“Guess not,” the Brit said as the guards doubled down on me and Jessica continued to plead for them to stop.
After what felt like hours, but was likely only seconds, they finally stopped. This time, my body apparently had had enough. Every muscle, tendon, bone, and piece of sinew in my body ached with exhaustion and pain as I lay there in a huddled heap, gasping for breath. Sweat poured down my body, and every gasping intake of oxygen felt like my last.
But even as I lay there, my body wracked with immeasurable pain, I felt something in my mind drift away, like it floated up beyond us so I could look down from the ceiling.
I watched as the guards prodded me over and over, watched as my body twisted on the floor in torment, even watched the strange Mr. Finney, his eyes half-lidded, his lips curled into a hideous smile as he looked on. Watched as Jessica screamed in horror, her eyes wide, both hands on her mouth.
“Stop! You’re killing her!” she screamed, her voice distant like I was remembering her in a long lost memory from my childhood.
I just blinked slowly, watching it all unfold before me.
“You love her like a sister, don’t you?” whispered a voice in my ear.
Ivana. Just like in my dream the night before.
I nodded, my mind not even questioning what was going on. Somehow, this moment in time seemed even realer than the one down below where I was being prodded in the sides with stun batons. It seemed more pure. Whether it was or not, I had no idea.
“You love all of them? The whole pack, don’t you?”
I nodded again. “They’re my pack. Whether I like it or not.”
“Good,” Ivana whispered. “Now you’re ready. Now you can speak to Peter. Now he can be whole, with you by his side, even if only in spirit. You two are closer than you imagine. You two are one. Two sides of the same coin, closer than any mates. You’re alphas, both of you.”
And just like that, pain surged through me again as I was back in my body, my legs kicking, my arms trembling, my mind full of nothing but unspeakable agony.
But they’d stopped at least and their batons were no longer stinging my sides like a million electrified bees.
“Take her back in the room,” the Brit spat, all the culture and decorum in his voice replaced by vitriol and hate.
Arms hooked around mine and I was dragged back into the middle of the room and dropped beside the table. Distantly, I could hear Jessica’s tears as she sobbed in fear.
“Now,” Finney said, “stay down. Rest for a moment. Recuperate. Then, get up and finish your meal, Ms. Springer. As I said before, you’ll need your strength.” The three men turned and left, but not before one of the guards gave me one last shock in my side, sending me into a new set of convulsions.
As the door closed and locked up tight again, Jessica threw herself on me and rolled me onto my back, her tears falling on my face like rain. “Oh my God, Vanessa, are you okay? How bad is it?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but could only groan a weird gurgling noise.
“Shit,” she whispered, stroking my face, brushing my damp hair back from my forehead. “Okay, let’s get you into bed.”
My strength gradually returned as she dragged me to my feet. My knees wobbled, but at least my boots were planted on the ground beneath me. Together, we were able to get me on the bed.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked as I lay there on my side on top of the comforter, curled up in a half-fetal position.
I nodded, swallowing, and licked my lips. I tried to speak but it was like my words wouldn’t come at first. It was like my brain was in a fog and unused to having to work the simplest functions of my body. “Yeah,” I said after struggling to get out the words. “I’ll be fine. Need rest, is all.”
“Okay,” she whispered, stroking my cheek again, “you do that.”
I breathed out a sigh and closed my eyes.
“Before you go to sleep, though,” Jessica whispered as I lay there in darkness, “tell me one thing. Why’d you do something that stupid?”
I thought about it for a moment, the gears in my mind finally beginning to spin up to speed. “He was disrespectful to you. And you’re in my pack.”
“That’s what I thought,” she whispered back. “You shifters are all the same.” But this time, I could tell the concern in her voice had been replaced with respect.
Chapter Twenty-eight – Peter
I was so startled when I heard Vanessa’s voice in my ear that I nearly dropped the LAW, a small and compact rocket launcher, I’d been inspecting.
“Peter,” she said, “I know the secret now. I know what to do.”
“Vanessa?” I asked the empty room as I spun around. How had she gotten back here? Had she escaped?
Outside, the afternoon sun had begun to warm the streets and sidewalks of the Rock. Before too much longer, it would be behind the mountains to our west, and we’d have to get a move on if we wanted to reach the castle where they were keeping both women.
Vanessa laughed a little, a disconcerting sound considering the gravity of the situation we were all in. “No, silly. I’m not there.” I felt my hand rise of its own accord and press my palm over my heart. “I’m here.” Below my palm, though, I felt my heart skip a beat.
“Oh no,” I whispered, panic seizing me for the first time since before I could remember. “They killed you, didn’t they?” Was I going crazy? Was she speaking to me from the beyond?
I heard another laugh inside my head. “No, believe me, I’m fine. A little roughed up, but fine. I see you are, too. Got whatever that was out of your back?”
“Yeah,” I said, still shocked and unsure of my mental state, “feeling much better. It was silver. You felt that?”
“Of course I felt it. We’re entwined now.”
“Entwined?”
“Ivana says it’s because we’re both alphas. That, for whatever reason, our bond is stronger than the others, because of our blood. Whatever that means.”
