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She knew she had surprised Rafe. There was no way he could even begin to comprehend her remark. But this had to be the Were who had haunted her dreams. Why else had they met like this—him, out of all of the other wolves the Landaus could have sent to find her?
Was there such a thing as coincidence, after all, or had there been some other hand at work here?
Cara had anticipated this meeting with her dream man and had vowed to pay him back for the sleepless nights. Now she wanted this moment to go on, and for time to stop with the two of them right here, near the water.
Eventually, she broke the silence. “Six days. I’ll stay here for six days and then I’ll go home.”
He said, “Are you worried about the moon being full right after that?”
Cara didn’t have to look up at the sky to know the exact position of the moon, and that it was half-full tonight. The pull of the moon on her system was a constant reminder of what it could do, and what she could become. She also felt the movement of the tides and the rhythm of the blood in her arteries.
She felt Rafe’s attention on her as if it was another touch.
“It wouldn’t be wise to stay any longer,” she said.
“What would happen if you did?”
He wore a serious expression that made his eyes gleam as he waited for her to explain herself.
“Unwanted guests might arrive,” she replied.
“We’ve had quite a few unwelcome visitors in the past and know what to do with them,” he told her. “Have no doubts about that.”
“These uninvited guests wouldn’t be any of your concern and are merely another part of my existence.”
“Are you talking about vampires and what happened to your parents here?”
“Among other things.”
He leaned toward her. “What would other creatures want if they did come?”
“The same thing you want,” she replied soberly.
“And that is?”
“Me.”
Her answer didn’t seem to surprise him. He didn’t feign ignorance or pretend to misunderstand her meaning. But he took in a breath and held it before speaking again.
“It’s natural, I suppose, that I’m interested in you. Wolf-to-wolf attraction has a heady allure, and being at the beach doesn’t help any, because moonlight on the water is romantic. Then there’s the fact that you’re exceptionally beautiful and half-naked. All of that can mess with a guy’s head. I’ll admit that it’s messing with mine.”
Ribbons of pleasure wound through Cara with an exotic flutter. No one had ever told her she was beautiful. She hadn’t really been sure how others perceived her looks. She’d never understood why other creatures wanted a piece of her, except for the vampires. Her mother had warned her about that. Having a Banshee’s spirit nestled inside her would allow her to lead bloodsuckers to their next meal by pointing out human weaknesses. If caught by them, she’d become a vampire’s dinner bell.
The heat caused by Rafe’s remarks left Cara uncertain about what might happen next, and what she should do. Her legs felt weak, and that was a first. Her stomach twisted as if the thing she housed had come alive. Rafe had an almost mystical allure for someone who had gone without companionship for most of her life.
They had reached the place where she had discarded her clothes, but he hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t he said he liked her half-naked?
“You haven’t seen a naked woman before?” she asked, noting how he stared at her as she started to take off his shirt.
“I’ve seen a few,” he replied. “But none quite like you.”
A shiver moved through her as she brought her head up and whirled around. A new feeling had invaded her senses, and it didn’t register as anything remotely like pleasure. It was an announcement that they had company. The kind she had warned Rafe about. Trouble was coming, and the wolf beside her was about to find out what her world could be like.
* * *
Rafe spun around, his senses on high alert. Cara was already on the move.
He caught up with her in four long strides as his cop reflexes kicked in and he stepped in front of Cara to block her way while he searched the beach and the sidewalk. She placed both of her hands on the center of his back and applied pressure to move him out of the way.
“Wait,” he said to her. “Just wait.”
He didn’t have his gun. Hell, he wasn’t wearing shoes. The shove Cara gave him sent him forward a few inches, but he rallied. Determined to do his job and protect her, Rafe hit a number on his cell phone to call his father and said to Cara, “What’s out here that I can’t see?”
“Fangs,” she replied.
“Fangs, as in vampires?” Could that be right? Had vampires found Cara already? How was that possible?
“One of them,” she said.
“Close by?”
“Very close.”
“How can I find it?” Rafe asked.
“Smell.”
He was supposed to smell a damn vampire when his lungs were filled with Cara’s rich scent?
“Describe the smell, Cara.”
“Dark earth, dirt and other things more difficult to define unless you’ve met with vampires before. They’re masters at masking those smells, which makes them hard to find if you were to go looking.”
“Can we get to the street, or another block down the beach?” Rafe asked.
When she didn’t answer him, he took her silence for a bad sign. Keeping his eyes trained for any movement in the distance, Rafe automatically reached for Cara’s hand. The surge of electricity that hit him when their skin met was a shock. But he couldn’t let it distract him from getting Cara out of there. Even if she had faced these creatures before, he had to guard her with his life. Or try to.
“Follow me,” he instructed, lacing her fingers with his and absorbing charge after charge of electricity that felt like nothing he had ever experienced.
