Brody!
Jasmin was stuck in the wall, the trailer’s metal structure tearing at her skin. There were men, men everywhere, men and nets and guns.
And shock sticks.
They sparked in the men’s hands, and her jag lost her mind.
Flashbacks and sensations pounded at her. A fire hose knocking her across the room. No air. Dying. Shocks and more shocks and nerves on fire, jag human jag human can’t make it stop, don’t do what they want but it hurts hurts hurts
No! No! Not again! Never again! She fought like a wild thing, but in a panic. No thought, no strategy. Just pure fear.
Jasmin tore free of the net they tried to trap her with, twisting and backing away. They were everywhere, herding her toward the van, blocking her escape. She fought and darted and slashed, but she couldn’t get away, couldn’t get away…
She was near the front steps when they finally got her with one of the shock sticks. That familiar, terrible pain went through her. Her body seized, and her jag was gone. She was naked on the ground, clawing at the steps, desperate to keep them from dragging her away.
She knew it was futile, but she wouldn’t submit. She would never submit.
She saw something round and dark, half-buried in the snow that had drifted between the open steps.
Flynn’s tracker.
Jasmin closed her hand around it just as the men in the ski masks dragged her into the van. Half the back was closed off with wire mesh, forming a cage.
They threw her inside. She hit the wall, painfully, and slid to the floor.
In a few minutes, Brody was tossed in next to her. He was human again, but unconscious. Blood was running from several wounds, and his face and ribs were bruised.
Fucking Bastian. He was a dead wolf.
They shoved Adele in the cage too, a little more gently. She was also out cold.
The cage door slammed shut, the men in black piled into the back of the van, and it pulled away.
Flynn’s truck careened into the trailer park, Xander riding shotgun and Sloan in the back.
“Here,” Xander said, pointing to Brody’s car.
“Holy fuck,” Sloan said, as they came to a stop.
One whole side of the trailer was ripped apart, and the front door was half off its hinges.
“What the hell,” Xander muttered.
They spread out at Flynn’s orders, all with their handguns, ready to shift at a moment’s notice. Flynn took the front door, and Sloan and Xander the ripped-out wall.
Flynn gave the signal, and they ducked inside. Xander and Sloan checked the living room and the bedroom. There were splashes of blood and multiple scents, but no bodies.
“Clear,” Sloan said.
“I got someone up here,” Flynn called back.
They joined him in the front of the trailer, by the tiny kitchen. There was a young black woman on the floor. Fox shifter, by the scent.
Flynn was helping her sit up. She looked groggy, but basically uninjured.
“They took her,” she mumbled. “They took them all.”
“Who took them?” Flynn demanded. His voice was gentle, but his alpha presence pressed down, compelling a response.
“Men,” she said. “A wolf, and a bunch of men in black ski masks. Humans, I think. Or shifters with no fur scent.”
The Bad Bloods glanced at each other. “Hunters,” Xander muttered. Sloan growled.
“Did you hear where they were taking them?”
She shook her head. “I saw… a van. Black. That’s all.”
“Did they take them both?” Flynn asked. “Brody and the jaguar?”
“And Adele,” she said. “Brody’s ma.”
They exchanged glances again.
“Fuck,” Flynn muttered. “We don’t even know who we’re dealing with here. We’ve got nothing.”
He helped the woman off the floor and into the living room, onto a love seat that had been shredded by animal claws.
“Is there someone we can call for you?” Sloan asked.
He handed over his phone, and the woman sent a text. A moment later there was a reply. “My friend is coming,” she said.
Flynn was pacing. “They could be taking them anywhere,” he said. “Dammit!”
Xander’s phone chirped.
He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at it, went to put it away, and then did a double-take.
“Flynn,” he said. “Remember that tracker you put on Brody’s car? It’s just been activated.”
Flynn frowned. “The car’s here,” he said.
“The tracker’s not.”
