Kenny (Shifter Football League Book 2)

by Becca Fanning

  Admin in the league working against shifters probably wouldn't care except for the time and expense of finding new thugs. He'd bet none of the thugs ever arrested would be bailed out and that none of them knew enough about who'd hired them to be a threat.

  He tested the straps again. They were threads compared to his muscle. He could break them so easily. But staying still on the gurney, not even twitching? That was hard.

  He heard the three of them grabbing Dani and hauling her down the ramp behind the stretcher. He heard the screaming from the arena. He smelled the blood and death.

  He began to understand what was happening and where he was being taken.

  "How much did you give him?"

  Sjoberg's voice came from above him. He sounded irritable in the extreme. Wherever they were, it was inside but not yet directly beside the place from which the terror and emotions washed up. Darker where they were, and cooler than the truck or outside. If he had to guess, he'd say backstage somewhere.

  Damn it, he wanted to open his eyes. Dani had made several short exclamations of pain as the men forced her along. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to stop this. He wanted to see what was happening and make that stop.

  But stopping it – finding the organization responsible, bringing down some of the kingpins – that was more important than immediate needs.

  Apparently he'd played his unconsciousness card too long. Sjoberg was becoming irritated. Must be time for Holden to groan and shift and try to free himself.

  Holden did all those things. Instantly the muzzle of one of the riot guns knocked into the back of his head.

  "Don't knock him out, idiot," Dave's voice said.

  Sam or Stuart, whoever held the gun, said something indistinguishable.

  A foot nudged Holden hard in the thigh. "Wakey, wakey, bear. We have a surprise for you."

  No, they didn't.

  He'd already figured out what it was he was hearing.

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Dani gagged on the stench of the place. Once they'd come inside the doors were all locked anyway. Her father had instantly flung her away from him, pointed at one of the private boxes rigged in the arena and told her to get out of the way and shut the fuck up.

  She hadn't said anything. She didn't bother saying so. No one had taken her phone and she wanted to keep it that way. The private box gave her a birds eye view of something she didn't want to see. But at least that way she could get all the evidence she needed and send it on to every one of her friends as fast as she could.

  Photos. Sound recordings. Her notes. All the names she could find.

  To do that she had to look into the pit.

  Ten feet deep, the edges of it filled with razor wire and broken glass to keep the combatants in the center of the ring where they could be easily seen.

  Seen by the gamblers grouped around the edges of the pit, safely out of reach, or watching from bleachers in the abandoned complex's sports arena.

  Betting. Avid faces, sweating in the heat and with excitement.

  Watching humans shifted by fear and need to animals, fighting each other.

  To the death.

  Human dogfighting.

  Shifter dogfighting.

  The arena was rank with the smells of slaughter.

  Dani hadn't told Holden everything she knew. The fact that she'd been attracted to him for years, knew his public persona to be honest and full of integrity meant nothing. Her father didn't come across as a dogfight ringleader either.

  She'd held back the information she had hoped was the worst of it: that the bodies of the hated shifters were easily dealt with once the murders had happened because there was a market for stuffed heads, for pelts, for teeth and tongues, for paws and claws, for internal organs.

  Some of it was to rich bastards too lazy or scared to even go on a canned hunt, the travesty where cages were opened and frightened animals ran a few steps before being taken down as trophies.

  A lot more of it was to the still robust traditional medicine market – for sexual stamina and health, for male problems. For things that pharmacology could take care of, or nothing could fix.

  In order to document it, she'd have to look at it.

  Dani swallowed over and over as she aimed her camera at the pit, watching the carnage.

  Holden sat up. He didn't bother playing to the myth of the straps. Let them know he could have broken them at any time. But he kept up the fallacy that he was woozy.

  They dragged him to his feet where he swayed, under the watchful guns of Sam and Stuart. Apparently if he got this far and then rampaged, they'd just kill him.

  Good to know. Because he stood a much better chance in the ring. Whatever the leaders of the atrocity thought, they were stupid. There was a way out of the ring: Working together.

  Shifters didn't have any sort of telepathy. What they did have was the ability to sense each other's hormones, to smell intent.

