THE FINAL
They couldn’t kill Raul. They had to let him live. Had to let him live!
But if he stood by and did nothing, that bastard wolf monster, the demon in wolf’s clothing, was going to kill Malinda.
For several long seconds Garrett stood there, unable to move. Unable to act. No matter what he did, Raul was going to kill someone he loved.
He heard bone snapping, saw what Raul was doing. He made his decision.
Damn it all to hell.
No. Damn him to hell. He was going to burn for this.
And take the animal spirit with him.
Trampling his way down the alley, he aimed himself at Raul like a bullet from a gun, meaning to take the wounded Shifter wolf down before he could do any more hurt to Malinda.
Then in a flash Raul moved, swift as sight itself, and tossed Malinda bodily through the air. He couldn’t avoid being hit by her. The only thing he could do was use his body as a buffer, to cushion her fall.
They fell in a tangle, heaped over and around and into each other, and Garrett couldn’t believe that Raul hadn’t seized the opportunity to attack them. When he looked up, Raul was gone.
“Malinda?” He said her name gently, pulling himself out from under her and standing there, unsure what to do, not knowing if he should leave her and go after Raul or if he should get her out of here or if he should find Brandon or, or, or…!
God damn it!
“Hey,” she said to him, and only then did he notice her eyes were open and she was panting hard and looking up at him. “Hey, don’t worry about me. Go… get him.”
She was hurt. Badly. He had to help her. “Hold on. I’ll get you back to the mansion.”
How? He was a bear. If he shifted back, he’d be a naked man, running through the city streets with a wolf in his arms. If they could get to the car…
“Garrett,” she whined. “Go after—”
“Shut up!” he told her. “I can’t leave you!”
She licked his jaw. “You have to.”
“Shut up,” he said again, not as loud, but with more confidence. This was what he had to do. He had to save her.
“Brandon…?” she asked, a word full of too much meaning.
“I’ll find him.” He would. He would find his son, and save him, and then he would kill Raul until he was dead, for sure this time.
He relaxed his body, starting the process to Shift back to his human self.
His animal spirit snapped at him, inside, as real as if the damned thing was physical. It blocked him from changing. It kept him as a bear.
What the hell?
Fine. He didn’t have time to argue with the demon spirit. He knew he’d been right about the damned spirit. No matter what Malinda might believe, the things were evil and they only brought harm. Look at her. Look at his son!
I’m trying to save your son, the bear told him.
Go fuck yourself. Let me be human again!
You need me.
I need you gone, is what I need.
You need me.
Why?
Because Raul is still here.
The scent. He had been so wrapped up in his own worries, his own indecision, that he had failed to notice what was literally right in front of his nose. Raul’s scent. It hadn’t changed. It hadn’t faded. It was still here.
He was still here.
Without me, you would be dead. Consider that the next time you call me a demon.
Then the bear faded back into himself. The demon—no, the spirit—within him had just saved his life, and probably Malinda’s as well, even as he had directed all of his anger and frustration onto it.
He was humbled, and grateful, and he didn’t have any time to express it.
Raul was here, and coming closer.
“Stay here,” he growled to Malinda. “Don’t move.”
She searched his eyes, and he could see she understood. Whether she caught Raul’s scent or whether she just saw something in his direct gaze he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. She just needed to do what he asked for now. He had to make sure someone he loved was still safe.
Lumbering a few steps away from Malinda he snuffed at the air. Yes. The wolf Shifter was still here. His scent was different than Malinda’s, easily separated from hers even though both of them were wolves. There was a muskier smell to his, a male aroma so to speak, but it was more than that. Raul smelled wrong. Tainted. Foul.
“I know you’re here!” Garrett called out to him. His voice was rough against the bare brick walls around them. Thank God they were in an isolated part of the city. Talking animals never went over well with a terrified public. “I know you’re here! Come out. Let’s end this.”
