“Devians?” he asked, a puzzled look in his eyes. “Oh! You mean the pack that fled town? We didn’t know if the chosen one was amongst them or not. We didn’t find out about Logan until after the fact. Our scouts were only supposed to go in and interrogate the beasts, but when the vampires showed up, they had to fight. They were merely civilian casualties. It happens all the time in our business.”
Drake gave a flippant gesture as if the lives of the loups-garous, vampires, and humans that died that night meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Katey couldn’t let such an ignorant statement go unanswered.
“Families were torn apart because of you and your father,” she spat. “Do you realize the damage you’ve done? What about those two wolves you killed with the wolfsbane darts? Were those just casualties too?”
Drake chuckled. “Neat trick, huh? We’ve been developing that for the last few months. We have a lab here in the compound, and a team of botanists working to mass produce the poison. Hunters all around the globe will have wolfsbane darts as soon as we’re done. You see, the silver bullets can be dug out. You can’t take a poison out of their blood, though.”
Katey clenched her jaw at the horrific reality of every hunter on earth wielding such a weapon. If a hunter found a loup-garou and they had the wolfsbane dart, there was no hope left. It almost didn’t matter what she said this evening. If the hunters were successful in producing the poison, her kind was lost already.
“And what about the fires in Crestucky? Is that a usual tactic for you?”
Drake ignored her heated tone and replied, “When you and Logan fled, and we lost your trail, we had to find out where you had gone. They wouldn’t give us the answers we wanted. If the vampires hadn’t stepped in, we would have taken care of them. The fires were set to cover our presence there.”
Katey resisted the urge to growl. “Then I’m so thankful the vampires were there to stop you from killing more innocent wolves.”
“Innocent?” Drake laughed. “You think those beasts are innocent? They must have brainwashed you.”
“Nobody had to brainwash me to make me understand they aren’t the monsters.”
“And I suppose you think we’re the monsters?” Drake swept his hand toward his following. “Let me tell you, something…” He stepped closer, and the guards hesitantly parted so he and Katey could face one another without a barrier. If she weren't on a mission of peace, she would have attacked him where he stood.
“We’ve been taking care of these monsters for generations. My family has been in this business for centuries. We can trace our lineage back to the medieval ages when we hunted wolves for the kings. Ever since we’ve had one mission: to exterminate evil from the world. And we’re doing that one werewolf at a time.”
Katey balled her hands into fists but didn’t reply. Something within her told Katey not to contradict him. There was no point. Drake and all the other hunters like him were too set in their ways, just as the vampires and loups-garous were. It would take a miracle for them to renounce their practices and give up their family heritage. This was not the time or the place.
Instead, she nodded. “I see, and you say there’s no way I can convince you to give up your mission to capture Logan?”
Drake must have been expecting an argument, but looked satisfied when she didn’t take the bait he had wiggled in front of her nose. “No. My father’s demands stand. We need Logan, and we need him alive. If he won’t come willingly, then we’ll have to take him by force.”
Katey tilted her head. “Alive?” she repeated.
“Yes. We need him alive. You can tell him if he comes willingly, we won’t have to kill those closest to him. When we’re done with him, we’ll let him go and give him a day’s head start before we begin our hunt again.” A sly smile crept across his lips. “You see, I can be merciful.”
Katey studied him and found no deceit. If he was telling the truth, there was hope for them. If she could go back and explain the situation to the others, maybe they would let Logan play along. When they had what they thought they needed, Logan would be released, and they could run again. As much as she detested the idea of fleeing, it was a better option than running with the hunters still hot on their tails.
She stepped up closer to Drake, bringing their guards to attention. She could hear them grip their guns a little tighter as skin slipped against the handles. “Do I have your word on that?”
Drake slapped a hand on his chest. “You have my word as a hunter in a long line of hunters.”
After a long moment, still watching his eyes for any flicker of doubt, Katey nodded.
As soon as she did, Katey heard a ruffle of cloth and clank of metal on metal. She turned, but two men seized her arms and twisted them behind her back.
She gave a short cry and then felt the searing silver on her wrists. She had felt silver only once before when she was shot by Yaverik. That was a tiny bullet, and the tight handcuffs burned her skin in such a greater way that Katey hissed and whimpered at the pain.
A wave of shock rippled through the group and nearly every gun in the room was pointed at her in an instant. Drake staggered back and gawked.
Katey trembled and tried to shift her arms so that the silver wouldn’t bite into her flesh, but it was no use. She couldn’t escape from it.
“It’s impossible,” he mumbled as a guard turned Katey around so his young leader would see what the cuffs were doing to her. “You’re human, aren’t you?”
There was no hiding it now. She shook her head. “No, I’m not. Please, take them off!” she wailed as a tear slipped down her cheek. Blood dripped onto the padded floor and slid down her fingers as the metal cut into her.
“Take her to the detention room,” Drake ordered. “We were going to take you as an incentive for Logan to come here, but it looks like we don’t even need Logan anymore. We got what we’ve been looking for.”
