by Anya Nowlan
Fucking bombheads, he thought morosely, getting far beyond annoyed now and solidly into the land of being pissed the fuck off.
“No. It’s not a ‘what’ that I’m offering you. It’s a who.”
“Who could you possibly give m-“ Dice started with a snort, but the rest of his derisive comment died in his throat as his eyes went wide, flashing the threatening dark brown of his bear as the realization settled upon him. “You can’t be fucking serious.”
“I am,” Spade said, unflappable as ever.
“She’s dead. She’s been dead for five years,” Dice said, pushing himself off the tree and crossing the space between him and the intel officer turned the living incarnation of the reaper with fast strides.
“She’s not. And I can prove it. Interested now?” Spade asked, smoothing his expression into one that told Dice nothing at all.
His stomach twisted as he pulled a hand through his hair, feeling the sweat slick against his fingers.
He has to be full of shit. It can’t be possible. Meredith…
“Talk to me,” Dice said, his eyes dark brown and focused on Spade like laser sights.
“I knew you’d come around,” Spade said, smirking.
The whole thing about kicking Spade’s ass seemed more and more inviting as time went by.
Two
Meredith
Five months later…
“I’m going, I’m going. Settle down, Chip,” Meredith said, moving to the armored vehicle faster now, which of course didn’t stop Chip from shoving her in the back with his rifle.
It was funny how that didn’t even faze her anymore. Like he’d shoot her. Like any of them would do a thing to harm a hair on her head, despite all the smack they talked. Meredith rolled her eyes slightly, stopping in front of the car and putting her hands out in front of her for Thyne to tie up with a loop of plastic that cinched hard around her wrists, but not hard enough to cut off blood flow or cause any permanent damage.
“So where are we going today?” she asked, sounding almost casual as Thyne shoved her into the backseat and pulled the belt over her body, securing her in place with her hands stuck in her lap. “Or is it super secret and I’m not supposed to know?”
“Vermont, I think. Funnily enough. Hey, it should be nice there right now, huh? Snowy and picturesque and whatever,” Thyne said with a chuckle, jumping in next to her, though he didn’t put the belt on.
“Yeah, that’s what I need. A bit of winter wonderland to make all this freaking jungle bullshit seem like a bad nightmare,” Chip snorted, slamming the door shut and climbing into the passenger seat in front.
Ordie was driving today. As far as Meredith knew, he’d lost his twin a few years ago and the werewolf hadn’t been quite the same since then. Not that she could really tell. All of The Arctics’ soldiers basically looked the same. If they weren’t blonde and blue-eyed originally – designating werewolves from the higher polar areas – then they either dyed their hair and wore contacts to blend in or were embracing their ‘specialness’ and ran with it.
But none of the guys who weren’t from the polar regions could ever become more than simple foot soldiers in the sick and twisted organization that was The Arctics.
It was one of many tidbits the young cellular chemist would have rather not known.
“When’s the flight?” she asked, stifling a yawn.
“In the morning. We’re getting there now since the drive is smoother at night,” Thyne said conversationally enough, relaxing against the stiff leather of the seats.
They were travelling in a large armored vehicle, some sort of a Humvee as far as Meredith could tell, and the jungle roads they were traversing through were a challenge for even that kind of heavy machinery. Best Meredith could tell, she was in some sort of a Peruvian jungle, at least considering the species she’d been studying over the past six months.
About once a year The Arctics, her unwanted benefactors and unofficial owners, would fly her out into some new and kooky location, force her to do research she didn’t want to do, and then occasionally fly into scarcely disclosed locations to defend whatever she’d been doing for the past stretch of time. It was sort of starting to become a habit.
At least this time it was the jungle. She vastly preferred the heat and the humidity over the freezing cold of the polar South, which was where she’d gotten to spend her last stint. All in all, if it had been her choice, she wouldn’t have been using The Arctics’ ‘vacation’ planning services.
But it isn’t your choice, she reminded herself dully, resting her head back and closing her eyes.
It had been an exhausting day for Meredith Wilder. She’d been up since the crack of dawn, trying to get two rather fluorescent looking slugs to mate while under extreme duress, and it had gotten only weirder as the day went on. But oddly enough, it was by far not the most remarkable day she’d had so far, not by a long shot. Then again, five years of indentured servitude to some of the most dastardly terrorists the world currently had to offer did that to a girl.
Expand your horizons. Meet new and wonderful people. Figure out how to kill them from a distance, she recited under her breath, remembering the little motto she and a number of the other captured scientists had come up with during the frigid South experiments.
This time, she was all alone, with the rest of the crew being made up of The Arctics’ loyals or foot soldiers. The closest thing she could get to a decent conversation was discussing hockey with the guards, but even they were strongly biased towards the all-wolf teams, so it really didn’t make for good arguments. You didn’t want to piss off a guy who could kill you in twenty-seven ways before you could finish your sentence, after all.
The compound, a sprawling location that almost looked like a jungle resort from a distance by the way it blended into the valley, disappeared from sight and the pitch darkness of the jungle took over. Her eyes fell shut again, the long day taking its toll.
