The Dark-Hunters (310 page)

Without a word, without moving a single inch, he stayed in the shadows like some lounging predator that was eyeing his next lunch. There was something completely eerie about the way he was able to sit like that. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he’d stopped breathing. He really was a human statue.

Nervous, she watched the streetlights cut across the angles of his lower face from the corner of her eye. It was extremely unsettling to be with a man who exuded such a primal aura and yet she had no idea what he really looked like.

The silence was only relieved by the low thrum of the cabdriver’s Zydeco CD. She wanted to think of something to say, but since Wren wasn’t making an effort, she thought it best to follow his lead.

When they finally reached her driveway, Wren had the driver wait for him while he walked her to her door.

There was something strangely sweet about his actions. They were totally incongruous with the air of lethal danger that clung to him.

“Well, this is it,” she said as she dug her keys out of her purse. “Home sweet home.”

Opening the door, she stepped inside and debated whether or not she should invite him in. Part of her wanted to, but she was afraid of being rebuffed. As a rule, guys thought of her as a friend, never as a girlfriend. It’d always bothered her, and tonight she didn’t think she could deal with his rejection after all she’d been through. Not to mention, she wanted to be alone for a while and just calm down.

Wren sensed her uncertainty as he stood on her doorstep. It reached out to the animal in him and set it on edge. It was always in his nature to attack when he sensed weakness, but with her it was different. He wanted to soothe her.

And that scared the shit out of him.

“Good night,” he said, stepping away. He needed to put some distance between them.

“Wren?”

He paused to look back at her.

“Thank you so much. I owe you more than I can ever repay.”

He inclined his head to her. “It’s okay, Maggie. Just stay out of trouble.” He headed back for the cab.

“How much do I owe you for the taxi?” she called after him.

Wren just waved at her over his head. He was tempted to laugh at her offer. Why would she think that he’d charge her for seeing her home?

Women … he’d never understand them.

He paused at the cab’s door and dared a quick look at her to see her framed in her doorway. She looked so fragile and beautiful. He wanted to kiss her so badly that he could already taste those full, tempting lips. But more than that, he wanted to taste the rest of her body. He wanted to know every scent and curve of her flesh.…

His hormones were playing havoc with him. His entire body felt as if it were on fire and alive. He wasn’t sure how to cope with this. In truth, it frightened him. If he were to lose control, he could easily hurt or even kill her.

In his mind, he could envision her naked. See her underneath him as he claimed her not as an animal, but as a man.…

Leave!

He had no choice. He didn’t belong here and he didn’t belong with her.

There was no place where he did belong. No matter how much he might want otherwise, there never would be. His life had to be spent alone.

*   *   *

Marguerite forced herself not to react to Wren’s hot, devouring stare. She’d never been so interested in any man, especially not one who she really had no idea what he looked like.

It was ludicrous and yet there was no denying the way her body felt. She should have at least asked for his number or e-mail.

He got into the taxi and slammed the door shut with a finality that echoed through her.

Marguerite watched the cab drive away as she felt an inexplicable urge to call Wren back. There was something so lonely about him that it had reached out and touched her deeply.

But it was too late now. He was gone. And she would most likely never see him again.

*   *   *

As Wren paid the driver only a block away from Maggie’s condo, he was starting to sweat from the effort of remaining in human form. He had to get out of here and back home ASAP. If he lost consciousness as a human, he would immediately turn into his true state. And the last thing he needed was to be passed out in large-cat form.

That would be a one-way ticket to a government lab somewhere. He’d seen enough episodes of
X-Files
and
Buffy
to know that was the last place he wanted to be.

Ducking into a dark shadow behind a garage, he flashed himself back to Peltier House and into Carson Whitethunder’s examination room.

A Were-Hawk, Carson was the resident vet and doctor for all the nonhuman inhabitants of Nicolette Peltier’s Sanctuary—of which there were many. Sanctuary had been set up a little over a hundred years ago to be a haven for any and all species. The Peltiers themselves were Were-Bears, while the rest of the inhabitants were leopards, panthers, wolves, and even a dragon. The only species missing from their ranks was the jackal, but then jackals were even more peculiar than the normal oddballs that made up their race. And as such, jackals usually stayed away from the other Were-Hunter branches.

