by Danica Avet
* * * *
Inside the house, Ricky stared at Saga. Damn, but that was one fine woman! Too bossy and independent for him, of course, but a man could look, couldn’t he? The incubus sighed deeply as though he’d seen this all before and wasn’t interested. The Cajun hadn’t said a single word since Ricky and Grant had shown up and it wasn’t until now that the bear remembered he was even in the room.
“Can we call the queen now?” Fallon asked in a tired voice.
The Amazons ignored him, talking to each other in hushed voices. Good thing Ricky had excellent hearing because it was a conversation he wouldn’t have missed for the world.
“Good job, brain trust,” Rosetta hissed at Saga. “I can’t believe you told him what Queen Albreda planned for Izzy. Now he’s out there like some…some white knight charging to the rescue. That was not part of the plan!”
Saga’s eyes were bright with surprise and anger. “I know it wasn’t part of the damned plan, but I had to find out how he felt about her, didn’t I? Albreda suspected something was up between them and now we know.”
“We know that Izzy thinks she’s out of the tribe.” Rosetta spoke through her teeth, glaring straight in her friend’s eyes. “You promised we wouldn’t use that threat unless things were really bad.”
Saga’s ivory shoulder lifted in a shrug. Ricky’s mouth watered at the sight of the lean muscles beneath the taut skin. He could almost taste her.
“Izzy’s hardheaded, you know that as well as I do. If we’re ever going to become aunts, we need to take drastic measures. Now the minotaur is out there doing exactly what we wanted him to, and Izzy is doing what we need her to do—think about how she feels about him. Simple.”
“You’re both couillon,” the Cajun inserted with an aggrieved sigh. “Ma fouine was deeply hurt, not just because of having to leave her taureau, but because she does not want to leave her sisters. Si c'est pas les maringouins, c'est les chaboulures.”
“What’d he say?” Ricky asked as he absorbed all the information he’d learned.
Saga turned, looking at him with wide blue eyes that narrowed dangerously. “You’re still here.”
He shrugged and fought off the urge to glower at her for forgetting he was in the room. “Of course I’m still here, I want to know what the hell’s going on!”
She took a step forward. “You were supposed to follow your cousin out of here.”
“Yogi done screwed up,” Rosetta muttered as she checked her makeup in her compact.
“What the hell’s going on?” Ricky roared because enough was enough. These Amazons were driving him insane!
Fallon clucked and sauntered towards them. “I said ‘There’s always something wrong. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.’ Which loosely translates to, you just let the most important person in this operation go.” He shook his head at Ricky and left the house.
“Idiot.”
“He’s a man, Saga, he’s going to screw things up.” Rosetta snapped her compact closed and pulled out her sword. “We can castrate him now or we can go after the bull. Which do you want to do?”
Saga shook her head at Rosetta and strolled towards the front door. Ricky stepped in her path. She kept walking until she was mere inches away from him. He could feel the warmth from her body drawing him like a magnet. He wanted her something awful, but there was no way in the nine hells he’d end up with a woman just like his mother.
Not ready for her to know how much he wanted her, Ricky glared down at her. “Where are you going?”
She was cool as ice though, his Amazon. No, not his Amazon. She was a pain in the ass, that’s what she was. Her and her sisters. She looked him up and down, her expression shielded.
“I’m going to make sure my sister gets her mate.”
She pushed past him with Rosetta on her heels. The drag queen stopped and shot him a come-hither look. “If you want to follow with one of your hawt deputies, I’d love for someone to um, hold my sword.”
“Rosetta! You’re such a whore!” Saga shouted from the front yard.
“I am not a whore. Izzy’s the whore. I’m just easy.”
The door slammed behind the drag queen, leaving a very confused Kodiak bear all alone.
“What just happened?” Ricky asked the empty room.
* * * *
Grant followed Isola’s departure to the end of his drive. He frowned, sniffing the air carefully. His nose sorted the scents. Isola had stopped for some reason and someone had met her here? He frowned, tracking and backtracking over the site.
