She took the first turn jumping off the opposite wall, in a par core move she knew well. Slade was fast though and he caught her before she made the next turn. “What are you doing? You’re acting crazy.”
“I know what I’m doing. Let me go.”
Slade slapped her. “That knock some sense into you?” He asked holding his hand up as a warning that she’d get another if she didn’t bend to his will.
“Don’t touch me,” Nora growled leaning against the wall as she lifted both her feet and shoved him away from her.
Slade fisted his hand, his eyes widened as he watched Nora reach for her knife. He halted holding his hands up. “Okay, I’m sorry. You’re acting crazy, you know that?”
The door around the corner flew open and Doogle came out. “What is all this racket? I’m trying to save the human race for crying out loud.”
Nora recognized him from one of the rallies she attended a year back. He’d aged a lot since that time. His head of brown hair turned white, and the bags under his eyes were large and bluish purple. The whites of his eyes were yellowing like his teeth.
Doogle was one of the only two remaining HRAF founding members, the other six passed away in the line of duty.
“You,” he said pointing a gloved finger at Nora. It was outfitted with jagged silver claws. “You fed us the information on this shifter pack. Yes?”
“Yes, sir,” Nora answered.
He nodded. “Maybe you talk to her? See if she trusts you, knows you.”
Angeline might recognize Nora if she was at the waterfall that day when Nora was there with Ian, otherwise Angeline wouldn’t know her and Nora would have no sway when it came to trying to get Angeline to cooperate.
Only Nora wanted her to cooperate in getting herself out not giving up information to the HRAF. These people of the HRAF were confused like she was. They just needed a chance to understand the that the shifters were not all bad. Ian wasn’t bad. The way the pack reacted when they learned Angeline was captured told Nora that she wasn’t bad either.
Will she listen to me?
“I’d have a much better chance at getting the shifter to talk, sir. Nora, she’s soft when it comes to that sort of thing.”
“We don’t need to hurt her to get her to speak,” Nora said glaring at Slade for immediately jumping to torture.
Doogle’s yellow toothed smile as he gestured for Nora to go inside the interrogation room was haunting. Whatever happened to Doogle over the past year it was clearly too much for him.
Nora felt Slade’s anger rolling off of him like a shadow cutting out the light on the lighthouse. She knew she needed to placate him or he would be poisoning her name to Doogle the entire time she was with Nora.
“Do you mind if I go first, Slade?” Nora asked him knowing he would feel powerful when she asked for his permission.
Slade’s cold glare softened a bit and he gave her a jerky nod of his head. “Shouldn’t take long before you realize I was right.”
Nora walked through the open door Doogle held for her. The door closed behind her and she heard the lock tumble into place. She’d seen rooms like this one before. Torturing shifters for answers was a large part of how the HRAF got their information. The room had an examining table where the subject was strapped down, as Angeline was.
Her white blond hair was long, her skin so fair, especially with the fresh blood dripping from the silver headband that ran across her forehead and pressed into her temples. She looked like an angel being tortured, no wonder her parents picked the name they did.
Angeline looked at Nora as if she knew her, as if she expected her. “Nora,” she said her lips trembling. “You’re here too?”
Nora approached the table.
“She won’t get any useful information out of her,” Slade said to Doogle. The two of them and a few others were standing on the other side of the wall that was like a chain link fence, only it was made of steel and painted with melted silver to keep the wolves and other shifters from tearing it down.
“Be silent or I will cut out your tongue,” Doogle said to Slade. “We communicate through the code or not at all in here.”
Nora did not look their way she continued forward with her eyes on Angeline. Her stomach was largely rounded on her small frame. It was clear she was with child and this made things worse for her. No doubt the next move Doogle would make would be to threaten the baby if he hadn’t already.
“I know you’re afraid,” Nora began as she stopped next to the table. “I am too. You know that already though, right? You can hear my heart pounding in my chest. The HRAF won’t hurt you if you help them.”
The sudden tapping on the other side of the steel and silver wall where the group watching stood was clearly audible to Nora. Someone was pointing out through the code that Nora had not identified herself as HRAF and spoke as though she were separate.
“I can’t call upon any vision when I’m in this much pain. Can you take this thing off my head?”
Tapping code sounded in a clear command not to remove the head gear.
Nora’s mind was racing. They were locked inside the room and neither would be able to break out if the HRAF believed she was betraying them. The door needed to be open before she could free Angeline.
“Tell me what you know about the HRAF from your visions. If what you say is enough for them I will take off the band.”
Angeline turned her head as far as she could pressing her face against the table, trying to move the band. “I can’t think with this thing on.”
“Try,” Nora told Angeline in a no-nonsense tone.
Think Nora. How am I gonna get her out of here?
“The man you think you care for, Slade,” Angeline said drawing Nora’s attention from her thoughts. “You think you hate him for his lack of care for you, but you still care. He will be the one to kill you.”
Slade tapped out, I never hurt you. Through the code, they used that was like Morris code only different and faster.
“Tell me something about HRAF,” Nora repeated. “I know you’re in pain and I want to help you.”
