Intrusion Read Online Free Page A

launch into
a full-blown dominance challenge right then and there, instead
choosing to fall back enough that I could just follow her. Not
being able to talk was less than convenient. It was one of the many
advantages that hybrids like Alec, James and Isaac had over the
rest of us. Those on four legs had to rely on body language to try
and communicate. Dom had mentioned in passing her belief that lack
of speech had been the primary reason that cats like her hadn't
ever come out on top in the wars they'd had with the
wolves.
    Unlike wolves, cats seemed to get stronger and
stronger as they aged. It meant that a really powerful southern
shape shifter was a match singly for some of the smaller packs, but
their solitary nature had so far kept them bottled up down in South
America.
    Dom pulled up short and I realized I
hadn't been paying enough attention. We'd arrived while I'd been
thinking about things that had less than zero importance to me
right now. A chill worked its way up between my shoulder blades and
down my muzzle.
    The gate was open, and given the way
the vegetation had been hacked up, it was a recent change. Dom
padded up to the gate, softly batted at it and then looked
pointedly at me. I bristled a little at the implication, but she
was right. If one of us had to reassume our normal shape, and be
less useful in a fight, it was better for me to do it.
    I mentally reached out to my beast and pulled
her back, cramming her back down into the corner of my being where
she usually dwelt. It was a fight, but it was always a fight.
Eventually I pushed her back enough that the transformation swept
back through me, leaving me panting on my hands and
knees.
    I'd forgotten just how inconvenient
it was to go back to two legs when you didn't have a pair of shoes
handy. The decaying asphalt wasn't so bad at least. I pulled the
gate shut without too much of a problem, but I had to walk up the
fence for quite a ways before I finally found a twisted bit of
metal that looked like it would serve to immobilize the
gate.
    Dom paced me the whole way there and back, tail
slowly twitching back and forth as she watched for trouble. I bit
back a curse as I stepped on a jagged branch, and then I was back
on the road and wedging the gate closed.
    Dom was pacing back and forth
expectantly so I sank back down to my hands and knees. I had a
split second to realize why I was so uncomfortable being a wolf,
and then the change was upon me and I was padding along on four
legs again.
    It was the fear that this time I wouldn't be
able to push my beast back down, that I'd be trapped as a wolf
forever.
    We didn't range very far away from the gate,
just far enough for the smell of vampire to get stronger. This
close I was able to start picking out some subtleties to the
stench. Cigarettes, alcohol, cucumber melon lotion. There were
other scents, but they were more subtle, less easily
distinguished.
    I felt my guts tighten up as I
realized that there was more than just the one vampire we'd been
hoping we were facing. Still, three vampires shouldn't be too bad.
Alec and the others would outnumber their opponents. As long as
none of the vampires were too old, too powerful, we'd be
okay.
    The barest hint of Isaac's scent cut through
the vampire smell, and then there was yelling from an area halfway
between us and the front gate. Dom and I both tensed up as strains
of violence drifted back to us.
    There was a meaty thud as someone was thrown
into what sounded like the side of a dumpster, and then three sets
of footsteps, moving our direction, very quickly. If I'd been by
myself I probably would have crouched down and tried to go
unnoticed, but Dom was already moving forward, sliding behind a
stack of abandoned barrels that would serve as a decent ambush
point.
    My hesitation cost me. There wasn't
time now to find concealment of my own, but in moving to follow Dom
I'd abandoned the patch of shadow that might have otherwise
sheltered me. I was stuck between two