I wanted to ease her mind, but I couldn’t lie. “Maybe. But we will find him. Don’t worry, champ. We look out for our own.”
She made a strangled noise. Ashley said, “If you find him, if you talk to him, tell him we can work through any trouble he’s in. I just want him safe.”
“We will.”
I hung up and looked at Gerald and Dan and then the clock again. “I have to get to ground. Dan?”
He nodded. “I’ll go to that hunt club and see if he’s there.”
“Come straight back when you know something. If you don’t find anything by daylight, I’ll meet you at the clubhouse.”
He nodded and disappeared.
I paced back and forth, waiting in my office as long as possible. I kept checking the clock, watching the minute hand inch closer and closer to the time when Gerald would have to drive me to the gravesite. The werepanther eyed both the clock on the wall and his watch continuously, his ears going flatter and flatter to his skull as he worried.
“Brandilynn, we should go,” he said after a little while. “I know you don’t trust your ability to fly well enough to try it right now.”
“I don’t. There’s still time though. And you can lock my body up in the office if we don’t leave in time. We’re underground after all.” I desperately wanted to hear that Dan had found Ryan alive or not at all.
“You know it’s not safe to do that. Do you know how many attempts have been made on Patricia’s life in the past? There are plenty of people unhappy that Tristan won that seat at the General Assembly, and some yahoo might decide to take it out on his sister. Most don’t know you’re not Patricia. Even if they did, a dead vamp is a dead vamp and therefore a good vamp.”
He was right. We needed to go so I could store my body in the safest place. I stood, readying to leave.
At that moment Dan popped into the room. He wasn’t surprised to see me still there, but he got cranky. “I figured as much. You need to get to ground now.”
I waved him off. “Did you find Ryan? Is he at the country club?”
“A truck matching his is. I can’t find Ryan Warner there, though.”
“Oh no.” I envisioned the worst.
“If he was dead, they’d have made the truck disappear. You don’t keep a dead man’s vehicle out in plain sight.” Dan glared at me. “Get Patricia’s body to her coffin and then zap back here. We need to find him.”
No body. The truck had been located. Dan was right, that had to count for something. That’s what I kept telling myself as I ran after Gerald to the parking lot. But images of Ashley and little Jesse kept swimming over my mind’s eye. We couldn’t be too late. That little boy needed his dad.
* * * *
If I could have jumped out of Patricia’s body, I would have. I had to be patient and settle for appearing by the grave as soon as she released me. Dan waited for me there. Without a word between us, he grabbed my hand and ‘ported us to the country club.
It occurred to me that this was a place I should have known. I’d been a high-priced escort in life, my job hanging on rich men’s arms at parties and events. However quite a few of those men didn’t want it known they’d hired their date. Much of my work had been done out of town in cities like Savannah and Jacksonville. I’d never been taken to the Fulton Falls Country Club.
As it was, I got to see the parking lot, a portion of the unnaturally green golf course and the outside of the stucco-sided modern club building. We weren’t there to mix and mingle, after all. We had a life to save.
It was insanely early yet. Only one vehicle sat in the lot, a too-familiar black truck with dark tinted windows. I winced to see it. “It’s Ryan’s, all right.”
Dan’s face settled into grim lines. “I went all through the club. It’s locked and he isn’t anywhere in there.”
I scowled and looked around. The place was quiet, the tan and ivory building lifeless. Woods surrounded the place, and I tried to get my bearings to figure out where the hunting grounds might be. I worried the hunt might already be on.
The sound of car engines reached my ears. Coming through the trees, on the access road that I presumed led to Highway 17, the chrome grill of a big car twinkled in the morning’s first light. I knew that vehicle on sight. It was followed by an Escalade, a big imposing truck built more for bragging rights than hauling anything.
My gaze riveted on the approaching sedan, however. “Tattingail.”
