by M F Adele
I lifted his paw, sliding from underneath him before he tumbled to the ground. And then I pouted. I tried not to, but I knew I was failing when my fae held his hand out for me with a barely concealed smirk.
“Did I steal your kill?”
“Yes.”
“On a scale of cut off to group sex, how mad are you?” Vaughn inquired.
His icy eyes danced with amusement, just like they had when he’d stopped me at the club so long ago. Well, a few weeks ago, but it felt like months had passed us by.
I pursed my lips. “Missionary. But after some tequila, I’m sure you could talk me into just about anything.”
“Noted,” he drawled, biting his lip as he grinned at me. “I’ll tell them to postpone our plans then.”
“What plans?”
“Nothing.” He landed a chaste peck on my cheek and spun me around, murmuring in my ear, “Don’t worry about it right now, Princess. We’ll sort it out later. We have things to take care of here.”
I groaned, throwing my head back to hit his chest. “Could you pour a bigger bucket of ice water on my libido? First, the dark prince rescues his princess, whispering sweet nothings in her ear. And then he says ‘nah, maybe later.’”
He shook his head, chuckling as we made our way to Briggs and Cooper.
“Listen. I understand that you’re scared. We took your mate and cubs to the Supreme Alpha. They’re safe,” my wolf was explaining.
“Who are you people?” Cooper snarled, rolling his head as he fought to calm his bear.
“They’re my mates, Cooper,” I quietly replied, laying my hand on his arm. “Please try to settle down. Darcy called Dad, and we came over right away.”
His eyes bounced from the minimal contact to my face before he really focused on me. “Sloane? Where are my mate and my cubs?”
“Yes, sir. All grown up and in the flesh.” I smiled reassuringly. “They’re safe. That’s what Briggs was trying to tell you. We’re going to stop all the abductions, but I need something from you first.”
He took a deep breath, nodding at me. “If Darcy and the boys are safe, then I’ll help you any way I can. What do you need?”
“It’s very simple, and then we’ll take you to Dad. I just need you to show me where they were trying to take you, Cooper.”
“It’s in the industrial park. I can take you there.”
“No. You’re going to stay with your family. They’re scared; they need you. I promise you, we can handle whatever we find.”
His brow furrowed as he studied me. “Then how do you want me to show you?”
I’d never disclosed any information to the pack members about the powers that I’d grown into. I couldn’t even recall if I’d ever shifted in front of them either. The tug of the full moon hadn’t pulled at me like it did them, so I’d taken to staying to myself.
“Just think about it; that’s all you have to do. Remember all the things about it that you can; smells, sights, noises. And then open your mind to me.”
I eased myself gently into his consciousness, bumping my presence against his. He sucked in a sharp breath, his eyes widening as they searched my face.
“That’s me. You have nothing to worry about. I’m only looking at what you’re showing me, so focus on the captures and the things that you noticed.”
He gave me a quick nod, closing his eyes as he pulled up all his memories.
As I rifled around in Cooper’s mind, I kept listening for the static, but it wasn’t there. From what I could glimpse, they’d sedated him somehow, and he’d been groggy as he fought them. They hadn’t had the opportunity to inject him with SEF47.
His behavior was coming from a place of well-earned paranoia.
“Take him to Dad, please,” I requested, sending the images to my mates. “Meet us there. We’ll wait.”
The warehouse was close to where Briggs and I had heard Katie talking. Not that it was surprising, but I didn’t think it was smart to be loitering outside of the place where you were conducting illegal activities.
But what the fuck would I know about that…
The guys and I patiently waited for Palmer and Briggs to arrive. None of us spoke aloud, not wanting to alert anyone who could be outside. We couldn’t see anyone patrolling, though.
Novak was filtering through thoughts from inside the building. He frowned before I heard his concerned voice in my mind. “I think we should reach out to Jack and Blaire. This sounds a lot worse than we thought it was.”
Briggs and Palmer stepped out of the Void behind us as I stretched the mental tethers between Jack and me. I summoned him and Grim, urging them to track me down.
I’d have to remember to give Blaire and Baylor tracking marks later. I had a feeling that they might need them at some point.
Another two minutes went by before Jack and Blaire popped out of the Void, followed closely behind by Grim and Baylor.
I tilted my head toward the building, flashing them the images I’d gotten from Cooper. Jack nodded in understanding, and Blaire pushed her thoughts to me.
“We’ll find the back door; there’s got to be one. We should move through the Void to get there. Check for cameras and alarms before any of us go in.”
“Agreed. We’ll head to the front, and we can go in at the same time.
We pushed into the Void as a unit. Once we were in position at the front entrance, I waited for Jack to show me what he was seeing.
The warehouse was pristine on the outside, though something was off about the area in general. It had a haunted vibe to it that I couldn’t really explain.
The oversized metal door boasted a sign saying that it was a chemical company, but I didn’t smell any chemicals. I did hear the sound of low moaning coming from inside when I strained my ears.
Jack opened his eyes to me, letting me see that he was getting ready to snatch a security camera off the wall outside the door. So I mimicked him, stepping out of the Void as nothing but thick, black smoke.
