Dead After Dark_Shadow of the Moon Read online

  "No, Brother" Dare mocked the word. "You are." Before Fury could blink. Dare lifted a gun and aimed it at Fury's head. Fury caught Dare's wrist at the same instant it fired. Docking and twisting, he fell to his knees, pulling Dare's arm with him. -

  Screams rang out around them. "Gun!" someone shouted, causing the human patrons to panic as they ran for the door.

  Angelia caught Fury by his throat. "Hold him down!" Dare snapped, as he tried to wring his hand out of Fury's.

  Fury refused to let go of Dare's hand. If he did, the bastard would shoot him with whatever he'd used on the lions.

  Angelia wrapped her arm around his throat, choking him. "Let him go, Fury."

  Before he could answer, all three of them were thrown apart. Fury tried to get up, but someone had them pinned down with one hell of a forcefield. Growling, he struck out with his powers in anger. Instead of breaking the hold, it turned him into a wolf.

  He barked at Mama Peltier, who moved to stand between them. But he knew from experience that it wasn't her powers he felt. The trouble was, he didn't know who they belonged to.

  "No one comes into my house and does this," she snarled. "All three of you are banned from here, and if I ever catch you inside Sanctuary again, you won't live long enough to regret it."

  "He attacked us," Dare said. "Why should we be banned?" Dev hauled him up from the floor. "Anyone who participates in a fight is thrown out. Those are the laws."

  Colt was far more gentle picking Angelia up."There was no bloodshed," Angelia argued. Mama curled her lip. "Doesn't matter. You almost exposed us to the humans. Lucky for you, they evacuated quickly. Now get out."

  Fury tried to turn human again to tell them what was going on, but his magick wasn't cooperating. Not even his mental powers were working. It most likely had to do with the fact that someone else's powers were holding him down.

  Damn it! Dare glared at him and made a gesture to let him know it wasn't over. Then, he and Angelia left.

  "That means you, too, Wolf," Dev growled. "Max, let him go."

  The forcefield dropped. Finally he was able to turn back into a human. Though he could have done without the public nudity. Unlike other Were-Hunters, he couldn't manifest clothes at the same time as he shapeshifted. / really hate my powers . ..

  As he reached to scoop up his clothes, they were put on his body. Confused, he looked around and caught Aimee's gaze. She inclined her head to let him know that she was the one who'd helped him. No doubt Fang had told her about his weakness.

  Dev stepped forward. "I'm going," Fury said. "But before I do, let me congratulate all of you on your stupidity. Those two assholes who just left were the ones who screwed the lions upstairs. I was trying to get the information out of them."

  Dev cursed. "Why didn't you tell us?" "I was trying. Next time you forcefield someone to the ground, you might not want to stifle their ability to talk, too."

  The dragon, Max, shook his head. "I thought you were just going to insult me for holding you down. It's what you normally do whenever you speak to me."

  "I probably would have had I not had something more important to tell you."

  Dev cleared his throat to get their attention. "Are they from this time period?"

  "No." Mama nodded. "Then they have to be in town somewhere. There's no full moon for them to use to time jump."

  Fury wished, but there was another truth about his old friend. "The woman was Aristos. She's not bound by the moon. They could be anywhere, in any time."

  Dev sighed. "Well, at least we got the humans out before they saw anything unnatural happen."

  "Bully that." Fury zipped his jacket up. "Now if you'll excuse me—" "Hey."

  He looked at Dev."You're still banned from here." "Like I care." He'd been banned from much nicer places than this, and at least there he'd had people who'd actually cared for him . . . at least for a few years.

  Without a backward glance, he left them and headed back to Ursulines. The street was strangely quiet, especially given the fact that a large number of humans had gone screaming into the night only a few minutes before. The threat of violence must have really gotten under their skin.

  But that didn't change the fact that he still had a wolf to track. Two of them to be precise. Common sense told him to return to his pack and tell Vane what was happening.

  Fury scoffed. "Lived my whole life without any sense. Why should I start having some now?"

  As he reached his bike, a strange fissure of power went down his spine.

