He’d been like a ball of rage for hours, and I couldn’t bear it.
“I know you must blame me,” I started, feeling sick but unwilling to pretend the elephant wasn’t in the room any longer.
“You’re wrong, Sienna,” he shot back with a growl. “I blame me. You are human. You have no understanding of this world, yet you’re the one constantly stuck trying to clean up this mess. I didn’t protect my sister, and now, I’ve managed to lose Patch as well. They are my responsibility, not yours.”
I moved toward him, taking his hand in mine and lacing our fingers together. To my relief, he didn’t pull away. “Saorise is her own woman. Patch is his own man. And the people doing these horrible things are monsters. You can no more control any of this than you can the moving tides, Connor.”
His gaze blazed across my face. “But you can?”
The question hung on the air between us and I swallowed the knot in my throat, realization dawning.
“Oh, you’re clever, aren’t you?” I asked as he drew me against his chest. “You’re using my own argument against me.”
I breathed in his scent, collapsing against his muscular chest like a collapsed balloon.
“Blaming ourselves won’t help Patch or Saorise,” I concluded softly. “So, let’s just focus on getting them back, shall we?”
He nodded against my hair and pulled back to gaze down at me.
“Sounds like a plan.”
Something flashed in his eyes as he tucked a lock of hair behind my ear.
“You’re a good one, Sienna. You’re special.”
I let his words wrap around me like a blanket before rolling up onto my tiptoes to press my mouth to his. His hands plunged into my hair as his tongue darted out to rub against mine. Instantly, my body came to life as he drew me closer, letting me draw strength from him. Strength I so badly needed.
Dimly, I heard the sound of a doorknob jiggling and pulled away with a start.
“Soon,” Connor murmured, his eyes full of promise. “We’ll get them back and soon enough we’ll have our time, unmarred by ugliness and fear.”
God, I hoped he was right.
Declan stepped into the room a second after we parted, arms loaded with bags of chips and drinks.
“I hope there’s chocolate in there,” I said lightly as I walked over to help him with his bounty.
“Naturally. What am I, a monster?”
For the next while we ate in silence, each lost in our own thoughts.
Shortly afterward, we decided by tacit agreement it was time to at least try to get some rest. But when I closed my eyes, all I could see was Patch, tied to a chair in that cold warehouse.
What if something happened to him before we could get to him?
Eventually, I did get to sleep, but it felt that I had only just closed my eyes when my alarm wakened me and I found Connor and Declan already dressed.
"I've ordered breakfast," said Connor, as I headed for the bathroom. "Better to go on a full stomach."
We didn't hang around over eating but as we ate, Connor explained his plan.
"Our big disadvantage is Patch. As soon as we get into that place then they'll know why we're there and they'll hold him hostage. Plus, doing this without Patch makes us a man down - no offense, Sienna."
"None taken." Patch was obviously more use in a fight than I was - my combat experience amounted to the occasional scathing email that I immediately regretted.
"So how do we turn that negative into a positive?" asked Connor, rhetorically. "We hit the warehouse before the club. Thanks to Sienna's bravery last night," I tried hard not to swell with pride, "we know where Patch is. We know that he's alone and secluded from the rest of the club. We get him first. That way, they can't use him against us and we have an extra man when we go into the club itself."
I was glad to know that, even though their brother was the main target of this expedition, Connor and Declan still had no intention of leaving all the other magical creatures there in captivity.
"How do we get in?" asked Declan.
"The garage is the most highly monitored entrance. But I saw someone enter via an elevator so I’m guessing that there’s a way down to the warehouse from the main store. I'm hoping the doors into the store itself will be less well guarded. After all, they don't want to draw too much attention to their presence with lots of guards standing around."
"You're adamant about coming?" Connor looked at me, clearly not happy.
"Are we really going to have this argument again? I can’t describe where everything is without risking a screw up. I need to be there to lead you guys."
He looked like he wanted to argue but instead, settled on reaching out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind one of my ears. "Fine. Stay close and be careful."
I had made it very clear that I was with them to the end, but there was now a niggle of doubt starting to slither its way through me.
It wasn't that I was afraid - I was, but that wasn't the problem - I was concerned that I would be in the way. I didn't want their protecting me to get in the way of their rescuing Patch.
"Let's go, then."
We approached the store from a different route and a different angle today. Whether that made a difference, who could say? But we were taking no chances - or, at least, no more chances than we had to.
I had suggested that we might create a diversion at the front to pull guards away from the store entrances, but Connor had decided that that might just make them suspicious. He was probably right, but it left us with the task of getting to the doors without being spotted by the guards.
"There," said Connor, pointing from our hiding place towards the store. As we had hoped, the doors into the store itself were guarded much less stringently. A single man sat near the doors, smoking a cigarette.
"Now what?" asked Declan.
"Now we go talk to him," said Connor. "The direct approach."
Cutting through the store's old lot was a shortcut that many used to get from A to B, so there was no reason for anyone just walking through to be considered a threat.
