Dakotah's Reading

CHAPTER 2

The sun was attempting to burn through the heavy autumn fog when the large male wolf stirred, the human within waking also, both of them immediately aware of the smaller wolf curled at their back.

The wolf quivered with joy at having a mate, a companion. It whined with excitement, its body ready to nudge the female awake and cover her, tying again as it had done repeatedly throughout the night.

But the man’s will prevailed, forcing the wolf to ease away from the female and escape. A denial of the wolf’s claim of a mate echoing with each footstep as they returned to the spot where the human clothing lay in a damp pile on the ground. Where the wolf crouched, snarling, its instincts warring with those of the man, its protests absorbed and echoed in the alien cells even as the air shimmered and its form was lost.

Fuck!

Domino stood snarling and hissing. Naked in the cold, wet air, and yet he was unaware of anything beyond The Heat coursing through his body, the burning need to return to the spot he’d just escaped and take Dakotah in her human form, to rut on her as his fangs buried themselves in her flesh and he fed The Hunger.

For long moments he battled his primitive programming, taking his cock in hand and sliding up and down his shaft, the movement first heightening the need then easing it in a jet of steamy release. But the relief was short-lived, the urge to return to Dakotah a shout from every cell save what small part of him was still human.

The Heat and Hunger were a dual roar now, a demand and a seductive whisper that never relented. He was close to The Transformation. Closer than he’d let himself acknowledge.

With a curse Domino turned his back on the small clearing, on the half rotted tree trunk lying on its side, its branches reaching for the sky and draped with Dakotah’s clothing. Despite the blueprint of creation and survival that his alien ancestors had designed for the vampire race, Domino didn’t want a mate. And despite what the wolf might claim, he had done nothing more than fuck during the night. Done nothing more than enjoy a good run before finishing his business in Ashberg and leaving.

Frustration moved through him as he dressed. Irritation.

He’d hoped to hunt as a dhampir for a few more years. Hoped to retain the ability to move about during the day in a human shape for a little while longer. But his time of absolute freedom was nearly over.

Like all of his kind, he knew the symptoms well. He was close to changing. Too close to risk staying here much longer.

He needed to finish his business, to gain what remaining information he could and then destroy the last three Believers in the area. Enemies who belonged to a secret society committed to killing both his kind and anyone else not deemed human enough to suit them—though in truth, the men he’d hunted recently had been little more than twisted deviants. Afterward he would return to his parents’ home where his father and brother could see him through the change and give him first blood.

Domino skirted the dirt and asphalt lot where the carnival had stopped and set up, preferring to avoid the sharp glance and biting comments of the fortune-teller, the knowing smiles and threats of a tarot reading. He would risk another encounter with her before he returned to his parents’ home, but not now.

Dakotah woke alone. The wolf immediately lifting its muzzle to the sky, offering a long sad song of abandonment and pleading. Its howls adding to the eeriness of the fog-enshrouded day, the clearing with its shadow-trees and wet, heavy mist.

They rose as one being, the human and wolf very nearly equal in will, though their desires were divergent. Dakotah’s thoughts centered on returning to the trailer, on leaving the carnival, her mind refusing to revisit the night or wonder about the male shapeshifter she’d spent it with. The wolf wanted to track its missing mate, to be by his side night and day. To forever abandon the lonely cage of its current life.

His trail led back to the clearing, his shape changing to that of a human, his scent one both Dakotah and the wolf would recognize again. The wolf yielded its form, accepting that it couldn’t hunt for its mate on four legs, but the change of shape didn’t reduce its determination to find the male who had claimed it.

Growling, the wolf slunk into the dark recesses where it was forced to hide, reduced to prey instead of living as it was meant to live, as a predator. But even in the darkness of its prison, the wolf’s conviction was strong. It had found its mate and they would be together again.

Dakotah stopped at the trailer only long enough to shed her damp clothes and put on a drier version of the same outfit before leaving again. A smile formed on her lips when she spotted the carnival owner trying to slip away from his trailer, a man intent on not being noticed.

Too bad.

She resisted the urge to yell Roy’s name, preferring instead to move to his side in the lifting fog. “Hot date?” she asked, catching him near the carousel.

Roy stopped, turning, enabling her to look down into his ancient, wrinkled face. She was curious despite herself as she remembered Helki’s cackled, He’s got a couple of lady friends in this town. He’ll be catting around all night and most of the morning.

