by Amelia Jade
His eyes adjusted to the darkness, immediately focusing on the feminine figure slumped in the center of the room with what appeared to be a chain around her neck. He growled angrily and stepped forward to go to her rescue.
There was a whistle from his left and Hector threw up his arm to block the blow. It was an instinctive move, one drilled into him by years’ and years’ worth of training. His brain hadn’t yet caught up to his body before it started to move. But it did catch up before the blow landed. There was enough time for one single thought.
This is going to hurt.
The four by four slammed into his already-weakened arm. Both arm and wood shattered from the blow. Hector fell back in agony, but not before he remembered to kick out with his right foot as he planted his left. The boot flashed out into the darkness and caught the figure charging forward right in the sternum. Something cracked and his assailant flew backward.
Clutching his left arm to his chest, Hector reached down, grabbed the remnant of the square wooden pole he’d been hit with, and advanced on his foe. His only option now was to keep him off balance, to never let up the attack. If he were to do that the other shifter would recover and then he would be in trouble.
There was an angry hiss from ahead of him and then a huge figure exploded from around a pile of pitch black that was likely metal or something. Hector didn’t have time to analyze it as he ducked and wove a defensive pattern against the furious onslaught of blows, fighting for his life.
Not just my life. Rachel’s as well.
He ducked and dodged all the blows. One thing became immediately clear to him as he discerned a pattern within the attacks. Whoever his attacker was, they’d been trained at the same school as he was. That meant someone from Cadia, and a bear shifter at that. A Green Bearet. Someone trained to fight like a warrior, part of the military arm of the bear shifters.
That narrowed his suspect pool down a lot. It also gave Hector an edge. He knew how his opponent was likely to strike, when, where, and how hard. His brain began to anticipate the strikes, and he waited until he saw the opening he wanted. It wasn’t much, not enough to deliver a lethal blow, or even get close to his attacker’s body.
But then again, that wasn’t what Hector was trying to do. He was far more interested in evening the fight, and he did just that when he leaned to the side to avoid a blow and swung the remnants of the post at his enemy’s wrist. He’d not gone on the attack at all yet, and the sudden change in tactic surprised his mysterious enemy.
The post hit the wrist bone square on and his enemy howled in pain, stumbling backward as he mimicked Hector, holding his injured limb close to his chest.
“You’re mine now,” he growled into the darkness, and advanced. His shifter vision let him see a lot, but the darkness was so thick in the shadows of the warehouse that he couldn’t make out much about his foe. They hadn’t spoken yet either, which was probably smart for them, avoiding identifying themselves by speaking.
He ducked aside from one desperate punch and delivered a swift kick to his opponent. The other shifter tried to move aside, but he was too slow. Hector connected solidly and his foe flew back through the air, crashing into all sorts of metal. Peals of noise filled the cavernous open space as he bounced several times.
Hector wasted no time, spinning and heading back toward the door. “Rachel!” he called as he ran over. “Rachel.”
“Hector!” she shouted. “Is that you?”
“It’s me. I’m here,” he reassured her as he approached. He got to his knees at her side. “Are you okay?” Using his free hand he stroked her face gently.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice strained a little. “It’s just these chains.”
Hector looked at the chain around her neck. He’d normally just break it, but with his one hand useless to him, that was out of the question.
“Can you get me out?” she asked as he stood up, following one of the ends.
Hector didn’t have time to reply. Behind him came a roar that shook the walls, sending dust cascading down from the walls, ceiling, and everywhere as the entire warehouse trembled in its foundations. Metal shrieked and something very large moved far back in the darkness. He summoned his strength, and yanked hard on one end of the chain. Something snapped, but he couldn’t see what it was.
His attention was focused behind him, where a very large and very angry bear shifter had just unleashed his animal. Hector reached inside of himself, looking deep into his brain to where the icy ball of power that was his bear lay. He knew a lot of shifters saw their animals as figures representative of the animal, a bear residing within his mind.
It had never worked like that for Hector. Instead he’d always sensed a cold well of power waiting to be tapped. Whenever he drew upon it, his animal would respond. Like now. The change came over him like it always did, in a wave. It burst out from within him, changing his entire body. Bones lengthened and thickened, joints reversed, and his face even reshaped itself, jutting forth with a huge muzzle filled with flashing white teeth, red-rimmed eyes, and fur everywhere. Russet-brown fur covered every inch of his body. He slammed down onto the concrete, three of four limbs hitting hard.
There was barely time to get his bearings before his unknown attacker charged. They went down in a heap, rolling over and over across the open floor before they hit something hard enough to stop their momentum. Hector was bleeding from dozens of wounds, but so was his enemy. They separated briefly before the two huge beasts collided once again. The building around them shook under the impact. The two animals, oversized versions of their wild cousins, repeated the dance over and over again, nearly four tons of power slamming into each other.
Hector knew he couldn’t keep this up. His broken left foreleg was proving to be a huge hindrance, and it wouldn’t be much longer before the other bear got the better of him. He had to find a way to either win, or shift things back to human form. Looking around desperately for a solution, his eyes settled on one part of the warehouse. If he could just get there, he might have a chance.
