The Heart Remembers: Blood Valley Investigations: Book Two (The Omega Auction Chronicles 16)

by Kian Rhodes

  The clapboard building was larger than it had appeared from the distance, two stories plus what looked to be a half-floor attic with dormer windows poking out. Most of the paint had peeled off, leaving the wood a weathered gray that was only occasionally interrupted by slivers of white paint. Several of the windows were boarded over and pieces of roofing fluttered in the breeze. A small cupola jutted up against the sky, colored glass gleaming in the light despite the layers of grime coating them.

  A church.

  It was a fucking church.

  "It looks empty," Jackal observed quietly.

  Our lead tracker, Stahl raised his face to the wind and closed his eyes. We waited for several long moments before he shook his head. "There's nothing inside." He grimaced slightly. "Nothing alive, anyway."

  With that warning ringing in our ears, I stepped free of the trees and marched to the door. It swung open easily, no surprise when I saw that the wooden frame was splintered from the door having been kicked in.

  Reaching behind me, I pulled my Barretta from the back waistband of my jeans. It wasn't something any of us needed often, but every member of the COPSD packed heat on the job. Even Vlad had started to, I thought with a grin, remembering his struggles to unholster his tiny .22 from the strap around his inner thigh during target practice. After all, a waist holster would have interrupted the flow of his caftans, he'd explained loftily when his husband had teased him about it.

  Flipping off the safety, I motioned for Zade – the only being not carrying a weapon - to stay behind me and I stepped over the threshold and into what could only be called Hell on earth. It wasn't until we reached an inner room and Zade began to shuffle through the papers scattered on the counter that we realized Harley was still in danger.. and we were too far away to do a single god damned thing about it.

  "Call Levi," Zade yelled, throwing himself into his shift without bothering to remove his clothing. He sprang out the door and hit the trail like the devil himself was on his heels.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Harley

  I knew the room I'd slept in at Zade's house wasn't really cold. Even if it had been, the pile of comforters and quilts that Levi had piled on me after Clint gently deposited me on the bed would have chased away any residual chill. Still, it wasn't until Scott crawled in beside me and pulled me against his body that the ice inside me began to thaw.

  "You okay, baby?"

  "I guess." I wiggled against his body, trying to get as close as possible. If I could have found a way, I would have climbed all the way inside him. "Is your back okay?"

  Guilt flashed through me at the thought of being responsible for him being injured yet again.

  "It'll be fine," his chest rumbled under my cheek as he reassured me, brushing a kiss over my hair. "The new stuff is already healing."

  "What about the knife wound?"

  Scott gave a rueful chuckle. "Well, it's rebandaged, but that one was already guaranteed to scar, Har. You know what silver does to a shifter."

  "And it doesn't help that I keep reinjuring you," I added with a sigh.

  "You haven't injured me once, Harley," Scott corrected me, running his hand down my back. "Everything that has happened has been because of decisions I made."

  If only I could believe that.

  "Anyway, Levi said to tell you that the doctor will be in to see you in a few minutes."

  A finger of dread began to unravel through me, but I wasn't sure why.

  "Harley? What's wrong?"

  "I'm not sure," I said slowly. "Did he say what doctor?"

  "No."

  I drew in a deep breath of the comforting Alpha hormones that Scott's body was offering up to me. "Damn, you smell good."

  Scott growled deep in his throat and his scent got deeper and more erotic, his dick starting to swell against my thigh. "Don't say things like that, Har. You need to rest."

  "Mmm," I exhaled against his skin, then tilted my head so I could rub my nose against the skin of his armpit.

  "Har, that has to stink," Scott protested, laughing.

  "So good," I disagreed, pressing a kiss to the soft hair. "I always loved the way you smell."

  Before Scott could reply, there was a knock at the door. It opened, admitting Dr. Miango, the doctor who'd treated my episodes before I was taken to Wolfsrudel.

