“Take me through the events of the previous attempt.”
Lena licked her lips and sat down with her hands firmly on the table. She looked like she needed to hold on to something to keep from jumping up and running around blindly until her friend was found. Sam didn’t blame her. He itched to do the same.
Lena started from the beginning and told the story he and Ethan were intimately familiar with by then. They’d made both women tell their versions again and again, trying to glean any clues from what they’d experienced. A petty part of Sam wanted Cenek to find nothing just like the lions, but it warred with the desperation he felt to have his mate safe in his arms.
Lena woke and expected to find Ethan next to her. Instead, another lioness Emily had been waiting in the room. Emily took Lena to another part of the estate, telling her that Jessa was waiting there to be protected from any accidental lion hunts. Once there, Lena found Jessa unconscious and Emily injected her with that awful drug designed to keep a shifter in their human form. Emily spoke with the hunters, and they loaded Lena and Jessa into a van. Before they took off, Emily heard a car coming up the drive and told them to wait to leave until it was clear.
Cenek sat quietly for a moment. “Has no one asked what Jessa was doing at the estate that day?”
Lena pursed her lips. “I always thought she just dropped by and got caught up in everything.”
Cenek nodded. “It seems likely, but when you tell me what this Emily said, about the deal for you and a mystery, it sounds like Jessa was the target. And Emily was in your room while you slept? Couldn’t she have prompted Jessa to go there?”
Lena covered her mouth, eyes wide in horror. “I was the bait for Jessa?”
“It seems she was the target from the beginning.”
“But why Jessa? They had my Queen in their grasp. What importance does Jessa have?” Ethan asked. Sam growled, and Ethan waved it away. “Meaning no offense.”
“Maybe it has something to do with what she is?” Lena asked quietly.
Sam jerked straight, and eyed everyone around the table. Of course, Cenek knew what had become of Jessa after he put the chimera curse on her. It didn’t surprise him that Jessa had told Lena. And Lena, of course, would have passed the information on to Ethan. Had he been the last his little mate had told?
“Well, it’s the only thing I can think of.” Lena snapped when no one took up her theory. “We were both shifters at that point. But she’s a little more than that, isn’t she? Whatever Cenek did to her, she’s not just a straight shifter. If these scum are going after more than werewolves now, she would be a perfect target.”
“Have we put anyone undercover with the group yet?” Sam asked. He should feel guilty for not being more involved, but he’d had a mate to win over.
Ethan shook his head. “I only have a few names that volunteered. No one has left yet.”
“Then, warlock, I think it’s time you start tracking with your magic,” Sam growled.
Ethan spoke again, and again let the power of his lion command attention. “Sam, that might ruin our chance of surprise later. They could even expect it now—”
Sam glared at the Alpha. His fists clenched on the tabletop. His claws pricked his palms, and the coppery scent of blood entered the air. Amber filled into his eyes, and he came closer to challenging the man than he ever dared. But he wouldn’t back down, not when it concerned his mate. “We need to find Jessa.”
Chapter Eight
Jessa grit her teeth. She was real fucking tired of being kidnapped. The first thing she was going to do when she got back was take Lena up on her offer to attend some self-defense classes. Well, maybe the second thing. She was going to kick Sam in the shin for allowing them to be separated. And then kiss the everliving hell out of him in relief at being back.
She sat as still as possible. They’d injected her with their gross poison to keep her from shifting and attacking them, then tied her up so she’d be a good little prisoner. The driver kept to the speed limit, but they still traveled fast away from the only person who knew she was missing. The other kidnapper sat next to her. The gun she kept trained on her made sure she didn’t struggle out of her bonds. Shifters could survive some pretty gnarly wounds, but she didn’t think a gunshot from point blank range was something she should test.
They hadn’t covered her eyes, though. They were either stupid, or it didn’t matter if she saw her final destination. It worried her, but she was glad of it. She cataloged every street sign they passed, every turn they took. They drove around in circles for a little while, she thought. She saw some of the same, run down buildings over and over. Then the buildings faded away into open lots. Open lots turned to thick tree lines with barely any lights shining down to the road.