They pulled into the lot and parked on either side of Ryan’s Ford, unknowingly running over me and Dan. I sighed at the uncomfortable sensation of having an engine block in my twat and stepped between the vehicles. Tattingail jumped out of his car, his expression angry. The Caddy spit out a big, beefy guy whose clothes were an advertisement for Land’s End’s version of hunting. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
I called out to the oblivious Tats, “Good morning to the jerkface of the hour. Where’s Ryan, you douche?”
Dan scowled at the other guy resplendent in red flannel that matched his ruddy cheeks. “The man with Tattingail ... isn’t that Ed Duke?”
I gave the guy my undivided attention. “The prosecutor from Waycross? Holy heck, it is!”
We in the para community were not fans of Duke. It was a good thing he came from the next county over, because Tristan would never let this monster into Ford County. As the town of Waycross’ head prosecutor, he’d found ‘insufficient evidence’ to file charges against a cop who had killed a couple of shifter teenagers. The officer had claimed self-defense, but a witness had shot video footage on his cell phone showing the kids running from him when he fired silver shot at them.
Duke’s refusal to prosecute had landed him in a lot of trouble. You wouldn’t have known it to look at his jowly complacent face though. He relied on his network to pull his butt out of the fire. Meanwhile, the rest of us rooted for a head prosecutor barbecue.
I pushed Duke’s legal troubles out of my mind. I needed to know where Ryan was.
The Tats ranted to his companion. “I told Warner not to park here! He knew to go straight to the cabin.”
Duke dug a key out of his pocket. “He’s playing games, but no harm done. We’ll get the truck out of sight before anyone shows up.”
Tattingail wasn’t mollified, but he headed back towards the driver’s side of his car. “The next one will be warned that if he tries to pull this kind of stunt, his family will answer for it.”
The Tats got in his car and pulled back out. Duke unlocked Ryan’s truck and got in. He started it up. Dan and I ‘ported ourselves in the truck bed to ride along.
We set off down the road that led to the highway. As we went Dan mused, “I distinctly remember Tattingail voicing his support of this clown when he let that shifter killer go.”
“He’s not one of the good guys,” I agreed. I made a face at the back of Duke’s head.
A few yards down the tiny two-lane road, the truck turned left onto a dirt trail just wide enough for one vehicle. A sign next to it proclaimed, ‘Members and Staff Only’. The woods closed in on either side of us. I didn’t remember seeing this dirt road in the zoning map I’d looked at.
Dan’s head swiveled this way and that as he took in the mostly pine trees that grew high. “Isn’t this the general area where you saw that light in the woods last night?”
“When I was shot at?” I thought about the map again and tried to get myself oriented. “Yeah, you’re right.”
I kept an eye on where we were headed. A weather-beaten sign appeared on the right side of the road, proclaiming we were now entering the Fulton Falls Country Club Hunting Grounds. Members and Guests Only.
Sometimes it sucks to be right. It really sucked to realize that it wasn’t just Tattingail hunting shifters. Duke and who knew who else were also a part of this. For all I knew, the whole blasted country club was in on the scheme.
We pulled into a clearing big enough to park a dozen cars. At the end of it squatted a rustic cabin mad
e with reddish logs. Tattingail’s car pulled up to the front. He got out. Our ride parked next to Tat’s sedan, and Duke joined him.
They went into the cabin, chattering and happy now that they’d taken the evidence of Ryan’s presence out of the public eye.
“Let’s do something about these creeps,” I told Dan. He nodded and we headed for the closed cabin door.
No sooner had we stepped onto the porch when all the energy left me. Dan cried out with me and we jumped back.
I felt almost light enough to float. Dan looked a little wispy around the edges as he swore. “It’s warded! Sons of a bitch, they warded the thing with an energy drain spell.”
I snarled at the door much like Gerald might. “Anti-para until they want some of what we’ve got. Typical hypocritical bigots.”
Dan shook himself, trying to recover. “We need to get in there. But how?”
Headlights in the early morning light showed up on the dirt lane. Someone was coming, and it gave me an idea.
