“What the hell!” Luc swung his head in the direction of the shout. Six humans—Guardians, if their wealth of weapons was any indication—stood near the river, in the middle of what was about to be tooth-and-claw hell.
Luc stepped outside just as the two warg sides met. The Guardians sprang into action, sending crossbow bolts into the fray. But one wheeled toward Luc, pistol trained.
Luc’s only thought as the bullet tore through his chest was that for years he didn’t care if he lived or died. Now he cared, but it might be too late.
The Harrowgate opened up to snow on the ground, blinding sunlight in the sky, and the clean, crisp crack of gunshots on the wind.
Con plowed through the shin-deep snow at a near run, with Wraith on his heels. Sin, E, Lore, and Shade were close behind. Tayla had gone to UG to round up medics.
Don’t be too late. Don’t be too late…
As they got closer, the unmistakable sounds of battle vibrated the air. Screams, bloodcurdling snarls, and the scent of blood guided them. Luc’s cabin was maybe fifty yards ahead when Con’s muscles vapor-locked, and he gasped and tripped over his own feet as he stumbled into a tree. Sin caught him, her strong body bracing against him.
“What’s wrong? Con?”
He couldn’t answer. His throat had closed up so that the only sound he could make was a growl. He was shifting and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He could only lessen the damage, and as quickly as he could, he stripped out of his shirt and pants.
“What’s going on?” Sin’s voice seemed distant, and then Eidolon yanked her away.
“The warg battle. He’s shifting. He’ll be fine. We have to go—” The sound of gunfire cut him off, and then wood sprayed in shards next to Sin’s head. “Shit! Slayers.”
Slayers who had tried to kill Sin.
They tried to kill my female.
Didn’t matter that the thought was insane. That it wasn’t true. That it could never be true. Something dark reached up and grabbed Con, squeezed rational thought out of his brain, and before he’d even fully shifted, he launched himself at the group of humans engaged in battle with dozens of wargs. The scene was chaos—wargs fighting each other and slayers in snow that had turned to pink, bloody slush.
He leaped, mouth watering as he prepared to bite right through a slayer. In midair, a gray mass of fur broadsided him. The warg’s teeth clamped onto his shoulder and his claws dug into Con’s ribs, and crazily enough, it was the damned slayer who brought down a blade and separated the warg’s head from his neck, probably saving Con’s life.
Faintly, he heard Eidolon order his brothers to gather the Guardians without killing them, something about Tay and Ky wanting them alive, and then another pricolici slammed into Con, and nothing mattered but the battle. The crunch of bone between his teeth, the taste of blood on his tongue.
He didn’t know how long the battle had raged when he felt a sting in his flank. Spinning, he rounded on the source… Sin?
She stood a few yards away, a crossbow trained on him. Searing agony stole his breath as his body turned inside out, twisting and morphing until he was back in his human form. She’d hit him with an Aegis morph dart, and damn, it hurt to shift with unnatural speed like that. He went to his knees, the icy snow scraping his bare skin. A god-awful snarl sounded behind him, and Sin, moving with catlike grace, launched a morning star at the charging warg while shooting another with the crossbow. The injuries wouldn’t be fatal, but the wargs fell to the ground, incapacitated by her well-placed strikes.
“You’re… damned good,” he rasped.
The cold-induced blush in her cheeks gave her a fresh, playful expression as she tossed him his clothes. “I’m made of awesome.” She offered him a hand. “Sorry about the dart, but Eidolon doesn’t know which of these werewolves is Luc, and he needs your help.” He could be macho and not take her help, but right now, his leg didn’t feel stable, he was sore from a dozen claw and bite wounds, and, really, he’d take the excuse to touch her. “I thought shifting healed you.”
The world tilted and spun a little, and shit, stop the ride, he was ready to get off.
“We all heal at different levels depending on our species and type of wounds. Trust me, I healed a lot in that shift.” Not as much as he’d have liked, but at least he wasn’t bleeding. He grunted and came to his feet. All around, the battle raged, and Sin took down another warg with a targeted shoulder shot as he plucked the dart out of his thigh and tossed it to the ground. “Has anyone checked the cabin for Luc?”
