by Bliss Devlin
He inclined his head. "The very same. You've led us on a wild chase, girlie."
"And now you're going to pay!" growled one of the men behind him.
He was a big fellow with dirty blond hair and a stubbled face. He grinned unpleasantly at her, his gaze fixed on her breasts.
Shannon backed away from the sink, hoping to make a dash for the clinic's rear entrance. But the shuffle of booted feet behind her warned her that some of the Beast Warriors had entered that way and were now behind her.
She halted and looked around wildly. She was trapped, and they knew it.
She could see them grinning in anticipation of what they were going to do to her before they dragged her back to WSS headquarters and handed her over to Colonel Perry.
"Well, you're a pretty little thing. Much younger than Dr. Donlon led us to expect," Erik said with a feral grin. "This'll be fun." He glanced over his shoulder at the scruffy blond man. "Sergeant Halfdan? You found her. You want to go first?"
"Oh yeah," Halfdan said and pushed his way past his companions.
They hooted and stomped their feet and cheered him on, making ugly suggestions and threats about what they would do to her when their time came.
Shannon frantically backed away from the approaching wolf shifter.
But she had nowhere to go.
A hard shove between her shoulder blades sent her stumbling forward into Halfdan's grasp. His grip on her upper arm was bruising as he drew her in for a kiss.
She screamed in outrage and terror as his wet mouth descended on hers. No! I won't let him!
Instinctively, she drew on her power, summoning the element of water and drawing it forth from her attacker's body.
Halfdan choked, stiffened, and pushed away from her. His blue eyes went wide with panic.
"What the fuck?" he managed in a hoarse voice before he was overcome with a violent coughing fit that went on and on.
Still coughing, he collapsed onto his knees.
"Barry!" one of the others shouted and tried to approach, only to have his fellow shifters grab him and hold him back.
As his companions—and Shannon, too—watched in horror, water spewed in a torrent from Halfdan’s mouth and flowed copiously from his eyes. His clothing was quickly soaked with it.
After a few moments, he fell forward with a groan, sprawling at Shannon's feet. A large puddle formed around him on the floor tiles as he continued to choke and vomit forth a clear stream of liquid. He was sweating copiously, too, and in a matter of moments, his fatigues were soaked through and clinging to him.
"What did you do to him?" demanded Erik Redclaw, his handsome features twisted into an ugly snarl.
Shannon noticed that the wolf shifters who had been gleefully crowding in, enjoying her terror, were now shuffling nervously backwards, trying to distance themselves from her.
No one wanted to touch her now, it seemed.
"The same as I'll do to anyone who tries to touch me against my will," Shannon said. Her voice shook, but she doubted any of the Beast Warriors noticed. "I've commanded the waters inside him to depart his body."
"Make it stop!" Erik ordered.
Shannon shook her head. "I can't."
Barry Halfdan groaned and writhed on the floor, the puddle of water surrounding him rapidly growing into a small lake that covered the linoleum tiles in her examining room.
It was over quickly. With a final groan, Halfdan stopped struggling, though liquid continued to flow out of him.
With horror, Shannon saw that he was rapidly turning into a mummy, dry, shriveled skin stretched over a skeleton lying in a pool of what looked to be at least fifteen gallons of water.
Her hands shook violently in the aftermath of using her healing powers this way. She clasped them tightly, trying to hide the extent of her trembling.
She had never killed anyone before. And by using her powers to do so, she had perverted her healer's oath.
She felt sick with the weight of Sergeant Halfdan's death on her soul, but at least she had stopped them from abusing her.
The wolf shifters were looking at each other uneasily, and she could tell that they were wondering what to do next. She guessed that they were accustomed to their prey either fleeing or fighting back with conventional weapons.
They had no idea what to do with her. Or so she hoped.
Erik Redclaw dashed those hopes—and quelled his men's incipient panic—by clapping slowly, an ironic smile on his bearded lips.
