Realm of Shadows (Vampire Alliance)

  A WOLF . . . ?

  “Open the drawer.”

  She opened the top drawer. Her grandfather’s things were neat and organized.

  “Open the little brown box.”

  She did so. There was a cross in it. A beautiful cross. Eighteen-carat gold, she thought, large, and elegantly fashioned.

  “Put it on. Please, I beg of you, wear it. Wear it for me.”

  She unhooked the necklace she had been wearing and replaced it with the cross. When she walked back to the bed, she was startled by the strength of his grip as he took her hand.

  “sit.”

  She sat.

  “This must be between you and me for now, please. Swear to me on that cross, that you’ll say nothing about this, whether you believe me or not.”

  “I swear, I won’t repeat any of this.”

  “I believe that they have dug up a vampire.”

  “What?” she cried, incredulity heavy in her voice.

  He sighed deeply. “There are such creatures in the world, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. There are sick people in the world, there are people who think they are vampires, but Grandpapa, there aren’t real vampires.”

  “I knew you would not believe me. And I’m very afraid that in time, you will.”

  She walked to the French doors that led out to the balcony of her bedroom and opened them to the night breeze.

  There were no stars in the sky, and the moon was but half full.

  She heard a strange sound. A baying. Fear seemed to clasp chilled wet fingers around her heart again. A dog. It had been nothing but a dog.

  And there it was. Down below, at the end of the drive.

  The animal was huge. She heard the baying again. Deep, and otherworldly. A haunting sound that might have come from an entire pack of deep-throated animals, crying to the night and the heavens above.

  She leaned over the balcony. It was a wolf.

  And once again, the night was split with the unearthly sound of the creature crying out to the moon and the sky.

  Don’t miss any of Heather Graham’s

  Alliance Vampire novels

  Beneath a Blood Red Moon

  When Darkness Falls

  Deep Midnight

  Realm of Shadows

  The Awakening

  Dead by Dusk

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  REALM OF SHADOWS

  HEATHER GRAHAM

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  A WOLF . . . ?

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  EPILOGUE

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  For Moraima, with deepest appreciation for the support. For Vanessa Molina, the songbird, with love and best wishes and total faith that she’ll fly high, and for Sean Abreu, with thanks for the laughter, and the tango!

  PROLOGUE

  The Trenches

  Germany

  September 1944

  A shell exploded not ten feet in front of the line. Despite the days and nights the men had spent in their hellish hole in the earth, some jumped at the sound.

  Others barely twitched.

  They’d been holding the line nearly a week, waiting for reinforcements. Though word kept coming through that the men from Airborne would be shoring them up, none had arrived. Some of the men were bitter, but Brandon Ericson shrugged at their comments without replying. He was certain the men from Airborne had been sent out.

  They just hadn’t made it yet. Gut instinct warned him that the paratroopers had been dropped from their planes with all good intentions. Some of them had tangled in the trees. Others had been shot down while their chutes were still billowing in the absurdly blue skies. Some of them had met death on the ground. And some were wasting away in the enemy’s prison camps. No lack of intent or valor left them as they were now. Just the brutal determination of a foe determined to conquer all Europe.

  “Jesu! That was close!” Corporal Ted Myers muttered, crossing himself. His pale blue eyes were bright against their red rims and the dark grime on his face. Beside him, Jimmy Decker started to shake. What began as a trembling turned suddenly into a full-force spasm. Then Jimmy slammed forward, crashing against the wall of earth that shielded them, and back again.

  “Better get him out of the line,” the lieutenant said quietly. “Back to the infirmary.”

  “Ain’t no infirmary anymore, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Walowski said. He leaned back against the earth and sank to a sitting position, drawing a cigarette from his pocket. “Caved in last night.”

  “The medics have something else rigged up. Myers, get Decker out of here,” the lieutenant said. He stared across the earth. Pretty soon, dusk would fall. Until then, there would be another barrage of mortar fire. After that, the enemy would make a run at their position again. He didn’t need anyone in the line who was cracking. They’d held here now for nearly two weeks under impossible odds. They’d done so because, for the most part, the men were crack shots. They weren’t budging, and from where they were, they could have a field day with troops approaching them—even the trained professional German soldiers who had been ordered to root them out.

  Still, they could only hold so long. The enemy powers had ordered those soldiers—family men, many of them, like their French and American counterparts—to give their lives, as many as need be, for the Fatherland. They’d just send more and more troops, night after night. Even if fifty of the enemy were killed for every one of his men, eventually, they would fall. Unless reinforcements could reach them. And quickly.

  A whistling tore through the air.

  “Take cover!” the lieutenant ordered. Myers, running with the shell-shocked Decker, ducked and kept running. The men remaining in the trench flattened themselves. This one didn’t explode quite so close.