The guards took Katey and quickly led her toward the set of double doors Drake had marched through earlier. As they exited the training hall, she heard Drake call out to her, “That was a dumb move, Katey. You should have sent someone else.”
In truth, there was no one else better for the job. They would take Katey, glean what they needed from her and Anton would go to tell the others what happened. Maybe they would have the sense to leave her and run while they still had a chance.
After taking a little over an hour to center himself, Logan left his quiet spot in the shadows on the back porch and went inside the mansion. Voices came from behind the cracked parlor doors, but Logan passed by without poking inside to check on their progress.
Plans were being made for their departure from Louisiana. Darren, Dustin, and Gregory all discussed their proposed escape paths with Michael, while Ben continued to help Forrest convalesce from his wounds. Out of everyone who participated in the battle against the hunters, Forrest was the worst off with his chest riddled with silver bullets.
With Ben’s help, they were all physically recovering from the fight as well as could be expected. Their flesh had healed, and the floor was cleaned of the blood that had been shed, but their hearts and minds were not the same as before.
Logan, especially, had a hard time winding down from what happened. He let the beast off its chain for one moment of unrestrained aggression, and he couldn’t erase the memory of tearing that man to shreds.
He stopped on the stairway and gripped the railing, and the room began to spin as it had earlier that evening after Katey stormed out of the parlor. He had never committed such a beastly atrocity since his rampage that night in Chicago so long ago.
Things he didn’t want to think about came whizzing through his mind. What if that hunter had a family? What of his parents; were they still alive? Did he have a wife or children waiting somewhere? Humans had their packs just like loups-garous had theirs. That hunter, along with the other nameless enemy Gregory killed, would never return to their homes.
Logan mentally grasped for the ass
urance that those hunters had done the same to his own kind, but somehow that wouldn’t pacify the guilt. Yes, hunters had killed their kind, but never so intimately as Logan did.
Though he had washed his mouth out a hundred times, the taste of that man’s heart and blood clung to his tongue like a terrible reminder of what he had done. The hunters didn’t devour their prey, but Logan had.
The only one who witnessed his crime was Katey. He could not confess to Darren or Michael or even Ben, who was nearly unconscious at the time it happened. The need for forgiveness drove him further up the stairs and down the hall.
More than his need for forgiveness, Logan desperately needed to feel the peace Katey gave so unconsciously. Logan had to feel her hand in his, her heart beating against his chest. Nothing else was going to make this pain go away.
As he neared the door, he listened but heard nothing. No heartbeat, no breathing. He knocked hard on the door, unafraid to wake her from whatever dream or nightmare she may have been having.
While he took a moment to wait, he let his hands slide into his jean pockets. The edge of his finger touched the warmed glass of the vial Marie had given him. Logan bit his lip and remembered the moment he was tempted to take the potion before he charged into the parlor to confront the hunters. He had already pulled the bullet out of his thigh by then and was ready to fight them back until he breathed his last.
Not one drop was missing from the bottle. Logan’s guts twisted with shame at the thought of having the potion to begin with. It never occurred to him he would have to explain his sudden ability to change. Darren and the others would ask what helped him and if he told the truth, he knew what a fraud he would become in their eyes; especially to Katey.
He regretted ever going to Marie, and at his next chance, he knew he would have to dispose of the magic somehow.
Logan rapped on the door again and tested the doorknob. It was then he realized the lock had been brutally broken and opened the door with ease.
The bedroom was empty and the French doors wide open. He took a moment to reach out through their bond, but it only confirmed what he already suspected. Through his grief, he had completely missed that she left the property and had traveled miles away by now.
Logan cursed under his breath and darted down the stairs. He was ready to barge in on the meeting taking place in the parlor when he saw something come up the drive out of the corner of his eye through the open front door.
Logan turned his attention there, thinking it was another hunter coming to claim him. When he stepped onto the porch, he saw Anton slinking through the shadows toward the mansion
Their eyes met, and it didn’t take him long to realize the vampire was up to something. The vampire paused, a dangling beard of moss grazing against his shoulder. Logan narrowed his eyes when Anton beckoned him to come closer.
Although he had proven his loyalty, Logan was still leery of the assassin. If the vampire knew why Logan’s heartbeat thrashed in his ears, then perhaps he was the one to talk to and not Darren or Michael.
They approached and walked around the side of the mansion into the backfield where the slave quarters and other unoccupied vampire guards were enjoying their break from patrol duty.
“What’s going on?” Logan asked, keeping his voice low so no one in the house might accidentally hear them.
“Katey’s with the hunters.”
It was the rage that made Logan lash out and try to grab Anton by the front of his shirt. It was speed and quick reflexes that stopped him before he could even lay a finger on Anton. The vampire gripped his wrist in a vice and bared his sharp teeth.
“I don’t have time for you and your angst. If you’re going to help me get her back, I suggest you follow and keep your mouth shut.”
Anton released his hand and marched forward like nothing had happened, but Logan stood a little befuddled for a moment. He had been spoken to like that many times before by his alpha and Dustin, but never by a vampire.
