After Dawn, What Came Next

Cole exhaled a breath of sheer relief. He had managed to get the collar over Claire’s wolf’s head without losing a finger or two in the process. He had no idea why Claire suddenly wanted to pretend to be a dog or exactly what they were doing out here at seven in the morning. He would have asked, but Claire simply seemed too impatient and bordered on urgent. Maybe, she just needed to slide into her wolf form for a while and this was the safest way to do it and not get caught. But, as intent as she was to find a scent, he doubted it was just a case of nature calling.

David kept his distance from Cole and the wolf. The wolf was intent on a scent. He caught it too. The mix of perfume and she wolf ripe on the air that told him pack had been here. He wasn’t as good at following a scent trail as Cole was and Cole’s abilities were nowhere near Claire’s in her wolf form. Not even Patrick could track a scent as well as a wolf. Claire stopped every dozen yards or so to mark her path. It would have been awkward or maybe even comical, something to tease her about later, if she hadn’t seemed so urgent about it. He caught another scent on the early morning breeze and it wasn’t exhaust or humanity. It was vampire, a Guardian, one of their own.

Cole had already come to the conclusion long before Claire’s wolf or David had. The minute he caught the smell of vampire blending in with the musky undertone of wolf, he put two and two together and had come up with an answer he didn’t like. At the first hint of blood, wolf blood, on the morning breeze, jogging to keep up with Claire’s wolf and with David on his heels, he pulled out his phone and did something he hadn’t done in over twenty-five years. He called for backup.





Chapter 66

“Ow! Would you stop that!” Phoenix jerked away her arm and growled at the brat gnawing on her inner arm. Brat? The thing trying to suck on her like she was a slurpy straw was nothing more than a little girl. A little girl? Yeah, an adorable curly haired, blonde, blue eyed angel with a very sharp pair of fangs and a laugh like the sound of wind chimes tinkling in a gentle summer breeze. What the hell? Phoenix sat up in the bed and wished like hell she hadn’t. Her head spun and the wave of nausea threatening to pull her back under had her going horizontal on the pillow real quick.

The little girl ran off in a cloud of pink taffeta, white lace, frilly skirts, and blonde hair. That creepy laugh echoed behind her retreat sending a series of chills up Phoenix’s spine. More carefully this time, she tried the whole sitting up thing again. A trickle of blood oozed from twin puncture marks on her inner elbow. Phoenix really, really didn’t want to put too much thought into the wound. She snatched the corner of the sheet and pressed it to her arm wincing from the pain as she applied pressure to stop the bleeding.

She blinked and tried to make sense of where she was. Danni was stretched out face down and limbs askew on the bed beside her. Breathing…she was still breathing. That was good. Right? The bedroom where they had been stashed looked like something straight out of Jayne Eyre. Lacy curtains covered the windows. The heavy oak furniture had plenty of curlicues and was polished to a gleam in the false light streaming through the curtains. False light? The walls were papered in a girly pattern of ivory and pink dainty flowers complete with frilly bows. The rug on the floor took up the entire room and was as Victorian or was it Edwardian as everything else in the room. The ornate old-fashioned double doors were closed tightly and Phoenix debated if she really wanted to know what was on the other side.

What the hell had happened? She rested her throbbing forehead on the palm of her hand and tried to piece it together. They had been at a club, sipping watered down drinks and sampling the human version of nightlife. Danni had gotten bored and the three of them had decided to call it a night. They were walking home and…Everything else was a blank. Trying to remember only gave her a worse headache than she already had.

Phoenix took stock of the situation. Her father had always told her that when nothing else made sense to focus on what pieces she did know. She had been stripped of her weapons and her clothes. She hoped whoever had had that particular privilege had enjoyed it. She wore a silky nightgown with a high neck and capped sleeves, utterly feminine and totally sheer. There were no windows that she could tell. Her wolf knew the difference between the glow of electricity and sunlight. She didn’t know how long she had been out cold. She sensed it was morning. Which morning, whether it had turned into tomorrow or next week, she didn’t know. The sweet reek of vampires filled her sinuses and that was never a good thing.