  He turned in expectation of a fight, but before he could even move, he was hit with a fierce shock. Cursing, he hit the ground hard. Pain exploded through him as he changed into his wolf form, then human, then wolf again. He was completely immobilized as his body struggled to hold onto one form and was incapable of it.

  Dare walked up to him slowly, then kicked him hard in the ribs. "You should have died. Fury. Now you're going to wish you had."

  Fury lunged at him, but his muscles wouldn't cooperate. If he could lay hand or paw on the bastard, he'd rip his throat out.

  He looked up at Angelia to see sympathy on her face an instant before Dare shot him again. Unbelievable pain ripped through him as he struggled to stay conscious.

  It was a losing battle. In one heartbeat, everything went black.

  "What are you doing?" Angelia asked Dare. "We need to know what he knows about our experiment. More to the point, we need to know who he's been talking to. We can't afford for our secret to get out."

  She cringed as she watched Fury's body continue to shift from human to white wolf and back again. At least until Dare wrapped the collar around his throat that kept him as human. Since Fury's natural form was a wolf, keeping him as a human, especially in daylight, would weaken him.

  And it would hurt. She shook her head at his actions. "You know he's not going to tell us anything." "I wouldn't be so sure."

  The Fury she remembered would never tell secrets. He'd die before he did, and he could take a lot of pain. Even as a child, he'd been stronger than any other. "How can you be so certain?"

  "Because I'm going to turn him over to our Jackal." Angelia sucked her breath in sharply at the threat. Oscar was a jackal whose heart was so black, he was more animal than man. "He's your brother, Dare."

  "I have no brother. You know what the Katagaria did to my family. To our patria."

  It was true. She'd been there the night Dare's Katagari father had led the attack on their Arcadian camp. Just a child, she'd been hidden as the attacks began. Her mother had smeared her with earth to mask her scent before she'd placed her in the cellar.

  Even now, she could see the wolves as they attacked her mother and killed her while she'd watched in horror through the slats in the floor.

  Dare was right. They had to protect their people. The animals needed to be stripped of their powers and put down like the rabid creatures they were. Even Fury.

  "Are you with me?" he asked. She nodded. "I won't see another child suffer my fate. We have to protect ourselves. Whatever it takes."

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  THE STORY OF SON

  by

  J.R. Ward

  For my family,

  both those of blood and choice,

  with all my love.

  1

  Claire Stroughton palmed her travel mug without looking up from the will she'd drafted and was reviewing. "I hate when you do that."

  Claire glanced across her office at her executive assistant. "Do what?"

  "That heat-seeking missile routine with your coffee.""My mug and I have a very close relationship." Martha pushed her sleek glasses up on her nose. "Then good thing it's got a lid. You're going to be late for your five o'clock if you don't leave now."

  Claire stood and pulled on her suit jacket. "How bad's the time?"

  "Two twenty-nine. Drive to Caldwell is a minimum of two hours plus in this traffic and your car is waiti
ng for you down in front. Your conference call with London is scheduled for sixteen. . . fifteen minutes from now. What kind of cleanup do you need me to do before the long weekend?"

  "I've reviewed the revised merger documents for Techni-tron and I'm not impressed." Claire passed over a stack of paper big enough to be used as a doorstop. "Courier them down to 50 Wall now. I need a meeting with opposing counsel seven a.m. Tuesday morning. They come to us. Do I owe you anything before I go?"

  "No, but you can tell me something. What kind of sadistic bore schedules a meeting with their lawyer for five o'clock on the Friday of Labor Day weekend?"

  "Client's always right. And sadistic is in the eye of the beholder." Claire packed up the will in a document case then grabbed her Birkin bag. As she looked around her spacious office, she tried to think of the work she planned to do over the weekend. "What am I forgetting?"

  "Pill." "Right, right." Claire used what was left in her mug to polish off the prescription she'd been working her way through for the last ten days. As she pitched the orange bottle in the wastepaper basket, she realized she hadn't sneezed or coughed since Sunday. Stuff had worked evidently.

