Long Lost

by Sommer Marsden

  I looked down. “The baby, maybe?”

  “Doubtful. The baby made me feel hope and joy. This makes me feel leaden and unsettled.”

  “Samuel! You coming or staying?” Bertie stuck her head in.

  “I’m coming.”

  “You’re human you know.” She winked. “You can stay.”

  “I’m coming, woman. I might be human, but I’m a big human and I know my way around here.”

  “Then let’s go. Ellis is getting twitchy.”

  “Go on,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I have company and now, something to ponder.”

  “You sure, Ruby?” He cocked his head, his brown eyes studying me.

  I shooed him. “Go on now.”

  “I’ve got her,” Madeline said, smiling.

  He nodded at her but didn’t smile and moved past the small woman to fall in line with Roberta. I rushed out and grabbed Ellis by the hair, tugged him in and kissed him. “Be careful.”

  “You be careful.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I teased, sniffing before more tears could invade. I wanted to be done with them. I’d cried more since he knocked me up than I had in my entire life.

  “We’ll watch each other’s backs, Ruby Sue,” Tyler said softly.

  I went to him and hugged him, and then Iris, Peabody, Samuel, Bertie. By the time I got back to Ellis, I was crying. Softly and stoically, but still crying. Couldn’t even keep control of myself long enough to say goodbye. I blamed the baby, mostly because he wasn’t here to defend himself.

  “Ruby. We’re going to check a problem in town. Not to war.”

  “It feels like war,” I said, pressing my cheek to his.

  He kissed me on the top of the head and rubbed my belly. “For luck,” he said to make me smile.

  And then they were gone.

  The door shut and I bit my lip. I knew Ellis could still hear me. So I waited, counted to a hundred, all the while Madeline watched me and I remembered my dream of her setting me up every time I toppled. Maybe this was what that meant. She was my support. Only I felt a fine vein of unease running under it all.

  All the people I loved were going to face some possible killers including a new rogue vampire…what the hell did I expect?

  When I hit a hundred, I let myself fall apart. I sat at the kitchen table and surrendered to it while Madeline busied herself putting the kettle on. If she asked me if I wanted any motehrfucking tea I’d—

  “Do you want some hot chocolate?”

  I put my head up and laughed, snorted, actually. “Yes, I’m thrilled it’s not tea, I’d love some.”

  “I figured you’d be sick of tea by now. Hot chocolate is yummy and soothing, and well, let’s face it—chocolate.”

  I smiled at her. “That is a true story.”

  “Want to go pick a movie? Whoever lived here before had a huge collection. Tons of those awful but fun horror movies you love. Eighties movies, old Clint Eastwoods, the whole nine yards.”

  I nodded. Yes, a movie and hot chocolate was a good idea. “Sure, I’ll go check. Any preferences?”

  “Nah, whatever makes you feel good and calm. I worry about you and that baby when you get so upset.”

  “That’s sweet,” I said, but the way her eyes shot up to my face I could tell she’d heard the mild annoyance in my tone. I’d heard it, too. And hadn’t known it was coming until it was out.

  What a bitch I was being.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m really stressed. I didn’t mean that to sound—”

  “It just sounded tired,” she assured me.

  “Thanks. I’ll go look.”

  I peeked out the front window and caught sight of them. I knew my husband and my friends well enough to know there was no way they were leaving this place until they’d checked it over. I saw Ellis duck around the side of our house across the street. It seemed like a million years since we’d been in our little lovely house and the beginning of our happy married lives. I missed it.

  Ellis circled back, waved to someone, Tyler I think, and then they all finally got in the trucks and left.

  “Are they done?” she asked.

  I jumped. “What?”

  “Are they done checking around here? Iris said they would. I guess she didn’t want me to worry about me and you and our safety.”

  “Looks that way. They just left.”

  Madeline handed me a huge green mug full of warm hot chocolate and bobbing marshmallows.

  “Careful,” she said.

  “Thank you. Looks great.” And it did. I had never had that coffee or my croissant. I wasn’t hungry thanks to nerves but the hot chocolate looked decadent and lovely. I took a sip and licked a small rime of melted marshmallow from my lip.