  “Keep down!” the lieutenant warned, and sure enough, the first explosion was followed by a second, and then by a third. On the last, great piles of earth fell like rain upon the already filthy men, but there were no cries of pain, no shrieks indicating an imminent death among their shrinking number.

  “They’ll be coming through the dusk and fallout,” the lieutenant warned. “Remember that ammo is low. Hold your fire until I give the command.”

  “Don’t shoot till we see the whites of their eyes,” Myers muttered.

  “Hell, we’ll never see the whites of their eyes in this powder and dirt,” Lansky said. Lansky was something of an old timer. Forty-five when the war had broken out. He’d joined up anyway, two days after his son was killed in Italy. By then, the recruiters hadn’t cared much about his age. He was a damned good man to have on the line. He’d learned to shoot hunting in Montana and he rarely missed his mark, no matter what the conditions.

  “Every shot counts,” the lieutenant reminded them all. He was less than half Lansky’s age, but Lansky never batted an eye at an order. Lansky had proven to be his best friend out here
. He’d seen action at the end of the First World War. He’d learned a lot about digging into the trenches, and he had a way of giving damned good suggestions. Quietly. Without irritating even the officers with higher ranks than the lieutenant’s.

  He saw Lansky’s eyes now. “They’re coming,” Lansky said. “I can feel it.”

  The lieutenant gave him a nod. And a moment later, Lansky was proven right. From out of the dusk, powder, and drifting dirt, the soldiers suddenly appeared. Knowing that they were within sight, they let out strange cries, like warriors of old. Maybe battle never changed, the lieutenant thought. Just the time, the place, the argument. Maybe men needed to scream, to run into a maelstrom of bullets, even if they were armed and prepared to deal out death themselves. Perhaps a battle cry was a man’s last roar to heaven or hell that he was, indeed, alive.

  “Fire!” the lieutenant shouted.

  The earth seemed to split apart with the roar of the guns. The line coming toward them stumbled and broke. The eerie battle cries turned to screams of pain as men fell and died.

  And yet, where the line had been broken, new men came rushing in, and the battle cry they had taken up seemed to soar and echo into the darkening sky. “Fire!” he roared again, and another barrage filled the night, and more men fell. But like ghost soldiers, the enemy kept coming, more soldiers filling in where the others had been. The line was coming closer and closer, and the enemy soldiers were firing as well, aiming blindly for the trenches.

  “Fire!”

  Again, the roar of bullets. Powder filled the night so thickly that it was almost impossible to see anything. They heard screams, and knew more men had fallen.

  And knew that they were close.

  A soldier burst into view, throwing himself into the trench, gun aimed at Lansky. The lieutenant used his own weapon instantly and instinctively as a mace, cracking the enemy with a vengeance on the back and neck. The man fell before he could get off a shot, but others were coming, almost upon them.

  “Fire at will!” he roared in the night. In a minute, it would be a melee, the enemy would be in the trenches, a man wouldn’t know who the hell he was shooting anymore. Rifle fire rattled explosively in the night as the defenders shot almost blindly at the enemy encroaching upon them. A soldier caught a bullet in his gullet and fell into the trench, on top of Lansky. Lansky pushed the dead man aside and took aim again.

  Then, out of the night, came a howling. It wasn’t the battle cry of the enemy. Eerie, uncanny, like the scream of a thousand banshees, or a cry from the damned in the deepest pits of hell. It was so startling, so deep, so soul-wrenching that, for moments, neither side fired a single shot.

  The silence was as eerie as the hell-hound cry that had stilled them all.

  MacCoy, the boy from Boston, spoke softly. “May all the saints bless us and preserve us!” he whispered.

  All hell broke loose; the baying began again, along with the sound of wild shots, shots fired from the trenches into the dust and darkness, shots fired at the approaching enemy, shots that whistled into the darkness.

  Then . . .

  The thunder against the earth. As if cavalry were upon them . . .

  The screams began, screams coming from the German soldiers, while they could still see nothing in the whirl of powder, earth, and dust before them.

  “Hail Mary, full of Grace . . .” MacCoy intoned.

  “Blessed Lord!” Lansky cried, and it was a prayer and a curse, for a German soldier burst out of the haze, covered in blood, falling in upon them and to their feet. Their eyes fell instinctively to the man in the muck.

  And that was when the creatures came.

  Creatures . . .

  Wolves, but not wolves. Some were silver, some were black, some were tawny. They had the form and structure of the canine beasts, but they were larger, and their eyes . . . their eyes were different. Their eyes saw, and knew, and the machinations of thought and cunning could be seen in them as they sprang, seeming to sail and fly above the soldiers in the trenches and then they came pouncing down.

  “Fire! Fire!” the lieutenant roared.

