Normally Lissa would have joined him, but her bear felt oddly restless. Maybe it was all the people, bumping and jostling and getting in her way. It was claustrophobic. Hard to breathe, almost like Flynn’s alpha presence pressing down on her.
But Flynn was back in the compound.
“I need some air,” she said to Tank. He stopped her with a hand on her wrist and looked into her eyes. “I’m okay,” she said. “Really. I’ll wait right outside the door.”
She hated that he was getting that worried frown between his eyes, but she could tell he was debating the merits of letting her outside alone, or keeping her in here if her bear was reacting badly to being cooped up.
It was cold outside, but there was a bench in the sun, and Lissa had on her warm pink jacket and her bunny boots.
She headed for the bench, but halfway there she got a stabbing pain in her head, like someone had shoved a spike through her skull. Someone was calling her.
Lissa. Come here.
The voice was inside her head, but she could hear it as clear as day, and she knew she had to obey. Her feet started walking down the strip mall, past one store and then another, to an alley between the buildings.
Inside the alley was Brother Damien.
He was backed by three of the men from the People of Ursus. Edward, her former boyfriend, Elder Michael and Elder Joshua.
All three men looked harder and more dangerous than they’d ever looked before. The People of Ursus were gentle and peaceful, and these men had always been kind. Now they looked completely different.
And they smelled like bears.
Like shifters.
Brother Damien gazed at her, his eyes glowing red.
He looked just the same as he had the night she left, except for a white scar running down the side of his face.
I hope I did that, Lissa thought.
Brother Damien’s face was angry, his nose wrinkled in disgust. “You smell vile,” he said. “Like grizzly, and half a dozen other animals. Come before me, you whore.”
Whore? Oh hell no. She tried to walk away, but red fire lanced through her mind. Her body walked forward, toward Brother Damien.
In one smooth move he unzipped her jacket and yanked it back. Then he pulled her sweater down and bared her shoulder.
“At least my mark is still there,” he said. “If you had let yourself be defiled by another bear, I would have had to punish you severely.”
He yanked her sweater back up. “I still may,” he said. “I was not pleased by your behavior, nor by having to chase you across the state of Tennessee.”
He grabbed her neck in a painful grip and pressed his mouth to hers in a punishing kiss, hard enough to draw blood.
“Kneel before me,” he said.
Lissa tried her hardest to resist, but her knees buckled and she went down on the hard, wet pavement. She could feel muddy water soaking into her jeans.
Then she felt a shadow pass over her and suddenly Brother Damien was three feet in the air, with Tank holding his throat.
“I don’t fucking think so,” he said, and threw Brother Damien into the wall.
The other three men growled simultaneously. The sound was met by feral growls from behind Lissa. Her crew.
The pressure on Lissa’s mind retreated, and she clambered to her feet. Brother Damien raised his hand, red fire dancing around it.
“Don’t even think about it,” Tank said. “Because I’m a fucking grizzly, and I don’t need to Change to tear a little bear like you apart, Teddy.”
Brother Damien climbed to his feet. “Whoever you are, stay out of this. She is my claimed mate, and I’m within my rights under law. You cannot keep her from me.”
“Oh, he so fucking can,” Xander said. “We all can. Just watch us.”
Tank stepped forward. “You Claimed and Turned a human without her knowledge or consent,” he said. “I’m within my rights under the law to kill you where you stand. And nothing would bring me more pleasure. So stand fucking down, rogue bear. Find another mate—one that wants you.”
“She’s mine!” Damien thundered. “No other female in the People of Ursus was strong enough to be the Vessel. The other two died—”
Lissa turned on him. “You did this to some of the others? You killed them?”
“They were not worthy.”
A red haze began coming over her mind.
“Oh, fuck,” Xander said. “She’s going all glowy-eyed.”
“Xander. Jasmin. Get her to the truck,” Tank ordered. More gently, he said, “Go on, Lissa. Go.”
