As usual, when Bree thought of her brother, her eyes filled with instant tears. Not now. She had to drive, to see the road.
She also had to get them to ground somewhere. Bree couldn’t keep this speed without attracting every highway patrol in the county, but if she slowed down, the guys chasing Seamus might find them.
Nothing for it.
“I’ll take you to a Shiftertown,” she said. “Which one are you from?”
Seamus’s gaze was on her again, unrelenting. “No. No Shiftertowns. Just put enough distance between us and them.” He had a hand on the door handle, as though contemplating when it would be safe to jump out. What the hell?
Something bad was going on here. At the same time, Seamus was a Shifter, and those guys chasing him were ready to shoot him. He’d be safe in a Shiftertown, where hunters didn’t dare go—they weren’t allowed to bother Collared Shifters. But if Seamus refused to go to a Shiftertown, then where?
“I have an idea,” Bree said. “I know a place you can lie low. Not the best choice, but no one will think of looking for you there.”
Seamus didn’t answer. He glanced behind them again, and his body finally relaxed. The headlights were gone.
Bree turned off the extra juice. The truck slowed abruptly, rattling and bumping. Remy had taught her how to drive a rod though, and Bree maneuvered the truck to handle the sudden change in speed. She took the next corner, heading off into the darkness of the back roads.
“Where?” Seamus asked, his voice harsh.
“You’ll see,” Bree answered. “I’m just telling you now, though—you get to explain why you threw away my cell phone while I was talking to my mom.”
Chapter Two
The young woman took Seamus to a house comfortably far away from any Shiftertown. Seamus wasn’t sure exactly where he was, but he could sense that no Shifters were nearby, nor had they ever been there.
The horizon showed a smudge of light—reflected light of a city—but the half-mile drive the young woman with smeared makeup turned up was bathed in darkness.
That is until she pulled the truck to a stop. Instantly, flood lights burst on to surround the truck, the young woman, a white painted house, and a white-fenced flower garden in harsh yellow light.
The screen door of the house’s porch banged open and a woman cradling a slim shotgun emerged. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” the younger woman said in irritation as she slid from the pickup’s cab. “Who do you think, in this truck? Put that away before you hurt yourself.”
The shotgun’s barrel moved to Seamus. “Who’s he?”
“A Shifter,” the young woman continued as she approached the house. “This is Seamus. He needs a place to crash. Geez, Mom, would you turn off the lights? It’s like Las Vegas out here.”
The woman on the porch had short, very blond hair that stuck up in points, and wore a colorful, flowing garment that reached her feet. She competently held the gun, the eyes over it a hard blue. A woman who’d seen tough times. Her daughter’s short, curly hair was a golden wheat color, so it was likely the mother’s blond was not natural. Mother and daughter shared the same eyes, but the daughter’s look was sad rather than hard.
The younger woman was nicely shaped, with curves outlined by her short leather skirt and a white top that bared plump shoulders and a modest amount of cleavage. The young woman carried a cat’s ears headband and had painted slanted points to her eyes and whiskers around her nose and mouth.
Shifter groupies liked to dress like this, so Seamus had heard, though he’d not encountered groupies much before tonight. Kendrick’s Shifters had to be careful what bars they went to, and Seamus had always been too busy with tracker duties to go out much.
The young woman walked confidently up to the porch, took the shotgun out of the older woman’s hands, and uncocked it.
“Come on in, Seamus,” she called back to him, her eyes meeting his in a sweep of blue. “My name’s Bree, by the way, and this is my mom. You can call her Nadine, or you can call her Mom. Whichever is most comfortable for you.”
Bree’s mother scowled. “None of your lip, Bree. You should have told me you were bringing home a guest. I would have fixed something.”
Bree ignored her to wave Seamus to follow. “No one chasing you with guns here. At least, not anymore.” She disappeared inside through the screened porch.
Seamus hesitated. He didn’t believe that Bree or her mother were a danger, at least none that he could immediately perceive. But he could bring them danger. More than they understood.
Nadine called after her daughter. “Why did you hang up on me out there? I was talking to you.”
