Wild and Free

by Kristen Ashley

  I turned and saw stacked milk crates lining another wall, most of them with the openings pointed out, the top ones with the openings facing the ceiling. Jeans, sweaters, tees, boots, running shoes, Henleys, thermals, all stuffed into the ones on their sides, a passing try at folding them—a poor passing try. Belts, socks, underwear shoved into the ones on top.

  I looked across the way and saw a small kitchenette against the wall opposite the bathroom area. Not much counter space and what there was was taken up with a coffeemaker, a toaster, a microwave, and a dish drainer. Clean dishes in the drainer. Shelves over the sink with food and a variety of mismatched tableware. An old, bulbous-fronted, white fridge to one side, a narrow stove to the other.

  Beyond that, two wooden hutches, their front door handles linked with chain and locked with padlocks. Secrets behind those doors, and in my current situation, I wasn’t a big fan of secrets.

  On the opposite wall to the milk crates, the bed I was on, shoved against the wall. Iron. Old. Unattractive. Though, the mattresses were good. The sheets light blue. The comforter rust colored. Lots of pillows. A standing lamp at the headboard, a nightstand beside it.

  By the kitchenette, an ugly, old, round metal table with three chairs, none of them matching.

  Rounding this out, a comfortable-looking-but-nevertheless-ratty armchair, a small round table beside it, a standing lamp next to the table, and sitting dead center in the room, the lamp’s plug attached to an extension cord that snaked to the wall. A trip hazard if there ever was one.

  But whatever. I wasn’t going to be around long enough to trip.

  I scanned the space and noted there were no rock concert posters on the walls. No calendars depicting Camaros or scantily clad babes draped over Porsches. No racks filled with weapons. No insane manifestos written in precise, tiny handwriting on every inch of wall. All of this how I would guess that guy would decorate.

  There also weren’t any books. No stereo. No CDs. Not even a TV.

  But there were two long, narrow garden-level windows, bars on the inside, blacked out.

  If I was correct, these windows faced the street.

  It was late; it had to be after one in the morning.

  But I had to try.

  I ran to the kitchenette, heaved myself up to my knees on the counter, and reached to the window.

  I tried to find a latch to open it, but there wasn’t one. I looked to the other and saw it didn’t have one either.

  Foiled again!

  Not giving up, I commenced pounding on it and shouting, “Help! Help! I’m held captive in here! Basement room off the alley under the Dumpster! If you can hear me, please help me! Call the police! My name is Delilah Johnson! Help me! Please!”

  I kept pounding and shouting and heard nothing. I did this for a while, until my voice started to get scratchy and my hand began to hurt.

  I kept doing it until I heard the door behind me start to scrape open.

  I stopped pounding and shouting, jumped from the countertop, and frantically searched around me. I pulled open a drawer in one of the two cabinets on either side of the sink and grabbed a steak knife.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  I whirled toward the door and froze when I saw who was walking in.

  A petite, elderly Chinese lady and, with her, a very not elderly, not petite, very good-looking Chinese guy.

  The woman came to a halt four feet in. The guy closed the door and moved in, looking around.

  Then he muttered, “Jeez, what is it with Abel? This place looks like a safe house for terrorists.”

  I couldn’t agree more.

  “And would it kill him to put a door on the toilet?” he carried on.

  “Chen, quiet,” the woman admonished.

  He shut his mouth, stopped staring at the toilet area with amused disgust, and turned his gaze to me. His eyes dropped to the knife I held out in front of me. He grinned, settled in, and crossed his arms on his chest.

  The woman took a step forward and I kept the knife where it was but moved it toward her an inch.

  She stopped.

  “I’m Jian-Li, niece, sister, mother to Abel,” she announced bizarrely, then motioned to the guy behind her. “And this is my son, Chen, nephew, then brother to Abel.”

  Well wasn’t that just brilliant? I had hoped with the Chinese guy’s opening remarks that these two were sane and might help me escape.