As was typical, Carson was in his office, reading a medical text. Native American in human form, which was due to his human father, Carson had long black hair that was always worn pulled back with a western tie. His black brows slashed above eyes that were a peculiar hazel green. Tonight he was dressed in a dark green turtleneck, blazer, and jeans.

Wren walked over and tapped on the door’s glass before he pushed it open.

Carson glanced up. “Hang on a sec, Wren.”

Wren tried, but his legs buckled. An instant later, he flashed to his true form of half white tiger, half snow leopard. It was something that disgusted him. Normally, he picked one form or the other, but wounded …

This was all he could manage.

Carson got up with a curse and rushed over to Wren. “What happened?”

Wren couldn’t respond. He was trying to stay conscious, but the instant Carson touched his wound and pain shot through him, everything went black.

*   *   *

Carson cursed again as he saw the blood that completely coated the underside of Wren’s chest. He grabbed the Nextel phone off his desk and paged his assistant. “Margie, get up here to the lab. It looks like Wren’s been shot.”

Carson also paged a couple of the bears from downstairs to help pick Wren up and move him to a surgery table. Though Carson as a Were-Animal was stronger than most humans, Wren was an extremely large tigard that weighed in at a good eight hundred pounds whenever he was in animal form. There was no way in hell Carson was going to get the behemoth cat off the floor without help.

Papa Peltier was the first one to appear. At a cool seven feet in height in human form, he posed a fearsome sight. His long, wavy blond hair floated around a face that appeared about forty in human years. In reality, the bear was closer to five hundred. Dressed in a navy T-shirt and jeans, Papa Bear was rugged and tough … the kind of man or bear that only a fool would tangle with.

He frowned as he saw the tigard on the floor. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know,” Carson said as he held a pressure bandage to Wren’s chest. “It’s definitely a bullet wound. I have no idea how he got it. He knocked on the door, then fell down unconscious.”

A second later, three of the Peltier quadruplets came in and helped Carson lift Wren to a surgical table. Margie joined them and quickly set about prepping the room for surgery.

Margie Neely was one of the few humans who knew who and what the members of Sanctuary were. She was a petite redhead who had been a waitress in the bar until a mishap had betrayed the Weres to her. She’d been so calm and accepting that they had embraced her as one of their own and then paid to have her trained to be an assistant to Carson.

Dev Peltier, who like his brothers was a younger copy of his father, moved back to let Carson near Wren again. “He was in a fight earlier tonight with some humans,” the young bearswain said. “I broke them up and sent them home. You don’t think one of them came back and did this to him, do you?”

“Nah,” his identical brother Remi said as he stepped away from the table they had placed Wren on. “They were rich pukes. They wouldn’t have dared endanger their trust funds for something like this.”

Dev sighed. “Since it’s Wren, there’s no telling who he pissed off. But at least we know it was a human. No Were-Hunter would ever use a gun. It’s too crass.”

Papa agreed. “C’mon, boys, let Carson work and we’ll find out what happened whenever Wren wakes up.”

The bears withdrew while Carson scrubbed his hands.

As Margie touched Wren’s side to prep him, he came awake with a vicious snarl, then lashed out at her.

She jumped back with a curse and cradled her arm to her chest.

Carson scowled as he realized Wren had torn her arm open. “Dammit, tiger,” he snarled an instant before he tranked Wren. Still he tried to fight Carson until the sedative took effect. “Watch that temper of yours.”

“I’m okay,” Margie said as she wrapped a towel around her savaged arm. “It’s my fault. I didn’t realize he’d wake back up. I should have known better.”

Carson shook his head as he inspected the damage Wren had wrought. She’d definitely need stitches. “I should have warned you. His kind are extremely vicious when wounded. They don’t like others anyway, and they’ve been known to shred anyone who comes near them.”

“Yeah, I was down in the bar when the humans threw a drink in his eyes. I’m still not sure how Justin and Colt managed to pull him away from them before he pounced.”

