Another table fell.
I leaned on a table leg and reached out with both arms ready to unleash my power if they breached the enclosure. My chest jerked up and down with staccato breaths.
Blood roared in my ears, blood and something else, another roar in the distance but getting louder—the unmistakable growl of Harleys drawing near.
CHAPTER NINE
T
HE
R
OAD
B
ACK
The motorcycles skidded to a stop in front of the cabin. I closed my eyes and reached out past the buzzing energy all around my enclosure to where I thought the bikes might be. I didn’t feel any life static.
Rune.
Out in the compound, the wolf fight continued. Heavy, booted footsteps thudded in the doorway. Waves of thrumming rolled through the air. Each wave built until it vibrated my chest. The scrabbling at the enclosure stopped. Growls and barking turned to snarls and whines and retreated to the back of the enclosure.
“Friends.” Rune’s voice was low and powerful. “I do not wish to cause you discomfort. Please leave and let me remove the woman safely.”
The thrumming stopped. Tension and anger permeated the air, but the wolves didn’t move. Rune’s footsteps echoed a loud measured cadence to the corner near the door.
“I thank you for keeping my woman safe,” Rune continued, “and for leaving me so I may help her from her confinement. We have helped one another many times in the past, and I am indebted to you and generations of your clan, whom I have known.”
The snarls outside in the compound rose to a fevered pitch. It sounded like a dozen wolves, but I was only picking up on two energy sources. Suddenly, one of the wolves screamed in pain and was quiet.
Inside the cabin, the tension continued from the wolves—a low rumbling of growls. The wolves advanced and the growls grew stronger.
Another pair of heavy, booted footsteps entered the cabin and joined Rune. No energy signal was attached to the new person.
The wolves neared the center of the cabin next to my enclosure. A steady pressure built from Rune and his companion, and I recognized the added thrum as the same one I’d felt at Rune’s place. It belonged to Griss.
As the wolves inched forward, the pressure from the two vampires built. I jumped as my ponytail lifted and the hair on my arms stood on end.
A limping step thumped up the steps into the cabin. The vampire thrumming stopped.
“Enough!” Bader’s voice boomed. “Stand down.” His voice was gravely and his words slurred. His energy felt part wolf and part human, or as close to human as Bader was earlier when I talked to him. His energy was tinged with the dark red of pain.
The wolves retreated a few feet but continued to growl.
“I said enough!” Bader said. “I am clan leader when the elders are away. You will do as I say or face the pack elders.”
Bader limped over to Rune and Griss and spoke to the wolves again. “Leave now. If I say it again, it’s a death sentence to whoever hears it.”
The wolves bounded from the cabin, some still growling.
“Marlena,” Rune’s voice felt like velvet on my ears. “
Fotia
, are you all right?”
It took a few tries to speak past my tightened throat.
“Yes,” I said at last, “I’m okay.”
Tears of relief sprang to my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Someone shook the tables and benches that made up my shelter.
“Can you release the bond you have on this furniture?” Rune said.
“I’ve tried,” I said. “It hasn’t worked.”
“Try again,” he said.
“Okay, but you have to leave the cabin. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
“If it will help you, we will leave.”
Two sets of booted footsteps started toward the door. A softer barefoot footstep started toward the door, then faltered. Someone caught Bader before he could hit the ground. My stomach turned and my energy spiked.
“Marlena,” Rune said, “he is well. Calm yourself.”
“I’m trying,” I said. “Is Bader really okay?”
Bader chuckled and drew a breath of pain. “Just a few battle wounds, Marlee. Nothing that hasn’t happened before. Maintaining rank in the pack is one of the down sides of being with fur.”
I tried to rein in my stress and worry. It was like trying to catch lightning.
“All right, Marlena,” Bader said from several feet away from the cabin. “We’re behind the truck. What’s say you take that thing down?”
I turned the table over. I ducked underneath it and resumed the crouched, arms-out stance I’d taken earlier. A bloom of energy built in my chest. I pushed it down my arms to my hands, but this time, it refused to even leave my body. At least last time it had let me send out the energy before it pulled the walls back in.
I pounded my fists on the wooden floor. “Damn, damn, damn.” I lifted my head and it thumped on the table.
