by C. L. Bevill
Locking her elbow across the first arm, Emma began to choke Britt. She didn’t waste words. That was the moment that Wheeler rushed into the room, shoving weres aside as if they were made of paper. He made a swift movement toward the thrashing pair, and Donovan knocked him to the ground.
“Christopher,” Donovan hissed into his ear, struggling to hold him down. “It’s a challenge match. You can’t…do anything.”
Wheeler bit back his violent denial. But Donovan was correct. Although it was fairly common knowledge that Wheeler had it hard for Emma, they hadn’t declared themselves as mates. Consequently, Emma had to fight it out for herself. She had attacked the more dominant were in the most provoking form of trial. The laws were simple. Challenges could be issued and fought until one backed down or one was dead. Fortunately, the Clan members often worked out its differences well before challenges were issued.
But Emma had skipped over all of that.
Another were said, “Britt was stalking Rissa. Emma went after him.”
Wheeler understood instantly. There had been a better way to handle the situation but Britt had unintentionally hit one of Emma’s sorest spots.
Taking a breath, Wheeler shoved Donovan off him, and came to his feet in a graceful movement. He stood still as he watched Emma. Britt was backing up, trying to bounce Emma away from him. Emma cinched her arm tighter and gritted her teeth. She enclosed her legs tightly around his body and squeezed. As a turned were, she had the strength to make it hurt and she did.
Britt roared with pain. In his cougar form, even at two hundred and fifty pounds, he couldn’t get at Emma who was tightly wrapped around him. He couldn’t make his paws work in the correct manner to come back and rake her flesh.
Donovan came to stand beside Wheeler. “No rules about fighting in were shape against another were,” he said mockingly. “I’m betting on Emma.”
Sometimes, Wheeler had an urge to pound his friend’s head in. He leaned forward fractionally as Emma got slammed against the nearest wall. She grunted but held onto Britt’s back like a leach. She knew perfectly well that if she let go, Britt would turn on her and make her into a pile of blood soaked spaghetti. What she didn’t know was that if Britt turned on her, Wheeler would be on him in an instant. There was no way that Wheeler would allow Britt to kill his mate.
Britt made a noise that sounded exactly like what he was at the moment, a strangled cat. He staggered and attempted to thrust Emma against the wall again, but the movement was arrested by a lack of oxygen.
Emma’s face attained a mulish expression. She wasn’t letting go until Britt was motionless beneath her. She gritted and the words whispered out as she panted, “Teach you to pick on someone smaller than you.”
Donovan made a noise that sounded like laughter and Wheeler shot him a glare.
There was another hitching motion as Emma tightened her grip another notch. Britt choked raucously and then tried to change his form. Bones began to warp and twist but Emma held firm. She merely adjusted herself accordingly, riding out the transformation.
Wheeler frantically wanted to break up the fight before Emma crossed the line. But he remembered suddenly that she had crossed that very same line years before, only weeks after she had been transformed into a were. It was their society. Death happened and sometimes weres were forced to kill. He didn’t want Emma to have to make that decision, even for the second time in her life. He didn’t want to make it for her. Not the woman he’d learned to appreciate more and more over the time she’d spent with the Clan.
“Submit,” Emma grated. The heated whispers of the weres came to a crashing halt. Britt had completely changed into the man and she moved her arms so that she slammed his head into the floor. Britt growled chokingly again and weakly bucked against her body. She slammed his head into the floor again, this time aiming for the hardwood that had been exposed by the struggles of their fighting.
“Submit,” Emma snarled again. “Or I’ll kill you.”
Britt, although malicious, wasn’t stupid. He knew that Emma meant it and he weakly nodded. She made a triumphant sound and threw him to the floor as she backed up. The man stayed down and it was probably the wisest thing that he had done on that day.
Wheeler wasn’t about to let anyone know but his knees felt like jelly. He’d seen Britt fight and he was a nasty opponent. If he’d gained the upper hand with Emma, he would have killed her just on the basis of her challenge alone. He would be a terrible enemy.