She was utterly lost by the time they turned down a dirt road. She eyed the gun uncomfortably as she bounced in her seat at the driver careering down the rutted road. Hopefully, the trigger needed more than a feather light touch, or she’d go splat at one wrong jerk of the car.
She let out a sigh of relief when they finally pulled to a stop. The driver got out first and opened her door. Her seatmate clicked open her seatbelt and nodded for the other to pull her from the car. She kept the gun pointed at Jessa the entire time.
So maybe they weren’t stupid. Or maybe they just didn’t want to go chasing after her in the woods in the dark. Not that she’d get far in heels, even if she tried. She’d trip and twist her ankle, most likely. And then get hacked to death by the big bad. No, she was determined to not have a horror movie death. She’d do what she could to be the survivor at the end. Hopefully with some sort of big explosion, roasted bad guy, cathartic moment.
The door opened and a giant figure of a man was shadowed by the light streaming outside. Two captors became three.
The large shadow moved aside for the others to lead her inside. She swiveled her head around and tried to quickly take in her surroundings. That’s what always saved someone in the movies. They saw something the killers casually left behind and took advantage.
Jessa felt a sliver of fear wedge itself in her heart. Not that she wanted to think of her captors as killers, but their cabin in the woods was the perfect setting for a murder shack.
The walls were rough and raw. The door between the rooms was hung unevenly. Jessa was reminded of the three little piggies nursery rhyme. Instead of a wolf, would a lion come to huff and puff and blow the place down?
Her car companions tossed her into the smaller room and shut the poorly hung door behind her. She staggered to the far wall and slid down to a crouch. The room held nothing for her inside it, except a mound of person. Jessa saw the regular rise and fall of breath but didn’t move for a closer inspection. She felt helpless with her hands tied behind her back.
She sat up at the sound of scraping against the floor. It sounded like chairs being pulled out. Creaks confirmed her suspicions, followed by another short series of scrapes as the sitters dragged their chairs into comfortable positions around the table.
“So, talk. How did it go?” It was a new voice that spoke. Her kidnappers had barely spoken, but the new voice didn’t sound like the male half of the duo. It must have been the hulking giant from the shadows.
The woman took charge. Jessa was all about equality and women in the workplace, but she could have done with a lack of kidnapping positions to be filled.
The woman started from before Jessa was taken. Her stomach turned at how long she’d been watched. Sam had been her saving grace for over a week, when they first started to actively try to abduct her. He was her ride to and from work, and he apparently lingered outside of her townhouse too often for the team to know if it was safe to take her.
When they saw the plans for the date unfold, they made their move. They had orders to avoid the pride suspecting hunters were involved, and they used the theater as an opportunity. Anyone could go missing in a crowd.
“I also said no witnesses.” The man interrupted. He seethed with rage.
Jessa could almost hear the fur starting to sprout from the man’s skin. She tried to catch his scent and recoiled at the foul, oily stink of him that she could smell even behind the rough wall. Her chimera whimpered and cowered in the dark corner of her mind.
The man, whoever he was, had to be insane. That was the only explanation she could think of for his stench. Certifiable, bat shit crazy.
“She was hard to find, and even harder to isolate. This was the only shot we had. Between the stage distraction and the fire alarm, the crowd was all riled up and streaming out of the building.” The woman tried her best to placate him, but he was a man uninterested in excuses.
“Crowd? Crowd!” The man sounded apoplectic. Jessa imagined his eyes bulged and his skin turned a vicious shade of red, if he hadn’t completely sprouted a fur coat by then. A sickening crunch followed by a high-pitched whine and thud gave her more clues to the man. He was a strike first, ask questions later sort of crazy.
“Joel, man, hold on. Shouldn’t we get more information out of her before tearing her apart?”
