Page 2 of Forsaken By Night

What the hell. They could run while he searched for whoever had fired the weapon.

Grinning, he closed his eyes and concentrated, and a moment later the familiar burn of his muscles stretching and contracting began. Pain racked him and blackness stole his vision as his bones broke and reformed and his skin sprouted fur. Gradually the pain faded, and he opened his canine eyes to find a different view of the world.

Tehya nipped his furry shoulder and took off at full speed, ears pinned to her skull, tail streaming behind her. Reveling in his black-furred wolf body, he chased after her, his tail high, his giant paws digging into the soft, moist earth.

Elation sang through him. This was what he lived for. The sheer joy of the wind in his face and a friend to keep him company.

It would be even better if I had a female two-legged friend too.

He stumbled like a cub learning to use its legs, and he swore Tehya laughed. As she should. He wasn’t cut out to be with other people, and he had no business having those kinds of thoughts. He was too dangerous, and no one let him forget that.

Tehya slowed to snatch up a stick to tease him with, and after a few playful attempts to take the stick from her, he let go of his regrets and surrendered to the simple life he’d learned to love since Tehya entered his world as an emaciated, half-frozen wretch more than a decade ago.

They ran for miles, chasing deer and rabbits along the way to find the shooter, and once he had to plunge into a river to avoid a grumpy black bear sow with cubs. Tehya went in the opposite direction, and as he pulled himself out of the stream, her howl, maybe half a mile away, rose up into the darkening sky.

He shook the water out of his fur and started trotting in her direction, but as he cut through a valley that had recently been the site of a massive battle among three vampire clans and humans, another gunshot shattered the air. A gut-wrenching howl of pain cut through the forest, freezing him in his tracks.

Tehya.

Terror turned Lobo’s marrow to jelly as he morphed back into his vampire form and sprinted in a mad rush through the trees, smashing through branches and leaping fallen logs and low-lying gullies. The sickening, metallic tang of wolf blood hit him even before the stench of the human who had fired the gun.

He burst over a ridge, and there, writhing in a rapidly expanding pool of blood, was Tehya, her hip blown open, bone and flesh spilling out through the ragged wound. And standing a few feet away, a man was taking a picture of his handiwork as the wolf flailed in agony.

A fuckingpicture.

What kind of sick asshole allowed an animal to suffer? And took photos of it?

With a roar of white-hot rage, Lobo slammed into the poacher, knocking him into a tree with so much force that he heard the crack of both wood and bone before the guy crumpled, unconscious, to the ground.

Unwilling to waste even the fraction of a second it would take to kill the scumbag, Lobo rushed over to Tehya. His heart clenched at the fear and pain swimming in her soulful eyes. Her chest rose and fell with her uneven, shallow breaths, and blood bubbled from her mouth.

“No,” he whispered. “Sweet Maker, no.”

She’d been the light in his life for the last twelve years, the reason he’d gone from merely existing to living. The reason loneliness hadn’t been the catalyst for a swan dive off the nearest cliff. He had to save her.

But it wasn’t as if there was a veterinarian hanging out over the next hill. The nearest town between here and Seattle was still at least an hour away at top speed. Carrying Tehya’s hundred pounds of dead weight would slow him considerably, and he didn’t think she’d survive the trip even if he could fly. And even if by some miracle a veterinarian could save her, he had little money. He got his food, clothing, and other necessities by trading venison, fish, or handmade bows and arrows.

His mind spun with alternatives, but it always came back to one option. The only option.

The vampire clan that had banished him decades ago had a doctor.

Very gently, he gathered Tehya in his arms. She didn’t protest or even whimper in pain, which wasn’t a good sign. As quickly as he could, he tore through the forest until he reached the hidden MoonBound entrance carved into the side of a stone mountain face.

Memories assailed him, both good and bad but mostly the latter, as his time as a MoonBound member came back to him. He no longer possessed the mark that would allow him entrance, and he knew no one would let him inside. But there was a way around that.

A dangerous way. A forbidden way.

In his arms, Tehya took a deep, shuddering breath. The sound of her blood dripping onto his boot was louder than it should be, and his gut wrenched in anguish as her life drained from her body.

Screw the danger. Fuck the forbidden.

He had to do this.

Closing his eyes, he summoned the image of MoonBound’s chief, a powerful vampire descended from the original twelve who, centuries ago, had spread the vampirism virus through North American native tribes. The familiar pain washed over Lobo as his body morphed, but unlike earlier when he’d shifted into a wolf, the pain was mild. He and Hunter were similar in size, weight, and, most likely, heritage, lessening the discomfort of his bones breaking and reforming, his joints popping and contorting.

When it was over, he was, theoretically, the spitting image of the black-haired, sharp-featured clan leader—right down to the MoonBound symbol that would allow him to enter the clan’s residence.

He didn’t waste another heartbeat standing around, but as he stepped across the threshold, he wondered how much longer he had to live. Merely impersonating another vampire had been bad enough to get him banished from MoonBound seventy years ago. But impersonating aclan chief?

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