by Alisa Woods
Fuck. It hurt like hell, but he wouldn’t die from it—not right away.
The Wolf Hunter strolled back around the gurney and picked up another implement—a slightly larger scalpel this time—and returned to his position in full view of the camera.
“The police are vigilant in their work,” the Wolf Hunter said, “but our laws hold them back from doing what needs to be done. It’s the responsibility of citizens—model citizens, to use your word—to step into the breach and do what the police cannot do, at least legally, to keep the citizenry safe. All you really need to know about shifters is that the police would do exactly what I’m doing here today if they had you in their custody. Namely, take blood samples to prove your guilt and then get rid of your useless carcass.”
“Is that right?” Marco said, trying to keep the pain out of his voice. He could already feel his body trying to heal around the wound, but with the scalpel still in his chest, there was only so much the magic in his blood could do. “Last I heard, you’re Public Enemy Number One at the Seattle Police Department. In fact, I hear shifters are welcome on the force now. If I were you, I’d be careful about who you consider friends. Doesn’t look like kissing up to the police is going to work out for you.”
“It’s true there are a few shifter sympathizers on the police force,” the Wolf Hunter said with disgust. “They just need to be cut out, like a cancer, just like the rest of you.” Then he reared back his hand and plunged the second scalpel into Marco’s chest, on the opposite side from the first.
He gasped with the pain, and stars swam in front of his eyes—it was all he could do to stay conscious and not scream out. His wolf was howling inside, thrashing under his skin, trying to get out to attack the Wolf Hunter. But Marco knew he couldn’t let his wolf loose—that was precisely what the man was trying to do. Enrage him enough that he would shift. Then the Wolf Hunter would get his fucking blood sample and torture him as a beast in front of his captive audience.
Which only reminded Marco that the kids must be watching, too.
Shit.
He twisted his head to the side and forced his eyes to stay open so he could see their small faces, wide-eyed with horror. A few were crying.
He gave the kids a wink and turned back to the Wolf Hunter, wheezing a little because he couldn’t catch his breath at all. “You know, I can keep this up all day.”
The Wolf Hunter lost the smile behind his mask. “We’ll see about that.” While he was going back for another stainless steel instrument to stab him with, Marco twisted to face the camera on the computer.
“For those of you watching at home,” he said in the most light-hearted voice he could muster, “there are a few things you should know about the Wolf Hunter.” He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “He has a few daddy issues. You really have to feel sorry for a guy that—”
“Shut it!” The Wolf Hunter whirled around, blocking the camera’s view of Marco. He had another steel blade in his hand.
“Hey now! Come on, dude. You’re blocking the camera,” Marco wheezed. “How are people going to see the show, if you’ve got your skinny little ass in front of the screen?”
Marco could see the snarl behind the Wolf Hunter’s mask, but he matched Marco’s light tone. “You’re quite right. We need to give them a much better show.” The Wolf Hunter marched back around to his spot on the far side of the gurney.
“You really are adorable in your surgical mask,” Marco taunted. “And it’s so much fun playing doctor with you. But why don’t you let the folks at home see who you really are?”
“They don’t need to see my face to know that my work is filled with righteousness,” the Wolf Hunter said, but it was stiff as hell. “They know I’m serving the greater need of keeping them safe.”
Marco turned to face the camera and cringed a little. “I’m thinking there’s a whole lot of u-g-l-y under that mask, aren’t you?”
The Wolf Hunter snarled and grabbed Marco by the hair, wrenching his face back toward him. He held the blade up to Marco’s cheek. “Do you want to see an ugly face? I can make that happen.”
“Not the face! Not the face!” Marco said in a false high voice. “The ladies will be crushed.”
The Wolf Hunter growled, grasped Marco’s hair tighter, and then swiped the blade across his cheek.
Fuck, that hurt like hell—he could feel it going deep to the bone. Worse, that would make it even harder to talk back. Marco had better rein it in.
