just telling you now, though—
you
get to explain why you threw away my cell phone while I was talking to my mom.”

The young woman took Seamus to a house comfortably far away from any Shiftertown. Seamus wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but he could sense that no Shifters were nearby, nor had they ever been there.

The horizon showed a smudge of light—reflected light of a city—but the half-mile drive the young woman with smeared makeup turned up was bathed in darkness.

That is until she pulled the truck to a stop. Instantly, flood lights burst on to surround the truck, the young woman, a white painted house, and a white-fenced flower garden in harsh yellow light.

The screen door of the house’s porch banged open and a woman cradling a slim shotgun emerged. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me,” the younger woman said in irritation as she slid from the pickup’s cab. “Who do you think, in this truck? Put that away before you hurt yourself.”

The shotgun’s barrel moved to Seamus. “Who’s he?”

“A Shifter,” the young woman continued as she approached the house. “This is Seamus. He needs a place to crash. Geez, Mom, would you turn off the lights? It’s like Las Vegas out here.”

The woman on the porch had short, very blond hair that stuck up in points, and wore a colorful, flowing garment that reached her feet. She competently held the gun, the eyes over it a hard blue. A woman who’d seen tough times. Her daughter’s short, curly hair was a golden wheat color, so it was likely the mother’s blond was not natural. Mother and daughter shared the same eyes, but the daughter’s look was sad rather than hard.

The younger woman was nicely shaped, with curves outlined by her short leather skirt and a white top that bared plump shoulders and a modest amount of cleavage. The young woman carried a cat’s ears headband and had painted slanted points to her eyes and whiskers around her nose and mouth.

Shifter groupies liked to dress like this, so Seamus had heard, though he’d not encountered groupies much before tonight. Kendrick’s Shifters had to be careful what bars they went to, and Seamus had always been too busy with tracker duties to go out much.

The young woman walked confidently up to the porch, took the shotgun out of the older woman’s hands, and uncocked it.

“Come on in, Seamus,” she called back to him, her eyes meeting his in a sweep of blue. “My name’s Bree, by the way, and this is my mom. You can call her Nadine, or you can call her Mom. Whichever is most comfortable for you.”

Bree’s mother scowled. “None of your lip, Bree. You should have told me you were bringing home a guest. I would have fixed something.”

Bree ignored her to wave Seamus to follow. “No one chasing you with guns here. At least, not anymore.” She disappeared inside through the screened porch.

Seamus hesitated. He didn’t believe that Bree or her mother were a danger, at least none that he could immediately perceive. But he could bring
them
danger. More than they understood.

Nadine called after her daughter. “Why did you hang up on me out there? I was talking to you.”

“Ask
him
,” Bree said from somewhere inside the house.

Nadine snapped around to Seamus and gave him an impatient look. “Are you coming in, or what? If I leave this door open any longer, every bug in Texas will get inside. And damn, they have a lot of bugs out here.”

“Like they don’t in Louisiana?” Bree’s voice floated out. She said the state’s name with all the vowels slurred, like
Looziana
.

Nadine reached one hand inside the house. The lights died, leaving only a small glow over the door.

Seamus’s tension eased—he preferred to be in darkness as the observer, not lit up and observed. He made his decision, quickly skimmed up the porch stairs past Nadine, and entered the house.

Nadine banged the screen door shut. “’Bout time you made up your mind. Bree, did you pick up my cigarettes?”

A sound of annoyance and running water came from behind a door under a flight of stairs. “No, I did not get your cigarettes. I was
busy
!”

“Busy chasing Shifters?” Nadine looked Seamus up and down, her hands on her hips. “I see you caught one. Bree, you are not having sex with him in your bedroom. You hear me?” Nadine broke off. “What’s he doing?”

Seamus was moving through the house, checking everything. A painfully neat living room ran from front door to back, an alcove with a dining table lay behind the staircase, and a door in the dining area’s wall opened to a very large kitchen.

Another door in the kitchen led to the back yard. Seamus crossed the kitchen and opened the door to find all quiet outside, except for a striped cat who came pattering up the back porch’s two steps to Seamus as soon as he emerged.

The cat followed him inside, twining around his legs as he walked through the kitchen to the living room again. Cats liked Feline Shifters, and Seamus in particular.

Seamus walked past Nadine and started up the stairs as Bree emerged from the ground-floor bathroom, wiping her dripping face.

Nadine called after Seamus. “What did I just say? No Shifters in the bedrooms.”

“Leave him alone,” Bree said. “He’s walking his bounds.”

Seamus allowed himself to feel a touch of amusement. He was angry, scared shitless, and in pain, but this girl, Bree, was … interesting.

There was more to her than met the eye, that was certain. When he’d jumped into her truck, Bree had been terrified, but she’d quickly rallied into anger and then resourcefulness. She’d understood the danger the Shifter hunters posed, and she could think on her feet.

Upstairs Seamus found two bedrooms and a bathroom, each as neat as the rooms downstairs. The furniture was comfortable, not showy, but clean and tidy, the hardwood floors polished.