Angeline growled as the silver continued to burn into her temples, the blood flow increasing. “What good is a human rights organization that kill humans? The poisonous gas that emptied Texas, it killed twice the number of humans than it did shifters. HRAF is nothing but a name for people scared of shifters.”
Nora stiffened at this. They were told that Texas was cleared of all the humans before the poison bomb was dropped. Now that she found herself in love with a shifter it was devastating to Nora and shameful that she’d ever been a member of such a group that would kill like the HRAF does.
Angeline moved her lips without making any noise. It took a second before Nora could make sense of what she was mouthing.
They’re coming.
Nora removed the headband.
“Put that back,” Doogle said aloud not bothering with the code.
Nora looked over at him leaning in toward Angeline as she did to remove the IV they had on her wrist. They’d hit the kill button and inject her with a mixture of metal breakdown in liquid form including silver which would kill Angeline and her unborn child immediately.
Angeline didn’t make a sound when Nora pulled out the IV, even though she was sure it must have hurt since she had to pull it out without looking at it or making any big movements that would cause them to notice that Nora had just removed their kill switch.
“Put it back on her head. She’s dangerous. She’ll tear your head off if she gets the chance, you foolish girl,” Doogle yelled.
“I told you, Doogle,” Angeline said raising her head up off the table to look at him. “You die today. Make your peace.”
Time is out. Any second the alarm will sound warning that the pack is coming. Nora loosens the straps on Angeline’s wrists enough that she can pull them free.
“Traitor,” Slade bellowed with such disbelief that Nora felt the sting that Angeline warned her about. There wa
s still a part of her that cared for the young man that pulled her into that wagon.
“We were wrong about them, Slade. They aren’t all killing machines. I mean look at us. We have become the killers, Slade.”
He wiped at his face with the back of his hand, his mouth bowing in a deep frown as he shook his head, the black hate symbols tattooed on his scalp stretched and wrinkled as he fought to control his emotions.
Doogle slammed his hand down on the button that would trigger Angeline to be poisoned. The alarm sounded once and then silenced leaving lights flashing like a strobe as silent warning that the perimeter was breached.
Nora heard Angeline hit the table and turned back toward her with disbelief.
No! I pulled it out. I pulled it out!
Following the IV lines, Nora spotted the split and followed it with her eyes leading to Angeline’s other wrist.
They put in two lines?
Nora reached over Angeline and yanked the other line throwing both lines to the floor. “Angeline?” She grabbed her shoulders shaking her. “Wake up, dammit. Angeline,” Nora screamed her name.
Angeline didn’t move.
“Cut the baby out,” Doogle’s voice was to her immediate right. “It might have the same visionary skill. We can use it.”
Nora put one hand on the table. Leaping up, her legs wrapped around Doogle’s neck. His yellowed whites widened as he reached up to pull her legs away but he wasn’t fast enough. Nora executed the sharp twist breaking his neck as she took him to the floor.
The hurried knocking repeated growing louder as the message was passed throughout the base.
Kill Nora Prush. Kill Nora Prush. Kill Nora Prush.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ANGER.
He’d let his anger speak instead of his heart. What if it was the last thing he ever got to say to her? Somehow as the drumming feet of the pack racing together all around him on Nora’s trail clarified everything down to its simplest form.
I am mad and hurt but more than that, I love her. I can forgive her anything. Anything at all.
The distant single beep let the pack know they were spotted by the activist faction. Nora was telling the truth about giving her time to get there before they set off the alarm. That meant her heart truly had changed, didn’t it?
Killian and Ian were pushing so hard that they took the lead passing Darian and Cora.
Ian knew Nora’s scent best and it was beginning to fade. That damn plant that soaked up scent was planted all along this section of forest. No doubt this was on purpose. Nora’s scent was within every open space where the plant didn’t touch, she’d purposefully left them the trail to follow.
She’s trying to make this right.
The grew so narrow that it disappeared altogether. The plant was covering the ground in the area like a thick moss with no open spaces.
Killian growled as he began to race around aimlessly searching for the trail.
Nora’s smart. She would have left me a way to find her. I just need to open my eyes and see it.
Ian fought back his wolf spirit enough that he could view the forest through human eyes. He scanned the forest floor.
Nothing.
Panic was leaking back in because he knew they needed to hurry. Raising his gaze from the forest floor he scanned the forest again and spotted it.
The branches were broken heading toward the east. She crashed through the low hanging branches trying to leave them a trail.
I see it, Nora. We’re coming.
Ian launched in that direction catching the tiniest hint of her scent on the trees as he ran closer to them. The pack followed him. Killian right at his heels.
The forest was a blur all around Ian as he raced at his top speed following the path she left him. A pounding sounded from the earth as if the earth’s heart beat carried a strange rhythm.
We’re close. I’m here, Nora. Come back to me.
Darian let out a warning bark to the pack as the people dressed in red and black started dropping down from the trees. Their hatred driving them past their fear that was like an offending stench in the air.
Killian shifted catching a silver arrow with his bare hand and stabbing it through the chest and into the tree behind the young man with the silver ax.
