Pranic, Pregnant, and Petrified (The Montgomery Chronicles Book 3)

by Karen Ranney

  As we hit the outskirts of San Antonio, I wasn’t getting anything. We were inside Loop 1604 and nothing was making my little antennae quiver. I closed my eyes again, wondering if I could send my aura ahead of the SUV, searching out Dan.

  There was no time like the present to try.

  I envisioned the golden light surrounding me, then sent it out as fast as I could, which was pretty damn fast considering Paul wasn’t exactly obeying the speed limit. I couldn’t help but wonder if Dan’s organization had special dispensation or if the black SUVs were just ignored. I never once saw a patrol car and that was unusual.

  The aura sprang back to me when I called it, like a border collie puppy aiming to please. It hadn’t caught anything, not a vibration, a feeling, or a hint of Dan.

  “Where to?” Paul asked.

  “Where’s the closest MEDOC lab?” I asked, referring to the company Maddock owned.

  “Near Stone Oak.”

  “Let’s go there.”

  He nodded, but I caught the twitch of his lip.

  Paul didn’t have any faith in my ability to find Dan. I couldn’t blame him. At the moment, I didn’t have any faith either.

  I sent my aura out again, but just like the last time, I didn’t feel anything.

  Was my ability to find Dan being blocked in some way?

  Charlie stuck his head between the seats and nosed me on the arm.

  Paul glanced at him and smiled. “He wants to be up front where all the action is.”

  Some action.

  Charlie rolled his eyes, then looked back to where the second SUV was following us. The SUV with the witches. The SUV with Nonnie and Janet chanting a spell.

  What the hell?

  Were they preventing me from finding Dan? Could Charlie/Opie somehow sense that? Or had my imagination flipped into overtime and was making everything more sinister than it was?

  “Could you keep your eyes on the road, please?” I asked, then dug into my bra for my phone. It was nice and warm.

  I dialed Nonnie’s number, half expecting her not to answer. When she did, I let out the breath I was holding.

  “Nonnie, whatever spell you two are using is screwing up my reception.”

  “It’s a simple location spell, Marcie.”

  “I don’t care what it is. Please stop. And tell Janet I want my stuff back.”

  I hung up after saying thank you and goodbye. I couldn’t hang up on my grandmother without the niceties.

  I sat back against the seat, sent out my aura on another Olly, olly in come free journey. My stomach clenched when we neared the Stone Oak area, but I lost the sensation when we pulled into the parking lot of one of the MEDOC labs.

  I wanted to say that he wasn’t there, but I wasn’t sure I was right. I’d been through a lot in the last two days. The event tonight in the sparring room was enough to confuse my senses for weeks. Maybe I couldn’t feel Dan anymore. Maybe I hadn’t seen him.

  Yes, damn it, I had.

  “Stay here,” Paul said, leaving the car. Felipe followed him, leaving Charlie and I alone.

  “Studs,” Opie said. “They’re studly.”

  I looked back at her. “Are you kidding? Your mind’s on sex?”

  “Your mind would be on sex if you were trapped inside a dog who humps everything in sight.”

  I stared at Charlie. “He doesn’t.”

  “He does. When he doesn’t, he thinks about it.”

  I just shook my head and turned to face the windshield.

  The SUV with Nonnie and Janet inside pulled up next to us in the nearly empty parking lot. The only other car was a red Ford, model unknown. I’m not good at cars, but I don’t think it mattered right at the moment.

  William rolled down the window, which meant I did the same.

  “Where did they go?”

  “On a reconnoitering mission,” I said.

  “Do you think Dan’s here?” he asked, staring at the one story brick building.

  “No, I don’t.”

  He looked like he wanted to ask: then why the hell are we here, but didn’t. Thankfully, I couldn’t see through the tinted windows to the back of the car. I didn’t know if Nonnie and Janet were glaring at me or not. I assumed they were, so I rolled my window back up.

  Just then, something pinged. It was the strangest sensation, like a sonobuoy making a connection.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Opie.

  “Hear what?”

