Tiffany didn’t bother to answer. Instead, she yanked Viv out of the car with such force, she hit her head on the door before she fell face first in the snow.
Sputtering and coughing, Viv wiped at her eyes. “Okay, Princess, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but you put one more hand on me and I’m gonna kick your ass!”
Tiffany leaned down low, jamming her face into Viv’s. “Get the fuck up!” she roared, making the hair on the back of Viv’s neck stand on end. Then she yanked the phone from Viv’s hand, hurling it across the wide expanse of white.
Rather than rattle her any further, Viv rose with a wobble, blood dripping down her forehead and onto her jacket in crimson splotches.
With a fist, Tiffany punched her between the shoulder blades. “Walk!” she shouted.
The blow set off a coughing fit Viv found hard to contain, but she walked. “Where are we going?”
“Shut up and walk, you disgusting whore!”
Whoa. Whore?
There was a whole piece of some story she was obviously missing. As they pressed forward, Viv considered her odds for escaping crazypants Tiffany.
Sure, she could run, but in this snow, as deep as it was, it was going to be slow going.
But if she could shift, she maybe stood a chance of climbing a tree. She’d mastered Trees 101.
Yet, the impulse to shed her human form, as usual, eluded her when it was most useful. Taking deep breaths as Tiffany shoved and pushed her toward the edge of the woods, her last choice was upon her.
Kick a bitch’s ass.
She was no weakling. She’d taken self-defense classes and a boxing class or two, though the rules to take out your opponent now escaped her much the way her shifting had.
But she had to take the chance.
As they trudged deeper into the woods, she began to panic. She’d never find her way out of here if she didn’t do something. Now.
Whirling around, she confronted Tiffany, who didn’t seem to mind the bitterly cold, rapidly dropping temperatures one bit.
“Who are you and what the hell do you want?”
“You know who I am, you slut!” Tiffany raged the words, spittle flying from her beautiful mouth.
Viv was stunned—speechless. There was clear hatred in her eyes and it was all directed at her.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Vivienne Hathaway of the rich and powerful Hathaways! Surely Jagger must have told you about me?”
Aw, hell. Right up until three-point-two seconds ago, he’d been the perfect guy. But that wasn’t possible. No one was perfect. Especially if they knew certifiable women like this one.
Viv moved in closer to Tiffany, noting her eyes were dilated, her nostrils flaring, her breathing irregular. “I have no idea who you are! Jagger and I just began dating.”
Apparently, that wasn’t what this surreal creature wanted to hear. She raised her arm high and brought her hand to Viv’s face with a crack that sent her head flying backward.
“Don’t say things like that! He loves me! Me! He’ll always love me!” she howled.
The question was, did Jagger know he loved her?
Squaring her shoulders, Viv shook off the stinging slap and moved in even closer. “I don’t know who you are, you crazy bitch! So tell me what the hell you want?”
Her eyes went narrow, like two slits in her head when she grabbed Viv’s face and squeezed. “I want you to die! I want you to suffer for trying to steal my husband!”
Perfect guy theory: epic failure complete.
Chapter 11
Jagger scrambled out of the van, his nose on fire with Viv’s scent, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. Yet, it smelled like she was right next to him.
Max and the rest of the men got out of the van and huddled, surrounding him. “Jagger! Listen to me,” Max ordered, clapping his jaw with a cupped hand. “Don’t lose focus. Set aside your emotions and use your tracking skills.”
Hector gripped Jagger’s shoulder. “We’ll find her. Promise, man. Just stay calm.”
“What the hell is this?” Derrick asked, pulling his hat down over his ears as he looked around.
Jagger’s eyes scanned the surrounding area, pinpointing a dilapidated mobile home in front of the trails leading into the woods behind it. And tire tracks in the falling snow, skirting along the makeshift path working its way around the structure.
“The mobile home? Belonged to some of the guys who helped clean up a bunch of fallen trees when we had that big storm back in 98. They brought it out here for a place to keep warm while they worked,” Jerry reminded.