  Damn airplanes. Germ pools with wings. "Walk with me." Claire gave a couple more marching orders on the way to the elevator, all the while waving to some of the two hundred-odd attorneys and support staff that worked at Williams, Nance & Stroughton. Martha kept pace with her in spite of the load of paper in her arms, but then that was what was great about the woman. No matter what, she was always there.

  At the bank of elevators, Claire punched the down button. "Okay, I think that's it. Hope you have a good weekend."

  "You, too. Try and take a break, would you?" Claire stepped into the mahogany-paneled lift. "Can't. We have Technitron on Tuesday. I'm going to spend most of my weekend here."

  Four minutes later she was in her Mercedes inching forward in the Manhattan traffic, trying to get out of the city. Eleven minutes after that she was being patched into London.

  The conference call lasted fifty-three minutes and it was a good thing she was basically in a parking lot because the virtual meeting didn't go well. Which was pretty common. Mergers and acquisitions of billion-dollar companies were never easy and not for the faint of heart. Her father had taught her that.

  Still, it was a relief to hang up and just focus on driving. Caldwell, New York, was probably only a hundred miles from downtown, but Martha was right. Traffic was a bitch. Apparently everyone and their uncle was trying to peel out of the Big Apple and they were all using the same route as Claire.

  Normally, she wouldn't be taking the time to drive to see a client in a private home, but Miss Leeds was a special case for a lot of reasons and it wasn't like the woman could come down to the office easily. She was what? Ninety-one now?

  Christ, maybe she was even older. Claire's father had been the woman's lawyer forever and after he'd died two years ago, Claire had inherited Miss Leeds along with his equity in the family firm. When she'd taken his seat at the partners' table, she became the first female in the history of Williams, Nance & Stroughton to park it in the boardroom, but she'd earned that right, in spite of what Walter Strough-ton's will said. She was a fantastic M&A lawyer. Second to very, very few.

  Miss Leeds was her only trusts and estates client, which had been the same for Claire's father. The elderly woman was worth close to two hundred million dollars, thanks to her family's interests in a variety of companies, all of which were represented by WN&S. These holdings were the heart of the relationship. Miss Leeds believed in sticking with what she knew and her family had been with the firm since its inception in 1911. So there you had it. An M&A rock star doing T&E for an NHC.

  Or in human speak: a mergers and acquisitions specialist doing trusts and estates work for a nursing home candidate.

  Believe it or not, the interaction algebra added up. The will and the trusts in it were fairly straightforward once you got familiar with them and Miss Leeds was easygoing compared to most of Claire's corporate clients. The woman was also good for business when it came to that will of hers. She approached revisions of it the way some people got into gardening, and at $650 an hour for Claire's time, the billable hours added up. Miss Leeds was constantly reworking the charitable portion of her estate, tilling that section, trimming and replanting the philanthropies as she changed her mind. The last two alterations Claire had handled over the phone, so when Miss Leeds had asked for a personal meeting this time, there was every reason to go up for a quick visit.

  Hopefully it would be quick. Claire had only been out to the Leeds estate once before, to introduce herself after her father's death. The meeting had gone well. Miss Leeds evidently had seen pictures of Claire through her father and had approved of Claire's "ladylike deportment."

  Which was a joke. Although it was true that clothes could make both the man and the woman, and Claire's wardrobe was full of conservative suits with below-the-knee skirts, that was surface gloss. She had her father's head for business and his aggressive streak, too. She might look like a lady from her chignon to her sensible pumps, but on the inside she was a killer.

  Most people picked up on her true nature about two minutes after meeting her and not just because she was a brunette. But it was a good thing Miss Leeds was fooled. She was from the old school and then some—part of a generation where proper women didn't work at all, much less as high-powered attorneys in Manhattan. Frankly, Claire had been surprised Miss Leeds hadn't gone with one of the other partners, but the two of them did get along for the most part. So far, the only hiccup in the relationship had occurred during that first face-to-face when the woman had asked whether Claire was married.