  Maybe I hadn’t heard anything. Maybe I’d felt it, instead. I closed my eyes, put my hands over my ears, and concentrated. It wasn’t a ping. It was a scream, not one of pain as much as rage.

  Every sense I had was abruptly on alert.

  I sat up, staring at the building in front of us.

  “Is he in there?” Opie asked, picking up on my body language.

  “No. But I think I know where he is.”

  I was about to leave the car when I saw Paul’s hulking shadow. He and Felipe were creeping around the side of the building.

  I reached over and hit the horn. At another time, I would think of how they jumped and laughed. Right now, however, I just wanted them to get in the car.

  A minute later, Paul jerked open the car door so hard I expected it to be pulled off the hinges. He greeted me with a colorful Anglo-Saxon word I’ve used on occasion. I let him vent for about ten seconds before I interrupted him.

  “I know where Dan is. I think I know,” I amended. “MEDOC has a warehouse on Blanco,” I said. “He’s there.”

  “A warehouse? Are you sure?”

  “About where it is? No. I’ve never been there.”

  I remembered reading about the warehouse opening when I was doing research on Maddock. The warehouse was one of those completely automated ones where they employed robotics instead of people. The mayor and a few other dignitaries had been present for the ground breaking. I still recalled the picture with all of them - taken at night, naturally - with Maddock smiling proudly and the others looking enraptured to be in his presence.

  Paul did some checking on his phone, got the address and left the car to talk to William. I could just imagine the words he was using. He returned two minutes later, got behind the wheel and pulled out of the parking lot.

  The pinging got louder. I was thinking of it as pinging because I couldn’t bear to hear Dan scream. I hadn’t mentioned the screaming to Paul and I wasn’t going to now. The only thing I did say as we crossed 1604 again was that we needed to hurry.

  He glanced over at me.

  “Really,” I said.

  Fear was a blanket coming down over me. I was beginning to smother under it. I’d never been afraid like this. Maddock had terrorized me, but I’d always had hope. I’d always believed I could win. What I was feeling now was different. Hope had disappeared along with any positive thinking. I knew that if we failed, the ramifications would be long lasting. No, not long lasting.

  I’d feel them forever.

  Chapter Thirty

  Holy Crap, You're A Werewolf!

  The closer we came to the warehouse, the stronger I felt the connection. I could feel Dan’s breathing as if he were beside me. His pain, pushed down and not vocalized was in the lower octaves. They’d hurt him, but they’d also pissed him off, and his rage was a high C.

  I didn’t hear it as a sound as much as a vibration of that sound. His power touched me, making me wonder why they didn’t feel it. Why it hadn’t shattered them.

  The warehouse was one story, with six bays in the rear and an office in the front. Like the lab, there weren’t any lights, but Maddock and his fellow vampires didn’t need any. They functioned quite well in the dark, like mutant cats.

  Paul parked the car on the edge of the parking lot, close to a veterinarian clinic. The second SUV pulled in alongside. I didn’t lose any time leaving the car. Charlie bounded to the front seat and followed me.

  Paul grabbed my arm. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What the hell are you going to do?”

>   “Save him,” I said.

  “We need a plan.”

  “My plan is to save him.”

  “You can’t just go in there.”

  I stared up at him, annoyed and too damn close to tears to want to argue the point.

  “We don’t have time, Paul. Trust me on this.”

  I jerked free of his grip and started running toward the building. I didn’t hit the office, but rounded the corner to the door beside the first of the bays. They’d just moved Dan to the third bay.

  A cloud moved over the stars, blanketing them from sight. Concentric rings formed in the air, each shaded a little differently. I immediately felt the power, knew that what I saw wasn’t really there, that it was merely an allegory for what was happening inside the building. The air vibrated with the rings moving outward from the warehouse. Another image I wasn’t sure anyone else could see.

  “What the hell?” Paul said from a few feet behind me.

  I guess I wasn’t the only one who could see and feel the rings of air. They were almost like an atomic explosion, the waves of air blasting a few seconds later.