Adrenaline took over. Cara didn’t protest when he pulled her forward. “Warn me if I’m heading for trouble,” he said.
She tugged at him hard enough to stop him after a few steps. Frustrated by this, Rafe turned to face her.
“It’s you,” she repeated, but with a different emphasis this time.
Her face came close to his. As she met his eyes, her wet hair brushed against his bare arms, causing alternating heat and chills. Cara, the hybrid shifter he was trying to protect, could adopt a vampire’s form if one were to appear on the beach, but the need to get her to safety was strong enough for him to override his fear of that happening.
“What is it, Cara?” he asked.
Her next words shook him up more than touching her had.
“You smell like them,” she said.
“What are you talking about?”
Cara didn’t honor him with a reply. She turned toward the dark remains of a hotel under renovation, taking him with her. That’s when Rafe saw what had attracted her attention. Someone was standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Someone Rafe thought he knew.
“No way,” he muttered in surprise. But in the time between that remark and his next breath, the figure materialized beside them...and Rafe hadn’t seen anyone move.
Perfume. He smelled perfume, and it was familiar. Also familiar was the tangle of blond hair and the green shirt that did little to hide an exquisite body.
Holy hell...it was Brandi. She was a goddamn vampire?
Shock kept him from moving as fast as he should have. His date from earlier that night was there beside him, hissing through a pair of lethal-looking fangs as she went for his throat.
In a flash of speed that rivaled the creature in front of him, Cara had Brandi’s hair in her fists. God, it really was Brandi...or whatever the hell Brandi really was.
“My problem. Not yours,” Cara said to him over her shoulder.
“The hell you say,” Rafe snapped.
Cara was already liquefying. That was the only way to describe what happened. Her body just seemed to melt into a kind of being that was Cara, and yet different, as the fight began in earnest without him.
* * *
Cara snapped at the vampire with a fresh set of fangs that made the creature in her grip hesitate for a few seconds too long. Uncertainty flashed in its red-rimmed eyes as Cara’s hold on its hair tightened.
She felt the vampire’s hunger and the incessant throb of its need to feed. Hunger was everything. Starvation meant oblivion. Vampires killed in order to feel alive—otherwise they were merely animated corpses without any real direction. This one was old, and masterful in its ability to disguise itself, at least on the surface. Once the fangs came out, its human semblance began to decay.
Cara’s fangs, on the other hand, brought on a hunger of another kind—a defensive desire to rid the world of the monsters she was cursed to emulate.
The Landau wolf joined in the fight. Using his weight to press Cara aside, he struggled to get one of the vampire’s arms behind its back. The harsh sound of a bone breaking was alarmingly loud as the vampire’s arm shattered near the shoulder. Louder still was Rafe Landau’s startled intake of breath.
Fangs brushed her arm, ripping her sleeve, leaving a long trail of flapping fabric. Cara maneuvered her way between Rafe and the snarling bloodsucker with her own fangs exposed and her hands moving almost subliminally fast.
Rafe, who was incredibly strong and used to fighting, by the looks of things, wasn’t to be left out of this fray. He also wasn’t going to allow a female to help him do his job, no matter who or what that female was. With great force, he leaned his shoulder into the vampire, and it teetered. The bloodsucker hissed again through its treacherous fangs and spit out his name.
Hearing that made Rafe Landau hesitate. Cara pushed past him. Even a few seconds of hesitation when facing the walking undead meant certain death, and this abomination whose distant relatives had helped to make Cara like them in so many ways wasn’t going to win tonight. She hated vampires. She hated when they came to find her, sensing kinship. She hated every time her fangs dropped and she became like them.
Foul black blood spurted from the vampire’s shoulder when Cara’s fangs found purchase. The blood was evidence of the creature’s recent meal. There would have been none otherwise, only a spill of dark gray ash, the same ash vampires dissolved into after being dealt a death blow by a worthy opponent.
“Let me have her...have it,” Rafe directed. But this was Cara’s own personal war.
Cara dug into the bloodsucker’s flesh with her fangs. At the same time, Rafe landed a right-handed punch to the vamp’s shoulder, and the fanged parasite shrieked, probably not from pain, but from anger. It lost hold of its feminine disguise as it rallied, and the undead creature whose looks previously could have fooled most humans became the bony, skeletal, red-eyed abomination it really was.
Cara felt no kinship with this vampire and refused to acknowledge being like it. This was one of the many monsters that ruled her nightmares. Vampires were the enemy, though this one had likely believed at first that Cara Kirk-Killion, with her pale skin and fangs, might help take Rafe down. But vampires like this one had nearly killed her father. To most of the world, her father had died.
