Jessica looked down at her friend, their eyes locking. “Think I didn’t see the look in your eyes when you thought it might be Frank out there?” she asked. “You’d do this in a heartbeat if you had to, and we both know it.”
“But, Jess–”
“No,” Jessica snapped, cutting her best friend off before turning her face back to mine. “We’re getting our men free. Isn’t that right?”
I took a deep breath, nodded again. I could feel my core temperature rising, even as a cold chill rippled through my body. I swallowed hard and tried to keep my lunch down.
Whatever was happening to me wasn’t happening to Jessica, that much was clear. But whether this was a side effect of what Peter was going through, it didn’t matter. I still had to go through with this. If I didn’t, Peter would be the one sitting in a cell somewhere, or, even worse, dead. And there was no way I could let that happen. Not now, not ever.
“Let’s go,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“Right.”
I turned back to the door. “Hey, Kraut! Call your dogs back from the door. Me and Jessica are coming out, but we’re not giving ourselves over till you’re outside the hallway. Got it?”
“Fine, fine,” he said before barking a command to his men. Boots shuffled outside, and the ground shook as the giant retreated to the spots I’d designated.
“Ready?” I whispered to Jessica.
“Are you?” she asked. “You really don’t look good.”
“I’ll be fine,” I sighed. “Promise.”
She put an arm around my waist, anyways, clearly ignoring my assurances. “No you won’t. You look like warmed over death.”
“Thanks for the boost of confidence,” I groaned as she pulled the door open. “It’s just what I needed.” Still, though, she was right. I could feel my strength waning already. Whatever was wrong with me was getting worse. I sagged into her, grateful that her toned arms were strong enough to accept my added weight.
Together, we shuffled out into the hallway, with Elise and Ashley both moving to shut the door behind us.
I glanced back over my shoulder, giving both women what I hoped was a reassuring smile.
From the looks they returned, though, it wasn’t.
“Alright,” Jessica said as we looked down the hall at the giant who towered over all the armed men and women in the front room of the Curious Turtle. “You got us. Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Donka shein,” he replied with a grotesquely huge, too large for any normal man, smile. “Your chariot awaits.”
Chapter Twenty-two – Peter
The world slowly came back to me like there were a million on-stage lights, and each one was gradually being illuminated, one by one by one. First, in front of me, was my steering wheel. And in my ears were the sounds of crumbling masonry and the incessant honking of a car horn. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Then, as I looked down, there was the glass in my lap.
As I turned my head, there was Richard groaning beside me, but quickly coming back to his senses. A trickle of blood ran down his head, looking like a map of the tributaries of the Amazon River or the Nile.
Outside, where my windshield should have been, was the barista from the coffee shop, looking at me, slowly blinking his eyes. He looked as shaken as I felt.
“You okay, Mr. Frost? You guys both okay?”
Before I could respond, though, the pain returned in my lower back. It was excruciating pain, like every competitor in the MLB Homerun Derby for the last thirty years had lined up to use my kidney as a ball. And then came the pain in my head. Like they’d switched to my brain for batting practice after my kidney was knocked out of the park.
All I could do was groan and wipe a hand across my face at the curious wetness that was there.
“Mr. Frost?” the barista asked, coming around to my door. “You probably shouldn’t move. You’re bleeding pretty bad.”
“Really?” I asked, my tongue fat and awkward in my mouth as I slurred out the words.
He nodded, those eyes still big as dinner plates. “Real bad, Mr. Frost. We tried calling the ambulance, but the phones are all down.”
“Fuck,” Richard groaned beside me. “What the fuck, Pete? What happened?
And then the bikers rolled up. Their cheers and cries were somehow even louder than the roar of their bike engines as they all came tearing in. I looked left, my neck twisting painfully.
“Did we do that?” I asked as I looked at the Bronco shaped hole in the front of the little coffee shop. My car insurance rates had been pretty good, too. Guess not anymore.
“Yeah,” the barista said, looking out at the bikers. “You did. Are those guys, uh, friends of yours?”
“No,” I said. “No, they’re not.” I unbuckled my seatbelt, grabbed the door, and tried to open it. I winced in pain as my whole back seemed to virtually alight with fire and agony, sucking the air from my lungs. “Shit.”
Beside me, Richard unbuckled his belt and began to slam his shoulder against his door. Based on the way we’d come in, the passenger side must have taken the brunt of the impact, smashed his door, and bent the frame. He kept slamming into it, though, even if it was to no avail. “Come on, Peter,” he growled as he checked the door with his shoulder. “Snap out of it, man!”
“Mr. Frost!” called a man with a British accent as Richard continued to vainly collide with the door. “So good of you to join us this fine Colorado morning!”
I found the source of the voice picking his way through the rubble at the front of the store. Instinctively, I growled.
A tall, lean aristocratic man was standing there in a well-tailored dark, three-piece suit. He adjusted his tie as he came walking up, a rictus grin spreading across his angular features. “So good,” he repeated. “So very good.”
As he approached, the barista began to step away, as if he, too, could sense the evilness in this thing that walked on two legs.
