by Kim Fox
“He must be here,” Grant said, staring up in disbelief.
“Who?” Logan asked, looking confused.
Mack nodded, staring at his alpha. “Rakesville, Washington.”
Grant crushed the paper as he squeezed his hand into a fist. “Mount up!”
Chapter Two
Mack
“There it is,” Grant said when he spotted his truck parked on the seedy street. It was in front of a run-down liquor store that had a couple of drunks sleeping in front of it.
Mack followed him over with the crew following close behind. Ryder, Tempest, Amélie, and Logan were all there with them, looking for Grease.
Rakesville was a total dump of a town and Mack looked around at all of the garbage on the street in disgust. Washington was the only state named after a President, and if the state was a person, Rakesville would definitely be the armpit.
Grant circled the truck, peering inside the driver’s window looking for clues. “He could be anywhere,” he said as he looked around at the sketchy apartments that were covered in graffiti.
“Well, we’re not leaving here until we find him,” Mack said as he looked through the window into the back seat. A pink sweater was bunched up on the seat next to a dog-eared Baby Sitter’s Club book.
Out of nowhere, something whacked Mack’s leg, making it sting and burn. He grunted in anger as he jerked his head to the side, just in time to see a girl whizz by him with a bamboo stick in her hand. She ran up to Grant who was still looking in the window, raised the stick, and smacked him over the head with it.
“Ow!” Grant shouted as the girl darted out of reach. She held the stick up between them like a sword as her wide eyes darted from one shifter to the next.
“Get back!” she warned. “This is my Pop’s truck and unless you want a stick up your butt, I’d suggest that you keep moving!”
Mack chuckled as he watched her. This was his kind of kid. She was only eight years old but acted like she could take the entire world on by herself.
Something was in the air, tingling his nose. He inhaled deep and smelled what she was hiding inside: a polar bear just like her father’s.
Tempest stepped forward with an air of confidence. “I got this,” she whispered to them. “I’m great with kids.”
The girl watched with a wariness in her eyes as Tempest approached. She bent down in front of her with a big smile on her face.
“We’re friends with your dad.”
Whack. The girl moved fast and before Tempest could react she had smacked her over the head with the stick.
“Ow, you little fucker!” Tempest said as she held her head. “That hurt!”
“My Pop doesn’t have any friends,” the girl shouted back as she squeezed the stick.
Mack laughed. “Sounds like Grease all right.”
The pretty little blonde girl’s amber eyes darted toward him. “What do you know about Grease?” she asked as her eyes narrowed.
“I know that he throws one hell of a right hook,” Mack answered with a chuckle. He could still feel the thumping on his jaw of when Grease had nailed him with a punch. Mack had only been staggered by a punch a couple of times in his many, many fights over the years, but Grease hadn’t just staggered him, he had knocked him clear across the room. And that was when the enhanced polar bear shifter was only getting started.
The girl’s lips were pursed as she studied him, wondering if he was a friend or foe. Mack was neither. He just wanted to get the information and get the hell out of there.
The girl raised her little nose and sniffed the air. “You guys are shifters?”
None of them answered as she sniffed in each of their directions. “Lions,” she said, looking impressed as her eyes ran over Ryder and Logan. She turned to Amélie and sniffed again. “Panther?”
Amélie nodded.
She turned back to Tempest who was still kneeling in front of her and sniffed. “Not you. You’re just ordinary.”
Tempest looked insulted. “I’m not that ordinary.”
The girl stared back at her with a blank expression on her face.
“I can do lots of things,” Tempest said, sounding unsure of herself. “I can run fast and I’m also pretty strong.”
The girl didn’t look too convinced.
“I have a cool wand that can zap people,” Tempest said, sounding pretty desperate now. “I zapped your father!”
The girl’s eyebrow raised. “Let’s see it.”
“Oh…” Tempest said with a wince. “I don’t a… have it on me…”
Ryder chuckled and Tempest shot him a look, shutting him up immediately.
“Sounds awesome,” the girl said in a monotone voice. She didn’t look impressed at all.
“I have a throwing ax,” Tempest said, showing her the golden ax that hung from her belt.
“To chop wood with?”
“No! To hunt bad guys with. I’m a badass bounty hunter!”
“You throw axes?”
Tempest was nodding proudly.
“At people?” The girl looked horrified and Tempest’s head slowly stopped moving.
“Sometimes…” she mumbled.
The girl shot her a judgmental look. “Sounds like you’re the bad guys.”
“Sounds like you should go do your homework!”
“It’s already done!”
Tempest and the girl glared at each other as Grant walked over and put a hand on the frustrated bounty hunter’s shoulder.
“Thanks, Tempest,” he said in a low voice. “Why don’t you go take a walk?”
She shot the girl one more dirty look and then marched off with a huff.
“Looks like Tempest met her match,” Logan whispered to Ryder who was trying hard to keep a straight face.
Ryder chuckled. “You think?”
Grant walked up to the girl and stood in front of her. “Look, Lily. We need to find your dad.”
Her eyes widened as she took a step back. “You know my name?”
“Yeah,” Grant answered with a nod. “Like I said, we’re friends with your father. This used to be my truck. I gave it to him so that he could be with you.”