Colton Killion’s DNA had been compromised by too much vampire saliva and too damn many bites, and he’d become a legendary white ghost wolf one fateful night here in this city, an albino whose skin and hair would have stood out anywhere as being freakish.
The same thing was not going to happen to Rafe. Not tonight.
Though this bloodsucker was fast, Cara moved faster. She possessed a secret weapon that hadn’t yet been revealed. Her heritage. All of it.
She snapped her fangs in the creature’s face and made it look at her...made it look into her eyes. A far older spirit than this vampire was beginning to show itself. This was death calling. True and final death. The Banshee inside her had awakened.
The shriek that came from the vampire’s open mouth when it realized its fate dictated what would happen. One second passed, then two more, and Cara, with her dark spirit’s extra push of power, punched through the vampire’s bony concave chest with both hands. Gripping hard, she squeezed the blackened heart that had not beat in centuries until the useless thing crumbled.
“Don’t breathe,” Cara shouted to Rafe, who was beside her and struggling to get his hands on the foul creature. Seconds later, the bloodsucker exploded like a bomb had gone off, and its lifeless body disintegrated into a flurry of foul-smelling ash.
Chapter 5 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)
A dark, sticky rain was falling. But it wasn’t rain, really, and nothing that resembled water.
Rafe let out the breath he had been holding and stared at the spot where the vampire had been standing. He was afraid to look at Cara in vampire mode. Shock over witnessing what had happened here made his stomach turn. This was something he would never forget, though the whole event had happened so fast, he hardly believed it had happened at all.
Finally, he did look at Cara. He had to see her to try to make sense of it all. She hadn’t just exposed a gleaming set of fangs—she’d exposed one of her secrets. And even with her fangs, pale skin and flat black gaze, she had the ability to mesmerize.
Many features remained of the Cara he had met earlier tonight, only slightly rearranged. She had sharper cheekbones with gaunt hollows beneath. Dark crescents underscored her eyes, contrasting with the whiteness of her skin. The only color she possessed was in the tiny drops of blood speckling her lips, which were half-closed over a daunting pair of unnatural teeth.
The rumors were true. Cara had transformed into this new version in less time than it had taken for him to catch his breath. Rafe found himself equally fascinated and repelled by her new look and by what he had seen Cara do to the vampire. No stranger to violence himself, he sympathized with Cara, and how her life probably consisted of one fight after another. He wondered if she would ever be able to find the kind of peace she might crave.
Hell, he was speechless, and therefore couldn’t ask her how a shape-shift like hers was possible, or what it felt like. Plus, it wasn’t his place to ask her tough questions or make her feel any more ill at ease than she already did.
Cara Kirk-Killion, in whatever incarnation, had just possibly saved his sorry ass from a date with a vampire. He couldn’t believe it Using fangs had likely been Brandi’s intention all along. The skimpy lingerie had been camouflage. Lilac perfume had masked the unfamiliar scent. They probably never would have made it as far as the bed.
Cara had freed him from having to deal with his first vampire—a bloodsucking parasite so like a human, he had fallen for its charade. What about the curvaceous body Brandi had sported, and the silky tousled hair? Would he have discovered the truth if he’d gotten close enough to the creature to discover that her chest contained no heartbeat?
And what about Cara? Did her vampire form come with a vampire’s thirst? If she had those kinds of urges, she was controlling them well. She stood three feet from him with her hands at her sides, radiating no perceptible aura of danger, though for a few seconds back there, he’d had doubts. His ears still rang with the sound of her fangs gnashing.
“Can you change back?” he asked, slightly out of breath from the recent adrenaline surge. “Will the vamp characteristics fade away on their own?”
Maybe those weren’t the questions Cara had been anticipating, but they were the only ones she was going to get from him at the moment. Her eyes were trained on him. She said nothing in reply as he led her down the sidewalk.
In the glare of his building’s exterior security lights, Rafe glanced away from her lingering gaze long enough to note the rips in the shirt he had loaned her and the blood soaking it in several spots. She didn’t seem to notice any of that.
“We’ll need to see to those scratches,” he continued, stepping aside so that Cara could precede him to his apartment. “We can make a quick stop at my place if you’re up for that,” he added. “I have a first-aid kit.”
When she shook her head, Rafe paused, then rallied enough of his wits to say, “Thank you, Cara.”
Her red-rimmed eyes, still dilated by an interior darkness, met his. The tips of her extremely white fangs seem to glow against the color of her blood-flecked lips.
“That’s what you meant when you said ‘it’s you,’ right? You smelled that vampire on me?” With the adrenaline still flowing, he kept up the nervous chatter. “Now that I think about it, I invited that thing inside. What kind of a fool does that make me?”
Cara finally spoke. “I told you they are deceptive in their disguises. Like we are.”
Like we are...
She meant werewolves masquerading as humans.