“Age is all in the mind,” he said, his dark eyes gleaming with amusement, his laugh an echo of the fortune-teller’s as he tapped his forehead with a gnarled finger. “You don’t need pills and potions with the ladies if you know how to give them what they want.”

“Then you know what I want?”

Roy’s hand reached out and she stiffened automatically, bracing against the contact, willing to accept it even though she preferred not to be touched. Preferred to remain as separate as possible—except during those times when the need for sex became an itch that had to be scratched by someone other than herself.

Understanding flickered in Roy’s eyes, along with a hint of something else—knowledge, the same glimmer Dakotah had seen in Helki’s expression as she studied the tarot cards of Dakotah’s reading. “Stay another day.”

“I can’t,” Dakotah said. Knowing as soon as she said it that it was absolutely true. She could feel the change in the wolf. She was aware of its intention to find the large male and she couldn’t allow that to happen.

It had taken her too long to master that part of herself. She couldn’t risk losing control of it, though realization had slowly overtaken her as she’d returned to the carnival. The wolf in the woods was like none of the supernatural beings Victor Hale had sent after her. The wolf in the woods held traces of the same alien scent she’d encountered before. On Fane Mercier. And on the man who’d clamed Sarael.

The wolf stirred, savoring its future victory as Helki’s words moved through Dakotah’s mind. You will see Sarael sooner than you might think and be a part of her world for more years than you can imagine. But Dakotah pushed the prediction aside. She had no room for hope or sentiment. “I need to head out,” she said, focusing on the carnival owner.

He nodded and pulled a wad of bills from his pocket as if expecting things to unfold just as they had.

Domino found the Believer named Byrd in a hotel room littered with liquor bottles and condoms. It had been a tedious task monitoring Byrd’s activities, staying close enough to the Believer so that he could reinforce his commands periodically and gather information. But the sacrifice had been worth it. This trip alone—which had led to the deaths of several dozens of their enemy—had made the investment of Domino’s time worthwhile. And yet he was more than happy to see it end.

Left to his own devices, Byrd was a rapist. A man who enjoyed breaking into houses and defiling the women within before stealing their money and jewelry. Domino’s compulsions had kept the Believer from returning to his preferred forms of entertainment, but it required constant monitoring and Domino could no longer afford to do it or to take the risk that Byrd would slip his mental leash.

With a grimace, Domino kicked the sagging hotel bed. Repeating the action until Byrd opened bleary, reddened eyes, only to be immediately trapped in obsidian ones. “Where are the others?” Domino asked, an often repeated question when he dealt with the Believer.

Byrd’s body twitched, as though he was trying to turn his head and look for his companions. “Must have gone after the girl.”

Domino tensed, flashing back to the night Matteo had joined as he and Fane hunted. They’d first heard the Believers were after a female on that night. The confession coming from someone who claimed to have overheard it. But with each of their enemy questioned and then destroyed, no one else knew anything about her. And so Domino had come to believe there was no intended victim—though he had little doubt a woman would be taken and raped.

“What girl?” he asked, cursing himself for not hunting Byrd immediately after learning about the woman. But he’d been distracted by other matters—Sarael’s escape from Matteo. Fane’s conversion from dhampir to vampire. His own hunting, complicated by the closeness of the change and the distraction of Dakotah.

A growl escaped, a low rumble from the wolf at the reminder of the woman it considered its mate. Domino grimaced, suppressing that part of his nature. “What girl?” he asked again, his gaze boring into Byrd’s. The Hunger waking, sliding irritably underneath his skin.

“A girl Chuck’s been looking for. He said she was hotter than the whores we brought back last night. He got the go-ahead this morning to pick her up.” Byrd licked his lips as his hand moved to his crotch, his smile widening. “We’re going to have a good time tonight. As long as we deliver her alive, we can do anything we want with her.”

The Hunger became a roar and Domino fought to keep his fangs from descending until after he’d gained all the useful information he could. It would be a pleasure to kill tonight, to sate The Hunger completely with not only blood but a life.

“Where are you taking the girl?”

Byrd’s eyes went blank. “Chuck didn’t say. Maybe back to Atlantic City.”

“To those Chuck reports to?”

“I don’t know for sure. Maybe not. I heard Chuck talking on his phone about money. Half for finding her. Half for delivering her.”

“What’s the woman’s name?”

“Something weird. The name of a state.”

Rage ripped through Domino. “Dakotah?”

Recognition turned Byrd’s mouth upward in a smile that was his last. The word yeah forever trapped on his lips as Domino struck with savage fury, easily subduing the larger, heavier man as he drove his fangs into the Believer’s neck.

