Under a Raging Moon: Part Three

by Chambers, V. J.

  Once I had everything together, I went back to Sal and padded him down.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  I yanked his keys out of his pocket. “Thanks, Sal.”

  I couldn’t use his car forever, of course, but it would be a good start.

  I was out of the apartment completely in ten minutes flat.

  Standing at the edge of the parking lot, I held Sal’s key aloft and hit the button to unlock the doors. A Hyundai Elantra’s lights flashed at me.

  Nice.

  I was on my way.

  Back on the road, I was glad of Sal’s car, because it was much nicer than traveling in public transportation the whole way. And I was headed back over the same route I’d just traveled. I figured I’d go back to the cabin, pop in, hand Kale the necklace, tell him I was sorry, and then get the heck out of there.

  I fantasized briefly that the both of them would be glad to see me, but I told myself that wouldn’t be the case. I’d drugged and abandoned them. They’d be pissed.

  Of course, they’d held me captive in the middle of nowhere.

  But I’d also tried to steal from them, and that was going to be the nail in the coffin. They wouldn’t forgive me after that.

  So, there could be no sexy reunion, the three of us taking off our clothes—no, them undressing me, slowly peeling away my clothes to bare my breasts and uncover my ass. I wouldn’t have their hands on me. I wouldn’t be able to put my hands on them.

  None of that was going to happen.

  And it turned out that I was right, because when I got to the cabin, no one was there.

  It was completely empty, and there was no sign of life anywhere. The dishes from our last meal were still in the dish drainer, and the glass door was still boarded up. If it weren’t for those things, it would have been as if we hadn’t even been there. We’d left our mark, but now no one was around.

  At first, I was worried.

  Had something happened to them?

  And then I was pissed off. They’d acted like they were stuck in that cabin with me, no way out. I remembered Kale making a big deal about how they’d taken his phone and stuff.

  But they must have had some way to communicate, because they were gone, their stuff was gone, and the month they’d been supposed to stay there wasn’t up.

  My anger was overtaken by worry again the minute I realized that must mean that Kale was back home.

  Sal’s men were going to check there first before anywhere else. They might not expect to find Kale at home, but they damned well weren’t going to leave that stone unturned. They’d probably leave a few guys lying in wait for him there as well, like they had for me.

  That was one thing when I thought Kale was off at the cabin, but now that I knew he wasn’t, he could very well be at home. That meant he was in danger.

  Crap.

  I got back in Sal’s car and drove as fast as I could back to Werewolf Town, USA and Kale’s split level house.

  When I got there, the house was dark. Kale’s car was in the driveway, but I expected it had been there the whole time we were in the cabin, so that hardly made any difference. I parked Sal’s car far enough away that it wouldn’t be conspicuous and made my way up to the house.

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if they were there. I guessed I’d have to shift into a wolf to fight them. I reassured myself that Kale would do the same thing. He could shift and protect himself. I’d seen what he and Hudson had done to those electric workers.

  He’ll be okay, I told myself. He’ll be fine.

  I approached the house slowly and softly. There was no noise coming from inside, no lights on, no signs of life. When I tried the door, it fell open under my hand. Someone had taken out the locks.

  Immediately upon opening the door, I smelled blood.

  He killed them, I thought. He killed them all.

  But the blood didn’t smell right. It wasn’t human blood—not exactly. It was wolf blood, and it smelled like Kale. I hadn’t realized that I knew how Kale smelled so well, but I guessed that our closeness had cemented his smell in my brain. That was Kale’s blood. They’d hurt him.

  The inside of the house was a mess—furniture overturned, electronics destroyed, claw marks on the walls.

  What the hell had happened?

  I turned in a circle in the middle of the living room, my hand to my lips.

  This was bad. This was really bad.

  * * *

  I banged on the door of Hudson’s ramshackle house downtown. I was being conspicuous, and I knew members of the werewolf conclave might see me and try to subdue me again, but I didn’t care. I needed to make sure that Kale was okay.

  The door of the house opened, and Hudson stood there. He looked me up and down.

  “Listen, Hudson,” I said. “I know that you have every right to be angry with me, but you have to just hear me out—”

  He yanked me into the house and slammed the door. Then he threw me up against it. “You are such a lying whore, Piper,” he growled.

  “Okay, you can call me names later, but—”

  His mouth was on mine.

  I was startled, but immediately began kissing him back. He smelled like pine and fresh air and sunshine, and I wanted nothing more than to be close to him.

  He ran his hands over my curves, skimming the walls of my breasts, my waist, my hips. “Tell me the truth. Who the hell are you?”

  I gasped. “It’s complicated, but it’s not important right now.”

  He touched my lips. “I thought I was never going to see you again.”

  I shut my eyes. “Something bad’s happened, Hudson.”

  He kissed my neck. He put his lips against my jaw. “I’m going to do bad things to you, Piper. You deserve it, and I want…” He ground his body against me.

  Geez, he was hard.

  “Oh goddamn it, Hudson, you have no idea how much—”

  He cut me off kissing me again. His hands went inside my shirt, dancing over my bare flesh.

