Impulse

Chapter Seventeen

She heard his voice in her dreams.

Slow. Familiar. Coaxing and wheedling, whispering for her to open her eyes, whining for her to wake up. Her head throbbed and her body felt bruised from nose to toes, but it was his voice that dragged her into consciousness, and the sick dread that came with it.

Paper touched her lips. “Wake up and drink it. You got a little banged up in the crash.”

Josh.

She pressed her lips together as tightly as she could and turned her face, not caring that something wet splashed against her cheek.

He sighed, exasperated and impatient. His fingers curled tight in her hair, and he forcibly pulled her face back to the cup. “Drink.”

It smelled like water. Shuddering, she parted her lips, and she was so parched she let the liquid wash over her tongue and only considered spitting it back at him for a few moments. It might be satisfying, but it wouldn’t be smart.

Right now, she needed to be smart.

“Touching.” Another voice, this one low and irritated. “When you’re finished, can we talk about how you fucked everything up?”

Sera tried to turn her head, but Josh’s grip in her hair hadn’t eased. She only caught a glimpse of the room’s other occupant out of the corner of her eye, but it was enough. He looked like an older, angrier version of Miguel, which meant he had to be Diego Mendoza.

Okay, she had to be really smart.

Wesley Dade’s dire prediction about dominoes and the end of the world echoed in her head as Josh turned to glare at Diego. “I wasn’t going to miss this chance. The bastard’s been on top of her day and night.”

“Which is the point, genius. You take him out, you get her, and we both have what we need.

As it stands, I provided you with some powerful, expensive magic, and for what? To watch you make kissy faces at a woman who obviously despises you? This isn’t even entertaining.”

Josh’s coyote surged to the surface, its rage a hot wind of power. He released her and rose, placing his body between her and Diego with a twisted sort of protectiveness. “She belongs with me. Your son’s confused her, because he doesn’t know how to take care of her. He doesn’t deserve to touch her.”

Sera’s stomach roiled at the fervent tone of the words. Not the same as the angry man who’d confronted her in New Orleans. The sick pulse of his coyote was proof enough.

Whatever grip on sanity Josh had possessed was gone.

Diego snorted. “I don’t give a shit what you and your little princess get up to, but you owe me. You didn’t hold up your end of this deal.”

“Deal’s not done yet.” Josh lowered his voice. “Give me time to talk to her. She’ll come around and then we can take care of the rest.”

Diego snatched a bottle of whiskey up from the table and tossed it into the small kitchen sink with a crash. “Too much of that, not enough thinking. You’re not the only shapeshifter stupid over the girl. Do you think my son’s going to wait for her to turn up? He’s coming after you, idiot.”

Josh stared at the wolf, and for one hysterical moment, Sera wanted to laugh. Josh was an idiot. A drunk, stupid fool, and wouldn’t it have been nice if Diego had turned out to be one too?

The two of them could have bickered over tactics like a sketch-comedy parody until Julio showed up to kill them both.

What a weak, pathetic hope. Just like a good submissive shifter. Cringe and whimper and wait to be rescued.

Fuck that.

Her body ached, but Josh hadn’t bothered to tie her up. Why would he have? She’d never had the ability to disobey him for long, not once he brought dominant power to bear. She could feel the weight of the enchanted gun holster at her hip, but Diego was staring right at her.

Not the right time. She wet her lips and remembered Josh’s sneering insult from a thousand years ago. Is that how you deal with life these days? Something bugs you, you throw a goddamn wolf at it? She had a lot of wolves to throw. None of them would send Josh running, but Diego…

Oh, she could scare him.

“Julio’s not the only one who’s going to come looking for me,” she said, looking straight back into Diego’s dark eyes. “Alec Jacobson’s in town, and he’s been friends with my dad since before I was born. You don’t want to be here when he shows up. And if you paid for magic to fool Anna Lenoir, you really don’t want her knocking on the door. She won’t bother to kill you before she starts cutting you into pieces.”

Diego pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and he barely glanced at her as he lit one.

“Muzzle your bitch, Hill. She’s about to start in on the head games.”

Josh had called her a bitch during a hundred arguments, but apparently that privilege was reserved for him alone. A snarl vibrated in his chest as he pulled back his shoulders. “Watch your fucking mouth.”

“No, you watch yours,” Diego growled. “I’m not about to let her flap her lips and throw you off your already pathetic game. So shut her up, or I will.”

Tension filled the room, a challenge issued. Sera held her breath…and almost let it out on a whimper when Josh turned away, submitting to Diego’s dominant power. “Hush, sweetheart,” he whispered to her, leaning down to stroke her cheek. The touch made her skin crawl, but not half so much as the rush of magic that followed. He might have submitted to Diego, but he was still dominant to her.