  Charlie let out a howl. I’d heard him bark, but never that sound.

  Paul immediately joined in, followed by Felipe.

  Maybe I was a little slow on the uptake, but I didn’t expect the tearing of shirts and trousers or both men to fall to their hands and knees.

  Nonnie and Janet were rounding the building as the two men’s backs arched, their hands and feet elongating and growing claws. Their noses became snouts, their ears pointy and moving to the tops of their heads. Felipe’s skin was filled with silver fur while Paul’s was as black as the night surrounding us.

  “Holy crap, you’re a werewolf!” I said.

  In all the books I’ve read, mainly about female werewolves, bras are left hanging around their necks after they transformed. Or they had some decorum and kept their panties on. Um, not with male werewolves. Evidently, the act of transformation also brings about prurient thoughts, because both Paul and Felipe were, shall we say, excited.

  “Good grief,” Nonnie said, staring at Paul. “What a boner.”

  I turned to my grandmother, open mouthed, as Charlie began to make a choking noise. I knew it was canine laughter, just as I knew that both Charlie, the dog and Opie, the resident ghost, were amused.

  “Get a grip,” I said, striding to the door.

  We had more important things to do than admire a man’s/werewolf’s attributes. The door was locked, but it didn’t matter, because Paul the werewolf, erect penis and all, just pulled it off its hinges.

  I rushed in - where angels feared to tread - and headed for the area where I felt Dan. A door in the wall was my target and just like before, Paul merely pulled the door off its hinges. Handy to have a werewolf around when you needed him.

  I stood in the doorway, my aura in full glowy mode when I saw him. Dan had ripped off the leather restraints on the chair and was standing there in a nimbus of yellow light. Who knew a wizard could glow? He was also roaring, the same sound I’d expect from an aggrieved lion.

  His eyes were bright green, beautiful and scary. I was more impressed than frightened. He had to be the most glorious creature I’d ever seen, angry and capable of handling any number of vampires.

  Maddock stood facing him.

  I knew Maddock. He wouldn’t have come here alone, not with just one Fledgling.

  Um, I hate being right.

  The far door opened and a dozen white faced children of the night flooded into the room. One of them was Meng, the guy who’d betrayed me.

  “Hello, Marcie.”

  I turned, hearing that voice and knowing who it was before I saw her.

  She was dressed in black. Very atmospheric, plus my mother had always looked good in black, kind of like a menopausal Snow White. Not that she looked menopausal, either.

  I would have liked to tell her she was going to be a grandmother just to see her blanch, but I don’t think her skin could have gotten any whiter. Her lips were blood red, though, and I knew she’d been the one to bite Dan. Not simply because she could, but a way to slap me in the face.

  My mother had thrown in with the vampires, specifically Maddock.

  Had she gone after him or had he sent her feelers?

  Now was a sucky time to be feeling vulnerable and childlike. There wasn't a shred of maternal love in my mother's eyes, not one gleam of motherly affection. I wasn’t exactly surprised, but I was sad. I knew this encounter wasn’t going to end well. She was either going to be hurt or I was. At the end of it, she was going to be hauled off to jail.

  “It’s my mother,” I said to Opie.

  Charlie growled. I couldn’t blame him/her. Opie had a right to be pissed. My mother had killed her. I had a right to be angry because she was my mother and had tried to kill me.

  What sort of mother does something like that?

  Not the mother of the year kind. Did Child Protective Services have a rogues’ gallery of really bad mothers? Pictures of women in the last stages of drug abuse, prostitution, or alcoholism? Demi hadn’t had any of those problems. She just didn’t care. Shouldn’t there be a classification of apathy?

  My mother had liked Bill, but then my mother liked men. Any man was better than any woman in my mother’s estimation. We once had a block party and I remember, even as a little girl, watching my mother interact with other people. She dismissed the women almost with a wave of her hand, smiling and flirting with the men so outrageously she was almost a parody of herself. More than one wife frowned at her, but it never made any impression on Demi. She was a social butterfly, batting her eyelashes like Scarlet O’Hara in an attempt to bring every man under her control.

