Laying the cookie sheet on the stove, she pulled off her oven mitt and hurried to the sliding door to look out. Sure enough, he was sitting in the rain, looking up at her with a hopefulness she could practically feel through the glass. Poor guy. He was soaking wet.
She hesitated to let him in—surely he belonged to someone in the neighborhood. But why would anyone who loved him let him out to roam in weather like this? He shouldn’t be off a leash at all, especially not looking like a monster-sized wolf.
“Hold on, boy,” she called through the door, then ran back to her laundry room, where she kept a stack of old towels. Grabbing two fraying bath towels, she laid one on the carpet, then opened the door just enough to let the massive animal in, braced for the invariable dash and shake.
To her surprise, he didn’t bound inside, nor did he shake at all. Instead, he walked forward calmly onto the towel, and stopped, watching her expectantly.
“You’re amazing.” She closed the door behind him, then opened the second towel and rubbed him down. “Someone’s trained you well.”
The dog looked up, meeting her gaze with a look in his eyes that she could swear was amusement. “You’re way too smart for your own good, aren’t you, boy?” She knelt in front of him, rubbing down his head and neck, watching the pleasure fill those beautiful eyes. Oddly, he didn’t even try to lick her face, which most dogs did given the opportunity. “You’re quite the gentleman.” She dried his legs and his belly, then finished with a quick rub of his tail.
“There you go. I’m afraid I don’t have any dog food, but I have leftovers from dinner. How about chicken and green beans? That shouldn’t be too terrible for you. I’ve also got cookies. Do you have a sweet tooth, boy?”
To her surprise, he shook his head . . . or appeared to. She laughed. “You’re really something.”
She pulled a wide, shallow plastic food storage container out of the cupboard, then cut up the leftover chicken and green beans and heated them in the microwave just enough to take off the chill. After pouring the mixture into the plastic container, she set it on the floor in the corner.
The big animal looked up at her with an unmistakable gleam of thanks in his eyes, then turned to the food and wolfed it down while she filled another container with water.
She picked up the cake recipe she’d thought to make tonight, but no longer felt driven to continue her baking and set it down again. The animal’s presence had calmed her, pulling her back from that edge of desperation that always drove her to bake.
Maybe, instead, she’d try to get some work done. While the dog ate, Natalie grabbed her laptop off the counter and settled on the floral-patterned sofa in her small family room. As she pulled up the file of the first patient she saw on Friday, and the results of the vision tests she’d run on the girl, the tension began to ease out of her shoulders. For the first time all day, she felt like she could breathe freely again. This was what she’d been born to do. It was no wonder, considering she had two younger brothers whose lives had been handicapped by their eyes’ inability to function optimally, if at all. Her youngest brother, Xavier, had been born blind, but it was James, only two years her junior, who’d actually had the hardest time thanks to a pair of undiagnosed vision problems that had made it next to impossible for him to learn to read.
By the time James was seen by a developmental optometrist, a specialist who could actually help him, he’d been a freshman in high school, and it had been too late. When she thought back on it, she wanted to shake their family eye doctor who’d seen him every couple of years throughout his childhood, who’d assured her mom that there was nothing wrong with James’s eyes, that James could read if he wanted to. And while, technically, he was right—there wasn’t anything wrong with his eyes—his brain could never make sense of what he saw because he wasn’t able to track smoothly across the page or keep from seeing everything slightly double.
Finally, one of his teachers talked her mom into taking him to a vision specialist, but by then James was convinced he was a dull-witted loser and refused the recommended therapy that could have corrected both problems. Though they didn’t know it at the time, he’d already found drugs and alcohol. A year later, he dropped out of school and took off. The last time they’d heard from him, he was living in Florida and had been in and out of rehab repeatedly.
While she’d love to find a way to open, quite literally, the eyes of the eye-care establishment as a whole to the benefits of vision therapy, she’d settle for helping the kids she could. No child should be made to feel stupid because of an undiagnosed vision problem.