Jessa perked up at the new voice. This new person sounded like someone who wasn’t actively involved in her taking, but worked for the big baddie. And he was incredibly stealthy, if she hadn’t heard the outer door open to let him inside. Jessa tucked the information away.
“Get rid of her. I have no use for failure.”
Chairs scraped without any further dissent and the thuds of boots all led outside the shack. Though he had ordered his minions to do it, the crazed man followed. He certainly seemed to need to have utter control. No doubt he’d tell the others to slit the woman’s throat, and how they did it wrong.
Four became three.
A motion to her right shifted Jessa’s focus. The crumpled body in the corner stirred and struggled to sit upright. Jessa didn’t know whether to be surprised or resigned when she caught sight of a young woman. Her face and arms were covered with sickening shades of green and purple, and the bruises extended under clothes that blissfully looked untorn. Their captors weren’t afraid to hit a woman, but it looked like sexual violence was out of the question.
A much smaller mound stirred next to the woman. Jessa hadn’t noticed it before and thought the woman must have curled up next to it for protection. A tiny limb broke free of its swaddling and struck out at the air, but it remained blissfully silent.
“Who are you?” The woman hissed. Her eyes flashed with feral protection and slid to the child.
Jessa winced. If she spoke too loud, the others could hear them. She tried to quiet the woman with her eyes, but she was having none of it. Jessa shifted to show her hands were tied as well, and she posed no threat.
The woman scooted and slithered across the floor until she was near Jessa. Each movement produced a winced and muffled curse, but soon she was near enough to lean her head on Jessa’s shoulder.
“Jessa.” She kept her voice as low as possible.
Jessa had a brief flash of a summer camp memory. The girls would stay up late and play a game of telephone, where they whispered a phrase as quietly as possible around a circle and see how garbled the message became by the end. But the cabin she was in now wasn’t the cozy one from her childhood, and the woman next to her wasn’t playing a game.
“Do you know where we are?”
Jessa shook her head. She didn’t even have an idea of why she was taken. She’d tried listening to her captors, but they gave nothing away. Her best guess was it had something to do with surviving the previous attack, and she was an easier target than a fierce lion queen.
“Me either. They brought us here last night.”
“What’s your name?”
“Hazel. And that’s Benny.” She jerked her chin over to the baby.
“Why are we here, Hazel?”
“Me? I’m here because that sonovabitch Joel is holding my sister hostage. Me and Benny are insurance that she cooperates.”
“But why? What needs her cooperation?”
Hazel shrugged her shoulders, and winced. “He’s after shifters with a little more. Don’t know why. But I haven’t seen a pure shifter come through anywhere they’ve taken us yet.”
Jessa’ mouth dried. Shifters with a little more was a perfect description for herself. Good Lord, what had she been dragged into? Her blood boiled. What had Cenek sentenced her to through his pettiness? “Your sister?”
“Psychic. And lion. Well, we’re both lions. But she was born with that little extra spark.” She narrowed her eyes and took a long sniff. “What’s your story?”
Psychic? Well, damn. She learned something new every day. She wondered just how it worked. She doubted it was anything like the late night infomercials using someone with a phony Caribbean accent. Of course, an organization that sought out a warlock for protection spells would find a use for a psychic.
Jessa chewed her lip. Could she trust Hazel? What if Benny was stripped from her arms, would Hazel keep silent then? Would it even matter, if they had a psychic on staff? “Witch and shifter.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie. She was cursed by witchy magic into a shifter. Maybe her lie would make her less special.
The thought chilled her to the bone. What did they do with the less special captives? Were they disposed of like any humans that got caught up in their nets? Jessa shook her head. She couldn’t think of that. She needed to focus on getting out.
“How many others have you seen?”
Hazel thought for a moment. “Eight, nine, maybe? I lost count. They keep us moving every few days. The others always get taken somewhere else before long.”
It was enough for Jessa to close her eyes and say a silent prayer to whatever god happened to be listening. There was no telling how she’d find her way back home if they took her elsewhere.
