The asphalt blurred under Levi’s front wheel, the engine between his knees sending him flying north along the country road.
The plan hadn’t worked. It almost couldn’t have gone worse. The bloodsucker’s minions had caught him with his backside hanging out of the third-story window, loot in hand and about to begin his descent.
Wolves didn’t care much for vertical surfaces. That was more of a feline attribute. Trying to stay in human form while naked, gripping a stolen dagger, and being threatened with very serious looking weapons was just about impossible.
He hadn’t tried.
Instead, he’d taken a header into the bushes, shifting on his way down so that he hit the branches in his wolf-form and rolled free, the dagger in his teeth. Legs and heart pumping, he ran in a flat sprint for the gate. Every leaf etched against his vision in the darkness, and the wet foliage slapped his body as his long lope ate the ground beneath his paws.
Worst of all, it’d been his own kind that had come after him, howling through the woods until he hit the fence and shifted just enough to use his hands to catch the top edge and propel himself over, into the woods on the other side and to the motorcycle waiting beyond.
Paws were good for a lot of things, but driving wasn’t one of them. So he’d had to shift all the way back to human as he hit the seat, bare ass cheeks on cold leather, and slammed the keys home. The engine had roared to life as the pack following him burst from the treeline, and he’d driven off stark naked with the dagger still clutched in his teeth, shooting the bird at every single one of them.
Lap dogs.
That had been satisfying, but it wouldn’t take long for the damned vampire to send a more effective force on his trail. And though his Ducati Superbike could outrun pretty much anything on the street, the desire to not attract attention required that he stop long enough to pull on his clothes before he hit a major road.
Of course, before he’d done that, there had been the very nice-looking lady in the minivan, whose shocked face behind the glaring headlights still made Levi chuckle to himself….
The truth was, though, he was in deep shit. Probably the deepest he’d ever been in. His brothers had been completely against the heist. The entire clan had vetoed it, in fact. So, technically speaking, he was now an outlaw.
Levi had never bothered much with technicalities before. But he did wonder how he was going to get out of this one, since his plan had pretty much depended on not getting caught.
Now the bloodsucker’s goons had a good fix on his scent, and they knew what he looked like, too, and knew his ride. The problem with high-up vampires wasn’t so much their own power but the sheer force they could bring to bear if they wanted to.
And given what Levi had just taken, Mortensen would be pretty damned motivated to do whatever he could to stop him.
Screw him, though. Screw the vampire, screw Levi’s clan, and screw everybody who stood in his way. Levi had something that represented real power, the first chance for everyone in his clan to finally be free of vampiric threats or dependence.
No more uneasy truces. No more negotiations. No more contracts. With what he had, he could cut ties to them, and they couldn’t do a thing about it.
Of course, that would only work if he survived to use what he now had. And the first step in raising his chances of survival would be to ditch his motorcycle, which was probably being broadcast on police channels across three states by now, and get another ride.
The thought gave him almost a physical pain. He had scrimped and saved for his bike for a whole year back before he’d established his main business, taking jobs he had no interest in for rich scumbags and paranoid husbands, all with the goal of owning this beautiful beast. Riding a motorcycle was the closest he could come to feeling like a wolf in human form, and on it, he kept all the keen intelligence and analytical ability that gave way to primal instinct and visceral immediacy as a wolf.
And riding this motorcycle, in particular…. If riding a motorcycle was like sex, he thought, the Supersport versus his old, secondhand hog was like the difference between having a long night with a beautiful woman and rubbing one off in a dirty bathroom stall.
But now it was a liability. If everything worked out well, he could buy as many Ducatis as he wanted. If it didn’t, well…. Dead men—or wolves—didn’t have much use for a bike.
He had to ditch it.
As if on cue, a car appeared on the opposite side of the road as he crested the hill, a golden Buick from the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. If he could get it running, that could be perfect. He blew past it and made a U-turn in the middle of the empty road to come up behind it again at a more sedate pace.
He could see a girl with a butt to die for leaning into the open trunk, and he spared a moment’s pity for her, since he was planning on commandeering her ride. It was a shame to upset the owner of such fine assets.
But he’d take what he could get—and beat it before his recent past caught up to him in a very literal way.
