"They're freaking out six ways to Sunday."
Still unable to believe what had happened and his luck, Mason leaned back against the cool stone wall of the town, and watched as the townsfolk went about their business. Mostly they were keeping their distance from Mason, and the object of their fear, Andy, who knelt in front of him.
She snorted as she lifted his shirt to assess his wounds. "So they should be. I wasn't kidding when I said I'd drag them to hell."
He watched her. She was beautiful. Scary, but beautiful.
She looked up, a frown on her face. "Okay, handsome. Want to tell me why you're not dead yet? You should be."
"Sorry, sweetheart. Not a clue." Mason shrugged as she dropped the shirt back into place. Soaked in blood, it clung wetly to his torso.
She sighed. "You're not dead, Mason. I don't know how or why. You look human. You walk, talk and act human. But you're not. You can't be."
"Don't talk rubbish," he scoffed. "Of course I'm human. What else would I be?"
"That's what worries me." Andy stood and held her hand out to help him up. "I don't feel the call to reap your soul, and your body is already healing the damage. You're not human."
Mason grabbed her wrist and hauled himself to his feet in one lithe movement. An hour ago he'd felt like he was at death's door but now he felt energized, and raring to go. Hand still wrapped around Andy's he looked down into her eyes.
"I'm as human as they come," he told her firmly. "Nasty, devious...yes, but plain old human. And those wolves are about to find out why we were the top of the food chain for thousands of years."
"Listen up. Are we putting together a rescue plan for the kids, or am I doing this on my own?"
Andy watched as Mason walked away from her, his shoulders squared as he challenged the very people who, less than an hour ago, had been ready to kill him. Admiration filled her. That had to hurt. She knew how much the town, and the safety of the people within it, meant to him. To insist on helping them after what they'd done to him? It said good things about his soul.
Silence met his challenge as people looked away. Andy didn't blame them. She'd forced them to actually look at what they were doing. Forced them to admit to themselves they were about to kill one of their own.
They called the other races monsters. But those monsters, herself included, had no choice in what they were, how they acted. Vampires craved blood to the exclusion of all else, Lycans were born for the hunt and the kill. They couldn't help their instincts. Humans though, they were different. They could choose to kill, or not. Most of the time, when pushed, they chose to kill rather than walk away. In her book, that made them worse than any of the monsters out there.
Unable to bear the silence she sighed, brushed the dirt off her denim-covered jeans and stood.
"I'm in," she said simply, moving to stand next to Mason.
He smiled quickly, shooting her a sideways glance filled with thanks. She didn't need the thanks. Whilst she understood the needs and instincts, which drove them, kidnapping and extortion were not natural Lycan drives. She and that pack Alpha would be having words, and they weren't going to be pleasant ones.
She looked around the assembled crowd, most of whom looked embarrassed.
"Now I'm sure you're not going to let us go in alone to rescue your children, are you?" she prompted, and took half a step into the Shade.
The world lost its color. She reached out and called the lifelines of every living creature within a hundred meters to her. The sparkling silver ropes leapt into her palms like puppies eager to do her bidding. Only two didn't. Her own, which stretched out flat and black behind her, and Mason's.
She paused to look at it. The grey of humanity had started to fade. Already it was a lot darker than the silver strands she held in her hands. Puzzlement filled her, as a frown creased her brow. Just what the hell was he?
No way was he human, but he wasn't a Reaper either, despite the darkness of his lifeline. Chiding herself for getting distracted, she pulled on the lifelines, and stepped back through into the mortal world. As expected she had the attention of everyone in the crowd. Including Mason. She wasn't surprised. She'd just reminded them she held their lives in her hands. Sure, she couldn't actually kill them, or reap their souls until they were ready to go, but they didn't need to know that.
"Just as I thought. Let's plan this thing then, shall we?"
"Ugh. That was like pulling teeth," Andy announced as, three hours later, the pair made it back to Mason's room. "Are they always so obstructive?"