Flynn strode over and pulled the phone out of his hand. “Sonovabitch,” he muttered, a crooked grin creeping onto his face. “That’s my girl.”
He started for the door, then paused, looking at Yolanda.
“Go,” she said. “My sister will be here any minute.”
Flynn pulled his phone and dialed Tank.
“You got them?” Tank asked.
“They’ve been taken,” he said. “Hunters. But we’ve got tracking.”
He could hear Tank swearing. Then he asked, “Sure it’s not a trap?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Flynn replied. “We still know where they are. It’s all we need.”
“Lissa and I are on our way,” Tank said. “And we have company. How much firepower should we bring?”
“All of it,” Flynn said. “And isn’t it a good thing I didn’t let you put the fucking Christmas tree on top of the weapons locker?”
Chapter 25
Jasmin was pacing the cage in the empty fight barn, trying to keep her jag from panicking.
Across the barn, Brody and his mother were lying on identical metal gurneys, electrodes attached their heads, hooked up to some kind of portable scanning equipment.
Men in lab coats were huddled around the screens, along with a couple of the men in black. Their leader was grilling Bastian about the location, clearly pissed off.
“You told me this place was secure,” he said sharply. He had short blond hair in a military cut, and a weathered face with deep creases down his cheeks. His name was Decker.
“I said nobody would find us here,” Bastian said sullenly. “It’s usually used on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but with it being Christmas, nobody’ll be here until next week.”
“Unless they decide to show up and do a little organizing. Or cleanup. Or some other fucking thing you can’t predict.” The blond man shook his head in frustration and spoke into his radio. “Perimeter, keep a sharp lookout. Use any means necessary to divert or neutralize intruders.”
Translation: if you can’t get rid of them, kill them. That set Jasmin’s jaguar pacing again. Flynn and the others had no idea what they were up against. They could walk right into an ambush.
Be careful, she prayed. Be paranoid.
At least Decker hadn’t found the tracking device, stuck to the bottom corner of the cage in the van. His guards were on the lookout for casual visitors, not a rescue party.
Be paranoid. Be badass. Be Flynn.
Decker strode over to the scientists. “What’s the holdup?” he said. “Can we use Jameson, or should we just take the old lady and kill him and the jag?”
“He has some kind of a mental block.” That was one of the scientists, an Asian man with thick glasses. Not a shifter, then. Shifters never needed glasses.
“It’s fascinating,” said one of the others, a younger man with a boyish enthusiasm Jasmin found sickening. “Like someone erected a wall in his mind. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.”
“So he’s useless,” Decker said.
The Asian man shook his head. “Not from a scientific standpoint, certainly,” he said. “Simply to examine his brain and see how this might have been done, how it could be replicated, how it can be broken…”
“I’m not here to bring you toys to play with,” Decker snapped. “And neither are my clients. They’re looking for white wolves with specific powers.
Mental blocks are useless.”
The boyish man gave Decker a ‘stupid civilian, you just don’t get it’ look.
“If he has a block, he has powers,” he said. “He has to be blocking something, or there’d be no point. And a wall like this must be blocking something big.”
Excitement crept into his voice. “This one’s almost more important than she is. Do you know what Gen-X will pay for a half-breed with verifiable powers? Ones that possibly can be turned on and off with the right stimuli? That could solve the instability problem—”
Cold fear spiked through Jasmin. They were going to take Brody. Test him. Experiment on him.
Torture him.
Hoses. Water pulsing in her nose and eyes and ears, choking, can’t breathe. Then the shocks, the burning pain. Must shift. No, can’t shift. Jag. Human. Jag. Human. Do what they want and they’ll stop, but they won’t stop, they can’t win, don’t do it do it don’t do it…
Jasmin threw herself at the cage wall, rattling the metal grating. The impact nearly stunned her, but she scrambled to her feet, ready to attack. Get to Brody. Can’t let them take him. Not Brody. Nooooo…
She gave a hideous, desperate yowl of pain. No one she loved was ever going through what her crew had been through, not if she had to die to keep it from happening.