Hollow laughter filled the alley. Garrett stretched out with his hearing, listening, but couldn’t tell where Raul’s voice came from. “I’m here,” he admitted. “Just a bit banged up. You and your bitch over there did a number on me.”
“Not as much as we wanted to.” A few more steps into the alley, and the scent was stronger. “If Malinda had known the rules we live under, we would have hacked you into pieces. Then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“And I wouldn’t have your son.”
Anger flashed through his veins. He ground his teeth together and growled low in his chest. For a long moment, he saw the world through the bear’s eyes. He was the animal, his human mind pushed to the back, only there as an observer.
Then he was in control of his body again, the huge bear that he would use to crush Raul into pulp, if he could ever find him.
“Don’t worry,” Raul said in a voice that was oozing fake sympathy. “Your whelp is all right. At least, he isn’t dead. I have him. Let me go if you want him to stay that way.”
“You give me my son!” Garrett shouted, racing forward, searching everywhere around him, tearing into a stack of cardboard boxes, slamming his fists into the walls. “You give him back to me!”
“Patience, Garrett,” Raul laughed, still nowhere to be seen. “I still have a need for him. You can find him at the corner of Salstiz and Fifth. The white building. You can’t miss it. But… I wouldn’t wait too long. I might get hungry.”
Garrett roared his anger, losing all control over himself, all sense of restraint. He smashed forward, shouldering a metal garbage bin out of his way, yanking down the lower part of a fire escape ladder, leaving deep scores with his claws in the walls. His only thought was to get to Raul, and kill him.
But that wouldn’t save his son.
With Brandon’s image suddenly floating into his mind he was able to pull back, to regain that part of his humanity that he had very nearly thrown away for good just then. That had been a dangerous precipice he had just danced across. Raul had said all the right things to make him explode, anger and fear and rage pouring out of him with each breath.
When he could see straight again, when he could take a breath that didn’t leave his chest again in an animal’s guttural shout, he stood where he was, and searched for Raul with his senses. This was what the monster had wanted. For Garrett to be so upset that he lost sight of his goal and let the beast within him take over.
Because now, Raul was gone.
*
“You can’t go in there alone.”
Rooftops. Apparently that was the way all good Shifters got around in a city. Who knew?
Now they stood together, a bear and a wolf, on the rooftops of New York City, watching an empty white building at the intersection of Salstiz and Fifth. She was in pain. Most of the trip here had been Garrett waiting for her to catch up. A broken leg. For an animal that walked on four legs it shouldn’t be such a problem. She still had three.
“No, I can go in there,” he argued with her. “I have to go in there. It’s you who can’t go in there. Not like this.”
She licked at the break in her leg. It was still bleeding. “This will heal, right? Like you healed?”
He pressed the side of his body against hers. “It will heal. In time. Stay here, let yourself go to sleep. If you’re lucky, it will be all better when I come back. With Brandon.”
“I’m just supposed to sleep while you go fight with the devil?”
His eyes were amused, black orbs. “So now you agree with me that the spirits are demons?”
“Raul is. I can agree to that. Right now my animal spirit is keeping me alive and it’s going to heal a broken leg. Plus,” she added, “it brought us together. Brought me to you.”
A huff of breath, a low growl. She could tell his body was reacting just like hers. Even through the pain, desire for him pulsed in her blood. He would always be hers. And she would always give herself to him.
Right now, he needed to do this. Alone. She knew that. She just didn’t like it.
“Why don’t you find your Shifter friends in the city?” she asked. “The owl…?”
An owl. Right.
He licked the corner of her mouth. “I love you. I always will. Stay here.”
“And sleep?”
“I’ll be back. I promise.”
“You’d better keep that promise. If you don’t, I’ll find you and kill you myself.”
He stayed pressed against her for a brief moment, then he was gone.
*
Garrett didn’t argue with his bear this time. He needed the animal’s strength and enhanced senses. Raul was injured, but he was still Raul. Psychotic. Murderous. Without emotion. Soulless.