With a sudden surge of energy he shrugged his foe off, raked the huge claws of his right paw against his face, and then spun, taking off across the warehouse floor. Hector didn’t care much about dodging; he simply plowed straight through most of the obstacles in his way. Several were too big for that and he was forced to go around them, but not much.
Reaching the area of warehouse he’d chosen, Hector shunted the power of his beast aside, returning abruptly to human form as he ducked in among the various pillars of steel that supported the huge structure above him. He wasn’t sure what the thing was, but the pillars were easily a foot wide, and spaced perhaps five feet apart. There was simply no room for a bear to operate without risking dislodging too many of the pillars and being crushed.
“Come and get me,” he taunted as the other bear slid to a halt, obviously realizing what Hector had in mind. Seconds later his foe’s human form returned, a silhouette against the semi-darkness of the warehouse.
Footsteps echoed on concrete, and the other shifter advanced to meet him.
Hector smiled in anticipation. It was time to end this.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rachel
Her hopes soared as Hector materialized out of the darkness for the first time, appearing in the tiny circle of dim light that surrounded her. He smiled tightly and spoke calming words to her. Rachel heard herself responding, but if she’d been asked, she wouldn’t have been able to remember what she’d said. Hector examined the chains around her neck and made to remove them when he was interrupted by a noise.
A very loud, very angry-sounding noise.
He muttered something under his breath, yanked hard on the chain, and then disappeared into the shadows that started less than a foot from where she lay and rapidly grew into pitch black. A moment later the entire building shook and dust came down from the ceiling in a thick layer that blanketed her.
That wasn’t the worst of Rachel’s conce
rns though. In his haste to try and free her, Hector seemed to have inadvertently broken the restraint that prevented the weight from descending freely. It was starting to pull her up with increasing force. Rachel looked around, trying to figure out what to do as she hauled back on the chain with all her weight, trying to stop it, to no avail. She was slowly lifted from her knees into a crouched position.
There was no time to lose. She needed to free herself, and soon, else she would find herself on her tiptoes shortly with nowhere else to go. Looking around, she tried to see what it was that Hector had done. She’d heard something snap, but it obviously wasn’t the chain. Was it?
She was lifted to an awkward standing position, and as she did, something clattered gently in the dark. Rachel frowned as she reached out with one foot, trying to figure out what it was. Her shoe encountered something and she pulled it closer, unwilling to remove one hand from the chain as she kept pulling on it, slowing its progress as best she could.
The weight won another battle however and she was now in a nearly upright position. The movement caused the object, whatever it was, to slide across the floor some more, finally pulling it into the little bit of light that was all she had to see. Rachel twisted her neck awkwardly to look down on it, and her eyes opened with surprise.
It was the other end of the chain. She could free herself now if she was careful. Bracing her body as best she could, she snatched the free end and began to unwind it around her neck. With only one arm to hold on, the weight dropped quickly, tugging the chain up faster and faster. It was a race against time as she dipped her head around while moving her free arm in a circle, trying to undo the last link.
Air began to become harder to come by as she was forced into a full standing position, and then onto her tiptoes. The chain was still unwinding. Rachel began to panic, her limbs starting to thrash slightly, but she kept fighting it, maintaining control as best she could while her vision began to fade. It couldn’t be many more now. She tried to remember how many times the mystery shifter had wrapped it around her neck but she couldn’t remember. She began to gasp, trying to suck in air as it tightened some more.
Then all at once the chain slipped free from around her neck, whipping upward as the heavy weight came crashing to the floor with a loud bang. Rachel crashed ungainly to the ground beside it, one hand on her neck, the other gently rubbing her stomach as she tried to calm both herself and the child inside of her.
“It’s okay,” she crooned to herself after a moment. “Everything is okay now. You’re all right. I’m all right.”
The two monsters roared again in the dark. Metal crunched and the floor shook as they did battle. Rachel looked behind her in the direction of the door, and began to slowly inch toward it. The last thing she wanted to do was be stuck in the dark with furious battling shifters. The entire building felt like it was going to come down around her. Metal screeched as something large ripped and gave way.
There was one last roar, and then just as suddenly silence filled the building. She looked around nervously, wondering what had happened. Had someone won? Was it Hector? Or was he lying dead somewhere that she couldn’t see him? Rachel hated that she couldn’t see in the dark, wishing that there was light for her to go by. She couldn’t help if she couldn’t see what was going on.
Help? Listen to you. You’re seven months pregnant and you want to help in a fight between shifters? What kind of crazy are you!
Rachel snarled silently at her inner doubts. She was the crazy in love kind. Hector was out there fighting to keep her safe, and she wasn’t just going to sit around and do nothing about it. But a quick pat of her person came up with exactly nothing to help her create light, besides her cell phone. The flashlight on that simply wasn’t strong enough to light the entire warehouse. She needed more.
It would, however, help her look around for other things to ignite. She pulled the phone out and was just about to turn it on when voices sounded in the darkness. They were low, directed at one another, but it was clear to her that there were still two of them. Hector was still out there fighting, and she needed to come to his aid.
