Jocelynn Drake - Dawnbreaker

“Totally,” he said, his head dropping back as a bark of laughter finally escaped him. I punched him in the arm and then fell back to sit in the middle of the gravel graveyard road, chuckling at myself. Nicolai sat up, his shoulder still lightly shaking as he released my wrist. “You were so serious and scared shitless,” he teased.

“Asshole.”

“Mira, sweetie, you’re great and I appreciate you bringing me here, but it was just sex,” he said, stretching out one hand toward me.

I batted his hand away, trying very hard not to smile at him. I felt like such an idiot. “No kidding it was just sex.”

“You’re just not my type. I prefer to date women that can’t kill me with a snap of their fingers,” he said, grabbing my hand when I tried to smack him away a second time. “I’m hoping this means you’ll at least stop avoiding me.”

A sad smile finally lifted the corners of my mouth as I looked at my handsome companion; a ray of golden sunlight in a dark, dreary cemetery. If he thought I’d been avoiding him because of our brief encounter, I wasn’t about to disabuse him of that notion when the truth was far darker. “Not until the naturi have been taken care of. It’s too dangerous,” I said, giving his hand a light squeeze as if to soften the blow of my words. It wasn’t his fault that he lost control when the naturi were around. The race had the natural ability to control all lycanthropes when they were close. The only reason Nicolai was able to fight it that night was because they had been several miles away.

“Speaking of which,” I said, suddenly recalling what had started this conversation in the first place, “I’m assuming the naturi are no longer calling you, since you’ve gotten this good laugh in.”

“Yeah, they stopped a little while ago,” he confirmed, pushing to his feet. He extended his left hand to me and pulled me up as well.

I dusted off the back of my skirt as my gaze scanned the area once again. As far as I could tell, we were completely alone in the graveyard. But then, I couldn’t sense the naturi, nor could I sense Jabari. “Do you know what they wanted?”

“It sounded like a hunt of some sort in Forsyth Park. They didn’t want us in human form. I had an overwhelming urge to shift and…hunt.”

“Hunt nightwalkers,” I growled, looking down at the ground. Closing my eyes, I reached out, searching the night for Tristan. Some part of me needed to know that the young one was safe and away from the naturi. I didn’t get what I wanted.

Mira! My name reached me as a frantic scream as I made contact with my ward. Help! Naturi…shifters…everywhere! Hurry! Tristan broke off contact, but not before I caught a flash of the large white fountain at the center of Forsyth Park. Tristan wasn’t alone. There was another nightwalker with him and it felt like Amanda, but I wasn’t sure. I knew now that the naturi had summoned up the lycanthropes to hunt down Tristan and whatever other nightwalkers were currently in Forsyth Park.

“I have to go. The naturi are hunting nightwalkers in the city. Tristan!” I said, turning toward where I had parked my car near the entrance to the cemetery.

“Go,” Nicolai called after me, but the word had already begun to fade when it reached my ears as I started running.

Tristan was in trouble, and I was going to happily tear apart anything that dared lay a hand on what was mine.

The fight was over by the time I drove the twenty minutes back into the city from the cemetery, but the damage left behind turned my stomach. I parked my car more than a block away from Forsyth Park, as the entire area had been ringed by flashing blue and red lights from the police cars and ambulances. Cloaking myself from prying eyes, I slipped between the police cars and entered the area.

I flinched at the sight of the first body. Naked, he had been disemboweled before his head was torn from his body. He was one of the unlucky lycanthropes that answered the call of the naturi. The moment he died, his body had naturally changed back into human form. I suppressed a shudder as a white cloth was laid over the body and pushed on, moving deeper into the park.

Tristan? I hesitantly began. I had not tried to contact him earlier for fear of distracting him at a critical moment. But now that I knew the naturi were gone from this place, I needed to hear his sweet voice in my head.

Here …he whispered. His mental touch was weak and thready, but it was close. I followed the feeling toward a small cluster of EMT workers who knelt around a person leaning up against a tree. The bark above their heads had been gored by long claws, scoring it down to its pale, pulp interior.

“Tristan.” His name escaped me in breathless relief before I could stop myself, revealing myself to those close by that could hear me. Two of the three human heads popped up in surprise to find someone unknown standing so close to the injured victim.

“Do you know this person?” one man inquired, pushing to his feet.

“Yes, he’s…my brother,” I said, hesitating for only a heartbeat. I looked too young to pass myself off as his mother, even though I technically was, within the family. “Let me see him.” I followed the command up with a slight mental push to all three of the EMT workers, who then rose to their feet and took a step away from Tristan.

Kneeling before him, I discovered that the nightwalker was covered in blood. His dark navy shirt was shredded and large patches of white gauze and tape were placed over his neck, arms, and chest. Another patch was placed on the thigh of his left leg. Just by the look of him and the destruction wrought within the park, it appeared as if he and a few others had been attacked almost solely by lycanthropes.

“What happened?” I asked, grabbing the arm of the closest EMT worker. I put all three of the workers under my mind control so Tristan could feed in peace. I appreciated their tender ministrations as they undoubtedly helped to slow his blood loss, but both he and I appreciated their blood donation more.

“We were cutting through the park, heading toward the Dark Room, when the naturi attacked us,” he said in a low voice, accepting the EMT worker’s wrist I offered him. “There were only two of them, and then the shifters attacked. There had to have been at least a dozen, all in wolf form. We didn’t have a chance.”

“Who is this ‘we’?” I asked, then frowned as I caught him the moment his fangs sank into the man’s wrist, effectively catching him with his mouth full.

Four of us. Amanda, me, Kevin, and Charles. I could also feel a small sigh escape him as the blood rushed down his throat. It would go a long way to speeding up his healing. We were headed to the Dark Room to meet up with Knox.

Stay here. Feed. I ordered, pushing to my feet. Tristan took over mind control of the three EMT workers while I wandered through the carnage. Park benches were smashed, deep furrows were dug in the earth from where bodies had been thrown to the ground. And across everything were claw marks.

I quickly walked the entire length of the park, searching for every body, every wounded fighter. Six lycanthropes and a blond-haired nightwalker by the name of Charles were killed. Amanda and Kevin were nowhere to be found. Neither were the two naturi that Tristan said he’d seen.

Tristan, where’s Amanda and Kevin? I asked, trying to steady my thoughts.

Kevin ran to the Dark Room for help. The lycans followed. The naturi took Amanda. There was a hopeless note to his thoughts. He didn’t plead with me to find her, to bring her back, though I know that request was hovering on the edge of his thoughts. We both knew that if the naturi had bothered to take her, then they planned to use her to get to me. It was also highly unlikely that the young nightwalker was going to survive the encounter, even if the naturi were trying to keep her alive for some kind of exchange.