Bear's Strength

by J. L. Madore

  Calli shrugs, tipping back her cooler and finishing it. “I’ve survived worse than her. Not growing up in your world, I hold no awe for the pomp of her title. Maybe that helps me see her solely for the woman she is. How someone so petty and vicious could have raised a son so tender and thoughtful is the thing of awe from where I stand.”

  I lean over the back of her chair to kiss the top of her head. “Ever my dauntless defender.”

  She reaches back and pats my fingers on her shoulder. “You better believe it. You decide who you want in your court and how that’s going to look. No one else.”

  A scream in the back yard has me rushing to the patio door. I yank back the glass slab and bolt through the doorway. Doc and I launch off the back deck at the same time, hitting the lawn at a run.

  My sister is surrounded, as men in black seethe from the shadows and she stands between them and my mother.

  “Keyla!”

  Brant

  Damn this asshole’s got legs. I pump my arms and beat feet as fast as my tactical boots can carry me. The thundering thump-thump-thump of my long stride isn’t getting me any closer to catching up. My bear growls as my thigh muscles burn and my lungs begin to catch fire. I’m not sure how long I can keep up in a flat-out run behind this guy.

  I’ve got my sights locked on the runner, so it’s a jarring shock when I get clotheslined and taken to ground—by nothing. I suppose no one would be more accurate.

  Well. At least no one I could see.

  Dammit. The cloaked guards.

  One connects a lucky kick to my ribs, but I grab at the hit and grip his foot. Invisible or not, I twist until it snaps. The scream tells me right where his face is, and I grapple up his body and clock him with a right hook.

  I’m not sure if there are more, but I don’t have time to worry about it. Back on my feet, I’m launching off again when Hawk goes booking it past me in pursuit.

  Shit, where did he come from?

  I watch my footing as I dodge what is left of the front gate, and we bank a hard right. He’s trying to lose us, ducking down side streets and weaving his way in and out of shadows.

  A few blocks away from the mansion, he takes an alley edged by rusted out old cars, dumpsters, and empty lots. This guy is moving too damned fast to be human.

  Doesn’t matter. If he leads us to our Black Knight it doesn’t matter what he is or where he thinks he’s going.

  He’s ours.

  Hawk is hot on his heels, gaining a few inches with every stride. Damn, the avian can run. Makes sense. As dense as my bones and muscles are because I’m a bear—Hawk’s a bird. He’s got to have less mass to make his transitions into his hawk form and fly.

  I’m twenty or thirty feet behind them and losing ground. Neither of them seems to be having trouble with the rough and uneven sidewalk, but I’m still a bit wonky from my scrap with the invisible man and it trips me up. I almost tumble head over heels at a patch of broken concrete but manage to save my stride.

  I can’t do anything about the momentum I lose.

  Our man drops out of sight down a narrow dirt track between a pair of industrial-looking buildings that speak of better days. When Hawk disappears around the corner, too, I pull an extra burst of power from my bear’s strength.

  At the same time, I try to access my bond with the others.

  We need backup and it would help if someone knows where to find us. I round the corner and see Hawk closing in on the guy—too quickly.

  With how fast he was booking it, there’s no way he’s running out of gas like that. No. He’s deliberately slowing his pace. Hawk doesn’t seem to connect the dots. He’s focused on the chase—too focused.

  “Hawk, stop!” I can’t tell if he hears me or not but he doesn’t slow. I know how strong the call of the hunt is when I’m locked on a target and I’m a beta.

  Hawk is all alpha.

  The guy turns and another shot cracks off in the night. Hawk’s rhythm is lost as he twists and dodges to the side, but he doesn’t slow.

  Our bad guy’s non-human status is sealed when he takes a ten-foot fence at a running leap.

  Hawk launches into the air, gets his hands over the top edge, and pulls himself up and over.

  Another two shots.

  Shit. I can’t see what’s on the other side of the fence.

  I repeat Hawk’s performance and take a flying leap to grab the top edge of the fence and flip over onto the other side. I’m still in freefall on the opposite side when the metal tang of blood hits me.