And he had Garrett’s son.
The inside of the building was dark, and the bottom floor was one huge open space. Maybe this place had been a warehouse once upon a time. Maybe it had been a textile plant and dozens of workers had been hunched over long tables here. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Up on his hind legs, walking like a man, lumbering like a bear, he shuffled into the darkness.
Not that it was completely dark. Not to him. The animal had its uses. Enhanced sight was one of them. Saving him from nearly dying at Raul’s hands back in his mansion was definitely useful as well.
The bear inside of him tried to talk to him, tried to tell him how they could be so much more, together. He didn’t listen. The animal spirit had shut him out earlier and kept him from changing back to human. Fine. He could shut the animal spirit out as well.
Not that the demon spirit was wrong. Now that he had allowed the bear to take over, rather than fighting it at every turn, things were easier. Better. Almost… harmonious.
He might even have to stop calling the spirit a demon.
Maybe.
Just not right now.
Right now, he was using the spirit for what it was good for. Enhancing his own limited senses to tell him what was right in front of him.
His son.
“Brandon.” Even though he’d spoken quietly, his son’s name echoed around him, off the walls, back to him, louder and louder. It was like the entire world had anticipated his coming, lying in wait for him here to spring whatever trap he had stepped into.
“Dad?” Brandon’s voice echoed to his ears. “Is that you? Dad, I can’t see you.”
“It’s all right. Stay where you are.” Snuffing to pick out the different strands of the scents in the air, Garrett lumbered a few more steps forward. “I’m coming to you.”
Raul’s scent was here. Everywhere. It was overlaid on itself and crossed so many times that he couldn’t tell if the bastard was here or not. Maybe he’d lucked out and managed to come here while that wolf was out somewhere else…
Laughter, cold and hateful, followed the dying echoes of his promise to Brandon that things would be all right. Raul’s voice, making him a liar.
Brandon was at the far end of this room, tied to one of the massive concrete support beams that were spaced out evenly all around. The ropes were thick, and tight, and he could see even at this distance in the dark that he was being braver than any ten-year-old boy had a right to be.
“Should I let him go now?” Raul asked, humor edging his words. “I have you, after all.”
Where was he hiding? Garrett couldn’t see him, couldn’t pinpoint where the voice was coming from. He shuffled forward more, one step at a time, standing tall and alert still. There was no sense trying to bargain with Raul. There were only two ways this could end. With Garrett and Brandon dead, or with Raul dead.
Garrett wanted Raul dead. More than he had ever wanted to hurt anyone in his life, he wanted Raul dead.
But he had to find the damned Shifter first. Talking was the best way.
“You can let him go, Raul. Let him go, and you and I can settle this.”
“We’ll settle this,” Raul growled. “But the boy stays. The boy watches.”
There. Garrett could follow the sound of that hateful voice to…
“Then the boy will die as well.”
There.
Brandon made a sound that wasn’t quite a little kid whimper but was damned close. Garrett knew what this was doing to Brandon, what it had to be doing to his mind, but he couldn’t undo what had already been done. His son had learned what his father was, what his father had kept secret from him for so long, and now he’d been kidnapped and tied up and the only one who could save him was his father.
He wasn’t going to let his son down.
Roaring, snarling, he dropped to all fours and ran at the part of the darkness where Raul was hiding, in the shadows, behind stacks of pallets, an obvious hiding spot that wouldn’t keep him safe. With one more bounding leap he crashed through the stack, breaking thin wooden slats, slamming his head and paws and body down where Raul was hiding.
Only, he wasn’t there.
Grunting, sniffing at the air, he got back to his four feet and stood there, confused. The wolf should have been here. Right here…
“Dad, look out!”
Brandon’s shout came two seconds too late. Raul jumped him from behind, hidden better than Garrett would have given him credit for, his attack savage and sudden.