  But from her introductions, which made no sense, I was thinking not.

  “And you are…?” she prompted.

  “Wanting to leave,” I replied. “Like, right now.”

  She tipped her head to the side and her lips curved up in a soft smile. “Abel came to us and shared you were distressed about this evening’s events. He’s asked me to come down and explain a few things to you, thinking perhaps you might find me a little less…imposing.”

  She was right.

  But seeing as she was crazy, she was also wrong.

  “And since Ma can’t open the door, I’m here,” the son put in. I looked to him and he was still grinning. “Another thing I don’t get about our boy, why he has steel doors installed in every pit he occupies. It’s whacked.”

  I blinked.

  Every pit he occupies?

  “Chen, your opinions are not needed at this juncture,” the woman noted.

  “Ma, look at her.” He swung an arm out toward me. “She’s freaked.”

  “I can see that, and if you’ll be quiet, I’ll do something about it,” she shot back.

  He again settled in with his arms on his chest, mumbling, “This oughta be good.”

  “Chen!” she snapped.

  “Ma, no joke, what you’re about to say is gonna freak her more,” Chen retorted.

  Excellent.

  “Uh, if I could butt in here,” I butted in there, “your boy kidnapped me after committing five serious felonies, so I’m not sure I can get more freaked.”

  I didn’t know if it was a felony to kill a wolf with your bare hands, but if I were a lawmaker, it would be.

  After I said this, something changed in the woman’s face that made me brace, and considering I was already alert and ready for attack, this meant every muscle in my body strung tight.

  “Qīn ài de,” she said quietly. “Perhaps you should sit down.”

  “I don’t want to sit down,” I returned. “I want to leave.”

  “That cannot happen and I think you know why,” she replied gently.

  “All I know is,” I retorted, “I’m in a basement room that does look like a safe house for terrorists. I’m here not of my own accord. I’m covered in blood. And I watched one guy murder three men and two wolves not an hour ago. I should be at a police station. I shouldn’t be talking to two Chinese folks who seem nice, but who are somehow connected with that man, and that man scares the absolute pants off me.”

  “Abel would never hurt you,” the woman stated.

  “Maybe not,” I replied, “but he has no problem hurting other people…like a lot. Like until they’re dead.”

  “Those other people were vampires,” she announced and I stared, feeling my mouth drop open. “And, of course, werewolves.”

  Slowly I closed my mouth and whispered, still staring at her, “Brilliant. Awesome. Fucking fabulous. You’re crazier than he is.”

  “I know it’s hard to believe, but she’s telling the truth,” Chen put in.

  “Great, and you’re crazy too,” I muttered, turning my stare to him.

  He grinned again, shook his head, and declared, “Abel will just have to transform in front of you.”

  Transform?

  “What?” I asked.

  “He’s a werewolf too,” Chen told me.

  I blinked.

  “And a vampire,” Chen finished.

  I said nothing.

  They didn’t either, both watching me, assessing my reaction.

  Eventually, I gave it to them.

  “You’re both totally insane.�
��

  “We’re not, we’re—” the woman started but stopped when it happened to me.

  She didn’t miss it, but then again, it would’ve been impossible to miss. As the pain sliced through my innards, I sucked my cheeks in, lurched back, bent double, and dropped the knife so I could wrap my arms around my stomach in a futile effort to contain the pain.

  “What is it?” Jian-Li asked the same time Chen asked, “Hey, you okay?”

  My mouth filled with saliva and the pain twisted, taking me down to a knee.

  Chen was close in a flash, kneeling next to me, hand to my back. “Hey, hey, hey,” he crooned. “What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  My head jerked back. It did it; I didn’t make it.

  And then my mouth moved.

  “He’s in danger.”

  Chen swore under his breath.

