After Dawn, What Came Next

God, did Ray even know about his sister yet? Cole had called for backup and the Guardians were here prowling for a trail to follow. Why hadn’t she realized sooner what was happening? There were so many things she could have done and she had done nothing. Someone came up and laid a hand on her shoulder, guiding her back from Barbara. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Sebastian was Carter’s second. He was a tall, stoic looking man. Long and lean, pale blond with a ponytail curling and draping to the middle of his back and very kind. Claire let him guide her to the mouth of the alley where he deposited her into the path of the sunshine. She was grateful for the warmth on the sun on her skin, but it did nothing in the way of consolation to know that Barbara, Phoenix, or Danni might never feel that warmth again. “Whose fault was it then?”

Sebastian had the little wolf right where he wanted her. The brat pack was on the verge of officially dissolving. Their ranks were divided and further splintering. Gathering up the pieces he needed would be child’s play now. A part of him hated playing both sides. He would rather salvage his integrity than continue with this ruse. But, things had to happen in a certain order. He had two of the wolves in his possession. Cat would come of her own free will. She would try to save them and she would fail. Her failure though would be his success and the last piece would fall into place.

It would take time to breed the humans and the wolves into submission. But, time was all a vampire had. He would need to rally his brethren to his side. Show them the truth that had been hidden from them for so very long. He had thought on it long and hard. Humanity was about to have its last day in the sun. The day would at last belong to the vampire. Through his natural children he would change history. They would be presidents, rulers of nations, and they would destroy the human race.

The wolves had a place in this new world of his. He had watched Cat carefully. She needed blood to survive. So would his offspring. The wolves would provide it. Vampires would no longer have to rely on humanity to supply that particular need.

He had tried to make Starr happy. For so long she had wanted children. They had tried. The things they had created were demented, twisted, eternal children. Adults trapped in a child’s weak body. It wouldn’t have had to be this way. He wouldn’t have been forced to come to such conclusions as he had come to, if the Great Father had shared the gift. One child, just one was all Starr wanted. Sebastian had appealed to the Great Father and been shown to the door. Well, this time it was going to go his way…as soon as he got his hands on Cat. Starr would have the baby she had always wanted. “It’s Carter’s fault, of course. He failed to see to your friends’ safety. The fault is his and it is mine and it rests on the shoulders of the Guardians.”

Claire froze where she stood. To hear a second betray his leader…what did that mean? Did Sebastian really believe what he had said? One look at the expression on his face told her that he did. But, if that were so what did he have to gain in staying by Carter’s side? “That’s a lie. We protect our own.”

“Do you now?” Sebastian glanced at Barbara and raised a brow at Claire. “Really.” He had left Barbara behind for the simple reason that her half human blood was too dilute to be of any use to him. She didn’t carry the magic within her that the full- blooded wolves did. But, she might still be of some value. She was stronger after all than he had anticipated. He had thought the tranquilizer dart would do its job and kill her. It hadn’t. And what a lucky thing that was turning out to be.

Barbara was growing cold again and her skin taking on a sickly grayish pallor. Her breathing was ragged and shallow and she had slipped into unconsciousness again. Cole kept his fingertips pressed to her neck, counting the staggering pulse. He could hear her heart beating in a rhythm fast then slow. He had tried to feed her his blood again and she had rejected it. A trickle of red stained the corners of her mouth. He didn’t know what to do, but one thing was for certain. She wasn’t going to die on his watch no matter what it took. “David, will you try.”

David thought they should take their chances and get Barbara to the nearest emergency room. Nobody else seemed to agree with that. Morning traffic was a bear and a car was coming to pick them up. Getting Barbara out of the alley unnoticed was going to be a miracle in and of itself. The Guardians were working on it. Under the guise of a city road crew doing repairs they had managed to clear the sidewalks and the block. The area was quarantined off. Gas leak…it worked every time.

