by Amelia Jade
“Of course, Doctor,” came the reply, and the phone beeped as she was transferred.
“Hello?” came the gruff reply a double handful of seconds later.
“Gabriel. It’s Courtenay.”
“Go,” he said instantly, something in his tone telling her that he recognized this wasn’t a normal phone call. Gabriel was the leader of the Stone Bears, the highly trained security force for LMC, as well as the burgeoning Sentinel program, a sort of shifter-police designed to help protect the human occupants of the town from any inappropriate shifter behavior. Courtenay likened them to military police.
“You need to call Garrett,” she rushed, in case something happened. “They have Joel. I know where they are. I followed them there.”
“Uriel, call Garrett,” Gabriel said, ensuring the phone call would be started before they even hung up. Uriel was another member of the Stone Bears. “Where are you?” he asked to her.
“I...I don’t know,” she stammered. Somewhere outside of town.”
“If it is safe for you to leave, could you do so and guide us back?”
She nodded quickly, then blushed as she remembered she was on a phone call and he couldn’t see her. “Yes, yes I think so.”
“Are you positive?” Gabriel asked, looking for confirmation.
Courtenay set her jaw. The man she cared for—no, the man she was falling in love with—was in danger, because he had been willing to sacrifice his life for her. She didn’t know if he was even still alive, but if they had killed him, she wanted to ensure that justice was swiftly delivered.
And if he was alive, she just wanted to feel his arms around her one more time.
“Yes, I can do it,” she said firmly, determined not to fail anyone.
***
“Turn left here,” she directed.
The wait had been nearly unbearable.
Courtenay had managed to get back into town undetected. But the wait for Garrett to show up had taken a long time. Minutes had ticked by. Then a quarter of an hour. At half an hour she had wanted to call Gabriel back and demand to know what happened.
Finally, forty minutes later, they showed up, several big shifter trucks rumbling into the parking lot. When she had asked what took them so long, Courtenay had found out they were up on a day off, and Garrett had had to collect everyone first. Along with the Jade Crew, the Stone Bears and at least half a dozen of their trainees had shown up. It was, in her eyes, an impressive display of force.
She just hoped it was enough. The dust cloud they were kicking up even in the generally damp early-spring conditions was certainly intimidating enough. Garrett had taken back his truck from her when they had met up, and to her great relief, he hadn’t mentioned anything about the overly rough condition it had arrived in. She felt terrible about having to smash in the lights everywhere, but it had been necessary.
“Gabriel, are we heading where I think we’re heading?” Garrett asked now over the phone. The two of them had been on hands-free communication through the trucks since they departed.
“Perhaps. Ask Courtenay if we make another left, followed by a right, where there’s a big sign that says No Entry.”
“I can hear you,” she said dryly, always amused at how some of the shifters seemed unable to comprehend technology. Most were good, but even those like Gabriel had lapses from time to time. “And yes, that would be correct. You guys know this place?”
Garrett’s lip pulled back in an angry sneer. “This isn’t the first time we’ve had to dispose of some idiots doing dumb things at this location.”
His angry posture suddenly dissipated. “We just never figured they would come back to it,” he said, berating himself.
“What is the place?” she asked.
“Property that was given to another mining crew,” he said softly. Regret and sadness tinged his voice, and she could tell that there was a great deal more to it than that, but she didn’t press the subject. If Garrett wanted to explain, he would. Otherwise, she didn’t want to do anything that might interrupt their focus.
At last they pulled to a halt next to the sign that said No Entry, just like Gabriel had predicted.
“Do you think Joel is still alive?” she blurted out suddenly just as Garrett was exiting the truck.
“I hope so,” he said honestly. “But if not, they’re going to pay.” There was no anger in his voice, just a swift promise. “What are you doing?” he asked, looking at her.
Courtenay paused. She had just pulled the door handle to open it. “Getting out?” she said, confused.
“No, absolutely not,” Garrett said. “You take the truck and go back to the Lodge. You’ll be safe there.”
She stared at him. Part of her wanted to do just that, to get as far away as possible, and let the shifters resolve everything for her. It was the easiest and definitely the safest method, which should have been what appealed to Courtenay.
So why was she so intent on accompanying them all of a sudden?
“They have my man. Your Crew member. Their friend,” she said, gesturing at the other shifters. “You all get to fight for him. Why shouldn’t I?” As if to prove her point, she jumped out of the truck and stormed toward where the other shifters were gathering.
“Because you’re just a human!” Garrett shouted, then stopped. “Don’t crucify me,” he said as she turned a glare his direction.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t,” she snarled.
“Because, Courtenay, you know me. You know I don’t mean that offensively, or that I think of humans as lesser.”
She relaxed, knowing he was telling the truth.
“But that doesn’t mean that in a fight between shifters that you aren’t at an extreme disadvantage,” he said. “Logically, you can’t do anything but be a distraction for the rest of us. Instead of worrying about what we need to be doing, we’ll have to be worrying about you as well. That puts us in more danger of being caught unawares, and increases the likelihood that one of us gets injured badly, or possibly worse.”