And her coyote knew it. The animal inside curled in on itself, a defensive gesture that left her feeling small and helpless. The crush of Josh’s aura against hers made it hard to choke out even one word, let alone a whole sentence. “You’re going to let him hurt me?”

“He doesn’t want to hurt you,” Josh soothed, stroking her again. “He didn’t want you having babies with his son, but that’s natural. After I left New Orleans, I knew those wolves had to be twisting you up. They’re not right, not any of them. We stick to our own kind. We belong with our own kind. Diego knows that. I know that. You know it, even if they made you forget. You know how good it can be.”

Getting the shit beat out of her would be less traumatic than this. She twisted away, wiggling back toward the wall. “Then Diego’s lying to you. He didn’t stick with his own kind.”

The wolf leaned against the wall and eyed her. “Didn’t I?”

“Carmen’s in her thirties and Miguel’s barely past twenty. That wasn’t a one-night stand.”

“Humans are more of a blank slate.” One of his eyebrows ticked up in a tiny arch. “If they weren’t, Julio couldn’t have been born a wolf. You certainly couldn’t give birth to one.”

“She’s going to have coyote babies,” Josh growled. “Anything else would be unnatural.”

Great. Let them argue over what grand purpose her womb was supposed to serve. Edging her body toward the wall, she slid her hand up her leg, toward the invisible gun digging into her side.

“No argument from me,” Diego said with a shrug. “None of my business what you do with her.”

Almost. Almost. Her knuckles scraped against the wall as she worked her hand closer to the gun. She’d have to shoot Diego first. Josh scared the shit out of her on a gut-deep level, but Diego was the one who’d snap her neck without a second thought.

Josh pulled her up by the shirt suddenly, slammed her against the wall and knocked the wind out of her, and the years fell away with breathless speed. She was sixteen again, gawkish and wounded, blinded by power of a strong male of her own species. She was twenty, two years married and discovering the dark side of a husband who had hidden it so carefully for so long.

Shame battered her as instinct forced her eyes down. Quiet. Quiet and passive. Don’t move.

Don’t make him angry. Don’t breathe…

“Shh, it’s okay.” He wrapped an arm around her and froze when his hand bumped into the gun. “What the hell?”

Invisible, not intangible. Magic could force people not to notice the gun, but it couldn’t make it not exist. Panic made her stupid, and she grabbed for the weapon.

Josh snatched it away first, staring at the gun and then her with a look of betrayed disbelief.

“Sera?”

Once you call attention to it, the glamour’s broken. So don’t wave it around screaming, “I have a gun.” That had been the gruff warning from the man who’d attuned the gun to her. Josh would be able to see it now, even if he put it down. So would Diego.

No more secret weapon. “I needed to be able to protect myself.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Diego took a single step forward and held out his hand. “Give it to me before you let her blow your brains out. You don’t have them to spare.”

Disdain dripped from his voice. The same barely concealed loathing that laced the words of every well-bred wolf who had to deal with her. Josh’s gender didn’t save him. He was a coyote.

He was lesser. And he was a fool if he’d believed a wolf like Diego would deal fairly with him.

Maybe not entirely a fool. Josh held the gun away from Diego, eyes narrowing. “Back the fuck off, Mendoza.”

“You’re blind. She’ll get you killed if you don’t take care of her first.”

The craziness was back on Josh’s eyes. He swung his arm around and pointed Sera’s gun at Diego’s head. “You try to lay a finger on her, and I’ll take care of you instead.”

Diego groaned and rubbed his eyes. “It serves me right for dealing with inferior fucking—” Josh squeezed the trigger, and thunder shook the room as the wards on the gun backfired.

The concussive force punched into Diego, sending him staggering, and slammed Josh back against the wall. The gun thumped to the carpet, and Sera dove for it.

No one chased her. Whatever spells had been woven around the gun to keep anyone but Julio or her from firing it must have been strong. Sera scrambled through the door and skidded down the hallway, barely seeing the walls on either side of her. She got the fleeting impression of roughly hewn wood, an impression confirmed when she bolted into the front room of a rustic cabin.

The front door was locked, but one jerk of even her limited shapeshifter strength snapped it from the doorframe. She flung the door wide as the first footsteps staggered into the hallway behind her.

Fight or flight. She had a heartbeat to decide, and instinct drove her out the door. The woods surrounded the cabin on three sides, with the fourth side facing a placid little lake. An idyllic location, and a remote one. She could scream herself hoarse without scaring anything more than the wildlife.

Cars or woods. An SUV sat on the gravel drive, but the chances its keys were waiting conveniently in the ignition seemed tiny. Another split-second decision, and she bolted toward the trees. If she had to she could toss the gun and her clothes and shift. Try to lose herself in the woods, or find a place to hide…

The door crashed open, and the wind carried Josh’s scent to her. He was too close. Too close to run, too close to hide.