“Ask him,” Bree said from somewhere inside the house.
Nadine snapped around to Seamus and gave him an impatient look. “Are you coming in, or what? If I leave this door open any longer, every bug in Texas will get inside. And damn, they have a lot of bugs out here.”
“Like they don’t in Louisiana?” Bree’s voice floated out. She said the state’s name with all the vowels slurred, like Looziana.
Nadine reached one hand inside the house. The lights died, leaving only a small glow over the door.
Seamus’s tension eased—he preferred to be in darkness as the observer, not lit up and observed. He made his decision, quickly skimmed up the porch stairs past Nadine, and entered the house.
Nadine banged the screen door shut. “’Bout time you made up your mind. Bree, did you pick up my cigarettes?”
A sound of annoyance and running water came from behind a door under a flight of stairs. “No, I did not get your cigarettes. I was busy!”
“Busy chasing Shifters?” Nadine looked Seamus up and down, her hands on her hips. “I see you caught one. Bree, you are not having sex with him in your bedroom. You hear me?” Nadine broke off. “What’s he doing?”
Seamus was moving through the house, checking everything. A painfully neat living room ran from front door to back, an alcove with a dining table lay behind the staircase, and a door in the dining area’s wall opened to a very large kitchen.
Another door in the kitchen led to the back yard. Seamus crossed the kitchen and opened the door to find all quiet outside, except for a striped cat who came pattering up the back porch’s two steps to Seamus as soon as he emerged.
The cat followed him inside, twining around his legs as he walked through the kitchen to the living room again. Cats liked Feline Shifters, and Seamus in particular.
Seamus walked past Nadine and started up the stairs as Bree emerged from the ground-floor bathroom, wiping her dripping face.
Nadine called after Seamus. “What did I just say? No Shifters in the bedrooms.”
“Leave him alone,” Bree said. “He’s walking his bounds.”
Seamus allowed himself to feel a touch of amusement. He was angry, scared shitless, and in pain, but this girl, Bree, was … interesting.
There was more to her than met the eye, that was certain. When he’d jumped into her truck, Bree had been terrified, but she’d quickly rallied into anger and then resourcefulness. She’d understood the danger the Shifter hunters posed, and she could think on her feet.
Upstairs Seamus found two bedrooms and a bathroom, each as neat as the rooms downstairs. The furniture was comfortable, not showy, but clean and tidy, the hardwood floors polished.
A square of ceiling on the landing likely led to an attic above. Seamus was tall enough to reach up and push the square aside to reveal a dark hole. No ladder was in sight, so Seamus leapt, caught the edges of the opening, and hoisted himself up and inside. The cat sat down on the landing and meowed.
The attic, unlike the rest of the house was dusty, dark, unused. Seamus could see well enough in the dim light, even without shifting to his wildcat, to discover what was up there.
Not much. Boxes smelling musty, pipes for the rest of the house, debris that looked as though it had been left over from the house’s last remodeling.
Seamus didn??
?t like the slightly acrid smell, so different from the clean house downstairs. He wondered why the two women hadn’t come up here and thrown away all this junk.
No men were in the house. Bree and her mother lived alone, and one of them smoked—a lot. Seamus wondered why humans loved inhaling toxic chemicals. He could see the bands of poison sliding into them and not coming out.
He slid back down through the hole, landing on his booted feet. Bree and her mother had joined the cat, three stares on Seamus as he straightened up and dusted off his hands on his jeans.
Bree’s eyes, now free of groupie makeup, were undisguised, soft, and blue. She looked him over, taking in the streaks of dirt on his arms, which hid the now-dried blood, his hair, which must be a mess, his face that had to be as filthy as the rest of him. His clothes kept her from seeing how hurt he was, which he would shut up about until he decided what to do.
Bree moved her scrutiny from him to the attic. “What’s up there? I haven’t had the chance to look.”
“Old stuff,” Seamus said. “You should have a clear out.”