Garrett thrashed with his massive arms, but Raul had gotten the advantage of position, used Brandon to draw him out and make him vulnerable. The wolf’s teeth tore into the back of his neck, ripping out chunks of flesh and fur. His hind paws tore into his back near the spine. He couldn’t shake Raul loose. He couldn’t lay a paw on him.
At the end of the room, his son watched as Raul tried to kill him.
The sight of his son trapped like that, tears brimming his eyes, trying fitfully to loosen the ropes and unable to do anything more than cut his skin against them, that did more to energize Garrett than the threat to his own life.
Take it, he said to the bear. Take me. Be me. Save my son.
The next few moments were always a blur in his memory. Hazy colors and formless shapes filled his vision. A nagging sense of pain from a thousand different wounds that he couldn’t do anything about.
Through the bear’s eyes, he saw what happened, but it was like he was watching a movie, unable to stop what was happening, unable to control it, only able to watch as it happened around him. He spun himself in a hard circle, throwing Raul in a wide arc with the wolf clinging by his teeth to his shoulder. It was enough for one of the bear’s paws to grab hold of the wolf’s chest, claws sinking in. One hard yank and Raul was off his back and under his foot. He leaned down and twisted and ground Raul into the cement floor.
The wolf went wild. Biting, hissing, tearing, clawing. Garrett knew he was already bleeding from enough places to make the floor red. Raul opened up more, cutting into his arm down to the bone. Garrett snapped his jaws at Raul’s head, clamping down on an ear, ripping and tearing the thin flesh. Still Raul fought on, even as Garrett bit down on his long skull hard enough to hear bone crack, until finally the wolf’s claws cut through a tendon in his forearm.
Was there pain? More pain? It was impossible to tell from this distance, as he watched through his own eyes. Impossible to know through the other pain that already flooded him. All he knew was that not even his animal spirit had control of that arm anymore. It was dead, and useless.
And Raul was free.
This time the wolf’s teeth came down around his neck.
“Dad!” Brandon cried out.
Garrett couldn’t answer. He couldn’t find himself.
*
The bird regarded the sleeping wolf form on the rooftop. A female wolf. Interesting.
It wasn’t very often she saw something like this. Almost never, in this city.
She wondered if just maybe this wolf was dead.
*
Garrett came back to himself when his bear admitted defeat and ran away.
That was the only way he could describe it in his mind. One moment, the bear had control of him and he was a passenger in his own shifted body. The next, the bear was fleeing to the back recesses of his mind and leaving Garrett to the pain and terror of a body torn and broken by Raul’s wolf.
Damn. Oh, damn.
He lay on his side, panting heavily, the tang of his own blood heavy in the air. Up was that way, he thought, although gravity seemed to have loosened its hold on him. He floated on a cloud of agony, of terror, of defeat.
Raul had won. He’d beaten the bear spirit. Garrett couldn’t do anything to save himself, or Brandon, or Malinda.
At the edges of his vision, Raul limped into sight. He was beat up as well, bleeding just like Garrett, but still on his feet. One of those feet dragged at an awkward angle, but he still circled Garrett with a smile on his canine lips. “Done, Garrett Millieur. You are done. I have waited years for this revenge. I have faced death, I have starved and waited and lived in the shadows while you enjoyed everything life could give you. Wealth. Power. A son to carry on your name.”
He leaned in close to whisper in Garrett’s ear, blood oozing down his face and over one eye. “Did you know my mate was pregnant?”
“Go to hell,” he managed to breathe.
Raul slashed his claws across Garrett’s face. “You first.”
“Don’t hurt him!” Brandon screamed. His brave son, facing down a wolf.
Raul twisted around at Brandon, losing his balance on his three feet and pitching forward. He regained his balance with a growl and stalked his way over to the boy. “Your turn will come soon enough,” he promised. “First, you watch me kill your father.”