“Ow! What the heck is the use of having this thing, if it won’t do what I tell it to?” I crawled from under the table, rubbing my head and looked down into the dark hole in the floor. My skin crawled and my throat constricted again. Flashes of Aunt Tibby’s house raced through my brain.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t crawl into that hole.
I stood and slapped the dirt from my jeans.
“I can’t do it,” I shouted. “My energy is just too out of control.”
Rune’s smooth, calm voice sounded by the enclosure, and I jumped. “Would it help if you took the medication I sent with you?”
“No,” I said. “It quit working.”
“Both of them?”
“Yep.”
“Would it help if I came in with you?”
The idea of Rune in the small enclosure with me sent both fear and excitement through me.
“I . . .” I scrubbed at my face and ran my hands through my hair. “I . . . Oh, what the heck, it’s worth a try. How are you going to get in here?”
“Bader said there is a hole in the floor.”
The thought of Rune’s gorgeous body under the cabin with my used chamber pot turned my stomach. Two steps took me to the wall near Rune. I put my hand on the wooden wall and tried to feel him. Part of me needed to touch him. Part of me feared being in the same cabin with him.
“No,” I said. “I change my mind. I don’t think—”
“Think what,
fotia
?” Rune said.
I spun around and found him inches from me.
“How’d you do—”
He put his finger on my lips and smiled. “It is not important.”
Our gazes locked and I didn’t care if he mesmerized me. I was just glad he was there. The enclosure seemed at once too small and too large. To my amazement, all my fear and worry melted into need—the need to be held, the need to be reassured, the need to touch him. I leaned into him. His hand moved from my lips to cradle the back of my head. An arc of energy jumped between our mouths as they met.
My body stiffened, and my energy level spiked as the butterflies in my stomach fought for freedom. As the kiss deepened, a whimper escaped me, and I relaxed into him. Energy flowed from me into his mouth. My hands encircled him and slid up the tight wall of muscle that was his back. His cool body evoked heat from mine where we touched. I pressed into him, and he moaned and deepened the kiss until he leaned over me holding me with one hand behind my head and one at the small of my back.
I felt light. The energy that had clogged my chest, head, and arms all day evaporated. Rune stopped drawing energy from me, but the kiss continued for several more heartbeats. He broke the kiss and his lips traveled across my cheek then down my neck, dancing lightly against my throat. Then he pulled away and shook his head. His eyes glowed with my energy.
“No, not here.” He pulled me upright, stroked my hair, and smiled. “I lose myself so easily in you,
foteinos fotia
.”
I closed my eyes and relaxed into the feel of his hand on my hair.
“What is that?
Foteinos fotia
?” I said. I finally had to ask. I loved the way it sounded, but I had been afraid it meant something like “one who can’t control herself.”
A deep chuckle rumbled in his chest.
“It means luminous fire in a language older than your history.”
I sighed and tucked my head under his chin. “Luminous fire?”
He turned his face so his cheek rested on the top of my head.
“It is how I see you. To vampire eyes, you are a bright and luminous beauty. Your life energy shines beyond all other humans. It is what Samuel saw in the classroom.”
I pulled away from him. “Samuel is a . . .”
Rune smiled. “Vampire. Yes. He is vampire.”
“But it was just dusk. The sun—”
“He wears a black leather coat with a hood and slathers on sunscreen. Even then, he goes out as late as he can. The sun’s pull to sleep is strong.”
I stepped out of his embrace and drew a deep breath to clear my mind.
“Did you . . . you know . . . turn him?” I rubbed my neck where Rune’s lips had been moments before.
“No. I did not create him. Someone less attentive created him. I just provided him a less destructive path to follow.”
“Oh.”
Reality flooded back into my brain like a face full of cold water. I was in what amounted to a wooden box with a vampire. I didn’t believe in vampires a week ago. Now I was surrounded by not only vampires but werewolves. What was I doing?
I stepped back and bumped the wall.
“That kiss just now. Was that your doing or mine?”
Rune leaned against the table. His black jeans, T-shirt, leather jacket, and biker boots gave him the look of a modern day pirate, but his bearing held a distinctive touch of class no pirate would have. He smiled.
“I may have given a small suggestion. The rest was a natural occurrence. Was it such an unpleasant experience?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know.”
Rune laughed. “Would you like to go home with me now, Marlena?”
The pros and cons of going home with Rune collided at all angles in my brain. He represented danger in many ways besides the fact that he wasn’t human. I had to keep reminding myself of that as I looked at him.