“Ghosts,” Nadine put in decidedly. She had a cigarette in her mouth, a lighter clicking. “The place is haunted. You can hear them banging around up there at night. This house belonged to my uncle. When he died, we got a nice yard, a paid-for house, and ghosts.”
Bree rolled her eyes. “It’s not haunted. Birds get in through the vents.”
“Well, there’s something up there. What did you see, Shifter?”
“No ghosts,” Seamus said. “Not at the moment. We’re alone.”
Bree and her mother exchanged a glance. They were uncomfortable, uncertain of him, though not completely afraid.
Whoever he’d been fighting in the dark tonight had been so afraid of Seamus the terror had rolled over him in waves. Rage had flowed over him as well—or had that been his own? The fear as well? The remembered feel of terror and anger started to bring his darkness back, the lack of air, the blurring of his brain.
Seamus was suddenly exhausted, the pain making him weak. He needed to sleep, to heal—he didn’t know if he could trust these two to guard him when he did. Or even if they could.
Nadine took over. “Well, we are marching back downstairs. And you, young man, are going to tell us why you made Bree bring you here.”
“He didn’t …” Bree flipped her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Never mind. I need coffee. And I want to hear why those guys were chasing you too. Downstairs. Go.”
Seamus did not obey, but Bree brushed past him, filling him with a scent like violets. He turned his head to watch her go down, noticing the way her hips swayed under the leather skirt.
When he turned back, he found Nadine right under his nose. She blew out cigarette smoke, making his eyes screw up. Seamus held back a cough.
“I have my eye on you,” Nadine said severely. “You go easy on my girl. She’s grieving. If you hurt her in any way, I’ll shoot you through the heart.”
“Mom!” The exasperated word came up the stairs. “Leave him alone.”
The end of the cigarette glowed as Nadine took another pull. “You understand me?”
Seamus was too fatigued to argue, so he gave her a nod, turned away, and went downstairs after Bree. Nadine followed him. Closely. Her cloud of smoke engulfed him.
Seamus checked the ground floor again as Bree clanked things in the kitchen. The shotgun was nowhere in sight—Bree must have secured it. She’d known how to carry it safely, respectfully. Seamus hated guns, as most Shifters did, and he was glad that at least Bree wasn’t careless with it.
The front door was the most defensible—an intruder would have to navigate the porch’s screen door, the porch itself, and the main door in order to enter. Plenty of time for Seamus to hear them coming, to get the females to safety, to counterattack.
The floodlights had a motion sensor, Seamus discovered when he and the cat walked outside to check the truck and scan the grounds. Anyone approaching would be instantly seen.
All was quiet. A line of houses began to the west about a mile away, separated from this house by an empty field. The other three directions also held empty fields—one had what looked like a large, upright sign in the middle. Trees densely lined the far side of the field to the north, showing the presence of water, most likely a creek, one of the myriad of waterways in this area.
Seamus walked around the house to the back, wondering what the hell to do. He needed to make sure his people were safe, but he couldn’t risk leading anyone to them right now. He was too weak to fight, would be too slow to get them to another place. And he was running out of safe houses. At some point tonight, he’d simply fall over, and he needed to secure himself before then.
Who to trust? Could he trust anyone while waiting for Kendrick’s signal? He couldn’t risk revealing the wrong information to the wrong people.
The name Dylan Morrissey was talked about, but Dylan was a Collared Shifter, high in power. The Morrisseys captured rogue Shifters, he’d heard, brought them in, put Collars on them, tried to tame them if they were feral. Killed them if they couldn’t be tamed. No, the Morrisseys were not an option, especially when Seamus feared he might be going feral himself.
If he could get word to Kendrick … Seamus was one of Kendrick’s trackers—a fighter, guard, scout, and spy.
He had responsibilities, protocol to follow now that they’d had to go to ground. Keep his head down, protect those he was assigned to protect, stay sane and free, regroup. Standing procedure.
At all other times, standing procedure worked well. This time…
Seamus swallowed another grunt of pain and let himself in the kitchen door. This entrance was the most vulnerable, with no screen and only a small porch with steps leading to it. If he battered the stairs away, he decided, an enemy would have to jump or climb to get to the door, giving Seamus some advantage.
