Blood Oath (Shifters Unlimited Prequels Book 1) Read online

  She grabbed the sack of food as he grabbed their two satchels and they ran. Callum let out a high-pitched whistle and stuffed both their satchels into a duffel bag lying on the ground outside. Then they strode toward the lane. Bravo ambled back toward them, eyeing the burning barn warily.

  With a soft sound, Callum calmed him as he grasped one of the training harnesses the part-time farmhands usually left over the fence post. He cautiously slid the bit into the horse’s mouth and then glanced over his shoulder at her. “You still good with riding bareback?”

  “What do you think I do here while you’re gone? Just twiddle my thumbs and bake cookies?” she asked, trying for a smile.

  He swung her onto the horse, looped the duffel across his chest, and swung up behind her before turning. Bravo turned toward the far side of Doc’s territory. “I thought you spent most of your time studying anatomy books and learning how to dissect corpses.”

  She loved how normal he made her obsession sound. The world might be falling apart around them, but he was still her Callum.

  “I’d rather work on live people,” she said, surprised when tears gathered in her eyes as she glanced back at the barn. For all the wonderful help Doc had given her, this was how she’d repaid him. By bringing dangerous people to this town and burning down his barn.

  Callum’s arm snuggled around her waist as he pulled her tighter against him. “Don’t worry. We’ll settle things with Doc, but now we need to get away.

  “On horseback? I don’t think we’ll get far.”

  “We just need to make it to Miller’s Crossing in time for the Midnight Special’s run to Whistler.”

  He pulled Bravo to a halt several miles down beside the gate to the sheep pasture. After slipping free the wire holding the gate tight, he nudged it open with his foot.

  “Now he loses his sheep too?”

  Callum drew her tighter against him. “Neighbors will head here to fight the fire. In the meantime, the sheep will confuse the wolves. They’ll run themselves in circles.” He gave a wicked chuckle. “The sighting of wolves will bring out the sheriff and a posse fast enough to make the enforcer heads spin. They’ll be run out of town. Or shot and hung at the nearest trading post.”

  Normally, she’d be appalled at the thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to muster any sympathy for the alpha’s men. “Let’s hope the sheriff is his usual excellent shot today.”

  3

  Flathead National Park, Montana

  Home? The Ford Model T truck rattled to a halt in front of the tiny clapboard post office, and Breslin Taggart reduced the throttle and stomped on the brake lever. As the engine died down, he rubbed the grit from his eyes with thumb and forefinger. No, this place had no feeling of home, but it was a place to rest his head. He’d spent weeks trailing a damn shifter slave trader through the Arizona desert from Tucson deep into Mexico, along the Sierra Madre and back. Hadn’t slept for days either. But as much as the need to crawl into bed and pull the covers over his head appealed to him, he still had loose ends to tie up before he crashed.

  Not home, though. No, the cobbled-together bits of timber on the property he’d purchased decades ago didn’t qualify as home, but the location was priceless. His family’s property was uninhabited and close by. Close enough to pacify his cat with a sense of territory. But the thrumming power from nearby Black Haven Stronghold swept away any brief pleasure of that memory. During his childhood, Black Haven didn’t allow refuge for non-wolf shifters, thanks to the previous North American alpha, Corbin King. By his mandate, only the elite wolves earned the right to own land within his sanctuary, leaving Breslin’s family no choice but to settle without protection and vulnerable outside the sanctuary perimeter on the narrow strip of land between Alpha Karndottir’s and Alpha King’s territories.

  Bitterness coiled in his stomach. Rules about alpha loyalty and protection might have changed with the new alpha, Deacon Black, but his new rules wouldn’t bring back Breslin’s family. Or fix the true reason they were gone.

  His parents had worked hard, but greed and murder weren’t things decent people could guard against on their own.