  Most of them were instantly charmed. The few who weren’t she dismissed as either being gay or beneath her contempt. More than once she’d gone after someone who initially spurned her, charming him until he was under her spell. The minute it happened, she dropped him. The ultimate aim wasn’t to acquire his affection as much as it was to prove that she could.

  I knew, in a way that wasn't precognitive as it was based on years of observational experience, that my mother had been intimate with Maddock.

  I wonder how Maddock stacked up in the lover department? I seriously needed to take a bath after asking myself that question. Or disinfect myself with bleach. I’ll bet Maddock didn’t need to give Demi Spanish fly or whatever he’d given me.

  She took another step toward me.

  Her eyes didn’t look quite right, having a glassy sheen. Her lips were formed in an odd smile, one I’d seen her practice in the mirror. A half-smile guaranteed to eliminate those brackets on either side of her mouth. But what stopped me in my tracks was the wound on the side of her neck, signs of where she’d been bitten.

  Had it been consensual? Had she wanted to be made a vampire? Or had Maddock just done what he had to my mother as a form of revenge?

  I couldn’t help but think she’d be happy as a vampire.

  One of the Fledgings crept closer to Dan.

  Leave him alone!

  My voice thundered through the space, so loud that the walls reverberated. Several people, creatures, and vampires, turned to look at me, their eyes wide.

  Leave him alone!

  One by one, the vampires crept closer to Maddock and away from me. Big, bad Maddock was not going to save them.

  “Daughter.”

  Nonnie stood in the doorway. One hand reached out and flipped on the light switch. All of us blinked for a minute or two.

  We formed a strange tableau. Dan was facing Maddock while I didn’t let my mother out of my sight. The two werewolves stood on all four legs just inside the door. Nonnie was in the doorway with Janet behind her.

  I didn’t know who was responsible for the power I felt all around me, but I thought it was mostly Dan with a little from my grandmother.

  Nonnie wasn’t happy at the moment.

  “So, you finally gave in,” she said, addressing
Demi.

  My mother had a thing for vampires all her life, but she’d handled the addiction in the last several years by attending an Al-Anon group specifically for vampire lovers.

  Charlie growled when my mother took another step toward me. I rested my hand on his head, uncertain if I could stop him if he suddenly lunged.

  Silence stretched between my mother and me, but then we’ve never been conversationalists. Most of our talks in the last few years had consisted of my listening to her complaints about the world. I’d never volunteered anything about my own life simply because it would’ve been a wasted effort.

  Why the hell didn’t revelations come at quiet times? Why didn’t you suddenly understand something in the dead of night, when you were trying to fall asleep? Or when you were contemplating your navel in the bathtub? Why did you suddenly realize things in the middle of a crisis (and this was definitely in the middle of a crisis)?

  I realized I didn’t hate my mother in that second. I didn’t grieve for the loss of her affection. I was no longer the little girl who wanted her mommy to love her. I didn’t feel anything for her. Not one ounce of any kind of discernible emotion.

  It was like this giant vice had been unscrewed and dropped from around my chest. The sudden freedom was euphoric.

  Charlie growled again.

  My mother glanced behind me and smiled. I knew better than to look over my shoulder. If I did she would pounce. An old gambit I’d learned from cartoons.

  Besides, I already knew who was there. Maddock had moved in the last few seconds. He’d been too fast to see, but my Pranic senses knew where he was.

  “Marcie, I knew you would come.”

  I didn’t turn to face Maddock because that would have left my mother at my back.

  “That’s why you grabbed Dan,” I said. “He was bait.”

  “He didn’t have to be involved, Marcie, if you’d only shown a little sense.”

  “What, like falling into your arms? Are you nuts?”

  I sidled a few feet toward Dan and only then glanced at the master vampire.

  He was fully fanged. I wondered why he had never gotten his fangs gold tipped. Some of the older vampires had done that, a gilding of the lily that made them look like pimps. Not a bad description, considering how they treated Fledgings.