A brief moment had Jagger wondering why Jerry was with them. He was a great guy, but his penchant for getting stuck in shift and his anxieties didn’t exactly make him a prime warrior.
“Jerry, why don’t you wait here?” Jagger asked, finding it hard to keep his concern out of his voice.
Jerry shook his head, his eyes filled with determination. “Because I like Viv and I don’t want to see her get hurt. I’m really strong, even if I can’t shift all the way.”
Max nudged Jerry’s shoulder. “He’s right, Jagger. He is strong, and he’s damn quick. If we need someone to drag in more reinforcements, Jerry can call it. Hector has his back if things get out of control.”
Hector’s goggles bounced atop his head as he cracked his knuckles. “I got all your backs. Plus, if this is the jackhole who hurt that poor family of rabbits Max told me about, I want in on getting it the heck out of Cedar Glen.”
Still trying to understand Viv’s location, to understand who was doing this and why, Jagger looked around again and asked, “Why would whomever has Viv bring her here?”
He knew she was here. He smelled her. Her scent, tinged with fear was everywhere.
Max pointed toward the woods where footprints were visible beneath the new-falling snow. “Maybe because it’s wide open space from here on out. Not another house until you reach Pennsylvania. Forget the reasons. Can you smell her, Jagger? I can smell Viv’s perfume. Those tire tracks have to belong to the car Hector mentioned. C’mon—let’s do this!”
“Wait!” Jagger shouted. He was a mixed bag of volatile emotions, but he knew enough to warn them about the strength of a bear shifter. “You have to be careful. I’m betting this is the shifter we encountered in the woods the other night. Even in human form, he has the ability to crush her. He’ll go for her throat—it’s instinctual. If you come across them, let me handle it. I’m not going to end up with one of you killed because of this lunatic.”
“Got it,” Hector said above the howling wind, pulling his goggles down over his eyes. “Now let’s roll!”
Everyone began to run toward the trail leading into the woods, even Scar, who’d been unnerved since they’d all piled into the van. Jagger followed, hot on their heels, his stomach in a batch of knots.
Viv, where are you?
* * * *
“Your husband?” Viv gasped, the shock of those words penetrating her brain like sharp knives.
Tiffany waffled; Viv sensed it as her eyes shifted in unease. “Yes! No! I mean, yesss! He was my husband. Back in New York before he moved her with all of you, and it took forever to find him, but I’m not leaving this backward-ass town until he leaves with me!”
Hmmm. She had only seconds to think—but she ended up wishing she’d paused longer before she spoke. “So he’s your husband in your mind? Like your imaginary husband?”
Regret screamed through her nerve endings when Tiffany thwacked her with an open palm across the face again. “Don’t you dare say that! I’ve given up everything for him—everything just to be with him!”
“What did you give up, Tiffany?” she howled, her limbs growing numb from the ankle-deep snow.
The wind swirled Tiffany’s long hair around her face, and Viv didn’t doubt this woman was beyond troubled.
She glared at Viv with venom in her eyes when she latched on to her throat and dug her fingers into her flesh. “My humanity! I did this for h
im. I became a bear shifter for him!”
Viv clawed at Tiffany’s long fingers, managing to loosen her grip, but only by a hair. “What?”
She shook Viv, rattling her teeth as though she were angry Viv didn’t understand. As though she should know the sacrifice Tiffany had made. “He revealed himself to me and I freaked the hell out!”
Totally natural. JC had done the same when she’d found out about Max. “So you were human?” she croaked as Tiffany tightened her grip.
“Yes! But I fixed it. I’ve fixed everything now!” she said, her excitement at finding her way out of her predicament, whatever it was, palpable. “Ohhh, he was so upset when I told him I didn’t know if I could live with something so—so—enormous. He broke it off. It was awful. So, so awful! When I realized I’d been shallow, that I’d made a huge mistake, I begged him to take me back. But he wouldn’t—he refused. He said he could never live with the way I’d looked at him when he told me—when he showed me! But it’s better now. Now I’m just like him and I’m not leaving until he comes home with me!”