“Cut that out!” one of the guards yelled. He hit the button on his shock stick and slapped it against the cage. Jasmin barely jumped back before the current hit her.
For a second, she teetered on the edge of panic. Run! Hit the wall! Beat it down! Kill them, kill them, kill them…
With all the mental strength she’d gathered from Alexander Grant’s cells, from the fight cage, from the dark locked closet in her childhood, she pushed the panic down.
She used to make herself Change in the cells at night even though she’d been ordered not to. Trained not to. Tortured and punished and beaten and bloodied. She’d held down the panic then, and when it grew too unbearable, she bled someone.
She had no one to bleed now, but she couldn’t panic.
Brody was counting on her.
She paced, keeping her distance from the walls, checking out the cage’s two entry gates. If there was any weakness, it was there.
The cage was strong, to withstand fighting shifters, but maybe not strong enough to keep them imprisoned if they really wanted to get out. No one had tried to fight their way out of the cage before. Why would they? If they wanted to leave, all they had to do was tap out.
“If we break the block, we can see what’s behind it,” the boyish man was saying. “It shouldn’t be difficult—we just have to override the conditioning. Rage, terror—any extreme emotion should do it.”
“So we threaten the mother,” Decker said.
Bastian had slithered up to the cage like the snake he was, one arm in a makeshift sling. Now his eyes were fixed on Jasmin. “Nah,” he said. “He knows your clients won’t pay for damaged goods. He won’t believe you’d really hurt her.”
He jerked his chin towards Jasmin. “But this one—she’s a crazy-ass killer. Throw him in the cage with her, let them go at it. Fear of death should bring out Brody’s special side.”
Decker snorted. “You really are an idiot, aren’t you? She’s his girlfriend. She’s not going to attack him.”
Bastian sneered at him. “These assholes in the white coats have all kinds of crazy drugs,” he said. “Don’t they have some rage steroid shit you can give him?”
Decker stared at the scientists. “Well?”
The Asian man said, “There is a drug known to bring on aggression in shifters. It might work, especially since he almost broke the block earlier.”
“Give it to him,” Bastian said, glaring at Jasmin. “Give it to him and shock him with that cattle prod thing until he attacks. Then our kitty will have to fight him. She won’t have a choice.” An evil grin split his face. “She’ll fight until he tears her to pieces.”
They stared at each other.
Dead, Jasmin’s jag said. We’ll make him dead.
Jasmin continued to pace the cage while they administered the drug to Brody.
Her rage had turned to a cold knot of fear.
Despite her bravado, she knew how this would end.
They’d give Brody the crazy drug, goad him until he lost his mind to rage, and he’d attack her. Monster Wolf would only see the threat, not the woman Brody loved. He wouldn’t give up until she was subdued—or dead.
Her jag would never submit. Neither of them would back down. His wolf never gave up, and neither did she. The harder she fought, the harder Monster Wolf would try to kill her—unless she killed him first.
And she knew, deep down, she’d never be able to deliver the killing blow.
Not to Brody.
He was her true mate. She’d known it all along, and she’d just never been able to face it. Never wanted to admit how her heart was tethered to his, how he made up the other half of her soul.
She could never hurt him. And she knew he would never hurt her, either.
But Monster Wolf didn’t love her. Monster Wolf didn’t have a heart.
She heard the growls before they brought him into view. Low and guttural, sounds she’d never heard from Brody before. The fur stood up all along her back, and her jag growled in answer.
He sounded insane.
The scientists wheeled the gurney over. Brody was still human, struggling against the restraints, terrifying noises coming from his throat.
They opened the cage door, loosened the restraints, and shoved the whole thing inside. Then they slammed the gate and locked it.
Brody ripped out of the restraints. He rose slowly, staring at Jasmin, and gave a wild howl.