However much he wanted to resist such an order, he gathered up his wounded pride and hurried after him to follow like a silent specter in Anton’s wake.
He watched as the vamp began to wordlessly recruit other vamps from the shacks. All he needed was a gesture to get their attention, and they trailed behind him like eager pups. Once he had amassed a decent following, he took them to another shack free of occupants.
Logan wondered who was really in charge of this coven. Michael was the elder, but these grunts seemed willing to follow Anton just as unquestionably as if he were their leader. With the reputation and prestige that followed Anton, it was no surprise any vampire in the world would jump at the chance to stand by him during battle.
Some of the vampires gave Logan untrusting looks, but they let him glimpse inside their makeshift armory. Hanging on the dilapidated walls of the vacant shack were dozens of guns ranging from simple forty-five caliber pistols to automatic rifles they slung over their shoulders. The guns were the same ones the vampires wielded the other night when they almost open-fired on Katey in her loup-garou form.
Buckets upon buckets of silver bullet rounds were lined up along the walls. Logan took a step back and nearly collided with a vamp who was trying to make his way into the arsenal.
He wanted to turn to Anton, who was loading his own weapons and shoving them into holsters under his coat, and ask how Katey fell into the hunter's hands in the first place. Did she go there alone? If Anton knew about her capture, did he go with them?
Anton looked up, his eyes burning in the darkness. It was as if the vampire read his mind or understood his worry, and said softly, “She went in to talk, just like she proposed earlier. They found out she was the one they were looking for and not you.”
Logan turned to the vamps who were busy arming themselves. “If we went with her, she might not have been caught.”
“No,” Anton replied as he slid the loaded magazine into the bottom side of the handle. “The more that tagged along, the more likely we would have been caught. It was a stealth mission, and it got out of hand. That’s all.”
Logan snorted and wandered down the creaking, unstable porch, shaking his head. “You say that like it’s nothing,” he muttered. “She might be dead right now for all we know.”
“No,” Anton repeated. “She’s not dead, and you know it.”
As much as he hated to admit it, the vampire was right. The bond still thrummed within his soul, screaming that Katey was still alive, but that didn’t give him any assurance or slow his racing pulse.
“Besides,” Anton continued, “they don’t want to kill her. She was about to make a deal that if you came willingly to them, they would release you once they had what they came for. I doubt they will do any differently with her.”
Logan leaned against one of the support posts and heard it groan under his weight. Once again, Katey defied orders to do what she thought was necessary and put herself in front of the gun barrel for him. His chest squeezed, and his hands found their way into his pockets again to touch the vial.
Anton placed a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to get her back, and if it clears your conscience, you’re welcome to come along.”
Logan owed her that much. He owed her much more than that, but he would take care of it when she was back safe in his arms. With a nod, he turned back to Anton. “What can I do?”
In an imperceptible motion, Anton whipped out one of his guns and handed it to him. “Do you know how to use this?” he asked.
With hesitance, Logan took the gun and marveled how well it fit in his palm. He curled his hand around the handle but kept his finger off the trigger. Yes, he knew how to use a gun, but after everything he had been through tonight, it seemed like such a tame and humane weapon compared to what he found to be more efficient.
“And don’t make too much noise,” Anton added and walked away to brief his men on the plan.
Logan listened from a distance, his eyes fastened on the barrel of the gun. He wondered if he
had the nerve to kill another human tonight and if he did, would it be his undoing?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Katey sat cross-legged on the floor of the cage in the dark detention center. A single light shined down from the center of the room, but her sharp eyes filled in the rest of the details the light couldn’t illuminate. Hers was not the only cage in the room, but it was not the biggest nor the smallest of the dozen or so that were empty.
There were no windows and only one door at least six inches thick with three locks that required passcodes to unlatch. Beyond the room, she could hear almost nothing of the hunters’ activities, and the silence rang in her ears so strongly she thought they would eventually bleed.
She remained still, being careful not to move in such a way that would make any part of her body touch the solid silver bars of her prison. The first half hour of her captivity had been spent testing every bar with a single touch, just to make sure there was no way out. Even the padlock was made of silver and some formidable metal she couldn’t break or kick open.
With nothing to listen to, nothing to touch, and nothing to watch, Katey sat with her hands folded in her lap and eyes closed. If it weren’t for the confined space she found herself in, she would have curled up and slept.
Instead, she dedicated her time to calming her wolf who was frantic and desperate for escape. Now she understood how her pack and the other loups-garous felt while imprisoned in the dungeon below the vampire castle. She didn’t have to deal with bodies pressing in from all sides, nor the hungry tempers of other men around her, but what she was left with seemed much worse.
The lonely void made her body shiver with emotions she hadn’t experienced before. Like in the hotel room the other day, the disconnect from her pack and her fiancé nearly crushed her spirit. Besides then, she couldn’t recall a time when she had been so completely alone. Even in the hotel room, she knew Logan would return eventually. Here, she wasn’t sure of anything.
Beast Within (Loup-Garou Series Book 3) Page 35