I wrapped my hand around the camera at the front door and jerked. The plastic fixture that it was screwed into came with it, leaving the wires exposed.
We went in the front door as the others went in the back, and Jack reached out to me.
“Quick, Lo. Don’t lose your cool. Grim is already struggling with the number of trapped souls in this room.”
I took a deep breath as Vaughn kicked the door in. Inside, the front of the warehouse was oddly ordinary. There was nothing special about the small reception area. I doubted it had been changed since the previous company that had been in the building.
The smell was what caught my attention.
Behind the desk was another metal door, and when we opened it, the stench of a rotting body hit us.
Worse.
More than one.
Behind that door was a heinous sight.
As the hinges creaked, the moaning I’d heard was replaced with snarling and growling.
Rows and rows of chain-link cages lined the interior walls of what used to be a distribution room, floor to ceiling. There had to be twelve or so, all of them filled with shifters.
I rushed in, calling over my shoulder for Palmer to put some kind of wards on the doorways.
A few were dead, several more looked close to death, but most were alive, terrified, and starving.
“York? Can you and Grim start going through the rooms? Maybe find an office or something?”
I needed both of them busy and not focusing on the devastation that was around us. Death permeated the air, and I knew the reaper was sensitive to the suffering souls. He needed a clear mind to ease their transition.
And York… He’d been in their situation not long ago. I knew this would trigger some sort of trauma, but I was hoping that we could lessen whatever memories he was going to relive.
He hadn’t talked about any of it yet, and that worried me.
The last thing I wanted for him was to have flashbacks from his time at the camp. That wouldn’t do eith
er of us any good, seeing as how I couldn’t bring Kelvin back to life to kill him again. His second death would have been miserably slow.
“Yeah,” Grim answered, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. “We’ll search around for any kind of paper or technology that would leave a trail, check the cabinets and things. Yeah. Come on, York.”
My druid’s eyes had dulled; all the sparkle and light had vanished instantly.
As soon as they cleared the room, the rest of us began trying to rip the cage doors open. They were fucking spelled. The moment my hands touched the metal, a jolt of electricity sent me flying backward.
I collided with Blaire, coming to a complete stop at her feet.
“You good?”
“Fucking peachy,” I quipped, rolling my shoulders back as I moved for the cage door once more.
A young, blonde woman crawled to her knees, pushed herself up to her feet, and brushed herself off. She straightened the tattered shirt she was wearing as she eyed me with suspicion.
“You can’t open them without the magic words,” she remarked. “Are you here to move us again or rescue us?”
Her pupils dilated, turning into slits like that of a feline shifter. She wasn’t scared; she was angry. She was on the edge and wanted to know if she needed to fight or not.
I held up my hands, backing away from the cage door to give her some space.
“I’m Sloane King, the Supreme Alpha’s daughter, and these are my mates and friends. We’re here to rescue you guys. Do you know who’s in charge here or who put the spells on these doors?”
“I do, and as soon as I see those cunts and their mage, they’re fucking dead.”
I raised a brow at her. “Who?”
Novak sighed, his voice sounding from behind me. “Anna and Katie.”
“Who the fuck are Anna and Katie?” Jack asked from the center of the room.
“Two fake, bubbly blondes?” the young woman asked.
“Yep,” Novak agreed as Vaughn said, “That's them.”
“I should have fucking known,” Briggs grumbled. “We’d speculated, but—”
Baylor grunted. “Don’t beat yourself up, Big. Leave that for the rest of us.”
The young woman’s eyebrows shot up, and she rushed to the outer wall of the cage she was in. She hissed when she touched it, but she didn't let it stop her.
Tentatively, she called out, “Bay? Briggs?”
Briggs’ back went ramrod straight, and all the color faded from Baylor’s face as they stared at her.
“Ripley?” Briggs questioned quietly before turning to me. “Can you get her out?”
“Give me a second.”
I closed my eyes, focusing on the feel of the magic around me. And try as I might, I couldn’t break it. I struggled to grasp the magic; it burned me, physically and mentally, every time I touched it.
“I… It’s not working.” I grimaced as I opened my eyes.
“It’s light magic, Love. Ye can’t use dark magic to reverse it,” Palmer explained from the doorway. “Ye can use my magic; not yers. Amelia King is a nightwitch, and that’s a type of dark mage. Ya have some light in ya, but it’s not much.”
“Can you break the spell then? We need to get everyone out.”
My mage placed his hand on the door of the closest cage, closing his eyes as he focused on the magic. Words and runes filtered through his mind for a moment, swirling together before they stopped.
Stormy gray eyes met mine as he nodded his head at the cage. “Try it. That should’ve reversed the spell for all of them.”
“Should have,” I muttered to myself, cautiously wrapping my hands around the metal poles. “That godsdamn spell just blew me across the fucking room.”
But there was no shock.
My mage winked at me, and I squeezed my eyes shut as I reprimanded myself.