“Fuck you,” I growled and tried the handle on the door again. More pain welled up inside me, though, sapping the strength from my arms.
Deep down, I knew this man belonged to Jaeger-Tech. Somehow, like it was in my bones, in my sinew.
“Who the hell are you?” Richard asked from his side.
“Mr. Finney,” the strange British man said. “At your service, of course.”
“Our service?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. In fact, such a service I offer. A wondrous service. You see, I’m in the business of moving people. Particularly, your women.”
“What the fuck?” Richard growled as he curled up in a ball on the seat, his legs coiled in front of him. He kicked out hard, sending the passenger side door of the Bronco flying open, and glass flying everywhere across the thankfully empty coffee shop.
“Now, now, Mr. Murdoch,” Finney said, holding up a finger and gesturing at Richard like he was three years old and about to do something naughty. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Fuck you,” Richard said, gun drawn.
“Lay a finger on me,” Finney said, “and your women, both of your women, will have made their little deal in vain.”
“Deal?” I asked, shaking my head a little, the pain growing worse in my back. “What deal?”
“Well, the deal they made to save your lives, of course. Their freedom for yours. I think it was quite erudite on their part. We only get one shifter and a measly human, while you get two shifters. But they did have their own guns in their mouths, so to speak, and they might have done something quite drastic and final had I not offered them a reason to live. That mate of yours, Mr. Frost, is quite the firecracker.”
“I don’t understand,” Richard said, glancing over to me from the front of the car. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Yeah,” I growled. “What are you going on about?”
“Shifters. So slow, sometimes.” Finney sighed and rolled his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was louder and his words slower and spaced out. “I ha
ve your women. They gave themselves up so I won’t take you.”
Behind Finney, the bikers had begun to gather. And they did not look happy as they paced back and forth.
“Do you like how my little plan is going?” Finney asked. “How successfully I’ve cut your little town off from the outside world?”
I growled again. The pain in my back had begun to spread like first a fire, then a coldness, now a bone-deep numbness. Like frostbite, but more dulling.
“It took quite a bit of manpower,” he said. “I’ll have you know, we called in all our various branches. Luckily, of course, our counter-intel people discovered your little hacker girl in the systems at the airport, tracking our numbers. I’m quite surprised you figured out as much about us as you did without our first realizing it. But, alas, all we had to do was a simple double-blind on that, and you were none the wiser. Tell me, Mr. Frost, how does it feel to be outflanked and outmaneuvered so thoroughly?”
I glanced towards Richard. He squeezed his fists tightly, so tight I could hear his knuckles pop inside the truck. He bared his teeth in a growl, like he was going to use his human ones to tear the throat from this strange Mr. Finney.
“No, Murdoch,” I told him. “He has your wife!” I winced again, doubling over in pain. Why wasn’t I healing? Where was this coming from?
“Listen to the man, Mr. Murdoch. After all, we do have your precious little wifey. I’d hate to have anything happen to her.” Mr. Finney’s eyes swiveled back to mine, and he grinned even more broadly than before, his face disturbing as his mouth stretched a little wider than it seemingly should. “Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have a lunch meeting to attend. Do give my regards to the rest of your pack.”
“Where are you taking them?” Richard asked as Finney turned away.
Finney stopped in his tracks, glass and stone crunching underfoot of his impeccable dress shoes. He didn’t even bother to glance back. “Burton’s Folly. See you soon, I’m sure,” he said before walking out of the remains of the little coffee shop on Main Street, and right up to the leader of the Skull and Bones MC.
“What do we do now?” the leader asked. “Can we have ‘em?”
“What?” the Brit asked, and I could hear the smile in his voice from all the way inside. “Why would I give them to you? You’ve served your purpose.”
The head biker’s face became disfigured with rage, his teeth bared as he took a step towards the Brit. “The fuck, man? The fuck is this bullshit? You fucking promised!”
The Brit laughed, a macabre sound like nails on a gravestone. And then, in a flash of speed I wouldn’t have thought possible of the man, a gun was in his hand, a bullet was fired, and the lead biker was lying on his back on the street in a pool of his own blood.
“What the fuck?” one of the bikers screamed. But before he could raise his gun, a cackling of automatic fire burst through the air from the direction of the Curious Turtle.
I winced as I watched the bikers get gunned down in the street, their bodies jumping as the automatic fire tore into them, dropping them to the street. Mr. Finney, with the confidence of a demon strolling the battlefield, walked right into the hail of bullets without even flinching.
Not a single bullet touched him as he walked out of view.
Behind him, the bullets continued to fall, their roars filling the air as the men screamed, gurgled, and died. It was worse than a regular gunfight. It was a massacre.
“Jesus Christ!” Richard yelled above the gunfire. “What the fuck?”
“No, Richard!” I yelled as the gunfire began to die down. “No! It was a double-cross, that’s all it was. Besides, what did you want him to do? Toss us to them?”
My oldest friend looked back at me, shock still on his face. “Peter, they just got gunned down in the street, man! Gunned down like dogs! What the fuck is going on?”
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s going on is, I need you to get this door open and help me get out. Something’s wrong, and I don’t know what it is.”