  Claire was most definitely not married. Never had been, not interested, no thank you. Last thing she needed was some man with opinions about how late she stayed at the firm or how hard she worked or where they would live or what they would have for dinner. Eliza Leeds, however, was clearly of the you're-defined-by-what-was-sitting-next-to-you-in-pants set. So Claire had braced herself as she'd explained that, no, she had no husband.

  Miss Leeds had seemed daunted, but then she'd rallied, moving swiftly on to the boyfriend question. The answer was the same. Claire did not have and didn't want one of those and no, no pets, either. There had been a long silence. Then the woman had smiled, made a brief comment along the lines of "my, how things have changed," and that was where they'd left things. At least for the moment.

  Every time Miss Leeds called the office, she asked whether Claire had found a nice man. Which was fine. Whatever. Different generation. And the woman took the no's with grace—maybe because she herself had never been married. Evidently she had an unfulfilled romantic streak or something.

  If Claire was honest, the whole relationship thing bored her. No, she didn't hate men. No, her parents' marriage hadn't been dysfunctional. No, in fact her father had been a very supportive male figure. There was no bad fallout from a relationship, no self-esteem issues, no pathology, no history of abuse. She was smart and she loved her work and she was grateful for the life she had. The home and hearth stuff was just made for other people. Bottom line? She totally respected women who became wives and mothers but didn't envy them their burden of caretaking. And she didn't have a hole in her heart on Christmas morning because she was alone. And she didn't need soccer games or drawings on her refrigerator or homemade gifts to feel fulfilled. And Valentine's Day and Mother's Day were just two more pages on the calendar.

  What she loved was the battle in the boardroom. The negotiation. The tricky ins and outs of the law. The energizing responsibility of representing the interests of a ten-billion-dollar corporation—whether it was buying someone else or divesting assets or firing a CEO for having illicit eight-digit personal expenses.

  All of that was what juiced her and, as she was at the top of her field and in her early thirties, she was in a damn good place in life. The only trouble she had was with people who didn't understand a woman like her. It
was such a double standard. Men could spend their entire lives devoted to work and they were viewed as good earners, not antisocial spinster-aunts with intimacy issues. Why couldn't a woman be the same?

  When Caldwell's span bridge finally appeared, Claire was ready to get the meeting over with, head back to her apartment on Park Avenue, and start prepping for the Tech-nitron showdown on Tuesday. Hell, maybe there would be enough time to even go back to the office.

  The Leeds estate consisted of ten acres of sculptured grounds, four outbuildings, and a wall that you'd need rapel-ling gear and the upper body strength of a personal trainer to surmount. The mansion was a huge pile of stone set on a rise, an ostentatious display of new wealth erected during the Gothic Revival period of the 1890s. To Claire, it looked like something Vincent Price would pay taxes on.

  Navigating the circular drive, she parked in front of the cathedral-worthy entrance and set her cell phone to vibrate. Picking up her bag, she approached the house thinking she should have a cross in one hand and a dagger in the other. Man, if she had Leeds's money, she'd live in something a little less dreary. Like a mausoleum.

  One side of the double doors was opened before she got to the lion's head knocker. Leeds's butler, who was a hundred and eight if he was a day, bowed.

  "Good evening, Miss Stroughton. May I inquire, did madam leave the keys in the car?"

  Was his name Fletcher? Yeah, that was it. And Miss Leeds liked you to use his name. "No, Fletcher."

  "Perhaps you will give them to me? In the event your car must be moved." When she frowned, he said quietly, "I'm afraid Miss Leeds is not doing well. If an ambulance must come. . ."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. Is she ill or. . ." Claire let the sentence drift off as she handed over her keys.

  "She's very weak. Please, come with me." Fletcher walked with the kind of slow dignity you'd expect from a man sporting a formal British butler's uniform. And he fit in with the decor. The house was furnished in old-money style, with layer upon layer of art collected over generations choking the rooms. The priceless hodgepodge of museum-quality paintings and sculpture and furniture was from different periods, but it flowed together. Although what an upkeep. Dusting the stuff would be like cutting twenty acres of grass with a push mower—as soon as you were finished, you'd need to start again.