  Guns blazed, animals fell, men fell, the trenches themselves became a mire of men and blood, German uniforms, American, cloth so bloodied, ripped, and torn, it couldn’t be discerned. “Fire, fire, fire! ” the lieutenant thundered again and again, and he heard the deafening rat-a-tats as his men obeyed his command. At his side, Lansky’s body was suddenly wrenched up and away. He saw Lansky fall before the trench just as another bloodied, terrified member of the German elite came hurtling in upon them, eyes open in death.

  “Lansky! ” He went flat, crawling, down, down against the dirt, determined to drag Lansky back to the relative safety of the trench. Bullets, wild and stray, whistled above his head as he inched along.

  He was struck. He didn’t know by what. He felt the weight, a terrible crushing weight, upon his back. Then the stinging at his nape. A bullet, a bayonet, a knife . . . he didn’t know what. He just felt the stinging sensation. Not even real pain . . . just the thrusting ... and the sting.

  He’d been hit.

  By fire? By one of the rabid wolves? But he was breathing. Alive and breathing. And still crawling.

  Lansky lay just ahead, at his side. Lansky, the crack shot. He had to get him back. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Not sweat. Blood. His vision was blurring. He refused to die in the mud; he refused to lose the battle this way. He inched forward, aware that more and more of the dust and haze seemed to be filling his vision from the inside. He looked where Lansky lay and saw his countryman’s hand. He reached out, catching his friend, dragging him toward him.

  As the body came near, he screamed aloud himself, recoiling. Lansky had no head.

  Despite the horror, his scream faded. His lungs burned. His entire body seemed to be afire, and yet, in seconds, that fire seemed to be fading to a strange cold. Cold.

  Death was cold.

  He was dying. It was his life’s blood dripping into his eyes. Oozing from his veins through the stinging gash at the back of his neck. What dim light there had been was fading away completely. Just as sound. He could no longer hear the screams of his men. He could no longer hear the sound of rifle fire. Time stood still, and cold, and it seemed that sound kept ebbing, and ebbing . . .

  There was stillness. He didn’t think that he had blacked out yet. And he didn’t think that he had died.

  Yet.

  But still, time had passed. Sped like light, drifted like a slow current . . .

  The stillness remained.

  Then there was a dim sense of sound and movement again.

  Footsteps. Walking. Hard on the ground. He tried to turn. He felt something on the earth at his side. Heard language that didn’t register in his mind.

  He blinked hard. His sight seemed to be dimming to a tiny peephole surrounded by a haze of red and black.

  Yes, something by his side. He blinked again, fighting to remain conscious, yet knowing that he would lose the battle any minute.

  Yet, there, yes . . . a boot. A man’s black boot, planted against the muck and mud and blood of the earth. Black, and something shining despite the caking mud that spattered it.

  Just as his eyes closed completely, he recognized the shining insignia on the boot.

  A swastika.

  The thought registered ...

  Then there was no more thought. The world faded into a haze of crimson, and then . . .

  There was nothing but blackness.

  CHAPTER 1

  “He has changed since you last saw him. He has simply changed.” Ann waved her hand in the air as she spoke, the plume from her cigarette creating a swirl of smoke.

  Tara stared at her cousin blankly. She was exhausted-she had managed to cross the Atlantic without even a catnap, despite the overnight duration of the flight when traveling eastward. She wanted nothing more than to reach her grandfather’s little chateau on the outskirts of Paris, but after picking her up at the airport, Ann had insiste
d they stop for petit dejeuner before heading out of the city.

  And now, though she wasn’t putting it in so many words, Ann was trying to tell her that their grandfather was senile, or suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

  Tara narrowed her eyes, perplexed, as she watched Ann. She shook her head, taking a long swallow of her café au lait. “Ann, if Grandpapa is ill, then perhaps he should come back to the States—”

  “Phui!” Ann wrinkled her nose, inching it higher in the air. “Why must you always think that there will be something better in the United States?”

  “I didn’t really mean that,” Tara said, then lowered her eyes, biting her lip. The medical care in France was excellent. She did have that tendency to think that the best of everything had to be in America.

  Except for croissants, perhaps. And café au lait.

  She looked at Ann and grimaced ruefully. “Sorry.”

  Ann shrugged.

  “But if you’re trying to tell me that he has lost his mind completely—”

  Ann sighed deeply. “No, no, it’s not that! Really, it’s not that at all.”

  “You think, though, that he is becoming senile? He’s certainly old enough to be allowed some eccentricities.”

  Ann shrugged again at that. “Mais oui. He claims he does not know how old he is himself. He said that he was older than most of the boys in the Resistance, and lord, World War II ended in nineteen forty-five! So, yes, he is up there in years. He has had the respiratory trouble, as I told you on the phone, but I’ve had him out of the hospital now for several days, and though I chide him and tell him he must be careful, he is up and about a bit each day. But he sits in his library when he is up! He shuts himself in, and he talks about something that he calls the Alliance all the time.”