Callie's Guardian: White Tigers of Brigantia (Book 1) by Lisa Daniels (70)

Chapter Three

Milev tapped her on the shoulder, making her flinch in surprise.  “Sounds like they're watching T.V.  Probably five in the house.”

She calmed down, and scowled up at him.  “You can hear the T.V?  Because I can't hear shit.”  Isabelle placed pressure on the lock, gently teasing one of the pins up.

“Like I said, I'm magical.”

Isabelle snorted, but kept working on the lock.  In the meanwhile, she had the scent of the werewolf to contend with, slowly undulating into her nostrils and triggering her brain with pheromones.  She gritted her teeth, irritated.  Those pheromones were seriously messing up her concentration, making her mind digress to unexpected places, such as imagining those huge, bulky arms of his wrapped around her protectively, his lips pressing against her temple.  Her cheeks flushed, and she knew full well that the werewolf could scent any form of arousal on her skin.

“Can you, like, turn that off?”

“What?”  he asked, amused.

“Your... sex scent.  It's hard to focus.”

“Um, I hate to break this to you, but it's just my natural smell.  I can't really turn it off.  Unless I bleach my skin, which I hear is painful.”

“Fuck you, then,” Isabelle replied, sticking her tongue out in concentration. 

“Will you be heading back to your hunter friends after this?”

Isabelle stopped her infiltration to look up into his eyes, dark yellow in the lack of light.  “Why do you ask?”

Milev shrugged.  “Well.  If you're not busy.  Maybe we can go on a date sometime.”

She boggled at him, at an utter loss for words for the second time in as many hours.

“Okay, possibly a bit soon.  Let's just get out first, shall we?”

Isabelle opened her mouth, then closed it.  Part of her wanted to tell him to fuck off, for the audacity of a werewolf asking a hunter on a date.  And also because they were both currently in the process of trying to escape imprisonment.  The other part, fueled by intrigue, and possibly by some of those pheromones she'd been complaining about, found the notion more appealing than expected.

Bad fucking timing, though. She placed her attention back on the lock.  Milev hummed to himself, still far too cheerful and unflappable for someone who had apparently been chained up for two weeks.

“They did let me out so I could go to the bathroom.  Usually surrounded by, like, ten werewolves.  No dignity at all, of course.”  Milev scowled suddenly, and became stiff.  “Hang on, there's new sounds.”

“What?”  Isabelle stared at the man, who had a demon lurking inside.  Who acted, well, normal, given the circumstances they shared.

Maybe another time, without knowing his true identity, she would have gone for him without hesitation. 

Or maybe, given enough time, when they were not stuck in a cell, and if he genuinely lived up to his word on the status of werewolves, she might change certain priorities in her brain as well.  Could she trust him?  Not all of them were murderers?  There were laws against flesh-eaters?

Imagine if she presented that idea to her hunter friends.  Would she be ostracised, or accepted?  Accused of being a werewolf sympathizer, or listened to?

She didn't know.  It was all pretty confusing right now.  One thing she did know, however, was that she didn't hate Milev.  Not until he gave her a reason for loathing.

“I'm not sure.  People are coming in.  I think –”

Whatever he thought, Isabelle jumped when she heard a loud bang from beyond the basement, and abandoned her attempt at the door – two pins away from being unlocked – to gape at Milev.  Consternation smeared his face.  He stopped breathing, and Isabelle realized she'd forgotten how to breathe for a second as well.  She let it out in a hiss.

“What's happening?”

Shouts, shrieks, gunshots.

Milev puckered his lips, which looked comical under his blond beard.  “I think either we have help, or things are about to get a lot worse for us.  Uh... I don't know about you, but I think maybe we should just... go back into the basement.”

More gunshots spat out.  Isabelle renewed her efforts on the door.  “I don't know what's happening, but if the new people lose, we don't want to be sticking around.”

Milev's face contorted in slight anxiety.  “I'm not a great fan of being shot at.”

“Neither am I.  Strangely, I'm okay with holding the gun, though,” Isabelle said, a smirk tugging on her lips.  He rolled his eyes, but smiled back.

People shrieked in a language Isabelle didn't understand, followed by a clipped accent that yelled, “No more resistance!  Is bad.  We are mad at you!”

Someone screamed at the speaker to go to hell, which was followed by a gunshot.

“Danniven,” someone grunted.  “This isn't all of them.  We're missing, like, twelve.”

“The clan is seventeen, eighteen strong, yes?”

“Yes, sir.  There's only six here.”

Another gunshot.  “I think you mean two.”

“Oh, wow,” Isabelle said.

“This is werewolf upon werewolf violence we're listening to right now,” Milev said.  Then, winking, he yelled, “Danniven Lubanov!  It's Milev Spirova!  I'm stuck in the basement with a human!”

A brief silence followed his statement.  “Milev!  Is you and human okay?”

“No, it's terrible.  The human is so mean.”

A low chuckle.  “Humans are mean, yes.”

Their footsteps approached the basement, at the same time that Isabelle sprung the lock, and swung the door open to see four men with gleaming, supernatural eyes, wielding guns.  Danniven Lubanov sported amber eyes, and clearly headed the group.

“Hello, Milev,” he said.  “Not too late?”

“Could be worse,” Milev replied.  He placed a friendly arm on Isabelle's shoulders.  “This badass human killed about seven of them by herself.  So you're actually missing around five.”

Danniven nodded admiringly at Isabelle.  “Excellent.  We tell Markus what is happening.  And I text girlfriend to say I am alive, not dead.”

