Sanibel Surrender Vampire Werewolf Menage (Fanged Romance Series Book Five) (8 page)

“I know somebody who knows somebody, who has a knack for cleaning up ridiculous messes,” Bane assured her with a wink. “By morning, it’ll be tip-top and none the wiser.”

“Why?”

“Why, what?”

“Why did I call you first? How did you come so quickly?” Her words grew harsher. “Why do you want to help someone who clearly doesn’t like you, particularly the relationship you have with my sister Renee?”

Bane shrugged. “We’re family.”

Ail laughed as he settled behind the wheel and started the car. “Don’t say that, Bro, she’ll start screaming if you do.” Instead of hearing the snappy retort that he expected from his big brother, Ail watched Bane’s nostrils flare.
What is it?

If you have to, use the nitrous.
Bane shut Molly’s door and jetted across the parking lot.
Go!

“What’s happening?” Molly asked, exhaling a stunned breath. Amazingly, her moss green eyes trailed Bane as he jumped from tree to tree, in speeds humans couldn’t normally follow.

“Never mind what’s happening, just hold on, Molly.” Ail cursed, his breathing deepening due to his rising werewolf.
Tamp it down.
Tamp it down.
One slow exhale and it…worked. Werewolf averted,
thank you very much
. He peeled out of the parking lot, kicking up a fine spray of gravel and dust. “Oh, and you may want to close those lovely, Irish eyes.” By the time Ail realized
exactly
what was happening, the sick sensations his body refused to believe, an ominous flapping sounded overhead.

“Oh, my…w-what is that?” Molly gasped, her head careening this way and that.

He threw more compulsion her way:
You didn’t see that.
“I told you to close your eyes.” He smoked through the intersection, unable to stop for the red light as they careened down McGregor Boulevard. With the moderate traffic and their breakneck speed, Ail figured they had a fifty fifty shot of making it to Sanibel Island without him turning werewolf…
unless
the police got involved. “Shit!”

Molly turned to him with patrol lights flickering across her face. “The cops are chasing us, like we’re criminals!”

“We kind of are,” he barked, nearly sideswiping a Royal Palm while weaving around a slow going minivan. “Well, more like you, being a vandal and all.”

“I’m not a vandal!”

“Ah, Innocent Molly, that wasn’t finger-painting I saw back there. By the way, you don’t have any of it dried under your nails, do you? Cops will scrape them for evidence.” Ail crossed the median, passing four cars before having a near-miss collision with yet another patrol car. Yep, the mortal authorities were calling in reinforcements.

“Running makes things worse!” With a cry, she stretched her hand toward the steering wheel.

“Everyone knows that you don’t touch a man’s equipment unless you intend on putting out.” He gripped her wrist, circling the tiny bones with his fingers and placing it back onto her lap. When his forearm brushed her soft thigh, he inwardly groaned.

“Ail, pull over!”

When the third patrol car entered the melee, Ail realized he had no other choice but to drop his hold on Molly’s mind and redirect his coercion on the six officers, who were tailing them. In the process of him confusing the police, sending them in different directions, Molly would remember everything that she had seen and felt tonight. More than likely, the memory rush would propel her into a human hysteria of some sort, and he wasn’t so good with consoling hysterical humans. “I’m not stopping so sit tight.”

“Are you kidding?” she sputtered. “You most certainly will stop!”

“No, I won’t,” he said patiently. Even mixed with remnants of paint, her scent was killing him. Ail’s werewolf was too twitchy around her, shooting primordial tingles up and down his spine. Gritting his teeth, he shook those thoughts off yet again and finally released his compulsion on her.

“What’s happening to my head?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute.” His left hand sprouted claws, so he thrust it under his thigh, waiting it out.
Down Beast, she’s not ours.
“On the count of three, take a deep breath and hold it.”

“For what?”