“She shall not go!” Damien shouted.
The pain lanced through Lissa’s head again, and her bear roared.
“Go!” Tank shouted.
The last thing Lissa saw was Tank’s fist smashing into Brother Damien’s face, and then everything went black.
Chapter 28
“He compelled you to come to him?” Flynn asked. “From half a block away?”
Lissa nodded. “There was a horrible stabbing pain in my skull, and then my body just walked off without me. I couldn’t stop. And when I was standing in front of him, I had to do what he told me, even though I didn’t want to.”
“Shit,” Flynn muttered. He was pacing back and forth in the living room of the cabin, a constant rumbling growl in his throat. “Just please tell me you didn’t kill him,” he said to Tank. “Not in the alley by the supermarket.”
“I should have killed him.” Tank was breathing heavily. “He tried to Turn two more women, Flynn. They both died. He said so.”
Flynn dropped his head back, shaking it in disbelief. “Shit,” he said. He turned to Lissa, his voice gentling. “People you knew?”
Lissa’s voice was shaking with anger. “He didn’t say who. But I knew everyone in the cult. They were—they never hurt anyone.” She swallowed hard. “And those men with him. They were my friends—one of them used to be my boyfriend. And they stared at me like they didn’t even know me. He Turned them too—I could smell it. And then he did whatever he did to me, that made me into his zombie bitch.”
“Tank should have killed him,” Xander said, running the flat of his knife blade across his thigh over and over. “We could have hidden the body.”
Flynn swore again. “We can’t drop bodies in town, for God’s sake,” he said. “But if he comes here, you can rip him apart for all I care. My concern is that he’ll lure Lissa somewhere else.”
Or try to make her turn on them. They didn’t say it, but they didn’t need to. “I guess nobody’s letting me near any sharp objects for the duration,” she said.
Tank growled.
“Should we call the Council?” Sloan asked. “We’ve got more than enough for them to move on him.”
Flynn and Tank exchanged glances. “I’d rather not,” Flynn said. “It could turn into a legal tangle. She does have his claiming mark.”
Lissa looked from one to the other. “What does that mean?” she asked. “He said something about me being his under the law, but I thought he was delusional.”
Flynn blew out a sigh. “Well, not quite. There are several different kinds of matings under shifter law. True mates have a magical bond that’s invoked when they have sex with the intention of accepting the bond between them. That bond is unbreakable and can be sensed by other shifters, and is a legal mating.”
She looked at Tank. That must have been what he had with Angie.
Flynn went on. “There are also more informal matings that can be recognized by the Council or an alpha, and can also be dissolved if the two people want to. Like a divorce. And then there are claimed mates.”
He rolled his big shoulders, obviously tense. “Claiming is normally for shifters of different species, so that one can be accepted into the other’s crew, pack, or clan. Or for a human/shifter mating, so the human gains rights and privileges in the shifter world that they normally wouldn’t be allowed.”
Lissa said, “It didn’t sound like I was getting any rights or pri
vileges. More like I was being enslaved.”
“The claiming bite has magic,” Sloan said. “If it’s done with intent, and supposedly with consent by the person being bitten, then it binds the two people with a weaker bond than a true mating. If the person doing the claiming is pledged to an alpha, then the claimed mate is also automatically bound to that alpha. It’s a way of keeping humans from going off and outing shifters, if necessary. The alpha can compel them.”
“Is that what Brother Damien did to me? To make me obey him?” Lissa shuddered. It was horrible, her body doing things whether her mind consented or not.
“Yes, but apparently he’s such a wuss he was afraid it wouldn’t take, so he went one step further and put compulsion magic on you. That’s the red energy that fights Flynn’s alpha magic.” Xander shook his head. “Wanker.”
“That’s illegal magic, even for witches and sorcerers,” Jasmin said. “You can’t just go around taking over people’s minds.”
“People do,” said Flynn dryly. “Ask Noah Reilly. Hell, ask Tristan. He could probably do shit like that if he wanted.”
