The Judah Black Novels Box Set

by E. A. Copen

  “Wait!” I screamed after them and strained against my restraints, drawing more blood. “Espinoza. Ed! Tell me if they’re still alive!” They started to shut the door, and I pounded against the wall with my foot. “Hey, I’m talking to you, bitch! Where are my friends? Tell me. Tell me!”

  I screamed at her long after they shut the door and left me in darkness, until my throat was dry and painful.

  I didn’t bother with whatever gruel they were feeding their prisoners. It had to be low in calories and nutrients. They meant to wear me down, keep me weak so I’d be easier to manipulate. I had no idea what they wanted from me, but I also had no intention of waiting around to find out. I still had some strength left, and over time, that was going to wear down. If I was going to make an escape, it would have to be sooner rather than later. I didn’t have the luxury of being able to wait for an opportune moment.

  Without access to my magick, though, that was going to be a difficult task to accomplish on my own. I still had no idea how they were keeping me from accessing it. There had to be wards in every stone of the place or some kind of anti-magick circle around the whole building for it to work. Just leaving the room wouldn’t be enough to get me my power back. And I had to save Espinoza, Mara, and Ed. I couldn’t leave without them. That wasn’t even an option, not after everything.

  If they were bringing food, that would have to be my chance. I had to convince them to free my arms or legs. Maybe if I hurt myself bad enough that I was in danger of bleeding to death, they’d pull me down. It was dangerous. I’d have to take myself to the brink and do it at exactly the right time. That meant right before I expected them to show up and open the door. Without a clock or any sense of time, I didn’t know how I would do that other than to hope my ears worked well in the dark. So, with no other plan, I curled up as tight as I could to keep warm and waited, listening.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ed

  The air was alive with smells. It was always that way after a rain in the desert. Rain pulled down the cold scent from the upper atmosphere and churned it with the dry dust. Back in Colorado, I could always smell snow on the rain. Texas rain smelled different than Colorado rain. It smelled of electric ozone, like the scent of exposed wiring. I’d never gotten used to it.

  That’s why I doubted it at first, that weird, cold but spicy scent of magick Judah always leaves behind. The blood on the ground had to be hers.

  I circled the spot where it had fallen, wolf nose to the ground, deciding what I should do. I could shift back and drive the car away in search of help, but shifting would leave me weak and vulnerable inside enemy territory. The wolf in me didn’t like that idea.

  A flash of light from one of the second-story windows made me perk my head and ears up. Muffled voices on the wind, male, and something that made my nose itch. I sneezed. Someone was in trouble, someone who wasn’t quite pack. If it was one of the pack, I would have felt the gentle tug of them in my head. This was different, too distant to be one of them. Judah.

  I lifted one paw, intent on throwing myself at the front door. Maybe I could knock it down? On second thought, who was I kidding? Even as a werewolf, I only weigh in at a hundred and thirty pounds or so. I’d break my shoulder trying that stunt. I lowered my paw into the squishy mud and panted, deciding. Judah might not be pack in the strictest sense, but Alpha loved her. I couldn’t let anything happen to her, not on my watch.

  So, I did the only thing I thought might help. I threw my head back and let out a loud howl with a small yip at the end. “I am here!” I shouted from the back of my wolfy throat, hoping Judah and Espinoza would hear me and know I hadn’t left them.

  I trotted forward to a patch of grass that smelled faintly of car exhaust and motor oil. Someone had parked there recently, close to the door. “I’m still here!” I tried to howl, but it came out as a sort of whining howl.

  A shuffling sound filtered through the door and out into the night. I moved directly in front of the door and crouched a little, pulling my ears back and making my teeth visible. When the door opened, it was a man in dark jeans and a white t-shirt. He walked out on the porch and down the steps before he stopped. The man didn’t have a gun, but I could smell the silver on him from where I stood. I recoiled when the scent of it stung my nose and snarled at him.

  Adrenaline bled out over the wet Earth and ozone smell of Texas rain, carrying with it undertones of fear. Prey scent.