Carson let out a tired breath. “Wren’s getting more unstable. I don’t know how much longer he can stay here.”

He saw the concern in her eyes as she looked up at him. “That’s what Nicolette said after she sent Wren into Peltier House. If he pounces like that again, she’s going to make him leave.”

Carson looked back at his unconscious patient. “God have mercy on him then. The best thing we could do is strip him of his powers and dump him back in the past in a rain forest somewhere. It’s probably what they should have done to him instead of bringing him here.”

“Nicolette is already making those preparations. Since his father went mad, she assumes Wren will follow.”

Carson looked back at Wren. His chest tightened. He’d known the tigard since Wren had been brought here almost twenty years ago. Traumatized by the violent and gory deaths of his parents, Wren had just been entering puberty then. His powers had been unstable and shaky. But the powers had been too strong for them to strip, especially since the boy’s guard had been up. He’d trusted no one to come near him, and as a result, there had been no way they could control him.

But now …

Now Wren’s guard was extremely lax around them. At least most of the time. It would be easy to catch him off-guard and strip him of his powers.

Such a thing was a last resort for their kind. It was reserved solely for those who couldn’t pass in the human world. Or those who threatened to expose the Were-Hunters to public scrutiny.

Wren had never wanted to blend. He prided himself on being a misfit and outcast. No one had minded since he did his job in the bar and didn’t even try to speak to the humans.

Tonight that had changed. He had gone after a human female. Not that contact with females was forbidden. Most of their males took human lovers from time to time. But they had to be careful who they chose.

If Wren’s indiscretion threatened them, then there would be no choice.

He would be sacrificed in a heartbeat.

Chapter 3

“Damn, tiger. What the hell did you do? Besides getting shot, that is.”

In his tigard form, Wren opened his eyes to see Dev coming into his bedroom. He glanced at the clock on his nightstand to see that it was just after noon—too damned early for him to be up and about, especially when he hurt this much.

He was actually amazed that the bear was awake and in human form, barging into his room. Most of the Katagaria had a difficult time maintaining human form until after nightfall. So as a rule, they were mostly nocturnal.

Not to mention, the occupants of Peltier House knew that tigers didn’t like to be disturbed, especially not from a sound sleep.

Without changing his animal form, Wren lifted his head from the pillow to watch Dev walk over to his dresser. Wren growled in warning at the bearswain, who paid no attention to him as he placed an extremely large flower arrangement on top.

Wren started to shift on the bed, but his wound was too tender. Instead, he roared threateningly.

“Calm your tiger-ass down,” Dev said, his tone irritated. “If anyone has a right to be pissed, it’s us. Notice I’m the one in human form and you’re not? You think I want to be awake and looking like this at this unholy hour of the day?”

The bear had a point.

“And do you know why we’re up?”

Like he cared. If Wren were in human form he’d be staring drolly at the bear.

Ambivalent to Wren’s mood, Dev barely hesitated before he answered his own question. “Because we all thought that these were for Aimee. You’ve never seen bears move so fast as we did when
Maman
told us there was a truck loaded with flowers that were to be delivered here. We were getting ready to open a can of whup-ass on some local when the delivery guy said they were sent to
you.
”

Dev moved to the bed and pulled a small card out of the back pocket of his jeans. “It says ‘thanks for last night.’” Dev gave him an amused smirk. “So what? Did you finally get lucky and find someone desperate for a quick lay?”

Wren snapped at Dev, forcing the bear to jump back from the bed.

Dev’s eyes narrowed on him. “You better knock that shit off or else we’re going to go round. I don’t care if you are wounded, I don’t play.”

“And neither do I, asshole.”
Wren sent the words to him mentally.

Dev stared at Wren in amazement. “Wow. Multiple syllables and a whole sentence from the tiger. Who’d have ever thought it? Whoever she was, she must have had a lot of talent to make
you
speak. Next thing you know, she’ll have the dead walking. Quick, call a Dark-Hunter. I’m sure some of them would like another resurrection.”