Lissa shuddered. If this Tristan person could do that, she was glad he wasn’t here anymore.
“So then why can’t we call the Council on Brother Damien?”
Tank was growling. Lissa put a hand on his back to try to calm him, but her bear was just as riled up.
Flynn said, “It’s dicey. He could claim you agreed to the mating and then ran away. And your bear is still out of control. They might return you to him until they can investigate.”
“Are you kidding me?” Lissa said. “This is worse than the human system when there’s domestic abuse, and that’s saying a lot.”
“Yeah well, that’s why we want to keep it out of the courts. Israel and Ashley will be here on Friday. If they can lift the compulsion magic and testify to the fact that it was there, then the Council will accept their word and nullify the claim.”
Tank said, “What if I claimed her?”
Lissa stared at him. He didn’t really want to do that, she knew he didn’t. And yet it might keep her safe from Brother Damien.
And she wanted it. She was shocked at how much she wanted it.
But she couldn’t let him sacrifice the rest of his life when they might have another solution in two days.
Flynn scrubbed his head, a sure sign he was agitated. “I don’t know. It could make the legal stuff more complicated, not to mention tangling up the magic. And even if you pledged to me and then did it, we don’t know how it would affect Lissa. Look what happened when I tried to offer her my protection, the first day she came.”
They all went silent.
Flynn turned to her with a sigh, and she could see the worry lines around his eyes. “Try not to worry, okay?” he said. “Just make sure somebody’s with you at all times. Don’t go off on your own. We’ll have a nice Thanksgiving, with a nice healthy fight at the end of it, and then Israel and Ashley will be here the next day. We’ll keep you safe.”
Lissa tried to do what Flynn said, but she couldn’t keep the worry from crawling through her belly. Brother Damien was here. He might be able to sense where she was. He could call her, and she would have to come. Or worse.
“He could make me hurt you,” she whispered to Tank. They were alone in his room, getting ready for bed. “He could make me hurt all of you.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Flynn’s locking up the weapons. I’m with you. We don’t even know for sure that Brother Damien knows where you are. You’ll be okay until Israel gets here.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, those soft green eyes looking into hers. “I’ll claim you if you want me to,” he said. “It’s your decision.”
She yearned so much to say yes, to feel his bite on her shoulder, to be his. But she couldn’t do that to him.
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “I know you’ll take care of me. In two days, this will all be over.”
Chapter 29
During the deepest dark of the night, Tank came suddenly awake. Lissa was moving restlessly in her sleep, whining like her bear was in pain.
“Shh,” Tank whispered, rubbing her back, trying to soothe her. But she only grew more agitated.
“No,” she groaned. “No. I won’t do it.”
She was having a nightmare. Tank shook her, trying to wake her, but she was still thrashing and muttering, a continuous growl rumbling in her chest.
Oh, hell. This wasn’t a nightmare. It was Brother Damien, somewhere out there, calling her in.
Lissa sat straight up, her eyes wide and unseeing, red flames dancing in them.
She roared out in a deep, gravelly voice, “I hear. I obey.” Then, with a shout, “I come to you!”
With shocking suddenness her bear burst out of her skin, midnight black and furious, her body outlined lined with crimson. The force of her Change knocked Tank off the bed and halfway across the room. He landed on the floor, the wind knocked out of him.
“Lissa!” he wheezed. “Fight him!”
She turned and snarled at him, no recognition in her eyes. With one huge bound, she leaped off the bed and smashed through the big window onto the back porch, shards of glass raining down on the wooden floorboards.
Tank scrambled to his feet and jumped through the window after her. Jagged glass cut into his skin, but he ignored the pain. There was no way he would let that fucker Damien drag her into his sick web of magic and insanity. She’d survived his forced Turning and made a place for herself in this crew. She deserved to belong to no one but herself.
