An odd odor saturated the air, dry and slightly metallic, like copper warmed by the sun. The thing stepped over the woman, its gaze fixed on her.
“Run!” Karina turned on her heel and dashed down the hallway, herding the children before her.
The man with shark teeth rose slowly, pulled a wooden splinter out of his eye, tossed it aside, and, with a deep bellow, charged into the lobby through the hole in the wall.
A snarl answered him, a promise of pain and death. It whipped Karina into a frenzy. She swiped Jacob off the floor—he was the smallest—and ran faster to the heavy door barring the stairs. She jerked it open. “Up the stairs, go, go!”
They ran up, whimpering and sobbing. The same fear that drove her propelled them up the stairs better than anything she could’ve screamed.
Karina slammed the door closed, balancing Jacob on one arm, and looked for something to bar it, but the stairway was empty. Her stomach burned, the pain from the needle puncture spreading up and down her body as if her skin had caught on fire. She ran after the kids. The boy in her arms was stone heavy. They reached the top of the staircase and crowded on the landing.
Below something clanged. There it was again, the scent of hot metal burning her lungs.
Karina set Jacob down and wrenched the door open. They burst into the upstairs hallway. She scanned the rows of doors and tried to shove the nearest one open, but it was locked.
Another—locked, too.
Third—locked.
This is a nightmare. It has to be a nightmare.
A vicious snarl chased them. Emily screamed, a high-pitched shriek that could’ve broken glass. Karina grabbed her daughter by the hand and dragged her down the hall, to the single window. “Follow me!”
Beyond the window a fire escape waited.
Karina grasped the window latch and jerked it up. Stuck.
Her head swam. The air around her had grown scalding hot. Every breath burned her lungs from the inside out. She stumbled, caught herself on the windowsill, and pulled the sash upward with all her strength. The wood groaned and suddenly the frame slid up.
A door thumped. Kids screamed. The terrible dark beast had made it into the hallway.
She grabbed the nearest child and hurled her onto the fire escape, then the next, and the next. Little feet thudded, running down the metal stairs. Emily was last. Karina clutched her daughter to her and climbed out on the fire escape.
A black van waited below. Several men stood by the van. They had the children. They stood there silently, watching her, so calm while the kids screamed, and suddenly she realized that they and the beast inside were allies. They were trapped.
A growl washed over her.
The world gained crystal clarity, everything becoming painfully vivid and sharp. Slowly Karina turned. Her daughter hugged her, her breath a tiny warm cloud on her neck. The metal rail of the fire escape dug into Karina’s back. The thudding of her heart sounded so loud, each beat shook her rib cage like a blow from a sledgehammer. Every breath was a gift.
She saw the thing emerge from the darkness. Slowly, it solidified out of the gloom, one gargantuan paw on the windowsill, then another. Enormous claws scratched the wood. It climbed onto the windowsill and perched there, a mere foot from her. Karina stared into its eyes, inhaled its scent, and knew with absolute certainty that she was going to die.
The thing opened its maw, revealing huge fangs. Its deep voice issued forth in a single mangled word. “Donor.”
“Are you sure?” asked a male voice from below.
The beast snarled. Karina jerked back, shielding Emily with her hands. Her legs gave out and she fell to her knees.
“My lady?” said the voice from below, closer now.
She barely turned her head, not daring to take her gaze from the monster in the window. A dark-haired man climbed the fire escape toward her. His face was preternaturally beautiful, his eyes a dark, intense blue. “I have a proposition for you, my lady . . .”
His voice faded, replaced by darkness and the feel of cotton against her body.
I agree.
Karina sat up . . . She was in her bed. The room lay dark about her. A nightmare. That was all.
Her heart thudded in her chest. She rubbed her face and her hands came away slick with cold moisture.
I agree. “I agree” to what? What did she agree to in her dream?
It didn’t matter. It was a nightmare. In the morning, she’d call the grief counselor.
Karina frowned and pushed free of the blankets. She felt a strange sense of wrongness, as if there was something very important she was missing. Something vital. A small lamp waited on the table next to the bed. She flicked it on and a cone of soft electric light illuminated the room.
The bedroom wasn’t hers.
For a moment Karina froze, and then fear caught her in its fist and squeezed. “Emily?” she whispered. “Emily?”
No answer.
She was alone in a strange bedroom.
There could be a rational explanation for this. There had to be. She just didn’t know what it was.
I agree. An echo of her voice from the dream. She had a terrible suspicion the unfamiliar bedroom and those two words were connected.