Finally, I sighed, and my shoulders dropped. “Yes,” I said.
Rune reached out and grasped my hands. He pulled me away from the wall seconds before it collapsed outward. I jumped into his arms and looked around, my heart racing.
“Did you do that?” I said.
He scanned the now-destroyed enclosure with a look of surprise and admiration. “No. I believe you did.”
He pulled away from the table, grabbed my backpack and overnight bag off the floor, and led me by the hand around the minefield of overturned tables and benches until we stood outside. Griss and Bader leaned against a nearby pickup. Bader wore loose jersey shorts and nothing else. His right leg sported a deep gash and blood flowed in a small rivulet onto the dirt below. Other than the four of us, the compound stood deserted.
Cool night air washed over me. Eyes closed, I tilted my head back and breathed the fresh air. The wolves’ energy tingled far into the forest but was fading fast into the night.
“You and trouble are on a first name basis I see,” Griss said. A sly smile peeked from his full beard. The beard now sported a few thin braids with small turquoise beads woven into them here and there. With his wild blond hair flowing over his leather vest and bare chest, he looked like a Viking Hell’s Angel.
“They’re more like blood relatives,” Bader said. He glanced uneasily at Rune’s face.
“Damn,” Griss said, “I haven’t seen your eyes glow like that since we took out that mercenary cell down in South America. What was that—eighty men?”
“Griss,” Rune warned.
“Oh right,” Griss said as he rolled his eyes. “She hasn’t noticed your eyes and she forgot that you’re a—”
Rune’s low voice shook the leaves of the giant tree overhead. “Enough.”
Griss laughed and grabbed Bader’s elbow to help him sit on the truck bumper.
“Are you okay?” I tried to walk toward Bader, but Rune tightened his hold on my hand. I glared back at him, and he shook his head slightly. For some reason, he wanted me to keep my distance from Bader. Or was it Griss?
“I’m fine. It’s just my leg.” Bader held up a hand to warn me off. “I’ll turn after you’re gone. It’ll speed the healing.”
He nodded toward two Harleys. Their black paint and chrome glowed in the moonlight. Cooling exhaust pipes ticked a metronome rhythm.
“What time is it?” I said.
Rune glanced toward the star-filled sky. “It is less than five hours until sunrise.”
I darted a glance from the motorcycles to Rune. “Sunrise? How will we get back in time?”
“We will meet Tony at the Big T truck stop near Ketchum. Griss and I and the motorcycles rode in the back of the van with Tony driving until sunset. The panel van would never had made it here in time.”
Thinking of some of the impossibly narrow roads I’d travelled to get here, I saw his point.
Several howls split the air. The hair on my arms waved in response.
“The wolves . . .” I said.
Rune released my hand and put his arm around me. Besides my grandmother, I’d never had much physical contact with anyone. I tried to relax and fight the warring impulses to pull away or put my arms around him. His touch was odd but comforting, foreign but like coming home. I really didn’t know him at all, but it was like there had been a place for him in my life all along.
He turned an unfocused gaze toward the dark forest.
“Yes,” he said. “It would seem our friends wish to return home. Time to go.”
He tossed my overnight bag to Griss to strap onto his Harley. Then Rune helped me stow my backpack in the motorcycle’s side bag and retrieved a helmet for me. I hesitated and then took it from him.
“I’ve never actually ridden.”
He swung a leg over the gleaming black machine and pulled it upright. He lifted my hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into my palm. His eyes glowed in the darkness and a slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth.
“I shall enjoy being your first.”
My face heated. I dropped the helmet and jumped when it hit the ground beside me. I yanked my hand from him and picked up the helmet wondering, between Dr. Sarkis and Rune, who posed the greatest threat.
Rune nodded to Bader. “My thanks to you, friend.”
Bader nodded at Rune then winked at me.
I pulled the helmet over my head and Rune helped me fasten it. He pulled off his leather jacket and held it out. I threaded my arms into the musky leather and cuddled into its buttery softness. I climbed onto the seat behind him and with a push of a button, the motorcycle roared to life. He guided my arms around his waist. The sensual feel of him through his tight black T-shirt combined with the vibration of the motorcycle between my legs sent spikes of energy through me and into him. He patted my hand and chuckled as the motorcycle leaped forward.