in full moonlight, and that for her the werewolf comment she had made earlier had now taken on new weight.
What would she do next?
Where would she go to feel safe?
Who will you tell, Riley?
His shape-shift took seconds. Derek roared in the moonlight, daring the creature in the alley to challenge two Weres in spite of what it had said. But the creature, which had to be some special kind of vampire, didn’t rally. It hovered near the street for some time before Derek decided to break the face-off.
He rushed forward, wanting to get to Riley, knowing that in order to reach her, he’d tear this bloodsucker apart if he had to.
Intending to ram the vampire’s body, Derek barreled forward with his backup on his heels. The foggy bastard he lunged for wasn’t solid, so he passed right through it and pulled up a few feet from the street, snapping his not-quite-human teeth.
His packmate had no better luck.
Angry, Derek whirled around to try again. But the vampire remained elusive, shifting in time to avoid any direct confrontation as it drifted over the Weres. It was as if the spooky sucker had the ability to fly.
Again and again, Derek and his mate challenged, spun and went for the abomination. Time after time, their teeth and claws came away empty. Finally, the bloodsucker floated to the street and spoke. “You see, wolf, that I was right to warn you, and to call to your attention the vulnerability attached to your new weaknesses.”
The next remark the vampire made came in the form of a touch on his mind.
“She is not for you, wolf. Stay away from her or our next meeting will not go nearly as well as this one.”
Derek clutched his chest—he was suddenly short of breath. He hadn’t been wrong. The warning had been pointed and had pertained to Riley Price. Who else could this sucker have been talking about?
Madder than ever and refusing to give up, Derek and his packmate sprinted toward the creep like rabid animals, biting, clawing and punching at nothing even remotely physical enough to maim or injure. They kept this up until the vampire simply disappeared, as if it had never really been there at all.
Derek stared at the empty alley with his heart racing. When his packmate turned to him in an equal state of confusion, Derek sent a message. “I hope to God there aren’t more of those things around.”
It was at that moment that Dale arrived, alone and calm. After a quick look at the two Weres, Dale asked, “Did I miss something?”
“I think it must have been a ghoul,” Derek’s current fighting partner, still wolfed up and wild-eyed, messaged back. “That thing was seriously demented.”
Though Dale looked to Derek for an explanation, Derek was already miles beyond thinking about the fight. There were new questions to be answered—carefully, cautiously and with as much diplomacy as possible. The thing they had faced had shown off new tricks, and also knew about Riley. It didn’t seem to want him hanging around her, and had issued that warning.
It was possible the creature had purposefully allowed Riley to see the werewolf in this alley, so that she’d be frightened enough to stay away from the streets. Why, though? What did that creature have to do with her, and more to the point, what did it want?
“Derek?”
Derek glanced at Dale.
“Maybe you can explain what happened after you’ve changed back, boss. Tonight was quiet everywhere else we patrolled. The pack is reconvening at the park for your summary and for further instructions.”
Derek didn’t feel like downshifting. He felt like running. Like howling. Like tearing apart that damn fog in any way he could so that he’d be able to sleep.
But who was he kidding? There’d be no way to sleep when he had to find Riley Price and convince her that she hadn’t seen what she had seen.
There’d be no way to rest until he made her understand there was no such thing as a werewolf, and that she must have been mistaken due to the darkness of the alley if she thought there was.
Those urges had to be tamped down for the moment, however, because his pack was waiting for their alpha.
Was the weakness the vampire had mentioned about Riley?
Did he believe that?
There was no way to skip over this encounter with the vampire, or ignore what it meant. Either the vamps had evolved somehow and learned new crafts, or he had just come face-to-face, more or less, with their damn queen.
Damaris.
If that was true, he had, for the first time, experienced the power of a centuries-old vampire that had been around as long as there had been history. A powerful female bloodsucker that had gone after his ex-lover two years before and had caused McKenna Randall to accept the so-called blood gift that only a pair of fangs could offer in order to fight back. McKenna had accepted immortality by way of a Blood Knight’s kiss. Her new lover’s kiss.
McKenna had been given the gift of an everlasting life span from an immortal warrior who had walked the earth for as long as Damaris had, and who once had gone by the name of Galahad. The same motorcycle riding superpower that had stolen McKenna’s heart, and then had taken her away.
A goddamn immortal who rode a Harley instead of a steed.
“Derek?” Dale called out.
Derek backed into the shadows and absorbed the flash of pain that came with downsizing again. He headed for the street, already planning what he had to do to warn his pack about the future, before he’d try to find Riley Price and get to the heart of the problems piling up.
In his mind, like a lingering echo, he heard that vampire’s message. She is not for you, wolf.
It was no longer to be an average fight with a vampire. Whether or not anyone liked it, the stakes had just gone up.
Riley made it to her car and got in wishing she had avoided coming out in the full moon altogether. With a shaky hand, she finally got the key inserted and started the engine, not sure which direction to go, but needing to get away from where she was.
There had been a werewolf in that alley, and though the beast had looked dangerous, it hadn’t come after her. Two close calls in one night made this the worst night in her life as far as stumbling into danger went. It also made her the luckiest woman in Seattle to have emerged relatively unscathed.
She pulled away from the curb, nearly scraping the car parked in front of her. Though she drove too fast, she couldn’t help it. Adrenaline pumped through her body in a fight-or-flight reaction to what she’d seen in that alley, and there hadn’t been time to tame it.
She had to tell someone.
She couldn’t call her dad after what they had been through. There