“How?” She forced the word out as though it were mired in peanut butter, pulling at Tiffany’s hand. “How did you become a shifter?”
She looked quite pleased with herself when she whispered in a giggly tone, “I made him bite me. I held his wife at gunpoint and made him bite me as a way to spare her and voila—look out Winnie The Pooh! Then boom! I killed them both anyway.”
Okay. Time to get the hell out of Dodge.
That was when she saw it, from the corner of her eye, a blur of something—maybe someone.
Suddenly, Derrick was in her line of vision, waving his hands just in time to save her windpipe from being crushed.
He made the universal sign for Viv to stretch out the conversation as he began his shift.
So rather than fight the immovable grip, she went slack. “Who did you bite, Tiffany?”
“Jagger’s best friend Dale, of course. He’s a bear shifter, too. You’d know who that was if Jagger really loved you. He would have told you. But he loves me, and once you’re out of the picture, he’ll see the sacrifice I made for him and come back to me where he belongs!”
Oh, God. She was staring stark-raving mad right in the eye. Horror washed over her in waves.
How had this woman who’d been so lovely turned into this?
Viv slumped, fighting for oxygen, but she pressed forward as snow battered her face and the wind tore right through her. “You killed his friend Dale?”
She snapped her fingers with a smile of glee. “Just like that!”
“But what did you do with Dale and his wife, Tiffany?”
“My name’s not Tiffany, you useless, useless, interfering bitch! It’s Miranda. The only name Jagger will speak from now on!” she growled.
“Where are Dale and his wife?” she asked, raising her voice to drown out the noise Derrick and Max were making with their shifts.
She batted her eyelashes, her lips a crimson slash in her face. “I don’t know why you care, but I buried them in my backyard. No one will even know they’re gone because everyone thinks they’re in Nigeria. I texted Jagger from Dale’s phone just last week. Clever, don’t you think?”
“It was you in the woods that night, wasn’t it? It was you who killed the rabbits—you who bit those dogs.”
Miranda frowned, suddenly displeased. “I can’t seem to eat enough. I’m hungry all the time,” she whined with a moan. “I don’t know how to fill up, but none of that matters. Jagger will teach me everything I need to know. Now shut up and move!” she roared, lobbing Viv to the ground.
Just as she stumbled, she caught sight of Scar off in the distance, moving faster than she’d seen him move since they’d met, his teeth barred, his jowls flapping on either side of his precious face.
That was the exact moment Tiffany/Miranda sensed a presence behind her. Viv saw it in her eyes. She lacked the finesse of a shifter, that much was easy to spot, seeing as she suffered her own maladies with the subject, but that didn’t stop her from her next course of action.
Her clothes melted away in a flash, her bones making that horrific crunching noise Viv knew only too well.
Hair sprouted from her flesh as her skin fell away and she transformed with a roar that could make one’s ears bleed.
Viv scurried backward in a crab-like crawl, her hands stiff from the cold, her legs wooden, scanning the forest floor for some kind of weapon.
Miranda dropped to all fours and began toward her at a run, one she’d never expect could be so quick from a lumbering bear of her size. She towered over everyone, surely standing at least seven or eight foot, her body quivering with ugly rage.
There were seconds between her and this woman who was so lost in a world she’d created in her head that, if her life weren’t on the line, Viv would pity her.
But there was no time for pity. There was only time for survival.
And she fully intended to survive this just so she could hear Jagger’s explanation.
That oughta be good.
Wife indeed.
There was also no time for any more thought as Miranda lunged for her, her jaws wide, her teeth dripping with strings of saliva.
Gripping the first thing she could touch, Viv latched on to a branch, pushing herself upward and taking a wild swing. If she was going down, if this was it, she wasn’t going down without a knock-down-drag-out.
But it was like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Miranda had her on the ground in the time it took for Viv to wipe the flying snow from her eyes, and then she went for her throat.
Viv surprised even herself when she tucked and rolled into a snowdrift, crashing against the hard packed, icy matter with a shout of pain.