  I crouched low, ready to spring at him when he attacked. Instead, he did the absolute worst thing prey can do in the presence of a predator. He let out a frightened whimper, turned, and ran.

  I don’t like to chase and kill things, but I can do it. Valentino made sure of that. Where most werewolves see fleeing prey and charge to take it down with the intense urge to kill and devour, the only thought that I usually entertain is “chase.” But when this man turned, I caught a whiff of something else, something that crowded out the instinct to chase and catch, replacing it with pain.

  Judah’s pain.

  I felt it for an instant, the fluttering of fear in her chest, strange hands on her wrists. She fought, was fighting, cursing, hurting. It was a flash and then it was gone, replaced with something new that made me pull back and cower. Alpha’s rage. He must have felt it, too.

  The shock of it stayed with me. What did that mean? Judah and Sal weren’t bonded, not the way pack is, so that should have been impossible. Chanter had always said werewolves and humans cannot bond. Was Chanter wrong?

  I shook the thought from my head. Something else was coming through the pack bonds now, a call down through the ranks, one I had to answer.

  A low, feral growl echoed through the night, shaking my bones. I was charging across the yard and up the stairs after the man before I even realized that it was me who’d made that sound. The terrified man scrambled behind the safety of his threshold and into his den, swinging the door closed behind him. I reached the door just before it caught and wedged a foot into the narrow space. I snapped at him through the gap, saliva dripping, my heart pounding. The thoughts in my head weren’t my own. They were the alpha’s, and I was little more than an instrument of his will.

  Behind the door, the man screamed and kicked at my paw with his steel-toed boots. He slammed the door harder and put all his weight against it, crushing my paw. It was too much. I had to pull my paw back or risk them cutting it off. I pulled it free. The door closed. I stepped backward and charged into it first, and then tried the window beside it.

  That was when I saw the guns.

  There were two men at the bottom of a set of stairs, each one with an assault rifle pressed to their shoulders and aimed at me. Something about staring down the barrel of a gun snapped me out of my mindless rage and I put my paws down halfway through my run at the window, causing me to slide across the porch. Lightning flashed, and gunfire popped. Glass shattered and I slammed into the side of the house between the window and the door. I let out a loud yelp when a sharp pain hit my hindquarters and scampered to move away and crawl down the stairs.

  The gunfire let up, and I knew they were about to come out and get me. I couldn’t run, not at full speed, but I could still outrun a human. I booked it the hell away from that house as fast as I could, trying not to put much pressure on my back leg. I ran through the field, across the road, until I was so far away, there was no way they could catch me. Then I kept on running.

  When I finally stopped, it was because the adrenaline had finally worn off and my back leg hurt even worse. The burning pain spread up the leg, into my butt and tail, making it all but impossible to move once I went down. Eden was still a good ten miles away, and Paint Rock closer to twenty. I wasn’t going to make it if I shifted. Only my wolf could cross that distance, and the bullet in my hindquarters meant I couldn’t even do that.

  I lay on my side in tall grass for a minute, panting and whining, cursing. Now what? Judah could be dead, Espinoza too, and it was all my fault. Judah and Espinoza had trusted me, and
I let them down. I had to get them back, but I couldn’t do it alone, and I couldn’t do it lying in an open field in the desert.

  I tried to get up and fell back down. Nope, not going anywhere. At least, not like that.

  The sound of tires crunching over rocks vibrated through the ground. I lifted my head and let my tongue fall over the side of my mouth, breathing fast to cool myself. Headlights danced through the tall, dry grass. A car rolled by and shook the pebbles near my snout. Another drove by after I waited a few minutes. The road, whichever it was, seemed to be well-traveled. I could shift back and maybe catch a ride, but I didn’t think anyone would stop for a naked man standing in the middle of the highway. They would stop for a dog. At least, I hoped they would.

  With a mighty huff, I forced myself back on shaky legs. It was a risk, pulling the old injured dog maneuver. I was as likely to get hit as I was to actually get a ride, and I had to bank on not being driven pronto to the nearest emergency vet clinic in San Angelo. I needed to go the other way.

