Shiver Read online

  Shiver

  by

  Christi Snow

  Chapter One

  Dare Buckley shuddered as he looked one direction at the wall of barren mesquite trees and the other which only held dead, grey field grass. Nothing looked familiar. He scented the air, but besides the bitter tang of the icy sleet, he couldn’t sense anything, anyone in the dark.

  It was finally happening. He was succumbing to the disease. Confusion and panic wracked him as he searched the barren, winter countryside for something...anything...that might look familiar.

  He tore through the bare mesquite bushes, their branches rustling in his wake. His hooves pounded across the frozen ground, echoing in the dark of the night. Breath huffed out his snout in tiny puffs of white fog as he shifted his weight, his path turning more and more erratic during the panicked flight.

  Where the hell was he? He needed to find...something. His heart rate pounded through his chest, echoing in his ears. He needed to calm down, but his brain wasn’t getting that signal as he became more and more confused.

  Finally, he burst through the thicket. Freedom.

  But a blast of white light burned his retina before pain slammed into him. Hard, earthshattering, blinding pain as his body flew through the air.

  Then the world went black.

  ***

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Corey Abbott slammed his hand across the top of his steering wheel as he skidded to a stop. “Merry Christmas to me,” he muttered. “Fuck!” He didn’t need an expensive repair bill on his truck right now. “Fucking deer.”

  But even as he said it, he shook his head. It was his own damn fault. He’d been thinking about Damien and not paying that close of attention. He knew better. Out here in West Texas there were more deer than jack-rabbits.

  He grabbed his flashlight out of the console in between the front seats and flipped on his hazards in case anyone else happened to be on the road. But that wasn’t likely to happen. He hadn’t seen a soul the whole ride home from work in San Angelo.

  The sleet that had moved in about an hour ago kept most West Texans home. They only got weather like this a couple of times a year. So the place simply shut down rather than try to deal with it and the fact that none of the locals could drive on it.

  He clicked on the flashlight and shrugged on his heavy brown canvas Carhartt coat to fight off the frigid cold before he climbed out of his truck. He jumped to the ground. From the wonky light he knew one of his headlights had been smashed, but as he rounded the front bumper of his truck, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw.

  A huge antler had gotten tangled with his hood and hung off there as a macabre reminder of the animal he hit. The animal no longer attached to the appendage. “Shit. He was huge wasn’t he?” That massive antler was one side of the biggest rack Corey had ever seen. It had to have at least a dozen points on it. How big had that deer been?

  Forgetting to worry about the condition of his truck for the moment, Corey swung his flashlight around looking for the deer. There in the ditch, he could see the buck’s hindquarters. Corey approached it slowly, not sure if it was dead or just wounded. He had his handgun under his seat if he needed it. He would never leave a wounded animal to suffer. Although it was probably stupid to come close to the injured animal without it right now.

  Corey swung his flashlight over the completely still carcass and squinted in disbelief at what he saw. West Texas had become a hunter’s mecca with ranches importing foreign, exotic deer. This one looked like a normal whitetail, which was native here, but it was at least twice as big as the regular deer. No, this boy was at least the size of a full-grown elk with the antler rack to match.

  But it looked like a section of his scalp had been ripped away with the antler and now his head was covered in blood, a gruesome macabre mess. Definitely dead.

  This majestic buck had probably been beautiful, standing tall and proud, but now with half his rack gone and left in the ditch, dead and bloody...

  Corey shook his head and blew out a sigh to control the emotions trying to rise up his throat. Ever since Damien had died in front of him last year, it had been harder to deal with death...of any sort. This type—totally needless—was the worst kind.

  “I’m sorry, man,” he said to the deer. “Fucking waste. I should have done better and been on the lookout for you.”

  Deer roamed the fields, grazed, and bedded down here in the evenings. Corey usually did a better job of paying attention to them. But he couldn’t do anything about it now.