“Ivana? I thought she was dead.”
“Believe me,” Vanessa replied in my head, “came as a surprise to me, too.”
“So she’s not?”
“Oh, she’s dead alright. But she’s here somehow.”
“How?”
“Think I understand how any of this works?” she asked, laughing a little. “I’m asleep right now, I think, but somehow I’m talking to you like you’re right next to me. For all I know, you’re just a dream.”
“Well, for all I know, I’m just going crazy.”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside Jessica’s office where I’d been inspecting some of the weaponry. “Cap?” Jake asked as he poked his head in the door. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, trying to appear calm. The last thing I wanted to do was tell the pack that I was hearing my mate’s voice inside my head. Even if they didn’t think I’d lost it and gone off the deep end, they’d probably want to know why it was happening. And that was definitely not something I had an answer for. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Thought I heard you talking to someone, that’s all.”
I shrugged. “Nope. Wasn’t me.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, giving me a slow nod. “Alright, then.” He turned and left, going back out to our staging area in the gallery where we had assembled all the cleaned, locked, and loaded weapons.
“Use your inside voice when you speak to me.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Trying thinking, I mean. Like inside your head.”
“Like this?” I thought, sub-vocalizing the words like I was thinking to myself. “Can you still hear me?”
“Perfect,” she replied. “Now close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“I want to check if something works. Ivana says it will.”
“Hold on,” I thought, putting the stubby canister that would extend into a tube capable of delivering an explosive projectile on the desk. I closed my eyes and turned to face the room.
; And there she was. A luminescent version of herself, like an outline of her body and face drawn in forest green florescent light. “Can you see me?” she asked, her phantom shape brushing a lock of hair behind her ear.
I nodded in amazement. “Yeah,” I thought back. “I can see you.”
“Good,” she said, taking a step toward me, slipping her arms around my waist.
She felt real. Like really real. Like she was there in the room, and those were her real arms slipping around my body.
I sighed, slipping my arms around her. I didn’t know if I was going crazy or not, but there was no denying the feel of her in arms. It felt just as perfect as the night before, back in the living room of my cabin. So perfect, so wonderful. I put a finger beneath her chin and tilted her phosphorescent lips to up mine.
She stood up on her tiptoes, her body blending into mine as we seemed to melt together.
I lowered my head, pressing my lips against hers. A feeling like I’d never experienced before, not even in all the years of us together before I’d left my father’s pack and joined the Navy, surged through my body. Warm light, the kind of rush I felt when I was on the hunt with my pack, the kind I felt as we stood atop the boulders on mountain peaks, howling at the moon, seemed to engulf me as our lips pressed together.
She opened her mouth against mine, running her tongue across my lips until I opened them. We danced together, tasting each other for the first time in over a decade, even as we seemed to pry apart the bars holding our souls in our own bodies.
It was completeness. Oneness. Like losing yourself in the moment, allowing your body to dance on the flow of nature’s universal music.
“Hey, Peter?” Richard asked from behind me. “You okay, man?”
Startled, I released Vanessa from my embrace and turned around, eyes wide.
Richard gave me a weird look, his eyebrows so scrunched together he looked like he had just one, his eyes narrowed.
“I-I-I’m fine,” I stammered out, realizing immediately how ridiculous I must have looked when he came in, my back to the door, my arms wrapped around the body of a phantom woman. “Just, you know, thinking.”
“You sure?” he asked, taking a step into the room, his eyes flickering down to my lips. “Is that…”
“Is that what?” I asked, following his gaze. I reached up, brushed the tips of my fingers over my lips, and peered down at the redness smeared there.
“Is that blood?” Richard asked in concern.
“No,” I said, glancing back up at him. “It’s lipstick. It’s Vanessa’s lipstick.”
Chapter Twenty-nine – The Hunters
“I told you she was dangerous!” Klaus boomed down in the hall, where both of the Jaeger-Tech overseers had retired for their own lunch. “You should have had the techs inject her the moment she entered the castle.”
Mr. Finney frowned down at his lunch. He knew he should eat, but still, anxiety was gnawing away at the pit of his stomach like a rat terrier. He shoved his own stuffed pheasant away from him, a frown creasing his lips downwards.
Whatever was causing the anxiety was just beyond his field of vision, a small fact he hadn’t accounted for. In their line of business, so to speak, they always relied on each mission being the same as the one before.
It was simple, really.
The found a pack. They did surveillance on them until they understood the ins and outs of their schedules, their hunting territory. Who would be where and when. Then they struck.
Easy. Simple. Replicable.
But, oh, these Frost shifters, these damnable beasts with their unpredictable patterns, their mates, and their damned training. And, worst of all, their pack leader Peter Frost. Mr. Finney had read the reports of what had happened overseas while Frost was stationed in Baghdad, of the strange sightings of the beast around the city, the times coinciding with the Navy SEAL’s deployment there as he hunted the insurgent threats against his men.
Even now, it was hard not to laugh at the ridiculousness of them. After all, who in their right mind would believe something like that? Even Finney, with his almost unique circumstances, had trouble with it.
Even now, though, it was just as hard to dismiss them.