He crouched beside Barbara and vowed then and there to rip whoever was responsible for this limb from limb. Every vampire had been where Barbara was. Hovering between life and death, the threads binding them to the world of the living growing more and more frayed with every heartbeat. The toxins in her blood were attacking her human side and effectively severing the ties that held her earthbound. Her wolf side was battling for her life, still trapping her here. But, it was just a matter of time before one side or the other won. Blood wouldn’t help her. She needed her wolf. The magic that was both natural and supernatural to pull her back.

David massaged her throat and eased her mouth open with his thumb. He didn’t hesitate to score his wrist with his fangs and bring the bleeding flesh to Barbara’s slack lips. The blood rolled from the punctures in his wrist and into Barbara’s mouth. He coaxed her to swallow, but his blood dribbled down her chin. He tried harder, pumping his fingers to keep the blood flowing and massaging her throat faster with his fingertips. “Barbara, if you want to live you’re going to have to help us out here.”

Cole did the only thing he could. Supporting Barbara’s weight with his arm he fumbled with his phone. They were running out of options and he didn’t want to consider the only alternative they had. He would do it if he had to. He would turn her if there were no other way. He didn’t want to take her life away and give her another one in its place. He didn’t want to consider all the things he would rob her of…all the things he had willingly given up to become what he was. Maybe, he didn’t have to take them away from her. Maybe, there was another way.

Barbara was a daddy’s girl. If there were anyone she would listen to, anyone who could keep her on the physical plane, it was her father. “Thomas, talk to your baby girl. Call her back. Keep her with us.”

Barbara had never seen her other half before. Her wolf was a splendid creature. She was beautiful. Black as night, her ears and tail tipped with silvery fur as bright as moonlight. The dream was a wonderful one. She was in a quiet and peaceful place. A flat meadow drenched with sunshine and spotted with bright orange tiger lilies in the tall grass. She couldn’t remember how she had ended up here and it was getting easier and easier to forget the life that was waiting for her when she opened her eyes.

She didn’t want the dream to end and she didn’t want to think about what it meant that she was seeing her wolf outside of her body. She was dead and didn’t that bite. There were so many things she hadn’t gotten to do. Stuff like falling in love for the first time, going to Disneyland, body surfing in the ocean, having babies lots and lots of babies, learning to crochet. The thought of all the things on her list of to dos that she hadn’t done brought a wave of sadness crashing down around her.

Great grandpa Mack was here. The thought of finally getting to see him again had her running in what she thought was the direction of the Great River. For the first five years of her life she had Great grandpa Mack to herself then her brothers and sisters came and she had been forced to share him. There were so many people she had missed that she would get to see. Leigh. Great grandpa Mack. And other people she had never met but wanted to. Her grandpa. Lucien the warrior. The Prophet. Sure she was leaving people behind that she loved and cared about, but she’d get to see them again someday.

She came to the banks of the river. The round smooth stones should be cold and biting into the tender soles of her feet, but they didn’t. She could have been walking on a cloud of feathers for all the pain she felt. On the other side of the river she could see Great Grandpa Mack. She was happy to see him, but he didn’t look happy to see her. He didn’t want her here yet. Would he scold her for being dead? Surely not. It wasn’t like it was her fault she was dead. Speaking of that, how did she die in the first place? She had been walking home with Phoenix and Danni and…and. She couldn’t remember. Something had happened. Something bad. Something she had to tell everyone about.

Barbara plopped down onto her butt and thought about that. What was she supposed to remember? Her wolf came into a sit beside her. Wasn’t her wolf supposed to be nipping at her heels and chasing her across the river? She reached out and ran her hands through the thick fur and thought about that. The spirit wolves were supposed to make sure the dead stayed here and the living didn’t end up here by accident. Could you even be accidentally dead? Die by accident, sure, but accidentally dead when you weren’t supposed to be?

Barbara could feel the tug of her body pulling her back. So, she wasn’t dead or at least wasn’t supposed to be. She could hear voices calling her back, begging with her to open her eyes. She wanted to stay here with Great Grandpa Mack. Here left no room for argument, indecision, or doubt. But, there…was life and the crazy roller coaster ride that came along with living it. Life was hard and death by comparison seemed so simple. “Barbara Eloise Sterling! You get your butt back here right now!”