  He turned his focus back to the damage to the truck. He had a huge steel brush guard, but it hadn’t done much to prevent the damage. The hood, front bumper, and the front side panel on the passenger’s side were completely trashed. And the brush guard would have to be completely replaced or rebuilt. Fuck.

  He ducked his head and examined the wheel well, but it looked like the integrity had held there. He hoped so. His house was still a good five miles away. In this cold, with his insufficient clothing layers, that walk would be worse than miserable. And he just happened to be in the dead zone on this road where there wasn’t any cell service, so he was shit out of luck for calling for help.

  He rounded the cab of the truck to climb in when he caught sight of the buck again. Again remorse flooded him. Such a waste. He stilled, considering. It was December twenty-third, two days before Christmas. The downturn in oil prices had affected so many people in this area who were barely scraping by right now. The meat from that buck could do some good for someone who didn’t have meat for Christmas dinner.

  It wasn’t entirely legal to tag road kill. Special permission had to come from a game warden to do so, but since he planned to claim this one to donate to the local food pantry, maybe he’d be forgiven. And the odds were no one would ever realize what he’d done anyway. It’s not like a game warden would be out here tonight. He just had to figure out how to get the mammoth beast loaded into the bed of his truck.

  Fifteen minutes later, with a tarp and a fuck-ton of muscling, Corey had the buck dragged into the bed of his truck, a hunting game tag tied onto his remaining antler. And because of the impromptu workout, he didn’t have to worry about being cold anymore. No, now he had sweat dripping down his spine.

  He went around to the front of the truck, pried the damaged antler from out of the metal brush guard, and threw it into the back with the dead deer. No one would believe this story if he didn’t keep the evidence. Then he climbed into the truck, raised the heat, and restarted toward home. Again.

  It was going to be a long night since he still had to dress out the dead animal before he could relax again.

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, Corey had the garage prepped for butchering the massive buck with tarps and buckets. He was exhausted and tempted to leave the carcass for the night, but then the beast would freeze and make everything more difficult. So he sucked it up and headed out into the cold to where he’d backed his truck up to the garage door.

  He glanced into the bed as he opened the tailgate and froze. “What the fuck?”

  Instead of a dead and bloody deer...a bloody, naked man lay there.

  Corey shook his head. He had to be seeing things. But nothing changed. The man was huge, muscles upon muscles. Blood pooled under his head soaking the tag that Corey had placed around the remaining antler of the buck. How was this possible?

  But even as he had that thought a full body shiver wracked the naked man.

  Oh, fuck.

  He was alive.

  Corey scrambled into the bed of the truck. It was freezing out here and the man was completely nude and obviously very much alive. Corey didn’t have time to worry about anything besides getting him inside and getting him warm before he really died...died from exposure.

  Core
y shrugged out of his coat and draped it over the man’s torso. “Can you hear me?” Corey asked as he frantically looked the distance from the truck to the house. There was no response. Corey’s breath sped up as panic flooded him. How the heck would Corey get him out of here? He wasn’t exactly weak, but this guy was huge.

  It was one thing to muscle a deer into his truck when he didn’t have to worry about hurting it because he was dead. It was quite another to remove a huge, muscular, wounded, unconscious man and not hurt him more when he was very much not dead.

  His brain wanted to dwell on the whole not-dead-deer thing, but he didn’t have time to worry about it right now. It was hovering near zero degrees out here and the man’s skin was already blue with the cold.

  He knelt by the stranger’s head and did a quick examination of the wound there. While there was blood all over the floor of the bed, it didn’t appear to be bleeding much anymore. Corey lightly tapped the man’s cheek. “I really could use your help here. Come on, man. Wake up.” If the guy could aid in the process of getting out of the truck...even the tiniest bit, it would help a great deal.

  The man moaned and his eyes fluttered open before shutting again.

  Corey’s heart leapt. “That’s it. Come on. Wake up for me.”