“But,” she began to protest, looking around at the other shifters, desperately hoping that one of them would say something to come to her defense.
There was only silence.
Angrily she crossed her arms and planted her feet. “I’m not running back into town though. If Joel is in there, I need to be nearby. He’s going to need me.”
Like I need him.
Garrett looked prepared to argue, but Gabriel laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be fine here,” he told the Jade Alpha. Judging by his voice, Courtenay wasn’t sure he believed those words, but he was willing to give her that much, at least, so she took it.
That settled, she watched as they headed down the road, spread out across it so that they didn’t form a particularly large clump. She counted only thirteen of them though. Six Sentinel trainees, five Jade Crew, Gabriel, Raphael and… where was Uriel?
He was missing, she realized suddenly.
“Here, take these.”
Courtenay whirled at the voice behind her, trying her best not to cry out.
Uriel was holding out a belt with two guns on it.
“Guns?” she asked, surprised. “I didn’t think those worked against you.”
He smiled. “A big enough one will, but generally you’re correct. These aren’t normal guns though. They fire an extremely sharp dart filled with highly concentrated tranquilizer. Each dart has enough juice to put down two adult elephants,” he explained, quickly showing her how to switch off the safety, and how to reload. “You’ll need two or more darts per shifter. The first dart should slow them down enough for you to hit them twice more. If you go with three darts, that’ll take them out for at least fifteen minutes.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, strapping the belt on and adjusting the fit before following him down the road.
He turned to show her the side with no arm. “I know what it’s like to feel useless in a fight. I also know what it�
��s like to need to fight for the one you love.” His eyes grew unfocused for a moment, and she could tell he was thinking of Sydney, his mate.
“Thank you,” she said after several minutes of walking in silence.
Uriel simply nodded, his attention focused ahead. She saw his body language change suddenly as he heard something. Her hand went to her waist, drawing the tranquilizer gun. Courtenay was no stranger to guns, though she had never had the desire to carry one. But as a child growing up in a house in the country, guns had been a common enough thing to carry and learn to use. The tranq gun was a little different, but she felt confident enough to be of use with it at least.
As they continued to creep forward, moving off the road into the bush, she began to hear shouting voices and the roar of animals.
Ahead of her, Uriel began to jog forward. She almost had to sprint to keep up with the huge shifter, but she stayed doggedly on his heels. It almost backfired on her when he stopped abruptly and she ran into his back.
He turned to look at her, giving her a questioning look, but Courtenay simply gave him a thumbs up, letting him know she was okay. The sounds were louder now, and a huge crash sounded in front of her.
Despite the terror beginning to drift through her system, Courtenay somehow managed to follow Uriel as they emerged into a living hell.
Massive bears roared and bellowed, charging and slamming together in thunderous contact that threatened to send her tumbling to the ground. Blood sprayed where paws met exposed skin, and cries of pain and breaking bones sounded from all corners of the clearing.
“How the hell do I know who to shoot?” she yelled, watching as Uriel put three darts into the flank of a bear charging another one from behind.
“That black one!” he shouted, kicking his foot out to show her.
She spun, bringing the gun up and tracking the bear he indicated. It was one of two that had backed a smaller golden-brown bear into a corner. She quickly hit the first with a dart, and turned to hit the second as well, hoping to give the friendly bear the opportunity to get away.
That was her first mistake. Even as she and the golden bear focused on the second attacker, the first one with the dart in his side roared and turned to face her. It charged straight across the field at her. With each step she could see it losing steam and coordination, but it moved so fast. Courtenay had never dreamed that something so big could close the distance so easily.
She tried to track the pistol across, but her arms seemed sluggish and moved too slow. It was too late; they would never arrive in time.
The bear leapt at her.
Chapter Twelve
Joel
He stared at his captor.
“Among us?” he asked, stunned at the revelation. “Who is it?”
The man pointing a gun at him never got a chance to answer. A loud, angry roar, followed by a massive crash and the shrieking protest of warping metal assaulted their ears.
For a split second, the gun wasn’t pointed at him, but in the direction the noise had come from. Seizing the opportunity, Joel stepped inside the shifter’s reach and delivered an elbow to his jaw as hard as he could. Something cracked, the man’s eyes went blank, and he wobbled on his feet.
Despite how hard he had hit him, the natural resiliency of a shifter meant Joel had to continue pressing the attack, or else his opponent would recover in a matter of seconds. He took a half step back, drove his fist into the other man’s temple, grabbed the gun from his suddenly limp hands, and fired.
Nothing happened.
“Fucking safety,” he swore, flicking it off and unleashing a storm of darts into the other shifter’s torso.
The body thumped to the floor almost instantly. Without hesitating, Joel reached down and snapped his neck. He hated himself for it, but they had threatened Courtenay.
Nobody was allowed to threaten his mate, and he would stop at nothing to drive that point home, and that nobody ever raised a finger against her again. Searching the other man, he pulled a second magazine of darts from a pocket.
