Dire Needs: A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan by Stephanie Tyler Page B

eyes out. Instead, he slammed up to the third floor, where Rogue rested, seemingly comfortably, on the king-sized bed facing the window in full view of the moon.
    Rogue hadn’t moved, lay there like he was goddamned dead, and if his color hadn’t been normal, someone would’ve put him in the ground already.
    Vice’s chest squeezed, the emotion coming on too strong, nothing he had control over. Excess roamed every part of his body, his mind, and he dropped to his knees next to the bed, the physical pain nowhere as bad as what Rogue or Rifter had endured, he was sure of it. But it was damned close, and for him, it had been a fact of life since long before he’d shifted for the first time.
    Finally the pain eased, slightly at first before slinging full force back to pleasure. There was no gray area for him. Never would be.
    Rogue understood that about him most of all.
    Vice rubbed Rogue’s hand—still warm. The man hadn’t aged at all, looked exactly the same as he had when they’d left the house together for a night of leading people astray. But Rogue hadn’t come back, and Vice remembered searching the streets for him, a growing terror in his throat. And it took an awful lot to scare the man literally made from sin.
    Vice stroked a hand through Rogue’s hair. They hadn’t cut it, and the fact that it was still growing was a comfort to Vice. He stood, pulled Rogue’s body toward him and stared down at the wolf on his back.
    The eyes looked dull. Rogue’s wolf was out of it too, both man and his Brother Wolf trapped inside a body that refused to work.
    All the Dires wore their wolves on their backs. To humans, it looked like an intricate, lifelike tattoo, but it was actually a glyph that began to slowly appear on their skin sometime in the weeks leading up to their first shift.
    The tribal wolf tattoos they had were real tats they’d all gotten together, a simple gift of solidarity toward Rifter, their king, and also to honor his dreamwalking curse.
    When one of us is cursed, we all are.
    And honestly, that held true. They just didn’t happen to have a Native American shaman do so from birth.
    “Damn it, Rogue, come on,” he muttered, rubbing the tribal wolf tattoo that sat over his own heart.
    Harm’s return was probably not the best thing to share with Rogue, but hell, maybe the brother needed to get angry with him.
    “Harm’s here. Maybe he wants back into the fold. If you want your say, you’ve got to wake your sorry ass up.”
    Vice growled the words, but Rogue didn’t so much as twitch.
    Motherfucker.
    Maybe bringing Harm up here in the flesh would help. Maybe Rogue or his wolf would catch a scent. Vice would do anything to bring Rogue back to life.
    “Wanna smoke?” Vice lit up a rolled one, made with his special blend, and put it close to Rogue’s nose, because one day he was going to wake this motherfucker up.
    Rifter wouldn’t even walk through Rogue’s dreams before their capture—saidthey were too fucked up. Now when he tried, Rifter couldn’t get into Rogue’s dreams. He couldn’t be sure if Rogue was a plant from the sorcerers or weretrappers, and Rifter did not want to get trapped in his dreams.
    So Jinx tried to figure out a way to wake his twin up while he continued his work dealing with ghosts and demons and other shit most humans believed happened only in horror movies and prime-time shows, although Vice had to admit that
Supernatural
was pretty damned good. He wondered if maybe he could get a consulting job with the network for it. You know, when his time freed up, since Jinx had snared him into helping him full-time on supernatural-activity watch to battle the dead and demonic.
    It was certainly cutting into his fun time. The supernatural activity in the town had increased markedly over the past months, no doubt the work of Seb’s witches. Although Jinx had yet to confirm the source for sure, Linus was worried about the possibility that the weretrappers were using Weres to