The snow was slush, and he and Ricky had driven through here not long ago which meant any footprints were obliterated. He walked along the road towards town a ways, trying to see if he could find anything and discovered a spot where a vehicle had almost gone off the road. He recognized the tire treads as belonging to Isola’s Tahoe and cold fear struck him. Had she been in an accident?
He shook his head. No. He could clearly see where she fought for control of the car and pulled it back on the road. He jogged over to the spot and that’s when he saw it—a heavy footprint too big to be Isola’s. He crouched low, sniffing the tread, and his lips pulled back in a silent snarl.
Bear. But not a local bear.
He backtracked again, trying to see where the footprints had come from and was rewarded yet again, but not in a good way. Closer to the entrance of the driveway, there was a small impression in the snow and a droplet of blood on the muddy snow. His heart pounded as he bent to dab at the drop.
Even before he lifted it to his nose, he knew it was Isola’s. Rage and anguish beat like a drum in his chest. His mate had been hurt, taken by the kind of shifters she feared the most.
“Taureau!” The Cajun incubus ran up to him, his nostrils flaring as he caught the scent of blood on Grant’s finger. “Where is ma fouine?”
“I don’t know. Bears took her.” Grant was having trouble speaking, but knew he needed to share the information he’d learned. Once again, his father’s wisdom reminded him not to be too proud to ask for help. With his mate’s life on the line, Grant had no pride. “They stopped her car somehow and hit her. They hit her.”
Fallon nodded once, his eyes dark with promised retribution. “We will find them, taureau, I promise.”
Grant barely heard the incubus’s words, his whole body concentrating on the extremely fragile bond his mate had formed with him. He could feel where she’d joined with him, but because their bond was so new, he couldn’t use the bond to track her.
He fell to his knees in the middle of the road, clenching wet slush between his fingers. Gods, he’d messed this up so bad. The one time Isola needed him and he couldn’t follow her!
His roar of frustrated agony echoed across the countryside, startling the wildlife that stilled. It was the sound of a beast denied his mate and vowing to destroy anything that stood between them.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Splash! Izzy spluttered and shook her head. What the hell? She tried reaching up to wipe the water out of her eyes. So help her, if that bull thought he was going to start wetting her while she was sleeping…
But she couldn’t move her arms. She tugged, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes. Seriously, what the hell? She looked up and around. Blurred figures surrounded her. The water that had gone up her nose flowed out again and she was able to take her first breath of air. Animal musk, a slightly sweet scent, the smell of freshly turned earth. Bears. And one of them, she remembered.
Her brain felt sluggish and her memories were fragmented, but she distinctly remembered seeing Dov’s face before she was knocked out. The muscles in her throat contracted sharply, fear weighing heavily on her chest. The terror spell at work and if she couldn’t get her act together, she’d end up passing out, leaving herself at Dov’s not so tender mercies. She shuddered.
Dov made tsking sounds over her. “No warm greeting for an old family friend, Izzy? Your mum would be disappointed.”
The false heartiness in hi
s voice made her gag. She could almost feel his hatred of her, and it didn’t take a genius to guess what he planned to do to her. Mentioning Trianna was another way for him to hurt her and she bled a little inside at the thought of the mother she once had.
“What do you want, Dov?” she asked with false bravado.
Her fear was a tangled knot inside her chest. It threatened to suffocate her, but she would not go down without a fight. For a fleeting second, she wished she could’ve told Grant good-bye, but she shoved the thought away.
“Leave us,” Dov ordered the other bears that left, but not before leering at Izzy.
She took a quick moment to see where she was. It was a shack or shed. Devoid of everything but the bare essentials: cot, small wood-burning stove, and weapons. She stared at the guns and swords longer than she meant to before moving her gaze along the shack. It had to be some kind of line shack which meant they were probably in the middle of friggin’ nowhere. She was in the middle of nowhere with Dov and his bear flunkies.