  It’s heavy in the air and I soon see why.

  Hawk is down and bleeding bad.

  A guttural growl has me searching the darkness. Two sets of golden eyes shift forward from the shadows of the gated yard. Two Rottweilers, heads down and teeth bared.

  “Well, fuck.”

  Calli

  Keyla’s scream sends shards of ice through my guts. I chase Kotah out the back door and am right on his heels as he bounds down the stairs of the back deck. The sounds of fists to flesh hang in the still night air. The shadows are writhing with men throwing punches near the gazebo.

  Someone is dragging Keyla across the lawn toward the gate. Doc, Keyla’s two guards, and the Prima’s palace guards are there but overwhelmed by attackers. Kotah’s growl is more menacing than I’ve ever heard it. The fury of being attacked in our place of privacy burns in my blood too.

  My phoenix ignites within.

  My skin starts to glow gold as—

  A blue bolt of icy energy hits me in the shoulder and knocks me spinning into the pool. I hit the water with a backward momentum that swamps me in seconds. Salt burns my nostrils and my throat as I kick back to the surface.

  So. Rude.

  “I’m fine,” I sputter, sensing more than seeing Kotah’s conflict of saving me or his sister. The water steams around my face as I flame out. “Help Keyla.”

  I told Jaxx this afternoon that I wanted to take a swim tonight. This isn’t what I had in mind. A quick breaststroke takes me to the ladder, and I haul myself out. My clothes hang heavy and feel gross, but there’s no time to worry about that.

  My soggy socks are barely on the marble slab of the pool deck when I’ve got incoming. What the hell.

  Give a girl a second to catch her breath.

  Do I want the pool at my back so no one gets behind me or do I want to avoid getting dunked and drowned? I don’t know which would be better. I try to call on my phoenix but whatever that icy energy pulse was that took me into the pool is chilling my fiery side down.

  I dodge the incoming right cross and settle in for the fight. One guy is swinging, another is trying to grab me, the third has a gun but he’s screened by the other two.

  This I know how to deal with.

  If nothing else, over the past two weeks, the guys have been drilling in melee fighting skills. I’m getting pretty confident in hand to hand… even without my orange spatula of raging fire.

  Gun guy is trying to get around the others but is having trouble because the pool is at my back. Okay, I’ll pretend I meant to do that. Yay me.

  I’m swatting away grabby guy when punchy guy lands a solid shot to my jaw. My head pivots with the force of the blow and I honestly see stars. The light show has me blinking, but I don’t drop my guard. He might have rung my bell, but he isn’t going to win the fight.

  The chuff-chuff-chuff of rotor blades has me glaring at the helicopter landing on the back lawn. Damn. These guys are serious. I try to call on my flames again, but whatever chill I caught, it’s still holding on.

  Dammit.

  I see the Taser pointed at me too late. The high-pitched whine of a power-up draws my attention just as the probes shoot into my boob. I stiffen as fifty-thousand volts of raw energy short out my brain.

  Punchy moves in and places an acrid-sweet cloth over my face. The world and my will to fight drift away.

  Jaxx

  I finish patching up the downstairs guard’s bullet wound and hand him off to
the FCO officers to do with him what they will. “He’ll be fine. It’s a clean shot through the meat of his shoulder. It didn’t impact anythin’ vital. It’ll also be a great place to apply pressure if the interrogation isn’t goin’ well.”

  “Fuck you, feline,” the guy sputters.

  “Yeah, you’re welcome.” I smile and move back to my first patient to see how he’s healing up. “Hey, Lukas. How you feelin’ now, my man?”

  “Pissed and ready to kill someone.”

  I stop in front of where Hawk’s badass, right-hand man is sitting on the third step and check his eyes. His pupils are equal and reactive. His color is back as well. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get your chance soon. You’re good to go.”

  Hannah comes jogging down the stairs and Lukas pushes up to his feet and out of her way. “Everyone upstairs seems fine—physically at least. They’re confused though.”

  “So, we got the kids?”