  “Where?” Jian-Li demanded, also now close.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” I chanted, feeling the pain at the same time feeling a panic that was so extreme, it was nearly consuming. I reached out a hand and clasped it on Chen’s biceps, curling it tight and yanking him to me even as I leaned his way. “We have to get to him.”

  “You’ll guide me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Let’s go,” he said, straightening and pulling me with him. We were both racing to the door when he called back to his mother. “Call Xun and Wei.”

  “Of course,” she replied, her tone urgent, and we were out the door, up the stairs, and down the alley where he stopped me by a motorcycle.

  The man they called Abel had a Harley Sportster.

  Chen had crotch rocket.

  My father rode a Harley. My father had ridden a Harley since before I was born. My father got a job at thirteen and worked it, saving every penny to buy his first broken-down Harley at the age of fifteen. And my father would disown me if he knew I did what I did next, that being jumping right on behind Chen after he mounted it and turned the ignition.

  I wrapped my arms around his flat stomach and leaned deep, lips to his ear. “Left out of the alley, right at the next street. Hurry!”

  We shot out of the alley and Chen turned left, then right at the next street.

  The wind whipping my hair, Chen wasting no time, impossibly, since I didn’t know how I knew, I just knew that I knew, I said into his ear, “Right at the light.”

  We hit the light and slung low, our bodies straining to the heavens, our knees nearly grazing the blacktop as he took the turn at the light.

  “Alley, alley, alley!” I cried when he’d made the turn and righted us and the bike, then, “Left!”

  He took us left and I nearly flew off the back of the bike and over his head when he braked so fast, the rear wheel came off the tarmac.

  I looked around him and got what made him stop so fast.

  Abel was fighting three men. Three huge men.

  Three huge men with swords.

  “Okay, my night just officially went off the charts, batshit crazy,” I breathed.

  I nearly fell off the bike as Chen dismounted swiftly, a phone at his ear and him talking into it. “Alley behind Guzman’s. Hurry.”

  I heard the loud clang when one of the guy’s swords crashed against the long length of pipe Abel was using to defend himself. I looked that way as Chen dashed toward the fray.

  Unarmed.

  “Chen!” I shrieked.

  And I shrieked this just as a huge wolf came flying out of the shadows.

  It was heading toward Chen.

  It didn’t make it to him.

  This was because Chen leaped incredibly high at the last second and grabbed hold of a pipe sticking straight out of the brick of the building. He did a loop-di-loop like he was a male gymnast on the horizontal bar, flew off, then fell, aiming and connecting a vicious kick into the wolf’s jaw before he landed. The wolf let out a canine howl and scuttled back three feet.

  Chen didn’t waste even a second in recovery. Having landed in a deep squat with one leg out, both hands to the tarmac, he whirled in a flash to standing. Using his legs and clearly martial arts moves, he beat the wolf back with brutal kicks, even turning full around to get his momentum going, connecting, and the wolf flew to his side, cheek-first in the asphalt, and skidded away.

  “Holy shitoly,” I whispered.

  “Chen!” Abel bellowed, still defending himself and scarily retreating under the onslaught of three swords. “Get her to safety!”

  “Kinda busy here, brother,” Chen replied, still kicking at the wolf.

  “Get her…” Abel roared, rounding his pipe and connecting savagely up the side of one of his attacker’s heads, blood flowing out in a spray. The man fell down on a knee with one hand to the ground. “To safety!”

  It occurred to me I was standing there, staring at this lunacy, and not doing anything.

  So I did something.

  But that something was not running away.

  No.

  That something was looking around for a weapon so I could help.

  I hadn’t found anything when Abel thundered, “Move!”

  Instinctively, I sensed he was talking to me and leaped out of the way, toward the wall of a building.

  I did it in the nick of time. Two crotch rockets rounded into the alley and they did it fast.

  And they did not stop.

  One fell to its side, the rider rolling off, the motorcycle skidding uncontrollably, bowling over two of Abel’s attackers.