She forced herself to appear unconcerned, but inside, she was a quivering mess. She didn’t want to know what those bears planned even though she had a strong suspicion.
Dov pulled up a chair in front of her and seated himself with a smile. He’d aged some since the last time she saw him, but she could still see the handsome young lad she’d teased mercilessly before her spirit walk. They’d explored each other’s bodies and sexuality. At the time, Izzy had thought they were going to be mates, but after watching Trianna change at Dov’s father’s hands, Izzy had blocked any tender feelings for him.
“Isola Malone,” he said with a satisfied sigh. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for years.” Brown eyes regarded her lazily, though she knew better than to think he was relaxed. No, she saw the predator in his gaze and knew he only waited to attack. “You’ve grown into a fine lass, a bit more bottom than you used to have.”
Izzy rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Are you going to tell me I have a fat ass, too?”
He laughed, the sound was rusty as though he hadn’t done it in a long time. “Ah, Isola, you always were a joy to be around.” His lips twitched as though remembering some of her more youthful antics. Then, just like that, the light died in his eyes leaving them cold and menacing. “Until you killed my clan.”
“I didn’t kill them, dammit! Your crazy father did that.”
His nostrils flared with the rage that filled his eyes. “My father tried to teach you your proper place in the family. Your disrespect cost me the life of my father and brothers and sisters. And now,” he leaned forward, his voice a soft whisper of sound, “now, I’m going to take everything from you, Isola Malone—your tribe sisters, your friends.”
Izzy’s heart thundered as blood roared in her ears. No, he couldn’t wipe out an entire Amazon tribe. It was impossible.
“And your mate.”
She froze, her heart slowing to an unnaturally calm rhythm. “What mate?”
Dov smirked at her, his eyes strangely hungry. “At one time I thought you were my life mate. When Da told me he was mating your mother, I imagined taking you as mine. I could have trained you to listen to me, trained you to be the perfect mate, but you went back to your tribe.” His lip curled in disgust. “It’s unnatural for females to war like men. I would have gone after you, but Da said not to, that you’d come to me.”
Izzy was flummoxed. He’d wanted to mate her? Seriously? And turn her into some kind of Stepford wife? “You must’ve been out of your mind. There’s no way I would’ve gone along with that.”
“You would have if I had beaten you every day.” He stood, towering over her, his size blocking out most of the light. “I would have broken you until you saw me as your lord and master just as Da did your mother. You think it was easy to break an Amazon as old as she?” He laughed. “Trianna was taught to obey her mate. You would have been much easier to train, as young as you were.” One of his big hands reached out to graze her cheek. “My world changed when you brought death to my family. I had no one, nothing, except the need to punish you for taking them away from me, for defying me.”
Izzy shook her head, her skin crawling where he’d touched her. “You’re crazy.”
An unholy light lit his brown eyes. “I’ve waited nearly a hundred years to teach you as much pain as you’ve taught me, Isola Malone, and I plan to enjoy every second of it.”
A knock sounded on the door seconds before it was thrust open by one of the other bears. “Dov, there’s someone coming.”
Dov blinked slowly as though coming out of a trance. “Send out a couple of men. Kill them.”
The bear’s eyes slid to Izzy. “What if it’s the minotaur?”
“Bring him alive, I have plans that don’t involve our employer. Anyone else dies.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door closed again, leaving Izzy alone with Dov. Her strange calm was displaced by fear. She knew it was either Grant, or her sisters, or both. They’d come after her and Dov planned to kill them. She couldn’t let that happen. She needed to get free and protect them. She needed a plan.
* * * *
Grant looked over at the strange little fairy who led them across the countryside. She had gray skin, black wings, and brilliant green eyes. She also seemed to be the only person who could find his mate.
“Shikoba, are you sure this is the right direction?” Saga breathed the question into the late afternoon air.
The fairy smiled tightly. “Yes. She’s somewhere up ahead.”