“He told me he won it in a poker game,” she said, eying him skeptically.
Grant laughed. “Well, he lied. I helped him before when he needed it, and now, I need his help.”
Mack could tell that the girl was protective of her father. She was probably worried that they would take him again.
“We’re friends,” Grant said, offering his hand.
Lily looked him up and down, studying him carefully as Grant waited patiently. She stared into his eyes for a long moment before finally sliding her hand into his and shaking it.
“Follow me.” She turned and ran down the sidewalk. Mack and the crew followed as she darted around the corner and disappeared into an alley.
They followed her through garbage-filled alleys and down dirty sidewalks until they arrived in the back of a grimy Vietnamese restaurant.
“Pops!” she shouted as she opened the broken-down screen door. Mack looked over her head and saw Grease washing the dishes inside. “You have visitors.”
He quickly popped his head outside and then looked relieved when he saw Grant and the rest of the crew. “I’m taking my break!” he shouted back inside.
The girl was all sparkling eyes and smiles as she watched her father take off his dirty apron and step outside. The first thing he did was give her a big hug and kiss on the cheek before turning back to Grant.
“You want your truck back?”
“No,” Grant said with a shake of his head. “That was a gift. You can keep it. Although, I would appreciate it if you stop getting parking tickets.”
Grease looked embarrassed. “Sorry about that.”
Grant waved a hand as if to say don’t worry about it. “How have you been?”
Grease turned to Lily and smiled. “Why don’t you go inside and get some of those fortune cookies you like?”
“I’ll stay here,” Lily said in a firm voice.
“Lily…” Grease warned in a firmer voice.
She exhaled in annoyance and rolled her eyes as she opened the door and went inside.
“Cute kid,” Grant said with a grin. “Has it been going well?”
Grease lowered his head and sighed. “It’s been hard. I’m not going to lie. My ex-wife, Lily’s mother, was a little too eager to pass her off when I showed up after our meeting. Her polar bear was acting up a lot and my ex didn’t know how to handle it. Humans…” He rolled his eyes. “So I took her and we ended up here. It’s a good place to hide out. They pay me under the table, and I can take home the leftover food.”
Grant rubbed his chin as he looked at the back of the dilapidated restaurant. A police siren was blaring in the background. “This is not a good place to raise a little shifter.”
They all knew it was true. There wasn’t any forest for miles.
Mack felt sorry for the girl. It wasn’t easy living with a cooped-up animal that needed plenty of forest and land to roam in. Especially, a young, energetic one like Lily surely had.
Grease just shrugged as his head hung low. “It’s not like I have a lot of options.”
“Come to Montana,” Grant said. “There are people who can help in Redemption Creek. Mountains and lands to roam on, farms to work. But most importantly, it’s shifter friendly. Lily will thrive there.”
Mack felt his chest tighten, but he kept his mouth shut. The dragons who ruled the town didn’t like it when outside shifters came in, especially shifters with a lot of baggage. And with all that Grease had been through with General Hunt and the military and the police, he didn’t just have baggage, he had a whole cargo ship full of issues. The dragons wouldn’t be waiting with open arms, and they might even look at Grant and his crew to blame if there were any problems.
“I’ll think about it,” Grease said with a nod. “So… I’m guessing this is not a social call?”
Grant shook his head, getting down to business. “No. That facility you escaped from… We need to know where it is.”
Grease’s wide eyes darted up to Grant’s. “Why?” he asked with a shiver. “You have a death wish or something?”
Mack stepped forward as a swell of emotions swirled through him. “One of our own might be in there.”
Grease quickly looked them over and nodded sadly. “The kid? The blonde one?”
“Yeah,” Mack said as his jaw clenched. “The kid.”
Grease sighed as his eyes dropped back to the ground. “Well, if he’s there, he won’t be a kid no more. He’ll be a monster.”
That wasn’t what Mack wanted to hear. He cursed under his breath as he turned away.
“That’s what they do up there,” Grease continued. “It’s a monster-making facility.”
Mack turned back to him, narrowing his eyes as his lion stirred. “Maybe we have a little monster in ourselves.”
Grease shook his head. “Not like that.”
Mack knew what he was talking about. The crew had fought Grease and his enhanced polar bear shifter and it had been a rough one. He trembled thinking about how powerful the polar bear had been. He had never felt anything close to that before. And that wasn’t even taking into account the six long retractable spikes that ran along Grease’s spine. Mack shivered when he remembered the feeling of those metal spikes sliding into his lion’s body. He was lucky his lion wasn’t killed.
“Sorry…” Grease said, looking embarrassed. “About the spikes…”
Mack shrugged as he looked up at the sky. “Oh, yeah. I forgot all about that.”
Grant turned to him with a knowing grin.
“You seem like nice guys,” Grease went on, “and I don’t want to see you get hurt, so I’m going to level with you. Your friend is gone. You don’t want to go anywhere near that place. Even with that red wand.”
He looked to Tempest and his eyes darted up to the bun in her hair that usually had the wand sticking out of it.
“You still have the wand, don’t you?”