  The man lifted a hand to his head, but Corey stopped him from touching it. “Yeah, you’re hurt. As soon as we get you inside, I’ll figure out what we need to do about that. But first, I need you to help me get you inside where it’s warm. Come on open your eyes for me.”

  “So c.c.co...cold.” Those eyes fluttered open and hit Corey with an ice blue punch. But within moments of focusing on Corey, the man began to realize something else was going on here.

  His eyes opened wide in panic. He kicked at Corey, and scrambled away until his back hit the cab of the truck. Fear, confusion, and pain radiated from his gaze.

  “Shh,” Corey soothed. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to get you inside and find you some clothes and heat.”

  Even as Corey said the words, the man began shivering even harder than before.

  “Come on, man. I really don’t want you to freeze to death out here. Let’s get you someplace warm, some clothes, and then we’ll get you to the hospital to look at that head.”

  The stranger glanced down his bare body and frowned at Corey in confusion. His gaze skittered from side to side as if to ascertain where he was, but instead of helping to sooth him that Corey didn’t pose a threat, he seemed to be getting more and more agitated. “I do...don’t re...re...remember.” His teeth were chattering so hard, he could barely form the words.

  “That’s probably because of your head wound.” The image of that bloody buck flashed through Corey’s brain. How had this happened? Had he done this? How could he possibly have hit a man and thought it was a deer? He’d come home straight from work. He hadn’t had a drop of alcohol or drugs in over a year, so it didn’t make sense that he’d hallucinated his way through any of this. Could someone have spiked his coffee at work?

  But none of that mattered right now. He had to get this guy inside where it was warm. Somehow, he had to get this guy to trust him before he passed out again. His eyes darted around in fright, but they were really unfocused and it was obvious from his swaying that he was seconds away from face planting.

  “I’m Corey. What’s your name?”

  Another full body shiver wracked the man. “Um...I d..do...don’t...” He shook his head and moaned in pain.

  Corey couldn’t wait any longer, besides the man was so weak the odds were he wouldn’t be able to fight him off anyway. “Okay. Let’s do the niceties inside by the fireplace.” He reached for the man and grabbed him around the waist to help him out of the truck. Probably because of the pain racketing his body, but this time the stranger didn’t fight him and relented to Corey’s help. As they shuffled across the bed of the truck, Corey focused on the man’s eyes watching for him to collapse and he kicked the discarded antler.

  The stranger glanced down at the clatter and made a sound of pure pain. “Mine.” His voice choked on the word and then he dropped.

  Corey felt the man’s collapse coming. He ducked under him so that he dropped over Corey’s shoulder and he held him in a fireman’s carry. Even that was so much easier said than done, but the ice-cold flesh under his hands convinced him that he could do it no matter how hard of a strain on his muscles. He jumped from the truck bed and rushed inside the house.

  Chapter Two

  Corey paced in the blazing hot living room where he’d laid the unconscious man on the couch covered with pretty much every down comforter and old quilt he had in the house. Then he’d stoked the fire until the blaze was practically a bonfire in his fireplace.

  The stranger hadn’t stirred yet, but his color had improved in the thirty minutes they’d been inside. Corey couldn’t make sense of what had happened tonight, and his mind kept shying away from the only explanation that made sense.

  In the last year, he’d learned that there was a lot more to this world than he’d ever known, thanks to his boss, Zack Blackthorne, who also happened to be a vampire. As a result, he went to the only person who wouldn’t immediately put him into some sort of institution for his question.

  He called Zack.

  “Corey, what’s wrong?” Zack didn’t engage in niceties with conversation. He just immediately cut to the point. “Did you have an issue on the slick roads going home tonight?”

  “Um...” He looked again at the unconscious man. “Kind of. I ran into a problem, I think.” He rolled his eyes at the unintended pun.