  "Well, now, Harley, I hear your memory has recovered," the man greeted me with a broad grin, but there was something strange – hostile, even – lurking in his eyes.

  "Some of it, anyway," I agreed hesitantly.

  "Not all?" He seemed oddly relieved.

  "Not yet," Scott answered for me. "But we're optimistic that the rest will come."

  "One can only hope," the doctor said with an odd snicker. He pulled a needle from the pocket of his long, white coat. "Now, I understand that you've had a traumatic morning, so rest is going to be the best help." He advanced on me, snapping the cap off and spraying a tiny drop into the air. "Be a good boy and hold out your arm for me."

  I screamed as images began to flood my mind, one after the next so quickly that I couldn't even process them all. I was tied to a chair, a bed, an operating table and in each of them the doctor was holding a needle and telling me to be a good boy.

  Then he was forcing pills down my throat, striking me across the face when I gagged on them.

  I didn't realize I was broadcasting them until Scott jerked up beside me.

  "You fucking bastard!" Beside me on the bed, Scott snarled and began to shift, but the doctor pulled his other hand free of his pocket, the silver blade of a scalpel flashing in the sun.

  "Come now, Alpha," he huffed in annoyance as he slashed at the air, "do you really think that your body can take exposure to any more silver?"

  He caught me around the neck by his arm and dragged me from the bed, hold the scalpel to my neck. Gripping the needle in his teeth, he dug around in his coat pocket until he drew out another needle, this one still capped and tossed it across to Scott. "Unless you want to see his pretty red blood spilled all over the floor, you'll inject yourself."

  "No! He's going to kill me anyway!" I shouted, struggling against the arm that had an iron grip on my throat.

  "Just relax, Harley," Scott said calmly, flicking the cap off the needle and holding it over his thigh. "It'll be okay."

  "No, no!" the doctor snapped. "It has to go into your vein. Use your arm!" As he tried to lean past my head to see the veins in my Alpha's arm, I heard the tiniest noise from behind us. Jerking free, I dropped to the floor as a loud thud ran through the room and the doctor slumped over, the scalpel falling harmlessly from his grip.

  The needle was a different story.

  When he fell, it had slipped from his teeth and was lodged in his lip.

  As the doctor's body writhed on the floor next to me, his eyes jerked erratically under half-closed lids and flecks of foam began to build at the corner of his lips. Looking up, I saw Levi standing in the doorway, a large cast iron skillet in one hand and his cell phone in the other.

  "It's okay, Rafe," he said into the phone, his voice trembling. "Miango is down. Everything is going to be fine."

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Harley

  "Are you ready, Harley?" Rafe tried to keep his voice calm and gentle.

  I nodded jerkily, squeezing Scott's hand between both of mine.

  "You're sure you want to do this in an open forum?" Colby asked from his spot beside Rafe. "We can video tape it or even stream it live, instead."

  "I can do it," I said, scooting my chair slightly closer to Scott's.

  Rafe nodded toward the one-way window and the door opened, one of his detectives – Jackal, I think – began ushering people in one at a time.

  The older man who seemed to be in charge patted my shoulder as he took his customary seat at the front of the table. Carol, a woman from the Crimes Against Omegas division took the open seat to my right. As much as she had bugg
ed me with all of her repetitive questions when I didn't have any answers, now that I'd several chances to talk to her, I'd really started to like her.

  Another familiar face - Charles somebody - took the one next to her.

  By the time the door closed, the twenty seats had all been filled and the back wall was two people deep.

  "Thank you all for coming," Rafael began, rising from his seat and walking to the front of the room. "We're here for an update on the Omega Doe case."

  A whisper ran through the room and the Blood Valley Omega snorted. "Nope. It's not actually the wrap-up, unfortunately."

  Rafael shook his head. "As much as we wish it were, we've only scratched the surface of this case." He flicked off the lights and walked back to his seat. "Colby? If you don't mind?"

