Gabriel found himself struggling with the urge to transform himself to reach the house faster. He couldn’t place a name to the terrible dread that had filled him, but he didn’t question it. Something was wrong. Marlee was in trouble and he didn’t believe John had anything to do with it. A vague sense of relief began to percolate through him as he reached the end of the path and jogged toward the house, but he knew even as he shoved the door open and stepped inside that Marlee wasn’t there.
“Marlee!” Eli bellowed. “Where is she?”
“They’re not here!”
“Check the trucks!”
“Wait!” Gabriel growled abruptly. “Did you hear that?”
“It’s a truck engine. She’s found the damned keys!” Joshua snarled, racing across to the front of the house.
“Not that!” Gabriel snapped, realizing abruptly that the sound was in his head. “It’s John!” Turning, he ran back out the way he’d come, searching the landscape from the edge of the porch.
———
The pain in his chest warred with fear and rage as John lay staring up at the night sky, trying to summon the strength to rise. He could feel blood pooling on his chest, though, and finally realized he was growing weaker, not throwing off the weakness.
Struggling to block thoughts of Marlee from his mind, he tried to focus on making the wounds close, but the bullets were still in his chest. He couldn’t close the holes or stop the bleeding. Wrapping one arm tightly across his chest to apply pressure, he finally managed to lever himself into a sitting position. He began coughing as soon as he sat up. Alarm flickered through him when he tasted blood.
It occurred to him with a touch of surprise that he might die. The fear that flickered through him was galvanizing. He wouldn’t be able to help Marlee and she was hurt! Leaning forward, he tried to focus on forcing the bullets out, picturing them in his mind, searching inside himself for them. One had entered a lung. The other had hit a rib, shattered it and lodged in the muscle near his heart.
Thankfully the bastard had only been packing a .22 caliber or there would’ve been a lot more damage. It was frustration and fear that he either couldn’t expel the bullets at all or wouldn’t be able to in time to help Marlee that directed his mind to Gabriel. They’d never succeeded in sharing mind talk when they were too far from one another, but he tried it anyway, abandoning the effort to heal his wounds long enough to focus on calling out to Gabriel.
He felt a question form in his mind, knew it was Gabriel’s mind and tried again. That time Gabriel answered. Where?
Field beyond the pasture.
Slumping with relief, he rested for a few moments and focused on the bullets again.
Slowly but surely, he worked them outward. He thought for several moments after he first noticed the pounding that it was only the blood pounding in his skull from the effort. He heard Gabriel call out a moment later, however.
“I see him!”
In a few minutes his brothers surrounded him, dropping to their knees to study him worriedly. “Who shot you?” Gabriel barked, his voice filled with anxiety.
John tried to focus on the details he’d noticed. “Wearing a ranger’s uniform,” he said finally. “She’s hurt. She tried to run to me and he pistol whipped her.”
His brothers surged to their feet.
“Stay with John and help him, Aaron,” Gabriel growled.
Aaron looked torn for several moments but he nodded as the others shifted into their dragon forms and one by one took to the air. Dropping to his knees, he studied John. “Close the wounds before you bleed to death.”
John shook his head, trying to shake off the darkness that was beckoning to him like an embrace. “It won’t heal around the bullets.”
“Shit! Try shifting! We’re stronger when we shift.”
John choked on more blood when he tried to suck in a breath to speak. “I don’t have the strength. That’s what killed mother—trying to shift when she was too weak. It took the last of her strength.”
Aaron shifted. “This is going to hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, John,” he growled warningly.
Curling his fingers inward except for the index, he used his claw to slice into John’s chest across one of the holes. To his consternation, John passed out. He thought, in fact, that he’d killed him for several horrible moments. The steadily surging blood told a different story, however.
Shaking off his anxiety, he focused on digging the slug out and then cut a slice above the other wound. It was far harder to find and he’d begun to worry that John would run out of blood before he succeeded. When he’d finally removed the second slug, he pressed the sides of the wounds together and leaned down to lathe the cut.
It was one of the few things they’d ever figured out about themselves and their abilities.
Their saliva helped to heal wounds when they couldn’t merely ‘will’ them to heal. Quite often, it was enough just to think about the wound and mentally close it and heal it. They’d gone through many battles over the years, however, particularly in their early years, where that wasn’t enough.
Arrow, spears, and bullets damaged so much that they would’ve died many times over if their instincts hadn’t guided them in that, at least.
Relief filled him when he saw the wound had ceased to bleed. He waited a few moments and tended the other and then sat back, watching John’s pale face in the light from the stars, watching the shallow lift and fall of his chest. It seemed to him John’s breaths grew shallower and shallower and further and further apart. He’d begun to think he’d only succeeded in finishing John off when he finally dragged in a noticeably deeper breath. His eyelids fluttered a few moments later and then he opened his eyes and stared at the sky.
“Did they get her?”
Aaron felt a combination of fear and rage surge through him—fear both for John and for Marlee, rage that anyone had dared harm her. “They went after her.”
John swallowed with obvious effort. “Go. I’ll follow when I can.”
“Gabe told me to stay with you,” Aaron objected, still torn between the need to go after Marlee himself and the fear that John would die if he left him.