  “Did you choose one?”

  “No, I was spying. Pick whatever you like.”

  “How about something with John Candy?” Madeline said, thumbing through the movies.

  “Ooooh, good choice.” I yawned.

  I arranged my bulk on the ugly sofa and drank my cocoa and watched the snow start to fall. “Snowing,” I said.

  She looked out and smiled, popped the DVD in and sat in the arm chair. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

  “Always. Snow makes me feel calm even when I don’t actually feel calm.”

  “Are you feeling calmer?” she asked.

  “I am. Thanks.” I settled back into the pillows, drinking and watching the opening credits. I just needed to zone out and relax. When they got back, they’d be fine and Ellis would be safe and I would be safe and the baby would be safe.

  Madeline was texting. “Everything okay?” I asked, my voice muzzy.

  “Just texting for a weather update. See if we’re due anymore significant snow.”

  “Wow. They have texting for every little thing now,” I said in an odd sing-song and yawned widely. “What the hell?” I muttered.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just super- super tired. And my mouth has a mouth of its own. I mean mind. My mind has a mouth of its own. No…”

  I rubbed my eyes but my vision stayed fuzzy. “I mean…” I slowed down. “My mind…has a mouth…of its own.”

  Fear penetrated the fog. What was wrong with me? A simple sentence like that shouldn’t take so much effort. What had she done to me?

  “What did you do to me?” I asked, my tongue tripping over itself.

  She was watching me with a cocky and reserved gaze that I saw now to be her real face. This was who Madeline was. This was what was unnerving me and my new psychic spider senses. This.

  “What she was told to do,” the gaunt man said, waltzing in the living room like he owned the place.

  I made a noise and grabbed my belly.

  Madeline smiled at him.

  “It’s about time, I thought they’d never finally leave,” he said to her.

  “Ruby, this is Victor. Victor, this is the Long Lost. Aka Little Bird.”

  “How nauseating,” Victor said.

  “I agree,” Madeline sighed.

  “But you…you…” I waved a finger at her and noticed with great alarm that periodically I appeared to be waving two fingers at her. “You killed those two men who were with him and…”

  Madeline shrugged and gave me a smile that made my heart cold. “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made. What can I say? I rise to the occasion.”

  “Your sister,” I said around a tongue too big.

  “Another casualty in the ways of an Alpha female.”

  “But you’re not a shifter,” I said slowly. I tried to lift my legs. I wanted to run. But all of me was sluggish and heavy and fuzzy around the edges.

  “You don’t have to be a shifter to be an Alpha,” Victor said. He dropped onto the arm of the arm chair. “We met and she loved my mission. Loved me. And I love her. She has a fire in her belly, this one.”

  It’s called crazy. That’s the name of the fire…

  “Setting me up. Set up. Those were the dreams,” I mumbled
. I thought of her lining up glass and dangerous things on…going up. And me falling over and her…setting me up. “Setting me up,” I mumbled again.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Victor asked.

  Had I said it aloud?

  “What are you going to do with me?” I asked. I was too drugged on whatever to feel fear but I felt it anyway. My hands were shaking but seemed made of lead so I could barely feel it.

  “Take you somewhere. Wait for you to deliver like the sacred cow you are and then…” he shrugged. “Shoot you, I guess.”

  “Or something slower,” Madeline said. “If we have that kind of time.”

  “Why haven’t you already killed me?” I asked. My hot chocolate mug fell from my hand and hit the rug with a wet thump.

  “See,” Madeline said, rolling her eyes. “We were going to. As soon as I got your stupid friends to bring me here, I figured we’d do it. But then we found out you were pregnant and the plan changed to killing you and the baby immediately. But we failed when your flock of minions ran Victor’s boy off. And then the damn thing started growing like crazy and we thought maybe…just maybe…we could end up putting that baby to good use.”

  “He’d be like a mythical creature of some sort,” said the gaunt man. “And you know how people love a good mythical creature along with a good prophecy.”