  “One cell,” Hannah says. “From what we’ve pieced together, this Black Knight of yours is keeping them split up while he trains and reprograms them. Likely three cells of four kids per cell. We’ve got the first four upstairs.”

  “And the banshee girl who attacked Brant?”

  “Upstairs with the others and very confused. She swears she lives here and we’re home invaders.”

  I sigh. “Only four. I can’t say I’m not disappointed.”

  “Hey, once we get some help to them, it’ll be a solid win for these four.” Hannah’s gaze shifts to Lukas next. “I’ve been trying to get our next steps from Mr. Barron. He mentioned taking the kids to the compound he rented and putting them in a garage loft? I haven’t gotten confirmation on that. Do either of you know where we go from here?”

  Lukas taps the comm in his ear and it beeps to life. “Sir, we got four of the kids. Where do we go from here?” The guy waits for a bit and then frowns. “Hawk? You hearing me? Hawk, check-in. Where are you?”

  His pinched brow raises my hackles. “He and Brant went off after a runner. Here, I’ll try calling them.” I pull up Hawk’s number first and it goes to voicemail. I call Brant’s next and get the same thing. “Okay, I’m hating this.”

  Lukas frowns and starts tapping his phone. After a few seconds, a map fills the screen and a blue dot appears. “Grab your med-kit, Jaguar. I’ve got him. Let’s roll.”

  I grab my gear and am hot on Lukas’s heels as we hustle back to the SUV. The doors are still open from the mass exodus of the incursion team, so we slam those shut and close the tailgate before we get going.

  Lukas hands me his phone and gets us moving. I study the screen as it recalibrates and start the navigation. “Out of the gate, take a right. Two blocks up, a left.”

  It goes like that, the side streets and alleyways passing in a blur as I close in on Hawk’s location. When the SUV jolts to a stop, we’re staring at the ten-foot security fence of what seems to be a testing facility of some kind.

  “I’ll take a look.” Being a jaguar has advantages even when I’m in human form. I set down the medical bag and scale the fence with one vaulting leap. Grabbing the top edge of the fence, I peer over the top and try to take it in.

  The carnage. The blood.

  “Brant? Is that you?”

  The giant grizzly bear turns his head and lets off a throaty bellow.

  “Yeah, I’m glad to see you too, buddy.” With my mouth open to speak, the scent receptors in my tongue sort through the different sources of blood. Some canine, some Brant’s, but a huge percentage of it is Hawk’s. I drop my gaze to the heap of male right below me at the base of the fence. “Oh shit. Okay, hang on. Help is here.”

  “Thank fuck!” Brant says flipping to two feet from four.

  I drop off the fence and frown. “Lukas, if it’s in your power, I need this fence gone. Hawk’s wedged against the bottom on the other side and circling the drain.”

  A second later, there’s no fence. Lukas stands, hands poised, and magic snapping in the air.

  “Now that’s cheating,” Brant says, dropping to his knee on the asphalt. “We got pinned down by guard dogs and he was in no shape to get back over the fence. Thanks for tracking us down.”

  Even with the night vision of my jaguar, I can’t see shit with all the blood getting in the way. “Get him flat on his back and strip off his shirt.”

  The two of them lay Hawk out and do as I asked while I dig into the bag for the tourniquet. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Brant, do you have doctors in any local hospitals that we can trust to get us a wildling top up?”

  Brant frowns. “Not close enough to be of any use. Doc’s our best bet. He’s got mad skills.”

  My hands are slick, and I’m fumbling to tie off the pressure band. I do a quick check for other injuries, but I can’t see shit. “Okay, good enough. Let’s move.”

  “I’ll call Calli and get our phoenix girl wound up and ready to help.”

  “Even with her tears, we’ll need blood. I don’t suppose the FCO has a blood bank or lab in the neighborhood?”

  “I’ve got him there,” Lukas says. “I’ve topped him up before in a crunch.”

  “What? Human mage to hawk wildling? That’s insane.”

  Brant scoops Hawk up as if he weighs little more than a kid. “I’m with Jaxx. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

  “I never said it was ideal,” Lukas says, jogging ahead to open the door of the hatch. “After a bit of a battle, his body will accept it.”

