Oycher

Cover art by
www.g12design.com

Copyright © 2014 by Talyn Scott.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s rights. Purchase only authorized additions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Six months ago, Madrignano, Italy

A hand wrapped around her face. “Don’t scream.” Claws scratched her cheek, his tightening fingers barely leaving her room to breathe.

Isla wiggled against him, twisting, her alarm growing. Sure, she’d been forced to live here, to devote her body to feeding fanged monsters, but even they had protocol. And this wasn’t protocol.

This was an attack.

“Stop fighting.” His tongue snaked out, flicking the side of her temple. A soft groan escaped him, his breath a horrifying caress as his big body trembled in want.

At the taste of her blood, most vampires did.

She hadn’t a vampire’s nearly limitless capabilities, but Isla was far stronger than a human. She faked him out by swinging her heel upward between his legs. In typical male response, he grabbed her ankle and closed his knees. Working with that sliver of distraction, she pushed back with her elbow and whacked him in his nose. A sickening wet crunch echoed through the ancient corridor.

His hold loosened. “Damn you!”

Rushing forward, she made out the dim curvature of a staircase and lunged. In vampiric speed, he smacked into her back, his arms circling her ribcage with gentle deliberation. His other hand found her mouth again, covering it. Screaming against his palm, she tried to bite him.

“Cease, Isla darling.” His voice rumbling from his chest into her back, he lifted her in his arms and glided down two flights of stairs, curving around the stones by displacing air beneath his booted feet. “To a vampire,” he said, as she tried to head butt him when they reached the final landing, “biting and blood are considered foreplay.”

She head butted him anyway, just for his arrogance, but all her effort gained was more pain and a fresh wave of blood from her head wound. His tongue came back out, licking all around her temple and brow. “Stay still.”

Six shadows suddenly loomed, circling them. “Hurry,” one said, “the monarchy’s alerted to our presence.”

“I must close her wound with my mouth, or she’ll leave a strong scent trail.”

Dizzying seconds passed and she relaxed shamefully against his body, the movement of his tongue a dangerous lulling between predator and prey. Whatever he was doing to her, Isla couldn’t stop the soothing effect he had on her senses, or the way her joints were dismantling into jelly.

His voice sounded raw and gravelly, when he explained, “For your honor, I’m retrieving you in the name of Jayce Jordan, Alpha of the North American Werewolf Pack.”

The North American Werewolf Pack? But why? Her eyes strained, trying to make out the roving shadows. Who was this Jayce Jordan?

Brushing her hair from her shoulder, he sighed longingly before a scrape of fangs met the side of her throat. “I have to mist you, temporarily disrupting the molecular content of your body to travel, by biting.” He tightened his hold on her, hissing in the way of vampires. “If you move away from me before we solidify at the airport, you’ll be lost in the stars forever.”

“Then you won’t get the freedom you seek, and we won’t get our ten mill.” Another shadow whispered urgently. “So don’t screw up, mixed blood.”

Freedom? Oh, at this point, she’d blindly follow any dangling carrot mentioning freedom. She nodded eagerly, exposing her throat the way she’d been taught to do since arriving in Italy.

The tips of his fangs found her pulse point, lowering into the flesh. A white-hot pain seared her throat. She gasped, fighting the instinctual urge to run. Then a tug backwards nearly buckled her knees, but he took her weight and they went…nowhere.

Alarms sounded.

“What the hell?”

Dogs howled.

“She’s tethered!”

Wings flapped overhead.

“We’re forced to hoof it.” All shadows bolted, one of them throwing her over his shoulder. “Tethered by structure or by magic, I haven’t a clue. I can’t sense anything.”

Another shadow opened a door. “On to plan B. I’ll signal now.”

Isla could see they were on a long bridge connecting building to building, where they stood at least five stories up, maybe more. The cavernous pits below filled with rushing water threatened to suck her down to her death, and another wave of dizziness attacked her. She needed to run on her own two feet instead of hanging precariously, on the shadowy vampire’s shoulders.

“I want down!” she pleaded, though was smart enough to keep her body still as stone.