  I limped up to the last bit of grass near the highway and crouched down, waiting. The trick was in the timing…and hoping the guy at the wheel wasn’t drunk or asleep. Oh, and avoiding trucks. I might survive being hit by a car, but a truck not so much.

  A car appeared in the distance on my side of the road. I hunched down and waited, counting and holding my breath. When it was close enough that I could read the license plate, I leapt out and stopped, turning my head to face the car. The hood dipped as the driver applied the brakes. Tires squealed. I braced for an impact that didn’t come. When I was sure it wasn’t going to hit, I cracked open one eye. The grill was right in front of my face.

  The car door opened and I hurried into position, lying splayed across the road with my injured rear leg displayed. I whined when the figure leaned over the hood to get a better look. “Ed?”

  I cracked open an eye, cut off my whine halfway through, and looked up into Bran’s face.

  The passenger side door opened and Angel got out. “What is it, babe? Is it dead?”

  Now, it was one thing for Bran to see me lying there, playing the injured dog card to try to snag a ride. He wasn’t a werewolf, so I didn’t have to worry about maintaining an appearance. However, it was another for Angel, his wife and a wolf outside my pack, to see me like that. I rolled as soon as I heard her coming but paused when I had to move my injured leg. I turned for a better look and saw my whole leg was red and sticky with blood. As soon as I saw it, the fur started to itch so I leaned over to give it a good cleaning with my tongue. Maybe that’d ease the pain.

  “Edward Petersen. One of Sal’s wolves,” Bran said.

  Angel squatted down next to me and tilted her head to the side. “Is that a bullet wound?”

  I tried to scoot away from her, to hide the wound in some way. Angel may have been a werewolf, but she wasn’t in my pack, and that meant she was potentially dangerous. Being injured in front of an outsider made me prey, something I didn’t want to be.

  “Looks like,” Bran said and slid one arm under me.

  The last thing I wanted was for Bran to pick me up. I squirmed, but that just wound up making things awkward. And it hurt a lot, too.

  “Calm down,” he said and hauled me up as if I weighed nothing. “We’ll take you back to the pack. You can shift in the back seat. Angel can help.”

  If it’d been anyone other than Bran, I might have bitten him for how he manhandled me, especially in front of a werewolf who wasn’t pack. But Bran and Sal were practically brothers. The only reason Angel wasn’t pack was because she had a record. Chanter didn’t let anyone who had done time into the pack. Arrested was one thing, time inside was another.

  Angel climbed into the back of the car on one side while Bran opened the door on the other. He deposited me on the seat so that my head had to lay on her lap if I wanted to keep my legs up on the seat. Then, Bran got back in front, made a U-turn, and headed back toward Eden.

  I didn’t get much time to think about where we were going or how I was getting there. Angel placed her hand firmly under my chin and made me raise my head to look her in the eyes. I jerked away, trying to avoid it, but she held me, so I just growled.

  “Don’t give me that macho bullshit,” she snapped at me. “I know you’re about as likely to bite me as you are to fuck me, so don’t even try. I’m not going to hurt you. Well, not much, anyway.” Her dark lips turned up in a smile and her grip on my jaw tightened. “Now, that bullet’s probably silver. Shifting’s going to be a bitch, but you’ve got to do it unless you want to get stuck like that, you hear? I’m going to help you, like it or not. Now, look me in the eyes, dammit.”

  I kept my gaze averted. A lot of humans think werewolves don’t look each other in the eye because it’s a dominance thing. It’s way more complicated than that, especially for someone at the bottom of a pack like me. Locking gazes like that is overwhelming, especially if the other party is stronger than me or has more status. It’s like being hypnotized but by something ugly and horrible. I can see the monster inside, the ugliest, darkest side of their wolf, and it scares the piss out of me, sometimes literally. Seeing that activates the fight or flight parts of the brain and can have other effects other than feeling queasy. Someone at the top like Sal or Valentino could force me to shift or keep me from shifting with nothing more than an intense glare.