From outside, cries of alarm were gathering steam as more sounds that could only come from a bear shifter tried to overwhelm them. Joel crept back to the door, remembering the two guards that were outside. He saw them both looking away from the door in the direction of the noises. They appeared to be debating whether to go or not.
His finger on the trigger of his appropriated tranq gun, Joel whipped the door open and calmly put two darts in each shifter. The first went down immediately. The second guard had a chance to start turning to face him before he too ended up face-down in the dirt. Rather than waste more ammunition, Joel proceeded to give them the same treatment as the first enemy shifter.
I hope Courtenay can forgive me, he thought, more concerned with how she would judge him than how he felt about his actions.
Taking a quick glance around, Joel made his way toward the sounds. There were flimsy pre-fabricated metal shelters everywhere, he noted. Identifying the direction of the loudest noises, Joel jogged across an open area toward another building.
“Shit!” he yelped in surprise as two huge bears burst through the wall, the building collapsing behind them as walls were ripped from the frame.
Then he cried out again. The one bear was a mix of white and dark gray that he had never seen before. But the mammoth, angry bear that it was trying to handle was one that Joel would recognize any day.
It was Garrett, his Alpha. Without thinking he raised the gun and a dart flew across the distance, piercing the side of the gray and white bear. He knew one dart wouldn’t do much, but it slowed the attacker’s movements more than enough for Garrett to swat aside his defenses and take the other bear’s neck in his jaws. Joel turned away just as he heard the sound of ripping flesh, but he couldn’t ignore the wheezy sigh of the bear as Garrett ended his foe.
Not waiting to see what happened next, Joel proceeded forward until he came to what appeared to be a main courtyard.
There were bears everywhere. As he watched, two of them pushed Corey’s bear back into a corner. He frowned as one of them trembled. Then the other went down. But he watched the first turn and charge. His eyes followed to the target, and he saw Courtenay standing there, holding a gun that looked very similar to his own.
She was in the path of the bear.
Joel’s entire world narrowed down, his legs coiling and launching him into a flat-out run as he desperately tried to beat the attacker. The dart that Courtenay must have lodged in its side slowed it down, but Joel knew it was going to be close. The other bear lunged forward, saliva flying from its mouth as it opened its jaws, eager to latch them onto the helpless human in his path.
At the last moment Joel poured on an extra burst of speed and lunged forward. In midair he called to his bear, letting the pent up, angry animal surge forward as it realized what was about to happen.
He heard Courtenay scream.
The two bears collided in midair. Joel hit his opponent squarely in the flank, and he heard ribs give way under the force of the impact. His teeth dug deep into the attacker as he landed hard atop of it, using all of the killing instruments his body had in a frenzy of anger. Paws ripped and tore, teeth sunk and ripped into exposed flesh as Joel roared again and again.
Finally, sides heaving, he blinked, realizing that his foe was no longer breathing. The wounds were too deep and significant for even a shifter to heal from.
Turning around he shifted back. His shirt was soaked in blood, so he ripped it off and used it to try and clean his face as best he could.
“I’m sorry you had to see me like this,” he said as Courtenay stared at him, abject terror plainly written on her face.
“You saved my life,” she said, clearly in shock over what she had just witnessed.
“I tend to do that for those that I love,” he said, instantly cursing himself for using such a strong word with so many emotional connotations in a fucked-up situation like they were in.
“You love me?” she
asked, her eyes finally ripping away from the corpse that lay behind him to focus on his face.
“Courtenay Laurel, you are my mate, and I am so thoroughly in love with you it scares me and makes me happier than I’ve ever been, all at the same time. I couldn’t imagine doing anything but being with you.”
A bear roared in pain from behind him.
“I could go on and on, but right now, I’m needed,” he said, his face scrunching up at the awkwardness of the situation.
“It’s okay, I’ll take care of her,” Uriel said, stepping around the corner of the nearby metal outbuilding.
“Thank you,” Joel said, turning and rushing back into the fray, his skin rippling as his bear exploded from within once more.
He hated leaving her already, after having just been reunited with her. But there were a lot of enemies in the area, and until they were gone, she would be under threat. It was time to end the danger to his mate and the rest of his family.
***
“Here,” Darren said, tossing a bottle of water his way.
“Where the hell did you find this?” he asked, his mouth parched after the fighting. He quickly downed the first half of the bottle, then used the second to try and clean himself up a little. Red-stained liquid poured off him as he washed the blood from his face. Most of it wasn’t his, but he had enough wounds to ensure that it hadn’t been completely one-sided.
“Cooler back there,” Darren said, pointing back in the direction he had come. “They had it out for some reason.”
Joel nodded. “This operation is a little larger than I would have expected,” he said quietly as Garrett joined them.
The Alpha nodded. “Yes, it would appear we underestimated them. Again.”
“It’s not your fault, boss,” Joel said. “None of us expected them to be so well-organized.”
“We should have,” Garrett said, unwilling to pass off the blame.
“There’s a lot of things we should have done,” Joel muttered, thinking about what he had been able to learn, just as the rest of the group came into view. There was Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, the Stone Bear trio alongside their Sentinel trainees. With them were the rest of the Jade Crew.