by Kyrii Rayne
“I can't believe this.” Jake's jaw hurt from clenching it. He wanted to find whoever was behind this and beat them into a pulp. How dare they touch his mate. Father, damn you, what do you know? “Maybe I should go back and question that bastard,” he growled softly as they entered the service elevator.
“Not advisable. It's a short step from hurting your loved one to hurting you, and he's not exactly making the best moral decisions right now. I'm gonna suggest we gather information on our own or from other sources, and make sure he doesn't find out what we're doing.” Darrin stopped the elevator. “No wait, scent's getting fainter. They went down.”
“Okay.” Jake threw the switch the other way and they started to descend.
“Whatever is going on, we'll need to track her, and fast. My nose will do the trick if she's still in the building. But if she's been taken offsite we'll have to figure out how and where.”
“The helicopter pilot.”
“He's human. They keep him in the dark. If he was given some cover story for why she needed to be moved, I can probably wheedle it out of him and get him to take us wherever it is. Depending on if he's bribable, or stupid.” Darrin nodded. “Smell's getting stronger. They're in the sub-basement.”
They exchanged glances as the elevator rattled to a stop, and Jake pulled the safety gate open. Beyond was a long service hallway lined with doors. “Think this is mostly storerooms. They built the Lodge on top of an old bomb shelter so there are all sorts of rooms down here, but... nothing too interesting usually.”
The place was strangely deserted, and they went from door to door, opening them. Food storage, fuel storage, dry goods, repair equipment, extra sets of furniture... Jake was just starting to relax from the monotony of it all when Darrin's nose led them to a door near the end and he opened it. And Jake saw cages. The room was very large, concrete floored and walled, and its space split up by barred walls into six cages with an aisle in between. Darrin went over to one of the center cages and sniffed again, then nodded. “She was here. Conscious again. Not even two hours ago. They must have taken her out the far door with the others.” Jake had been about to explode in rage at the very idea of Anna kept in a cage, when what Darrin had last said sunk in. “O... others?”
“Yes. Six humans total, all terrified. Wait, no. Five terrified, one pissed off.” All the color was leaving Darrin's face. He hurried to the far door and opened it, and a stiff breeze blew in. “This leads up to the helipad.” Jake stood there with his heart pounding as the full horror started to sink in, even before Darrin said out loud what he was thinking.
“That special hunt today. The one your father and his buddies organized. The prey they released into the woods an hour ago were in these cages. It's a group of six humans.”
Jake started to shake with rage. “And Anna's one of them.”
Chapter 6 - Survivors
Their captors bagged them again, without the chemical this time: opaque hoods pulled over their heads before they were marched up a steep, multi-story staircase and out onto the helipad. They were ordered to keep quiet and loaded in, each one buckled into a seat while the helicopter pilot chattered obliviously with their handlers. He thought they were part of some kind of televised survival contest. One of the men with them patiently explained in a bland Wyoming accent that they were being deliberately disoriented as part of the contest, and not to discuss where they were going. The pilot agreed cheerfully, and off they went, with Anna holding back a scream for help as the helicopter lifted off.
The redheaded woman started crying and squirming next to her, and one of the attendants hissed a threat in her ear, making her freeze. Anna breathed deeply and slowly. After a moment, the big shape next to her reached over and clasped her hand. Mark.
She sighed relief and squeezed back, fighting off her fear. Whatever else was going on, at least she didn't have to face it alone.
It wasn't a long flight. Maybe ten minutes, maybe fifteen. The helicopter landed carefully, and she shuddered as she heard the rotors spinning down slowly. What are they going to do to us?
“Stay in the helicopter. We'll take this from here. After this we proceed to Drop off Point B and unload the other three.”
The two attendants opened the hatch and started unloading them, roughly helping them step down and then leading them off to the edge of the clearing, several paces away.
One of them spoke to them.
“We will leave. Once the helicopter lifts off you are free to remove your hoods. After that you will have a running start of about two hours. I suggest that you use it.”