Whirling, she lifted the gun and pointed it at his chest. “Don’t. I swear to God, I’ll shoot you.”

Josh held up both hands, but his words were a denial, pure and simple. “You can’t.”

“You’re wrong.” She eased toward the car, keeping the gun steady with both hands. “Get me keys and let me drive away. If you make a run for it, maybe you can get far enough away to survive. That’s what you care about, isn’t it? Surviving?”

“I care about you!” he roared. “Us, our life together. I want it back.”

“We didn’t have a life together. We had your life and your dreams.” Her hip bumped against the front bumper of the SUV, and she braced her weight on both feet. “I was sixteen when you found me. You didn’t give me a chance to grow up and decide what I wanted to be.”

“So come home,” he whispered. “You’ll figure it out, and we’ll be happy again.”

Dominant power settled around her like a blanket, and her finger tightened reflexively on the trigger. He was going to make her do it. Make her shoot him, force her to splatter the brains of the man she’d once loved across the dirt driveway. And if it had only been her, she might not have had the strength to stand up to him.

But it wasn’t only her. It was her father, who left the light on because he wanted her to come home. And Anna, who was more fragile right now than anyone but Sera knew. And for Julio-He’d blame himself. All that responsibility on his shoulders, the need to keep her safe. His so-called failure with Kat. Losing her now would break him. He’d give up, and the dominoes would fall. Carmen and Miguel. Alec. Patrick. So many bad things had happened already. One more would be too much.

Sera swallowed hard as sick dread twisted in her gut. “Please, Josh. Let me go. Don’t make me do this. Just give me the keys—” He lunged, and she fired.

The first shot hit him in the shoulder and exploded. Her ears rang at the sound, but it was nothing compared to the sight. His arm was gone, blown off at the shoulder. But he was a shapeshifter, and feral rage clouded his vision as he snarled and staggered toward her.

The second shot tore his chest in half and shredded his still-beating heart.

She stared—shocked, horrified—and she was still staring when pain detonated in her skull.

The blow caught her off guard, knocked her to the ground as her gun skittered off across the fallen leaves into the darkness.

Diego stood over her, the heavy branch he’d used as a club still clutched in his hand. “Got him pretty damn dead, huh? That’s natural selection for you.”

“Fuck you.” She scrambled back, her head throbbing. Her vision was throbbing too, tingeing the world with darkness every time her heart beat. “Don’t do this. Whatever you’re trying to prove to Julio, this isn’t going to help.”

His face screwed up in confusion. “What?”

“Josh was supposed to kill him, wasn’t that the plan? What are you going to get out of killing me now?”

“Oh, that.” He shook his head. “You’re a loose end, girl. You could clear up a lot of things by being gone.”

Sera inched back, trying to remember which direction the gun had gone in. To the left, toward the trees. “And then you’re going to kill your own son?”

“Don’t make it sound so cold.” He gripped the club and advanced on her. “It’s how things are done.”

Her ears were still ringing and the fog around the edges of her vision hadn’t faded. But Diego Mendoza was about to cave in her skull with a tree branch, and she wasn’t going to make it easy.

A fist-sized rock dug into her hip as she shifted her weight. Clawing together every stubborn scrap of willpower she had left, she closed her hand around the makeshift weapon and whipped it at Diego’s head. The second it left her fingers, she twisted. To her knees and then her unsteady feet, using the momentum to fling herself toward the woods in a stumbling pace that felt more like falling forward than running.

His heavy footsteps crashed through the brush behind her, closer with every frantic breath she dragged into her lungs. He swung again, and the branch caught her across her lower back, hard enough to knock her off her feet and send her sprawling.

It hurt to move. Even dragging her knees under her spiked agony up her spine. She clawed at the ground, tried to crawl away. The coyote battered at her, desperate to spill free, and she wasted what was probably her last moment fighting the animal back. The animal would only end up tangled in her clothes, pinned and helpless.

Branches snapped in the darker part of the forest. The wind shifted, and a familiar scent tickled her nose. Hope flooded her, desperate, giddy relief. She gasped in a breath, filled her lungs with the scent of safety, and gathered her remaining strength to roll out of the way as a dark wolf lunged out of the trees.

Julio.

He tumbled to the ground with Diego, rolling through the dirt and leaves, and snapped his jaws shut on the man’s arm. Diego roared and kicked hard, aiming his shot at Julio’s ribs. Sera cried out a wordless warning, but Julio took the blow, his head wrenching to the side.

Flesh tore, and Diego dropped the branch and fumbled for another weapon with his free hand. Julio lashed out with one paw, raking his claws over the right side of his father’s face.