“Not that I know of.” She frowned. “Looks like the varcolac are retreating.”
Yeah, they were. The ground was littered with bodies and injured wargs, some of whom were starting to shift as the battle waned. He tugged on his jeans and whipped the shirt over his head. “Come on. Let’s search the cabin.”
Sin shook her head. “I’m going to help out the guys. You go.” Before he could argue, she was off and running.
“Sin!” he called after her. “Be careful. You still have assassins after you.”
She flashed him a wave with one hand and took down a warg with another.
Christ. The female was going to give him a heart attack.
Nineteen
Con sprinted to the cabin, his heart pounding at the sight of blood splashed on the snow, the door, and the entryway of the cabin. Luc lay stiffly on the floor, bleeding from an apparent gunshot wound to the chest.
“Hold still, buddy.” Con sank down on his heels and slapped his hand over the bubbling wound. “Eidolon! Shade!” The brothers were still engaged in battle, now mostly defending the varcolac that were trying to flee.
Keeping an eye on the situation outside, because it would suck to get attacked while he was rendering aid, he ripped open Luc’s shirt to expose the bullet hole. Luc moaned as Con performed a rapid exam, gently rolling the heavy-ass warg to check for an exit wound. Sure enough, the bullet had blasted a mangled hole through his shoulder blade.
Finally, the two demons jogged over, leaving Wraith, Sin, and Tayla to clean up. Looked like staff from UG had arrived, too. “What do we have?” E asked.
“GSW to the right upper chest. Through and through. He’s got blood in his airway, and his breaths are rapid and shallow.” Not that any of that mattered, since Shade and Eidolon would be able to get inside Luc and use their gifts to heal him quickly and efficiently.
They both palmed Luc’s arms, the symbols on their right hands glowing intensely. Luc groaned, but his eyes were bright as they locked on Con’s. He mumbled something about a car. “Under… the rug.”
“Hey, man, it’s okay—”
He shook his head. “Let her… out. Name’s… Kar.” The Feast female.
“We got Luc,” Shade said. “Go ahead and handle whomever he’s got stashed under the rug.” Shade frowned down at the warg. “Hell’s fires. You think you know someone…”
Eidolon muttered something about Shade’s BDSM cave, but Con ignored them to roll back the thick, knotted rug. There was nothing there but wood planks.
Sin and Wraith stalked through the door, and behind them was Lore, hauling a medic duffel over his shoulder.
“UG staff is patching up wargs, and all surviving Guardians are tied up,” Wraith said. “But they could probably use some medical attention. Especially the one dipshit with the idiotic Mohawk. He lost a lot of blood.”
“Because you ate him,” Sin said wryly.
Wraith blinked with exaggerated innocence. “Fighting makes me hungry.”
Con’s own mouth watered at the sight of Sin, all fresh from battle, her eyes bright and hair wild. She pointed at the floor. “Oh, secret door!”
“You can see it?”
“You can’t?” Her expression of innocence matched Wraith’s, and yes, those two were definitely related.
Lore punched her in the shoulder. “Stop being an imp.” He moved toward Con and set the bag down on the floor. “Assassins are trained to recognize the spells cast aroun
d hidden entryways. Luc’s secret door glows like a neon sign to us, but few others would see it. She’s messing with you.”
“You ruin all my fun.” Sin scowled at her brother as she bent to trace her fingers along what Con assumed was the edge of the hidden door. Then she thumped her fist on a board. Thumped on another. And another. The third time was the charm, and suddenly, the door popped up, a three-by-three square. “And yes, I knew where all the secret doors at Rivesta’s were. I just liked watching you look for them.”
Sin really was an imp. Con peered down the hole, the darkness no match for his vamp vision. He didn’t see anything, but he heard a heartbeat, soft breaths, and he smelled the bitter spice of anxiety.
And sickness.
“Kar?” he shouted down. “My name is Conall. I’m a friend of Luc’s”—he ignored Luc’s snort—“and it’s safe to come up.” There was no answer. He glanced at Sin. “I’m going down.”