Ail growled, “Can’t you stop asking questions long enough to do what you’re told?” His werewolf picked that time to slam his head, rattling his skull until his ears started ringing. He stretched his neck, fighting the pain, but it was no use. To his right, Molly was shattering his sensitive Were ears, her mouth firing on all cylinders, spewing out shit regarding women’s rights. And how he couldn’t tell her to ‘do what she was told’ or she was going to do something anatomically impossible to his body. He’d never heard anything like it in his life. And she didn’t stop there. Oh, no. After that, Molly told Ail that it didn’t matter if he was three times her size - probably four times but he wouldn’t interrupt her - since she took a premium self-defense course and knew a thing or two about removing assholes from
deserving
people. He didn’t particularly like the way she drew out the word deserving, but he was too busy outrunning the cops to mention it. It didn’t matter; Ail knew she was all fluff. Molly was horrified when he’d found her coming out of that hidden room beneath Edison’s staircase, but he didn’t have the heart to point it out and shoot down her self-confidence.

“Fine, Molly Ballbuster, have it your way.” Now, he had a healthier respect for his brother’s ability to multitask, specifically while guarding impossible females. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.” Slamming his teeth together to ward off his growing canines, Ail released his compulsion from Molly and threw everything he had towards the six officers. Come on!
Come on.
“Flip off your lights, turn those patrol cars around, and leave to find
real
criminals.” It took all of ten seconds before the patrol cars ceased chase.
One problem down, many to go.

He heard Molly’s sharp intake of breath, but he trained his eyes on certain shadows hovering in the sky, which could lead to a potential problem and a half. In his side vision, though, he saw that she had wrapped her arms around her head, her lips soundlessly chanting something. “If those are prayers, work ‘em in triple time, sweetheart, if my instincts are right, things are just about to get interesting.”

“He disappeared!” She screeched in a disbelieving voice. “It really happened. He kissed me and then disappeared right in front of me!”

For the first time in his short twenty years, Ail finally understood what possessive jealousy was all about. “Who the hell kissed you?” Oh, he would never get his claws to retract now!

“That man.”

“Your
husband
, right?” Damn it! Why did he nearly choke on that word?
She’s not ours.

“No! Under the stairs, the man with those
eyes
kissed me before he vanished.”

“Those eyes, you say?” Molly’s face contorted in panic before she shook her head no, and he knew what she was thinking. That he would rat out her
supposed insanity
to her
nutty family, who would then toss her into a padded cell and never look back. They might do that to Renee but not to Molly. “The man disappeared and,” he coaxed.

“Then, you found me.”

A partial truth, there was something she was hiding. “What are you leaving out?”

She finally admitted, “He…acted like he knew me and said he would find me after the next rain.”

“Really?” Surprise, surprise, they were in the middle of rainy season. “So we’re to expect mystery man tomorrow or perhaps the next day?”

Molly dared to ask, “What do you mean by
we’re
to expect him?”

Ail bent the steering wheel. “Bane reminded you that we were family, right? Or do you think your
husband
,” he sneered the word, couldn’t help himself, “can take care of this man?”
Cause I sure as hell can!

Instead, she countered with yet another question of her own. “You don’t seem shocked that I told you a man disappeared, like, into thin air.”

“Shocked?” They had finally reached the Sanibel Causeway, and as Ail suspected, their uninvited guests had flown ahead, creating an aerial roadblock. “Look in front of you, Molly, and you’ll understand why nothing shocks me.”

“What…Y-you have claws!”

“Yeah, about that, now would be a good time for you to see reason. Be glad for my claws, Molly, they give us a sporting chance. Focus on staying alive, on the sound of my voice, and block out everything else. Believe me, buried deep down, you have the ability to do this. Search for my quiver, please, second request.”

He rolled down the window at the tollbooth and kept it that way. Hanging his head out, the sight above him made his stomach plummet. A solid black mass nearly blocked out the moon. Rock had told Ail about these creatures, how in full transformation, he’d taken down
one
. Considering Ail was now staring at
three
of the Dynasty Empire’s Gryphs flying low, their midnight wings flapping in the island breeze, he felt seriously outnumbered. Seen by few, the royal guards kept a low profile, obscuring their cunning predatory skills from not only the human world, but also the immortal world as a whole. Ail knew that the only reason he could see these particular Gryphs was that they allowed it. So what exactly was going on? With his blood running colder by the second, he told Molly to hurry up.

“I think I have it,” she called out.

