Dark Embrace

It was a scream of fear and pain; he knew she’d been wounded.

He did not think. He leapt.

STILL DEVASTATED BY THE IDEA that Aidan had become the Wolf of Awe, Brie hurried down the block. Dusk was approaching and she knew she had better not be caught outside. The city wasn’t safe after dark and although the mayor’s curfew was voluntary, very few of the city’s denizens disobeyed it. Every shop on the street had already closed, except for the grocery store on the corner, and they were pulling their blinds.

She started to run. She couldn’t recall ever being this upset, not even when Allie had vanished into time last year. But she had known that Allie’s journey to the past was her Fate, she’d even seen the golden Highlander coming for her. This was entirely different.

The Book, handed down from generation to generation of Rose women, was very clear on the matter of Fate. It could never be defied by a mortal. Only the gods could rewrite it—and they never entirely did.

But sometimes events happened that were not in The Game Plan and the Gods corrected things when they went awry. Eventually, what was meant to be would happen.

Brie prayed that the historian she’d read had gotten all his facts wrong, or that her vision was wrong. She began to think that maybe she’d better go to Scotland and check out the tomb there, but she was really afraid of what she’d find. And why was her grandmother’s ring bothering her? It had always fit perfectly, but now it was pinching her.

Brie stared at the ring. “This is meant to happen, isn’t it?” she murmured.

Her grandmother had passed away a decade ago, at the ripe old age of 102. She’d been in full possession of her faculties right up until she’d taken her last breath. When she passed away in her sleep, Brie had somehow known her time had come and spent the night at her grandmother’s Bedford, NewYork, house. Sarah Rose had died smiling, and Brie often felt her presence.

She felt her now. “I mean, I could have felt all that pain and anguish last year or the year before—but I felt it now, for a reason. He needs me. I’m supposed to help him.” She thought about her crush. Had she become infatuated with him so she could help him? “Why else would I feel him so strongly?”

She felt her grandmother’s benevolence. If Sarah approved, Brie was on the right path, she thought. That only made her more determined to get into that Level Four file.

A shadow fell across the pavement directly in front of her.

Her heart seemed to stop with alarm. In a moment the sun would be vanishing beneath the horizon and the city would be lost in the gloom of the night. She’d never make it all the way to CDA.

A teenage boy stood in front of her, smiling maliciously.

He was pale, pimply and wore a long black cloak, marking him as a member of gangs who reputedly burned “witches” at the stake.

Brie breathed. “Get lost!” she cried, even though she was terrified. “It’s light out!”

“Not for much longer.” He snickered.

She tensed as three more teenage boys barred her way, all of them ghostly white, their lips nearly purple, wearing the same long black cloaks, as if they’d come from the Dark Ages.

She knew all about the ongoing investigation into these gang members at CDA. The “sub-demons,” or subs, as they were often called, were human, with normal DNA and very real identities. They were missing boys and girls, belonging to distraught family members, but, robbed of their souls, they were pure evil.

Brie whirled to run, and faced two more leering teens in black hoods and cloaks. She was in big trouble. She prayed that Tabby and Sam would sense it and come to her rescue. And simultaneously, she thought about Aidan. It was instinct. If he was near, he had the power to save her.

“She’s fat and ugly,” one boy said. “Let’s find someone else.”

Brie didn’t want to die, but she didn’t want anyone else to die, either. She glanced back over her shoulder at the setting sun and cried out. The sky was mauve now, the sun out of sight. In another moment or so, dusk would become night and she would be killed.

Brie tried to run.

They let her. She ran as hard and fast as she could, across the empty street, aware of them laughing with malicious glee. Hope began when she didn’t hear their footsteps behind her. She was going to make it. She didn’t know why they’d let her go and she didn’t care.

Suddenly three different boys appeared in front of her and barred her way, grinning. She tripped, crashing into them, but was seized from behind and pulled ruthlessly up against a lean and young male body. They had only let her go to torture her.

She fought wildly, writhing, her mind exploding into shards of terror. Her captor jerked on her so hard that something inside her snapped. Brie screamed in pain and fear.

The boy holding her laughed. The pimply-faced blond boy held a knife and he hooked it into her jeans, jamming it through the denim. She felt blinded by her terror. The steel met the sensitive flesh of her belly. He said, “Witch. You’re a real one, ain’t you? You reek of witchcraft!”

“No!” Brie begged. But she didn’t dare struggle now.

The boy glanced past her. His face paled and his eyes widened with alarm.

A low, long, very menacing growl sounded.

It was otherworldly.

Shaking, Brie looked behind her.

A huge wolf with blazing blue eyes crouched behind her and the boy, his hackles raised. Wolves did not exist in New York City. This one was oversized, demonic. Brie felt his huge black power.

And in that split second of utter comprehension, before it leapt, she met eyes that were human.

The Wolf of Awe had heard her.

The wolf snarled and leapt—at her.

She screamed, glimpsing enraged blue eyes, expecting the beast to land on her, dragging her down and mauling her to death. As her heart burst in terror, the beast somehow twisted and landed only on her captor, and she spun aside.

The wolf ripped the sub’s throat out and then, with a bestial roar, turned to one of the other boys.

They had guns and they started firing at the wolf as it drove another teen to the ground, savagely ripping him apart the way dogs shred stuffed toys. Brie was frozen in horror, but only for a single breath. She turned to run.

But as she did, the wolf raised his head, bleeding from its shoulder and its chest. It looked right at Brie with its eerily human eyes. Brie backed up, terrified. It leapt at one of the other boys and she did not think twice. As the sub-demon screamed, she fled.

She ran up the block as hard and as fast as she could, acutely aware of the snarling wolf behind her on the city street, making sounds she wished she could not hear. She somehow unlocked the front door of her building and ran inside. She didn’t even think to lock that door or use the elevator. She ran up the three flights of stairs to her loft and somehow unlocked her door, her hand shaking as if with Parkinson’s disease. Slamming the door closed, she speed-dialed Nick. Tears blinding her, she spoke before he could even answer.

“I think he’s here. He’s shot. He needs medical help, Nick!” She wept into the phone.

“Don’t fucking move,” Nick said, and the line went dead.

She dropped the phone, images of the vicious wolf as it destroyed the boys filling her mind. Subs or not, they were human. Sometimes, souls could be reclaimed when evil was exorcized.

Instead of calling Tabby and Sam, she silently begged them to hurry to her. And then she went still, paralyzed.

A huge power filled her loft behind her.

Brie began to shake uncontrollably. Slowly, she turned.

Aidan of Awe stood there.

CHAPTER THREE

HE WAS A MAN, NOT A WOLF, and he was bleeding from his gunshot wounds. His blue eyes blazed with rage and fury.