  I could hardly breathe, but I kept trying to speak. “I want this. I want you. But we need to focus on…”

  He pushed my bra out of the way and rubbed his thumbs over my nipples.

  I moaned.

  “Not so loud,” he managed. “You’ll wake up my sick mother.”

  I snapped my eyes open. “It’s Kale.”

  That made him stop. “Kale? Seriously?” He backed away from me, rolling his eyes.

  “He’s hurt,” I said. “Jesus Christ, I don’t have time for your stupid jealousy right now.”

  “Right, I see,” said Hudson, jamming his hands in his pockets. “So, his hurt is more important than anything I’m feeling? Oh, and by the way, what the hell did you do to us at the cabin, anyway?”

  “Not hurt feelings,” I said. “He’s been physically hurt. It’s my fault. You’re going to hate me—”

  “I already hate you.” He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean, physically hurt?”

  “There are men, and they’ve taken him somewhere, but when I went into Kale’s house, I smelled his blood, and I don’t know what they did, but I came to you because I didn’t know who else to come to. We have to—”

  “Hold on,” said Hudson. “Slow down. Now, what the heck is going on?”

  I didn’t even know where to start. There was so much that I needed to explain, but it seemed overwhelmingly complicated. “Let’s focus on Kale first, okay? We need to get him back.”

  “Back? Where is he?”

  “Well, that’s what we’ve got to figure out,” I said. “I need my cell phone. It has numbers on it for the boss of these men, and I don’t have those numbers memorized. Do you have any idea what happened to my stuff after the conclave grabbed me?”

  “Piper, who are these people, and what are they doing to Kale? Does this have something to do with your past? Is it the bad situation you were running from?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “There wasn’t really a bad situation.
I’m not who I said I was.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s pretty obvious,” he muttered.

  “Do you know about my phone?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think it’s back at the conclave’s clubhouse.”

  “Can we go get it?”

  “If I bring you in there, that’s only going to open us up to a lot of questions, and probably waste time.”

  “Well, I can’t stay here with your mother, can I? If she sees me, won’t she just notify the conclave?”

  Hudson sighed. “Fine. You can come along, but you won’t come in. You’ll hide in the truck while I get the phone.”

  “Okay,” I said. That worked fine for me.

  “I just have to figure out how I’m going to explain why I need that phone.” He eyed me. “And you are going to have to do better at shedding light on this entire situation, because I’m incredibly confused.”

  * * *

  Hudson swung back into his truck and shut the door after him.

  “Finally,” I said from where I was crouched down behind the dashboard. “What took you so long?”

  “They thought that if I had your phone, it meant that I knew where you were. They thought that you and I had conspired to be together to cut Kale out of the equation, and that I was going to mate with you in secret. It took a lot of time for me to convince them otherwise.”

  I started to crawl back up on the seat.

  “Stay there,” said Hudson. “Don’t move until we’re out of sight of the clubhouse.”

  I groaned. It was really uncomfortable down there.

  “I don’t even know why I’m helping you,” Hudson said as he pulled out of the parking lot. “You’ve been lying to us the whole time, and you put something in my food, didn’t you?”

  “Benadryl.” It wasn’t very comfortable down here. I was being jostled around. “Are we out of sight of the clubhouse yet?”

  “That’s what you wanted the Benadryl for.” He shook his head. “You little bitch.”

  “Stop calling me names!”

  “I’m sorry, but if it weren’t for the fact that you’re so goddamned sexy that I can’t stop thinking about you constantly, I wouldn’t have a fucking thing to do with you. You’re bad news.”

  Well, he wasn’t exactly wrong about that. I didn’t say anything.

  He kept driving for a bit. “Okay, it’s safe to sit back up.”

  I scrambled back up onto the seat. “Give me the phone.”

  “I don’t think so. Not until you explain what the hell is going on.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Look, the men who have Kale are…” I didn’t even know what they were, now that I thought about it. They’d needed to hire me, after all, so they couldn’t be thieves themselves. “Lowlifes,” I decided on. “They only care about money, and they’re willing to be violent if it means they get their payday.”

  “What the heck does that have to do with us? Kale doesn’t have that much money. He’s better off than me, but it’s not like he’s a good candidate for kidnapping.”

  “No, I know that, but they think he has something that he doesn’t have anymore. Or they think he knows where it is, at any rate.”

  “What’s this something?” Hudson glared at me. “Jesus, Piper, could you be more vague?”

  “I need the phone,” I said. “Let me make a call so that I can figure out where Kale is, and then we’ll get him back. And once I know he’s safe, I swear to God, I will tell you the whole story.”

  His jaw twitched. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, and I could see that he was losing his temper. Hudson ran hot, and I knew his anger would be like a searing explosion. Instead of being afraid of that, though, I found myself feeling a little bit… excited.

  Abruptly, he pulled the car over. He pulled down a little dirt road and parked by the side of the road. He turned to look at me, his expression stony. “Piper, you have to explain to me what’s going on.”

  I was reminded of the first time we’d touched each other. We’d been in this truck, parked on the side of the road in a similar way. My breath hitched in my throat.

