Bait This! (A 300 Moons Book) Read online

  She glanced around wildly. There was no reason to do so. The only human in those woods was Derek, and she was damn glad he was not here to get himself into trouble.

  Looking back at the shadow, she wrapped an arm around her face and began to chant a protective spell.

  She peered out from behind her arm.

  The thread of black smoke was twisted in on itself. Like a nest of rattlesnakes. It had a curious quality to its movement, as if it were fascinated with how she was keeping it at bay.

  It observed her as if it could watch her all night long.

  Hedda felt her voice weaken slightly. It had been a long day. She was cold and physically drained, she hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink since her morning tea. Even the chant was slowly nibbling away at her magic.

  How long could she keep this up?

  The shadow swayed, as if in answer. It had taken on a childlike shape, with long sleeves, trailing into smoke at the ends. The smoke swung slowly, hypnotically, as if to slow her rhythm.

  No, no, no. There had to be a way out.

  Repeating the chant mechanically, Hedda racked her brain.

  If the shadow took on a physical form she could blast it. What if she drew an animal out of the woods with her charisma? Could she tempt the shadow that way?

  She was running out of options.

  Carefully, she maintained the chant as she closed her eyes and pushed out a circle from her body.

  Her awareness slid through the area around the mine, through the trees, and died off abruptly when it hit a young raccoon.

  Perfect.

  She opened her eyes and nearly screamed.

  The shadow child was an inch from her eyes, its cloudy face slanted inquisitively.

  In her shock, Hedda stopped chanting for a moment.

  Its mouth dropped slightly open and a tongue-like ribbon of smoke unfurled from within as if it was going to enter her through her eyeballs.

  Jerking back to her senses, Hedda began to chant again, loudly.

  The ribbon retracted, but the demon remained, floating inches away.

  Hedda’s skin crawled at its repulsiveness. But she focused her mind on the raccoon as she chanted.

  When her voice was smooth and steady again, she knew it was time.

  Pushing on her magic was a huge risk. If she drained herself the demon would possess her instantly.

  But if she didn’t do it now, she might not have enough magic left to attempt it later.

  She reached within herself, and pulled.

  At first there was nothing, but then came the sudden sweetness, like sucking the juice out of a popsicle and leaving the ice behind.

  She felt the magic bubbling, warm under her skin, teeming at her scalp and fingernails, vibrating through her blood.

  In the back of her mind she could hear her own voice chanting. The shadow child fluttered in confusion, forgetting itself and melting into a dark fog again. A rustling of leaves signaled the approach of animals from the woods. The trees themselves groaned as their branches reached out.

  Hedda’s consciousness was wrapped up in the throb of the magic as it coursed recklessly through her body.

  23

  Derek trembled as the bear awoke within him. There wasn’t a peaceful stretch inside him, but a leap and then a flash of teeth and claws.

  Something was wrong.

  The bear tugged at him, pulling him in the opposite direction of where he thought he should go.

  Derek turned immediately, following the bear’s instinct without question.

  He was grateful now, he understood.

  But the urgency of the bear’s demand had Derek on full alert. It could only mean one thing.

  Hedda was in trouble.

  He crashed through the underbrush, ignoring the scratches and scrapes from the branches and brambles. He had to get to her.

  For once he and the bear shared a rhythm. When Derek let go a bit more he found he was running and bounding over obstacles with the same aplomb as his bear.

  When he reached the creek at last, he felt it - a tingling in his skin, pulling him, calling him.

  He put the pedal to the metal and ran fast and hard.

  But the bear could run faster.

  He offered the creature control but it nudged at his chest from the inside instead, keeping him focused on running. Odd.

  They ran past empty houses and onto the pavement of a street.

  Buildings lined the road, looming over him, staring down with darkened windows as he passed.

  Hedda had been right, it looked like a town, but there was no one here.

  He would have been spooked except that he was too desperate to get to her.

  By the time he reached the gravel drive there was a ringing in his ears.

  The acrid scent of burning began to irritate the bear.

  At last he was close enough that he could see a tower of black smoke rising behind a tall chain-link fence.

  A hastily hand painted sign affixed to the fencing read:

  MINE CLOSED

  FOR YOUR SAFETY

  DO NOT ENTER

  The gate stood open. Hedda must be in there somewhere.

  Derek dashed, his feet kicking up gravel and dust, leaving a quarter of a mile of haze behind him.

  He didn’t need to think about direction. Hedda was close now, pulling at him like a black hole.

  He flung himself around a corner and stopped in his tracks at the sight.

  Hedda stood, her dark hair whipping around her in a wind he couldn’t feel. Squirrels, rabbits and even a raccoon were pressed against her legs. Birds perched on her clothing.

  As he got closer he saw bugs dragging themselves toward her.

  The scraggly weeds poking up through the gravel stretched horizontally, their leafy fingers grasping toward her.

  And circling over her head like a halo, a black shadow swirled threateningly.