Her miniature flashlight spun around in a circle, but there was nothing nearby to help. Light reflected off a bit of glass from the door, and Rachel darted toward it. Pulling open the door allowed some of the slight ambient light from outside to spill in. But it also revealed to her a row of switches on the wall.
“Here goes nothing,” she muttered and flipped them all at once.
Sparks erupted from the ceiling at regular intervals, several bulbs shattered, and glass fell to the floor in a short-lived avalanche. That was followed by a loud buzzing noise filling much of the warehouse.
“Well that was anticlimactic,” she said, disappointed.
Then her eyes narrowed. Nothing had happened at first, but now that she was looking longer, Rachel was positive that in spots here and there she began to see circles of lights. Most of the bulbs were obviously dead, but some still had life to them, and as they warmed up they began to cover the warehouse in light. Not much, but enough that in thirty seconds or so she could see well enough to pick her away around objects. Another ten seconds and she could even make out the two figures still going at it in the center of the cavernous building.
She strode forward, undoing and picking up the chain as she went. That was about as far as her plan extended. After that, she was simply going to wait for an opportunity to present itself. Probably. Or she was going to do something stupid.
“Probably something stupid,” she growled as Hector took a glancing blow to the body, rolling with it and kicking out with a leg to drive his foe—who was masked—backward until he could regain his balance.
“Hey, ugly!” she shouted as she got close to the duo, and whipped the chain at the masked shifter as best she could.
It wasn’t much, but then again, the chain wasn’t light. The links whipped forward and the end slapped the side of his mask hard enough to snap the shifter’s head backward. It wasn’t serious damage. It was barely even mild to a shifter. But it was a distraction. He whirled to face her, throwing up a hand to grab the chain and yanking it from her hands.
All the while Hector was free to operate unimpeded. She could barely follow the blows they came so fast as he moved in to striking range. His right fist landed once, twice, three times, and then Hector did something that made even Rachel grimace in pain. He wound up and kicked his enemy right in the nuts.
That was followed up with a vicious uppercut to the jaw that doubled over the masked attacker. Hector snorted once, then spun in place and delivered a steel-toed boot right to the man’s jaw. The shifter collapsed, falling backward until his head landed a foot from her.
Rachel reached down and without hesitation yanked the mask free.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hector
He stopped short in his dash across the room toward Rachel as she reached down and unmasked the man who had caused so much trouble for him and others.
“No,” he breathed, stunned. “It can’t be.”
The shifter lying on the ground was in no condition to answer, but that didn’t stop Hector from yelling at him.
“How could you have done this to us?” He rubbed his face with one bloodied hand, trying to wrap his brain around what he was saying. “You killed Corvin!” he screamed, even as Rachel came up to him and wrapped him in a hug.
Hector was momentarily distracted as the warm, tender body of his mate pressed up against him and he allowed himself to give her a kiss, made hot and hard by the events of the evening. Rachel pulled back from him with fire in her eyes. He was going to have her later, once everything was settled, and he let his face tell her that.
There was a bang from the doorway. He spun, putting Rachel behind him in case he needed to fight again, but he relaxed as Gray came into the room. Not even the revelation of who was on the floor could change his opinion on Gray.
“About time,” he muttered.
“
Sorry,” Gray scowled. “I tried looking for Martin and then had to get someone else to fill in.”
Hector nodded. “That’s because he wasn’t there.”
Gray looked confused. “What?”
He stepped aside, pulling Rachel with him so that Gray could see who was sprawled across the ground behind him, just now starting to gather his senses.
“You weaselly sonofabitch!” Gray roared as he strode across the open space, picked Martin up, and slammed him into the ground.
Hard. Bones broke on contact and Hector intervened to prevent his friend and boss from beating the other shifter to death right then and there, even though his instincts told him to do just that. Martin didn’t deserve life. Not after the pathetic, vile, treasonous acts he’d committed. Death was all he deserved, but first he needed answers.
“I want to know why,” he growled at Gray, restraining the other shifter. “What caused all of this?”
Martin coughed from the ground, then made a low pained moan.
“Nobody gives a fuck that you’re hurt,” Hector said, turning and stomping on the shifter’s ankle as he tried to rise. “Stay down.”
Martin rolled backward in agony, until he came up against Rachel’s leg. She kicked him in the head. Hector didn’t even try to stop her. He did, however, lean down, grab Martin by the collar, and pull him into a sitting position until their faces were but inches apart.
“It’s time you started talking,” he growled. “Otherwise the pain you feel right now will seem like heaven in comparison to what we’ll do. Understood?”
Martin nodded weakly, blood running down his chin from where a boot had split his lip wide open. “Yeah,” he said tiredly.
“Why? Why do all this?” Gray asked, fury simmering in his voice as he looked down from above them.
“Nothing…” Martin winced as the action of speaking hurt him. “Nothing personal.”
Hector’s jaw dropped open. “Nothing…personal?!” he yelled into the other shifter’s face. “How the fuck can you say it’s nothing personal? You set me up, and you killed Corvin.”