“What are you gonna do to us?” Mark demanded.
The attendant let out a little laugh.
“The hunting party is having an early breakfast now. If they catch you, it's game over. So yeah, get moving if you want a chance in Hell of surviving.”
Anna froze. “This is insane—!”
The redhead started wailing again, low, gulping sobs echoing off the trees. The two attendants moved away, their footsteps heading back to the helicopter. She cried and cried as the rotors started up and the helicopter powered up, then lifted away into the sky.
Anna yanked her hood off and looked around hastily. They were in a large clearing on a gentle slope, nowhere near where she and Jake had hiked yesterday. From the position of the sun and a few landmarks she had seen on the flight over, they were somewhere north of the Lodge, which put them between it and Jackson. Her mind focused on these clues of location and direction to try to distract her from the unhinged weeping behind her, and the urge to join in. She was terrified. She pushed her mind on toward survival matters, knowing that Mark had a point, but her heart jumped in her chest like a frightened animal.
Mark stood nearby, similarly getting his bearings, and then turned to her.
“You OK?”
“I think that's pretty relative right now.”
He flashed a grim smile. “Yeah, no shit. You think you can walk?”
“I can do ten miles before I have to rest seriously.”
His eyebrows went up. “Not bad for a cute little thing.”
“Watch it.” But she said it with a smile. Meanwhile her mind cast back to Jake, and that morning, and wondering if he would be able to help her at all. He would defy his father to come after her, wouldn't he? He'd have the nerve? He had better have the nerve. It's his fault I'm up here in the first place.
Mark went over to the third person in their group, who was still balled up with the hood over her head, crying and mumbling. “They can't do this... they can't do this, oh my God, why is this happening...”
“Hey,” he said, bending down. “Hey! Girl, you need to snap out of this right now, you have no time left for crying over your situation.”
“Fuck off!” came the ragged little screech, and she flailed in his direction. Mark scowled and caught her arm, then yanked her hood off.
“Now, are you going to calm down, or do we have to leave you alone with your feelings? You heard the man, little lady!” He stared into her muddy gray-green eyes fiercely. “There are men with guns coming after us. Crazy men. Do you really want to be here when that helicopter touches down again?”
The woman whimpered, lips trembling, then shook her head.
“Then you need to dry your goddamn eyes and get ready to get moving. I'm taking us north toward Jackson.” He straightened and looked to Anna, and she nodded. “I'm going to set a pretty fast pace, you two, so get ready to work for it.”
“Holy crap,” the redhead sniffled. “Yeah, okay, my legs still work anyway. Even if I'm losing my goddamn mind. Does anyone have a cigarette?”
She patted nervously at her clothes.
“They emptied our pockets too,” Anna spoke up. “What's your name?”
“Tori. I'm from Chicago. Came up here, thought I would see the sights, photograph a moose or a bear or something. Don't know what I was fucking thinking.” She patted herself down again and then hugged herself, twitching slightly, and let out
a burst of bitter, manic laughter.
“I'm Anna. This is Mark. Look, I know this is scary, but he's got a point. We have to try to keep it together.”
Tori smiled twitchily, and Anna felt her heart sink. More, when the woman said, “Well, I don't know how together I'm gonna manage if I can't get my cigarettes.”
Mark sighed softly and rubbed his face.
They set out within a few minutes, bringing the bags with them for the heavy cloth and the rope ties sewn into them. Mark took one look at Tori's heels, and shook his head.
“You'd be better off walking barefoot,” he mentioned, and she pouted at him. But she spent the first ten minutes tripping along, falling behind and going ‘ouch’ a lot, and finally took them off.
Anna lent her the outer pair of her socks to pad her feet with something, but she still stumbled and whimpered a lot.
She's slowing us down.