James had been lost to them for years and now Xavier was gone, too. The ache in her heart was sometimes so sharp, she thought it might rupture that critical organ. She couldn’t imagine how much harder this all was on her mom.
The dog trotted through the kitchen, his nails clicking on the linoleum, then padded silently across the carpeted family room to join her.
Natalie smiled. “All through?”
He sat at her feet, then leaned forward to rest his chin on the cushion, pressing against her thigh, as if thanking her. Her heart swelled with adoration. As he looked up at her with soft, liquid eyes, she knew she was in trouble.
“Where’s your family, boy?” She ran her hand over his head, stroke after stroke, as those liquid eyes watched her. “If you don’t have one, you can live here.”
The words were out before she really thought them through, though it wasn’t like he could possibly have understood her. She didn’t have time for a dog. Still, the thought of his waiting for her at night made something stir inside of her, an excitement and longing for companionship that she hadn’t felt in weeks.
“Since you can’t tell me your name, I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a new one. What do you think of King?”
He gave her a disgusted snort and she laughed. “Okay, not King. How about Bruiser?”
He looked away as if he couldn’t bear it, making her grin.
“Not Bruiser, then. I’m half tempted to call you Wolf, but the neighbors might think you really are one, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
But at the sound of the name, he lifted his head expectantly and barked once, low.
“You like Wolf?”
He barked again, his eyes all but laughing at her.
“Okay, Wolf it is. Did someone already give you that name? It certainly fits.” She stroked his big head again. Would he be happy here while she was at work all day? Did she really want responsibility for an animal? This animal?
Staring into those kind, intelligent eyes, she knew there was nothing she wanted more.
Her hand sunk into the fur beneath his ear as she stroked his neck. “I’d be honored if you chose to live with me, Wolf, but I understand that you may already have a family. Regardless, you’re welcome to visit me anytime.”
As Natalie returned to her work, Wolf curled up on the carpet at her feet, a warm, welcome presence. She’d worked for nearly an hour when Wolf suddenly leaped to his feet, baring his teeth, a low growl rumbling deep in his throat.“What is it, boy? What do you hear?”
The animal met her gaze as if he understood every word she uttered. In those dark eyes, she could swear she read indecision, as if he felt torn between investigating and protecting her. What a wonderful dog.
She placed her laptop on the sofa beside her and rose. “Come on. We’ll investigate together.”
But he stepped in front of her, blocking her path.
“Wolf, move.”
He glanced up at her, his eyes stubborn and determined, and damn if he didn’t shake his head again. Which was impossible. He was a dog.
But when she tried to push him out of her way, he refused to budge.
“Wolf . . .”
She heard a bang at the front door, as if someone had thrown something against it. Or kicked it. A moment later, her front door splintered and crashed back against the wall. Shock reverberated through her body, her heart leaping with terror because she knew . . . she knew . . . that whatever malevolent force had killed her friends and stolen her brother, had come for her again.
Chapter Four
Wulfe growled low in his wolf’s throat as the first of the Mage sentinels came charging into Natalie’s family room, sword drawn, triumph on his face, and violence in his eyes.
Wulfe’s mind roared with fury that they violated Natalie’s house, that they threatened her safety, even as he thanked the instincts that had driven him to check on her this morning. What if he’d waited until tomorrow morning, then arrived to find her missing? Or dead.
The thought barreled through him, lending furious power to his hind legs as he leaped at the first of the bastards, crushing the Mage’s skull between his powerful jaws. The last thing he wanted was for Natalie to witness any more violence, but . . . no . . . the last thing he wanted was for her to become a victim of it herself. If that meant forcing her to watch him take out her attackers, so be it. He could always clear her memory of the sight later. He hoped.
A second Mage intruder rushed into the room, and a third, and a fourth, all dressed in the tunics of Inir’s sentinels. Why were they here? Was it because of her glow?