“We can amp up off this late arrival. Maybe we can handle a power drain if we’re on overload.”
The vehicle behind the headlights came into the clearing, a gold Lexus. It pulled up and parked.
Dan nodded his approval of my idea. “Let’s stay out of sight, though. Don’t take in so much power that you appear to the living. They don’t need to know we’re coming.”
The driver within the car was a dim shadow. A small splash of light showed he spoke on his cell phone. He kept the Lexus running as he continued to talk.
Dan and I went to the front of the car. We ducked down behind the hood to avoid being seen in case we took in enough energy to appear. It was easy to get greedy when snagging a power snack. It was like a certain brand of potato chips; once you started, it was darned hard to stop.
We shoved our hands into the engine compartment. Power flowed in, replacing what we’d depleted and then some. This was so much better than draining a cell phone. Yow, the tingles. It felt good. In fact, slurping up this much energy was second only to live blood. Plus I tended to get a little high from it. I wasn’t the only one. Dan and I grinned and then started making goofy faces at each other. Good times.
The car coughed as we pulled hard on its battery. We heard the driver curse. He shut the car off and the pouring of power subsided.
“Aw man,” I complained. “Dude ended my ride on the happy train.”
Dan snickered and then waved for me to be quiet as we heard the driver get out of the Lexus. He continued to jabber on his phone.
“Yeah, I’m overdue for a tune up. Hey, I gotta get going. I’ll call you about that tomorrow.”
I remembered that voice. I jerked up to have a look even though its owner was already walking past. My joyous high fizzled and became anger in an instant. I barely managed to contain it until he disappeared into the cabin.
The owner of the Lexus was Ryan’s accountant friend Mark. His former frat brother, the one who had sworn up and down he and Ryan’s other friends would tear his blackmailer a new one.
“You slime! You hateful, lying piece of garbage!” I raged at the now absent Mark. “He trusted you! And I bet you were the one who told Tattingail he could be blackmailed!”
Dan put a hand on my shoulder. “Ease down, baby girl. Losing your temper isn’t going to help Warner.” He looked at the cabin and considered. “Let’s go in through the back. We got a little carried away. I think we might be visible to the living with all this energy, and we don’t know how little will be drained off.”
My burst of anger having been vented, I went back to feeling giddy. “Want to skip arm in arm?”
Dan snickered. We did not skip, but our journey to the back of the cabin was far from dignified. We kept purposely bumping into each other, laughing like loons as we did so. Yep, we’d taken in too much power to work effectively. With any luck, the ward would take the edge off and we’d be good to do what we needed to once we saw the situation inside.
We got to the back door and shoved our way through. The energy drain was expected. What we walked into was not.
We got through the energy-stealing ward with a tad less than normal strength to spare. It didn’t help. We’d no sooner walked into the backmost room of the cabin when our feet froze in place.
I flailed as I tried to step forward, but could not. Next to me, Dan was in the same fix.
He didn’t have the slightest care about not cursing in front of me at that moment. “Damn it! This place is warded inside as well!”
“Great. This is flipping great,” I said. “At least it’s not pulling our energy away and making us into wraiths. We’re just stuck.”
“We’re not the only ones. Another silver lining; we found Ryan and he’s alive.”
Dan was right. My sister’s husband was in the room, in an enclosure. Two sides were made up of thick metal bars that could have held a gorilla. They were bolted to the floor, ceiling, and the two walls they butted up to in the corner of the room. One of the walls appeared to have a door that would open to the outdoors, but I saw no handle to open it, at least not from the inside.
Ryan sat in the middle of this cage on the tile floor, his expression that of an utterly broken man. He didn’t look hurt physically. That had to be a plus too. I took all the good I could get out of the situation.
I looked around at the rest of the room. Two racks of hunting rifles hung on the walls next to a closed door. Like the floor, the walls had been covered in tile. There were two drains in the floor. A faucet with a hose attached.
