Spiked (The Sundance Series Book 1), page 1
Spiked
The Sundance Series
C. P. Rider
V.C. Group, LLC
For Victor, Zac, Alex, & Vik who loved and supported me as I chased my dream.
And for my sisters, daughters, and nieces:
May you always be able to open a book and find a heroine who looks just like you.
Contents
C.P. Rider
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
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Acknowledgments
About the Author
C.P. Rider
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Chapter One
If I'd known the poacher would be the one to blow my secret, I'd have cold-cocked him with a baking sheet the second he walked through the front door.
But I didn't know because I was following my rules. Specifically, rule two: respect your fellow humans and don't read their thoughts. I had a few more, but they all boiled down to one thing:
Never let anyone find out what you are.
I'd spent the morning scrubbing down the display cases in my Tío José's Mexican-American bakery café, La Buena Suerte Panaderia. The Good Luck Bakery. My uncle had named it that because this was the fourth time we'd had to start over in a different city, and he'd wanted to encourage good fortune in our new life. In my experience, luck only came in lesser and greater degrees of bad. Still, I liked the name and I loved my tío, so I went along with it the same way I'd gone along with his harebrained idea to open up a bakery in the southwestern desert of California.
I tossed my cleaning rag into a bin behind the counter and washed my hands. Headed into the kitchen to pick up a pan of pan de leche, sweet rolls made with milk, and then rushed right back out of there. Even with the fans blowing and the air conditioner going, I was sweating. Ah, June in the low desert. There was nothing quite like a dry, one-hundred-ten degree heat.
The bell hanging from the front door hit the glass like a gunshot, and a middle-aged white man in work boots, jeans, and a T-shirt two sizes too large for his skinny frame sidled into the café. Everything about the guy was slightly off. Like milk on the sour side of almost gone bad.
"Nice place you got here." The man gave me his back as he peeked through the window blinds facing the street.
"Thanks." I set the rolls on the back counter.
I considered reading him right then and there, but I didn't, because that was a knee-jerk reaction and I was working on curbing those. Also, the whole rules thing. So instead of reading the man, I grabbed a cochinito out of one of the display cases and strolled over to the table of my only customer, six-year-old Donovan Bates. I handed him the pig-shaped cookie and pretended to inspect his schoolwork. As I pointed to the letters he'd printed on wide-lined paper and nodded, I gave him a whispered warning.
"Human. No howling, Donny."
The boy clenched his small fingers around the cookie, reducing it to dust and reminding me that he wasn't an average kindergartener. It was unusual for a wolf to present as alpha so young, but, according to my uncle, not unheard of. It was why Donny was faster than most of his shifter friends and why his howl was loud enough to rattle the windows. Hence the warning.
"Okay, Miss Neely." His brown eyes were wide and wary.
My heart ached at the idea that any child had to wear that stark, fearful look, but there was no getting around it. Secrecy was a necessary part of life for a shapeshifter—for all paranormals—and we learned it young.
The stranger let the blinds fall back into place and stomped to the pastry display cases, boot heels reverberating like thunder as they struck the Saltillo tile floor. He looked first at Donny, then at me.
"Hello, sunshine." His mouth stretched into a jack-o'-lantern smile—too high on his cheeks and too tight over his teeth.
My automatic smile of greeting for customers dropped off my face. "Can I help you?"
"Sure. You got cold pop?"
"Yeah." I moved back behind the display cases, keeping Donny in my line of sight, and indicated the last of three chalkboard menus on the wall with a chin flick.
"I'll take a large cherry cola."
"To go?" One could hope.
"Nah. I'll drink it here." The man threw a five on the counter and jabbed his index finger at me, one eye squinted. "You know, you should smile more. I bet you got a real nice smile."
Instantly self-conscious, I brushed my hands over my cotton sundress, making sure the hem wasn't hiked up over my thighs. It bothered me that my first thought was that I was doing something wrong, so I made myself stop fidgeting.
"That's a pretty dress." The man's corpse-like gray eyes raked over me from ponytail to thighs, making me glad I wasn't reading his thoughts. "Orange looks real pretty on you, miss. Bright and sweet against all that—" He licked chapped, cracked lips. "—dark brown flesh. What are you?"
What am I? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was he talking about my Afro-Latina heritage or something else?
"You still aren't smiling, pretty girl. Go on now. Smile for me."
Read him. Just one little telepathic read. No one would know.
But I'd be breaking my rules, and every time I did that, something bad happened. The answer wasn't reading the creepy man, it was getting rid of him.