  I wanted to weep. For me, my stupidity and my baby. But I couldn’t. I was too damn tired and detached to cry this time. Go figure.

  “You’re doing all this because you fell in love with a wolf?”

  “A rogue wolf,” she corrected.

  “Let’s call it like it is,” Victor said. “The only thing Madeline loves is power. But that’s okay. It’s part of why I love her.”

  “How sweet,” I said and then I could feel myself falling under. Slipping away.

  “What did you give me? Did you hurt my baby?”

  “A minor tranquilizer in a decent dose. It shouldn’t harm him. We tend to metabolize at an incredible rate.” Victor smiled at me. It was the scariest thing I’d ever seen.

  “You should have seen how relieved you were that I wasn’t offering you tea,” Madeline said. “But it wasn’t to be kind. The chocolate covers up the bitter taste of the meds better.”

  I wanted to flip her off but couldn’t. I was going…going…gone.

  I felt them lifting me, moving me, taking me out into the cold air of the warehouse. I was bundled into a truck or a van, like so much cargo. And then we were bumping along and I was trying to hold on but I was so unbelievably sleepy. And we were moving, moving, moving. Away from Ellis, away from my friends. Toward some place I was very, very afraid of.

  Another contraction made my belly grow taut and I held my breath, waiting for it to release. When it did I tried to think calm thoughts. I tried to call out to Samuel with my mind. I tried to focus on what I could do to get myself out of this. I was not a weak woman. I would be a fierce mother. But the drugs they had given me won in the end and the last thing I remembered hearing was “Maybe we should just kill her” and then I was under for good. Into the gray and black. Away from the nightmare.

  Chapter 24

  It was like waking to the worst porn ever made.

  “Do me, Vic. Do me. We got her, we got her. We did.”

  Madeline was on her knees and gaunt and terrible Victor was fucking her from behind. Her hair wrapped round his hand, tugging it so her head snapped back and her throat was bared. He was even more gaunt naked, FYI.

  I shut my eyes and tried not to hear the sound of flesh slapping flesh. They were in the next room but here, bound on the sofa in some strange house, I could see through the open doorway where they were.

  I cracked one eye in time to see him really go at her. When she came she howled like some wild thing. And she was the human.

  I shivered and tried to move my hands—felt the tiny metal feather on my wedding ring rock against my flesh. They were bound at the wrist with rope and apparently I’d been working at them even in my sleep because my wrists were bloody and raw. I could hear them kissing and it turned my stomach. It’s not so much that they were loud but that whatever they had given me had sparked some hyperacusis. Everything was too loud. And I noticed lights were bright too. I had no idea what time it was, how long they’d had me or where we were.

  I did know that I had a contraction and from the feel of it, it wasn’t false or a practice run as Doc had described them.

  “Oh, no,’ I breathed.

  Baby’s coming, baby’s coming, baby’s coming. Help…I tried to project my thoughts to Samuel, which was silly. We were sensitives—psychics—but not mind readers. There was a difference.

  A contraction seized me up in hot steel bands around my abdomen and I bit my tongue hard to keep from making a sound. I did not need the dynamic duo to know that I was in labor. For all I knew they’d cut the baby out of me and leave me for dead. I took a deep breath to calm myself and then tried to shallowly breathe so that they wouldn’t hear.

  The pressure let up, the pain receded. I hoped this was only the beginning. I knew that labor could take hours, a day or even more. Doc Burns had prepared me. But I also knew my son had chosen to do everything from conception to now at an alarmingly fast rate. Why would I even begin to dream that I’d the birth itself would be any different?

  Accelerated birth would be great were I free. Tied up in some shoddy house with a demented anorexic shifter and an equally demented and scarily cruel human…um, no.

  Madeline caught sight of me and stood. Curvy and gorgeous and lush, I remembered seeing her riding Peabody. My heart broke for him—such a good man with such a good heart. And here she was just using him. I looked away.

  “Look who’s awake, Vic,” she said, coming toward me while she pulled on her clothes.

