Trying to get her rapid heartbeat under control, she attempted to stall him, realizing that the man who had pulled the trigger and killed her mother was this man’s brother. “Are you a friend of Mario’s?”

“A friend?” Ferdinand laughed bitterly. “No. His friends don’t live long. We’re cousins, if you didn’t know. He sent one of his men to kill me. Only I got the upper hand and killed Mario’s henchman first. But the assassin gave me a present before I ended his miserable life.” Ferdinand let go of her hands and went to work on her belt, but she couldn’t let him rape her or whatever he planned on doing.

With a superhuman effort, she tried to sit up, intending to hit him or kick him or something, but the pain streaked across her skull with a vengeance, and she collapsed back against the bed in a near faint.

“Hell, I figured you wouldn’t go easy. Just know this. You’re mine. The bastard who turned me is dead, but I’m not about to live alone like this. And since Mario killed Candy, you’re it, dollface. Mine.” He slammed his iron fist into the side of her head, creating an eruption of pain so profound that she cried out, and the darkness swiftly closed in on her again.

***

The sound of gruff angry male voices brought Alicia to semiconsciousness as she lay naked on a soft mattress, presumably in Ferdinand’s bedroom. Her head pounded, her arm throbbed and stung, and she couldn’t figure out why it hurt when only her head should have. The room was black as night, but a thin strip of light appeared beneath a closed door.

“You been following Mario,” a brusque man said in another room. “And Jimmy’s been following him, too. Only Jimmy’s paid for his… mistake. He said it was your idea to trail Mario. So what the hell for?”

“You’re wrong,” Ferdinand said, his voice just as dark. “My cousin’s damned paranoid.”

“You know Mario’s already pissed off at you.”

“Because his thug didn’t kill me last time.” Ferdinand sounded defiant, as though he still had the upper hand. “He shouldn’t have murdered Candy.”

“Candy shouldn’t have stolen from Mario’s casino. Not only that, but Mario said you got in his way with Missy Greiston.”

Her mother? Alicia swallowed hard.

“She was dating a loser. How did I know Mario wanted a piece of the action?”

“You wanted her because Tony was working for Mario and knew his business. You wanted to muscle in on Mario’s territory. And you figured you’d get the goods on Mario through Missy. The straw that broke the camel’s back? Candy’s gambling scheme that made Mario lose some big bucks. He doesn’t like to lose. Not to a woman. And not when you’d been porking her on top of it. He figured you had something to do with Candy’s going after his money. Admit it.”

Something hit something with a dull thud and a crunching noise, and a loud grunt of pain sounded. Cursing followed, mixed with moans, and then the words spoken were suddenly silenced. No one said anything further for what seemed like an eternity. The sound of Alicia’s blood pounding in her ears was the only thing she heard as she strained to hear what else was happening in the other room.

“He doesn’t know anything,” another man said, his voice quieter, much more sinister.

The silence that followed was more frightening than the harsh words. Because with the silence, she couldn’t tell whether the men were still a long way off or coming for her.

“Was Ferdinand alone?” the sinister-sounding man finally asked, his words spoken in the direction of the bedroom as if he was suddenly looking that way, suddenly aware Ferdinand might not have been alone.

“When I grabbed him in the living room getting a whiskey at the bar, he was the only one who made a sound. If anyone else was in the place, she would have checked to see what was happening.”

“Hell, he was naked. I thought you would have already checked to see if he had a woman stashed back there before I arrived. Jimmy said Ferdinand had grabbed a woman and taken her away with him. Maybe’s he’s got her tied up and gagged in the bedroom.”

The nightmare was only going to get worse. Alicia knew they’d look for anyone else in the place, and she figured she didn’t stand a chance if they found her.

She swung her legs over the bed, felt dizzy and sick at the same time, and forced her vision to clear. Then she swept her hands over the mattress, snagging articles of clothing: bra, panties, slacks, stockings, shirt, jacket. Everything but her shoes. She meant to stand, but as soon as her bare feet hit the carpeted floor, she crumpled. She couldn’t walk. Couldn’t do much but slide under the bed. With pain shrieking through her head and her arm throbbing as if it had been cut badly, she managed to slip underneath the bed, knocking her shoes under there with her.

Dust floated upward underneath the bed, and she stifled a sneeze, holding her nose and gritting her teeth.