Meredith must have fallen asleep because when she was thrown towards the front seat at a high speed, the belt catching her painfully in the chest, it came as a complete surprise.
“What the hell!” she screeched, heaving for breath as she struggled to understand what was going on.
The vehicle had driven into a deep ditch, tottering precariously over the edge. Thyne seemed to be out cold, seeing as he’d flown from the back seat and into the windshield. His body was slumped over the center console but Meredith could make no guesses on whether or not he was alive. Those werewolves were tough motherfuckers. Sometimes it seemed like it would take a lot more than a broken spine to slow them down.
“What the fuck,” Ordie growled, grabbing for his rifle above his head, though he was sporting a giant shiner and probably a broken nose where his face had hit the steering wheel. “Get up, get out,” he hissed at Chip, who seemed to be about as disoriented as Meredith was.
“Right,” Chip muttered in response. “Thyne’s out.”
“I can see that,” Ordie said, his voice strained with aggravation as he wiped blood from his eyes.
“Is anyone going to tell me what the hell’s going on here?” Meredith asked, frantically trying to undo the clip on her belt with her tied hands.
Her ribs hurt like hell but the belt had kept her from any more serious damage. Before anyone could give her an answer though, both of the front doors were ripped open and Chip and Ordie were pulled from their seats like they weighed little more than sacks of flour.
“Knock, knock. Santa’s here,” someone called, marked by a scream that sounded like Chip’s, and then a dull sound like something had been dropped from a great height.
Meredith couldn’t see a thing in the darkness, the headlamps of the vehicle lighting up the front of the car but that only showed a drop of about ten feet.
She heard footsteps thumping over the roof of the car and she quieted immediately, whimpering under her breath as she finally got the belt open. There was only one way she could try to get out, because
Thyne’s legs were blocking the door away from her. She fumbled with the handle but found the door locked, of course, making her crawl over Thyne in an attempt to make it to the front of the car and out of one of the open doors.
Whoever owned that voice was scaring her witless. The guy hadn’t sounded human, more monster than man, and that was something coming from a woman who’d spent half a decade surrounded by fundamentalist nutjobs.
Her frantic clambering was halted by the very distinct sound of twin gunshots and a low snicker coming from one of those… whatever they were that had dragged her guards, her captors, out. A flashlight shone into the car and it blinded Meredith, making her hold up a hand and look away.
“Well, well, she’s pretty. I guess Slice’N’Dice knows how to pick ‘em,” an unfamiliar voice said, almost cooing at her. “Don’t worry, honey. You’re safe with us now. You just stay there like a good girl and we’ll get you out in a minute, okay? Okay.”
He didn’t wait for an answer and as suddenly as he’d appeared, whoever he was as she hadn’t seen a thing because of the light shining into her face, he was gone again, the heavy steps of surefooted men pounding over the roof once more. It made the car lurch threateningly and Meredith backed into the backseat, her insides twisting and roiling with good, honest fear.
“Who are you?” she called out tentatively, balling up in the corner of the seat as she felt something attach to the rear bumper and then the whole car started to move backwards, away from the precipice.
“Your fairy godmothers,” another voice shot back, the one who must have laughed before.
Both of them had deep voices, rumbling and low, and Meredith wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to meet the faces behind those voices. But it wasn’t like she was being given a choice again. About a minute later, the door was yanked open and before she could scoot away, two arms reached inside, scooped her up and took her out of the car.
She was placed down, kicking and screaming as she was, and the men simply chuckled.
“Feisty one, huh? Don’t play, kitten, we don’t have time. Hold up your hands,” the man who’d picked her up said.
Looking up at him, she could make out his features now as his headlamp was not so glaring as the flashlight had been. He was a tall man, built like a wall, with a square face, brilliant, almost golden hazel eyes and a neatly trimmed reddish-blonde beard. He winked at her good-naturedly, behaving like this was all in good fun as she held up her hands and he cut through the binds with a hunting knife that would have looked comically oversized in Meredith’s hands.
Then again, in the hands of a 5’6’’, plump and curvy scientist, most weapons would have looked sort of funny. She had long mahogany brown hair and quiet blue eyes, which were the high-point of her small heart-shaped face as her button nose was rather plain and her lips were nothing to write home about.
Still, she was attractive enough, considering the way that the soldiers sometimes looked at her on the bases, but she hadn’t really worn anything but research gear or sweats or khakis for five years, so honestly Meredith was just about the last person to really judge whether or not she was cute anymore.
“Who are you guys? And can I get a better answer this time? I don’t believe in jungle fairytales,” Meredith asked, her voice shaking as she looked around for the other guy.
They had a big camo-painted truck that had pulled the armored vehicle out of the ditch and at that very moment, the other half of the duo was hauling Thyne out of the space between the seats.
“Don’t look now,” the guy closest to Meredith said, but she wasn’t fast enough, so she got a good eyeful of how the werewolf’s brains were splattered all over the side of the car before he was dumped into the ditch.
She threw up immediately, narrowly missing the tall guy’s boots.
