Blackout. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

      

      Blackout

      Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For my own Wolf, John.

      Chapter One

      Dylan Landau faltered, stopped by a sensation so strong he almost cried out. A feeling he’d been dreading. One he hated.

      Moonlight.

      The touch was like a vague silvery kiss, a brush of soft lips on his forehead, cheeks and mouth. Like a dusting of metallic sparkles, slightly cool, a little moist, adhering to his skin first, then seeping inside, behind his bones and into his emotions. His human emotions.

      Even though he wasn’t human anymore.

      Not completely.

      Run, he told himself…as if he could actually outdistance the thing growing inside of him. As though the beast he kept locked away could somehow ignore the turning of the moon’s glistening key.

      His neck prickled. Drops of moisture beaded on his forehead. It wouldn’t be long now until he weakened. He knew it. Hunger swirled up from his stomach with a ravenous roar, not for food, but with the need to be turned inside out, like a reversible coat.

      Something else hit him dead-on, with the impact of a fist in the face. Scent. The scent of warm perfumed skin drifted in on a balmy midnight Miami breeze. Gardenia, or possibly some other exotic flower, mixed with a trace of bath soap, dabbed carefully on the sun-kissed skin of a blonde.

      He knew a blonde when he smelled one. Miami was full of them, natural and non. Whatever the body type, age or flavor, women with light-colored tresses scrambled a man’s chemistry. The luscious spot behind a blonde’s ear, when pampered with perfume, was sexy enough to drive a guy crazy. All those silky strands of hair surrounding it could be fondled, nuzzled, whispered into. Add a beast into the mix, one with heightened senses and an insatiable desire for a mate, and you got Dylan Landau. Himself. Dade County Deputy D.A.

      Time to move.

      Hands twitching as he inhaled a last whiff of the gardenias, Dylan forced himself into action. He had to reach his apartment or at least get far enough away from the crowds before the cloud-cover blew free of the moon. He’d blown it by having one beer too many. It wouldn’t do to effect the “change” in public. There would be no pretty young blonde.

      “Not tonight,” he whispered soberly, if also in self-deprecation. “Seems I have a prior engagement.”

      One corner more. His steps slowed. There it was again—that chill on the back of his neck. Hot on its heels came the shock of the downside of his recently enhanced sense of smell. Bye bye, perfume. He now got a noseful of the odors of a grimy street: dirty sidewalk, humidified pavement, trash, cigarettes, old bricks. He tasted iron on his tongue, coughed, tried not to breathe too deeply and strained to resume his pace. He hadn’t gotten as far as he’d hoped.

       Too late

      An odd rolling motion moved his shoulder muscles. More than a twitch and not of his own accord. He heard the unmistakable snap of the ligaments aligning his knees and lurched to a stop on a deserted section of sidewalk.

      The Landau curse had kicked him firmly in the ass. Later than usual, admittedly, given his family history. Against the odds, he’d at least made it to thirty without experiencing the change. A torturous reprieve. Years of waiting and wondering. Nightmares.

      This particular strain of the genetic defect affecting the males of his family all the way back to the flood had been somewhat diluted, it seemed, by his mother’s strong genes. Sylvia Landau had Viking blood in her veins. Apparently, Vikings could do battle with werewolf DNA down deep in the body and hold the fort…for a while.

      Until six months ago, he’d actually looked like a Norseman. Sculpted features, ash blond hair falling past his ears, blue eyes in a tanned thirty-year-old face. He’d had the build of a rower on one of those ancient Viking ships, and a fairly decent silhouette for an overworked attorney.

      Since the curse had struck six months ago, all hell had broken loose. The bundled-up energy caused by the sharing of his body with something that wasn’t human revved his metabolism and leaned him up. His hair now hung to his shoulders, growing at an astonishing rate. His eyes held a haunted cast.

      For twenty-eight days out of each month, he felt feverishly energized. The other three days, like clockwork, this new internal burn, along with all those cells causing riots in his veins, were finally freed. Beneath a full moon, the freak cells, like cancers, knit together at the right time and pushed.

      He had to run to satisfy the impulses the pushing produced. The faster, the better. But no matter how fast he moved or how far he went, he couldn’t shake the curse. There was no help. No cure. In essence, like his father before him, he had become the stuff of a Hollywood horror flick, and he had to deal.

      “Ah, Hell!”

      Another popping sound, this one from his ankles. He kicked off his shoes, felt his shoulders begin to stretch and broaden. Tearing at the buttons on his shirt, yanking his arms free of the cobalt-blue silk, he glanced up at the moon in agitation, awaiting what would come next.

      He didn’t wait long.

      The change happened quicker than usual. A record at about forty seconds flat, and not in a good way. His face still felt hot and rubbery, as though the new configuration of flesh and muscle hadn’t set completely, and as if it remained the one body part needing more time to get with the program.

      At least he’d managed to remove his shirt. He wished he’d gotten to his pants.

      With clawed fingers, Dylan fumbled for his zipper. Unable to grasp the tiny bit of metal, he listened for the sound of splitting fabric, thankful he hadn’t worn jeans. The Armani’s tore with a nasty noise that echoed loudly in the closeness of the underpopulated, overbuilt side street he’d chosen as a shortcut.

      Anxious, raising his face to the moon in all her cold hard glory, wondering how something in the sky could possibly have mastery over morphable flesh and bone, Dylan opened his mouth, exposed his new set of dagger-sharp teeth and howled.

      He howled for newness, for loss. In anger over the necessary acceptance of his fate. His second vocalization was for the unconscionable merging of muscle and nerve, human and wolf, and with regret for a life that would never be the same again. His final cry was for having to miss the blonde, whoever she was.

      The sounds of his frustration carried, bouncing off the buildings of the deserted street before echoing back with a faint rise in tone. A strange, tinny sort of tone.

      Siren.

      The hair at the nape of his neck lifting, Dylan snapped his mouth shut, cocked his head, and dropped onto his haunches. In a low, crouched position he listened, his internal burner on high.

      The sound raised to an eardrum splitting decibel. In the darkness of the quiet street, in the distance and coming quickly closer, Dylan saw lights.

      Flashing lights.

      The flashing lights of the Miami PD.

      And him without a social bone left in his body to explain to the fine officers, were they to see him, about disturbing the peace, and why he resembled something big and bad that might have escaped recently from the zoo…without getting shot.

      The authorities might know about the wolf strain affecting a tiny percentage of the population, but they were not going to formally acknowledge or condone it. Even if he’d dealt with many of those cops professionally in his job as deputy D.A. Even if his father, the Honorable James Landau, was a superior court judge when he wasn’t prowling the better parts of Miami proper as a silver-pelted lycanthrope.

      The