There was no reason or sanity left in him. His hair was wild, and he looked like a Viking in full battle mode.
Come on, Flynn, Jasmin thought. Check the tracking device. Come and get us.
Brody’s form shimmered, and his body began to bulge and ripple. Monster Wolf was trying to break free. Brody was barely holding him back.
He couldn’t take this. He wasn’t recovered from last night.
With an agonized howl, his silver-tipped wolf took form. He stalked her, snarling, no recognition in his eyes. Only death.
Come on, Flynn.
But outside her battle cage, there was nothing but silence. No help. No hope.
She was one jaguar, alone. The way she’d always been.
And she’d known from the beginning that the White Tornado would be the one to take her down.
Chapter 26
Decker slid a shock stick through the wire mesh and hit Brody with it. Not hard enough to shock him back to human, just hard enough to piss him off.
His wolf snapped at the stick, and Decker hit him again. He roared in pain and lunged at the closest target he could get to: Jasmin.
She dodged out of his way, and he hit the metal wall of the cage, shaking it to the floor.
Decker shocked him again. Harder. Longer.
Jasmin backed up, watching him, ready to dodge out of his way. Bastian hit her with a shock stick.
“Fight, bitch!” he shouted.
Jasmin turned and lunged at the cage wall, getting him with a couple of claws before he shocked her again. He had no idea what he was doing. She’d withstood so much more than he could dish out.
But Brody hadn’t. The pain was enraging his wolf.
She saw the moment when he lost it.
Brody’s wolf gave that terrifying guttural growl, and then his eyes turned a strange churning silver. He grew before her eyes, bones breaking, jaws slavering, and burst out of his wolf skin into another form.
Huge. Pure white. Murder in his eyes.
Monster Wolf.
He let loose one enraged howl, and then he was pounding toward her like a freight train.
She saw her death approaching, and time seemed to slow down.
Fight!
No! It’s Brody in there! We can’t hurt Brod
y.
No one you love should give you scars. She’d rather die than hurt Brody like that.
Her jag panicked. No! Never submit! Never surrender!
But he’d broken his mental blocks. They’d take him away, and they’d do terrible things to him.
She had to fight. She couldn’t let them win.
They can kill us, but they can’t break us.
Her jag howled, They can’t make us submit!
No.
Jasmin’s mind cleared.
They can’t make us submit to them.
She stared at Monster Wolf bearing down on her, seeing the crazy in his eyes. Even though she couldn’t see Brody, she knew he was in there. She held his gaze. I love you, Brody.
And then he was on her.
At the last second, just as he lunged, Jasmin turned human and sank to her knees, exposing her neck.
No fight. No fear. Only love.
Monster Wolf slammed into her, knocking the breath out of her. Dimly, in the background, she heard Bastian’s roar of triumph, but all she felt was the rush of love through her chest, and her mate’s fangs at her throat.
“I submit.”
The words were no more than a whisper, but she felt the shiver run through his massive body when he heard them.
“I love you. I submit.”
They rolled over on the floor, and she could feel his massive jaw closing, teeth sinking into the flesh of her throat. No, not her throat. The big muscle of her neck, where it met her shoulder.
She heard Monster Wolf in her mind, as if he and Brody were speaking in unison.
We Claim you. Mate.
Jasmin replied, I love you. I submit. Mate.
Power blasted out of Brody into Jasmin, shooting through her like a thousand shock sticks, filling her soul. For one timeless moment she could see inside of Brody, past, present and future, all the fear and rage, all the depthless love that drove him to keep trying, never giving up. Trying to fit in. Trying to find his way. Trying to escape what he knew he was, trying to choose the right way.
And she saw herself, embracing only the badass, building her steel armor which turned out to be a steel cage, smothering the gentleness, the vulnerability, the caring. Trying to kill that side of herself was just as bad as what her family had done, trying to kill her strength.
Bad Blood Wolf (Bad Blood Shifters Book 2) Page 15