“Raul!” Garrett called out fiercely. “You touch my son, and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Raul demanded. “You won’t do anything! Your spirit is cowering inside of you. I can smell it. I can tell I’ve broken you! Now,” he sneered, saliva dripping from sharp teeth, “you die. And this nightmare finally ends.”
With a screech and a piercing call, an owl flew in through a window high up the wall, crashing through glass that shattered like broken bells against the floor. The bird swooped down, a sweeping glide that flashed talons and a hooked beak very close to Raul’s head. He ducked, belly to the floor, as the owl came back around and dive bombed the wolf again.
Ha, Garrett thought to himself. He’d recognize those tail feathers anywhere. Nice to have friends. Or at least, nice to have other Shifters he could count on when the chips were down.
They couldn’t be any more down then they were right at that moment.
Fight. He had to fight. The owl was smart, in most everything, but fighting had never been a skill she could master. She had the high ground, and her wings would keep her out of Raul’s reach, but she couldn’t do anything more than distract him while Garrett got himself together.
“Get up,” he whispered to himself. “Ignore the pain. Fight. Save the ones you love.”
Brandon was still calling out for his father, still crying big kid tears. Garrett concentrated on that, on the picture of his son in danger, to make him force his mutilated body into action. Still in bear form, or what was left of it, he swayed on four paws, heavy and in pain, and made it three steps, four steps, five. Brandon. He had to make it to Brandon. Another step, and another…
A blood curdling screech sliced into his brain. The owl. That was his friend the owl. He stopped and turned in time to see her skidding across the floor to slam up against the wall, to lie still, wings spread out over her head, feet twitching in the air.
Raul’s eyes pierced Garrett. “Your turn,” he snarled.
Faster than was possible, beat up and mangled as he was, Raul came across the floor at Garrett. He braced his big bear body for the impact one last time.
From the side, out of nowhere, a gray form raced in at them. It collided with Raul and beat him to the ground and bit and tore into him until blood was all Garrett could see. It couldn’t be. Raul was down, unable to defend himself, and he wasn’t getting back up.
Malinda looked up at him, smiling with her wolf muzzle smeared with Raul’s blood.
“I finished my nap,” she told him, before going back to tearing Raul apart.
Piece. By. Piece.
A noise, a small gasp, brought his attention back to Brandon. He limped over, putting his body between his son and the carnage Malinda was delivering. No boy his age should have to see this. Of course, no boy his age should have to live with a father who was a Shifter. This is not the life he would have wished on his son. Ever.
Is it so bad? his bear said, crawling out from the edges of his consciousness, finally, to speak. Look what you and Malinda just accomplished, with my help.
Your help?! Garrett very nearly roared the words out loud. You call that help?! You left me here to die! You left me here on my own when you knew I couldn’t win!
Silence. Then, You don’t understand, do you?
Understand what, you bastard demon parasite?
I left you to fight, because you were fighting for your son. I couldn’t continue to fight just for me. I needed something more, and I didn’t have it. You did.
What the hell are you trying to say?
I left you to fight for your son. There is nothing stronger than a man fighting for his family. Not even the strength of a spirit animal. You were stronger when I left you.
Garrett gaped, looking down at the terrified expression on his son’s face. He realized that what the bear had just said was true. He had been finished. There was nothing left in him when the bear left. It would have been the end right there, except it wasn’t. When he heard his son’s voice, he found the strength to keep fighting. To keep living.
To win.
His animal spirit had done what was best for both of them. The bear had let Garrett Millieur be Garrett Millieur.
Brandon looked up at him now, and he realized just exactly how much he had to thank the bear for.
“Dad?”
“Yes, son?”
“Can you, maybe, untie me?”
Laughing, allowing himself to be happy that his son at least was all right, Garrett hooked a claw into one of the loops of heavy rope around Brandon and yanked until the bonds broke.
His son threw his arms around his big fluffy torso, and squeezed. Garrett ignored the pain it caused to his cuts and bruises and breaks and other little wounds. His son was alive. That was all that mattered.
