Vixen ran through fields and woods, played tag with field mice, and just enjoyed the sheer rapture of being alive; of being a fox.

She didn't have to stay and deal with her disappointment in the people she had been beginning to trust. She didn't have to deal with anything. She felt no angst when she was in vulpine form. There were none of the unfamiliar and silly human emotions she'd always managed to avoid, welling up so big that they choked her. No tears. There was just life, and God, how she loved it.

What she felt for Seth...it was powerful. There were moments when it was exciting and delicious, and other moments when it was frightening and hurtful. She didn't know what to do with the power of those emotions, having so little experience with them. But she wanted to be near him, that much was certain. She wanted to be touching him all the time. That was odd, wasn't it? She'd never felt the need to be in physical contact with anyone else that way. And when she thought of his face or the look in his eyes, of the feel of his hand on hers or his arms around her when he'd carried her-when she thought of him at all, her heartbeat quickened, and her tummy tightened and her breaths grew short and eager.

Such drama-she guessed emotions were as heightened as every other sensation seemed to be once one became a vampire.

God, she longed for him as if he were air and she were drowning.

Her respite from the drama of being a human was short-lived. She couldn't maintain her fox form for long. Not anymore, apparently. She was exhausted after only a few hours, her body straining to return to its human lines. No, not human. That part of her was gone forever. It was the vampiric form pulling her back, powerfully, irresistibly. It felt as if the part of her that embodied the spirit of the fox was dying, too. It had always been as real to her, as important to her, as her human side, and now...

She had been a shape-shifter, mostly human, but partly fox, just like her mother and grandmother before her. But now she was a vampire, and that seemed to be overtaking everything she had been before.

She hated it.

She began trotting on her toes, tail straight out behind her like a rudder, toward the plantation house and all its drama. She supposed she had no choice. The sun would come up soon. And she was determined to watch it rise, one more time, just in case it turned out to be the last.

She could bear the sun's touch in fox form for a very brief time-this she knew on some instinctive, gut-deep level. But since she couldn't maintain that form much longer, she thought it best she get close to the house, find shelter and watch the sun rise from there.

Her plans, however, were cut off as surely as her dainty paw nearly was when there came a loud snap, and a set of iron jaws closed hard and fast on her foreleg. She yipped and jerked backward, but that only resulted in the cruel trap's teeth digging deeper. Oh, it hurt! She eased closer, to relieve the pressure, but the pain screamed on, and she could do nothing, only lie there, pawing at the metallic mouth with her free paw, pushing at it with her nose, licking at the bleeding wounds on her leg.

Then she felt warmth, and turned to look toward the east. It was the sun, climbing slowly from its place of slumber, rising bit by bit. The first streamers of golden light spilled across the sky, and then more, and soon the topmost yellow curve of the fiery sphere was peering at her from the horizon.

The sun. She loved it. And yet, right now, she feared it. Because the pain and the bleeding were making her even weaker than she had been before. And within minutes she would be too tired to keep from shifting back to her human form. Or rather, her vampire form.

And when she did, she was going to die. Jack had told her as much, back at the mansion when she'd been imprisoned there. She almost wished he hadn't. Death would be more merciful if she didn't know it was coming.

She pushed more desperately with her paw, whining and crying out as she tugged, because each movement sent bolts of pain through her.

And then, all at once, she stopped and went still. Her head tipped to one side, ears perking up high. She'd heard something.

"Vixen? Vixen, where are you?"

The voice was female, and familiar. Vixen sniffed the air to pick up the scent and recognized Roxy. Her first instinct was to return to human form as quickly as she could manage-it wouldn't take long. All she had to do was stop resisting it. Her body was fighting hard to shift. But if she allowed that now, with the sun climbing higher every second, she would die. And so she remained as she was, and she howled, a high-pitched, broken wail that she prayed would draw the woman closer.

And it did. She heard Roxy's steps in the brush, coming nearer, and she cried on and on, urgently. So weak, so very weak, and bleeding so much now...

"Oh, for the love of-all right, little one. All right, take it easy now." Roxy knelt on the ground, quickly yanking a shawl from around her shoulders and dropping it over Vixen's head. "Forgive me for that, sweetie. I can't have you biting the hand that saves you, though."

Then Roxy was prying at the trap. And it hurt. God, how it hurt, when she got the jaws to open, because sensation rushed into the area anew, and with it came crippling pain. Vixen moaned and whined, though even her cries were weak now.

"There now. My goodness, it's bleeding like hell. Hold on."

A moment later Vixen's pain was magnified as Roxy twisted something around her wounded leg and pulled it tight. The agony was unbearable, and Vixen screamed with it.

"I know. I know, I'm sorry," Roxy said. Then she was gathering Vixen up, bundling her in the shawl the way humans bundled their infants, and carrying her rapidly back to the house.