The voice was urgent and demanding. The tone of it promised punishment if she didn’t do what it said. No one ever called her by her full name. Ever. No one except for one person…her dad and when he took that tone with her it meant she was in big, big trouble. She was too old to ground or be sent to bed without supper. Besides, she was dead or pretty close to it. How could she possibly be in trouble for that? “Dad?”

Thomas gripped the phone in his fist. He battled with the pangs of guilt for yelling at Barbara. Jan was packing up. The brothers would be here any minute to take them to the city. He didn’t like taking Jan into danger, but if truth were told she was certainly better equipped to handle any trouble than he was. They had to get there in time to save Barbara’s life. He didn’t know all the details, but he knew enough from the tone of Cole’s voice. His baby girl was dying. “Barbara Eloise…you do what I say! You come home right now young lady. Don’t you think for one second I can’t punish you! You live, damn it! I won’t accept anything less.”

“It’s working, Thomas!” Cole shouted. Barbara had locked onto David’s wrist with the veracity of a hungry piranha. She was drinking and her color improving. He winced at the force behind Thomas’s words. He didn’t know the usually mild mannered and almost tooth achingly polite physician had it in him. Thomas cursed and he threatened and he promised a list of punishments that were capable of having any kid pissing in his drawers at the idea of them. Barbara was hardly a little girl, but Thomas had managed to reach the part of her that still lived within the depths of her psyche.

Cole would have snickered at some of the ways Thomas threatened to punish Barbara if the situation hadn’t been so dire. A month without ice cream? That was scary stuff. It reminded him a little of Bill his stepfather. He still felt the pang of loss. Odd considering how many years he had hated the man before they had finally made peace with one another. His own dad had never played the parent role. Not really. Cole had been an adult, or at least he had operated under the delusion that he was one, when he and his father finally buried the hatchet and actually forged a relationship with one another.

Maggie’s parents were gone. His mom would be gone someday and so would Thomas. His dad and Candy would pass away. And all of it was going to happen sooner rather than later. Megan had lost her mother. She had returned to HQ and was her usual efficient self, but everyone could see it, the pain of recent loss and her scrambling to process it. It wasn’t easy to let someone you loved go. But, maybe it was better than exchanging their lives for this…this life that he had…as a trade to keep them with you.

Strong and steady, Barbara’s pulse thundered against his fingertips. She wasn’t out of the woods yet. The drugs were still taking quite a toll on her body. But, she was going to live.

Barbara’s wolf snapped back into her body and she felt herself careening down into her physical shell. She had always hated it when her dad yelled at her. Nobody would have believed it if she told them that Thomas Sterling MD had one hell of a temper. His temper was like a volcano, dormant until it erupted all over the place. He had unleashed his fury on her and it had been enough for her to force herself to live. Only if it were for no other reason than she would wake up and give him a piece of her mind.

David finally managed to wrench his wrist out of Barbara’s grip. She had almost taken too much. He would have gladly given every drop he had to save her life. Weak and woozy, it had come a little too close to that. Thomas had stopped brow beating his daughter and David could hear him sobbing in gratitude on the other end of the line.

No parent should out live his child and no child should ever have to bury his parent. But, the universe and the laws of nature didn’t give a damn about what he thought. David had no family left. He was an orphan. His parents had died and his sister was dead. There was nobody but he and Nora and this rag tag group of paranormals he called friends. He had saved Barbara’s life, but he would never collect on the debt she owed him. It was enough that she would live. But, damn it, if she ever wasted one second of the life he had returned to her. He would kick her ass.

Jan had gone into nurse mode. She had pushed aside her personal feelings and gone to that headspace she went to when shit went critical. She packed supplies and shoved the bag into John Mark’s hands. She latched onto Thomas’s sleeve and dragged him to the front door. His heart was beating a million miles an hour. Not something a man his age needed. But, then again, the Sterlings were made of stronger stuff than most. Barbara was every bit as stubborn as her father. She rattled off a list of instructions to her youngest and shoved Thomas into the idling SUV before climbing in behind him. Everything was going to be fine. How could it not be with her husband on the case? Thomas had never accepted defeat and never would.