  The massive screen mounted to the wall came to life, filling it corner to corner was a simple picture of the hell house from the woods. Or, as Rafael had correctly guessed, the hell church.

  "This is an abandoned church on the Northeast corner of the Blue Ridge territory," Rafael began. "According to Alpha Sultan's records, when he took over management of the pack, no one mentioned it to him. It was even omitted from the official asset registration and the map in the Alpha's office."

  "Why?" a male voice wondered quietly.

  "We're still trying determine that," Rafael responded. "Harley, do you recognize this place?"

  I nodded and then remembered that they needed me to answer verbally. "Y..yes, Alpha. I do."

  "Can you tell us about it?"

  I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. "It's where I was held after I was taken."

  A faint gasp.

  "Maybe you should tell us what happened from the beginning?"

  Scott squeezed my hand and I stood up, walking to the front of the room.

  "Eighteen months ago, I was sold to the Blue Ridge pack elders as a potential mate for their Alpha." I sent an apologetic smile to Levi; I was well aware that he and Zade still hadn't resolved their differences. "But he wasn't interested. That left me with a lot of time on my hands and I used to spend most of it wandering in the woods."

  "One night I was watching the moon when someone came up behind me and grabbed me. Before I knew what happened, I was tied up and there was a cloth bag over my head."

  "Oh, honey," Carol sighed.

  "They took me to that building and tied me to a chair inside."

  Another picture flashed on the screen, this one was a panorama of the interior of the main room. There were evidence markers on the exam tables and in front of the row of small biocontainment units.

  "Do you know why they took you specifically?" Rafael asked gently.

  I shook my head. "I know that someone said it was as part of a forced mating ring, but I never heard anything like that." I drew in a breath. "I never saw any other real shifters being held there."

  The picture changed again, showing the laboratory where the evidence markers sat beside smashed equipment and a pile of glass that had been shattered out of an adult-sized bio unit.

  "Do you know what happened here?"

  "No," I said slowly, mentally superimposing the image of it as I had last seen it over the trashed room. "When I was released, it didn't look like that."

  "Okay," Rafael waited for me to continue.

  "Those monsters, the ones in the woods," I started, choking back a sob when Rafael brought up the uncensored image of the dead bodies. "Yeah, those. The last time I was there, the one with the bird's head was in the containment cell that's broken in the picture."

  "When you say the one with the bird head, you mean the one you killed?"

  I nodded, swallowing hard.

  "Okay," Rafael continued. "Were there only two of them?"

  "That were complete, yes. At least, as far as I know."

  "Can you tell us what that means?"

  "Can you go back two pictures?"

  "That row of small bio units? The ones marked with the number 16? Those are incubation units. The people who grabbed me were trying to create a race of super-shifters by combining DNA from several species into one." I sucked in another breath of air. "They would inject the mutated DNA into Omega eggs and then incubate them in there. Once they were big enough, they were moved to the next room with the larger containment units. Most of them died after a day or two, though, so they weren't ever moved."

  This time it was a horror-laden gasp that ran through the room.

  Rafael clicked forward through the pictures again, stopping on a close up of the boar-like creature. "You said that the other creature, for lack of a better term, was in the containment unit the last time you saw it. Where was this one?"

  I swallowed again, but the lump in my throat wouldn't recede.

  "That one had already escaped," I said quietly. "That was why they had to grab me. When it got out, it killed the Omega that they were harvesting for eggs. Without her eggs, they couldn't continue their experiment."

  The room was completely silent now, but when the screen changed again and brought up the image of a pretty young woman with a fading bruise on her cheek, Trevor choked on a cry. Next to him, Colby reached for the hand that Clint wasn't already holding.

  "Was this the Omega that was killed?"

  I nodded. "Her body was still there when they brought me in. I heard them call her Christine." I closed my eyes and forced myself to continue. "They had her hooked up to life support so they could try and harvest the rest of her eggs, but something went wrong."