"Impressive," he said. "But can you kill us all before we slay you, Irish witch?"
She bared her teeth at him. "I probably won't have to kill you all," she bluffed. "Rafe will be angry with me if I don't leave him anyone to fight."
Using magic to kill had drained her more severely than any act of healing she had ever performed. She wasn’t sure she could actually perform the water-summoning a second time, but she couldn't let these wolf shifters know that.
Unfortunately for her, Erik Redclaw didn't seem to be as impressed as she'd hoped. He boomed with laughter. "You've got real guts, girlie. I like that!"
He gestured sharply, and one of the wolf shifters standing near the door produced a familiar-looking antique broadsword with a yellowed ivory pommel and a gilded hilt. The polished metal gleamed under the clinic's fluorescent lights, revealing a dark engraved design of flying birds that Shannon recognized with sickening jolt of dismay.
Rafe's sword!
Fresh terror tore through her like an icy wave.
Erik's smile widened, and she knew he had seen her reaction. "So you recognize this?"
"B-but how? How did you get that?" she demanded, hating how her voice quavered. "How did you get here? Hal posted guards everywhere!"
"We're Wolf Team. The best scouts in the world and the best damned spies." Erik gave her an amused grin. "You didn't think we'd be stupid enough to try to drive straight down the highway to this podunk town?"
For the first time in her life, she regretted that she had been trained as a healer, not a soldier. She wanted to smash his smirking face.
"As for Rafe Magnusson's sword, here…well, once we tracked you to his home, we settled in to figure out the situation. My men have been watching his place for days, learning who comes and goes and when they do it."
Still smiling, Erik moved in closer to her, though he was careful not to touch her.
"And that's how we knew that Rafe would be coming back for lunch, alone, while his two bear-shifter buddies were on the other side of the ranch, cutting brush with those big, noisy, smelly chainsaws of theirs. They won't be back for hours." Erik leaned in, close enough that his breath touched her cheek. His voice dropped to a smug whisper. "We took him down in thirty seconds. You're on your own, little witch. What are you going to do now?"
Shannon tried to breathe evenly rather than pant like a cornered rabbit. She had to think!
"Is—is Rafe dead?"
To her relief, Redclaw shook his head. "Nope. WSS wants their bear shifters back alive and in shape to fight. But we did dose him with something that'll keep him knocked out for a while, and he won't be able to shapeshift for at least a couple of days. Our mission is retrieving you, but I wanted to make sure that we could come back for him and his friends later on."
Rafe couldn't shapeshift into his bear form? Not that robbing him of his ability would prevent him from doing something stupid if he realized that Shannon was in danger.
And then he would die, because trapped in man-shape, Rafe stood no chance against this pack of Beast Warriors. And Redclaw knew it.
Shannon had to find a way to protect the man she loved and the people of Elysia, who had welcomed her so warmly.
"Now," continued Erik, when Shannon didn't immediately reply. "Here we were in in the middle of fucking nowhere, hunting one lone runaway girl, and what do we find? A whole nest of fugitive Beast Warriors. Why, I'm sure that Colonel Perry would be really happy for this interesting tidbit of news…especially when we tell him that Hal Sigu
rdsson is here. General Amabilis hates Hal more than anyone else, and she'd give us a huge bonus if we brought her his head!"
His men nodded with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
Why is he telling me all this? Shannon wondered.
Then the answer came to her through the mist of terror and desperation fogging her brain.
Redclaw wants to strike a bargain with me. But why?
She remembered what she had seen and heard in her dream.
"Are you sure you want to tell Colonel Perry about this place?" she challenged. "Don't you want to leave yourselves an escape route if he decides to punish you for letting me elude you for, what is it now? Five weeks?"
She made a show of studying Redclaw's expression.
"Oh? You don't think he'll mind?" she asked with false innocence. "And what about the men you've already lost? That won't look good, either."
