Primal Bonds
He scratched in the earth, using the last of his strength to dig deep. He moved as much of the wet earth as he could before shoving the sword into the hole and piling mud on top of it. The field was so gouged with the fighting, this last gouge didn’t look any different from the others.
Sean morphed back to human, and then his world went black as the Collar’s agony took over. Vaguely he sensed another presence and smelled Lupine, not Jared, but nor was it Andrea.
Andrea. Love.
I love you.
As Sean lost consciousness, he felt himself being lifted by the armpits and dragged away. Behind him, dying sunlight picked out Jared lying alone and bloody in the litter-strewn parking lot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dylan’s white pickup barreled through traffic on MLK Boulevard, and Andrea hung on to the swaying seat. Dylan’s face was set, his dark blue eyes almost black with fury.
“So where did they all go?” Andrea asked. Once she’d calmed down from the shock Dylan had given her, he’d ordered her to come with him, striding away before she could ask questions.
“Callum and his clan declared war on Liam,” Dylan said in clipped tones. “Liam gave the order—all cubs and vulnerable Shifters to be taken to safety. But each family has to look after its own, because the collective hiding places aren’t safe, not when Callum and his faction know where they all are.”
Which meant each family or pride or pack had gone to ground in their own secret hideaways. They’d have these places, because even though Shifters now lived in communities, the instinct to protect the mates and cubs from other Shifters still existed. Shifters worked together now, yes; but they all had private places into which they could disappear if they needed to.
“What the hell were you doing?” Dylan demanded. “Liam wanted to take you to stay with Kim and Connor, and Ronan tells us you forced him to let you go to that Fae. Liam decided you’d be all right with him, but he’s bloody pissed off at you. And Ronan.”
“Don’t blame Ronan. I needed to talk to my father—to Fionn. He said that Fae were helping Callum. They want the sword—the Fae, I mean.”
Dylan grunted, not sounding very surprised. “Betraying Shifters to the Fae. Callum dies for that.” A simple statement, but the chill with which he said it emphasized the walking danger that was Dylan Morrissey.
“Sean was looking for Glory,” Andrea said worriedly. “I know some of the places she likes to go, but not all.”
“Doesn’t matter; I know where Sean is. Or at least, where he was.”
“You do? How?”
“He called me. I was on my way to meet him when Liam summoned me and told me to stay behind in case you popped back out of Faerie.”
He snapped his mouth shut, and Andrea didn’t have to be a mind reader to know how he felt about that. Dylan turned abruptly onto a little-used street that wound behind empty warehouses.
“Sean told you he was out here?”
“He said he was in the parking lot of a bar Glory likes to go to. He found her scent and some blood.”
Andrea felt sick. “Blood?”
Dylan was pale and drawn, his fear for Glory coming off him in waves. “Not enough to show Sean what happened.”
“Where exactly are we going?”
“Here.” Dylan jerked the truck into a parking lot.
Andrea saw the familiar bulk of Sean’s motorcycle by the front door of the closed bar. Dylan glanced at it, and then tires screeched as he rode the breaks to avoid hitting the body of a man lying motionlessly on the pavement. The stench of burning rubber filled the air.
Andrea was out of the truck and racing to the man’s side before Dylan switched off the engine. She dropped to her knees and pushed blood-matted hair out of the face of Jared Barnett.
“Jared. What the hell?”
Jared’s flesh bore the deep marks of the fully extended, razor-sharp talons of a Feline Shifter. The cuts went to the bone, Jared’s naked skin blue white where it wasn’t covered with blood. He was still alive, barely, his heart fluttering in faint, rapid beats.
Jared opened his eyes, but they were filmed over, gaze unfocussed. “Andrea?”
“What happened? Did you see Sean? Did he do this?”
Jared swallowed, fighting for air. “Felines. Sean tried to save me.”
“Sean tried to save you? Where is he? What happened?”
“Gone. He was taken. The sword.”
Dylan crouched on Jared’s other side. “What about the sword?” he demanded.
“The sword,” Jared whispered. His eyes drifted shut, but breath still rasped in his throat.
Andrea cast her gaze around the parking lot. Much blood had been spilled, red soaking into the crumbling gray asphalt. She smelled more Shifters than just Sean and Jared. Felines, several of them, some of whom had been in the bar with Callum.
The parking lot ended in a field covered with weeds and tall grasses. A creek cut through the bottom of this field, ensuring the place stayed nice and wet. The field had been torn up by the fighting, leaving gouges of mud through the tall weeds, but no bodies lay here.
Neither did the sword. Nowhere did she see a glint of sliver, the hump of its hilt, but as she stood at the edge of the field, she started to hear it. The familiar shimmering sound that the sword made when she neared it rang inside her head, growing louder and louder until Andrea clapped her hands over her ears. An instinctive move—one glance back at Dylan and Jared told her they couldn’t hear it.