The unspoken thought must have crossed Mark's mind as well, because his expression grew grimmer and grimmer the more that they had to slow up for Tori, or calm Tori down, or get Tori moving again when she started crying. Anna didn't know whether it was panic, some kind of mood disorder, nicotine withdrawal or all three, but it quickly started driving her up the wall.
Tori changed tactics after a little while, as if sensing they were getting sick of the stumbling and whining: she started talking to distract herself from the pain in her feet.
Her voice was a low, rapid mutter, almost to herself, but sometimes she looked around at them for acknowledgment.
“So I've got a caseload of forty-eight people, forty-eight, that's completely insane, right? And I haven't had any kind of vacation in four years. Haven't even had a freakin' weekend off in all of that time, holy shit, right? Right?” Mark grunted, and she went on. “And so I come to Jackson Hole, big town for hiking, autumn trails, figured maybe I could get some photo shoots in... maybe even meet someone.” That high, tight laugh again. “And then someone grabs me out of my room at the bed and breakfast and boom. Just boom. I'm in a cage. I'm in a fucking cage. Oh God. Oh God, I need a cigarette.”
“We're all in the same boat,” Mark said flatly.
“You smoke?”
“Yeah.” He smirked. “Looks like I'm going cold turkey.”
Tori stared up into his calmly furious eyes, and didn't start complaining again for a solid half hour.
Anna looked around as they walked.
“We've got some usable forage out here but not much. It's too late in the season. Mushrooms are too risky. I know some of the late season berries are all right, though, and there are still a lot of roots and tubers that could be dug out if I find the right plants.”
“That's assuming we'll last long enough to need to eat,” Tori pointed out miserably.
Mark eyed her. “Count on it. We have two hours lead time. We're on a fast walk north, going single file, and unless they have a good tracker with them they won't know which way we went or if we all went together. And if these are a bunch of old hunters like that guy... what was his name, Anna?”
“Matson. Anthony Matson. He owns the lodge we were being kept in.”
“If they're all old hunters like Matson, they'll travel in a group and only be able to go as fast as their slowest member.” he glanced unconsciously at Tori. “In the case of a lot of these rich guys, that's not that fast. So that gives us even more lead time, and we can widen the gap the longer we march.”
“Only up until dark, though, we've got no light source.”
Anna sighed and kept an eye out for something to feed them with once they stopped for the night.
They walked a while longer, and Tori finally spoke up about something other than herself.
“So how do you know this Matson guy?”
“He...” Anna sighed unhappily, thinking of Jake again and wondering where he was. “My boyfriend is his son. He had no idea his Father was into this... craziness...”
“Are you sure?” Mark pointed out flatly, and she flinched.
“I can't believe he would involve himself in this. He figured this would be a romantic weekend, you know, hiking, hot tubbing...” She had to catch her breath, not from the steep hike but because the doubt Mark had suddenly raised was clawing at her heart. “He was bothered by his Father's behavior, and his Father acted like he was saving Jake from me behind Jake's back.”
“That is how he sounded,” Mark admitted.
“Oh, but you know, some guys are just that psycho,” Tori spoke up with a creepy, manic brightness in her voice.
“He could have seduced you into coming up for the weekend, just because he's a misogynist. He could be in league with his father—”
“Will you shut the fuck up?” Mark snapped. He had been watching Anna go paler and paler and start to shake, and looked hugely annoyed. “I brought it up because it's an issue. We need to have some idea of whether this guy might report Anna missing or not. I'm trying to find out if he's got a reason to go against his father or not. I'm not trying to demoralize Anna to Hell and back.”
“Ooo, but you know, guys stick together against women. Especially if he's the son of some rich guy and he stands to lose a fortune if he defies him—”
“Shut. Up.” Mark had an arm around Anna now, as she forced herself onward. He gently kept her from colliding with a tree, and she smiled apologetically and kept trying to plod on.
“I'm just saying.”
Anna sighed and forced herself on even as her vision blurred from tears. Jake's father was crazy. What if Jake was too? You wouldn't betray me like this, would you? Are you coming for me? Can you? Or are you with the hunters?