The outer door slammed open, and feet tramped back into the shack. Two sets, if she judged correctly. She tacked on the third for good measure. There wasn’t any reason to think he didn’t lurk nearby, just as quietly as he had before. She could barely smell a thing over the thick, rancid scent of the angry one. Three large, crazy males all intent on holding two women and a baby captive.
Chairs scraped again, but a set of steps neared the door. No one spoke on the other side of the rough wall, but Hazel turned wide eyes to Jessa. She knew what came next, even if their captors said nothing.
The man she assumed to be the ringleader of the circus of crazy stomped into the room. Hazel beat a hasty retreat to her corner and Benny, but it wasn’t fast enough. Joel kicked a booted foot into her ribs to hurry her along. Jessa winced for the woman, though she didn’t cry out.
He crouched down in front of her, and gave her a long, lingering look. Joel was a blocky man, and kept his blond hair short in the military style. The rest of him was covered in short stubble of fur poking through his pores. His eyes glinted like steel, with a flash of something else behind them. Jessa inhaled sharply and tried to smell beyond the oily scent of madness that clung to him. Wolf? Some sort of predator, surely. One that he couldn’t control very well, if he was already sprouting fur.
“Now, let’s see what the little angels have given us this time.”
That got her attention. As well as the strong hand grabbing her jaw and twisting her head from side to side so he could get a better look at her.
No one in the otherworld spoke of angels unless they were praying to their god or referring to Nephilim, the ancient protectors of otherworld inhabitants. Jessa thought back to the meeting at the pride house, when Cenek had shown up unexpectedly. If her captors were the same that Cenek suspected, if the madman touching her was their leader, how had he escaped Nephilim custody?
She didn’t want to consider the possibility that they unleashed the crazy back on the world.
She doubly didn’t want to consider that they tipped the man off about her existence.
A high-pitched whine tried to escape her lips. She swallowed the noise and locked it away with her rising panic.
The air
behind Joel shimmered. Jessa squinted her eyes and tried to make sense of the forming shape. She hadn’t seen the trick when she was in the bathroom of the theater, but she assumed it was the same principal. Cenek was there, but he was all vapor. Her heart sank. They still searched for her, but no rescue was in the works.
“What are you doing?” She whispered to the image in front of her.
Joel looked at her like she was insane. He checked over his shoulder, then refocused back on her. “Who the fuck is she talking to?”
“Jessa, you need to pay attention. Tell me where you are.” Cenek urged.
She shook her head. Two images lay nearly on top of the other. Reality, and Joel. The vision, and Cenek. And both were demanding her attention.
Balls. Joel was too familiar with the otherworld, even if he was off his rocker. How could she converse with Cenek without Joel understanding she was giving away his game?
Oh hell.
She started to sing. “There’s a liiiight over at the Frankenstein plaaaace.”
“Great, we got one of the crazy ones.” Joel rolled his eyes. Even Cenek looked like he wanted to do the same, until she hit her second verse.
She hoped none of the men present were Rocky Horror Picture Show fans. She wove landmarks and smells into her completely bogus lyrics, and prayed Cenek was listening carefully. She certainly didn’t have longitudinal coordinates to give him.
She’d shove her love of movies in Lena’s face after this. Not a productive hobby? Phaw. She should go into improv for her quick thinking.
Joel had enough before she finished. He balled up his fist and clobbered her about the face. Hazel squeaked in her corner, but Joel quieted her down with a warning raise of his hand in her direction.
Jessa paused in her song and spit out a mouthful of blood. The chimera seethed in the back of her mind and came up with delicious ways of ripping the man into bite sized chunks. It pushed at the invisible barrier and howled when it was rebuffed.
Jessa picked up the pace of her singing. Surely Cenek had enough to go on? She didn’t think Joel would allow her to keep going for much longer.
Embracing Her Lion: BBW Lion Shifter Paranormal Romance (Carver City Shifters Book 2) Page 8