The Wolf Hunter let go of his hair, shoving his head aside, then he plunged the third knife into Marco’s chest. This one felt like it sank all the way to his backbone, and the surge of pain and lack of air made black dots swim in front of his eyes. He shook his head, fighting it off because he couldn’t pass out—he had to keep holding on. For the kids. To make this whole thing work.
He fought for breath and growled out, “You are one sick fuck!”
The Wolf Hunter flicked his fingers at the three blades sticking out of Marco’s chest, one by one, making them vibrate. Jesus Christ, the pain of that reverberated throughout him.
Marco gritted his teeth and pushed the words out. “Does that feel good, Hunter boy? You getting off on this?”
“As a matter of fact, I am enjoying this.”
Marco was sure that was one hundred percent true.
“Spoken like a true sociopath,” Marco ground out. “You know, most sadists have had some kind of traumatic sexual experience in their formative years. So what happened to you, sparky? You can tell me.” The Wolf Hunter’s blue eyes grew darker. “What? Did Daddy have his way with you?” Marco twisted to face the camera again. “We all want to know, don’t we—”
The Wolf Hunter punched him hard across the face, whipping his head to the side and knocking out what little breath he had left.
When he could manage to suck in a breath again, he coughed out, “That’s right! Fight like a man!”
The Wolf Hunter stalked around him again, probably going back for more implements of torture. Hold on. That’s all he had to do. This bastard could keep stabbing him, and as long as he didn’t actually ram Marco through the heart or the head, he could keep coming back for more. The magic in his blood was working frantically to heal every wound, in spite of the blades still sticking in him.
It would take a lot to kill him. Especially if the Wolf Hunter wanted to draw it out.
But then the man dug into a drawer instead of picking up another one of his shiny silver blades, and when he came back to the gurney, he was holding two paddles that looked a hell of a lot like the things you shock people’s hearts into starting again.
Or in this case, stopping them.
Oh, fuck.
“Let’s see if we can do something a little more shocking for our audience.” Then he held the shock paddles against the steel blades sticking out of Marco’s chest.
Just that movement wrenched new pain that almost made him pass out. But when the Wolf Hunter pressed the button on both paddles simultaneously, Marco’s entire body arched with the thousands of volts rushing through his system. He convulsed on the table, and he tried like hell to stay awake, but it was too much… too much…
The blackness closed in.
Julia crept to the edge of the low hill and peered over.
A hangar sat next to an abandoned airfield out in the middle of nowhere, halfway up a mountain outside Seattle. She was surprised they had driven so far and so long before finally reaching the Wolf Hunter’s hideout, but she supposed it made sense for him to choose a remote location, given he was basically kidnapping people and torturing them to death. The outside of the hangar was plain sheet metal, half white paint and half rust. She shuddered to think about what might be going on inside.
Stefan and Casey edged up behind her.
“This is killing me.” Julia gestured to the hangar. “I don’t suppose we can do this on our own?”
“No way,” Stefan said. “Marco was very clear that we were to go in as a pack. He kne
w that some of us would have a hard time waiting and might go off half-cocked.” He glanced at Casey when he said it, but Julia was pretty sure he was talking about her. And she couldn’t deny that her wolf was seething inside her, freaking out because Marco had been captured.
“How long until the rest of the pack arrives?” she asked.
Casey had been in charge of tracking the van, but Stefan, as Marco’s beta, had been on the phone coordinating with the pack and relaying their coordinates. It had been a long drive to get out here—probably forty-five minutes—but they wouldn’t have to wait that long for the rest of the pack to arrive. They had started preparations as soon as Marco had laid out his hasty last-minute plan, so they were only ten minutes or so behind.
“About eight minutes,” Stefan confirmed. “So what’s our plan of attack here?”