Tempest slowly shook her head as her cheeks turned pink.
Grant cleared his throat. “General Hunt has the wand.”
“Then y’all are surely fucked,” Grease said, shaking his head. “If the Angel of Death has that thing, then there’s no stopping him. He probably has a thousand replicas by now. He’s probably improved it and harnessed the magic into something deadlier.”
Mack was losing patience with all of this fear-based chatter. “Just tell us where it is.” He was going no matter what awaited him. Bryce, if he was still alive, needed his help and Mack wasn’t about to back down from giving it.
Grease took a deep breath and told them. It was near a small town in Alaska.
“We were way off,” Grant said, shaking his head. “But the town where everyone was murdered was in Canada…”
“That’s where they caught up with me,” Grease explained. “My polar bear moves fast, especially up there in the snow.”
The screen door creaked open as Lily poked her head back out. “Mr. Huynh wants you to get back to work.”
She stepped out with a bunch of fortune cookies cradled in her arms as Grease stood up.
“Can I have one of those?” Tempest asked. “I’m starving.”
Lily’s face twisted into a mischievous grin as she cracked open the cookie and pulled out the fortune before tossing the broken cookie to her.
“Your fortune reads… Silly woman who pretends to be badass is nothing more than an ass.”
“It doesn’t say that!” Tempest snapped, her mouth full of cookie. “Show me!”
Lily quickly stuffed the fortune into her pocket and gave an innocent shrug. “You can’t argue with Mr. Huynh’s cookies. They’re fate.”
Tempest just glared at her as she chewed.
“I gotta go,” Grease said, shaking Grant’s hand. “Redemption Creek, huh? Maybe I’ll see you guys around.”
Grant smiled. “I hope you do.”
Chapter Three
Kara
Kara stared at the dark lifeless fireplace as her whole body trembled. It was cold.
No. This wasn’t cold. Cold would be a luxury right now.
Cold was reserved for cool drinks on a hot day. It was the feeling you got when you stood in front of the refrigerator for too long when you couldn’t pick a snack. The invigorating chill between stepping out of a hot shower and wrapping yourself in a warm towel.
This wasn’t cold.
This was pain. This was horror. This was grim. Harsh. Hopeless. This was hell.
In the past, whenever Kara thought of hell, she pictured wild flames and intense heat. That sounded like a paradise right now.
Now, for the rest of her life—no matter how long that would be—when she thought of hell, she would be picturing this bitter place. This frozen, stinging, frigid place.
She pulled the stiff rug around her shoulders as she stared at the empty fireplace. It was taunting her. Teasing her. It was plastic food to a starving man. A cinderblock to a drowning woman.
Her body shivered uncontrollably as she stared at one lone cigarette butt in the fireplace and fantasized about a roaring fire. A fire so big and so hot that it would warm up this dark abandoned gas station. It would fog the windows and make her sweat. It would light up the creepy room and replace it with a warm comforting glow that only a fireplace could.
Her eyelids crunched as she closed her eyes. She could imagine the sight of the fire, but she couldn’t feel any heat. Not even in her mind. That sensation was gone. Deleted from her memory.
She looked out the window and saw a sliver of light. Another few hours and it would be morning. The sun would be up and she could keep moving. She would be a little farther from this place. A little farther from the wolves who kept howling all night from every direction, a little farther from this horrible fireplace that had been mocking and laughing at her all night, and a little farther from the facility.
>
But a little farther from her family as well. Her parents and her two sisters were still there. Still locked inside. She pictured them together, all warm and snuggled up together in the pushed together twin beds. Her heart ached as she heard the heavy soothing breaths of her father, felt the annoyance of Henley moving her legs a million times throughout the night, and it ached as she imagined the comfort of other warm bodies around her.
When Kara had first escaped two days ago, she had felt guilty. She had made it out of the facility that had been holding them captive, and they didn’t. She felt survivor’s guilt. She felt shame and regret. Why should I be free and they’re still stuck there?
Now, she was realizing how stupid she’d been. They were the lucky ones.
They were warm and surrounded by loved ones, and she was alone, cold, afraid, and about to die in an abandoned gas station in… wherever the hell she was.
Kara pulled the frigid rug around her, trying to suck any shred of warmth from it, but it was like trying to get water from a rock.
She thought back to the events that led her to this moment as she stared at the frozen cigarette butt with cold dead eyes.
Life was good once. She was from a nice family in a nice town in Maine where the major concerns were the raccoons getting into your garbage and the time when Mr. Thompson painted his fence a bright blue.
She was third in a line of four kids. Two sisters and an older brother.
Her parents were still married and seemed like soulmates—well if soulmates consisted of flirty comments, sly grins, and the occasional ass slap while doing the dishes after twenty-five years of marriage. To Kara watching it always did.
She went to a nice safe school and had nice safe friends. In a house of six, they had the usual fights, but they were always over things like remote controls, the phone, chores, and bathroom time. It was never serious. Never anything to shake the strong foundations of their familial love.
Then Kara went away to Boston University to get a business degree. It was a fun and exciting time full of new friends, bad dates, and classes that opened her mind and her worldview. She missed home and partied with her siblings when they came to visit.