Taken

What? Zach didn’t like the sound of that. But he had to take it one thing at a time right now. “Just give her some food. You’d better eat, sweets. You look like you need it.” He almost glanced at the passenger’s seat to gauge Kyle’s reaction, stopped himself only by easing forward and snagging a milk shake. Eric slurped at a root beer, flipping the turn signal and setting the drink in a holder with a practiced motion. He was the best driver, but he would have to be spelled about dawn.

Zach didn’t want to stop at a hotel and give everyone time to think for a little while. He wanted to wait until he had some sort of plan in his head. Besides, he felt better when they were moving. When they were on the road and he didn’t have to think about anything other than the next food stop, the next rest stop, the steady revolution of tires. Driving felt more natural than anything else, and if they stopped he might have to face the mess he’d made of everything.

They had a shaman now. But Kyle was gone. The spirits take with one hand and give with the other, the Tribes always said. But still. Why did they have to take so much?

Brun pressed a cheeseburger and a huge clutch of fries into the woman’s lap, ignoring her flinch, and moved over to Julia, bending over and whispering in his twin’s ear. Julia’s sobs were beginning to grate. She had reason to cry, they all did. But the racking sobs were beginning to take on a whipsawing note that meant Julia was working herself up into a fit or literally crying herself sick, and neither of those things would help the situation.

The floor of the van was littered with clothes, the leatherworking supplies stacked in cases behind the passenger’s seat. Here was his chance. Zach made it to the girl’s feet and offered her the milk shake. “Here. You really need to eat something.” He tried to sound conciliatory. Soothing.

Those pale eyes met his, and he found out they were gray, like a winter sky. He got a good lungful of her, spice and beauty overlaid with the hot grease from the bag in her lap. The thread of ice and moonlight was stronger now, twining through the warp and weft of her aroma like a jasmine vine coming into bloom, but the rest of it … she smelled damn near edible. And familiar, in some way he couldn’t quite place.

She smelled like his. It was that simple. It was a mate smell, and that was going to make things even stickier.

Why couldn’t you have come along earlier, huh?

But that was unfair. She probably had no goddamn idea what she’d just landed in. Which meant it was his job to keep this whole train on the tracks for a while, at least until he could make a stab at helping her understand.

And keeping her here until she was theirs.

She shifted on the seat, pulling her knees back, and the fries were headed for the floor until he caught them, his hand blurring. Quick fingers and quicker reflexes, the Tribe birthright.

It was sometimes the most useful part of the animal inside each of them.

Her eyes were very big, and glazed. Fringed with dark lashes, and behind her smudged glasses he saw fear.

“What’s your name?” He kept his tone nice and even. He had until they finished eating to calm her down a little. Eric slurped at his root beer, and Julia made a little hitching sound. Trying to steal the limelight, again.

The woman stared at him like he was speaking German or something. Finally, she stirred. “Sophie,” she whispered.

“Sophie. That’s pretty. What’s the rest of it?” Nice and easy. Good job, Zach.

“Harr—I mean, Wilson. My maiden name’s Wilson.”

Married? Huh. He didn’t see a ring, but he supposed anything was possible. And maiden name usually meant divorce. “Nice to meet you, Sophie. Listen, you really should eat. You just saw an upir kill two people.” He couldn’t put a nicer shine on it than that. And the more he kept a tone of normalcy, the better she might respond.

Or so he hoped.

She shook her head, and tears stood out in those big dark eyes. “Lucy.” Her lips shaped the word, and he had to stop staring. It was goddamn indecent, how soft her mouth looked.

“Was that her name?” Christ. It was her friend. Hard on the heels of that thought came another: Sophie was a really pretty name. He liked it.

Pay attention to what you’re doing, Zach.

She nodded. Her fingers curled around the milk shake, brushing his, and a jolt of heat slid up his arm from the contact. Married or not, hopefully divorced or not, the animal in him thought she belonged to him.

It was a tricky situation if she was married, but it did happen. Especially with “found” shamans. There were ways to fix it.

Lots of ways. Especially if you made up your mind not to be too overly concerned with playing nice.

She took a long pull off the straw and a tear tracked down her cheek. “She wanted me to have a little fun, that’s all. Since Mark …” Another flinch, and his sensitive nose caught the discordant note, an acridity in her scent.

Fear. More fear than she was already in. It smelled like old fear, like prey. Like blood in the water and an easy meal.

He pushed down the anger threatening to bubble up inside him. Slow and easy was the way to handle this. Her eyes stuttered to his face and she flinched, as if she’d read the emotional weather there and didn’t like it.