Within moments they were inside. Roxy laid her on a fainting couch in the darkened theater room. "Wait here now, little one. I'm going to get some bandages to patch you up properly."

Vixen stared into her eyes as she spoke, and Roxy paused before turning away, then turning again and staring back at her.

"It's almost like you're listening, like you understand every word I'm saying."

Vixen gave a yip to tell her to hurry, then lowered her head onto her good paw, careful not to touch the injured one, quivering and trembling with pain, dizzy now from the blood loss.

As she walked away, Roxy glanced toward the curtained windows and shook her head. "I just hope Vixen found shelter before now."

And then she was gone, and Vixen's weakness overcame her. She felt her body changing, her spine and limbs lengthening, her features shifting. And she was helpless to prevent it, and glad Roxy hadn't laid her down in a sunny room instead of this darkened one.

She couldn't move, could only lie there, her forearm throbbing just above the wrist, bleeding despite the wrappings, which were even tighter now. She was naked, except for Roxy's cloak, which was still draped around her, and she was rapidly giving way to the day sleep.

She heard Roxy's footsteps approach, then stop all at once.

"Well, I'll be dipped," the woman whispered. "It's you. Vixen. Vixen. Of course."

Vixen met her eyes and whispered, "Please don't tell." And then her eyes fell closed as the day sleep took her into its sunny embrace.

"What in the name of hell happened to you, Vixen?"

Seth whispered the question even as she stirred awake. Vixen found herself still on the sofa. Seth was sitting on its edge, close to her, and her gaze followed his, to where her wrist was swathed in thick wads of gauze, much of it stained with blood. Blood stained the couch beneath her, as well, and spots formed a trail across the carpet, still visible, though they had been cleaned.

Roxy was sleeping in a chair, still wearing the same clothes she'd had on before. She opened her eyes, and they met Vixen's.

Vixen held her breath, certain Roxy would reveal her secret-a secret she wasn't ready to share. Partly because she feared what they would think of her, particularly what Seth would think of her.

She hated this state of being, of caring so much. A fox never cared what anyone thought of her!

"Roxy, what happened?" Seth asked. "Where did all this blood come from?"

"No big deal," Roxy drawled with a casual wave of dismissal. "She had a run-in with a barbed-wire fence on her way back here, right after you all turned in. It was barely a scratch."

"Barely a scratch?" He looked again at the blood-soaked gauze, and the sofa and the floor.

"Well, you know how much your kind bleed. Honestly, I intended to have that all cleaned up by the time you woke. Guess I fell asleep." Roxy got up and moved closer. "It will be totally healed by now. We can get rid of the nasty wrappings." As she spoke, she reached for Vixen's arm, and Vixen held it up, too shocked by Roxy's behavior to do otherwise. The woman was going to keep her secret after all.

"I'll do that," Seth snapped.

Vixen looked at him sharply. He softened his expression, and his tone along with it. "If it's okay with you, I mean."

Vixen nodded, still wary, and Roxy quietly withdrew from the room, leaving them alone. Gently, Seth moved Vixen's forearm until it rested across his thighs. Then he began unwrapping the bandages. He slid his fingers over hers, twining them to lift her hand, so he could untwist the white gauze from beneath her arm. Over and over, around and around, he unwrapped her, until all the gauze lay in a tangle on the carpet and only the thick cushy pads remained on her skin.

Then he noticed a basin of water and a clean cloth nearby. He took the cloth, wet it and laid it on the pads, soaking them so that they would come away without pulling, stuck on as they were with dried blood.

Finally he peeled them away, washed the blood from her skin, patted it dry, and then looked very closely at the place where the wound had been.

Vixen looked, too, uncertain what she would see. But then she became distracted by the way his fingertips touched her skin, the way they trailed over it gently, his touch so soft.

She trembled, and wondered why the mating urge came alive so fiercely and so urgently at such a minute touch.

And yet, as he kept stroking her skin that way, the urge only grew stronger. Especially when he lifted his head to look into her eyes.

She stared back.

"Did it hurt terribly?" he asked.

She nodded. "It was horrible, worse than the collar. I've never felt pain like that before."

"It's because you're a vampire. All our senses are heightened far beyond what they were before, the sense of touch included. So we feel pain far more keenly. Pleasure, too, or so I'm told."

"Oh."

He looked away briefly. "Does it hurt now?"

"No. It's as if it never happened."

"Good," he said. "I'm glad." He drew a breath, seemingly thinking about his next words before he spoke them. "I want to talk about what happened. About why you ran away."

She lowered her head. "I'm free to come and go as I choose. You all said so."

"Yeah, I know. And you are. I promise. It's just that you were upset, and I don't like that we-that I-did something to upset you."