Phoenix didn’t know what to make of the little hell’s angel that had been snacking on her arm. A child vampire? Who would do something so cruel to a child? Vampires aged, maybe a day for every decade that passed. That little girl could well be over a century old, maybe more. She wouldn’t grow up…for a millennium. Whoever had snatched her and Danni up was pretty confident they wouldn’t put up too much of a fuss. They were unarmed, of course, but no one had bothered to bind their limbs. That would prove to be a very fatal mistake when she finally figured out whom to kill.

She checked Danni’s pulse. The thumping beneath the pads of her fingertips was nice and regular and strong as a drumbeat. Should she wake her or let her sleep it off? Whoever had captured them didn’t seem to be in any hurry to make himself known. Given the agony in her head, it might be best to let Danni sleep as long as she could. Weapons were a no go. Together they might be able to bust up a piece of furniture and form a crude means of defending themselves, but what was the point when they had their wolves to rely on?

Phoenix tried to call the energy of her wolf to her and felt the glimmer of magic, but no real force behind it. Whatever had been used to drug them had an effect on their wolves and Phoenix’s wolf was out cold. She would come back to her. She had to. Squashing down the urge to panic, Phoenix focused on trying to remember. They had been walking home and…and? There were more urgent needs than a stroll down memory lane, for now. First and foremost, figuring out exactly where were they and how were they going to get out?

Without answers to fill in all the blanks, Phoenix was back to the problem of weapons. Someone had replaced the mirror in the regency period dresser with a painting. She might have considered the painting art if it weren’t for the fact that she was a captive viewer. Her father had taught her that with a little creativity anything could be used as a weapon though.

Glass from the mirror was out of the question. The curtains were thin and fragile things made of dainty lace…could make a garrote out of them assuming her captives were stupid enough to let her get within reach. The furniture was heavy and dense, made of dark English oak. If they could work loose a table leg or some part of the massive headboard, it would definitely do some damage. But, vampires healed miraculously fast and it took a lot not only to take one down but to also keep him down.

Her head was fuzzy and not even her mind made a reliable weapon. She didn’t have her wolf to call on yet and with as wobbly as her legs were she wasn’t much use without a little preternatural assistance from the other side. She was for the first time in her life defenseless. The idea of being a victim had her palms sweating and her heart pounding. Her father didn’t raise victims. Phoenix would not allow herself to think in terms like that. She would figure something out…no, she and Danni would figure something out together.

Luckily, the vampires hadn’t forgotten a wolf’s more human needs and there was a bathroom just off the luxurious bedroom. On unsteady legs Phoenix eased off the bed. Her head swum and the world warbled in and out of focus. She wanted to curl up into a ball in the middle of the floor until whatever it was worked its way out of her system. She had no doubt she had been drugged. The signs of some sort of a toxin flowing through her veins were too many to ignore. Holding her breath she tried the faucet and exhaled in relief when cool water poured from the tap. Water would help to clear her head and flush whatever it was out of her body.

Had someone put something in their drinks? Seemed unlikely. The bar was full of humans laughing and dancing and in general having a good drunken time of it. The three of them had been so careful. None of them had felt any different or seen anything unusual. Sure, the vampire’s scent was in the air. But, that had been expected with all the Guardians in the neighborhood. Someone would have been assigned to patrol that part of town and of course, would have been curious enough about them to track their scent. What was it? What was she missing? They had been walking back to Guardian HQ and? What?

Gasping she twisted and contorted her spine to look at the tender spot at her right hip. The bruising was dark purple and beginning to fade to a sickly shade of greenish yellow. She could still make out the vague scab of a puncture wound in the center of the bruising. Fuck yeah they’d been drugged! Phoenix winced as she spotted another telltale area of bruising on her left bicep and another on her left thigh. She’d been hit with tranquilizer darts. Three hits…it had taken three hits to knock her out.

Danni was still asleep. How many hits had she taken? What about Barbara? She was half human and…oh my GOD! If Barbara had been hit with just one dart her human system might not have been able to withstand the drugs. One hit might kill her. More than one dart shooting poison into Barbar’s system definitely would.

Phoenix was suddenly cold and shaking like a leaf. Swallowing back the bile rising in her throat she sank down onto the cool tile floor and cupped her head in her hands. She couldn’t remember anything. Barbara wasn’t here, wherever here was. Phoenix couldn’t scent anything but the vampires and even theirs weren’t scents she recognized. Barbara wasn’t here! Was she dead?