Miranda rose upward again, howling her anguish, screeching until the trees around them shook with her distraught ire.
Back on her feet, she caught sight of Derrick and Max, fully shifted now, leaping through the air at Miranda’s back, snowflakes lashing their wolf forms. But Miranda was too swift. She whirled around and swiped them away from her as though they were nothing more than tennis balls and her paws were the racquet, their howls following in their discarded wake.
The distraction had given Viv just enough time to turn and run, her best bet at this point.
Then she heard, “Hey! Stop being so mean to Viv!”
She swiveled back toward the voice. She knew that voice.
Jerry?
Oh God, no! Not Jerry. She’d pulverize him. Jerry was sweet and gentle and he got stuck halfway through his shift. Miranda would eat his face off and he’d have no defense.
No. No, she couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t live with herself.
As quickly as that thought absorbed into her brain, another came hot on its heels.
Where the hell was Jagger?
No sooner did she wonder than she heard a distinct low growl, very different than Miranda’s. It was a fierce warning, a vicious threat.
Jagger!
Miranda didn’t take too kindly to Jerry’s assessment of her. She twisted around, opening her mouth wide and charging him with the pound of her feet against the snow.
And chaos erupted. A silent, stealthy chaos. There was no growling, no heated snarls of rage. There was just motion and the blinding wind.
Snow flew as Jagger knocked Jerry out of the way when Miranda made a frenzied dash for him, and then he was on his feet, too.
Majestic, beautiful, scary as hell, he rose upward and roared, the sound reverberating around her head in swirls of noise.
He went for Miranda’s throat, knocking her down like a freight train ramming into a brick wall. They rolled, twisting and turning, their bulky bodies kicking up clouds of snow and ice.
Jagger pinned her momentarily, but Miranda’s rage was her adrenaline, her fuel, and she managed to throw him off her.
A bark sounded, one full of anger and warning, high and almost shrill, making Viv’s eyes swerve to her left.
S
car!
Jerry and Hector were running behind Scar, yelling protests, but the dog was on a mission.
Save his master.
If she’d had more time, she might have wondered where the steam behind Scar’s full-on run had come from, but instead, she launched herself forward. Her intent to stop him from being eaten alive.
“Scar, nooo!” Viv bellowed as loudly as possible over the whipping wind.
Her heart crashed against her ribs in fear as she took the only route she could when Miranda caught sight of Scar.
She threw herself in front of Miranda.
With a screech of adrenaline laced with sheer terror, Viv, using her feet as springboards, threw herself in Miranda’s path, hitting the ground with such force, she gasped a shrill wheeze of air before the bear landed on top of her and pounded her into the snow.
Sharp teeth nicked her neck, but she couldn’t lift anything on her body even an inch to stop the attack, she was so deeply embedded in the ground beneath her.
There was another sharp bark from Scar, one Viv wanted to silence so he wouldn’t end up with a fate similar to hers, but she couldn’t breathe.
Her last thought was, no matter what her end, these last days with Jagger and Scar in Cedar Glen had been some of the happiest she’d ever experienced.
“Jagger! Scar! Stop, Scar!” someone yelled.
Moments passed with wet snuffs and snarls as her background noise, the heavy weight suddenly gone from her back. She lifted her head just enough to see Jagger on top of Miranda, his mouth at her neck and then she squeezed her eyes shut and gulped.
Tears slid down her face, making hot trails over her cold cheeks. There was a cold crunch of snow beneath feet and the mumbling of the men before she felt Jagger’s hand at her back.
“Viv! Jesus Christ, honey,” Jagger yelped, turning her over and wiping the hard-packed snow from her face.
She jolted forward almost as a reflex, trying to sit up but thwarted by the undeniable fire of an ache in her ribs. “Scar! Where’s Scar?” she managed before the tear of pain sliced through her midsection as Jagger helped her sit.
And there he was, his goofy face pushing between she and Jagger, his tongue lolling from his jaws and over his crooked bottom teeth. He snorted and grunted, head-bonking her.
Moves Like Jagger (Wolf Mates Book 4) Page 10