  “How you doing, sweetheart?” he asked. I didn’t want them to get close. I didn’t want them to see the sweat on my brow or smell my fear. “Fine. A bit stiff and uncomfortable, but I doubt you care about that.”

  I’m at…I looked around, still deliriously thinking I could radio wave my thoughts to Samuel and have him lead all of them to me and rescue me. Like some sappy TV movie about the amazing abilities of love and friendship. I’m at a rundown house but it’s big. I bet it’s a farmhouse. They had to drive me far. I know because I woke a few times. Edge of town?

  A cat sauntered through the room behind Madeline and I watched it. Orange and pale cream colored with flecks of black. It was what my mother would have called a Marmalade cat. How domestic of them to have a pet where they hold their prisoners.

  “What? You don’t think we care about your widdle feewings, Long Lost?” she laughed.

  “You are a crazy person,” I said. I was immensely thrilled to notice that I had not had another contraction yet. So maybe the beginning of labor but definitely not the-baby’s-coming-any-minute kind of labor.

  “I am someone who is tired of the supernaturals comingling with the humans. All that unharnessed power. All that wasted superiority. I want Victor to change me. Or maybe…I could have your son change me when he arrives. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”

  “Crazy person,” I said, but felt my armpits go damp with my fear.

  Ellis had loved me, fucked me, licked me, nibbled me and clamped down on me with his teeth—but he’d always been careful not to break the skin and bite me. Roughly 80% of werewolf bites resulted in infection. Roughly 80% created a new wolf. Repeated bites almost assuredly changed the victim. Unlike the movies, it didn’t have to be a full moon and it wasn’t a curse, but it could happen and it did happen. So he was careful.

  Something like birth would assuredly result in me changing. If I survived. But crazy Madeline getting my son to savage her, most likely before he could even comprehend, was obscene.

  “Isn’t she crafty?” Victor asked as if inquiring about a prize student. He pulled on black jeans and a sweater. What a blessing. Looking at his scrawny ass was starting to bug me.

>   “Yes, she is crazy. Oops, I mean crafty.”

  I was pissed, irritated, scared and I was pretty sure I was in labor. My patience had worn thin.

  Madeline stooped and grabbed a ball point pen off the ugly scratched up coffee table and rushed me. I had nowhere to go. I was tied and had been dropped on the ugly plaid sofa. She jabbed the tip of the pen to my throat and pressed. I made a noise like I was drowning.

  “Call me crazy again, cunt.”

  I blinked, looking into her shiny insane eyes and swallowed hard. I made myself say it, “I’m sorry.”

  Victor smiled and looked pleased.

  The cat wound the perimeter of the room, watching us. I wished it had thumbs. I could beg it to let me out. Great, now I was losing it. But a contraction hit me and I bit my tongue hard, trying to keep my face calm and placid while the cramp wrenched my guts and twisted my insides. Keeping my face from showing my pain was by far the hardest thing I’d ever done—so far. I felt Kincaid kick and that added to the pain.

  There was a beat where I was sure she was going to shove that pen into my throat and end it all. And technically speaking, since I was in labor they could. They could kill me and take Kincaid and all would most likely be well. But then she smiled, dropped the pen and patted my head.

  “It’s okay. I need to learn to be forgiving,” she said.

  “Why?” I stammered without thinking. I took a deep breath and held it before letting it out as subtly as I could.

  “Because I will be the Alpha female.”

  I must have looked confused.

  “We’re gonna kill your man, kill you once you deliver and keep your baby, baby! Then Victor will be Alpha and I’ll be changed. I’ll become his mate and we can raise the child of the prophecy as our own. And we can get this pack back to the way it should be. Blood and vengeance and power.”

  Crazy woman. But I didn’t say it aloud.

  “You won’t manage it,” I said, not convinced but I had to say it.

  “I managed to get them all out of the house. There was no fight, it was all bullshit. There was nothing to run to, no emergency. They found two of our decoys having a staged fight, but that was it. So, if I can fool them when they’re all on red alert, what will we manage when they’re caught off guard and your man is distraught?” She started to laugh and my belly felt like it was full of ice water. She really was a nutter.