  He bore a permanent animosity for deceased Corbin King, but only one alpha bore the responsibility for the crimes against his loved ones. Breslin focused the brunt of his rage on Gauthier Karndottir with a fury that festered in his heart, having long since compromised his soul. Karndottir’s long list of crimes against others earned him an eternal place in hell, but for the ones he’d perpetrated against the Taggart family, Breslin planned to personally send him there, even if he had to join him on the one-way ride to the devil. He didn’t care how long it took.

  Rage sizzled in his blood as his control diminished to a pinpoint of red haze before his eyes. If he were smart, he’d let his cougar loose. Run for days, satiating himself in the hunt of true animal prey. But, isolated from a clan bond, the risk of his beast turning rogue was too great. Besides, setting his cougar free wouldn’t erase the years of hunting, stalking, and the swift silent kills in his human form—his ghost assassin trademark. He’d honed his skills until his reputation became the thing to scare shifter children into behaving lest he show up and take them away. He needed those skills to fulfill his goal. Lately, though, he’d realized he wasn’t as free of self-recrimination as he’d intended.

  It mattered little whether his targets deserved their fates, they’d committed heinous acts of evil and violence toward the shifter community. Taking one life and then the next weighed heavy on his mind. As expected, he remembered the face of every victim. Little by little, the details of his bleak job obliterated fond older memories until he could barely recall his mother’s smile or his brothers’ laughter.

  He scrubbed his face with one hand and contemplated the chipped vanilla paint coating the three bowed steps and small wraparound porch. The ten feet of overhang shielded the tiny post office from the elements but didn’t bother to hide its age. Fifty years old or perhaps more, it shared a birth date with the tiny surrounding hamlet. Yet he’d been born before the trees used to make the lumber here sprouted from seedlings.

  Swallowing against the slight metallic taste in his mouth, he eased from the vehicle, eyes riveted to the front door of the post office as he stalked up those stairs. What he felt didn’t matter. He couldn’t fail his life’s mission.

  The door slammed behind him and his boots echoed softly on the worn floor as he reached the counter. Small cubbies covered three walls of the compact room. A table in the corner was just visible beneath stacks of string-tied, paper-wrapped packages. A withered old man shuffled from a small back room toward him.

  “You have anything for Taggart?”

  The man assessed him with a keen gaze before he spun back around to the table on surprisingly nimble feet. “Something came in today.”

  Another damn mission. It was to be expected, but damn if his gut didn’t turn over at the thought. With a curt nod, he took the brown paper package and headed back to his truck.

  God, he was as tired of this routine as he was the bone-weary job of cleaning up after the debauchery of others. The routine numbed his life until only one target held any purpose.

  Still, the urge to crank up the engine of the pickup and drive away until he left humanity behind assaulted him like a sledgehammer, a siren call difficult to resist. He choked down the impulse. Even if he hightailed it across the country, Vendrick would eventually track him down. It might take him several years because while Vendrick had been a good teacher, Breslin had been an even better student. They could play tag until his mentor found him and ripped out his throat.

  A predictable end for betraying his oath—an act beneath even him. Especially since Vendrick had delivered on his promise, fine-tuning Breslin’s mind and body into the perfect weapon—the perfect killer. Granted, Breslin had only been thirteen when he’d made the promise and even younger when he’d sworn to himself he’d revenge his family’s deaths. Yet, he’d never balked, following Vendrick’s de
mands, his instructions, executing his mission without question. Both the man and shifter understood reneging wasn’t an option.

  Vendrick’s immortal strength and magic exceeded even shifter abilities. More importantly, even alpha abilities, for he wasn’t a shifter. He was…other, making his lessons invaluable, because to kill an alpha, Breslin needed to be more than good. He needed to be unstoppable. That decision had claimed the years of his youth and laid his future to waste, but he was perfectly fine with the Faustian deal he’d made.

  After years of following orders, he’d had enough of wasting time. He was done with training and rules. He’d fulfill his debt to his master with a final and, as yet, undisclosed task in the box at his side, then he’d move on to kill Karndottir.