A swallow, her vulnerable throat moving. “Whatever he’s paying you, please don’t do this. Please don’t hurt me.” She looked away, toward the milk shake, as if she couldn’t quite figure out how it had gotten in her hand.

What the hell? His jaw was threatening to clench down hard enough to break a tooth. The fear in her was all wrong. If she was terrified, it would completely negate the soothing aspect of a shaman’s scent, and that would open up a whole can of worms—not just for him, but for the younger ones, too.

“Get this straight.” He took a deep breath, leashed the animal in him, and continued. “We’re not going to hurt you. We need you, and I’m sorry it happened this way, but from now on, you’re one of us. You’re ours. The sooner you accept it, the better off you’ll be.”

It would take a lot of repeating before that sank in. Might as well get it out of the way first.

“I have to go back to work on Monday.” She blinked again, swallowed hard, and more tears slid down those pretty, curved cheeks. “I’ve got night school, too. I’m studying to be a social worker.”

Well, Christ, honey, we’ve got tons of field-work for you right here. “We’ll settle that later. For right now, you have to eat.” And stop smelling like a downed deer.

She just stared at the milk shake. Zach retreated, settling on the floor behind the driver’s seat, the rhythm of the road soaking into his bones as he tore open a fresh bag and found a burger. The Silence folded around all of them again, and he didn’t think he’d done too badly.

There was no easy way to handle this. But goddammit, she was a shaman. He could smell it on her, the potential some humans and fewer Tribe carried. Once she was triggered, she could be the nucleus of a new Family, a way to rebuild everything. With a shaman they could settle down even in a territory held by others. They were no longer rootless, wandering non-persons, dangerous because they lacked the thing that kept their kind from running amok.

They could be somebodies again, instead of fugitives. She would make them somebodies.

That was worth a little kidnapping, he decided. Whatever life she had back in the city they were now leaving, she would just have to learn to let go of. His little Family needed her too much.

Chapter 7

The van jolted, and Sophie clawed up into full wakefulness, biting back a scream. Someone had draped a coat over her, and it was warm. Thin winter sunlight showed leafless trees, a few ragged pines, not blurring by but merely ambling. The vehicle made a deep turn, braked to a halt, and the engine cut off.

Finally. They were stopping. The eerie quiet in the car was breaking up, too, like ice in a river. Her ears had felt stuffed with cotton wool, but maybe it was the crying.

“Wake up.” The girl shook her shoulder, fingers biting in. Her voice was rusty, as if she’d spent weeks instead of hours not talking. “Time to wash, bleeder.”

Sophie sat up, blinking, and found the tank top had ridden up and twisted around, and the skirt—never very decent in the first place—was hitched up to show her panties, for God’s sake. Her entire face was crusty and aching, and she had to use the bathroom like nobody’s business. Her stomach rumbled.

The side door opened and the van cleared out. It was amazing, how people could fit in here. Clothes tangled across the floor, one bench seat had been taken out, and the back was stuffed with plastic bags. It didn’t smell bad, though, just musky and close.

Sophie clutched the coat to her chest. The girl made a spitting sound of annoyance. “Come on, will you? I’ve got to pee before my kidneys float away.”

You’re not the only one. Mechanically, she pulled the skirt down, tried to straighten the tank top. Lucy’s black heels were on the floor, and the way her back ached she didn’t think she could stand to put them back on.

But she did, because cold air was pouring in through the open side door. Frost rimed the slice of a parking lot she could see, and as soon as she hopped awkwardly out of the van, pulling her skirt down and shivering, she found out they were at a rest stop off the freeway. A brick building housed restrooms, a creek wandered on the side away from the freeway down a short hill, and another building had vending machines behind iron grating, a wall full of maps in plastic cases, and—oh, my God—a Kiwanis booth selling coffee.

An old man sat in the booth, reading a newspaper, occasionally glancing out over the empty parking lot. The van, she now saw, was an older maroon Chevy, and her eyes came back to the man in the coffee booth.

The girl—Julia—jostled her from behind. She had dark eyes, long straight dark hair starred with that single streak that turned out to be white, and a sweet face, with the type of clear pale skin only found on the very young. Amazing skin. She was pretty, but there was an unfinished look around her mouth, like she was trying to be hard and not quite succeeding.

And she looked, for some reason, spoiled. Sophie couldn’t put her finger on quite how, but she had the same overprivileged look as the mean-girl cheerleaders from Sophie’s high school years.