  "What happened next?"

  I had to take several breaths before I could force the words out. "The doctor started forcing me to take huge amounts of hormone pills and then every few days, he'd strap me to the table and inject me with something that kept me from moving while they cut me open to harvest eggs."

  Another shocked gasp.

  "Those were the injuries that you were healing from when you were released?"

  "Yeah."

  Another picture flashed on the screen, this one was an older man with sagging jowls and hard eyes.

  "Do you recognize this being?"

  "Yes. That was the one in charge. The others called him Cal." I blew out a long breath. "He like seeing me suffer. Every time they cut me open, he watched like it was a damned television show."

  Rafael's eyes widened. "You were conscious?"

  I nodded. "They didn't see the point of anesthesia or painkillers."

  Rafael muttered something under his breath that might have been a curse. "How many more captors did you know of?"

  I thought for a minute, replaying it in my mind. "The doctor that tried to kill me yesterday, but he's dead now. So, other than him and Cal, I only remember seeing two others and they were both muscle types – not scientists. They were the ones who grabbed me. But Cal talked to somebody on the phone nearly every day. I don't know who, though."

  "Thank you, Harley. You've been a great help." Rafael paused to turn the lights back on and turned back to face the room.

  "Harley," he began, his voice firm. "I owe you an apology. When I first caught this case, I decided that you were involved before I'd bothered to investigate the case thoroughly." He glanced over at Carol with a smile, "Some people called me out on and they were right to. I want to take this opportunity to tell you publicly how sorry I am for that."

  "Thank you," I managed before stumbling back toward my chair. Scott caught me and pulled me into his lap, nuzzling my neck.

  "Is that all?" Scott asked. "He's exhausted."

  "Of course," Raphael agreed quickly. "I'll have a few more questions tomorrow, but I think we've covered the key questions for now."

  Wrapping one arm around my waist, Scott led me out to the van and we headed out into the night.

  Epilogue

  Harley

  "What are you thinking about?" Scott's deep baritone caressed my ears.

  We were parked in a wide open field, and he was sitting on
the ground with me between his legs as we watched a meteor shower. It had been three days since I'd told my story to the council and in those three days, Scott and I had been completely wrapped up in each other, making up for lost time.

  "Wondering where I go from here," I responded, my eyes trained on the natural fireworks above us. "You know what I mean?"

  "I think so." Behind me, Scott rubbed his nose against the soft skin behind my ear, before sucking lightly. "What do you want to do?"

  I laughed. "I have no idea. I don't have any real education or skills." I shrugged, smiling when my Alpha began to nibble on my neck. "Mmm, that feels good."

  "Yeah?" Scott switched to the other side. "I can think of some awesome skills you have."

  I couldn't help but laugh as I snuggled back into his arms. "Well, as flattering as that is, I don't think I actually want to make a living on my back."

  "Huh? What are you talking about?" Before I could answer, he caught my drift and laughed himself. "Oh, um, no, love. Those skills are damn near legendary, but that is absolutely not what I meant."

  "What then?"

  "Seriously? We had big plans, once upon a time, remember? Now there's nothing to stop us from joining the tiny house slash caravan housing craze." He bit down lightly on my earlobe. "We’re going to be together anyway."

  When I didn't answer right away, I felt his body stiffen behind me and not in a good way.

  "Harley? Has something changed?" He drew in a ragged breath. "Did you change your mind about us being together?"

  "No, of course not, Scott." I tried to pick my words carefully. "It's just that maybe we should give it some time and see if that is really what is best. You know, not rush into anything."

  Scott eased away from my back and rocked to his knees before standing. I watched from the corner of my eye as he paced back toward the van. In the stillness of the night, I could easily hear his measured breaths, a sure sign that he was fighting to control his emotions. Knowing how much he hated to be seen as weak, I kept my eyes on the sky and pretended not to notice.