The door opened; a light flipped on. Footfalls walked around the room, black leather dress shoes squeaking. Heels toward her, the shoes paused at the edge of the bed. She froze. She smelled a man’s pungent cologne and the thick odor of smoke. The leather shoes walked away, and the footfalls headed back down the hallway. “No one else here. Kill the bastard.”

Ferdinand didn’t object. Why didn’t he say anything? Had they knocked him out? Taped his mouth shut?

She shivered with fear. If they found her, they’d kill her, too.

No one said anything further. She heard no other sounds until a door in another room opened and closed.

Then eerie silence prevailed. Too frightened to leave her safe spot underneath the bed, she lay there waiting, her head and arm hurting so much that she didn’t think anything could get any worse.

She was wrong.

Chapter 7

Alicia must have slept for some time, she thought, as she found herself pinned under the framework of a bed, but she felt strange, lying on her side and unable to move to her back. Her arms weren’t right. Her legs either. She shifted her head, and it didn’t seem right any more than the rest of her did.

As if… as if she was living in an alien body. She struggled to turn onto her back, but her strange legs wouldn’t allow it. She was experiencing another nighttime paralysis. Had to be. The way she struggled to move and couldn’t, her heart racing, her mouth opening to cry out in frustration. But then she recalled Ferdinand and the men with him and worried they might be in the other room, so she grew very still.

After a few minutes, she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer and again tried to roll onto her back, but she couldn’t in the confined space beneath the bed. And she couldn’t use her arms to crawl out from under the bed either. What was wrong with her?

Somehow, squirming and clawing at the carpeted floor, she finally managed to extract herself from under the bed and stared at herself in a floor-length mirror in disbelief.

She was a wolf.

Pointed ears, beige fur under her chin, darker markings around her ears and framing her face, light gray legs, and attractive darker markings on her torso, with a big bushy tail swishing from side to side—a beautiful wolf, but not real. This couldn’t be real.

It had to be sleep paralysis. Except that the only time she’d experienced it, she hadn’t been able to move at all or to yell. She had just whimpered, unable to free herself from sleep. Yet she’d been aware she was trying to escape the sleep paralysis. And when she awoke, she remembered the terror of being paralyzed and unable to break free.

But in this case, everything she smelled and touched with her wet nose, felt under her paw pads, and tasted with her tongue was too real to be a dream.

She meant to laugh at herself for thinking she was a wolf, but a woof erupted from deep within her throat. For a moment, she was too stunned to react.

She struggled to remember what Ferdinand had said to her.

But the assassin gave me a present before I ended his miserable life.

Ferdinand had gotten the best of him and killed him. But the man had given him a present first. A present? A virus? That made Ferdinand capable of biting someone else and infecting that person with the virus? That person being Alicia? Who now was a wolf?

She closed her eyes and tried to think of what else Ferdinand had said that might give her a clue.

The bastard who turned me is dead, but I’m not about to live alone.

The assassin had turned Ferdinand. Turned him. As in… had bitten him and…

She glanced down at her foreleg, which was matted with blood. Had Ferdinand bitten her arm? As a wolf? It had hurt like the devil before when she was lying naked on the bed. Naked. He’d stripped her of her clothes and then bitten her to… to turn her?

She paced across the floor, panting, so confused, so upset that her thoughts were scattered a million miles wide. She had to be dreaming, no, experiencing a night terror.

She swallowed hard and focused her attention on the doorway to the bedroom.

When Ferdinand had undressed her, the room had been pitch-black. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t understand how he could see her. If he… if he was…

She shook her head and began to pace again. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, the lights all off. Yet she could now see in the dark.

And wolves had nocturnal vision for hunting. Which meant? Ferdinand had…

She wanted to laugh out loud, but the sound came out like a garbled woof. Ferdinand had been a werewolf. That was too weird to believe.

She paused and glanced back at the doorway. What had become of him?

Her heart was in her throat, and fear cloaked her with the worry that she still could be discovered. But the need to learn what had happened to Ferdinand overwhelmed her need for self-preservation. She loped out of the bedroom and down the hall, smelling the shampooed carpet, the cologne worn by three different men, whiskey, and lemon wax cleaner. Her ears twisted back and forth, listening to the sounds outside—cars driving by, a siren way off in the distance, the hum of an air-conditioning unit, but otherwise an eerie silence prevailed.

As much as she wanted to see what had happened to Ferdinand, dread bunched in the pit of her stomach. The hall opened into a living room, spacious with high ceilings, richly carved dark wood furniture, and two couches and four chairs—all covered in brown brushed leather. She stopped dead.