“I figured you’d say that.” Brandon made a motion with his hand, and the sodden rag flopped onto Scott’s face again. The sound of another water jug being opened rang out, but before a drop hit the cloth over his face, a woman’s voice broke across the room like the harsh snap of a whip.
“That’s enough, Brandon.” There was a beat, then Scott’s chair swung back down until all four legs rested on the floor, and someone yanked the rag off his face.
Scott stared at the red-dressed woman from Jackson Square. She stood about six feet away from him, one hip cocked, her head tilted to the side so her black hair tumbled down in an attractive manner. Her dark eyes—they looked as black as her hair—studied him with a mixture of curiosity and excitement, and he fought the urge to squirm under her scrutiny.
“What’s his name?” the woman asked, directing her question at Brandon, though she never took her eyes off Scott.
“Scott Hunter,” Brandon replied. He sounded curiously stiff.
“Hunter,” the woman said, drawing his surname out. “How appropriate.” She looked him over from head to toe and clucked disapprovingly. “Did you have to hurt him so badly?”
“He won’t tell us where the Witnesses are,” Brandon said.
“I told you he wouldn’t,” the woman replied. “He is one of the Watchers, after all. Their sole life missions are to protect the Witnesses, even if it means their own deaths.” She walked forward, stopping in front of Scott and sliding down until she was at eye level with him. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Hunter?”
“I have no idea who you are or what the hell you’re talking about, woman,” Scott said, “but if you think I’m telling you anything about where my partner is, you can forget it. I’d rather die.”
The woman studied him for a moment longer, looking him right in the eyes. Then she stood. “I can see that, Mr. Hunter. Loyal to the bitter end. Unfortunately for you, the bitter end won’t be coming for years and years and years.” She gently nudged his right ankle with the toe of her high heel, and a stab of pain raced up his leg like fire, forcing a yelp out of him despite his best attempts to hold it back. “It won’t be long now,” she said to Brandon. “Go tell Chambers he’ll have a new recruit soon.” As she left the basement, climbing the stairs with a swish that could only be described as seductive, she added, “And no more beating him. He won’t be any use to us if he’s dead.”
“What the hell is she talking about?” Scott asked the moment the door at the top of the stairs thudded shut.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough.” Brandon clapped his hand on his right shoulder, hard, which jolted his broken arm again. “But I’ll be nice and give you a hint, because I’m willing to bet that Zachariah and Ashton haven’t bothered to teach you a damn thing about werewolves yet.” He leaned down, his mouth almost touching Scott’s ear, and murmured, “Think about everything movies and books say about werewolves. Then think about what they say happens when a person gets bitten by one.” He banged his hand on Scott’s shoulder one more time then motioned to the two men who’d entered with him. They left the basement without another word or look at Scott, leaving him to ponder what the hell Brandon had meant.
He shifted in his chair again, trying to find slack to break free. As he pulled his left arm taut against the zip-tie around his wrist, a thought seeped into his brain. He stopped struggling, his eyes widening as much as they could despite their injuries, as he realized what was going to happen.
Everything he’d ever read or seen about werewolves always said the same thing: if you were bitten by one, you would become one.
“Oh fuck,” Scott breathed.
His wounded, bitten ankle throbbed in response.
Ashton couldn’t describe the horror he felt on his realization that he stood less than a foot away from a werewolf. A tremor of terror vibrated through him as he scrambled to get away from the man in front of him, fumbling for the pistol he’d jammed down below the waistband of his jeans. Zachariah was moving forward, smoothly stepping between him and Jax, grabbing Riley and shoving her behind him. He took up a protective stance, shoulders hunched, back slightly arched, hands curved into claws, baring fangs that, for the most part, he worked hard to keep hidden. He looked for all the world like an extremely angry cat about to pounce on its enemy. Riley, for her part, just looked angry; her gold eyes were narrowed, and her palms had begun glowing with the barest of white light. Given time, it would probably build into something as bright as the sun.
