Masked By Danger by Christa Wick
Chapter One
Rain drizzledon Syracuse like a drunk pissing in an alley, the flow just enough to mute the city’s other odors. With the passenger window down, Cade Mercer inhaled slowly, filling his lungs to capacity as his face grew wet.
Nostrils flaring and twitching, he searched for a scent unique among all the others to help him locate the mystery woman he and his team had been tasked to find. Detecting no supernatural presence, he rolled up the window.
Beyond gender, he had no clue what his team was out here searching for. The new leader of the Witches’ Council had detected a strong, feminine signature loaded with magic. Those parameters meant the target could be a lone she-wolf or an orphaned female cub. Less likely was a woman with inactive shifter genes—a latent.
“Why do I feel like we are driving into a trap set by Hunters?” his driver asked as they waited for a traffic light to turn green. “Like, we’re gonna get there and it’ll be one of those freaky-ass meat-sack things.”
Freaky-ass meat-sack thingwas a pretty accurate description, but Mathis had only heard stories about the creature.
Those stories grew with each telling. Cade had actually seen the thing in its borrowed flesh and transparent skin. Fortunately, it had only been a head, neck and torso strapped to a wooden frame. The faintest thought of such a monstrosity possessing arms and the ability to walk made his balls shrivel.
“It’s called a golem,” Cade said as they entered the Washington Square district. “The possibility of a trap is why we have four vans traveling in a dispersed pattern instead of two driving in tandem. And it won’t be a golem luring us in. Creating such an abomination takes an extraordinary amount of magic. It would be a net loss for the Hunters if they only caught your ass and mine.”
Mathis shrugged, unconvinced by Cade's math.
Braving the rain again, Cade lowered the window and stuck the tip of his tongue out, cautiously sampling the flavor of the surrounding area and its inhabitants. Palpable emotions of fear and anger coated his taste buds and soured his stomach. Beneath it all, he detected hints of feminine appeal, but none felt like his mission's target.
He jerked his head inside the van and closed the window. He didn’t want to find the female in a neighborhood like Washington Square. The closer his team moved toward Onondaga Lake and US-11, the more bars and strip clubs they would encounter.
Bars, strip clubs, prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, junkies…
Mathis shoved a roll of paper towels at him.
“Damn, boss, you look like you just stepped out of the shower.”
“Thanks.” Grunting, he dried his face then grabbed the radio set. “Tanner, anything on your end?”
Waiting for the man’s reply, Cade shifted restlessly in his seat. Including his own warm body, the team comprised eight wolves and two latents spread between four vans. Everyone on the team wore charms to keep Hunters from detecting them. Another set of charms could change a vehicle’s color merely by pulling a secondary charm from its silver container and joining it to the vehicle’s primary charm—no witch required.
Too bad the magical assist couldn’t erase the two-hundred miles of highways and city streets between their current position and the nearest clan stronghold in upstate New York.
Tanner’s gravelly voice crackled over the radio. “Nothing, boss.”
“Keep looking.” Cade dropped the radio into the cup holder.
“Gotta take a piss.” Mathis signaled a right turn half a heartbeat before he whipped the van into the parking lot of a donut and coffee shop. “You think the witches are wrong on this one?”
“You want to ask any of them?” Cade joked, opening his window fully now that the rain had paused. “We just need to wait until the target settles down for the night. Once she does, the Wonder Twins can cast for a more concrete location. After that, our noses will lead us the rest of the way.”
The “Wonder Twins” were the two latents riding with Tanner. Spike and Petra weren’t twins, but were siblings born a year apart. Spike was the only male latent the clan had found so far. His discovery had made everyone but Esme Gladwin, the new head of the Witches’ Council, uncomfortable. She looked at Spike as proof that the Hunters intent on wiping out all shifters and witches were also latents, their ranks limited to men by choice.
Everyone else had reached the same conclusion—they just didn’t turn giddy over confirmation of the theory.
“Seeing as this one came straight from Esme, I’ll let you ask her, boss,” Mathis answered, a smile lashed to his face. “If anyone can turn a wolf into a frog, it’s gonna be her.”
“She wasn’t the only one casting,” Cade said, stepping from the van to stretch his legs. “And she admitted something was way off about the energy. The vibe was similar to finding Petra and Spike, just significantly stronger. So it could be several latents or cubs who have banded together, always sticking close to one another.”
The grin on his driver’s face disappeared at the mention of potential cubs. Search teams had discovered too many orphaned wolves in the last few months, all of them male and all born during a time when the fertility rate among the clans had plummeted to zero. More unnerving, the cubs appeared out of nowhere with memories as clean as the day they were born.
No question about it—Mathis and the rest of the team would much prefer to find a nubile woman who didn’t realize she had enough shifter DNA in her genetic makeup to mate with a wolf and have his children. Finding a cub on the run would add another layer of dread to the already immense cloud hanging over the clans.
The thought had been rolling around inside Cade’s head like an iron-spiked bowling ball the entire drive. He shoved it aside as he closed the van door and nodded at Mathis. “Hey, get me a triple shot with extra cream while you’re in there.”