  Hedda’s mouth was moving, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  She hadn’t seen Derek, yet, so she wasn’t talking to him.

  But he didn’t need to hear the words to know she was in trouble.

  24

  Hedda despaired without letting go of the chant or her magic. Lane women went out with a bang, not a whimper. But she knew this was the end. The thing would slip into her like she was a familiar piece of clothing. It would try to use her to open the portal. To free the evil she’d sworn to guard. Then it would feed her to the moroi, or just jump her off a cliff, launching itself into smoke at the last moment.

  Her magic was running out. Her voice was fading. It was only a matter of moments.

  “Hedda,” Derek’s deep voice cut through the static in her head.

  She turned to look at him.

  He stood before her, gloriously naked, his whole body leaned in as if he might be going to smack into her like a piece of metal in a magnet’s field.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She couldn’t stop her chant, but she raised her eyes toward the demon.

  He looked up at it. Then his jaw clenched and his hands fisted at his sides.

  The next thing she knew he was flying for her.

  But it wasn’t the draw of her magic. Somehow she knew to her core that he was choosing to come. The connection she felt was pulling him in too.

  He bent and she flew over his shoulder as he began to run fast around the air vent and back toward the gate where they had come in.

  Hedda knew she should panic, but instead she found herself laughing into Derek’s back as he ran.

  “It’s okay,” he reassured her, thumping her on the rear, and making her laugh even harder.

  He probably thought she was losing her marbles. And maybe she was. But she relished the euphoric feeling of having been saved from her doom.

  Because until that moment, nothing, absolutely nothing Derek had done would have given her confidence that he could handle himself in an emergency.

  When she’d seen him appea
r, she’d been pretty convinced he would momentarily be referencing a life hack article about ghost hunting on his cell phone, while she tried to keep them both out of harm’s way. Not that he had anyplace to hide a cell phone, or anything else for that matter.

  Instead, he had thought quickly, hopefully quickly enough to save them both.

  And now he was proving himself capable of resisting her magic when it was at its most powerful. He should have been trying to take her, by force, if necessary. Instead, he was a total gentleman.

  Though she couldn’t help but notice he’d kept his hand on her butt after patting her.

  How was he not trying to ravish her? Could she have used up too much of the magic?

  But the whole forest had been affected.

  She reached out with her mind, encompassing the trees around them.

  25

  Derek ran as fast as he could, trying not to be distracted by the armload of luscious woman he’d slung over his shoulder.

  “It’s not following us anymore,” she said, her voice uneven from the jostling.

  Somehow, he still couldn’t stop running.

  “Put me down,” she said lifting her head up to enunciate and banging him on the ass with her fists.

  The bear chuffed affably in his head, and at last Derek found the wherewithal to stop running.

  “Alright, woman,” he told her gruffly, bending to set her back on her feet. “There’s no need to be violent.”

  When he straightened, she was still just inches away.

  She gazed into his eyes. Her expression could only be described as curious. Her dark hair framed her face and her eyes almost seemed to glow.

  “Why didn’t you shift?” she asked.

  He shook himself slightly, fighting the instinct to pull her close.

  “I didn’t want to scare you again,” he told her truthfully.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a bear?” she asked, those bright eyes gazing clear and sweet into his.

  He looked away.

  “I don’t know,” he hedged.

  She shrugged.

  “Anyway,” she said. “I’m glad you can turn big and tough if we need you to. Let’s head back to my house. I don’t know why the thing stopped chasing us, but if it starts again I want to be somewhere safe.”

  “I don’t know much about these things, but it looked like it could slip through the crack under the door.”

  Derek hustled to keep up with her. When Hedda made a decision, her feet seemed to move of their own accord.

  “My sisters and I put protections on the cottage. A lot of them,” she said with satisfaction.

  “How far is it?” he asked.

  “Not far, just up the mountain,” she replied. “Should be an easy hike.”

  That wasn’t helpful. Everything here seemed to be up a mountain. At least she said it was easy going ahead.

  As if on cue, the black skies opened with a crack of thunder, dumping a deluge of dark water on the unsuspecting town, and drenching both of them instantly.

  They stared at each other in stunned silence for a moment before Hedda threw back her head and laughed, then continued on her way to the cabin.

  Now there was a sound he could get used to.

  At least the rain would wash away some of the grime from his naked woodland excursions.

  All at once, the fact that he was still naked crashed back to him, and he felt himself begin to swell at the thought. He needed to find some pants. Derek stayed slightly behind Hedda, so that he wouldn’t be rubbing her face in his arousal.

  Rubbing her face in it.

  Oh god, no, no don’t picture that, he pleaded with himself.

  The bear grumbled. No food, no woman. What was the point?

  For once Derek agreed with him completely.

  They were now out of the heart of the creepy little town and climbing the path leading up to empty houses along the mountain. The road sloped upward until he swore they were walking at nearly a forty-five degree angle.

  “Did people really drive up here?” he asked Hedda.