After all, Finney was seated across the table from an eight-foot giant who’d been alive since before the Great War.
Luckily, whatever Peter Frost had been able to transform himself into, that all seemed to be done and over with. It was far in the past, like Finney’s own childhood. Whatever power the shifter had once had was now gone—or they would have heard something of it by now.
“Why can’t things be simple this time around?” Finney said, still frowning as he glanced up at Klaus. “Like they always are when we do these little hunts?”
Klaus chortled, his booming voice filling the dining hall. “Because,” he said, “we’ve decided we need to take them alive. That our supplies are running low. You know the council.”
Finney pushed his chair back from the banquet table and crossed his legs as he leaned back. “There’s something about all this, about the relationship between Ms. Springer and Mr. Frost that just doesn’t sit right with me. Earlier when she sprang at me, there was a moment that just seemed…off to me.”
“Off?”
“Yes,” Finney said, his fingers steepled in front of him. “Her eyes went glassy, distant. I’ve seen something similar during my trips to the Indus River Valley, years before the Queen gave the region its independence. The yogis there, it was said, could meditate and enter a trance of sorts. A closing off of their mind from pain.”
Klaus snorted. “Bullshit,” he said, flecks of grease and spit flying from his obscene lips. He stuffed another turkey leg in his mouth, bit down, and cleared it in one go as he pulled the stump from his mouth.
Finney’s eyes flickered up to the giant, to the grotesque display of bones in front of him. Someone, at least, had regained his appetite. “I don’t know whether it’s bullshit—to use your phrase—or not, Klaus. But during that flash of a moment, she didn’t cry out even as we pumped her full of enough voltage to subdue an elephant. Or you, for that matter.”
“Jah, so let me ask you this, Finney. Do you think this has to do with her being a shifter? Or just something like, what is it you mentioned…a yogi?”
The British man frowned and looked at the lifeless bird on the plate in front of him. A mental image of himself, trussed and awaiting his own death, flashed into his mind, turning his stomach even more sour than before. That would be him, he knew, if he screwed this mission up. The Frost Security pack was meant to keep them through the years ahead, seeing as how the council had thoughtlessly over-hunted their prey.
“I don’t know,” Finney said honestly. “But I think it behooves us to find out. I’ll start going through the video footage of her room. See if I am able to notice anything that seems out of the ordinary. Perhaps that will give us insight–”
“Nein!” Klaus roared unexpectedly, surprising Finney so much that he actually raised an eyebrow. “We will do no such thing! Inject her. Limit her. You saw for yourself that she is a vixen, full of spirit and vinegar. Do it now!”
The Brit looked clearly at Klaus. First, there was the little sign of hidden truths this morning. Now there was this, with him attempting to dictate the actions of his superior? A monster such as he, nothing more than a deformed, giant of an oaf? How dare he? How dare he step above his station within the organization?
The Brit cleared his throat and readjusted his tie. “Klaus,” Finney said, his voice not betraying a single bit of the contempt or rage he felt for the giant at that moment, “I will keep my own counsel on this and follow my own wishes.”
“Nein,” he said. “It is too dangerous. I will not allow it.”
Finney cleared his throat and sucked a bit of fowl from his teeth. Maybe it was time to show the giant who he was actually dealing with.
“Rogers,” Finney called to no one in particular, his voice just barely raised above norma
l volume, “would you and your team make yourself known?”
A split second later, two doors on either side of the room burst open and a team of hardened veterans came rushing in, loaded for bear and armed to the teeth. They held heavy machine guns and grenade launchers, and there was even a flamethrower strapped to the last man.
“Klaus, I believe you’ve met my man Rogers before.”
There was no response from the giant as he continued to look straight at Finney, their eyes locked in a game of psychic chicken. Who would blink first? Who would flinch? More importantly, though, who was willing to go over the cliff of no return and make their move?
“Rogers here is ex-SAS. So are the rest of his men. They answer only to me and to a select few on the council. I’m not sure what will kill you, Klaus, but I am sure of what will hurt you. Of what will make your life very uncomfortable.”
Still nothing from the giant Prussian.
“Now, as I said before, I will not be contradicted by my subordinate. Particularly not one as grotesquely deformed as yourself.”
The giant’s eye twitched, even as he continued to stare.
Oh, that had gotten to him, hadn’t it?
“Now,” Finney said. “Disappear back to your carriage house.”
Silently, Klaus rose from the table, his beady, malevolent eyes staring at Finney from the puffy bulge of his face. He leaned forward, planting his fists on the banquet table so hard that the wood splintered beneath his hands. “You would be wise, Finney, to collar the bitch in that tower. Whatever you want to gain from her, it is not worth it.”
“As I said before, and as Rogers will be quick to point out if I so choose,” he replied softly, “I will be the judge of that. And no other. Now go. Take your lunch with you, you miscreant freak.”
Klaus’s nostrils flared as he straightened up. His eyes still on Finney, he brushed the serving platter full of both meaty and discarded turkey bones off the table, sending them flying to his right. Then, fuming, he stomped from the room. And when Klaus stomped, he truly stomped. Miniature earthquakes seemed to rumble across the castle as he made his way from the banquet hall and back outside.
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