Hunting Ground (Alpha & Omega #2)(30)

Anna pulled the hotel-room door shut behind them and tried to deal with the revelation that she was pretty sure Tom was right.

It wasn't until they were standing in front of the elevators that she found her balance. So he would fly her to England if she asked him to-she'd followed him up a frozen mountain buried in the depths of a Montana winter, hadn't she? It made them equals.

"Hey." Moira snapped her fingers in front of Anna's nose. "Shoes, remember?"

The elevator had opened.

"Sorry," she said. "Revelation, here."

"Ah." Moira appeared to consider that for a moment. "Nope. Shoes are more important. Especially if you're going to have that British snob eating at your feet."

And so Anna girded herself and set off for a second round of marathon shopping. Dark came early in the dead of winter, even if it was just raining. When Moira had done her worst, when Tom was complaining about numb feet, and Anna had shoes-and her hair trimmed and styled-Moira finally relented and told them they could head back.

To the hotel, the witch insisted firmly, not the auditorium.

Moira leaned around Tom as if she needed to see Anna's face when she made her final pronouncement. "Men don't care about dressing for dinner. Men shave and put on a tie and 'poof' that's good enough. Wom-"

They stormed out of the darkness of a basement apartment stairwell and brought a spell of silence and shadow with them. A spell that had hidden them from Tom's sharp senses as well as Anna's less-well-trained sensory abilities.

They hit Tom first, but not by much. Anna heard Tom's gasp, but before she could see what had happened to him, a delicate, strong-as-steel arm snaked around her throat.

Magic moved and settled around them all, a familiar spell, one used by packs to conceal fights or kills or anything else they didn't want the rest of the world to know about. But the attackers didn't smell like wolves.

As she fought to free her throat, she could see one of their attackers, a woman, run into the witch like a linebacker, knocking her down, off the curb and into the street.

A scream cut short, and a body hit pavement hard from Tom's direction. She couldn't see him, but it wasn't Tom who had screamed; she'd be willing to bet Tom had never made a sound that high-pitched in his life. Moira's attacker left the blind witch to help the others with Tom.

"Pretty Anna." Her attacker was a woman, and as she whispered she licked Anna's throat. She wasn't human, though. Nothing human could have immobilized Anna this easily-or taken down Tom in whatever numbers. "Come with me, little girl, and the others will survive-"

And, the immediate shock of the attack over, Anna kicked and broke the enemy's knee. She wasn't a "little girl." She was a werewolf.

The woman screamed into her ear-a sharp, high-pitched noise that deafened and hurt and drove Anna to the pavement to escape it. Hard hands dug into her shoulders in preparation to drag her somewhere. Anna twisted and writhed and hit the woman's jaw with her heel. That stopped the noise.

Her wolf took over then. Not in wolf body but in her human form, Anna taught the woman what she should already have known-Omega didn't mean doormat. It didn't mean weak. It meant strong enough to do exactly what it had to in order to triumph, whether that meant cringing in the presence of dominant wolves or tearing her enemy apart.

Anna was too far gone to pinpoint exactly when she understood what had attacked them: vampires. But she remembered Asil's lessons in how to kill them. When the vampire lay in two pieces-body at her feet and head rather nearer to Moira, who was screaming in incoherent rage-the wolf gave a satisfied snort and let Anna take over. And Anna heard what the wolf had not.

What Moira was yelling was, "Damn it, damn it-tell me what they are! Tom. Tom. Anna!"

And, as she sprinted to the pile of bodies that must have Tom on the bottom, Anna told her, "Vampires."

Moira didn't hear her, so Anna ripped the arm off the vampire she'd been trying to pry off Tom, and yelled, "Vampires, Moira. Vampires!"

And light exploded around them, warm and brilliant-and the vampires she and Tom hadn't killed stopped fighting and ran. Anna's vampire grabbed his arm off the ground before tearing after the others. Anna took a step after them, then forced herself to stop.

There were still four vampires, and that was probably three too many for her-and she couldn't abandon her fallen comrades.

"Tom?"

"He's alive," she told Moira after a quick-but-thorough examination-done from five feet away. "But he's going to need a moment before he's ready to believe we aren't the enemy." She knelt beside the witch. "Are you all right?"

"Fine, damn it. Just fine."

Moira was bleeding, Anna could smell it, but not a lot. She saw cuts on knees and elbows, but nothing horrible. The horrible thing had nothing to do with the vampire attack.

Moira's glasses had been knocked to the pavement and Anna saw what she'd hidden behind them. One eye scarred beyond belief, as if someone had ripped it out with a clawed hand. The other withered like a raisin, a sickly yellowish white raisin.

Without a word, Anna found the sunglasses-which were unbroken-and put them in Moira's hand. The witch's hands shook as she shoved them onto her face, then she steadied.

Anna understood about shields and the odd shape they sometimes took.