“He has a human girlfriend,” Milev added helpfully.  Isabelle suspected an ulterior motive for him saying this, and scrunched her lips in a disapproving frown.

“Is it just me,” one of the werewolves said, with a distinctive Toronto-Canadian accent, “or were you two in the process of rescuing yourselves?”  He indicated Isabelle's hairpin and the open door.

“We were.  She's good with locks.  We were going to be all stealthy and sneak out whilst they were watching television.”

“I don't understand,” Isabelle said, halting the banter, “what these werewolves hoped to gain from taking over your... alpha's property?  There must be more than something like that to usurp him.”

“Yes,” Danniven said.  “But they intended to kill alpha himself.  Alpha of course is not here.  He is in Bulgaria.”

“Don't you have, like, a second or third in command when this shit happens?”

“Yes,” Milev said.  “But Markus's clan here is still new.  He hasn't established a full chain of order yet.  It will likely be his next job when he gets back.  Promote loyal clans and start his own “noble” family thing.”

The sounds of a scuffle interrupted their statement, along with the revving of a car engine outside.

Danniven made a tsk noise, pinching the spot between his eyebrows.  “Markus will be in my debt for once.”  He examined Isabelle.  “Are you cop?”

“Hunter,” Milev said for her.  Isabelle watched the keen interest in Danniven's expression dim.

“Oh.”

“Need help!”  Someone barked from the other room, and Danniven, with his three Canadian allies, bounded off, obviously to deal with the remaining invaders on the property.  Isabelle's heart thumped faster.  She desperately wanted her weapons located, to have them snug in her hand, so she would feel powerful amongst a group of supernatural beings.

Then again, if she happened to be Milev or Danniven, she wouldn't exactly trust a hunter with a weapon.  Not when they could turn it upon a temporary ally.

Again, the betrayal of her so-called friends stuck in her head. 

“Come on,” Milev urged, pressing his palm into her back.  It left a burn mark there, where his warmth contacted, and it wasn't entirely unpleasant.  She allowed herself to be pushed on, heard two more gunshots, and saw a collection of werewolf bodies on the living room of the farmhouse, surrounded by Danniven's four Canadian werewolves, and two Bulgarian ones.  Blood dribbled onto the green carpet of a living room littered with trash, empty cans and tins, and Isabelle barely had time to fully register the sight of the deceased before Milev tried ushering her upstairs. 

“Wait.”  Isabelle held up a hand, and reached for one of the dead's sidearms.  “These will be vanadium-enhanced, right?”

A tiny flicker of fear slithered over Milev's face, before it disappeared.  For some reason, the fear disappointed Isabelle. 

“Yes.  Come on, let's go...”

But before they had a chance to react, a spray of machine gun fire hammered through the walls.  Screams and howls wrought the air as drywall dust spat into the air and swirled, and Isabelle screeched as Milev barrelled into her.  She collapsed in a heap, his body crushing hers, and she yelled, trying to push him off, even as more gunfire wrecked the surroundings around them.

She felt his body jerk once, twice, then fall even harder on hers, and in her panic, she almost tried aiming the gun into him, but hesitated at the last second.  He's been hit?

“Three down!”  Danniven hollered out.  “Martin, help Arthur!  Leave Tom, he's dead.  Get him!”  More gunfire spurted out, and Isabelle finally succeeded in peeling Milev off her.  Her heart sank horridly when she saw two blossoming bullet wounds in his back.

A sound clunked beyond the room.  Caution overrode her impulse to shake and shout the werewolf's name.  She aimed her gun, waited, and a black muzzled werewolf stepped into the room. 

The gun jerked in her hand as she fired at the wolf, then through the wall, hearing him collapse.  The machine gun he'd been holding skid and thudded into the ajar door.

Breathing fast, she waited for anything else.  Then, sure she wasn't about to suffer any extra intrusions, she turned her attention to Milev.

“Milev?  Milev?”

“Hey,” the werewolf croaked.  “I never did... ask your... name.”

“Isabelle.”

“That's... pretty.”  He wheezed, his eyelids beginning to flutter shut from the shock of pain.

She slapped his face, forcing him back into consciousness.  “Stay with me!  Don't go to sleep!”  She then yelled, “Help!  Help!  Milev is hurt!”

A moment later, Danniven entered the room, bleeding from the cheek, and gasped when he saw the wounds in Milev.  “Ne!  We need to pull those out...”

Two more werewolves bundled into the room, and Isabelle could only watch in numb shock as they peeled Milev off her, rushing him to the kitchen table for a hasty operation.

A werewolf had just jumped in the way and saved her.  Somewhere, she struggled to comprehend the fact.

Why had he saved her?  He owed her nothing.  She owed him nothing.

He's a werewolf.  He's supposed to be bad.  She bit her lip.  And I didn't tell him my name all this time.

“Are you any good with bullet wounds?” Danniven called, stepping into the room with her, as she stared blankly at the floor.  “Hello?”

Presently, Isabelle snapped back into focus.  “Uh.  Yes.  Yes, I can help.”

“Well, come on!  Save your boyfriend.”

“He's not...” she protested weakly, getting up to follow Danniven into the kitchen.

He's not my enemy.  The revelation crashed into her. 

She didn't want to see him die.  She didn't want to lose that stupid, grinning face, that unflappable manner.  Not when he had only just learned her name.

Not when he had, for some absurd reason, proposed to her a tentative date.  After the mess had cleared itself up, of course.  If they survived.

Her world unraveled around her, and she wasn't one hundred percent sure that was a bad thing.