He closed the door behind them, and, for good measure, threw the bolt. It didn't take a genius to work out that he didn't trust the townsfolk any more than she did. She didn't blame him. Without their stabilizing influence, or her there to scare the crap out of them, there was no saying that they wouldn't revert to plan A, and try to stick Mason's head on a stake again.
That happened and she wasn't bothering with the softly-softly approach anymore. She might not be able to drag their souls to hell until they were dead, but all it took was one little decision and their lifelines were ready to reap. One little decision and those threads would light up like a Fourth of July display. One little decision, like deciding to kill Mason, and she'd go to work with her sickles and carve a bloody swathe through the town.
She rolled her shoulders as she wandered around the small room. Small was the only word to describe it, and bare. A small window opposite the door allowed bright sunlight to stream in and provided a stage for the ever-present dust motes to dance in.
A small bed took up one wall, a battered chest of drawers next to it. A clock sat on it. Even without the tick-tock in the room she knew it was broken. Batteries were a precious commodity these days, so valuable no one would waste one on a clock.
She turned to find Mason with his back to the door, watching her. His eyes were intense, and his expression patient. There was something different about him, but she couldn't put her finger on it. The hungry look on his face sent a shiver down her spine. He looked like a starving man faced with a sumptuous banquet, and she had a feeling she knew what was on the menu.
"Come over here." His voice was low, with a rough, husky timbre to it that sent a shiver down her spine. Hands clasped behind her back she looked at him, and raised an eyebrow.
"Why?"
His eyes darkened dangerously, the heat of hell itself contained there. It was an inferno that licked at Andy's skin, heated the blood in her veins and made her panties damp.
"Because I said so. Don't make me come over there."
She chuckled, enjoying the light-hearted banter. They had an hour or so before sundown and the planned start of the mission. There was time. More than time for what he obviously had in mind.
"Not dressed like that you won't, Mister." She motioned towards his torn and bloodied shirt. "You need a shower and a change, then we'll think about it. Let me look at how those wounds are doing."
He dropped his chin and looked up at her through his eyelashes. It should have been a feminine gesture but on the very masculine Mason it became something totally different. She sucked a shaky breath in, feeling like she'd been punched in the gut. Only no punch she'd ever taken before had left her with a tingly feeling through her entire body and an ache that made her want to clench her thighs together.
"All healed. See? How, I have no fucking clue. But they are."
He looped a hand under his ragged T-shirt and smoothed it upwards over his toned and muscled torso. Despite a very feminine interest in those muscles, Andy still had enough about her to check for damage. Where there had been wounds, bloody tears in his skin where bullets had torn through it on their way into his body, there was nothing. No marks, no healing scars, no old scars. Nothing.
Just like her.
A rush of feeling hit her. After all these years believing herself alone, she wasn't. Mason should be dead. He had been dead, he had to have been, no one could survive being shot that many times and not pass over. Except a Reaper.
Perhaps that was it. Perhaps because he had died...maybe that was the trigger? The bombs of the war had done their work and twisted humanity's DNA a decade ago. Some had changed immediately and become whatever their twisted DNA dictated. For the first time in history Vampires, Werewolves and their brethren, the creatures of legend and myth, had walked the earth. And the world had gone to hell in a hand-basket since.
Others didn't change. Somehow they carried the potential for that change deep within them. Waiting for something like a bite, or death itself, to trigger what was locked inside. Her world tilted on its axis as she crossed the small room.
Her hand smoothed over the undamaged skin, but her gaze was locked with his. From the moment she'd seen him in the bar, she'd known something was different about him. Now she knew what. Like called to like.
"Reckon we'll both fit in that shower," she whispered against his lips, and then claimed them with her own.
Darkness blanketed the world, the moon playing peek-a-boo through the thick clouds above. Andy knelt in the shadows next to Mason and watched as he organized his team with silent gestures. That he'd been military was obvious, as was the fact that he'd trained these people to work together. A fan of the march-in-and-kick-ass school of thought, she tried to stay still and not jitter impatiently.