This was not an appropriate moment for half a fucking blink to turn me on.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I snatched the chain-link door away from the rest of the cage and tossed it to the ground. The guys started opening the others, and Blaire spoke mentally to me, calling out numbers as they checked on everyone.
Jack sidled up to me, handing me his cell phone before I realized that I didn’t have mine.
“We need to call Dad.”
“Do we have a total count?”
“Forty-three that are alive, three dead, and one body that’s been... chewed on,” Jack responded, wrinkling his nose. “Rotting flesh is disgusting.”
I took the phone from his outstretched hand, scrolling through a ridiculous amount of contacts until I found Bad Wolf and hit call. I didn’t wait for a greeting. As soon as he answered, I started talking.
“Dad, there are forty-three captive shifters in this building. We can’t verify which ones have been infected or not right now, but we don’t hear any static from them. They need to be seen by a doctor; most of them are severely malnourished and emaciated. Some have breaks that didn’t heal right.”
“I’ll call him in.”
“We’ll bring them through the Void. There’s no other way to get this many people to you, and no one will see us taking them outside, so there’s that. We don't know if this place is being watched or not, but there aren’t—”
I stopped abruptly, surveying the upper walls and corners of the building for cameras.
“There was only one,” Jack whispered. “I ripped it out of the wall before you made it in here.”
I sighed deeply, continuing my thought to Dad. “But there aren’t any cameras inside, and Palmer has put a ward up around the building. I'd rather not risk exposing them by moving them to you any other way.”
“That’ll be the best way, and we both know it. I need you or one of the vampires to look through the minds of the doctor and the faction alphas for that static or whatever it is that you keep talking about.”
“Call them in. I’ll ask Novak and Blaire to look into it.”
“I’ll go,” Blaire commented. “You don’t have to ask. Novak went with Palmer to put wards on the outside of the building, and the Elliott brothers are catching up with a childhood friend. I’d like to be there to get another read on the shifters after they’ve relaxed, anyway.”
I nodded as I surveyed the faces in the crowd. I recognized a few of them from reports.
Grim and Vaughn went around checking the captives out and healing what they could; which wasn’t much. Some of them were timid and jumpy, but most of them were hostile and unwelcoming of the extra assistance.
I couldn’t blame them, I would’ve been like that too in their situation.
The whole place was a mess. I couldn't understand how this had gone so far, but I also knew we might not have found this place if it hadn't been for Cooper coming forward. It could have been so much worse than it was.
Now it wasn't difficult to understand why he had been so freaked out.
The pack itself was in a bit of a predicament as a result. All the bullshit surrounding the rogues, the abductions, and the drug usage had put a kink in the pack’s trust of their Alpha.
I hoped this would rekindle that relationship.
Because I wasn’t staying here full-time. Charlie King would still be running the pack, but their wellbeing and any major decisions would be placed on Briggs and me.
Jack took Blaire to Dad as some of the guys worked to calm the shifters down. When he returned, he and Stone began taking them, two at a time, through the Void to the pack lodge.
I knew they would settle down once they were in the presence of the Alpha, but getting them to trust the demons wasn’t an easy task.
I had no way of knowing just yet, but I suspected these shifters were the next round of rogues. I didn’t think they had been injected with the SEF47 yet, though I wasn’t completely positive either.
We had no knowledge of how long it took to make their minds fuzzy, so we would have to check on them if Dad said they were acting strange.
Honestly, right now I was more interested in the feline shifter who had spoken to me.
Ripley?
She knew Briggs and Baylor, and they seemed to be close. She wasn't fearful like the other captives. Even though I had not met her before today, she felt familiar, and I couldn’t figure out why.
Something about her called to me.
Maybe it was her anger.
Maybe it was her fight.
Whatever it was, I had an irrational urge to protect her.
We wouldn't be able to keep her safe. Not until we were done with all of the risky shit we were doing. But there had to be someone who I trusted who could protect her—someone she would trust enough to let them protect her.
I was getting ahead of myself. I knew it, but I couldn’t help it.
Stone walked by, his hand gently squeezing my arm to get my attention. "You could call Dolyn. I don't see much getting through him. Stars would be safe for her. His house is basically a fortress, anyway."
"That's... Not a bad idea, actually. I'll talk to her first. I don't think Dolyn will mind, but I'll call him to double-check too."
“Vaughn added some fae magic to Palmer’s wards. I added a little into the mix as well,” my demon mentioned, wiping his palm off on his shirt.
“We don’t know what’s in here, and we don’t know what they’d take if they come back. I think it would be best to—”
I smiled, nodding in agreement. “Cover our tracks? Make sure there are no gaps in the protections? You’re right. I don’t want them coming back into this building.”
I glanced around as Grim swept up the last of the lingering souls. The room was clear, but there were quite a few places that we needed to check. If I could get a vial of the drug back to CBP, then they would have a sample to synthesize and begin research for an antidote.
Panic slowly began to course through the mate bond, and Stone’s gaze swung in one direction as mine went the other.
York stood frozen in the doorway, overlooking what was left of the… containment area.
I needed to get him out of here.