So much rage. It pulsed in the air, a sound, a taste. Diego stumbled back under its force, rising to his feet as his expression melted from rage to fear. “Don’t do this. Don’t kill your own father in cold blood—” Julio backed off and circled, his sides trembling, his lips drawn back from his teeth in one low, continuous growl. Then he rushed in suddenly and sank his teeth into Diego’s thigh.

A scream. Diego crashed to the forest floor and swept up the first thing he closed his hands on—a moss-covered rock. He struggled to twist, to free himself, but every jerk only deepened the wound.

Blood began to spurt, and Diego slammed the rock down on the back of Julio’s head with a yell. He staggered away, his paws slipping on the leaves. By the time he regained his footing, he snarled, ready to dig in for another charge.

Only Diego didn’t get up. He’d gone pale, his clothes wet and dark with blood already, and sweat beaded his forehead as the rock tumbled from his hand. “Your mother,” he slurred. “She always said this…” The words trailed into nothingness, and he slumped to the ground.

Dragging herself upright induced a spinning sort of vertigo, but Sera ignored the swimming world and the sharp pain in her lower back. She crawled to Julio’s side and wrapped her arms around his trembling body. His fur was slick with blood, but she ignored it and buried her face against his neck, breathing in strength along with his scent.

A shock of magic zipped through her, and Julio shifted in her arms. “Sera,” he rasped.

“Did he hurt you?” She ran her fingers into his hair, feeling for blood. “He hit you with a rock, I saw—” He shook his head and then swayed a little. “I’m okay.” Immediately, he began to trace his hands over her. “You have blood on your face.”

She didn’t know if it was hers or Josh’s. A shudder set off all the minor aches, and she pushed closer to him. “I shot Josh. With—with the exploding bullets.”

“We saw him outside the cabin.”

“Your dad—” Diego’s body sprawled a few feet away. She tucked her face into Julio’s throat so she wouldn’t have to see any more death. There was time to tell Julio everything. When they were safe and rested and the pain of having to kill his father wasn’t so raw. “It doesn’t matter.

We’re okay. You’re okay?”

“I knew he was part of this,” he murmured against her hair. “When Patrick and I got close, I knew he had to be. This is where he and my uncle used to come fishing when I was a kid.”

A family retreat, full of death. So much blood and pain, and maybe the crack across the back of the head had knocked her silly, but she couldn’t stop the tears. Not for her own fear and pain, but because her father would be back in Atlanta by dawn, ready to drown her in protective love, and Julio’s father…

She choked on the sob, furious at herself for giving in to it when he needed comfort and support. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s not fair, not for you or Carmen or Miguel, it’s not fair.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Julio pulled her into his arms. “We tried to walk away and rebuild our lives, but they didn’t let us. They were never going to. It was always headed here, like this.”

His heart beat so strong and steady she could almost feel it against her chest. She kissed his throat and his chin, bumped her nose against his cheek again and again even as her tears turned his skin salty. It was a gesture beyond words, beyond thought. A quiet affirmation of love and belonging, of submission and safety.

Julio’s arms tightened as footsteps sounded behind them, but it was Patrick who came crashing out of the woods. “I’ve got her gun and your clothes. Can you do your snuggling in the car?”

Julio stood with Sera still in his arms. “Cleanup?”

“I asked Anna to find someone. Might keep her too distracted to get on a plane and come dance on the bodies.”

“She’ll be pissed.”

“What, that she didn’t get to come play?”

“Yes,” Sera said, cutting off any truths Julio might be thinking about spilling with a jab to his side. “Anna hates missing a fight.” Particularly one Patrick was involved in. Anna might well be working herself into a protective fit at the moment, but the last person she’d want privy to that fact was Patrick himself.

Julio looked at her, his confusion fading into understanding. “Yeah. We need to get back to the house. We can call everyone on the way.”

She eased back and steadied herself with a hand on Julio’s shoulder. The ringing in her ears had quieted, but her vision still blurred when she moved too fast. “Can shapeshifters get concussions? I should probably ask your sister.”

He pulled on his jeans and grabbed his shirt. “Patrick’ll drive, and I can keep an eye on you until we get you to Carmen. It’ll be okay.”

She started to protest that he’d been hit over the head too, but the words caught in her throat. That was alpha power, the kind that made wolves three times Anna’s size cower in her presence. She could hit harder, last longer and heal faster, because she was strong.

Sera…wasn’t. Would never be. Shame usually accompanied that reminder, but not today. If Julio and Patrick weren’t here, she’d drag herself to her feet one way or another. She’d do it the way she’d accomplished everything else—by being too damn stubborn to quit. Having different resources at her disposal didn’t make her lesser. Just different.

Her resources were running low, and there was no shame in that either. She waited for Julio to lift her into his arms and tucked her face against his shoulder with a soft sigh. It was his turn to be the protector, to be the hero, and she wouldn’t begrudge him that.

More than anything else, she liked it.