Just when he thought his balls had shriveled into raisins, he glanced in the rearview mirror. Molly’s torso was slung over the seat as she rummaged for what he needed. Ail’s shirt rode high on her bottom, baring her sweetly spank-able and very naked ass.
Oh, yeah
,
balls are working
just fine
. A tad below those fleshy cheeks was an incredible pink pussy, one that belonged to a mixed-blood, made to clench for her male werewolf. That is, if she were
with
her celestially appointed male, she would milk him sublimely.
Gorgeous girl.
Right there next to him, waiting for a good licking, the vision of her sex forced down his canines.

Three breaths in, one long exhale out.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, just focus,” he reminded both of them.
Down Beast.
By an unforeseen miracle, he pulled his eyes away from this
married woman
and bit out his instructions, “Gather the wooden arrows. I need at least three.”
If my aim is on.
“Here’s the first arrow,” she said, her beautiful face tense with – could that be a werewolf’s fortitude? She settled the other arrows by her feet. “You have
only
three.”

“Okay, you have to steer.” He pulled his body halfway out, the door cutting into his back, and faced the sky. Nocking the first arrow, he temporarily clogged Molly’s ears and warned the Gryphs in his werewolf’s voice. “I know you smell what rushes my veins. In case a pertinent fact has somehow slipped your mind, attacking blood of the Beta breaks our joint faction agreement! Just so I know where to aim first, which one of you fuckwits wants to start the next immortal war?” To Molly, he then opened her ears and whispered, “Get your foot on the accelerator, quickly.”

“We are not going over the Sanibel Causeway this way!”

“Oh,” he shot back, “we’re going over the causeway, all right!”

“You cannot possibly…”

“It’s the only way onto the island, sweetheart. So yes, I can
possibly
.” And his Pack was now circling, positioning werewolves for an ambush. If these Gryphs were somehow after Molly, she had a serious problem on her hands. Molly wasn’t a Pack Member, wasn’t claimed by a werewolf. Therefore, at the very least, she needed to be on Pack property. It was the only hope for keeping her from their despicable clutches.

“It’s coming straight for us!” she gasped.

One Gryph dropped lower, flared out those massive, ebony wings on an air current, and narrowed its eyes determinedly at Ail. “Molly, hit the pedal!”

When his car lurched forward, Ail tightened his chest, keeping his torso steady. “That’s it, Molly Ballbuster, no looking up. Keep steady, and get us across the bridge.”

“I’m sure this isn’t a good time to remind you that this
bridge
is a three mile long causeway!”

“I swear that if you start telling me the odds on something you know nothing about, I’ll take my belt off here and now.” Ail didn’t know where to hit this thing, had never before fought this type of vampire. But Rock had said a single Gryph could take down a small plane as though it were a toy. That he had seen it for himself firsthand. Figuring decapitation was the end-all for most beings; Ail aimed at the creature’s throat and released the wooden arrow. If Bane knew he had these particular arrows…he couldn’t think about that now. A high keen nearly reamed his ears, as the Gryph’s rage-filled cry thundered across the sky. Bewildered, Ail watched the thing drop like dead weight into the Gulf of Mexico. He had no time to think about it regenerating, when he had to concentrate on the other two.

“Car!” Molly screamed.

In Were speed, he sat up, gripping his compound bow, the oncoming vehicle missing him by a measly two inches. “More warning next time!”

“Doing my best,” she said, her voice trembling.

And she was. After all, Molly hadn’t driven them off the bridge and into the ocean. Yet. When the next truck passed, Ail reached his hand inside the opened window. “Next arrow, Molly!

Another shadow of ebony wings swept behind his car, snapped shut, and then landed on the back glass. With his knee, Ail purposely hit the steering wheel, swerving his car and then straightening it. When the Gryph swayed with the car, struggling to right himself, Ail reared back his bow and aimed for the vampire’s heart with the sharp tip. Using his brute strength alone, since he hadn’t released his Beast, the bow pierced the Gryph’s chest soundly, then slammed the wooden arrow inside the bloody wound. From there, it rolled off the back of his car. One wing popped out, dragging across the inside of the bridge before slowing to a stop, the stench of vampire blood mixed with sour milk filling the air. To Ail’s utter astonishment, he killed it. Still, he had no time to think about that. With two down, where was the third?