  “Start talking,” he ordered in a low voice.

  “Hudson, it’s very complicated.” And then I threw myself across the truck at him, my mouth seeking his mouth, my hands grasping at his shirt to push it away. I ran my fingers over the smooth skin of his stomach, feeling his fine, soft hair.

  He grunted, but he didn’t stop me. Instead, he grabbed onto me and crushed my body against his while he kissed me as hard as he could.

  I explored the hard angles of his back, letting my fingers travel lower to touch the top of his ass.

  He sighed, moving his mouth away from mine, kissing my chin. “Piper,” he breathed, “you have no idea how badly I—”

  He broke off as I reached into his pocket and plucked out my cell phone.

  Triumphant, I flounced back over to the other side of the truck and began scrolling through my contact numbers.

  “You fucking—”

  “Don’t call me names!” I put my finger in his face.

  He clenched his hands into fists.

  “And what we were doing,” I said, “is to be continued, got it?”

  He sat back in his seat, running his hand over his face. “I don’t know what to think of you.”

  I selected a number and put the phone to my ear. I waited. Eventually, there was a voice on the other end. “You.”

  “Hi, Sal,” I said. “Thanks for the car. Where’s Kale Morgan?”

  “I knew there was something going on with the two of you. You’re sweet on him, aren’t you?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Or maybe it’s just that he’s got the necklace, and you want it back. Maybe you’re just using him. You seem like a hard little—”

  “Where is he?” I cut him off. Too many people were calling me names today. I didn’t like it.

  “Do you have the necklace?” said Sal. “Would you be willing to trade it for Morgan?”

  I considered. I didn’t want Kale to get hurt, but I didn’t really want to hand over the necklace either. Still, that might be the best way to get Kale out of hot water. And if I played it right, maybe I could hang on to the necklace and get Kale back. “Okay, Sal, you’ve got yourself a deal. Now tell me where to meet you.”

  Sal started talking. I listened.

  And started to scheme.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “You know what you’re going to do?” I asked Hudson. We were sitting in his truck, parked just away from the meet-up area, which was an abandoned shoe factory at the edge of town. I’d never been here before, but Hudson had known where it was.

  “I’m good,” said Hudson. “But I still don’t like the idea of you going in there on your own.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’ve got this.” I put my hand on the door handle, and then I looked back at him. “What’s the signal?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Piper, you’ve asked me that ten times.”

  “So, humor me, and tell me for the eleventh time, okay?”

  “You’ll say that you’re ready to roll, and that’s when I’ll know it’s go time.”

  “Good,” I said. I took a deep breath. And then I got out of the truck. I left Hudson behind. Sal and the others didn’t know about him yet, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  Once I was clear, the truck drove away, and Hudson was gone.

  I squared my shoulders and began the long walk to the meet-up spot. It took me quite a while, because I’d had Hudson drop me off way out of sight. I didn’t want the others to have any inkling that Hudson was around. As far as they were concerned, I was alone. On account of the walk, I’d arrived early.

  But they were waiting for me when I walked inside.

  The abandoned factory had busted-out windows and graffiti-covered walls. Inside, it was empty except for some scattered pieces of trash—old beer cans and napkins. Teenagers probably came here to party.

  S
al wasn’t there personally, but six other men were. They had Kale in a cage, and he was still in wolf form. I could see that there was a wound on his left flank. The blood had soaked into his pelt. It made me feel sick.

  The six men were all armed with big guns, and four of them had them trained on me.

  “You try shifting into a wolf, and we shoot you and loot your corpse for the necklace,” said one.

  I’d figured they’d try something like that. Walking into a situation like this, there was no way I could count on my ability to shift into a wolf to save me. Being a wolf meant that I was generally pretty fit and healthy, but it didn’t mean that bullets wouldn’t kill me just as dead as any other human or animal.

  I held up both of my hands. “I’m not going to try anything. I just want to make a simple trade.”

  “Right,” said the guy who’d spoken. “Let’s see the necklace, then.”

  I shook my head. “You’ve got the guns. How do I know you won’t shoot me the minute I show it to you?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “We can’t lower our guns. We need them for protection against you.”

  “How about you let Kale out of the cage? Let him come over and stand next to me. You can keep your guns on us the whole time in case I try anything funny. As soon as he’s free, then I’ll give you the necklace.”

  The man considered. “Why don’t you just show me the necklace so I know you have it?”

  I shook my head. “Kale first.”

  “Fine,” he muttered. “Let him out.”

  It was the best chance I was going to get. Two of the men were busy with the cage, and they were all looking at Kale, not at me.

  “Well,” I said loudly. “I’m ready to roll.”

  For several tense seconds, nothing happened. The guys with guns all gave me suspicious looks, wondering why I’d said that. It hadn’t actually fit into the conversation as well as I had hoped it might.

  But then Hudson came bounding through one of the broken-out windows, behind the men. He was in wolf form, and he leapt onto one of the men with guns.

  I tugged my shirt over my head, willing the change to come over me.

  One of the men squeezed his trigger, shooting straight at me.