  That was what Angel was going to do. She wanted to force me to change, and I didn’t want to. With the bullet inside, it could tear more, bury it deeper. There could be more serious damage, especially considering all the other injuries to my legs when they were broken before. What if it hit an artery during the shift? Sal had always said—

  Angel dipped her head into my vision and caught my eye. She had beautiful eyes, the kind that were hard to look away from. They were blue with lines of green and a ring of brown that danced around the center. The pattern in the colors made it look like someone had cracked a precious gem and let another one grow inside. But they were also sad eyes. Painful eyes.

  Then I saw the beast. She was small and black with wild eyes. Blood and saliva coated her teeth and lips as she snarled. The fury that burned in those eyes was raw and pure, threatening to boil at any minute. Just one wrong move, and that beast would rip someone’s throat out.

  The image of the beast faded, replaced by a curious reflection of a face I knew all too well. Dark, curly hair sat in a mess, eyes bruised and saggy from lack of sleep, a head too big for that scrawny neck. My own reflection stared back at me.

  That was when I knew the beast I had seen wasn’t Angel, but me.

  I drew in a deep breath and felt a sharp, stabbing pain in my left ass cheek. At the same time, I was suddenly aware of how cold I was. I looked down and saw that, without realizing it, I’d shifted back into my human self. Five fingers on each hand, every mole in its place. “What was that?” I asked Angel, my voice strained from the sudden change. “I’ve never…”

  Again, I heard the wolf inside demand. Look at her again.

  I wanted to. I wanted to see myself in Angel’s eyes all over again. I needed to so I could understand what she’d done. No, that wasn’t quite right. I just needed to. There was no good explanation for why.

  She pulled a wool blanket up from the floorboards of the car and wrapped it around me without meeting my eyes again. “Quiet, now,” she said. “And try not to bleed on the upholstery too bad.” She sat down, crossed her arms and legs, and fixed her gaze forward.

  Between wherever we were and Paint Rock, I tried to strike up a conversation twice. Angel made it clear she didn’t want to talk, and Bran reiterated that by telling me to shut my damn mouth.

  “Don’t you want to know what happened or how I got shot?” I gestured to the window. “Look, Judah and that cop need help. I can take you to them. I know where they are.”

  “Sal would be very angry if we went with you without speaking to him first.” Bran shot me an angry look in the rearview mirror and then adjusted it
so he didn’t have to look at me. “Rushing in without a plan is not a good idea, Ed. We must speak to the pack.”

  “You’re not listening to me!” I shouted. “They could be hurt or dead. We have to go back!”

  “We will speak with your alpha,” Bran said, calm and firm as always.

  No matter what I said, he wasn’t going to budge. The guy did what he always did and treated me like I was still a kid. I was almost twenty-two, hardly a kid by anybody’s standards. Bran wasn’t the boss of me.

  But Sal was, and when he found out I’d let Judah be taken, he was going to lose his shit on me. I’d be one werewolf sans a head. “He’s going to kill me,” I muttered and sank further into the blanket.

  “No one on our side dies tonight.” Angel sounded sleepy. Her eyes were closed, too.

  “We have to go back and get them,” I said, leaning toward her.

  “The pack has no responsibility to retrieve those humans,” Angel said, turning her gaze out the window. “And if they were any other humans, they probably wouldn’t.”

  I worked my fingers into fists. “What do you know about pack life, huh? Outsider.”

  I meant it as an insult, but Angel took it in stride. She turned back to me, a bored expression playing on her face. “One day, pup, but not today.”

  We didn’t say much else to each other until we pulled into Chanter’s driveway. All the lights were still on. The door opened when we pulled up, and Sal stepped outside.

  When he saw it was me and not Judah, the pain was evident on his face. Sal tore down the stairs to meet me, turned me around and sniffed the air before pushing me back to stand at arm’s length. “Where is she?” he demanded, his temper waking the wolf inside to peer through his eyes.

  I shrank away. “I’m sorry,” I managed before I stepped wrong. Pain shot up into my lower back. All the blood rushed to my head along with memories of being trapped in the cave pit with Judah two years ago when my legs were broken. The next and last thing I remember thinking was, Wow, the ground is really close.