With swift, angry movements, I shoved aside the pan de leche rolls on the counter. I slammed down a paper cup, filled it with crushed ice and soda, added a couple tablespoons of the homemade cherry syrup I kept in a mason jar in the small refrigerator behind the display cases, and sealed the top with a plastic lid. I whirled around, slapped a straw, the cherry soda, and the change from the five on the counter. The guy was getting it to go whether he liked it or not.
"Your drink is ready."
It took me approximately one minute to make the drink, cup to lid. During that time, the man had made his way over to Donny. His skeletal fingers gripped the edge of the square, wooden table as he smiled down at the boy.
"I see you're working on your letters, young man."
"Yes, sir." Donny's voice wobbled.
"That's a very nice 'W.' Do you have a favorite word that starts with that letter?"
Donny squeezed his trembling hands into tiny fists and pulled them tight to his belly. "No." The word was so faint that if I hadn't seen his lips move, I wouldn't have thought he said it.
"No? But you drew a picture of a wolf right here."
Donny's gaze traveled from his paper to the man's face, but he said nothing.
"Why do you like wolves? Don't be shy. You can tell me."
Uh-oh.
The next thing I knew, I was breaking rule two and invoking rule three: If you must read someone, have a damn good reason for it.
I focused on the man, dropped my mental block. His thoughts rushed into my head in a filthy loop.
…stick the kid, grab the female, stick her—if she's breeding…
My breath whooshed out of my lungs and my stomach turned inside out. Poacher.
Though I'd never met one, both my parents and my uncle had taught me the dangers of paranormal poachers. Callous mercenaries, they kidnapped shifters and other paranormal beings and sold them to wealthy "collectors." Most humans had no idea paranormal beings existed and those that did tended to keep that information to themselves either out of respect or out of fear. Not poachers. Those lowlifes hung on the bottom rung of a long ladder of enemies in the paranormal world.
I needed to get Donny as far away from this one as I could.
"Come on kiddo, it's time to go meet your mom." I stepped between Donny and the strange, rawboned man and scooped the boy up into my arms. He was small, but heavier than an average child due to his muscle mass. "She'll be worried if you don't hurry. Probably call a pack of friends in."
Subterfuge was not my strong point—I'd be the first to admit that. The poacher in front of me would likely be the second.
"Something wrong, missy?" His eyes pinched into slits. Bitch is nervous.
"Not at all." My voice was too high and too fast as I edged closer to the counter and farther from him. "Did you want to order anything else?"
"No." Soon as she puts it down…
It, not him. The guy made my flesh crawl.
"The little one isn't done with his schoolwork." The poacher swiped Donny's wolf drawing off the table and started toward us. He held the paper over his right hand as if hiding something.
&
…can't hold that pup much longer. When she—
Shifters, even little ones, moved fast. I sidestepped behind the counter and set Donny on his feet. The boy hooked around the display cases and rocketed out the front door. The bell smacked against the glass, another gunshot in the otherwise silent café.
The poacher stared straight at me, shock wiping the gaping smile off his face.
…worth ten times the bounty of a shifter—Retirement, here I…
I moved back behind the register and pointed to his drink, which had sweated a ring of condensation on the counter. "I took the liberty of making your drink to go. We're closing early today, so you're going to have to leave."
"Can't do that," he rasped. "No, I surely can't, telepath."
Sweat dribbled down the sides of the poacher's face even though the bakery was air-conditioned and all the ceiling fans revolved at maximum speed. Jaw set, he lunged, backing me against the counter behind the display cases. His body was damp, clammy—something I sensed even before he got close—and he smelled like a casino ashtray.
I reached behind me, dislodging a pile of plastic bags before my fingers curled around the edge of the baking sheet with the rolls on it. If I could get a grip on the thing, I could brain him with it. It was heavy enough and that way I wouldn't have to use my ability to—
"It won't hurt," he whispered, "don't worry."
"What won't hurt?"
A malicious gleam in his bloodshot eyes, the poacher stabbed a hypodermic needle into my leg.
Fire shot through my veins. My heart slammed against my chest, propelling the drug through my system until the taste of metal flooded my mouth, and I exhaled in a rush of fiery, medicated air.
"Bastard," I wheezed.
"All my life." He chuckled. "Don't worry, I know you're a telepath, not a shifter, so I'm giving you the human dose. I want to knock you out, not kill you. You're worth nothing to me dead."
"Not a telepath," I mumbled.
The world went brown and gray. My eyelids drooped. I fought the oblivion, but it was gaining ground. There was no time for finesse, not that I cared a thing about hurting the poacher. When my burning lungs were as empty as I could manage without passing out, I sucked in a chest-expanding breath and dropped all my barriers. The self-imposed psychological ones as well as the metaphysical ones.