Chapter 7 -
The Thing on the Mountain
“Those TV guys doing the survival series?” The helicopter pilot took a bite of his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully, spilling bits of lettuce and tomato out onto the ground. “Yeah, they left with the contestants two hours ago and change, and then I just dropped off the camera crew.” Jake and Darrin exchanged glances. The man had been fed an interesting line of bullshit about why six captives had been dropped off in the woods. But Darrin was very good at negotiating bullshit; he worked closely with a team of corporate lawyers to handle his computer patents.
“I get it,” Darrin started. “See, here's the problem. One of the contestants is diabetic, and we just found out that her insulin got left behind. I need to get it out to her, onsite, as soon as possible.”
The man looked at them doubtfully.
“It's only a twenty-five-minute flight here and back, but uh... I only have so much allowance for fuel per month, then I start paying for it myself.”
Darrin nodded, and opened his wallet, starting to count out twenties into a fan.
“How much is this going to cost us?”
The man paused a moment. “Four hundred,” he decided finally, and held out his hand for it.
The copter headed northwest, deep into the mountains between the Lodge and Jackson. Jake stared out the window the whole time, wondering where Anna was, hoping she was able to use her hiking and forestry skills to keep ahead of the hunters. It was a slim hope, though. They would be using their bear forms a lot. The only hope Anna had was if Darrin's keener nose and their fleeter, younger bear forms could keep ahead of his father and his cronies.
“If she has any brains she'll head toward Jackson,” Jake muttered. “She has the skills to keep north until she hits the highway, even without a compass.”
“Good. I'll check north first.” Darrin had a compass on him, in the grip of his walking stick. “What do we do if we run into your Father and the others first?”
“Find some way to slow them down. I know I can't fight all of them at once.”
“We can't,” Darrin grumped, not liking to be discounted just because he wasn't a bruiser like most bear shifters.
“Okay, point remains the same. We get ahead of them, and we do it by slowing them down if we have to. Then we help get Anna the hell away from here.”
“Okay. That sounds like half a plan at least. Problem. Did either of us think to bring any food?” Darrin sighed.
“Nope.” Jake shrugged. “Least of our worries. We can always hunt.”
“Great, raw deer. Yum yum.”
Darrin pulled a face, and Jake smirked. Sometimes his friend was a little too urban to fit in as a bear shifter.
The helicopter set them down in a wide clearing that smelled of many scents. Some familiar — Anna's and his father's — and several unfamiliar. Darrin sniffed, headed into the brush to the north, and then poked his head back out, nodding.
“This way.”
“Thank you,” Jake told the helicopter pilot. “We're just joining the onsite crew after this, so don't worry about picking us back up.”
“No problem. You guys have a good shoot today,” the oblivious pilot said as he waved and stepped back into his cockpit.
Once the copter was well away, the two looked at each other, and Jake nodded. Then they both changed. Jake's big body swelled massively, silver-tipped dark fur sprouting over him as his limbs shifted and his body became rounded and even more muscular. The world seemed to shrink a little bit around him.
Meanwhile, Darrin didn't change size very much, but became furry and dark and muscular as well, though without the silver grizzling. He sat back on his haunches a moment, then turned and shoved into the brush, heading north at a pace that sped up as he caught the trail.
Jake lumbered after him, trusting his friend to find Anna's scent better than any of the trackers his father used. Darrin's scouting abilities had made him very popular at the lodge; it was no wonder they had chosen him as a fill-in for this “special hunt.” And it was their loss that he had not joined them. But Jake kept worrying as they followed the faint trail of Anna's scent through the brush - would they get there in time? Could they possibly, or was his love story going to get cut short even more brutally than his father's?
The trail had been broken by multiple bodies, and they raced ahead along its markers, only pausing when Darrin found short cuts in the slightly meandering course and dashed in that direction. His nose was his guide, and he was Jake's, and they ran on like that for at least a good hour as the sun climbed higher.