I shuddered. The room had been designed for easy and quick cleanup. I had a mental image of someone hosing blood down the drains. It made me wonder how many shifters had died in here, perhaps refusing to run for their lives. Maybe they had simply sat on the floor as Ryan did now, not caring that rifles with silver shot pointed at them.
I didn’t have long to indulge in the morbid fantasy. The door on the far end of the room opened and Tattingail, Duke, and Mark walked in.
Ryan’s head came up slowly, as if it was almost too heavy to raise. His dejected expression disappeared in hopeful surprise, and he jumped to his feet. “Mark!”
His accountant gave him a little wave. “Hey bro. Glad you made it to the party.”
My heart broke to see awful realization fill Ryan’s face. His mouth opened and closed twice before he managed to say, “You – you’re part of this?”
Tattingail snorted at his shock. “Who do you think gave me the information to get you here?”
I did not take offense to the language as my brother-in-law turned the air blue with profanity. After a string of curses that got no reaction from his captors, he screamed at Mark. “You were the best man at my wedding! You’re Jesse’s godfather! How could you do this to me? To my family?”
Mark shrugged. “You’re not human, man. It’s not your fault, but – well, you have no business in our world. That’s the way it is.”
I ached to punch him in the face. “That is one cold piece of garbage.”
Dan looked as disgusted as I felt. “Sick. Twisted and sick.”
Tattingail spoke as if there had been no exchange. Smooth and polite as if he conducted a deal, he said, “I would like to thank you for your patience, Mr. Warner. The delay of our outing couldn’t be helped, but this business of our last, er, guest, has been successfully resolved. The hunt will be tonight.”
Ryan glowered. “I won’t do it. Not now, not with him involved.” He jerked his head in Mark’s direction. For good measure he added, “Fuck you.”
“May I remind you of what will happen when we disclose your doings to the medical board? To your former partners? Prison time, your family is ruined—”
Ryan looked like he might explode again. “Ashley and Jesse will be fine. Her parents will see to it. You can’t hold them over my head.”
Mark spoke up, his tone amused. “Maybe Ashley was in on it. My paperwork could be altered to make it look like she enjoyed a portion of your thievery.�
�
My hands clenched into fists. “Oh, I will so chew your neck through if you try it. You leave my sister alone.”
Ryan went still at the threat. His voice soft with pleading, he said, “Mark, come on. You can’t be serious. Ashley is innocent of anything I’ve done!”
“She stayed married to you. She consorts with inhuman freaks, endangering her child. Nothing innocent about that.”
Ryan’s mood swung to anger once again. He started to shift, his body swelling to strain the tee-shirt and jeans he wore. The claws on his feet grew longer, and fur ran out of his skin. An animal growl trickled from a snout grown full of sharp teeth.
The cage must have been solid. Despite the terrifying display, Tattingail, Duke, and Mark only chuckled.
Tattingail said, “I see it’s shaping – or would that be shapeshifting up to be a wonderful hunt tonight? Until then, Mr. Warner.”
The punmaster and his cronies left the room. When the door slammed shut behind them and the lock clicked home, my half-changed brother-in-law slumped to the floor once again. With defeat, the shift reversed, leaving him a sad semi-human man once more. Sobs shook his shoulders.
I sent my furious glare Dan’s way. “They are the worst waste of flesh posing as men. I’d like to take their guns, shove ‘em up their butts, and pull the triggers.”
Dan looked pretty enraged too, but he got control over it. “Ryan is safe until tonight. By then, you’ll be pulled back into Patricia’s body.”
My first wish was to come in and tear the place apart with vampire strength. However, these were community leaders and they were legally, though not morally, human. Even Tristan’s supposed sister wouldn’t be immune from anti-para sentiment if I came in rampaging. The authorities would stake me in the sun before it was over.
I made myself put aside thoughts of well-earned revenge. “I’ll run straight to Levi. He can grab some agents and come in with guns blazing.”
Dan nodded. “Atta girl. Who knows; maybe we can figure a way out of this before then.”
Animal Attraction Page 20