He took a running leap and tackled her just before she got to the woods, begging his bear to stay inside. Bear was raging with the need to kill Brother Damien, to make his crew and his mate safe, but he was too crazy to know what he was doing. He could easily go berserk and kill Lissa by mistake.
In bear form Lissa was bigger than Tank as a human, but not by much. She was sure as hell stronger, though, and had better weapons. Her claws raked down his back, and she snapped at him with her razor-sharp teeth.
He slapped her muzzle away. “Fight it, babe,” he panted. “Make him fuck off and leave you alone. You can do it.”
But she couldn’t. Those red flames still filled her eyes and she fought like a demon, desperate to follow the compulsion Brother Damien was sending to her through their magical bond. More deep, bleeding gashes raked his skin.
He hung on grimly, trying to talk her down, but he was losing too much blood. He felt his skin rippling as Bear tried to rip his way out.
Bones in his arms snapped, even as he fought the Change, and he lost his grip on Lissa’s bear. With a mighty roar, she squirmed out of his grasp and headed for the woods, leaving Tank stumbling after her, still bleeding.
There was no way to catch her in time.
Just as she reached the tree line, there was a soft hiss and a ‘thunk’ from off to his right, and then another. Lissa’s bear staggered, swayed, and went down.
Tank lifted his head and wiped blood out of his eyes. Flynn stood at the corner of the cabin, flanked by Xander and Sloan, a tranquilizer rifle in his hands.
Tank collapsed against a tree, blood running down his body from a dozen wounds. Flynn just shook his head. “Dude,” he said. “Would it have killed you to ask for a little help?”
Xander and Flynn picked up Lissa and carried her to the front of the house, Tank trying to stay within touching distance while at the same time mopping the blood from his quickly closing wounds. When he saw where they were taking her, though, his bear reared up in protest.
“You’re not fucking putting her in the crazy shed,” he snarled.
Flynn pushed his hair back and sighed. “What else are we going to do with her? If Damien can compel her from a distance—and call out her bear whenever he wants—then that lock is the only thing standing between them.”
“I’m standing between them,” Tank spat out.
Flynn shook his head. “I’m not going to make the obvious sarc
astic comment about how well that’s worked out so far.”
“You’re not locking my mate up like a fucking zoo animal. Or a science experiment.” They all flinched at that. They’d all been locked up, and they knew the terror and the helplessness.
Flynn snarled, “That’s bullshit. It’s not like that, and you know it. This is for her own safety, and it’s my call, not yours. She’s a member of my crew, so I’m responsible for her. And I’m still alpha here.”
Any other time, Tank would have respected that. But right now, everything was all crazy in his head, and he could hardly hear Flynn over the roars of his bear. “You’re not my alpha,” he snarled back. “And you’re not hers either. Nobody’s pledged to you.”
He could see his words rip through Flynn, but he didn’t have any regret in him. Not now.
“She’s not your mate, either,” Flynn shot back. “You haven’t offered for her, and she hasn’t accepted. But she has accepted my protection, and that means I decide.”
Wild fury ripped through Tank, and he and his bear roared, “Mine!”
His grizzly ripped out of his skin, and he lunged toward Lissa, wanting to drag her off to his den, to protect her at all costs.
Flynn’s lion burst out, his roar shaking the trees. Blue fire crackled around his mane and his front paws, and his alpha energy pressed down on Tank.
But he would not roll over. He would not submit. Lissa was his.
He roared his defiance and lunged again. Flynn leaped at him, hitting Tank with his body and knocking him aside. The panther and the snow leopard were flanking Lissa now, snarling a warning.
“Tank!” Jasmin shouted, the only one still human. “We’re not the enemy. Brother Damien is the enemy!”
Tank scrambled to his feet. Brother Damien. The enemy. He’d claimed Lissa. Without him, she’d be his. He would defeat Brother Damien, and then he could come back and claim his mate.
Bad Blood Bear (Bad Blood Shifters Book 1) Page 16