“Tell me how to get inside the base,” he demanded.
“Go ahead and kill me,” the young man cried.
The pack in a frenzy to find Angeline had already killed the other half dozen HRAF members that dropped down with quick, deadly accuracy that ended them before they could use their silver weapons in most cases.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Killian said to the young man. “I’ll bite you and let your family kill you.”
He dropped his weight and the silver arrow began to tear through his body. His eyes rolled back in his head and his hand began to tap the same beat coming from beneath their feet. His body was twitching as blood poured too quickly from his stretched open wound in his chest.
His mouth moved to the same rhythm. He was wheezing out something. Saying something. The pack seemed to collectively hold their breath to hear what he was saying.
“Prush.... Kill. Nora. Prush.... Kill....”
Ian sank his teeth into the young man’s ankle. His bite would prolong the young man’s life but the arrow would still kill him. Darian growled his displeasure at turning a human without permission but did not act further to reprimand.
The pain of the silver in his body as the shifter DNA mixed with his increased bringing the young man’s awareness back to this moment from wherever he was drifting off to.
“Get it out,” he screamed his voice breaking. He clutched at the silver arrow to try to pull it out but couldn’t stand the pain in his hands when he touched the arrow.
Killian leaned in closer to the young man. “Point to the entrance and I will pull it out.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NORA PRESSED HER FINGERS to Angeline’s pulse and found a heartbeat. The relief she felt was so strong that she nearly collapsed back onto the floor next to Doogle’s dead body.
“I hate you for making me do this,” Slade said from behind Nora at the doorway. “We were in this together. You promised me you couldn’t be turned. Fucking beast slut, that’s all you are,” he said through clenched teeth. His hand was holding the gun with the poisonous darts kept for the sole purpose of killing traitors.
Nora knew she could throw the knife she picked up off of Doogle and take out Slade. In fact, she knew she could probably do it before he got his shot off but the way he was crying. It was just like that day. That day when they held onto each other in the back of the wagon after they’d both lost the only family they’d ever known.
As angry as his words were, she could see his raw pain in his eyes. It was like he’s just realized who’d she’d been for him all these years. Who they were for each other.
Angeline’s warning that Slade would be the one to kill her was still fresh in her mind and here he was ready to do just that. She should throw the knife, she knew she should.
“I loved you,” he cried. His hand was shaking, his trigger finger trembling. “Throw it,” he yelled surprising Nora. He knew she had the knife?
Nora shook her head.
“That’s selfish, you know that? You’re making me be the one who has to kill you. Fucking bitch.”
“You don’t have to kill me, Slade. You can leave right now and leave this life full of hatred and murder behind,” Nora said.
“She’s inside interrogation,” one of the HRAF yelled out from behind the protective wall.
Slade crossed the space between them when Nora looked toward the other guy who’d just yelled out her location. The barrel of the gun pressed against her chest right over her heart. “You always seem to escape death, don’t you Nora? Not this time.” He pulled the trigger.
The sharp pain that came with a hard punch to her chest hurt but the pain immediately following was much worse. Nora crumpled to the flo
or screaming as the traitor’s fire began to pump throughout her veins. The pain was so strong that it was nearly all that existed.
Shaking.
She couldn’t tell if it was her body or the room shaking. The strobing lights caught Slade in freeze frames it seemed as he unsheathed his knife with his gaze on Angeline’s stomach.
Nora thrust her knife up into his thigh, cutting the artery located there. He screamed but Nora couldn’t hear him over the sound of her own screaming. The knife pulled out with a twist as Nora’s body stiffened and her back arched up off the floor, the traitor’s fire increasing in intensity over her back like she was lying in a fire. No matter how much she arched, rolled or moved she wouldn’t escape this fire.
Killian appeared as if out of nowhere. He was lifting Angeline from the table.
The pain that began in Nora’s chest was suddenly sharp again. Her body was too stiff, the pain too great to move even to breathe. It was one of the final stages of the poison.
It’ll be over soon. It’s almost over.
She lost consciousness blackness closing in briefly only to have it recede as the fire feeling eased enough she was able to draw in breath only to have the fire in her veins rekindle and burn as the poison was designed. This process would repeat until she finally suffocated.
The pain was like new and she couldn’t stop herself from letting out the scream filled with agony.
The sky? Or is that heaven?
Ian’s face twisted in torment blocked out the sun from her eyes. The pained look and sadness on his face, worse than Slade’s had been when he knew he was going to have to kill her.
Nora clamped her mouth shut fighting the need to scream so that she might hear what he was saying before she died.
“... I’m so sorry. I have no other choice.”
He’s going to end my misery.
Nora wanted to tell him it was okay. It was the right thing to do to end this pain. But her body was already stiffening up again on it’s way to freezing up completely and cutting off her air again.
This time was faster than the last time since her mouth was frozen shut. It was harder to breathe earlier. The sky that was so bright behind Ian fell black. Ian’s eyes were the last thing she saw.
Rizer Pack Shifter- Complete Series Page 38