“Second,” Donovan said suddenly.
There was a round of startled voices echoing his words. They acknowledged that Emma was now Wheeler’s Second in Command. She had beaten Britt and while in human form. It wasn’t unheard of, but by someone of Emma’s size, it was simply amazing.
Emma stood alone and panted, keeping an eye on Britt’s prone shape. The former Second had given up wholeheartedly. He had left the Clan the same day, absconding for parts unknown.
That was the time that Wheeler had last felt fear. But he was feeling it again as the Cat Clan’s Warriors systematically went against the security of the facility. Although the poorly trained humans were little match for Killian and his crew, Wheeler wanted nothing more than to find Emma.
By the time they had rounded up all of the employees in one of the cafeterias, the New York Clan had arrived. Wheeler welcomed the extra assistance. It only took minutes to force the locations out of the group’s employees. A resident doctor named Anton was particularly helpful. The captive male weres were freed immediately. It took a few minutes to convince the female weres who were holed up in their secured room that they were who they said they were. The New York Clan’s Alpha, Everton, spoke through the door to one of his members, a were named Marielle, and it made all the difference.
When the door was finally opened, Wheeler already knew that Emma wasn’t there. No one knew where she was to be found. Marielle told them what they already knew; Emma and the bird were, Xandra, went through the vents. The others heard distant gunfire and thought the worst, but they were prepared to wait for a rescue that might not have come.
And when he trailed Emma’s distinctive scent through the winding tunnels of the facility, he found a pen where she had been, with a gate that was left open to the forest. There was also the scent of humans who dripped with excitement and the pungent smell of freshly oiled weapons. He remembered what the bird were had said to him over the phone. “They’re humans who want to hunt our kind. They’re monsters.”
Chillingly, he could smell her freshly spilled blood on the wind.
•
They released Emma into the forest just as dusk was falling. There was a holding cell designed for the weres to be released without harm to the humans. It opened to the exterior forest. There was a heavy fence in between her and the men who had kidnapped her. When they were ready they would electronically open the outside gate and allow her to flee into the heavy woods. The silver wounds at her thigh, arms and hands were just beginning to heal. She was still a little woozy from blood loss but she was already feeling better than she had. The doctor had fed her an energy bar just as he was about to release her to the guards that escorted her to the holding pen.
Looking over her shoulder, she saw Whitfield standing with a group of three men. The three men were dressed in forest camouflage. They each held rifles and all of the weapons had a thermal imaging scope mounted to it. They eyed her with a lurid interest that made her chilled inside.
Emma stood still for a moment and looked at the men who had paid a great deal of money to hunt a ‘were.’ They stunk of beer and anticipation. She could smell them from a mile away.
“She’s really a shapeshifter,” one said doubtfully, eying her naked shape. “I thought they’d be bigger.”
Whitfield made an impatient noise. “She’s what is available at the moment. You requested a female. She’s not a cougar, however, but an ocelot. You’ll never have another rare opportunity such as this one. She’s a rare specimen and I hate to let
her go.”
A second man licked his lips. “Do we get to spend a little time with her first?”
“Then she won’t have a lot of motivation to elude you, will she, gentlemen?” Whitfield said. Distaste echoed in his words.
Oh, hunting and slaughtering weres is okay, Emma thought sarcastically. But rape is icky? Hypocrite. I’ll be back for you. Better grow eyes in the back of your head, asshampster.
“This better be the best hunt of our lives,” one of the men said to Whitfield. “We’ve been waiting for hours.”
Emma straightened her back as they stared at her. The wind blew from the north and for a moment, she thought she could smell a very familiar aroma. Slowly she looked around. Wheeler? Then the scent was gone and she was unsure that she had truly smelled it. Had it been a moment of desperate wishful thinking? But he wasn’t there and she was going to have to save her own hiney.