However, we had noticed that every time someone took this shortcut, the guard reported their presence into his walkie-talkie, and then gave the all-clear when they had passed by. As we approached the door, looking as much as we could like three people on their way somewhere, we saw the guard speak into his walkie-talkie.
"He's told them someone's coming," whispered Connor. "Okay, then." He spoke louder, "You think I'm wrong? I'll ask this guy."
Peeling away from Declan and I, Connor jogged over towards the guard.
"Yo. Sorry to bother you, buddy. My girlfriend thinks we're lost, I just need you to..."
Connor's hands moved so fast I barely even saw them, grabbing the man's arm, hurling him into the wall with a stunning smack, then yanking him back to pinion both arms behind his back.
As Declan and I ran up, Connor was speaking into the man's ear. "Now, I need you to get on the radio and tell your friends that we've gone back the way we came. And if you don't then I'm going to break your arm off."
I wasn't sure if Connor actually would have followed through, but he was very convincing, and the guard certainly believed him. Declan held the walkie-talkie up to the guard's mouth.
"They've gone back the way they came." The man stuttered a bit but nothing too suspicious. "Looks like a lovers' tiff."
"Got it," came the reply.
"Well done," said Connor. "That was a nice little bit about the lovers' tiff. Creative."
He released the man and then punched him in the face. The guard spun around on the spot, like a character in a cartoon, before falling full length to the ground unconscious. Declan crunched the man’s walkie-talkie beneath his boot.
The old automatic doors of the store gave way easy when Connor and Declan pried them open, and we crept in. Abandoned department stores are eerie places; row upon row of empty shelving, evidence of the homeless using them as a temporary dwelling, and always those
few items of merchandise that somehow got left behind.
The emptiness made my footsteps echo throughout that wide space, however hard I tried to tip toe. Irritatingly, the Selkie, though bigger and heavier than me, seemed to make no sound at all as they crept on through the store. We split up to search, heading for the walls, looking for a staircase that led down. I heard a whistle to my left and saw Declan beckoning. Connor and I joined him. Beside the freight elevator was a staircase.
Perfect.
We crept down and I tried hard not to let panic overtake me.
At the bottom of the staircase was a door with a circular window in it, smeared with grime. Connor cautiously rubbed a small area clean and peered through. I saw from the tightening of his features that he was seeing what I had seen yesterday. With economical hand gestures, he told Declan and I to back off, then took a handful of coins from his pocket and tossed them up the stairs.
They fell back down with a clatter.
Connor watched through his peephole, both hands on the door. Then, suddenly, he shoved the door forwards and I heard the smack of the door hitting someone in the face. I hoped that it was Jack. Connor rushed through the door like lightning, with Declan on his heels and me not far behind. As I entered the warehouse, I heard the beginning of a cry cut off as Connor grabbed a second man over the mouth, squeezing his head so tight it seemed like the man's eyes might pop.
"If you want to die, then struggle,” Connor growled low in his throat. “Please. I'm just begging for an excuse."
Declan was hovering over Jack, stunned by the door in the face but not quite unconscious. Declan helped him the rest of the way by banging the man's head against the hard floor.
I rushed to Patch, who looked up as I approached. There were fresh cuts on his face and his lip was split, but he smiled when he saw me.
"You're early. We're not open for hours."
"Keep making jokes and we'll leave you here," said Connor. But I could see the relief in his eyes. He was on the verge of tears and got control of himself by shaking his prisoner. "How many more of you in the building?"
The man made muffled sounds.
"Oh, yeah." Connor released the man's mouth and he gulped in air.
"You'll never get away with--"
Connor punched him hard in the face, knocking him off his feet and back into a pile of clothes hangers behind him.
"Thanks. I really appreciate you giving me a reason."
"You didn't already have a reason?" asked Patch, as I untied him and he collapsed forward.
"Christ, brother, are you alright?" Declan rushed forward to help him.
"Do I look it?" he deadpanned.
"No worse than on your twenty-first birthday."
Patch shrugged. "At least that I deserved. Never drunk so much in my life," he confided to me blearily.
"We still need to get your pelt, but you're safe now," I said.
“It’s in the next room.”
I cocked my head as he pulled away and lurched toward a darkened closet and wrenched the door open. A moment later, he had his seal skin in hand, his face a mask of relief.
“It’s okay. We’re all going to be okay now,” I murmured, moved near to tears.
"But not everyone is." Patch steadied himself. "Thanks for coming for me. Really. I know I screwed up letting myself get caught like this. But it's not just me here."
Connor held up a hand. "We know."
"You're going to help them?" Patch's compassion sent a rush of emotion through me. Even in his current condition, he was unwilling to leave, knowing that there were others in captivity at least as badly off as him.
How could you not fall in love with a man like that? Jesus, all of them were just so amazing.
"Damn right, we’re going to help them," said Declan.
"I need some clothes."
Wincing a bit as his various injuries made their presence felt, Patch quickly dressed in the clothes we had brought for him and tucked his skin into one of the bags.
"Right." He turned to me. "You know the way?"