Phoenix couldn’t force her limbs to move. The tile was cold and hard under her butt. Her hands shaking and heart racing, eyes closed she tried to remember. Her stomach was in the process of rebelling. Trying to evacuate everything she’d eaten in her entire life up her esophagus. She swallowed rapidly and blinked away the tearing in her eyes brought on by the spasms in her belly. Cat. What would have happened if Cat had been with them? She couldn’t think about that. It was enough to thank God it was just she and Danni that had been captured and Barbara…dead was better than what might be in store for them.

Danni hurt from head to toe. She kicked at whatever was wrapped around her calves and found herself grappling with a gauzy nightgown. Who in the hell would be crazy enough to put her in this get up? More importantly, how out of it was she to let them? If this was some kind of a joke Cat had played on her, dressing her up like some kind of a virgin on her wedding night. She was going to kick Cat’s ass. The nightgown was lace and silk, a flimsy very girly, sheer number that Danni would have been caught dead in on a bet.

She blinked against the sunlight streaming through the lace curtains and dragged the pillow over her head. She must have gotten drunk last night, very drunk, but the thing was. She didn’t remember drinking more than a couple of bad, watered down, expensive mixed drinks. It took a hell of a lot more than that to make a wolf with her metabolism drunk off her ass.

Danni stiffened and slowly pulled the pillow away from her face. Since when did the Guardians outfit their sleeping quarters like something out of a bad romance novel? Most vampires preferred dark as in not a stray beam of sunlight. Blinking, she stared at the window and finally, her sense of reason came back online. That wasn’t real sunlight streaming through the curtains. The window wasn’t even a real window. Stifling a groan, she sat up and frowned at her surroundings. The bed was a monster with a looming, carved headboard and footboard. The bedspread was lace and very frilly. Everything was uber feminine and something about it wasn’t right. This couldn’t be Guardian HQ, but if she wasn’t there. Where was she?

Her tongue felt as if it was glued to the roof of her mouth. Her thoughts were lazy and disjointed, confused and colliding off one another like rubber balls off walls. She sure as hell didn’t remember drinking that much. The last thing she did remember was everyone agreeing to call it a night and walking home. Did they make it home? She remembered walking and the sudden foreboding sense that they were in danger right before… “Shit!”

“Danni?”

“Phoenix, you ok?” Danni rolled off the bed and landed on her knees on the floor as her legs gave way and refused to bear her weight. Not one to settle for staying put, she began crawling toward the sound of Phoenix’s voice.

“Yeah…I’m ok. You?”

“Just checking out the rug. Nice place someone’s got here. Do you happen to know where here is?” Danni slid into a sit in the doorway between the bedroom and the bathroom. Phoenix was dressed in a getup similar to hers and from the looks of her not in any better shape than she was.

“Not a clue.” Phoenix refused to shake her head. She kept her eyes focused on the tile pattern on the floor. Phoenix had a pattern of bruises and pockmark scars on her upper arm. Phoenix counted four of them and another two on Danni’s thigh. Six hits with a tranquilizer dart. Six. “Do you know what or who happened?”

“No, but I’m starting to get the gist of it. How long have I been out?” The cool wooden doorframe felt good against her heated skin. Her body was beginning to burn off the effects of the darts and her mind was starting to come into focus.

“Not long enough.”

“Barbara?”

Phoenix really didn’t want to contemplate that question. She didn’t want to tell Danni about her pint sized snacker. She didn’t want to admit the shit storm of a situation they were in. Luckily, she didn’t have to. The door opened and in came two men. If the shit wasn’t hitting the fan, she could have appreciated the appearance of two of the most gorgeous twin males she had ever seen, with the exception of Tracker and Catcher, and of course, the trays loaded down with food they carried in their hands.

“Good morning, wife,” one of the men said.

“Good morning, wife,” the other male mimicked.

“Wife?” Danni and Phoenix said in unison.

Barbara had the world’s worst hangover. Every part of her felt bruised and battered as if someone had tap danced on her head with three inch spiked heels. What in the hell was going on? The world was fuzzy and she couldn’t quite seem to make her eyes focus on the worried face of the male hovering over her. Beneath her was the hard scrub of pavement and pebbles of gravel against her back. Why wasn’t she in bed? Why did the air smell terrible with the tang of rotten garbage? Why in the hell was she freezing when she should be warm and cozy tucked in bed with the covers up to her chin?