  The other one stopped on a rear-end-whipping-around brake. The guy on it pulled out one of the two swords crisscrossed in a scabbard at his back, whipped it around, and lopped off the third attacker’s head, the one who was still knee to the ground.

  I pressed into the wall.

  The guy who did the skid was running toward Chen. He leaped, going high, hitch-kicking in the air like a long jumper, landed on top of the wolf, and started raining what could only be described as karate chops all over the wolf’s head and neck as Chen kept kicking the beast.

  I heard a grunt of effort and looked back to Abel and the other guy. The other guy had unsheathed his second sword and was whipping them around his body so fast I could hear the blades slicing through the air. This was good, considering one of Abel’s attackers was flashing around him at inhuman speed, stopping, carving his sword toward his target only for it to glance off those whipping blades. Then he’d flash somewhere else and try again.

  Through this, I saw that Abel somehow had the dead guy’s sword, and when he got his opening, he drove it into the other guy’s stomach. While the guy was bending over his injury, Abel let the sword go, lifted his hands to the guy’s head, twisted, and tore it clean from his body.

  Oh my God.

  “This isn’t happening,” I whispered, pressing deeper into the wall.

  “Off!” I heard on a growled roar. My eyes darted back to Chen and his friend with the wolf only to see the wolf mid-transformation, turning into a dark-headed, seriously built, naked, humongous man.

  “No,” I breathed. “That didn’t happen.”

  Hand-to-hand combat commenced and I instantly saw how a martial arts champion could kick the ass of a heavyweight boxing champion because that shit was happening right before my eyes.

  Another almighty roar came and I looked back to Abel to see him appear, then disappear, appear, then disappear, again and again as he flashed around the alley in a swordfight to the death with his last armed attacker.

  I held my breath just as Abel disappeared and reappeared by his friend. The attacker appeared and started to aim his blow, but Abel’s friend stuck the guy in the back with both of his swords, whereupon Abel instantly swung high and took off his head.

  My ass dropped to my ankles.

  I caught a blaze out of the side of my eye. I looked back to Chen and his friend and saw the man was back to wolf and he was racing out of the alley.

  “We need him!” Abel bellowed.

  “
On it,” Chen shouted, running toward his bike.

  “Not you,” Abel stated, stalking toward Chen, still carrying his bloody sword. “Xun and Wei go.”

  “My bike may be outta commission, brother,” one of the other dudes stated.

  Abel turned his head to the man. “Take Chen’s.”

  “We’re wasting time,” the other, other dude pointed out on a rev of his crotch rocket.

  Then he decided not to waste one second more and tore out of the alley after the wolf.

  Xun, or Wei, ran to Chen’s bike, hopped on, started it up, and turned it around in the narrow alley at freakadelic speed, zipping by me and, not joking even a little bit, flashing me a grin as he went.

  I stared after him for a nanosecond before I was hauled up with a hand clamped on my upper arm.

  “You brought her to danger?” Abel bit out toward Chen, manhandling me until I was in position for him to let my arm go, but he then locked his arm around me so my front was plastered to his side.

  “She felt you were in danger and knew how to get to you,” Chen explained.

  I felt Abel’s eyes on me. Slowly and cautiously, I tipped my head back.

  Yep, he was looking at me.

  “You felt I was in danger?” he asked in a calmer voice, and if I was myself, which I was not, I would have noted the incredulous vein that threaded his tone intermingled with one that was undeniably tender.

  But I was not myself.

  I was a quivering mess.

  Therefore, as a response, I demanded, “Okay, priority one, find me a place where I can have a total mental collapse.”

  “We need—” he started.

  “Now!” I screeched, my body calcifying, cutting him off.

  He might be a murderous badass, but he was not a stupid one. I knew this to be true when he looked into the eyes of a hysterical woman and hesitated not a second longer before he let my shoulders go, grabbed my hand, and dragged me to his Sportster.