  He had no intention of fighting anyone in that ring. He wasn't going into it with the idea that this was his last hour on earth. He didn't even know why they fought. Other than terror. Of course. Faced with their own deaths, every shifter dropped into that pit had to know if they won every single bout there'd only be another. And another, and another, until they dropped from exhaustion.

  Even if that didn't happen? They'd just be shot.

  There was no way out.

  Except together.

  The walls of the pit were high. They weren't two shifters high though. One bear standing on the shoulders of another –

  --would be shot.

  But. How many shifters were above the pit? In pens, and nowhere near as hardcore of pens as the one he'd been in halfway here. Maybe because they were drugged when they were put in? Or because the others quailed and didn't fight before the pit?

  Whatever. It was to his advantage, so he wasn't going to question it.

  He was going to take advantage of it.

  Holden was faking it.

  Dani didn't know how, but he'd resisted the drug this time. She'd have to ask him about it later.

  There had to be a later. This couldn't be the end. Not at 24. Not with Lisa and her mother still under Sjoberg's control. Not when he was bound to switch Lisa into her place if something happened to Dani.

  She sent text after text, demanding in caps with exclamation points that her friends tell her the texts were received. Half of them texted back instantly.

  Good. She'd gotten the word out. Now she just had to stay alive.

  Dani let herself out of the private box.

  To Holden, the shift in the feeling inside the facility was so distinct he couldn't believe the gamblers and jailors didn't feel it.

  The shifters were coming aware. Hiding it, but each could see it in the other. They were waiting for some defining incident. For something to happen that signaled it was time to fight back.

  Short of standing and roaring, Holden wasn't sure how to do that.

  That was when the shifters in the pit stopped fighting and turned their attention on the audience.

  That was when the shifters in the pens, in human and in shifted forms, suddenly attacked their cages, rattling bars and snapping locks and those who couldn't free themselves were freed by the first out.

  That was when the men with the rifles were hit, first and hardest.

  Six guards with guns. Three of them didn't even get off shots. Two of them missed in their sudden terror. One hit the bear lunging at him and killed it. A silken haired boy in his late teens dropped to the floor, dead.

  The screaming started then. The guards dying, blood splattering.

  Holden went for the bears in the pit. No telling how many of the gamblers were armed. The doors were locked, though – as long as the guards were taken down and their keys seized, no one was going anywhere until this was over.

  A fast glance up at the private box where he'd seen Dani go proved she was on the move. He saw just the edge of movement as s
he headed out of the box and farther up into the stands.

  Good. Safe. Maybe documenting.

  Holden turned, growling, and launched himself at Walter Sjoberg.

  The thin, patrician man saw the bear charging him. He fumbled for his open carry Dirty Harry gun. The thing that probably made the thin, older man feel like a strong modern day cowboy slipped out of his hands like he was a child playing with a toy too heavy.

  He tried to turn for the gun at the same time he tried to defend himself against Holden, one hand up, warding him off.

  Holden lunged. His paws caught the man's shoulders and drove him down. Pinning Sjoberg, Holden growled into his face, fangs exposed directly above the man's neck.

  Sjoberg begged. Holden felt his grip on humanity slipping farther. He didn't usually hold on like this. The drugs and the headache acted on him.

  He'd worry about healing up later. When Dani was safe.

  When had she become so important?

  He felt a savage ursine grin overtake his face. He liked that she mattered.

  He sank his teeth toward Sjoberg's throat. And paused. No. He wouldn't kill Dani's father. Let him take the rap for what he'd done. There were courts that weren't crooked. Public opinion, for one thing. Deal with the haters long enough, it felt like everyone was one of them, and that just wasn't true.

  Let the public have their day. Expose the rings.

  He pulled back. He'd smash Sjoberg's head, knock him out, let him have the post-unconsciousness headache.

  When he pulled back, Sjoberg squirmed hard and made a move that shouldn't have worked. In an instant he had the gun in this hands, both hands, and pointed at Holden.