Indeed, the casualties were stacking up for WSS. Two guards and a pilot dead in the plane crash. The two wolf shifters, Powell and Torberg, whom Rafe had killed while rescuing her. And Sergeant Halfdan, just now.
She looked around at his men, pursing her lips as if studying them.
"But if you stay here, will you have enough men to fight the bear shifters?" she asked. "You might be able to defeat Rafe if it's your pack against a lone bear, but can you stand against Hal's combined forces?" She paused and forced herself to smile confidently. "They've been expecting you for days now, and the moment they realize something is wrong…let's just say that Hal doesn't want to lose his only healer."
"We can't let you go," growled Erik.
She inclined her head, fighting the despair that threatened to drown her. "I know. But do you want to lose more of your men trying to force me to return to WSS headquarters?"
Erik's blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. "So what are you saying?"
"I'm offering you a bargain," she answered. "I'll return with you on three conditions."
"You think you're in a position to bargain with me, girlie?" he sneered.
"I do."
Her knees were shaking, and her heart was pounding so loudly that she was sure he could hear it, but her voice, thankfully, had stopped quavering and now sounded calm. Confident.
That stopped him. She saw him collecting his thoughts and thinking about whether to negotiate with her.
"Okay, this should be funny," he said finally. "What are your conditions?"
She counted them off on her fingers. "First: that none of you will attempt to touch me against my will."
To drive home her point, she let her gaze linger on Sergeant Halfdan's shriveled corpse. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the wolf shifters cross himself.
"Second: that you don't tell Colonel Perry or anyone else about Elysia or the bear shifters here. Third: that you harm no one else here."
"And what are you offering in return?" Erik demanded.
"That I'll go with you now without resisting or attempting to escape again. That I won't kill any more of your men if they don't try to assault me. And that I won't tell Colonel Perry or anyone else what really happened."
"She couldn’t tell him anything if we ripped out her smart-ass tongue," muttered one of the wolf shifters standing near Redclaw.
Redclaw silenced him with a glare. Then he looked around at his men. "What do you say, boys?"
"Colonel Perry is fucking nuts. He's not gonna be happy about this when we return to base three weeks late," someone commented. "I'm all for having a bolt-hole while we're working for that crazy bastard." He looked around. "And this looks like a nice place to settle in, if we have to."
"Yeah!" shouted one of the men near the back, and his cry of assent was quickly taken up by the others.
When the cries died down, Erik inclined his head in Shannon's direction. "Very well, you've got a bargain."
"You'll swear to it? All of you?" she asked, remembering what Rafe and Hal had told her about Erik Redclaw's sense of honor. He never broke a bargain if you got him to swear to it.
Erik laughed.
"You may be pretty, but you're not dumb, are you, girl?" he said and stuck out his hand.
Erik Redclaw said loudly, "I swear to hold to my bargain with Shannon Joyce—"
"Shannon Magnusson," she corrected him, firmly, and his coppery brows rose in surprise.
"Shannon Magnusson," he repeated smoothly, "and may God strike me down with a thunderbolt and ravens tear at my charred flesh if I break my oath."
His men repeated his words.
Then it was Shannon's turn. "I swear by God and all the saints, and by own honor, that I'll keep this bargain with you, Erik Redclaw, and the other wolf shifters. May my powers wither and my luck desert me if I break my oath to you."
"Good," Redclaw said. He waved toward the clinic's door, and his men parted to clear the way. "Now let's get going, girlie. We have a long walk ahead of us."
"Can I at least go back to the house to fetch my things?" Shannon asked, wondering if she could manage to leave Rafe a farewell note.
"No," Redclaw said firmly. "No delays."
Because she had just sworn an oath not to resist, Shannon followed the wolf shifters out the door of her clinic with a heavy heart but no further protest.
Rafe, my love, I'm sorry, she thought as Team Wolf led her across the highway and into a thick stand of trees beyond a pasture.