But it didn’t seem that any of their actions were necessary. Jax didn’t make any threatening moves; he simply stood there, waiting for their initial panic to subside, his arms limp. It was clear Jax meant none of them any harm, but despite that, Ashton had trouble tamping down the initial alarm he’d felt. His shoulder throbbed, centered around his right collarbone, a reminder of an injury he’d sustained three years before at the claws of a werewolf. Old wounds were hard to forget.
“What do you want?” Ashton asked, watching Jax’s body language carefully for any change in his mannerisms.
“I’m not here to hurt any of you,” he said. “I was serious when I said I wanted to help.”
He looked so sincere that Ashton, who was usually good at reading people, gently touched the back of Zachariah’s neck, signaling for him to back down. Zachariah’s shoulders slowly relaxed, his back straightening from its hunch, his arms falling to his sides. He didn’t take his eyes off Jax, though, waiting on the man to make a wrong move.
Jax held his hands out to his sides, demonstrating to them that he was unarmed. “I was turned two weeks ago,” he said. “Not willingly, either. I had a run in with a werewolf on Canal, and it took a chunk out of my leg. For some reason, they always go for the legs when they’re trying to turn somebody.” He paused, like he was stewing over the comment, then continued. “I want—no, I need—to find the Alpha wolf. The legends say that if you kill the Alpha wolf, all the werewolves that descend from his line will turn back human. I need to know if it’s true. I need to kill him.”
“What does your need to kill the Alpha wolf have to do with your willingness to help us?” Zachariah asked.
“Because if I’m not mistaken, I believe the people who took your friend are the same people who are harboring the Alpha,” Jax explained. “And if that’s the case, we’d be working in parallel with each other to achieve the same ends. We might as well work together. I help you and you help me. Considering it’ll wipe out a pretty decent number of werewolves in one shot, it might even make your ongoing job a hell of a lot easier.”
Ashton finally freed the pistol from his pants, but he didn’t point it at the man. Instead, he paced to a nearby pew, sat down on it, and set the weapon beside him out of Jax’s reach. He scrubbed a hand over his beard, shaking his head and trying to decide on a course of action. His shoulder had a dull, arthritic ache throbbing through it, distracting him, and his bad leg ached something fierce. He resisted the urge to massage his hip and instead looked at Jax, gauging the man’s seriousness. To say it qualified as “deadly” seriousness was an understatement.
“Riley? Zach?” Ashton prompted, wanting to know their opinions. Especially Riley’s. She was, after all, the one who’d called Jax for help in the first place. She’d relaxed, the glow in her eyes and hands vanishing, and she leaned against a pew alongside her, her arms folded over her chest.
“We need help, Ashton,” she said. “We’ve got to get Scott back, no matter what. I won’t tolerate anything less. And we don’t have enough manpower to do it alone.”
Zachariah stared at Jax for a moment then asked, “What can you offer us?”
“Just me,” Jax said. “The Network is only a loose collective. We pass information along the line, but that’s it. The general rule is not to bother each other, because all of us just want to be left alone.”
“If he’s a werewolf, having one of him is like having ten men,” Ashton pointed out.
“True,” Zachariah acknowledged
. He strode to Ashton casually, leaned over the pew in front of him, and picked up the pistol. Then he suddenly turned and pointed the weapon right at Jax’s forehead. Riley gasped and took a step forward, but Ashton lurched from his seat and stopped her before she could interfere. He recognized the look in Zachariah’s eyes and the set of his jaw; he was making a point and had no immediate plans to hurt Jax.
“Don’t,” Ashton hissed, keeping a firm grip on Riley’s arm.
“Let me lay out something that you need to be aware of before we consider officially embarking on anything resembling a partnership,” Zachariah said. His arm was fully extended and unwavering, his body instinctively turned at an angle to minimize the target he’d make if someone shot at him from head on. “There are two people here with me. One of them is my lover. The other is my sister. If anything happens to either of them because of any direct action or inaction on your part, I swear to everything holy that you’ll regret the day you were born.”