It was over too quickly, too painlessly, as far as Domino was concerned. The meal too rushed and the hunt unsatisfying. But there was no time to waste or play. No time even to enjoy the blood which sated The Hunger even as The Heat grew more demanding.

Dakotah was aware of the two men almost as soon as she left the carnival. What few belongings she valued were packed in a knapsack that was slung casually over one shoulder so it wouldn’t become a leash to hold her with. Her hands were buried in her jacket pockets, each caressing a knife hidden there—the handles black and the blades clean, though both had been covered in blood many times.

She cursed herself for not going the night before. For not blowing off her pay and leaving when her gut told her to.

Irritation moved along her spine. At herself. At the old fortune-teller. At the wolf—her own and the big male.

Even though she was in control, her body didn’t feel as though it was completely hers. She felt edgy, restless beyond needing to run. She felt like she was in heat and it pissed her off.

Her lips pulled back in a baring of teeth. The men following her had picked the wrong day to take her on. They were human and she didn’t feel remotely human at the moment.

She’d started walking in the direction of a nearby campground, one that had been popular among the psychics who’d come to Ashberg for the psychic fair. The fair was over but a large number of the rigs remained at the site and she felt sure she could hitch a ride, if not to the closest big city, at least to a different city, one where she could begin her disappearance, could begin the process of renaming and remaking herself.

If she ran she could probably get within sight of the campground without the men catching her—unless one of them was smart enough to go back for their car. Even without a breeze, she could smell the sweat and sex that clung to their skin, the stink of beer and cheap liquor. They were no match for her, especially if they could be separated, dealt with one at a time.

She needed to know if they were predators after any female or if they’d come for her in particular. It bothered her that she’d seen others with ornate crosses tattooed on their necks coming and going from the town and the carnival in the last couple of days. Men resembling these, conscienceless specimens of human garbage.

Their deaths would only be a crime if she got caught.

Dakotah veered into the woods when she heard one of the men say, “I’m going back for the car.”

There was a curse behind her and she dropped the knapsack in a hidden pocket of shrubs and vine before she began jogging, luring them deeper into the forest of oak and pine, maple and cedar. Birch, the white of the trees like skeletal sentinels in a rapidly darkening land.

The wolf slid along Dakotah’s nerve endings, willing her to stop and allow its form to rule. She would if she had to, if it came down to her life or death. But the wolf would end the chase in a flash of teeth, in screams as flesh and muscles parted from bones in a rush of hot blood. The wolf wouldn’t stop to question, couldn’t press the cold steel of a knife blade to throats and groins in order to demand answers.

Her pursuers had sense enough to be leery in a jungle of narrow trails and wet leaves instead of alleyways and garbage. They stayed together, cursing, their breath coming and going in short pants. When she’d drained them of their strength, Dakotah stopped and turned, facing her prey though they still maintained the illusion that she was theirs.

“Where is she?” Domino growled, whirling as the ancient fortune-teller entered the travel trailer.

“Gone.”

“I can see that, old woman.” He flashed his fangs. “The Believers are hunting her.”

Helki laughed. “What kind of a mate would she be for you if she couldn’t take care of herself, especially against mere humans?”

Obsidian eyes gleamed with menace. “I have no mate.”

“The cards say otherwise.” She nodded to the bed, to what remained of Dakotah’s possessions, left there when the dresser and desk had been emptied. The tarot deck set apart from the rest. Three cards from it laid out on the dark blue comforter. The past, the present, the future.

Death. Strength. The Emperor.

A fourth and fifth, carelessly knocked to the floor when Domino handled her things. The Empress. The World.

“I don’t have time for this foolishness.”

The fortune-teller shrugged and stepped away from the door, her movement closing the distance between the two of them and leaving the exit clear. “Then go.”

Domino snarled. Frustration and rage rippling through him along with unwilling respect. She knew how close he was to turning. He could read it in her eyes, and yet she tested him.

“I could force you to tell me what I want to know,” he said, obsidian eyes meeting equally dark ones.

She reached up, smoothing calloused fingertips over his cheek. “So like your grandfather. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always loved you best. Accept my words. Accept your destiny. Both lead to Dakotah.” A small smile formed. “The wolves have already made their choice.”

Domino scowled, knowing he’d been bested by his mother’s mother. A woman who had managed to raise Sarael, a stolen kadine, without discovery. A woman who’d seen through the veil of his kind and peered into their world when her daughter, his mother, had been claimed and converted by his father.