“I’ll be alright,” he said with an effort, anger tingeing his voice. “If she’s … still alive, she needs help.”
Chapter Twelve
Marlee wove in and out of consciousness, aware of the jouncing truck for a time and then losing any awareness at all. She had no idea how long she’d been drifting in and out before her mind finally managed an attempt to assess her situation, but she focused inwardly first.
Her head ached as if her skull would split—or already had been. Her hair was matted to her head and still sticky. She remembered thinking that she’d been shot in the head and wondered if she had been. If she had, she was still alive, though, could still string thoughts together. Struggling with the nausea that began to vie with the pounding pain in her head for attention, she tried to perform a mental inventory. She managed to twitch her hands and fingers by thinking about first one and then the other and then wiggle her toes in her shoes.
She had some control over her motor skills. It was a relief, but it was hard to get excited when she felt like she was going to die. She passed out again. When she became aware once more, the pounding wasn’t as bad. The nausea was worse, but she realized that was at least partly because she was slumped on the seat of a truck that was bouncing like a bucking bronco.
Rough terrain—which could mean a back road or no road at all—and that didn’t tell her where she was.
She tried shuffling her memories to figure out what had happened, but that was no help at all. As soon as she did, she remembered John. He was dead and she’d never told him she loved him. The urge to cry vied with the nausea and the pounding in her head a while and then she thought abruptly about the baby. It might be John’s baby. It might be all she would ever have of John!
Those thoughts finally helped her chase the urge to weep and try to focus. The baby
was safe—for now—she told herself. Her belly was just about the only place on her entire body that didn’t hurt. But that was alright. That was a comfort. The baby wasn’t hurt. If she could figure out a way to escape, it would live and then John wouldn’t be completely gone.
It flickered through her mind that it might be Eli’s baby, or Gabriel’s, but she didn’t want to think about that at the moment. It seemed far more important that it was John’s baby.
No! The important thing was that it was her baby and she had to protect it!
Despair filled her for a few moments. She wasn’t physically capable of doing anything to win her freedom and she wasn’t convinced she had enough possession of her wits to manage it either. She decided to simply lie still and try to gather herself.
She was drifting toward unconsciousness again when the truck abruptly stopped. The truck door opened and then slammed shut again. He coming around to get her, she knew. If she could just pick her feet up, she thought, maybe she could stun him with the door when he opened it?
She struggled for all she was worth, but she’d only managed to get one leg up when he snatched the door open and she didn’t have the leverage to kick out at him. He dragged her out, stood her on her feet and slapped her, hard, on both cheeks. “Wake up!”
Marlee had to focus just to lift her head. The sharp slaps to both cheeks seemed to have rattled what little wits she had right out of her head.
He shook her, making her head wobble weakly on her shoulders. “Where is it? Show me bitch! I killed that bastard. I have to get out of here.”
The sense of lost that swept over Marlee squeezed her heart painfully when he said he’d killed John. She began sobbing. “What?” she wailed when he started shaking her again.
“The cave! Don’t play stupid with me. I have to get the gold and get the fuck out of here. God damn it! You made me do it! If you’d just shut your stupid, damned mouth and done what I told you I wouldn’t have had to kill him!”
Marlee sobbed harder, too hurt and confused to even try to think past her grief. “John! You killed John? No! No! No!” she screamed at him. “He can’t be dead! He can’t be!”
When he slapped her that time, her knees buckled and she hit the ground. The rocky surface sent shards of pain through her that pierced her grief. She clawed at it, fisting her hands around the debris that had cut them as he grabbed her by her hair and jerked her up again.
“Show me the damned cave where I can get the gold you fucking bitch or I’ll kill you right here, right now!”
Marlee twisted in his hold and flung the debris she picked up straight at his face. He let out a squawk when the sand and tiny rocks peppered his sensitive eyeballs and clawed at them.
Wrenching free of him, Marlee lurched away, trying to scramble toward safety when she couldn’t see and was so dizzy she could barely stay on her feet. When she tripped over a rock and sprawled out, she didn’t try to get up again. She began crawling frantically on her hands and knees, expecting any moment to hear the gun go off again and feel a bullet ripping through her.
Instead, she heard the sound of wings slapping at the air.
They’d come to rescue her, Marlee thought joyfully, so relieved it dragged a hurtful sob from her throat.
The ‘monsters’ she’d fled from had raced to protect her from the real monster. “I’m here!” she whispered.
———
Gabriel was in such a blind panic to find Marlee when he’d taken to the air, all he could think about was finding her, but there was no sign of any vehicle that he could see. He was dizzy from trying to pick up her scent before it dawned on him that he’d felt Marlee’s distress.
Gods! Where is she? Father moon, mother earth, tell me how to find her, damn it! She’s my bond mate! Why can’t I feel her?
He strained to listen, to pick up even the tiniest clue of which direction she might have been taken but all that kept pounding in his mind was that she was gone and she was hurt.
She was with rangers that night at the tavern, Eli responded. John said the man was dressed in a ranger’s uniform! I was focused on her, but one of them was questioning her on and on about the attack. He kept prodding her when she said she didn’t remember what happened.