“Fair enough,” Jax said.
“So what’s the plan?” Ashton asked, letting go of Riley’s arm and stepping back.
“Well, first we need to figure out where Scott’s been taken,” she began. Jax interrupted before she could go further.
“That’s not a problem,” he said. “I know exactly where they are.”
The reaction from the three of them was electrifying. Ashton straightened like someone had jabbed him in the back with a cattle prod, his eye widening, and beside him, Riley choked out, “What? Where?”
“An abandoned house in one of the wards decimated by Katrina,” he explained. “One of the women in the Network got the information to me ten minutes after she saw them go in. They were dragging a man with them who had a black bag over his head. That was probably your partner, Miss Walker.”
The look that settled over Riley’s face could have curdled milk. Her hands curled into fists, and her face settled into a clear expression of anger. “Did he look hurt?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “My contact didn’t say, but I think if he had been significantly injured, it’d have been mentioned.” He hesitated then added, “Also, Brandon Hall is in town.”
“That son of a bitch, I’m going to kill him!” Riley exploded.
“Riley, you’re in a church,” Zachariah warned, taking the words out of Ashton’s mouth.
“I don’t care!” Riley said, and there was desperation in her voice that made her words sound utterly haunting. “They have Scott, and God only knows what they’re doing to him. We have to get him back.”
“We’ve established that already,” Ashton said. He grasped her arm again, gently. “You need to calm down and focus. If you keep letting your emotions lead you, you’re going to be useless.” He turned his attention to Jax. “Take us there,” he ordered. “We need to see the house so we can plan how to get in and rescue Scott.”
Jax nodded. “I have my car parked outside. You guys follow me in yours. I’ll get you close to the house.”
To say that Riley felt absolutely terrified about the condition she’d find Scott in once they assessed their options, made a plan, and executed said plan was an understatement. As Zachariah followed Jax’s car from the church to the wards hardest hit by Katrina, she massaged her flat stomach, wishing for some antacids. Her stomach churned something awful, and it threatened to make her ill. She slouched against the backseat, rubbed her temples with the heels of her hands, and stared at Zachariah and Ashton as they conversed quietly in the front seat.
She felt envious over the closeness between the two. She’d never had anything quite like that, a relationship so deep that it transcended everything else. Oh, she’d come close once with her former partner, Kevin Anderson, and sometimes she wondered if they’d have become so obviously inseparable if he hadn’t been killed in the line of duty. But even then, she didn’t think it was possible. There was something in the way Zachariah and Ashton looked at each other that suggested something deeper, something soul deep, something that said, “I’ll lay everything down for you without you ever having to ask.”
“How long have you two been…dating?” Riley asked, desperately seeking something to take her mind off all the ways Brandon could have hurt Scott.
“Almost three years,” Zachariah replied. He glanced at her in the rearview mirror and smiled. “We tried to kill each other when we first met.”
“Oh, that sounds like an interesting story,” she said.
“It is,” he agreed. “I’ll have to tell it to you sometime.” He paused, looking from the windshield to her and then Ashton and back before asking, “Did something happen between you and Scott while you two were away? You’re acting differently toward him. I thought you didn’t like him.”
“Things change,” she said. “Especially when you spend almost a month dealing with the same person day in and day out.”
“Yeah, but things have changed pretty drastically for you two,” Zachariah pressed.
“No, they haven’t,” she protested.
“Did you two have sex or something?” he persisted. Riley’s jaw dropped.
“Zach!” Ashton exclaimed. “Seriously, that’s enough.”
“What?” he said. “She’s my sister. It’s my job to grill her about the guys she’s seeing.”