“I want no mate.”

Helki cackled. “Neither did your father that night he came to the carnival to hunt and discovered my Giselle.” Her eyes danced with remembered amusement. “What a chase she gave him! What a chase she still gives him!”

Domino grimaced, preferring not to be reminded of The Heat that surrounded his parents. No doubt his mother would soon be pregnant, ready to bear and raise a second generation of sons, followed by more, two or three sons for each quarter of a century that she and his father were reproductively fertile.

“Have your say then,” Domino grumbled.

The fortune-teller stroked her calloused fingertips over his cheek again. Her expression going from amused to serious. “I wouldn’t have you spend the future alone, Domino, dependant on the herbs in order to control The Hunger.” She grimaced with distaste. “Nor would I see you go to the padralls and have them create a kadine for you. A female raised with no freedom. No sense of who she really is other than one whose very existence is centered around becoming the perfect mate for a male she didn’t choose. Accept what the cards say. What the wolf has already told you.” She stepped away from him, leaning down to pick up the cards that had fallen to the floor.

Domino stiffened as she separated the third card from those already on the bed, joining it with the two he had brushed against earlier and knocked to the floor, positioning them in the shape of a V—the Emperor and the Empress connected to each other by The World.

“You see it?” Helki asked him, but Domino refused to be drawn into her game.

“I see nothing but the day fading and the night approaching.”

Helki cackled, tapping The Emperor. “Oh, he is a stubborn one! Forceful and dominating. But what a protector he can be, a provider for those he cares about.”

Her finger moved to the corner of The Empress. “An interesting card for your mate. She wouldn’t see herself in it, but it contains her. Her life has been one of famine and drought instead of abundance. Of harsh choices and betrayal, and yet her soul has not been tarnished and her secret heart yearns for a man to prove that all men aren’t like those who have come before him.”

The fortune-teller’s fingertips settled beneath The World, underscoring it. “The circle is complete. Two separate journeys now become one on a path that is lined with fulfillment, enjoyment, unity as it weaves its way into the future and takes form in the next generation of sons, soldiers to follow in their father’s footsteps.” She cackled. “And to give their father the same challenge that their father gave to his! You’ll find your mate and those chasing her in the woods between here and the campground.”

The men chasing Dakotah stopped in their tracks when they saw the knives in her hands. Wary, but not afraid. The one in the lead grinned, broken teeth in a filthy mouth. “This bitch is going to be better than the ones we had last night.” He smacked his lips. “Oh yeah, unwilling women are always more fun.”

“You think the guy who wants her will care if we knock her teeth out, Chuck? She’s the kind that would bite a man’s dick off just for spite.”

“As long as she’s alive, he don’t care,” Chuck said, retrieving a knife from his pocket before taking his jacket off and wrapping it around his arm. “Go around and get behind her on the trail. This place gives me the creeps. I want to be out of here before it gets much darker.”

“What about fucking her?”

“You want to do it while I get the car and move it closer, fine, only she’s got to be tied up. I’ve spent enough time in these shit-hole little towns. And I don’t trust the guy not to figure out where we are and come get her himself—or send someone else—if we don’t deliver soon.”

“He wouldn’t double-cross the order—”

“Bullshit. He’s not a Believer.”

Dakotah laughed, a sound without any true mirth. “Victor Hale isn’t even human,” she said, watching as Chuck’s body jerked in reaction, verifying her suspicion about who had sent him, though the reference to the Believers puzzled her.

She smiled, a baring of teeth, relieved that they’d answered her questions without the necessity of her asking. They were after her and her enemy hadn’t yet arrived. There was no reason to delay over their killing.

As the weaker of the two men slid into the woods, fighting vines and low branches in an attempt to get behind her, she lunged for the one named Chuck, growling in rage when his knife sliced along her shoulder and upper arm as one of her own drove into his stomach and ripped downward like a wolf’s lethal disemboweling of its prey.

Chuck’s scream was piercing, his movements violent as he tried to pry her off him. But the wolf was in a frenzy, driven by the hot, metallic smell of blood.

Dakotah barely felt his blows. She didn’t hesitate to plunge the second knife into his back in the moment that the first blade ripped through his groin, internal organs emerging from torn clothing, trailing after her hand as she slashed at the inside of his thigh, deep enough to ensure that he would bleed out while she dealt with the other man.

She pulled away from him, turning, bracing for an attack that would never come. The second man lay in a crumpled heap at a dark stranger’s feet. A man Dakotah had never seen before but whose scent she knew well.