My rules were officially out the window.
"I've got just the collector for you, telepath. Pays good and is always in the market for breeding stock." He squeezed the plunger again, releasing more of the potent drug into my system. "Sleep now, my pretty little payday."
"Not … telepath."
"Now don't lie, little one." He threw his head back and laughed. "Of course you're a telepath. How else would you have been able to read my mind?"
"Not only telepath." The drug heated my veins, coated my tongue, buzzed my brain. I was losing ground. I had mere seconds to attack, but then, I only needed one.
"Well, what else are you? A shifter?" He examined the hypodermic needle. "That's good. Makes you worth more."
"Not shifter."
I focused on the frequency of his brainwaves. The adrenaline pumping through his body made them strong, easy to grasp. Once I picked up the rhythm of his brain, I locked on.
"Then what are you?" He shook his head as if to clear it. He was definitely feeling me now.
"Guess."
The poacher's expression swung from gleeful to horrified. He reached for his head with one hand, the other was still gripping the injection needle. "What are you?"
"A telepath." I finally gave him that smile he kept asking me for. "A spiker-telepath."
I stabbed deep into his brain.
A scream caught in his throat. His mouth fell open in a rictus of pain and terror. Spittle formed in the corners of his mouth and drooled down his chin.
Oh god.
His thoughts floated into my head easily now.
Please, stop. Hurts.
Although I'd never been spiked myself, I'd heard that the sensation is similar to having a red-hot icepick plunged into one's skull. But spiking wasn't only about pain. It wasn't only about reaching into someone's mind and yanking out the things they'd prefer to keep hidden, either. At its best, spiking was the involuntary intrusion and subsequent manipulation of the conscious mind.
Unfortunately, this was also spiking at its worst.
Please.
His brain was a sheet of origami paper, folding this way and that, until it took on an entirely unrecognizable new shape.
Hurts.
He screamed and I gasped. Being linked to another being through a spike meant that it was possible for me to feel everything they felt. It meant watching the poacher die from the inside out. I shoehorned distance between our minds as best I could. Tried to keep the pleasure I felt at his pain from flooding into my brain.
He sobbed, but only a trickle of sound came out. Hurts.
My back teeth ground together as I tried to rein in the power rushing through me. My head screamed and bile burned the back of my throat. I wanted to disable the poacher, not kill him. Problem was, it had been a long time since I'd used this ability, I was drugged, and I'd never been good at control.
We collapsed to the floor, me dragging the baking sheet of pan de leche rolls onto my head, the poacher grasping the plunger end of the hypodermic sticking out of my leg. His finger slipped, pushing more drug into my system, and I felt my hold on his brain loosening, felt myself floating away.
Something slammed against the back door. My uncle crossed the doorway from the kitchen into the café, shedding clothing as he moved. "Mija? Are you okay?"
I tried to give him a thumbs up, but my fingers were numb.
"Who is this man?"
"Poacher," I rasped.
Tío José howled so loudly the glass in the windows vibrated. Fur sprouted on the sides of his face and on his arms. The poacher was already dead by the time my uncle seized him by the throat with a clawed hand, but he crushed the man's trachea anyway, presumably to make sure.
Chapter Two
I woke up on the bakery floor with a wolf in my face. The wolf's fur was more gray than black, and his golden eyes drooped. The peak of one of his ears was bent at a funny angle and his silver muzzle was stained red.
Behind the wolf lay a body. Or, at least, what used to be a body. I sniffed the air, expecting the vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg scents that normally perfumed my uncle's and my clothing. Instead, all I smelled was wet fur and fresh blood.
How long had I been out?
I squinted up at the clock we'd never changed to daylight saving time. Was it spring forward, fall back? Or was it spring back, fall forward? The first one sounded a little more correct, which meant I'd been out for only half an hour. I wasn't a shifter with a crazy fast metabolism, but I was paranormal, which meant a human dose of the poacher's drug wouldn't hold me for as long as it would a human. However, I'd expected to be out longer than this.
"You okay, Tío?" I had trouble getting the words out. My tongue was dry and too thick for my mouth. "I heard you scream before I passed out. It's getting worse, isn't it?"
The wolf whined. If my uncle wouldn't discuss the reason shifting was so painful for him in human form, I definitely wasn't going to get anything out of him in this form.
"F-Fine. We'll talk about it later." I slurred the words. My head floated on a cloud six feet from my body. "Anyone s-see what I did?"
He shook his head, spattering blood on the back of the display cases, the counter, and me.