She blinked slowly, considering that. "You. It was definitely you."

His brows rose in apparent surprise. "Because I'm the one who suggested burning the killers while they sleep?"

"Yes. And because you're the only one who intends to do it."

"I am?"

She nodded.

"I don't follow. I mean, Tope argued, but no one flat-out refused."

"No, but I can sense things that others can't."

"We can all read thoughts, Vixen."

"It's not so much that. I sense things-anger, fear, reluctance. A person's scent changes, their stance changes, their eyes and faces and voices-everything. You can look at them and tell what they're thinking, even if they're guarding their thoughts. You don't have to read their minds. You can read their bodies, their scents."

"You mean, you can," he said.

She shrugged. "Yes, I can. So I know that Topaz has no intention of doing what you suggested. Nor does Reaper. They both had things on their minds, plans of their own unfolding even while you were talking about yours."

He lowered his head, and she thought he felt insulted. "If they had plans of their own, they would have shared them. We're a team."

"You think so? They were both keeping their own secrets for their own reasons, Seth. If you don't believe me, just ask them."

"I will."

He surged to his feet, his hand finally breaking contact with her arm, and for one mindless moment, all she wanted to do was grab it and pull it back to her. She loved him touching her.

Seth started toward the doorway, but Roxy came in before he ever got that far. "Where are Reaper and Topaz?" she asked.

Seth blinked, as if stunned, and sent a searching look back at Vixen, as if she might hold the answer.

"I don't know, Seth," Vixen said.

He turned back to Roxy. "I don't know, either. You checked their rooms?"

Roxy nodded. "Checked the whole damn house. They're both gone. Didn't leave a note or say so much as a freaking word."

"But...we're a team," Seth muttered.

Topaz very nearly borrowed the Mustang for her mission but decided against it. The car was loud, as if it liked to boast of its power to anyone within earshot every time you stepped on its accelerator. And it was noticeable.

It was an eye-catcher, and she supposed she should admit, at least to herself, that she was enamored with it. She might just buy one for herself as soon as she got her money back from Jack.

Which was, of course, the only goal on her mind tonight. She didn't give a damn if Reaper and Seth burned the rogues' headquarters to the ground with Jack inside. She didn't care if he lived or died. But she wasn't going to watch her money go up in smoke along with him, so there was really no choice but to save him.

She mulled her plan over in her mind as she made her way through the night, cutting through woodlands, racing across fields, her pace faster than a human could possibly detect or perceive as more than a brief blur of motion; there and then gone.

She had to see to it that Jack wouldn't be there when the place was torched, so that he would be alive to return her half million dollars to her.

Period.

She was glad she'd decided to travel on foot, because a small, slender vampiress was much more silent and easily concealed than a bloodred muscle car any night of the week. She knew the location of the rogues' hideaway from what Reaper and Seth and even freaky little Vixen had said. She also knew that the vampires went out hunting within a few hours of sunset every night and returned well before dawn most of the time. So she would simply crouch outside the mansion and wait for them to come back from their nightly hunt, then try to catch Jack's attention mentally, while blocking her presence from the others. She would get him to come to her alone, and then she would figure out the rest.

She paused in her fast-paced journey at the shore of a glistening lake surrounded by woods, as if it were some closely guarded secret shared only by the trees and the wildlife. It was too beautiful not to admire, if only for a moment, while she pondered.

She couldn't really warn Jack of what was about to happen. He would warn the others, and then the entire mission would be ruined. But she had to make sure he wasn't in that mansion when it burned just after sunrise tomorrow.

The only method that came to mind was to take him somewhere and have sex with him until it was too close to dawn for him to make it back there. He would have no choice but to wrap his arms around her and hold her while they both slept through the day. And to be there, still holding her, when she blinked her eyes open at sundown.

The shore of this lake would be a perfect spot for making love to Jack Heart. At least until dawn drew close. But there must be shelter nearby. She looked around and spotted an upturned tree with a platter of roots and soil as big as a small house. They could huddle in the natural cave it created and pull brush in behind them to cover the opening. They could lie there all day long, their bodies entwined.

A shiver whispered up her body and emerged as a shaky sigh. She closed her eyes and tried to shake away the rush of desire. "I don't want him," she told herself. "This is about money. Nothing more."

But even as she said it, she knew it was a lie.

She turned in the direction of the mansion and, in a burst of motion, completed her journey. Then she took up a position in the woods across from the front drive and main entrance, crouching there and trying to sense Jack's presence anywhere nearby.

There was nothing. Vampires near, yes. But not him, and nothing from inside. The energies she picked up were odd-weak, or dulled somehow. Must be the dronelike vampire guards Seth had described, left behind to watch the place while the others went out to hunt. She suspected that she'd arrived too late to see them leave. But she would be here waiting when they returned.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***