  I wipe my hands on my jeans as we move. “I’m not sure his body can take any more battle than he’s already waging.”

  “It’ll work,” Lukas snaps.

  Brant reaches into the back of the truck and lays Hawk down. “That’s where he gets the magic boost.”

  Right. We’ve speculated about that. Still, knowing how inter-species blood donation works, mage blood should kill him not save him.

  I climb in the hatch with Hawk and drop the back seats to give us more room. Still, it’s crowded. “Hey, Hawk. Hang in there, my man. We’ll get you sorted out as soon as possible. Brant, you’re calling Calli, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he says, shutting his door. “On it now.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Calli

  I rouse with the fumes of car exhaust in my nose and a pounding throb in my head. By the constant whir and bump as we move along, I guess that I’m in the trunk of a car. My first instinct is to flame out, heat the gas tank, and blow these fuckers to bits. But I don’t know where Kotah and Keyla are. If they’re in the car too, Keyla wouldn’t survive. Kotah might… the guys don’t seem to suffer from my fire now that we’re mated. Still, it’s too risky.

  I shift to ease the pain in my right shoulder where something metal is poking me. My arms are tied behind my back, but that’s the work of a moment. As pissed as I am, that plastic cable tie has no choice but to melt away.

  Rubbing the tender flesh around my wrists, I soothe the pinched skin. Okay, recap. We were attacked in the back yard… I was tasered and drugged… helicoptered somewhere… and now on a road trip.

  My life is one big adventure.

  I press a hand to my chest and frown at the emotions I’m getting from my mates. Closing my eyes, I focus on where the pain is coming from. They’re all distraught. Hawk’s hurt.

  I feel him slipping from our bond and I focus on strengthening our hold on him. What’s happening? Where are they? Where am I?

  The answer comes back to me with a moment of donning clarity. I have no idea where I am, but I know that none of my mates are anywhere near me. And if I’m not near Hawk, I can’t help him.

  I also know, without a doubt, Kotah’s not in the car.

  What about Keyla?

  Shifting around to the back of the seat, I fumble in the dark for the seat release. Carefully, I pull the release and ease the seat forward enough to see that the back seat is empty.

  “… a right bad idea.”

  “That’s not for you to decide. In ten minutes, we’ll hand her
over and be done with the whole thing.”

  “And yer sure she’s out?”

  “Yeah, she’ll be out another hour at least.”

  Wrong, asshole. Phoenix blood has healing abilities you forgot to take into account. Sucks to be you two. With that, I invite my phoenix to come out and play. My skin burns hot and glows with the fire of my fury igniting within. With both my hands on the floor of the trunk, I focus my fiery intentions toward the gas tank.

  The car explodes into a mass of mangled metal and flying shrapnel. Those two thought they could take me from my mates? Fuck that.

  Whoever decided this was a good idea doesn’t begin to understand how bad things are going to go for them.

  I straighten inside the heat of the inferno and my cells suck up the intensity of the explosion. It’s a freaking power boost. I raise my arms and my wings unfurl. My wingspan reaches across the entire width of the two-lane road and it’s an awesome sight, even for me.

  Each time I connect with my phoenix, she gains strength.

  I know what I am and embrace my wildling side.

  I connect with Hawk’s suffering and push from the ground. My mate needs me. My wings pump against the darkness of the night sky forcing the cool night air downward as I climb. I’m doing it. I’m flying.

  For two incredible minutes, I gain altitude and distance from those who conspire to hurt me. Then I flame out and fall from the sky… “Oh shit.”

  Brant

  “What the fuck do you mean, she was taken?” My voice is laced with all the fury and frustration of my night. Only getting four kids free, Hawk getting shot, me playing the part of a chew toy for hostile dogs, and now—worse than all of it combined— “Calli’s missing?”

  Kotah is barely holding it together, but I haven’t got the energy to care. He was on guardian duty for our mate. “And where the hell were you when she was getting stuffed into a helicopter?”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, gutted. “I failed her.”