  “Oh yeah,” Hedda replied. “Of course the school bus couldn’t make it to the very top. You’ll see. Another half a mile up there’s a turnaround where it would let off the last of the kids.”

  “It must have been a hard life for them,” Derek observed, noticing the simple shed-style shanties and dusty gardens.

  Hedda turned back to him, her eyes staying mercifully above his waistline.

  “No, not at all,” she explained. “We didn’t really interact with the pack much, but they all seemed so happy, so warm. And of course they could shift any time they wanted. They were always among friends, among their own.”

  “I never thought of it that way,” Derek admitted. He pondered a life where he and the bear could be themselves with no fear of judgment or repercussion.

  That place certainly wasn’t Glacier City.

  He thought of shifting in his penthouse, claws scrabbling against the polished mahogany floors. He wouldn’t even fit in the elevator.

  He spotted a clothesline abandoned outside a house. A faded pair of jeans still hung from it.

  “Go ahead,” Hedda indicated.

  He scrambled over and wiggled into the wet denim, then padded back to her. To his surprise, they were actually a little on the big side.

  “There aren’t many shifter communities left like this one was, that’s for sure,” Hedda remarked as they continued up the hill. Her face fell back into the mask of sorrow he’d seen earlier that evening, when she’d made the ludicrous claim that she had destroyed the town herself.

  “Look, I don’t want to be rude,” Derek said, eager to change the subject. “But do you have any food at your place?”

  She looked back at him and her face broke out into a smile.

  “Yeah, I’ve got supplies. But just to warn you, I’m a horrible cook.”

  “How horrible?” he teased. “I mean maybe I can try out one of the fine restaurants in town instead.”

  Oh crap, wrong joke. She didn’t want to be reminded of the empty town.

  She smiled though, the sad expression put away.

  “What about you?” she asked, looking him over as if to size him up. “Are you a good cook?”

  “You found me out,” he teased, delighted that she wouldn’t believe him and he’d be able to impress her later.

  “Was it fun?” she asked suddenly.

  “Was what fun?” he asked.

  “You know, being a bear,” she replied.

  Oh.

  Derek thought back to the smells and sound of the world from behind the bear’s eyes, the simple demand of an empty belly, the easy certainty that this woman was his mate.

  “I thought so,” she said with a smile.

  The look on his face must have been all the reply she needed.

  He smiled back.

  Thunder pealed overhead, reminding them to keep moving.

  “Don’t worry, we’re almost there, see up ahead?” she pointed. “Let’s be cautious, in case this is a trap, and one of them is waiting for us.”

  He could make out the shape of a structure ahead.

  It mostly looked like a small house, except that its walls were irregular. A faint tinkling sound, different from the rain, reached him.

  As they got closer, he could see the cottage was lumpy with stone and stucco, and the whole thing was topped with a lush thatch roof. It looked like something out of a children’s book.

  The tinkling came from random glass pieces and bottles hung from the trees surrounding it. Weird.

  Hedda was approaching it slowly, as if she were trying to sense whether someone might be lying in ambush.

  His bear leapt to attention at the perceived threat to his mate, and snuffled, tasting the air.

  There was no other human. The house was blossoming with the scent of Hedda herself. There were lighter, older scents from other humans- most likely her sisters, but the most recent was… four or five
months old.

  Though it was raining, the bear reached out for more olfactory clues, seemingly convinced that he could gather this information even at a distance.

  Derek was amazed to smell the bright elixir of the rain-swollen creek, far below.

  Hedda, seemingly convinced that the coast was clear, ducked under the roof overhang and opened the door to the cottage.

  For all her show of trepidation, it was unlocked.

  Derek paused before following.

  The bear moaned in reproach, and Derek found himself letting go of his train of thought to follow her.

  26

  Hedda slipped into the cottage and beckoned for Derek to follow.

  She couldn’t help glancing around, worrying that the place wasn’t straightened up.

  Ridiculous.

  Their lives were in danger, maybe the world, too. And she was feeling self-conscious about some clutter and a few buckets of magic stones.

  Okay, a lot of buckets of magic stones. Why had she kept making them? He was going to think she had a screw loose.

  Besides, there was no point being interested in a man. No matter how insanely gorgeous he was. No matter how much he seemed to like her, he was only responding to the magic.

  But beneath her skepticism, there was an insistent voice in her head, telling her that he couldn’t have pulled off that rescue if her magic were the only thing he was responding to - that there was something more to the attraction, something powerful.

  The familiar scent of chamomile tea that always filled the cottage distracted her from this unsettling train of thought, and reminded her that she was cold and wet. It was a comforting smell and at complete odds with the high drama outside.

  Footsteps told her Derek had entered. She turned to find him filling the doorway.

  “Come in, come in,” she said impatiently, trying not to notice his bare chest, which suddenly seemed like the only thing to notice about him. She fought to keep her eyes on his face, not his wide chest, not his six-pack…

  “Thanks,” he said in that deep voice. He was so tall that he nearly hit his head on the exposed beams as he stepped inside.