She scrambled to sit up. A pair of helpful hands gently aided her by the shoulders with the process of getting upright. Down was better than up. The world careened in spirals and her stomach…her stomach wasn’t on board with that particular plan. She rolled onto her side and narrowly missed puking on the owner of those helpful hands. Flushed with shame and sweating from the siege of nausea, she mumbled something that might have been an apology and doubled into a fetal position as her stomach revolted.

Cole could hear the Guardians scrambling into position. Vampires prowled the rooftops and blended in with the human flow of foot traffic tramping up and down the sidewalks. In the depths of the narrow alley where they had found…well, not they but Claire’s wolf had found Barbara. They were out of view and neatly tucked behind a dumpster in the back of the alley.

Barbara had been out cold and her chest rising and falling in an alarmingly slow, labored haphazard rhythm. Cole hadn’t known what else to do so he had done the vampire version of first aid and given her a drop or two of blood from his fingertip. She was still pale and very confused, but coming around. After heaving her guts all over the pavement, she looked a little better, but marginally. Cole never thought he’d miss Doc, but he wished the old shaman was here now.

He knew shit about medicine other than all bleeding stopped eventually. His blood had done the trick. Barbara had gone from impersonating a CPR manikin to breathing nice and even. Clothing was scattered all over the alley. Tattered and torn into nothing but heaps of rags fluttering in the morning breeze, they gave him some consolation to know that whatever had happened hadn’t went down without one hell of a fight.

David pulled off his jacket and draped it over Barbara. Her clothes were hanging by threads and covering nothing. He crouched onto his haunches and gingerly fingered the dart. She had been in the process of shifting when the tranquilizer dart hit her. That was probably the only thing that saved her life. The alley was littered with the things. He counted ten in all. Some of the tips stained with blood and others having failed to hit their mark, were not. He was ready to hit the trail…to hit something.

Focusing on his anger wouldn’t help. He needed to scour this alley for clues. What had happened? Who had done it? The why he could already guess. Wolf blood had a particular scent. The smell of it and the promise of life it contained would drive even the most stoic of vampires bat shit insane. Wolf blood was like vampire crack. He had his own theories about how Cat had come to be. Vampires were sterile and so had the Great Father been until his lovely Queen Tala, a wolf by birth, came into the picture. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had happened. Who wouldn’t risk the wrath of the Guardians and the brotherhood and the pack for the promise of bringing a live child into the world?

Phoenix and Danni were missing. David gathered up the tattered remnants of the clothing they had last worn and tucked them into a bag. There were tire tracks and trails in the alley as if someone had been dragged and carted off somewhere. There were paw prints, big paw prints tamped down into the mud. Tufts of fur drifted like dandelion fluff in the air. And blood, the blood he had scented wasn’t only that of the wolf or of Barbara’s half human blood, but it was also vampire blood too.

David was glad Phoenix or maybe, Danni had managed to take a bite out of whoever did this to them. There was some comfort in that small bit of justice served. He pinned Cole with a look…a look that said here we go again and went back to his evidence collecting.

Cole swabbed the hair out of Barbara’s eyes and gave her a gentle shake. She was starting to drift off again. She was half human and her body was not even beginning to recover from the effects of whatever drugs had been pumped into her system. He needed her awake until someone came who had a clue of what to do for her. Maybe, she needed another donation from him? Maybe, she needed blood from someone stronger than he was? Maybe, she needed more time to clear the drugs? An IV? God, he didn’t know how to help her. But, he had the instinctive knowledge that if she fell asleep. She would slip away. “Come on, help me out here. Stay awake, please stay awake.”

“We’ve got to get her back to HQ,” David said. “It’s her only chance.”

Claire snapped back into her body. She was naked and shivering in the back of the alley. Sheltered by a dumpster and scrambling into her clothes, she shook off the last remnants of her wolf. Regret slammed her in the pit of her stomach. If she had gone instead of playing good girl and reading a book, she might have been able to help. Danni and Phoenix might still be here or better yet, tucked in their beds. Barbara wouldn’t be dying in Cole’s arms. Everything would have been all right.