Barbara struggled to get her brain back in the game. The world was fuzzy and blinked in and out of focus. Her limbs felt too heavy to move. Just the effort of breathing seemed like too much to endure. Cole clutched her to his chest, gently coaxing her to do nothing more than simply stay alive. She could sense Claire pacing in the background, leaking paranormal energy all over the place. Barbara latched onto that preternatural force that was the heart and soul of every wolf and drew it deep into her. She needed to tell them what had happened. The details weren’t there, but something was. Mouthing the word she found the breath to finally speak it. “Sebastian.”



















































Chapter 67

“I thought you said you knew how to make pancakes?” Cat teased. She sat perched on the edge of the granite countertop eying Christian with no small measure of speculation. The first batch had already ended up in the garbage. The stink of burning batter still reeked in the air. He was working diligently to whip up a second batch of batter. The entire kitchen was covered in a sprinkling of flour and wet, gloppy splatters of goo. She had sat on countertops most of her life and watched Anna make pancakes and there had never been a mess quite like the one Christian had managed to make. She had not lifted a finger to help him and even she had smears of flour on her cheeks.

“I do. When I said I’d make the pancakes I was thinking of the microwave variety. I didn’t think I’d actually have to make make them. I mean, c’mon they didn’t even have a box of pancake mix in the kitchen,” Christian retorted. He had found an old dusty cookbook stashed back behind a bag of flour in the cupboard. “I followed the recipe to the letter.”

Cat eyed the glob of batter scorching in the skillet and batted her lashes at Christian. She sighed and hopped off the counter. Someone was going to have to salvage breakfast or they were going to starve to death. Rummaging through the cupboards she found an old box of cereal. “I think the recipe leaves something to be desired.” She poured two bowls of cereal from the box and plopped one of the bowls in front of Christian and took the other for herself.

Christian splashed some milk on Cat’s cereal and added some milk to his own. Brandishing two spoons he handed one to Cat and dug in. “See, I knew you could cook.”

Cat snickered and rolled her eyes. “It’s a bowl of cereal. Does that count?”

Christian frowned at the mess he had made of the kitchen and the steaming burned pancake in the pan. In his world, you ate so you didn’t die. Everything else, such as taste and food artistry, was inconsequential. “To me, it does.”

Cat poked her spoon at the soggy flakes. She hated cold cereal, but it was better than burned pancakes. She mustered the will to scoop up a bite. The spoon was halfway to her mouth when Carter showed up in the kitchen. One look at the expression on his face and the bowl was tumbling out of her fingers and shattering into bits of porcelain, milk, and soggy corn flakes. “What happened?”

Tom awoke to one hell of a skull pounding headache. He set the empty decanter of whiskey on the bedside table and swallowed down the soured stomach contents scorching the back of his throat. Just the smell of whiskey made him want to hurl and he was probably going to at some point. Pushing up into a sit, he sat there on the edge of the bed and rested his head in his palms. He remembered things about last night he wished he didn’t. The scabs from where he had cut his fingers on the broken shards of the vase in the hallway had healed. The brown crusty edges curling to reveal the pink new skin underneath. Gingerly, he tore the scabs free and flicked them off the tips of his fingers. Tiny droplets of blood welled to fill in the shallow crevices left behind in the torn skin. He wiped the blood on his jeans and used the pain to focus his addled hung over mind.

He didn’t want to think about the things he had done and said last night. He didn’t want to remember the feel of Ray’s breath slowly exhaling across his face or the heat of the kiss on his lips. Ray was his best friend. Hell, when it came down to it, his only real friend. The others were loyal to him because of Cat. They were loyal to one another because of her and for no other reason.

With Ray it was…had been different. Ray was his friend because he wanted to be his friend. Tom groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. Why in the hell had he let Ray kiss him? He knew how Ray felt about him. Allowing that kiss to happen sure as hell hadn’t been a smart thing to do. Responding to it hadn’t shown high marks in the intelligence department either. He wondered how far things might have gone if he hadn’t been so drunk. Ray was an honorable man. No matter how badly Ray wanted him he wouldn’t have taken advantage of the situation.