Wulfe leaped for another of the Mage, killing him, too, as a blade tore through his shoulder from behind. Not good, not when he wasn’t healing much better than a mortal these days. Fire licked through his muscles, the pain radiating down his limb. Son of a bitch.
“No, don’t hurt him!”
As Wulfe turned to tear off the hand of the Mage who’d stabbed him, he saw Natalie grab the wooden lamp off the end table, rip off the shade, and swing it upside down as if she planned to use it as a weapon. Admiration and terror rushed through him in equal measure because she was going to get herself killed.
Not if he took care of these bastards first.
He lunged for the next of the Mage, going for his throat. As the pair crashed to the floor, half a dozen more ran into the room, swords drawn, eyes blank. Soulless.
“Don’t kill them,” one commanded. “Inir wants them alive.”
Them? There was no doubt that Inir . . . or Satanan . . . had felt Wulfe’s presence, and his Daemon essence, before. On the mountain, he’d heard Satanan say, I sense one of mine. Blood calls to blood.
Hell, the Mage might have followed him here. He might have inadvertently led them right to Natalie.
He leaped for another Mage, taking him down, then scrambled out of the reach of grasping hands to attack another and another, taking three more blades to the shoulders and side.
In his peripheral vision, he saw Natalie swing her lamp at one of the two Mage who’d cornered her, cracking it against his shoulder. But before she could pull her makeshift weapon back for another swing, the second of her stalkers seized it, wrenched it from her grasp, and grabbed her.
Instantly, she stilled, and Wulfe knew she’d been enthralled. She wouldn’t remember anything more of this fight. But they weren’t taking her. Over his dead body would they take her.
In a spray of sparkling lights, he shifted to human form, swiped one of the dead Mage’s swords off the bloody carpet, then ripped the blade out of another of his attacker’s hands. Swinging two blades at once, he took on the remaining Mage. The Ferals avoided killing Mage whenever possible since Mother Nature took their deaths so personally, but he didn’t have a choice this time. It was either kill them or escape, but with Natalie enthralled, he’d have to remain human in order to sling her over his shoulder and run. Unfortunately, the draden would almost certainly find him before he could reach his truck and safety, and he’d be forced to shift back to wolf or die, simply delaying the inevitable fight to the death with the Mage. Better to do it here, now. Mother Nature was just going to have to be pissed.
One by one, his attackers died beneath his blades. Outside, the wind began to howl like a freight train bearing down on the house. By the time only two Mage remained, his opponents circling him, his vision was beginning to waver, his arms starting to feel like anvils thanks to the stab wounds that still bled freely. If he didn’t kill these last two quickly, it would be too late. For both him and Natalie.
As they leaped at him, carving slices into his side and thigh, Wulfe called on the last of his considerable reserves and took them on with desperate efficiency, hacking, stabbing, until only one remained.
Wulfe faced the last of the sentinels sent to attack them, the leader of the band. Fury tore through him, fury that these soulless monsters had followed him here. Here. That they’d desecrated the home of one of the brightest spirits Wulfe had ever encountered and threatened her life. Inside, his animal gave a furious growl.
Fangs sprouted from his mouth, claws erupted from his fingertips, and he went feral, that place halfway between man and beast. As the sentinel lunged at him with his sword, Wulfe cut off the bastard’s remaining hand. The last thing Wulfe needed was to become enthralled, too.
Digging his claws into the sentinel’s neck, he slammed him against the nearest wall. “What does Inir want with us?”
Real fear shone in those soulless eyes. “I don’t know. Our orders were to capture you both and bring you in.”
Wulfe believed him. With one clawed hand, he ripped out the Mage’s heart, then dropped it to the floor, along with his body. A harsh wave of dizziness rolled across his vision, and he sank back against the wall, sweat rolling down his temples, blood down his chest.
A gust of wind blew through the house, whipping the curtains and scattering papers every which way. Hail pounded against the siding and windows. He needed to get Natalie out of here before Inir sent more men, which he’d undoubtedly do when this batch failed to return.