“Be careful.”
“You two are just so cute,” Wraith drawled.
Con ignored the demon and dropped into the hole, not bothering with the stairs. He landed in a crouch, fully prepared for the throwing knife that whooshed over the top of his head. He whirled to face the thrower, whose arm was cocked back and prepared to launch another blade. Before she could, he had her in a headlock and pinned, face-first, against the wall.
“Be nice,” he growled into her ear. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She snorted. “What makes you think you could hurt me?”
Her arrogant, wiseass comment reminded him of Sin. “I’d ask who you are, but something tells me you wouldn’t answer and I think I know anyway. I’m going to release you and head back upstairs, where Luc is being treated for a gunshot wound. If you want to see how he’s doing, you’ll come up, and you won’t try to fillet me again.”
She drew a harsh breath. “Is he okay? Who are you?”
He paused at the sound of Luc’s ferocious curses from above. Luc was a terrible patient. “He’ll be fine, I’m sure. He’s got a doctor and medic from Underworld General working on him. I’m his ambulance partner. Now, are you going to play nice?”
She nodded, and he released her, stepping back quickly in case she decided to strike out. If she was anything like Sin, she’d nail him in the balls. Fortunately, she didn’t attack. In fact, she remained against the wall, forehead against the stone, her body trembling.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Squaring her shoulders, she swung around, and though she was pale and unsteady, she moved toward the ladder.
“You’re sick.”
“Just woozy from the shift.”
Con got that, was still suffering the effects himself. But he sensed more was at play here, and the sharp tang of illness was in the air. He gestured for her to go first, and he followed.
When he emerged, Luc was sitting with his back braced against the wall, an IV attached to his arm, and Lore, Shade, and Wraith had gone. Con must have had a questioning look on his face, because Sin said, “They’re dumping the slayers in the nearest town. Wraith is going to scramble their memories so they don’t remember what happened.”
Eidolon looked up from mopping blood off Luc’s chest. “You’ll need to contact the Warg Council to have them collect the dead. We can’t leave them here for humans to find. Not in these numbers.”
Wargs were one of the few paranormal species that didn’t disintegrate when they died in the human realm, which usually wasn’t a problem because autopsies revealed nothing strange. But an investigation into a battle of this size wouldn’t be good no matter how much damage control The Aegis applied.
Luc shifted his worried gaze to the female, whose sunken eyes and flushed skin were even more noticeable in the daylight. For as long as Con had known Luc, the warg had been a loner, and with the exception of one pricolici female, he’d never latched onto his bedmates. They were lays, and that was it.
But the way he was watching Kar, with hunger, a trace of affection, and a glint of shame, definitely made her more than a bedmate.
She moved to Luc, and though it was obvious that she wanted to touch him, she didn’t. “Are you okay?” She swiveled around to Eidolon. “Is he?”
“He’ll be fine,” Eidolon said. “Sore, and we should get him to UG sooner than later, but yeah.”
Luc dropped his head back against the wall as though exhausted, but Con sensed coiled tension in him. “Doc. You have to do something for Kar. She’s sick.”
“Sick?” Eidolon shoved to his feet. “With what?”
“I think it’s the virus.”
All heads swiveled toward Kar, and Con’s gut twisted. “Must be early stages.”
“Which means there’s hope.” Eidolon’s voice gentled, but never lost the no-nonsense doctor edge. “Kar, do you mind if I take a look at you?”
She studied him warily. “You’re a demon.”
“I’ll try to keep my forked tongue and cloven hooves out of sight,” Eidolon said.
“Kar.” Luc’s voice was as soft and gentle as Con had ever heard it. “He’s a doctor. The best person in the universe to handle anything you’ve got.”
Doubt and suspicion warred in her expression, and then she gave a slow nod at Eidolon. “You should know that I’m pregnant.”
Gods, it just kept getting worse. Sin closed her eyes, her shoulders sagging, and Con had the oddest urge to draw her into his arms. Though maybe it wasn’t so odd anymore. He was much, much more deeply involved with her than he should be.