Chapter Twenty-three – Vanessa
“Where are you taking us?” I asked after they’d settled us into the back of the black SUV and sped us away from the scene of the crash, where the bikers lay lifelessly. “What’s going to happen to us?”
They’d cuffed both me and Jessica. To my left was a black clad man with a submachine gun across his lap. To my right was Jessica, our flanks pressed tightly together.
The frigid chills, the overwhelming sickness, still had its grip on my body, and there was no sign of it letting up. It was like the flu, but a million times worse, as sweat beaded on my forehead.
“Back to our base of operations,” the man with a British accent who’d been speaking to the bikers earlier said. “And you would do well to remember that silence is nearly sacred. I don’t want to gag you, Ms. Springer, but I will if I have to.”
“Fuck you,” sneered Jessica. “Where the hell is your base of operations?”
“Oh, Mrs. Murdoch, the same warning applies to you as well. And please don’t forget, you traded your life for your husband’s. That means yours is forfeit if I so choose, and, unlike Ms. Springer here, I have no use for you other than bait. I may be able to draw blood from you, but yours is as much use to us as juice from a turnip.”
“Bait?” I asked, wincing again as a horrible pain shot through my side, growing wider in its scope. Now it was in my hip, up into my shoulder blades. I wasn’t sure what had happened to Peter, but I was hoping to God right then that he’d get it taken care of before it somehow managed to kill us both.
“Yes,” the stranger replied, not even bothering to turn around in his seat. “Bait. Are you all dullards this side of the pond? Do I need to repeat myself like I did with your silly little mate?”
I felt Jessica slump in the seat next to me, a whimper escaping her throat.
He certainly didn’t need to explain. Both Jessica and I knew exactly what he meant. We may have held off the capture of our mates, but the hunters were still after them. Which meant Peter and Richard were still in danger. And, knowing them, they’d be stupid enough to try and storm these hunters’ headquarters in an attempt to save us.
“Where’s the giant?” I asked.
“Oh,” the stranger replied, “he’ll be along. Klaus rides in his own special vehicle. He doesn’t exactly fit well in your standard factory model seat.”
I turned and looked at Jessica.
The fear was rolling off her, filling the car with its aroma. And the tears, too, were beginning to trickle down her face again.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Don’t. Crying right now’s not going to do anything.”
She reached up, wiped her tears a little with her manacled hands, and sniffled. “I know,” she replied. “But what else can I do? We’re still in just as bad of a spot as before.”
“The guys will get us out,” I said, my voice nothing more than a whisper. “You’ll see.”
Up front, the stranger giggled a little, a soft tittering noise like you’d expect from a schoolgirl.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said. “You know your husband’s going to do everything he can to get us out. And so is Peter.” Almost on cue, though, the pain in my back grew even more painful and hotter, spreading through all four of my limbs with an intensity I’d never experienced, making me cry out in pain.
“Sympathy pains for your mate?” the stranger asked, tittering again in sick amusement. “Don’t worry, the further we get into the mountains, the less pain you’ll begin to feel. In all of our experiments, the furthest your shifter connections have stretched is two miles. By the time we reach our destination, it’ll all be a distant memory. A painful one, mind you, but still distant.”
“Experiments, huh?” I asked, licking my cracked and dry lips. “Done a lot of those over the years?”
The stranger snorted. “The years? More like centuries. We’ve been as entwined with your race of people as much as peanut butter is with jelly in this sa
d, forsaken country. Without you, there’d be no us. We’ve experimented long and hard, excruciatingly hard, on your people. How fast you can heal tissue damage, how quickly you can change. And that was around the time Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel and Da Vinci was figuring out he liked boys more than girls. You wouldn’t believe the things we’ve thought to test on you and your ilk in recent years.”
This line of conversation with the stranger was sickening. It was almost as bad as the pain in my side, and the knowledge that Peter must be going through ten times worse. I swallowed hard, turned and looked out the window as we trucked down the highway.
There I was, a captive of the people who’d been hunting mine like dogs. The ones who’d killed my pack, murdered my sister, and left me an orphan when they killed my mother and father. Forced me to go on the run, to become a criminal, to live a life that was broken and unfulfilled. Empty of love and trust, empty of my mate.
And what was my captor doing? Gloating. Gloating about how many shifters they’d killed. How they’d run experiments on them like mad scientists. I almost leaned down between my legs and threw up. But, no, I couldn’t give him that pleasure, that satisfaction. Because I knew that’s what the stranger would get.
Creatures like him only experienced joy when it came from someone else’s torment. Like children plucking the wings off flies with tweezers, or burning ants with magnifying glasses.
They were sick. A cancer on the world. And what did you do with cancer? You cut it out, killed it by any means necessary.
And, as we drove higher and higher into the mountains, farther and farther away from my mate, I knew that we’d get our revenge. We’d cut these bastards out from the body of the human race. No matter what.
As I sat there, envisioning the death of the stranger, warm hands enveloped my chilly one as Jessica laid her head on my shoulder and began to quietly sob.
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered as we drove, the pain in my back still as bad as ever and showing no signs of lessening. “I promise.”
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