Whitfield glanced at Emma. His look was significant. “Well, she’s inspired to escape you and her intelligence level is higher than most. They have silver bullets, Miss Lucia.” The last was directed at Emma. “She didn’t come willingly to our little facility and she wants to escape. She’ll have ten minutes head start.”
Silver bullets, Emma thought. If one hits me I’ll be stuck as a human. And those three look like they don’t much care what my feelings are about the matter. They wanted a ‘female.’
The gate opened and Emma ran. As soon as she hit the shadows of the forest she searched for something sharp. Then she stopped to dig out the tracking device in her shoulder using a sharp piece of granite. Biting back the cry of pain, she dug until stone scraped against something plastic. It pulled out with a low pop of abused flesh. She dropped the device on the ground and wiped the blood on the leaves of a nearby tree. Let them see that.
Changing into her ocelot form proved a little difficult, but she managed it. The silver wounds and the loss of blood had caused complications for her system. The stitches that the doctor had put into her flesh ripped with the transformation and fresh blood spilled from the wounds. She knew that if she could get a good meal and some rest, then her shifter DNA would take care of it. But that posed a real problem.
Abruptly, Emma’s ocelot head snapped around at a noise not so far away. Ten minutes, hell. They hadn’t waited five. She ran.
Chapter Ten
A cat pent up becomes a lion. – Italian Proverb
The two years that followed Emma’s ascension to Second were both bittersweet and frustrating to Wheeler. He walked a fine line between impatience and wry knowledge. He wanted her. He didn’t want to frighten her. He wanted his mate. He wanted the Emma who was full of fire and ready to commit to a permanent relationship with him. But Emma played hard to get.
But it wasn’t ‘hard to get.’ It was never that, Wheeler realized belatedly and with an urge to slap himself on the side of his head. It was that Emma didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know that their shifter DNA had determined their suitability. Further, she didn’t know that Wheeler found every aspect of Emma as intriguing as the last. She was everything he admired in a woman.
Time passed while Wheeler pondered what he would do, if anything. Emma didn’t show any interest in any other males, except as comrades and sparring partners. Wheeler had subtly warned off any who showed her undue attention. It wasn’t an issue once they comprehended that the Cat Clan’s Alpha was intent on Emma. And she continued her sporadic testing of his abilities. She’d surprised him the first time, but in successive rounds he’d come out on top. The last time, the time she leaped from the balcony box in the grand ballroom, was the second time she’d managed to get the upper hand. She’d had to use her knives and a little sneakiness to do it.
What did she say? ‘Anything’s fair in a fight, right, Wheeler?’ But that isn’t exactly correct. She was paraphrasing the old idiom: All’s fair in love and war. When he got her back safe and sound, anything else wouldn’t be contemplated, Wheeler was going to make sure that little Emma knew exactly what that expression meant. The truth of the matter was that he wasn’t going to wait any longer.
Killian came out of the tunnels, followed by several of the Cat Clan. One warrior was dragging a man in a bedraggled suit. He threw the man in the suit down beside Wheeler. Killian nudged the man with a toe. “This is the manager of the facility,” Killian said sharply. His Irish accent was heavy with disgust. “They have an expanded scientific agenda for their subjects. They use some of their research for medical applications.” He paused and said, “They also have a breeding program.” He waited for the feline explosion and when it didn’t come, he added, “They also have several other ways of raising money. Some of their donors are allocated special hunting permits for the game in this area. Usually it’s officially listed as cougars or gray wolves. Nothing endangered at the moment.”
Wheeler’s head slowly turned to regard the man in the suit kneeling at his feet. The man with mussed gray-specked hair was in his fifties. His suit was once immaculate but was now in utter disarray. His face gazed horrifiedly up at Wheeler.
“His name?” Wheeler’s voice was flat.
“Whitfield Dyson,” Killian said and crowded behind Whitfield as the man tried to inch away. Some of the other Clan members streamed out behind them and one said with revulsion, “They hunted our kind?” The female wolf were who had been in the room with Marielle and Emma, said, “And killed them, too. Let me have him. He’ll suffer endlessly.”