“No, it’s not,” Riley retorted. “It’s like I told our father: you don’t get to take a sudden interest in the intimate details of my life just because you came into it and found out we’re related.”
There was silence in the car for a long moment. Jax steered them deeper into the rougher areas of New Orleans, taking a winding path that Riley wasn’t sure she’d be able to replicate if she had to get out of there quickly. The road itself was in bad shape, the potholes sometimes as big as basketballs where floodwaters had eaten away at the pavement, and the gutters were choked with trash and other debris. Dilapidated houses still stood, notices posted to their doors indicating they’d been condemned, spray-painted symbols to rescuers from 2005 still adorning the walls. Riley was honestly appalled by the condition of the ward around her. Had so little attention been paid to the poorer areas of town that the city couldn’t be bothered to come in and clean up the place so it was livable again?
She blinked out of her ponderings of their surroundings and realized the SUV was slowing. Jax had pulled to the side of the street, and Zachariah followed his lead. Both cars cut their headlights off at the same time, and a dark figure slid from Jax’s car and jogged to theirs. He opened the back door and slid in beside her.
“Drive,” he said. “Keep it slow and steady. It’s two blocks up on the right.”
Zachariah obeyed, and as they approached the house, jolting over potholes on the way, Riley leaned forward to get a look at the building her partner was presumably being held prisoner in. It was a plain house, ugly in its dilapidation, but to her surprise, there were lights on inside.
“Generator,” Jax told her, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “I can hear it running.”
“We’ll have to take that out when we go in,” Zachariah murmured.
Riley clenched her fists, wanting desperately to punch something as hard as she could. Instead, she forced her hands to relax, at least enough to dig her nails into her jeans, and put her energy into studying the house, careful to note everything she thought might be important and everything that didn’t appear to be. She didn’t know what she’d need to know for her rescue mission.
There was a black van—how cliché—parked at the side of the house, and in the cracked, battered driveway were two SUVs that were obviously rentals. Riley wondered which one was Brandon’s. She wanted to jab a knife in his tires so he wouldn’t be able to run when she faced off with him this time. But there was no way the men in the car would think about letting her out of the vehicle, not until they were ready to move.
“Everybody get a good look,” Ashton instructed. “Take in as much as you can. We shouldn’t risk a second pass by the house, so this will be our only
shot to gather intelligence.”
“Where would Scott most likely be in there?” she asked.
“Either the basement—if it has one—or upstairs,” Jax said quietly. “I’m personally hedging my bets on the basement.”
“Maybe we should split up once we get inside,” Riley suggested. “Two of us go up and two down?”
“The only problem with that is I have trouble with stairs,” Ashton said.
“Up or down?” Jax asked.
“Both,” Ashton and Zachariah said in unison, eliciting a smile from Riley despite her dark mood.
“My hip is shot,” Ashton explained to Jax. “I got mauled by an alpha vampire a couple of years ago.”
“And here I was guessing werewolf,” Jax said. “How did you ever make it out of that alive?”
“The good fortune of having this guy,” he jabbed his thumb at Zachariah, “with me at the time. He beheaded the vampire with a silver-laced machete.”
Jax gave Zachariah a look that suggested he was impressed. “I guess you’re tougher than you look.”
“Excuse me?”
“Okay, guys, cut that shit out,” Riley interjected, “preferably before it turns into a dick-measuring competition.” No one responded, save for a snort of muffled laughter from Ashton. “We need a legit plan to storm the fortress. I need to get Scott out.”
“We’ve established that already,” Ashton said.
“I think I might have something of a plan,” Jax spoke up.
Twelve
Angelique listened to the water running in the shower as she stared at the television, flipping through channels in search of news on a certain house that had exploded the night before. She’d only been out of the hotel room once to go to the store for food, clothes, and basic healthcare supplies for her and Damon. Hence why he’d been in the shower for the past half hour, so long that Angelique worried he’d use up all the hot water before she got the chance to take a shower of her own.
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