  Zack made a sound of impatience, but waited for Corey to elaborate. “I know this may sound weird, but Zack...” He swallowed at the nerves that burned in the back of his throat. This was hard to even say because it sounded so ludicrous in his head. “It’s just that since we’ve met, you’ve opened my eyes to other things, other beings...” Again he stumbled to a halt.

  But this time Zack picked up the conversation. “Corey, spit it out.” His tone had a thread of urgency to it. “There are all kinds of creatures you don’t need to mess with. What did you run into?”

  “That’s the thing. On the way home, I thought I hit a deer, but he was a huge mother-fucker.” Corey glanced over at the massive man, trying to see how what he was thinking could ever possibly work. “I loaded up the carcass thinking that there were oilfield families who would be thankful for the meat this Christmas. But Zack...”

  Corey swallowed and then squared his shoulders facing the man whose head wound already looked considerably less than it had before. Again, none of this made sense. He shook his head. “I promise you I don’t feel crazy, but when I got home that deer wasn’t a deer anymore. I had a naked man in the bed of my truck.” He pushed the words out past the huge lump building in his throat. “Zack, are there were-deer in this world?”

  “Aww, damn, Corey. Where’s the body, now?”

  “Um...see that’s the thing. He’s not dead. He’s unconscious in my living room.”

  Dead silence rang over the phone. “Send me a photo of him.”

  Zach’s terse reply had Corey’s eyebrows rising in surprise. “So...were-deer?”

  “Yes, they’re really a thing, but I need to know who you’re dealing with, so send me the photo and I’ll track down the man’s herd. Although in this area, he’d almost have to be one of Eddie’s.” Zack’s voice trailed off. “Fuck, that would be bad. Get me the photo and I’ll do some checking. You said he’s unconscious. How badly is he hurt?”

  Bile tried to race up Corey’s throat. He’d hit a man with his truck. It didn’t matter that he’d been a deer at the time. That man—a very human man based on the still form lying on his couch—could be dying right this very moment.

  He couldn’t die. That would mean Corey had murdered him, even if it had been an accident.

  “Looking at him all I can see is a head wound that appears much better than it did thirty minutes ago. I’m mo
re concerned right now with averting the frostbite and hypothermia. He was naked and in the bed of my truck for way too long. He needs a doctor, but can I take him to a hospital?”

  “No. If you do, you risk exposing his kind.”

  On a certain level, Corey had been expecting that which is why he’d done all he could to settle him in here.

  “Weres heal really quickly, so he should be coming out of it soon,” Zack said. “If not, let me know and I’ll get hold of the San Angelo healer and see if he can get out to your place. Otherwise, just hang tight. His herd will probably come collect him before you or I can do much more. They’re all connected and they’ll know he’s been injured. Hang tight, Corey, help will be coming.” Zack disconnected.

  Corey sank to the floor and examined the stranger. Everything had been so frantic up until this point, he hadn’t been able to focus on the man himself. He was gorgeous, even with blood soaking his hair, face, and forehead. His jawline was covered with a heavy blond scruff, but below that, Corey could see his defined jawline and high cheekbones. He definitely had a Viking/Scandinavian vibe going for him from his golden blond hair to his really impressive size. This guy was Thor incarnate.

  Zack hadn’t said he needed to stay away from the stranger, so Corey rose from the floor. He couldn’t leave the blood on his forehead and face like that.

  He returned to the living room and perched on the edge of the sofa, gently rubbing the warm, wet cloth high over the man’s forehead. Slowly he revealed smooth, pale skin. He was careful to avoid the wound. He didn’t want it to reopen. But with every revealing stroke of the skin, Corey’s breathing sped up. The man was beautiful.

  “Who are you?”

  Corey jumped and fell off the edge of the sofa. But before he even knew what happened the man grabbed him, catching him just before his ass hit the floor.

  “Good reflexes.” Corey breathed out a sigh, his arm tingling where the guy still held him tight. He’d been so focused on his task, Corey had missed that the stranger had regained consciousness. “Thanks.”