There was an urge inside Wheeler to tear the human into tiny pieces. Little fragments of bloody pulp that no one would ever be able to put together again. But instead, he said, “Where is Emma Lucia?”
Whitfield glanced out into the blackened forest. Then he looked back at Wheeler. “I’ll tell you if you let me live.”
Killian chortled. “Fat chance, boyo.”
Wheeler put his hand around Whitfield’s neck and lifted him into the air as if he was a cotton ball. He held him up high above himself and watched as the suited man asphyxiated and his feet kicked helplessly.
Killian shook his head. “Stupid man. Don’t piss off a were. You’ve had this place for months and you haven’t learned that?”
“I won’t kill you,” Wheeler said.
Whitfield twitched in Wheeler’s large hand.
“I’ll put you in one of your cages.” Wheeler’s voice was the purest form of glacier. It was as if death personified was speaking to the man called Whitfield Dyson. “You’ll have everything done to you that was done to our kind. There will be tests performed on you. Needles and probes and things that are done to animals that no one ever speaks about. There will be weres who will hunt you. You’ll wish for death a thousand times before I’m done with you.”
Whitfield hastily pointed toward the forest. He made a strangled sound. His windpipe was collapsing. Wheeler suddenly let him drop to the ground without lowering him. Then the were began to strip his own clothing away as Whitfield watched in fascinated terror as he choked in much needed oxygen. Wheeler started his change before he had finished taking his shirt from his head.
Killian made sure that the gasping Whitfield couldn’t retreat by blocking the man’s frantic efforts to escape. After a minute, the lion were paused in front of the man and slowly put his magnificent head close to him. His whiskers tickled Whitfield’s skin. The long mane brushed against Whitfield’s arms. The acrid scent of fear began to cloud the area.
“Oh, my God,” Whitfield whispered.
“Not hardly,” Killian said mockingly.
Wheeler opened his mouth and Whitfield could see every last tooth in excruciating detail. A string of saliva dropped onto his flesh and he made a wild noise.
When Wheeler roared violently Whitfield’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell over sideways. Killian kicked him absently in the side as Wheeler twirled and shot into the forest after Emma.
•
Emma set to making tracks. Well, not literally, she thought. She paced herself and headed north. The hu
nters had spread out behind her and were herding her into the valley that the doctor had warned her about. They couldn’t match her pace and she had a little precious time to make a plan. First she needed to find a place to wait them out while they passed her position. If they were still spread out, she could take one or two of them. Undoubtedly, they had some kind of communication devices so they could hunt her more effectively. They didn’t want to accidentally shoot each other while searching for the ‘shapeshifter.’ That meant that as soon as Emma took out one hunter they would know. They would probably call Whitfield for some kind of backup. She wouldn’t have three hunters seeking her. She’d have a whole score of security men who knew the area better than they knew the freckles on their faces.
A doe and a buck exploded from a nearby thicket, scrambling to get away from the predatory presence, and Emma hesitated. Shifting her course, she followed their graceful flight, hoping to mix up tracks in a way that would deter the men following her. She followed their agitated evasion with gritty persistence.
Thinking frenziedly as she ran, Emma tried to plan accordingly. She didn’t know much about the thermal imaging scopes on the men’s rifles. They could see warm images in the darkness as white. Some of the scopes had the opposite colors, black hot imaging where the warm bodies were located. They ran on batteries and Emma could hope that the men hadn’t thought to carry extras. She could also hope that their communication devices weren’t satellite phones and the batteries on the units would also wear out quickly. She could hope that dawn would come quickly so they couldn’t use the devices any longer.
But she frowned. That was a lot of ‘hopes.’ Emma thought about what she knew. She was in Wyoming. There was a lot of forest in Wyoming. There was a lot of unpopulated area as well. The group who had kidnapped her couldn’t very well let hunters track her in an area that regular hunters populated. There was a fence somewhere that prevented curious people from getting into the area and that meant beyond that fence was a modicum of safety.