Gabriel turned and found Eli. Do you think it could be the same one?
He said he could take her to where she was found, Eli responded doubtfully. He thought about it for several moments and abruptly remembered the man had told her that whatever happened to her hadn’t happened there. She’d been dumped there. He asked her about a cave.
Gods! He thinks she knows how to find mother’s lair! He’s a damned treasure hunter like the fucking Spaniards that killed her!
Gabriel didn’t voice the fear that turned his blood to ice then. Even if she’d been in any condition to notice anything about her surroundings, Marlee couldn’t possibly know where the lair was because Eli and John had taken her to their lair.
Worse, that only gave them one possible reason for the man taking Marlee. It didn’t tell them where to look beyond searching the park itself and that was an enormous area to search even with the ability the fly and four of them to look.
Unless the bastard had managed somehow to get an idea of the general location?
We should head toward Mother’s lair, Eli said. If we don’t see any sign of them we could spread out from there.
Gabriel considered where he’d left Marlee that day and decided it was doubtful the man would’ve connected her to their Mother’s lair by proximity. That didn’t mean he hadn’t, though.
I want to search that peak closest to where I left her first.
We don’t even know if that has anything to do with the man that took her! Joshua said angrily.
Why else would he have taken her? Luke pointed out. It sure as fuck wasn’t the people we’ve been hiding her from! They would’ve just shown up and dragged her into a car!
Gabriel dismissed the argument, trying to focus on Marlee again, hoping against hope that he could connect with her mind if he could get close enough to form a connection. Even if she wasn’t calling out her distress to him, he was bonded to her. He’d felt the threat to her, felt her danger. He’d thought it was only his instincts telling him something didn’t fit right, but he hadn’t just considered that things weren’t adding up. He’d felt a sense of fear and distress. He didn’t believe he’d imagined it because he was worried sick about her.
As the dragon flew, they were far closer to the park than it seemed, or was, by the road.
Once they’d finally settled on a direction, it only took a matter of minutes before their goal was in sight. Gabriel searched the area feverishly for any sign of lights, the sound of a vehicle engine coming from area where it shouldn’t.
“Gabe!” Eli said in a strange voice.
Gabriel’s heart seemed to squeeze to a halt. “What is it?”
Eli turned his head as if trying to catch a sound and determine its direction. “I feel my son’s fear.”
A mixture of dismay, disbelief, and resentment flickered through Gabriel. He hadn’t sensed his own son at all, but he dismissed it and focused inwardly, trying to hear what Eli thought he’d heard. He heard it then, the cries of their minds. Their mother was in trouble and they felt the same emotions she did, reflected them.
“He’s taken her to Mother’s mountain!” Gabriel bellowed as soon as he’d tracked the direction, furious with himself that he’d guessed the wrong direction. He cut a sharp turn without waiting for a response from the others, straining to find the currents he needed to gain speed. Eli found the stream they needed first, soaring past him. He angled his body and beat the air to gain altitude to reach the current that was boosting Eli’s efforts.
Joshua reached it at the same moment he felt the sudden lift of the current. They nearly collided. Wheeling away to find the room he needed, Gabriel focused on the mountain he hadn’t set foot on since he was little more than a hatchling. In the distance, he caught sight of t
he lights he’d been searching for and strained harder to reach her, fearful that he was still going to be too late when he at last heard the sound he’d searched so desperately for. Marlee was trying to reach out to him.
He was close enough by the time the bastard dragged her out of the truck to watch helplessly as he beat her and screamed at her and not close to do a damned thing about it. Rage enveloped him. He sucked in a breath to bellow his fury and instead expelled a plume of flame.
It scared the pure fuck out of him. He hadn’t even known he could. He certainly wouldn’t have if he had known when he was so close to Marlee.
He heard a chorus of ‘what the fuck?’ from the others, but the blast of flame had caught the attention of the man. Marlee, he saw, was scrambling away from him on all fours. The man gaped at him in pure horror for several moments and whirled to run, firing blindly behind him until he’d emptied his gun. He threw the gun then.
The fury that had been diverted by the near disaster with his dragon breath rushed back as Gabriel swerved upward to counter his forward race to reach the man, trying to slow himself to land. He nearly skidded in on his ass, but he righted himself and charged after the man. Eli, he saw, had flown around to cut off his attempt to escape. Joshua landed beside him and Luke between the three of them.
The man halted abruptly and grabbed his chest as Eli arched his neck and sucked in a breath. Screaming as he saw the flame boiling from Eli’s throat, he staggered in a tight circle, saw he was surrounded on three sides and raced in the only direction open to him—the edge of the cliff. Gabriel dove toward Marlee, spreading his wings to cover her from the flames as they shot across the small plateau where the ranger had parked his truck and engulfed the vehicle in flames.
The inferno heated every combustible contained within the vehicle to detonation temperatures as if it was a bomb. The truck exploded, sending fragments of the body and engine in every direction. Gabriel felt the flying shrapnel pepper his back. Agonizing pain shot through him from seemingly every part of his body at one time. When his ears finally stopped ringing, he realized that Marlee was struggling against him, babbling incoherently. He shook his head.
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