“Hush, I think the hounds are attuned to your voice,” the one carrying her warned. “I don’t want those fuckers nipping at my heels.” She couldn’t hear the clack of stones under his feet, but she could see them moving. She hated the way vampires glided inhumanly and a rise of nausea caused her to gag openly. “Close your eyes,” he suggested, “stops the dizziness.”

She kept them open, looking forward instead of down. Up ahead, a descending stairway led to an open field where Lovci were taking flight two at a time. Why would her rescuers head toward the creatures of her nightmares?

With her remaining overhead, he glided down the steps, five stories to the ground. The shadows followed in a V formation, their eyes aglow flickering left and then right. On the ground, they leaned collectively in the shadows against the cool stone, pausing under an archway underneath the castle, the only sounds a moving drain beneath their feet.

The shadow next to her tapped her lips twice, a keep quiet gesture. And then her blood grew cold after she spotted the reason. Swooping low, three of the Lovci drew in their wings and plummeted toward the archway, the wind howling as they sliced downward.

“Jump off my thigh!” demanded the vampire who held her.

“Y-you expect me to go to them, the hunters?” she gasped, clinging to his broad shoulders, and then fighting him as he curled his hand behind her knee and held her upward.

“These particular hunters, I do. Take this.” His hand reached in her blouse, pushing a small paper inside her bra. “Don’t waste it on an urgency, use only in an emergency. Know the difference before you call that number.”

She heard the approaching wings, the wind formed by the Lovci's descent whipping her midnight hair around her face. Felt the smooth exchange of hands on her body before she flew high with the unyielding strength of wings lifting her up, up, up into the black void of endless sky. Isla stared down at the glowing eyes of her hero. She could make out nothing of his appearance, as his shadow grew smaller and smaller to her sight. Or was she falling into a languid sleep? She patted her bra where the paper hid and called down to him. “You don’t consider putting me in the arms of a Lovec an emergency?”

“No, mixed blood,” the vampire yelled back, his inky hand blowing her a kiss farewell, “this is your salvation.”

Present Day, Fort Myers Florida

“You’ve said this repeatedly since we left our apartment.” Unless they stayed on Sanibel Island, Pack insisted all unmated females have male protection after dark. A new rule Pack instilled for all females right before Isla had arrived, so she didn’t exactly feel singled out. Now an implemented order, going into Fort Myers had become forbidden fruit for most of the younger females, especially Haley. Because many of them were also vampire groupies attracted to the menacing danger of their natural born enemies. She reached across the table, lifting a drink menu to fan herself. For the past fifteen minutes, she’d been experiencing some weird hot flashes, and she was barely twenty-one. “Who are we meeting?”

“For you? Anyone non-shifter and non-vampire, I suppose.” Her green eyes missed nothing, sliding over every disturbing nuance inside Six Feet Under. A bar meant for immortals and mortals alike, so long as the humans never discovered the truth. That immortals had walked the face of the earth since the beginning of the beginning.

“Why would you want a shifter or a vampire?” Isla took a sip of her beer, glancing at the bar. In the mirror behind rows of bottles, she watched a dark-haired man with inked sleeves toss drinks in all directions. “They have serious listening issues and reflexes rivaling the speed of light.” The bartender glanced at her, flashing a quick peek of fang for her benefit. Yeah, he was just as pretty as the rest of them. Isla gripped her beer bottle and turned away.

“That’s why you belong to Pack,” a deep rumbling baritone that could only belong to a werewolf said.

Haley’s eyes rounded, staring immediately past Isla’s shoulder with an oh-shit expression. “Terje?”

“Funny,” he said, circling the table to face them, “I don’t see your brother anywhere in the club, Haley.”

He was incredibly beautiful, not that Isla expected anything less, but the blue of his eyes was purely arctic, his hair tawny at the roots and the ends tipped with white-blonde. The size of him was another matter, though, he was… “You’re huge,” she whispered, “even for a werewolf.” How stupid was that? Isla could smack herself.

He nodded as if he’d heard that a million and one times, answering in low tones, “I’m a Norwegian Pureblood Were Beast.”

Haley said to Isla, “His grandfather only recently reclaimed the Pack of Norway.”