  Fifteen minutes later, he reached his dirt lane. The deep ruts overgrown by brush and low-hanging branches remained obscured behind a tall metal gate and several yards of fencing. He drove in, sealed the gates behind him, and continued until the trail ended outside a dilapidated single-story cabin set on a ten-foot spit of land that dropped sharply into a jagged ravine, broken only by the determined stray pine tree.

  He rattled the padlock on the front door until the rusted metal snicked open and shouldered his way into the house. As inhospitable as the exterior and surrounding landscape looked, the cabin’s interior gleamed. Handcrafted and polished wood floors shone even in the dim light through the shuttered windows. Sturdy rafters framed the house, and a formidable stone fireplace covered the wall between the main room and the bedroom beyond. There, with one exception, the luxuries ended. The house boasted one overstuffed chair, one table without chairs, and a large mattress on the floor in the next room.

  He tossed the package to the table without a glance and headed for the small water closet at the rear of the cabin. He stripped his shirt over his head and toed off his boots, then grasped the iron handle and pumped fresh water into a china basin set atop a small, narrow table. Life might be bleak, but connecting the cabin to an underground spring to pump water into the bathroom and a sink in the kitchen was a convenience he’d appreciated after years of hauling in buckets of rainwater and snow. He washed away the grime from his trip, the dust and dirt seeming to infest every crevice of his body. Taking his time, he avoided glancing toward the offending package.

  Not until he started a fire in the fireplace did he allow his thoughts to consider what lay ahead. Anything aside from Vendrick’s usual letters was a curiosity. Usually his correspondence contained succinct notes with the offenders’ names, crimes, and last known location.

  Frowning, he glared toward the table. He’d hoped his missions were at an end, but the brown-papered package didn’t say end, it said complication.

  With no excuse to avoid the inevitable, he grabbed the package and dropped into the armchair. Haphazardly he picked at the twine. It came apart with a light touch, the paper falling open like aged flower petals displaying the contents inside.

  He froze. What the hell?

  Gingerly, he picked up the gauzy item with two fingers, raising it to his nose to process for scents. A delicate white shawl and the faint cedar scent confirmed it had spent time in someone’s hope chest. A woman’s garment, and, from the scent, belonging to a fully shifted female. Lingering scents of prepubescent shifters clung to the garment as well. Was she a nanny, perhaps?

  He’d never hunted a woman.

  The bright cream color of an envelope against the brown paper wrapper drew his attention. So, Vendrick had added the customary letter inside after all. Swallowing back his reluctance, he flicked it open and slid out the single sheet. Vendrick’s sweeping, angular scrawl covered the entire sheet.

  Suzannah Nettie Morgan’s husband reported her missing to the alpha’s lieutenant in Seattle. Apparently, she disappeared from home two months prior and never returned. According to the husband, Nettie tried to take her youngest child with her, but the boy escaped and returned home. The child claimed his mother was agitated and not acting normally. Embarrassed by his wife’s apparent abandonment of him and their three children, the husband delayed coming forward sooner. It has since occurred to him that she may have come to harm instead of fleeing.

  I’ve spoken with the child and the husband and can confirm they are not withholding information. There is also no sign of violence in the household. The children, while confused by their mother’s disappearance, seem well-adjusted. Mrs. Morgan’s husband was uncertain about her family’s hometown, as he met her when she was working in a Seattle diner and she avoided conversation about the subject. But he once noticed an old envelope among her belongings which contained a picture of what he recognized as Snoqualmie Pass. A good a place as any to start the search.

  It’s uncertain whether she was threatened and possibly abducted so this needs immediate attention. I have a pressing matter in Eugene, but I will meet you at the nearby diner once you find the woman.

  This will be your last assignment.

  I’ll expect you to be prepared to execute my final request after this mission is completed.

  V

  Well, Breslin had gotten his wish. One last completed mission, then he was done. How Vendrick knew he would find the woman, he didn’t know. But Vendrick was rarely, if ever, wrong.

  At least there was light at the end of this tunnel of servitude. With renewed vigor, Breslin headed to the bedroom to scrounge together some supplies for his trip.