  Holden roared and Sjoberg, aiming it at his face with a sadistic smile, saw something beyond Holden and grinned ferociously, aiming it past Holden's shoulder.

  He heard her voice at the same time. "Holden!"

  Dani!

  He smashed his paw down, crushing Sjoberg's wrist against the concrete. Even then the man still scrabbled for the gun, actually got his fingers on it, screaming the entire time, threats about what he would do to Dani. To Holden.

  To Dani's mother.

  To Lisa.

  Holden snarled and let the bear take him. The last thing he knew as a man was the feeling of the fangs sinking deep into Sjoberg's throat.

  Sinking, and ripping.

  When he was human again, it was over. Sam and Stuart were dead. Dave was wounded and the other guard, Jeff, trussed up in one of the cells which was more than hearty enough to hold a human.

  The more than 100 spectators, gamblers and audience members, were sitting under threat of death in the bleachers, waiting for the police.

  Dani was in his arms.

  Suddenly waiting seemed like a very bad idea. He'd wanted her more every minute since he'd wakened in the cage with her. Then every minute had led to more confusion, more panic, more bloodlust. More death.

  And now more of the proof she needed and more of the justice he'd sought.

  Her father was dead. Holden's human hands were figuratively covered in blood. She'd seen all of it happen.

  She was in his arms.

  When he met her eyes, he asked the question silently, with the yearning he felt naked on his face.

  She answered.

  * * *

  Chapter Nine

  Holden Tyrell had killed her father.

  Dani didn't know if she should be ashamed for feeling nothing, or grateful, or just accept the fact that she actually felt nothing.

  No. That wasn't true. She felt relief. Her father had been evil, actually evil, the way anyone was who wanted to wipe out an entire race because it didn't conform to his stereotypical expectations of what was right.

  Her mother was safe. Her sister was safe. And they knew she was safe, because she'd called and said she'd be home as soon as she could, that things had happened they'd need to know about.

  Her mother had flat out asked: "Is Walter dead?"

  And Dani, not hearing any emotion other than hope had answered simply. "Yes."

  "Thank God."

  There were police to contend with and statements to give and the attendees of the horror show to see arrested. But the police had an ETA of at least 15 minutes. They were really rural here.

  They had at least 15 minutes.

  She squeezed his hand.

  There was a private office near one of the loading docks. Dani didn't want to question too hard what had been loaded there. She just wanted the privacy.

  The window that looked into the warehouse area even had a shade. The door had a lock.

  The room had a desk that looked like a flat surface.

  They tumbled into the room together and Holden spun her and used her back to slam the door, locked it even as his mouth found hers, his other hand found her breast. He squeezed, molding her breasts to his hands, her nipples already hard as rocks and shoving at the lace of her bra.

  His mouth tasted sweet, like honey, and his eyes were honey, golden and dark rimmed, still as much beast as human. She licked his lips, looked up into his eyes, and trusted him in a way that was fast and stupid and risky and utterly true.

  She'd had the civilized men in her life, so called, and most of them were higher up in an organization that killed for sport and profit.

  Now it was time to have some wild in her life where wild meant caring and chivalry and – need. So much need. She felt it like he was already stroking between her legs, bringing the want and need and making her hot and liquid. She could feel her juices spreading, touching the tops of her thighs.

  She wanted him to rip her jeans from her, to touch her, to sink his fingers deep inside her. She moaned as his tongue filled her mouth. There was no finesse between them, no time for delicacy.

  Dani's tongue forced its way deeper into his mouth, tasting musk as well as sweetness, tasting the tang of animal. He smelled like oils from fur, like the hay and musk smell of bear and animal. He smelled of open places and passion.

  She could feel him through his jeans and hers. He was hard, so hard it must hurt him, pressing against her belly. He was so much taller than her, she'd need to climb him like a tree.

  She wrapped one leg around him, pulled his groin to hers, jeans or not. Felt his hands tighten on her breasts, tweaking nipples through her tank top. He groaned, made a sound like a growl, and tore the straps of her tank free, the one already torn and the one that hadn't been. Her nails clawed at his neck, leaving scratches there.