Her clothes were gone. She wore only underwear and a giant T-shirt, three sizes too big.
A pair of carefully folded jeans lay on a chair next to the bed. Her jeans, the ones she had worn on the field trip. Karina pulled them on. She had to find Emily.
The door swung open with ease and she found herself in a hallway. To the left, the hallway ended in a stairway leading up. To her right, a pool of electric light brightened the wooden floor and the rust-colored rug. Quiet voices carried on a soft discussion.
She followed the voices and stepped into a kitchen, blinking against the light. Three men sat at the round table in the center. They turned to look at her. The one sitting farthest from her wore the unearthly face of the man from her dream. His name surfaced from the depths of her memory. Arthur.
I agree.
Arthur nodded to her. “Ah. You’re up. Why don’t you sit down with us? Henry, please get a chair for Lady Karina.” His soft, intimate voice caressed her almost like a touch. It should’ve been soothing. Instead her insides clenched into a tight knot.
A tall man with a shy smile rose and held a chair out for her. So oddly domestic, all three drinking tea. Nobody was startled by her appearance. Clearly she was expected.
Karina sat. “Thank you.” The automatic response rolled from her lips before she even realized it.
“You’re welcome,” Arthur said. He leaned back with a quiet elegance, artfully posed without putting any effort into it. His hair was soft, black, and brushed back from his perfectly sculpted face. His eyebrows were equally black and so were his eyelashes, long and soft like velvet. They framed big eyes, crystalline blue, distant, and cold. Angelic, she thought. He looked like an angel, not a plump cherub, but an angel who roamed freely in the sky, possessed of heart-wrenching beauty and terrible power, an angel who had stared into the bottomless blue for so long that his eyes had absorbed its color.
“Would you like some tea?” Arthur asked.
“Children . . . ?”
“Safe,” he said and she believed the sincerity of his words even though she had no reason to do so.
Arthur rose, took a small blue mug from the shelf behind him, and poured steaming tea into it from a large kettle on the stove. He set the cup in front of her. “Please drink. It will steady your nerves.”
Karina looked at the cup.
He drank from his own cup and smiled in encouragement.
She picked up the cup and took a sip. Green tea. Odd taste, slightly sour.
Maybe she was still dreaming. The whole scene had that slightly absurd wrongness found only in dreams.
Karina looked about the table. The man who had offered her the chair, Henry, sat to her right. He was tall and whipcord lean. His face, serious with somber intelligence, lacked Arthur’s magnetism, but its sharp angles drew her all the same. His tawny hair was cut close to the scalp, but still showed a trace of a curl. His green eyes regarded her and she read pity in their depths.
The man on her left was model pretty. Strong masculine jaw, deep, dark blue eyes, high cheekbones, a mane of golden wavy hair dripping down to below his waist, hiding half of his face . . . His eyes flashed with wild humor. He gave her a wink, grinned, exposing even white teeth, and tossed his hair back. An ugly scar ripped his left cheek, almost as if something had taken a bite out of him and his flesh hadn’t healed right. She fought an urge to look away. He reached for her hand . . .
“Daniel.” Arthur’s voice gained a slight edge. “That’s extremely unwise.”
Daniel sat back.
“Just because she didn’t scream when she saw your face doesn’t mean you get to touch.” Henry refilled his cup.
“Please forgive Daniel. He doesn’t mean to be rude. He’s just forbidden to speak for the time being. Your tea is getting cold,” Arthur said.
“He tends to cause problems when he speaks,” Henry said.
Daniel gave her a smoldering smile.
She faced Arthur. “What did I agree to?”
Arthur sighed. “I see.”
Henry leaned forward. “Perhaps we should mend this.”
“Yes. The sooner, the better. Lucas might return and that would make things considerably more complicated.”
Daniel laughed softly. If wolves could laugh, they would sound just like him.
Henry held out his hand. “It’s easier if you hold on to me.”
Karina hesitated.
“You do want to remember, don’t you?” Arthur asked.
She put her hand into Henry’s. His long warm fingers closed about hers. The world tore in two and she was back on the landing of the fire escape at the not-motel, cradling Emily. Her whole body burned with a terrible ache.
Arthur leaned his head to the side, looked at them for a moment, and plucked Emily from her arms.
“No!” Karina struggled to hold on, but her hands had lost all strength.
Emily didn’t kick. Didn’t scream. Her face was completely blank, as if she had turned into a doll. Arthur turned and handed her to someone behind him on the stairs.