  One shifter female to find. One final debt to pay to Vendrick. Then he’d be free to exact his revenge.

  4

  Callum wheeled Bravo toward the direction of the sheep pastures at the edge of the property and kicked him into an easy trot. They neared an iron bell seated fifteen feet high on a thick post, a black iron prize given to Doc after he’d helped the railway workers after a bout of vicious influenza. The treasure had since served as alarm for local disasters—and minor farm animal mishaps.

  He pulled back on Bravo’s reins, allowing the horse to dance sideways to the post. Grabbing the long chain hanging from the clapper, Callum gave the rope four strong tugs until the clanging pealed across the fields.

  “That should bring help for the fire and the sheep.”

  Gillian didn’t look pleased, but she nodded as he urged the horse several yards down toward the gate to the pens. He pulled them to a stop again and slid off. “You guide him on through, and I’ll spook a few of the sheep into escaping.”

  “Haven’t we done enough damage to Doc’s farm?”

  “These sheep won’t get far. Doc keeps them well-fed and closer to pets than livestock. But we need them to confuse the trail of our scent between here and the creek. If the rest of the enforcers get here before the sheriff or townsfolk, the alpha’s men will waste time searching for us. Time we need.” He shooed several of the sheep in front of him, urging them toward the creek. “Don’t worry. He’ll get all the sheep back.”

  “At least there’s nowhere for them to go.”

  The same predicament they’d be in if they didn’t catch the train. “Help will get here before Karndottir’s men decide they deserve a sheep dinner.”

  He sprang back up onto the horse and pulled the reins until Bravo tracked behind the skittish sheep. Keeping to the creek, they followed the twists and turns for several miles. The sun was dropping, but they still had a couple of hours until dusk. Another advantage to exploit. Their shifter abilities provided perfect visibility even without moonlight, but the enforcers weren’t familiar with this area, and broad daylight didn’t give them places to hide. On the other hand, Callum knew this land, every nook and cranny from the swell of the hills rising to their left to the clusters of trees dotting the pastures for miles to their right. If Gauthier’s men decided to sneak through the underbrush, he’d see them first. Chances were the responders to the alarm bell would also.

  “The alpha must know the guy in the barn is dead by now,” Gillian said, voicing his other concern.

  “I hope the others find him and think twice.�
�� Callum wished he had more time to make the man suffer. Before he even entered the barn, Callum had smelled Gillian’s blood despite the smoke. Only the blessed glimpse of her pale face above kept him from shifting and tearing the dead body to bits. “Investigating and cleaning up the evidence will keep them busy for a while. There’ll be hell to pay from the alpha if the humans find the remains of a half-shifted body.”

  Even if Karndottir’s men used Gillian’s scent and followed it to her mother’s property, they’d still waste an hour or more trying to pinpoint all her trails. The fact that she had never taken an oath to the alpha meant there was no blood bond to aid Karndottir or his trackers, short of running across her by accident. With the breezes picking up and masking their scent, and Gillian having no footprint outside of Maisie’s, Doc’s, and Callum’s land, following her would be difficult.

  He, on the other hand, posed a problem. One he realized, with a sinking sense of dread, he’d ignored in all his planning.

  Gillian leaned back against his chest, her posture stiff. “Why Miller’s Crossing? There isn’t a passenger train coming through there until tonight.”

  Smoke still clung to her clothes and blood caked her skin. Anger burned through him again, and he brushed his cheek against her hair to reassure himself. They were both lucky she’d managed to evade the enforcer as long as she had.

  If he hadn’t arrived in time—hell, he couldn’t get the image of the shifting wolf hanging from the hayloft frame, grappling with Gillian as the iron tang of her blood permeated the air. His cat rippled beneath his skin at the thought.

  “What about Bravo?” she asked.

  He pulled back on the reins, slowing the horse as they moved beyond the creek to tended yards bordering the rail line. “He knows his way home, but one of Doc’s card-playing buddies lives close. I’ll leave him tied to a tree within the sight line of their house. He’ll be cared for.”