Julia was a little surprised he was asking her, but then again she had kind of taken charge of the situation. Or maybe it was because she said she was mated to Marco. Maybe that made her some kind of second-in-command. Or something—maybe Stefan just knew that this whole thing was making her insane, and she would need to be involved.
Julia peered at the hangar. It was a large building with a side door that was normal-sized and a hangar door that rolled up when the white van had approached and slipped inside. But it had closed back down before they could get a good look. Those two doors seemed like the only ways in.
Julia gestured to the building. “Seems like we’re going to have to bust down a door or something. Any ideas about that?”
Casey looked up with from fiddling with his phone. “Griffin is coming with some small-scale explosives.”
Stefan’s eyebrows lifted. “Explosives? Since when do we do stuff like that?”
Casey shrugged with one shoulder. “I’ve been messing around with some tech that, well, let’s just say it’s recreational.”
Stefan shook his head. “Well, I guess that’s a good thing,” he said, grudgingly. “Do you think Griffin can take out the pedestrian door?”
Casey nodded. “Yeah, I think so. But we might want to just bust it down the old-fashioned way. It’s going to be a hell of a fight no matter how we get inside.”
“Did you guys get a count on how many men the Wolf Hunter had?” Julia asked. “It was hard for me to track during the whole kidnapping thing.”
“At least a dozen,” Stefan said. “And I’m sure there’s more inside. Casey could be right about this—if we go in with guns blazing, we’re going to lose some people. But I don’t see a way around it.”
Julia frowned. “There are kids in there.”
“Yeah, I know. Believe me, we’re going to be careful. The only question is how to get inside without—”
Casey whistled low.
Julia looked at the hangar, but everything was quiet there. When she looked back to Casey, he was still messing with his phone. “What is it?”
“I uploaded the video,” he said, holding up his phone for them to see it playing.
Julia winced as she saw Marco running in to help her and then getting pounded by the Wolf Hunter’s men.
“It’s going viral. Tons of hits.” Casey looked impressed.
“Is that bad?” Julia asked. She didn’t mention that having her face on a video—especially a shifter video, because Casey had tagged it that way with a description of what had gone down—wasn’t really good for her personally, considering the police were probably still looking for her for the murder of her stepfather.
“No, the opposite,” Casey said. “This is exactly what Marco was hoping for. He said if we uploaded this, people would see what’s really happening to shifters. What we’re really up against. This could change the PR war we’re fighting. Maybe tilt it in our favor.”
“I don’t know,” Stefan said. “A lot of humans have been watching the Wolf Hunter’s videos. They’re probably just as happy to see a bunch of shifter kids loaded into a van and hauled away as the Wolf Hunter is.”
“No, I think Marco is right,” Julia said with a frown. “I mean, sure, there are some sick assholes out there. Plenty of haters. But regular people? They’ve got to be horrified by this whole Wolf Hunter thing, don’t you think? And if kids are involved… there’s no way normal people can justify that. Or turn a blind eye to it.”
Stefan shook his head, but he wasn’t necessarily disagreeing. “I hope you’re right.” He looked at the hangar. “All I know is, right now, my alpha is in there, and it’s killing me to wait to go rescue him.”
Julia knew exactly what he meant, and she hadn’t even pledged submission to Marco like Stefan and Casey had. But she’d spent a week falling in love with and making love to Marco. She was barely able to keep her wolf under control.
Casey swore under his breath, then shot a pointed look to Stefan.
“What?” Stefan asked.
“The Wolf Hunter just posted a new video.” Casey lifted his chin toward the hangar. “It has to be coming from in there.”
“Oh, fuck.” Stefan growled in the direction of the hangar.
Julia’s heart seized up. “What does it show?”
Casey cringed and exchanged another look with Stefan.
He gestured for Casey to give him the phone. “You’ve got a show it to her, c’mon.” Then he swiped through the screens on the phone to bring up the video and set it to play. Images of Marco strapped to a gurney, his shirt ripped open and his chest covered with blood leaped out at Julia. The horror of it threatened to strangle her. She covered her mouth with both hands, but she couldn’t keep in the choking and gagging sounds. Her wolf raged under her skin, howling and demanding to come out. She nearly shifted.