He relaxed himself, let himself release his hold on the shift, and this time nothing stopped him. In his son’s arms, he became human again. His body shrank down and as it did the pain of his injuries intensified. He went down to his knees, his one leg useless in its current state. He would need to sleep, and soon, so that he could be healed. One more reason to be grateful for the animal spirit.
He held Brandon tightly, naked but not embarrassed, even though he was getting blood all over the boy’s shirt. That could be fixed. What had happened here today might never be fixed. With love, and time, maybe. Brandon was strong. He would have to be stronger for him.
That was the way it had always been between them.
A woman’s hand was placed gently on his shoulder. Bloody, but beautiful just the same, Malinda looked down at him, her arm covering her breasts and her other parts strategically hidden behind his body. “Garrett, I, uh, think it’s done.”
He looked behind them. Raul’s body lay there, in several pieces. He caught her gaze with his. He was amazed at what she had done. Disgusted at the necessity of it, but so very impressed at what she had accomplished. She had been thrown into this mess of a life. She didn’t deserve it.
She turned his face away from the mess she had made, and kissed his lips. The faint taste of blood was on her mouth. He loved this woman. With all his heart.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
“Malinda too?” Brandon asked, his face buried in his father’s chest.
“Yes,” she answered for herself. “I want to go home, too.”
Home. Garrett’s home. Now, her home as well.
*
The owl was fine, as well. She’d been stunned, knocked out, but nothing was broken. She glared at Garrett after shaking off the hit Raul had dealt her, and told him she should have known this would happen. He always got her hurt.
Malinda raised an eyebrow to that, but didn’t bother asking.
The owl was also nice enough to bring them clothing so they didn’t have to walk home naked. Not that Garrett could walk at all. Not before a three hour nap that he took after they got home.
He woke to the feel of Malinda’s body next to his. She was warm, and soft, and as naked as him. His body was healed enough that it only barely throbbed with pain, and she moved in just the right ways when she heard him stir, and without either of them saying a word, they both fell into each other.
Her mouth tasted him all along his chest. Little flicks of her tongue brushed the lines of his muscles, his collar bone, the sensitive circle of his nipple. He responded to her immediately, and she made sure to push her leg up into his crotch for him to slide his growing erection over her smooth skin.
Ecstasy.
Aroused and suddenly full of energy, he rolled over on top of her and pinned her arms out and pushed her legs apart and touched his lips to each of her breasts over and over until she was arching her back and begging him to take her.
She was hot and wet and very, very inviting.
They moved slowly, at first, enjoying each other’s bodies in a way they never had before. It had always been all hunger and pure desire before. Now, it was love and trust and all the things that make two people into one.
Malinda reached her climax quickly, followed by another, and another, and by that time, Garrett was too far gone to do anything but give himself to her in one blinding release.
In the afterglow, they lay in each other’s arms, talking.
“There’s still so much I don’t understand,” she said to him. “You’ll have to teach me. Everything.”
“I will,” he promised. “There’s so much you need to know. So much I wish I could have told you before… before.”
“You didn’t exactly have time. Raul saw to that.”
She stroked his torso with her fingertips, and damn it if he didn’t think he could go again, with her, right now. Later. He promised himself that. With everything he’d been promising Brandon and Malinda and everyone else recently, he figured he owed himself at least that much.
“There’ll be time now,” he told her. “You and me. We’ll have all the time in the world.”
“You, and me,” she corrected him, “and Brandon. I love your kid, Garrett. He took all of this like a real trooper. Better than I did.”
“We’ve all had to do things we didn’t want to over the last few days.” He kissed the top of her hair. “I can’t imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t been here with me. I can’t imagine… and I won’t have to. Thank you, Malinda.”
She kissed his lips, his ears, the tip of his nose. “You’re welcome.”
Then her hand started exploring him in very sensitive places, and it was another few hours before they left his bed.