Eidolon guided Kar to the couch, retrieved a stethoscope and thermometer from the medical bag Lore brought, and began an exam. When he lifted her shirt and saw the faintest shadow of a bruise around her navel, he frowned. “This must be very early. When would you have been in contact with an infected warg?”
“Two weeks ago. My partner and I chased a demon into a sewer and were attacked by a sick warg. He clawed me, but when I didn’t have any symptoms later, I figured he didn’t have the disease.”
Eidolon shook his head. “The timing isn’t right. This acts fast. You’d be dead by now if he was the one who infected you.”
Kar shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t go on any Aegis hunts after that, and then I’ve been locked up with Luc, so unless he has it, there’s no way I got it from anyone else.”
“Maybe the fact that you’re a Feast warg is making the difference.” He gestured to Sin. “Can you get inside and take a look?”
She nodded, sank to her knees beside Kar. “This shouldn’t hurt.” Gently, she gripped Kar’s wrist, and her dermoire lit up. She closed her eyes, and for a good two minutes, she did nothing but scowl and shake her head. Then, suddenly, her eyes flew open and she sucked in a startled breath. “Oh, oh, man. E, Kar doesn’t have the virus. The baby does.”
“What?” Luc tried to absorb was Sin was saying, but he’d been in the medical field long enough to know that an unborn baby contracting a virus while the mother didn’t was nearly impossible. “How?”
Eidolon repositioned himself to insert the tympanic thermometer into Kar’s ear. “Sin, you’re sure the virus is present only in the fetus?”
“I’ll check again.” Sin concentrated, her dermoire glowing fiercely. Her glyphs might be faded replicas of her purebred brothers’, but they lit up just as brightly. “Yeah. Those little strands are running through the baby and floating around in the baby water.”
“Amniotic fluid,” Eidolon said. “How is the virus not moving through the placenta and umbilical cord?”
She shook her head, bit her lip, and the glyphs on her arm began to writhe. “What’s the placenta? A pancake-shaped thing?” At Eidolon’s nod, she frowned. “They’re… getting attacked. By… I’m not sure what the things are. They’re all in Kar’s bloodstream but not the baby’s.”
“Antibodies,” Eidolon breathed. “Holy shit, Kar is producing antibodies!”
Kar scowled. “I don’t understand. What’s happening?”
r /> Eidolon’s voice went deep, but with an undercurrent of excitement that gave Luc hope. “Up until now, no one who has contracted the virus has produced antibodies to it. But you… you’re the exact opposite of a regular warg. It might be different if you had the virus, but since your baby does, your body is fighting it off. Is the father a warg?”
“It’s mine,” Luc said. Con’s surprise was tangible, a burst of static in the air, but wisely, the dhampire kept any smart-ass comments to himself.
“Since you both turn at different times of the month, I’m going to guess that conception didn’t take place during a breeding heat?” Eidolon asked. Kar blushed, turning her already fevered skin even redder, and she nodded. “Okay, then, this is starting to make sense. I know nothing about Feast wargs, but obviously, they can give birth to babies who are born wargs, even if the father is turned, and even out of heat. The virus must have entered your blood and passed to the baby, but in the meantime, your body produced antibodies, which killed the virus in you—”
“But not the baby,” she finished. “Can you cure it? Can you save the baby?”
Luc didn’t like the dismal expression on Eidolon’s face. “Doc?”
“I don’t know. Sin, how advanced does the disease seem?”
She shook her head. “Not very. It’s weird. The virus is reproducing, but it’s being killed, too.” She swallowed. “But it’s reproducing faster than it’s dying. Eventually, the baby is going to, ah… be in trouble.”
It was going to die.
Luc might as well have been stabbed in the gut. He’d only just learned about the baby, but although doubt sang through him about his abilities to be a good father, he had no doubts that he didn’t want it to die.
“Please,” Kar whispered. “Can you do something?”
Sin and Eidolon exchanged glances, and Luc’s stomach clenched. “What? What’s going on?”
“Sin has successfully cured one warg whose disease wasn’t advanced.”
“There’s a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence,” Luc growled, his worry adding a rough edge to his voice.