Bree and Nadine looked up from where Bree was setting coffee on the table. So many windows in this room, in the entire house. Too many places a shot could come through and injure those within. Bunkers were much safer.
Not that the bunker Seamus had been living in until recently hadn’t been breached by a Kodiak she-bear, a human soldier, and a crazy wolf Shifter. Hence, Seamus was on the run, cut off from his clan and leader, trying to guard those in his care and not go insane at the same time.
The coffee smelled good. The beverage was a human affectation Seamus had taken up with pleasure. He dropped into a chair, grabbed the cup, and poured the steaming brew down his throat.
Bree and Nadine watched him in alarm. Nadine was stubbing out her cigarette, the smoke thankfully dissipating.
Bree sat down across the table from Seamus and lifted her cup to her lips. Blue eyes flecked with green regarded him with interest. Seamus watched Bree’s red mouth touch the coffee cup, narrow to a pucker as she sipped, and then her tongue come out as she licked away a lingering drop.
Despite his pain, Seamus went tight. It had been a long time, this woman had rescued him, whether she’d meant to or not, and his progressing madness heightened all frenzy—mating as well as killing.
The pain wasn’t dampening his sudden need either. Seamus drained his cup, thumped it back to the table, and couldn’t stop a sound of discomfort. He needed to crawl away and sleep, heal.
“Are you hurt?” Bree was up and at his side, her eyes filled with concern.
“I’m Shifter,” Seamus said through his teeth. “I mend fast.”
“Let me see.” Bree’s top slid, letting him glimpse a pillow of breast as she bent over him. Wisps of her short hair brushed his cheek as her hand went unerringly to the place Seamus hurt most.
He couldn’t stop his gasp. Fighters and trackers couldn’t show weakness, even to the females of the pack. They had one job to do, and they’d go down doing it.
Bree managed to peel Seamus’s black shirt up to expose the dried blood and bruising on his ribs. “Shit,” she exclaimed, her eyes widening. “You didn’t menti
on you’d been shot.”
Chapter Three
Bree’s fingers went cold as she studied the small holes in Seamus’s skin, the blackened blood, the purple-black of the bruises. The way he’d moved getting into her truck, the way he’d wandered restlessly in and around her house had betrayed no pain or discomfort. Not until Seamus had started to relax had he showed any hurt.
Seamus’s hand curled to a fist as Bree pried the shirt away, but other than that, he breathed without a hitch, and the rest of his skin was smooth and whole, if a little pale from the wound.
The abs the shirt had clung to were hard and well-formed, an arrow of dark hair pointing to his belt buckle. He was a big man, as most Shifter males were, but he was more lithe, like a gymnast or acrobat. Old scars and one mottled chunk of skin gone from his right side in a long-ago injury told Bree he was a fighter. A soldier, like Remy.
A soldier who’d definitely taken a bullet tonight, or two, or three.
Bree’s mom was up, cigarettes abandoned. She bent over Seamus, gave the wound a glance, and rushed out of the kitchen, her muumuu fluttering.
“How long ago?” Bree asked.
Seamus was regarding her in quiet surprise. He’d probably thought she’d turn green and pass out at the sight of his blood. “Right before I found you and your truck.”
It was Bree’s turn to be surprised. “Seriously? This looks days old—but wait, you’re Shifter. You heal differently than we do.”
“Faster,” Seamus said. “Not much different. Healing is healing.” He winced. “It still fucking hurts.”
“I bet.” Bree touched his skin as close to the wound as she dared. “Mom’s getting her fix-up kit. We’ll get you taken care of.”
She heard Nadine clatter down the stairs, and in a moment, her mother was back, setting the big tackle box that was their first-aid kit on the table.
“How many bullets?” Nadine asked Seamus.
“Three.” Seamus’s voice was getting weaker. “And a few scatters of shot.”
He looked pretty good for someone who’d taken three bullets and some pellet. Bree kept stroking his side below the wound, liking the warm, taut feel of his skin.