Then it was game on. The attack started, not with a bang, but a whisper as the human forces approached the Lycan camp on silent feet. Mason had made them all shower to try and erase the smell of human sweat. Like soldiers from before the war, their faces were smeared with dirt, and they carried their rifles as if they meant business.
This was Mason's gig, and she was happy to let him lead. She was used to working alone and had no idea how to get a group of people working together without half scaring them out of their minds. He didn't need to terrify them to get them to work well. Even though they'd tried to kill him earlier they were following his orders now.
Wraiths in the night, they flitted from cover to cover, moving towards their objective. She thought back to the briefing. Over a scale model of the terrain made from dirt and anything lying to hand Mason had given each team directions and orders about how the attack was to go down. As plans went, it was a good one. She just knew from experience no plan survived first contact with the enemy. Double that when you were dealing with paranormals.
The camp appeared before them like an island rising from a foggy sea. The light from the campfire cast sky above and around in a warm orange glow. It should have been a welcoming scene; the makeshift camp with sleeping bags lay haphazardly around the fire warding off the chill of the night. It wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine marshmallows being toasted or steaks sizzling on a grill plate...only this was ten years after the end of the world. Marshmallows had gone the way of the dodo, and Lycans preferred their meat uncooked.
The wolves lounged around the fire in human form. She'd noticed that about them, unless they needed to hunt or fight Lycans preferred their two-legged forms. She'd never understood that. If she had the freedom to shift forms and run with the wind like they could, she'd never switch back to being human.
Her breath plumed on the night air as she dropped into cover behind a group of old barrels next to Mason. He flicked her a glance and smiled, a quick flash of white teeth in the darkness, before he reached out to squeeze her arm quickly. A brief touch but one that spoke volumes as his fingers lingered a second on her skin.
She could hear his breathing and her own heart as they waited for the signal from the other teams. Every second stretched out to infinity as she studied the layout of the camp. To the side of the fire was the makeshift cage they had the kids in. Sneaky bastards. They'd put it between the fire and an outcrop of rock, which meant the human teams were going to have to go through the Lycan pack.
Next to her, Mason muttered under his breath as he did a headcount. Andy didn't bother. Her reaper senses told her that all the kids were alive. Whether they made it through the night that way though, that one was anyone's guess. Life or death hung in such a precarious balance that perhaps only a Reaper could appreciate it. Every day a multitude of decisions took each soul nearer or further away from death. Right now, the decisions the humans made, and those of the Lycans, would affect whether those kids lived or died tonight.
The moon flitted in and out of view, allowing her a brief glimpse of the terrain on the other side of the camp. Mason's teams were good. She could see neither hide nor hair of them with her normal vision. Feeling Mason's attention on her, she switched her vision to look into the Shade. The mingled gray and silver lifelines decorated the landscape like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
Her eyes narrowed. The first two teams were in position, but the third had yet to reach its mark. She waited until they jockeyed into position behind the tree stump Mason had indicated earlier, and nodded. Cooking with gas now.
She watched as Mason checked his weaponry, every movement calm as he watched the camp below for movement. Nothing happened. Most of the Lycans appeared to be asleep, their lifelines sparkling red to Andy. Her palms itched to draw the blades sheathed across her back, but she held off. The breeze picked up, bringing the scents of the campsite to them. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of stale beer and unwashed bodies.
Mason leaned down and selected one of the pebbles by his knee. A thoughtful look on his face, he hefted it in his hand a couple of times, as though considering its potential. Reeling his arm back he launched it into the middle of the camp. She caught her breath, wondering what the hell he was playing at as it landed in the center of a group of empty beer cans.
With a loud clatter the projectile scattered the cans. The noise woke the snoozing Weres, bringing them to their feet with shouts of alarm. Andy glared at Mason. The idiot had just given away the element of surprise, which was pretty much all they'd had going for them.
He winked at her as he pulled something from the side of his vest. A grenade. Pulling the pin with a vicious twist of his wrist he launched it into the middle of the Lycan camp.
"Fire in the hole."