Skidding to a stop, the car hit ice and swung haphazardly into the tall curbside. She barely even felt it. She was too busy jumping out of the car. Niamh dashed toward the opening in the snow-dusted trees. She could see the pathway under a thick layer of snow. Tires squealed behind her as her pursuers witnessed her escape. Sweat beaded under her arms as she pushed through the lethargy that still clung to her body.
Come on! She gritted her teeth in frustration as she ran up the snowy path, fast but nowhere near the speed she was capable of. The snow didn’t bloody help matters.
That fecking fecker of a werewolf!
He was going to get her killed!
The path seemed to just keep going, the trees thick on either side, and Niamh could hear the crunching of very fast feet through hard snow in the distance. Panic bloomed in her chest as she hit an intersection in the path.
She turned left, feeling her speed pick up in increments. Fast, but not fast enough.
Breaking off the path, Niamh disappeared into the snowy trees, hoping to lose her pursuers in the darkness. She had superior night vision, but so did most supernaturals.
The birch trees towered above like skinny giants holding out their snow-peppered arms protectively, urging her to hurry. She tried to detect the scent of her pursuers but she didn’t have a nose like a wolf and all she could smell was the freshness of snow, the earthiness of the soil beneath, and the sweet, sharp, clean scent of the birch. There was also the faint mustiness of animal. Not werewolf, but from whatever animal lived in the park.
Niamh picked up speed, calmed by the enveloping darkness of the trees and the fact that the crunching footsteps had grown fainter in the distance. She kept pushing, pushing until she burst out of the trees into an open field thick with snow. Gathering her speed again, she flew across the openness—wet encapsulated her ankles as her feet disappeared in and out of the snow—and into the tree line ahead.
Not long later, as Niamh caught the glimmer of another opening in the distance, a familiar sick sensation built in her gut.
No.
No, not now.
Tears of defeat pricked her eyes as she rushed out, skidding through the snow of another small clearing.
In the distance, she could hear the thrashing through the forest. The thrashing of her pursuers growing closer.
And there was nothing she could do as the first image blasted into her head, throwing her to her knees. She didn’t even feel the icy wetness soak through her clothes.
The pain was too blinding, an electric, white-hot heat that blazed around her head as she saw green.
Grass.
And on the grass, four stone circles. Like a small druid circle. Like standing stones.
Then a face appeared through that image. A woman. A face she’d seen before but not since her death.
And then Elijah.
And Rose.
And herself.
The image was obliterated as another slammed into her skull. A pendant. A jade pendant shaped like a water droplet. It flickered and there was a city. A mountain towering over it. A garden. A water garden. A Japanese garden. The images kept coming, one after the other, each like a mallet to her head.
Self-directed frustration and irritation held Kiyo immobile for a few seconds.
He’d followed Niamh’s scent down the highway, across traffic and down a road that led him under the railway bridge to a park.
And scattered across the road by the entrance to the park were three vehicles. One smelled of Niamh.
The other two of vamps and wolves.
The Garm.
They’d found her.
For a moment, Kiyo wondered why the hell she had led them to a park instead of traveling, and that’s when he realized that she probably couldn’t.
Kiyo’s trick with the iron had depleted her strength.
And if she died today, Fionn would make the rest of his eternity a living hell.
Biting back a curse, Kiyo took off into the park.
He was faster as a wolf, especially in snow.
So as he ran, a blur through the wintry darkness, following Niamh’s scent and the fresh footprints, he called on the change.
Not many wolves could run and change at the same time, but as Kiyo liked to remind himself, he wasn’t like normal werewolves.
Usually, he had time to enjoy the transformation. Changing was like a satisfying pleasure pain. Like a deep stretch of a knotted muscle. Bones cracked and muscles contorted and it all sounded horrific but … it wasn’t. Kiyo, however, didn’t have time to feel any of those things.
He slowed, kicking off his boots, just before he began to run on all fours. Eventually he skidded through the snow, halting in the density of the woods to let the transformation take over. He pushed it. He didn’t savor it. And in a flash, he was staring through the eyes of his wolf with his wider peripheral vision.
He contained the growl he wanted to unleash but didn’t for fear of losing the element of surprise. Kiyo instead left behind his tattered clothes and ran.
He soared through the woods with such speed, even if it had been daylight, all anyone would have seen was a blur so fleeting, they would be sure they imagined him. The wind whipped through his fur; the snow barely had time to soak his paws he was so light across it. He felt the violence building within him at the thought of The Garm harming Niamh Farren.
She was his charge.
She was his job.
His to protect.
And Kiyo did not like to fail.
Hearing voices ahead, his ears twitched as a male voice asked in a thick Russian accent, “What do we do with her?”
“Kill her,” another grunted in exasperation.
“But she’s … she’s seizing or something,” a female said. “Maybe she’s already dying.”
Seizing?
The word caused Kiyo more than a flicker of unease.
Rose said Niamh’s visions physically incapacitated her. She said she resembled someone in the midst of a seizure.
Niamh couldn’t even protect herself.
“Take that piece of iron and kill her!” the exasperated male ordered. Kiyo could see the man through the opening ahead. Tall. Burly. Another wolf.
Kiyo leapt out of the trees at his back, jaw open, and clamped his teeth into the man’s neck. The force of his hit took them both to the ground. He tore out the wolf’s throat, hearing the surprise from his companions as he rolled off to face the others.
His eyes darted to Niamh. She was collapsed in the snow, eyes wide and staring unseeingly at the night sky as her body convulsed.
Rage blasted through him as he turned his attention to the two vampires and two werewolves who bared their incisors and canines at him. Only cowards with no honor would take down Niamh while she was in no state to fight back.
He would enjoy this hunt.
The female wolf came at him first. Kiyo lunged to meet her. She was so distracted by his open jaws, she missed his claws. As she triumphantly punched him with impressive force in the muzzle, Kiyo pushed the change, his front forelegs shifting back to his human arms as he slashed her across the belly with his wolf claws.
As her howl of agony lit the air, momentarily disconcerting her companions, Kiyo made the full shift. Uncaring of his nakedness, he spun back to the female as she dropped to her knees, retracted his claws, and punched through the solid cage of muscle and bone in her back.
The force of the hit shuddered up his arms as his hand clamped around the hot, wet muscle of her heart.
He yanked it out and she sagged lifelessly to the ground.