I nodded, glad to be of help as I had felt pretty useless to this point and led them through the warehouse. At the door that led out into the underground parking garage and the club proper, there was a man on guard who, unfortunately for him, was facing the wrong way. Declan pulled the door open, Connor yanked the man back into the warehouse by his collar, and Patch slammed him over the head with a metal shelf.
"You know, I feel better for that," Patch muttered.
"Then by the time we're done, you'll probably be feeling practically back to normal," Connor grunted back with a grim smile.
"Archie?" A voice from outside the door, looking for the missing guard.
Again, Declan took the door, Connor the collar, and slam! In the head with a metal shelf.
"Maybe if we wait here then they'll all just come to us," suggested Patch, holding a badly dented metal shelf and smiling down at his second victim.
We sneaked out onto the platform of the loading dock and hurried down into the parking garage. From outside the curtains, the club looked like nothing but red sheets tied to the pipes that ran across the ceiling. Credit where credit was due; they knew how to create atmosphere.
Connor indicated that we split up - I went with him and Patch with Declan. Creeping around the periphery of the club, we each sought out a gap in the drapes.
"You know what to do?" breathed Connor, his voice lower than a whisper.
"Create chaos?" I murmured back.
"That's my girl." Some people might have found that condescending, but at that moment, there was nothing I would rather have been than Connor's girl.
He held up his hand so Declan could see the fingers counting down.
Three, two, one...
We burst through the drapes, Connor laying hands on the first man he encountered and holding him in front of us as gunshots rang out.
The man's body convulsed, and with a shock of horror, I realized that I had just seen a man shot. How little effect it had on me probably had as much to do with adrenaline as it had to do with the fact that the man deserved it.
Still using the dead man as a human shield, Connor charged across the room at the guard who was desperately reloading his handgun. I, meanwhile, turned to the cage beside me, that housed a werewolf, and threw the door open. The man inside - small, pale and inoffensive-looking - looked at me with gratitude writ over his face, a face that now twisted and expanded into that of a wolf.
Seconds later, he was out of the cage and hunting down guards as I began to fling open cage after cage, the club filling with the angry supernatural.
I saw one man screaming as a cloud of brightly colored fairies swarmed over him, biting and pulling at his hair. I saw a Cyclops, wearing just a fur loincloth, pick up another man and toss him into the Merrow tank, and, seconds later, I saw the green water tinged red with blood. I saw a half-woman half-cat - I don't know the technical term - spring from her confinement to slash the chest of her captor. The man fell backwards at the feet of a Kobold, which brought a chair down into his face with enough force to crush the man's skull.
The guards from the ramp, hearing the sounds, ran in, guns blazing. They did not last long as the bogeyman, that had been waiting for them behind the curtains, reached out and throttled them both with its long-fingered grip, shaking the life from their bodies before vanishing again into the dark seclusion of its hiding place.
The fight probably lasted barely two minutes, and when it ended, there was not a single employee of the Twisted Club left alive. I couldn’t blame the club's unfortunate victims for taking their brutal vengeance, but I suddenly remembered with a roll of terror.
“We still need someone to tell us where Saorise is!”
"What about the ones we left in the warehouse?" said Connor.
We hurried back the way we had come, to find that others had been this way before us and had left a trail of bodies in their wake.
"Looks like a succub
us," said Patch, evenly, as we stared down at the corpses, now shriveled as if the life had been sucked from them.
"Damn," murmured Connor. "This is my fault. I didn't think."
"None of us did," Declan put in, trying to comfort his brother.
"Wait a minute," I spoke up. "Maybe the creatures we released know something. They certainly owe us a favor."
Some had fled already, others remained silent, many preferred to be hidden - all acting according to their nature. But a majority was with us and willing to help. None of them knew to whom Saorise had been sold, but they could go us one better.
"The guards might have been able to give you the name," said the Kobold - whose name had improbably turned out to be Barry. "However, we can give you her location."
"Really?" The hope was potent in Declan's voice.
"Not now," admitted the little man. "But we have our ways. We’ll get it."
"And we all knew your sister." The fairies spoke in a tinkling chorus that was beautiful and yet simultaneously unsettling, especially as I had just seen them kill a man. "We all want to help you get her back if we can."
The affection on the faces of the Selkie brothers made my eyes burn with unshed tears.
"That's Saorise," said Patch, smiling through his beat-up face. "Always making friends." He glanced at me. "And you can't fault her taste in people."
We quickly gave the fairies information on how to reach us and watched them melt away into the sky.
Although, we still had not found Saorise, I sensed a greater optimism in our little group than ever before.
We were not alone anymore.
It was as if Saorise, by sheer force of her good nature, had put together a little army to help us. Saorise's Army.
And we were about to go to war.
Chapter 15
What to do while our newfound friends were hunting for Saorise was the first question.
It was tempting to join the hunt, but really; how?
We had nothing to go on. A person who wanted to buy a female Selkie, something almost impossible to get hold of, would be willing to travel whatever distance was necessary to do so.
Her Selkie Harem Page 11