“Aw, come on there, honey. That wasn’t even bad. Ryker was being a real pussycat, clean shot and everything. Weren’t you, Ryker?”
“Was I what?”
“Being a pussycat.”
“Sure,” Ryker confirmed with a snort. “I’ll take this one, you take ours. Take the girl. We need to get back to base. Mark the location so we can do cleanup after the compound is swept.”
“Don’t we sound all official tonight,” he said with a sigh, looping an arm around Meredith who was still trying to hack out her lunches from the last few days, it seemed.
She wiped at her mouth with her sleeve, the taste bitter and grimy in her mouth. She’d seen a man get shot before, one of the scientists who had openly defied The Arctics on a mission on the first year of her capture, but she’d forgotten just how much blood there could be. And how a person could go from being human to being wormfood in a split second.
I’ve gotten saved from psychos and handed over to motherfucking maniacs, she thought dizzily as she was led to the other car and helped in, the belt hooked up for her much the same was as Thyne had done.
“I’m Rio, by the way,” her driver said, hopping into the driver’s seat. “And you better hold on, Meredith, ‘cuz we’re sort of in a hurry and I don’t play nice with jungle roads.”
He flashed her a knowing grin before slamming the jeep in reverse and spinning it around like he was at a race, thumbing something in on the massive and complicated center console before kicking the car into gear and roaring down the road, in the same direction where Meredith had been coming from before.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, her vision swimming a little.
She raised her hands up a little and saw that they were shaking violently. No wonder. While she’d become a rather seasoned hostage, her life had been rather steady lately. Sure, there was always a plethora of armed guards around, but they weren’t openly trying to kill her. These guys? Well, she wasn’t so sure that the same notion held with them.
“Oh, we’re going to go see the show!” Rio said, grinning wide. “Tell me, do you think there’s anyone back there in your little base worth keeping alive?”
“Uh, what do you mean?” Meredith asked, confused, staring at the man.
He looked even scarier now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Not only was he big and sort of menacing, he had a kind of hardness to his facial features and wild flare in his eyes that she’d seen in a few people before, but none of them had been anything that she’d deem to call ‘stable.’
“That place you’ve been hanging out at for the past half a year. Is there anyone there who isn’t an Arctics’ lackey? A lapdog for the werewolf regime, as it would be?” he asked, his tone so light you’d think they were discussing where to go for brunch on Sunday morning.
“I… Um, no? I don’t think so? They’re all official Arctics’ people,” she said, fumbling over her words while her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Oh, you’ll see,” Rio said brimming with good humor.
It was sort of unsettling.
Then again, she hadn’t seen anything yet that didn’t completely freak her out.
And it was only going to get worse.
Everything always gets worse…
Three
Dice
“We’ve got her.”
It’s at that point that Dice’s world seemed to both grind to a halt and come to life again all in one fell swoop. He heaved in a breath, steadying his voice before answering over the comm lines.
“Roger that, Lynx Two. Lynx Four through Six, mission is a go. I repeat, the mission is a go.”
He couldn’t see anything, but he knew that all over the jungle, his men were now bursting into action. Thor was already in position, waiting to take out the two guard towers closest to his nest, and Prowler must have been busy at work disabling the compound’s communication grid, rerouting it through his tech. Price and Dice were slated to take care of the other two guard towers, one guard in each, before they could take on the rest of the compound.
I can’t believe this is actually happening, he thought darkly, feeling a chill go down his spine as he ran through the thick underbr
ush, having tracked a path for himself days before.
They’d been staking out the area for nearly a week but he had yet to see Meredith even once. They had solid intel that the armored vehicle heading out that evening would be her transport, based on the communications they’d been tapping into with the squad – The Arctics had taken to calling her ‘The Lark,’ which he thought oddly fitting since he’d always found the sexy chemist a little bird-like with her glasses and curiosity – but he couldn’t be sure. Not entirely.
It had killed him to allow anyone else but himself to go intercept the car, but he was needed where the action was going to be the hottest. As much as he was reluctant to trust Rio and Ryker yet, he knew he had to. They were trusting him, weren’t they?
It hadn’t been an easy journey. In fact, his ribs still fucking hurt from the throwdown he’d had with Ryker about a month ago – the fucker punched like a MAC truck – but things were slowly evening out. No thanks to Spade, of course.
But there was no time to mull. He grabbed his rifle off his back and ducked down, waiting for the count while he got the guard tower in sight. Thor was supposed to kick them off and as soon as he called it, Dice and Price would storm the other two and take out the guards as quietly as they could. He’d never been so damn jittery before a mission, but then again, it wasn’t always that the state of the mission was reliant on the safety of his mate.
“Lynx Six. Going in on three… two… one.”
Dice could only barely hear it, the soft thuds of two bodies falling on the ground as Thor took them out, smooth and efficient. No human could have heard the almost inaudible noises, but then again, the compound was guarded by werewolves. Possibly genetically modified, bordering on super soldier werewolves, if they got unlucky. By the lack of movement up in the tower, which was really just a platform hooked on a wide, sturdy tree, Dice figured they’d gotten lucky on the super soldier side of things.