Chapter 11 – Imperiled
When Rafe returned to his house in the late morning to prepare the lunch he planned to share with his mate, he was greeted by the scent of strangers on a day when he had no guests scheduled to arrive.
He didn't have any guests scheduled for today. No one should have come into his home while he was out working the cattle with Brett and Drake. Worse yet, he smelled wolf mingled with man.
Then he noticed that his broadsword was missing from its place of honor in his entryway.
Rafe instantly went on high alert, but it was too late.
Something hit his leg and stung. He looked down in disbelief to see a tranquilizer dart embedded in his thigh…and that was the last thing he remembered for a while.
Rafe returned to consciousness with a start. Even before he remembered what had happened to him, he was overwhelmed with the terrible certainty that his mate was in danger.
Then it all came back to him.
He had never doubted Shannon's prophetic dream, but now he knew it had come true.
Erik Redclaw and his men had somehow found Elysia, and they had been here.
In his house.
And whatever they had used to drug him had left a nasty taste in his mouth and a headache that felt like someone was pounding a spike through his skull with every heartbeat.
Those bastards! I'll make them pay for that.
Working fast despite the terrible headache and the lingering fuzziness from the drug, Rafe stripped. Then he summoned his bear-spirit in preparation for a shapeshift.
And nothing happened. For the first time that he could remember, Rafe's bear didn't respond to his summons, eager to take control of the man.
He tried again and again to shift, growing increasingly frantic each time it failed.
Finally, he realized that he was trapped in man-shape…maybe forever.
No! I have to shift! I can't save her if I'm like this!
He desperately wanted to know what drug had been loaded in that dart…and why hadn't Redclaw's men just killed him?
But if they thought that meant Rafe was going to be helpless to protect his mate, they were wrong. Shannon was his. He had sworn to protect her.
He would get her back…or die trying.
Rafe growled and abandoned his attempts to shift. He hurriedly got dressed again, then ran, taking the stairs up to his bedroom two at a time. He needed his weapons, which were locked away in a gun safe upstairs.
Another, newer, broadsword and a long-handled Viking-style axe were stored in that safe, alongside his Remington deer-hunting rifle. He
had used both of the edged weapons for covert ops during his WSS days—the shifter teams favored them because they were silent and accurate for close quarters work, and you never ran out of bullets.
He grabbed all three weapons plus all of the ammunition stored in the safe, stuffing the boxes of cartridges into a small backpack. Then he ran back downstairs.
On impulse, he grabbed a round, brightly painted oaken shield and two steel-tipped ash spears from where they hung on his living room wall before throwing open his front door and sprinting for his truck.
As he ran, he pulled out his phone and called Hal, Brett, and Drake in quick succession. None of them picked up, which was not unusual during working hours in the summertime. They were probably out of cell range in a distant pasture.
As Rafe roared down his long gravel driveway, heading for Shannon's clinic, he prayed for the first time in decades. His heart felt like a heavy stone lodged in his chest, ready to shatter into a million sharp-edged fragments.
Dear God, please let her be safe. Please protect her from her enemies, since I failed her.
When Rafe pulled up in front of the clinic a few minutes later, he sensed immediately that he was too late.
He stormed inside the building anyway, hoping that his gut instinct had been wrong.
Shannon was gone.
The examination room was flooded with water. A giant puddle covered the floor, and there were dirty boot prints everywhere. The air stank of wolf shifters mingled with the fading scent of Shannon's terror…and, even more disturbing, the smell of death.
Most damning of all, his mate had left behind the large day-pack that she used for carrying supplies whenever she was summoned to the scene of an accident or illness.
Nor did she ever leave the clinic without penning a quick note on the whiteboard that hung near the door, so that he wouldn't worry if he came by with lunch while she was out.
Rafe cursed with mingled anger and fear.
He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He had to remain calm and think, damn it!
So how was he going to find her?
First thing was to confirm that that Shannon had indeed been taken by wolf shifters. Rafe bent to examine the boot prints scattered across the floor of the clinic.