“Sure thing, pussycat.” Mathis disappeared into the coffee shop wearing a fresh smile.
Cade used the time alone to pace, loosening muscles that had cramped on the long drive and hours spent searching the city with little guidance beyond a twenty-block sector in the worst neighborhood Syracuse offered. He paced for several minutes, circling the van half a dozen times before Mathis finally exited the bathroom and ordered two coffees.
His cellphone vibrated in his pocket as he completed another slow circuit of the vehicle, jolting him from the concentrated haze into which he had settled. He fished the phone from his jeans and opened it to find new GPS coordinates from the Witches’ Council. The twenty-block area had narrowed to one precise location.
Stomach dropping like a load of bricks to fill his bowels, he sent the coordinates to the wolves riding shotgun in the other vans, telling them to hold at two blocks away according to the cardinal positions he had assigned each.
In the last three months, his team had executed eight rescue missions, all of them successful. Every extraction carried its own unique risks. Not yet able to shift, a cub might be in the care of humans. A latent could be unwilling to leave with them, or she might have drawn Hunters to her. Hell, locating a latent in Washington Square meant she could be under the control of a pimp or street gang.
As unpleasant a scenario as encountering a street gang might be, Hunters were far more dangerous. Working with the precision of military strike teams, Hunters were led by a maniac named Quentin. He was their “Father General,” a Dark Pope in black robes willing to sacrifice every last soldier in his war against the shifters, and his quest for power that fueled it.
Hell, there was good reason to believe he’d been kidnapping cubs for decades and siphoning off their magic. He had been caught callously referring to cubs as his “power grid.” The head of the Witches’ Council had been kidnapped and strapped to something like that before she was rescued.
Feeling the hairs rise along the nape of his neck, Cade climbed into the van and plugged the coordinates into the GPS unit. The route appeared with a few lines of text next to it. A fresh growl rumbled through his chest as he read them. No cub tonight—not when the destination was a strip club. So one or multiple latents in a bar, surrounded by men and liquor with bouncers at the door and nothing but cloaking charms to shield his team from the trained killers who wanted them dead.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Apprehension ghost walked the length of his spine before digging into his testicles. If he was lucky, the woman wouldn’t be compatible with any of the men on his team. Otherwise, all hell would break loose if a wolf’s mating response was triggered while some guy had a hand on the chick’s ass.
Heaven forbid a lap dance was in progress. The scent of arousal from the human male would be as good as a signed death warrant for the dude.
Mathis opened the driver’s side door, interrupting the scenarios racing through Cade’s head. He handed a coffee to Cade, then climbed into the van. “Got anything?”
Bringing the cup to his lips, Cade nodded and tapped the GPS screen. “New location—looks like at least one latent. We’re on lead. Everyone else is holding at two blocks out.”
Mathis pulled the seat belt across his chest before noticing the scowl on his alpha’s face. “Problem, boss?”
“She’s at a strip club.” Cade couldn’t keep the snarl from his voice.
“So totally not a problem.” Mathis laughed the location off, his face splitting into a glittering, wolfish grin. “You know what all the latents say—once you go wolf, you never go back!”
Seeing that the joke hadn’t cracked Cade’s stony facade, Mathis tried again. “Come on, boss. This might be your night to find a mate.”
“Just get the van moving before the evening gets any worse.” Cade checked the sidearm under his jacket, then fastened his seat belt. “I want to know what we’re dealing with before any of you decide to run in with your dicks out and guns blazing.”
“Or our guns out and dicks blazing.”
Mathis waited for the laugh that wasn’t coming.
“Seriously, dude, you should at least try to get some pussy before the decade is over,” he grumbled, pulling from the parking space. “We’d all be a lot happier if you did. I mean—”
Cade responded with a side glare that cut off the conversation. Satisfied Mathis would remain silent until they reached their location, Cade eased back against the seat and kept one eye on the dashboard’s built-in navigation screen while he argued with the beast inside him.
Unlike all the other latent and cub runs his team had made, his wolf had been twitching since the early morning call to action that had mobilized his team.
The latent doesn’t interest us, he reminded it.
A tail flicked inside his skull, the fur soft as silk and caressing him in a way that reminded Cade of his hand in the shower the night before.
We’re just here for the extraction.
The soft tease of fur became nails scratching against his sternum. He grabbed his wolf by its neck and gave a hard shake.
This woman is not ours.
Ours is gone.
The wolf quieted at the reminder.
Cade sighed—with regret, not relief. No matter how many women the Witches’ Council located, he held no illusion that he would find one with whom he was compatible.
Fact was, he’d met his mate when he was eight and she was six. But the she-wolf ended up rejecting the mating and leaving the clan when she turned eighteen.
The dozen years that had passed since didn’t make her any less his mate.
It was more than the shifter roulette equivalent of fated mating for him. As far as Cade was concerned, he couldn’t un-promise his heart—even if the woman had never truly wanted it.