When Saga and Rosetta found out about Isola’s kidnapping, they’d leaped into action calling other Amazons from their tribe and the small shadow fairy. Grant had taken one look at the strange Shikoba Fayard and wondered what was wrong with his mate’s sisters, but after following her for two hours, he was thankful they’d called her. She wasn’t just a shadow fairy, but a Shadow Knight with the ability to find anyone she targeted. It was a talent well-used by assassins, but in this case she was rescuing someone. Grant was almost tempted to kiss her for helping him.
The two other Amazons they’d called in had arrived with vials of liquid they called “Smell Be Gone.” Grant hadn’t wanted to drink it, but Rosetta and Saga had assured him the potion was safe and necessary to keep the bears from sniffing them out.
“It’s not on the market yet,” Rosetta had said as she waited for Grant to drink the potion. Once he did, she’d added, “It’s said one of the side effects of the potion is that it makes your cock enormous and—Oh my God! It works!” Her wide-eyed gaze had nearly burned a hole through the crotch of his jeans. “The Veilerian Drug Administration needs to give Mortimer Fairchild a medal.”
Grant had blushed just as the drag queen had intended. It had broken some of the ice between them, but preparations for infiltrating an unknown encampment had taken over from then. Isola’s sisters were smart, crafty, and willing to do whatever necessary to get her back.
“I wish we had Malachi with us,” Rosetta suddenly muttered as she strained to see into the distance. “He could have portaled to her.”
“And whoever has her would have felt the portal forming and either set a trap, or run,” Saga reminded her friend in a soft voice. “We have to move in fast and hard if we have any chance of saving Izzy.”
Ricky muttered something about “fast and hard,” but everyone ignored him. The bear had been particularly grumpy since he joined them, although Grant couldn’t find out why. And right now, it wasn’t important. They had to get Izzy from the bears. Then they could deal with everything else, like the completion of the bond, finding out who was after Grant, and how he was going to tell his mother he was a one-woman bull.
“Someone’s coming,” Shikoba hissed as she crouched down behind a fallen log.
The group fell to the ground as one. Grant, Ricky, Fallon, four Amazons, and one Shadow Knight. It wasn’t a big rescue group and they had not a single Guardian Elite with them, but Grant knew they could do it.
Snow crunched under he
avy feet as the newcomers approached. Grant scented the air and felt the rage he’d barely held in check slam through him again. He recognized the smell of the bears who’d taken his mate. It wasn’t all of them, but there was no forgetting that scent.
He tensed to charge forward, but Saga grabbed his arm. She shook her head slightly, her blue eyes narrowed on the approaching bears. Grant wanted to argue with her, wanted to shake her hand off his arm, but he didn’t. There was something in her gaze that promised pain to those who’d taken her sister.
He sat back. Well, at least he now knew Isola’s sisters cared about her as much as she cared about them. They might be seriously messed up in the head and have strange ways of showing how much they loved each other, but love they did. He supposed he should get used to it if he was going to spend any time with the strange women.
“…trouble if he keeps playing around,” one bear with a massive beard told the other as they tramped towards them.
They were too arrogant to think anyone could possibly lie in wait for them, and that was to Grant’s group’s advantage. Enraged and startled bears were not easy to defeat, and if his nose was correct, these were grizzlies, which meant they were tough as nails. Not good.
“Stop complaining and do as you’re told,” the other bear countered as he paused. “We’ll each have a turn with her before she dies and no one will know.”
“What about that minotaur? We’re not supposed to kill him, but I think Dov is planning to. We don’t get paid if he dies, remember?”
Bear Two paused again, his eyes on the ground. “That’s true. Well, we just won’t let Dov kill him.”
“Have you ever seen Dov in a rage?”
“No, why?”
“It’s like—”
A loud explosion rocked the woods, sending both bears to the ground. Grant and his group huddled closer to the ground as a blast of massive heat roared through the air over their heads. He’d never felt anything like it in his life. What the hell had caused an explosion like that? And why did he have the nasty suspicion Isola was at the heart of it?