Stefan quickly shut it off. “Fuck that. I’m going in after him.” He started to stand up, but Casey grabbed his arm and yanked him back down to the dirt.
“You have to wait!” Casey said through his teeth. “Two more minutes, and the pack will be here. We can go then.”
Stefan squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Goddamnit, Marco, this was a terrible plan,” he whispered.
Somehow, that helped Julia to rein in her wolf. Because she knew Marco was counting on them to get him out—him and the kids—and if they rushed in to help him now, they would only get themselves caught, too. And he wouldn’t forgive her for blowing up his plan to get the Wolf Hunter.
She had to keep it together.
“Casey’s right,” she said, inwardly telling her wolf to shut the fuck up with the howling. “We’re only going to get one chance to get him out of this, him and the kids, and he’s counting on us to do what he would do—which is the smart thing. Wait for backup.”
“Yeah, okay,” Stefan said, but his claws were coming in and out of his hands with his agitation.
Thankfully, the sound of car tires crunching along the pavement soon came from behind them—four vans rolling in fast. Julia, Stefan, and Casey shuffled down the small rise they had climbed to observe the hangar and went to meet the vans. The vehicles skidded to a stop next to their rusted-out car. Dozens of people spilled out of the vans—they must’ve been crammed in way over capacity. And it wasn’t just the men in Marco’s pack who had come—there were women, too. Even Ethan jumped down from one of the vans and trotted over to her.
“What are you doing here?” Julia asked, horrified.
He held his chin up. “I’m going to help rescue Marco.”
“Good,” Stefan said, clapping a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “We need someone to stay here and guard the vans.”
“But I want to help with the attack!” Ethan’s shoulders dropped.
“You think I’m putting you on a noncritical duty?” Stefan asked, doing a good job of looking slightly offended. “We need to make a getaway after we get your friends and Marco and everyone out safe. We can’t do that if somebody has compromised our vehicles. We need you here, understood?” His tone made it clear that he wasn’t taking no for an answer—Stefan was a beta, but there was a lot of alpha in that command.
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“Yes, Sir.” Ethan seemed to accept his duty pretty well.
While Ethan ran back to the vans, Julia turned to Stefan. “Don’t even try to tell me I have to stay behind.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.” Stefan was staring hard at the hangar again, and she could guess what he was thinking.
“Maybe we don’t want to wait for Cruz,” Julia suggested. Stefan had to be thinking it, too.
“We don’t know how many people they have inside,” Casey protested. “I mean, there could be a hundred guys with dart guns in there. Or regular guns, for that matter. We’ve got people, but we’re light on armaments.”
He had a point. “How long until Cruz and his men get here?” Julia asked.
“They should be here any minute,” Casey said, scanning the long road that led up to this mountain plateau airfield in the middle of nowhere. Julia prayed the Wolf Hunter and his men weren’t paying attention or had some kind of long-range scout because they could probably see them coming from a mile away.
“All right. We’ll give them another few minutes. But if it takes much longer, I’m not sure I’m willing to wait.” Julia crossed her arms over her chest and stared hard at the hangar, along with Stefan.
It was less than five minutes later when Cruz’s pack could be seen trundling up the road. There were only two vans, but when Cruz and his men spilled out, Julia was glad they had waited. They were toting guns that looked like AK-47s, which was some serious firepower compared to the handguns that Marco’s pack was mostly armed with. Casey had been off with Griffin, talking to him about setting up munitions to blow their way in. Stefan was standing by, but Julia knew she needed to be the one to talk to Cruz and coordinate the assault.
She stood her ground near the top of the rise that overlooked the hangar and waited for Cruz to amble up to her with his big bulky shoulders and shifter muscles.