Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  But what if that stopped?

  What if Chase opened up the bond with the Rabid, just enough to get inside his head? Just enough to tell us where he was?

  “Bryn? Idea?”

  “I have one,” I said, “but Chase isn’t going to like it.”

  Chase was in human form when I found him, but I could till taste the faint tang of blood on his tongue from the hunt.

  Chase?

  I didn’t come completely into his mind. I pulled myself back from his senses and concentrated on keeping my own.

  Bryn?

  Just thinking my name seemed to calm him, remind him that he was human, even when he was wondering at what point along the line he’d become a beast.

  You went hunting, I said. Plenty of men do the same.

  Of course, most men hunted with guns instead of their teeth, but that wasn’t what Chase needed to hear, so I left it unsaid. Instead, I concentrated on the thing that had sent Chase into hunting mode in the first place.

  We’re going to kill the Rabid, I told him, my voice steady and calm. I promise you, he’s going to die.

  For a moment there was silence on Chase’s end of the bond, and then he spoke again, his words broken, like he couldn’t remember quite how to put them together into thoughts. Prancer—want—dead—protect.

  We’re going to kill him, Chase. Lake and I are gathering up some weapons. If we shoot from far enough away, he might not even hear us coming. He’ll think he’s safe because the alphas aren’t coming after him. He won’t be expecting us.

  Another pause, and this time, when Chase spoke, his words made perfect sense. I’m tired of fighting him.

  I thought of what I was about to ask Chase to do and blanched. We need to find him, I said slowly. And the only way to do that is to get inside his head.

  I didn’t say the next part, couldn’t make myself spell out the fact that the only way for me to get into the Rabid’s head was for Chase to let him into his.

  I won’t let anything happen to you, I swore. We just need a few seconds. Just long enough to figure out where he is.

  He’ll want me to hurt you, Chase replied, his voice weary, even in my mind. He always does.

  I thought of Chase slamming his wolf body into the cage in Callum’s basement, because to him, I smelled like food. I thought of his body trembling as the smell of a foreign wolf flooded Callum’s living room and of the way Sora’s first instinct had been to get me out of there.

  You wouldn’t hurt me, I told him. You’d die before you’d hurt me.

  Asking him to do this was killing me. It wasn’t fair. I felt like Callum, treating Chase like a detail that didn’t matter as much as the big picture. But as much as I wished I could do this myself, I wasn’t the one with the connection to the Rabid. I wasn’t the one who could track him.

  Chase was.

  You have to promise to get out of my head, Chase said. If Prancer takes over, if I can’t fight him off … you have to leave. I won’t let him get to you, too.

  I didn’t promise, because I had no intention of abandoning ship the moment things turned sour, not when I was the one asking Chase to put himself at risk.

  I won’t let him take you, I said, pushing the words into Chase’s head with a ferocity that he must have been able to feel from head to toe. You’re mine.

  For a moment, there was a pause, and then Chase’s voice went very dry in my mind. In a non-freaky, non-ownership, we-both-retain-our-independence kind of way? I could practically see his lips curving upward into a subtle grin.

  Yes, I replied hastily. Exactly.

  Okay.

  Okay? I asked him.

  Okay, he repeated. I’ll do this. — Don’t leave me. —

  He didn’t mean for me to hear that last part, but the second I did, I let down some of my own guards, brought myself further into his mind, telling him over and over again, in every way I knew, that he wasn’t alone.

  He breathed in.

  I breathed in.

  He breathed out.

  I breathed out.

  And then, Chase let in the flood. I should have been prepared. I knew more about closing off and opening up bonds than just about anyone, but still, the rush of scent and the oily feel of a snake slithering down the back of Chase’s neck took me by surprise. His scars, each and every one, began to burn, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe.

  Well, well, well … if it isn’t the prodigal son.

  The voice sounded so normal, so human, but the sound of it hurt Chase’s ears. I pictured him bleeding, torn to pieces, the way the Rabid had left him that day.

  Not your son, Chase thought. Not your anything.

  That’s right, I echoed, my words for Chase’s ears only. He was his own person, and he was mine, the same way that I’d been his from the moment we’d touched. The Rabid thought he knew so much, but he didn’t know that I was there.

  Change.

  The word was a whisper, but also a command. This wasn’t Callum telling Katie to change back to human form. This wasn’t me asking Chase to become a wolf.

  This was domination. And punishment. It was cruel.

  You don’t have to, I told Chase, even as I felt the pressure the Rabid was applying.

  He’ll know something is wrong if I don’t.

  I heard Chase’s bones breaking, felt his skin give way as he lost his human form. The Rabid laughed.

  Change back.

  Shifting took energy. It was painful. Chase needed to recover.

  Change.

  Change back.

  The Rabid didn’t let Chase settle fully into one form before forcing him into another.

  Stop, I wanted to scream. Stop!

  But I didn’t. Tears streaming down my cheeks, my own body shaking with Chase’s burning white pain, I pushed. Pushed my way from Chase’s mind into the Rabid’s.

  Burnt hair and men’s cologne.

  The smell was overwhelming. Suffocating. I needed to throw up, but I couldn’t. I had to do this, because Chase couldn’t. Because his body was being forced to break itself and reassemble, over and over again.

  Sweat mixed with the tears on my cheek. A white-hot poker pressed into my stomach, my legs, my jaw.

  Change. Change back.

  I had to concentrate. I had to find out what we needed to know so Chase could throw his walls back up.

  Protect, my pack-sense demanded. Chase was mine. I had to protect him. I had to push the Rabid away—

  But first, I had to track him.

  I closed my eyes. I pictured the wiry bond that connected Chase to this madman. I followed it to its roots. I let damp, overwhelming darkness wash over me, until I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be warm.

  Blood. The Rabid liked blood. He liked power. His name was Wilson.

  The information came all at once, but it wasn’t enough. I pushed further.

  Where are you? I thought, knowing he couldn’t hear my words. Tell me where you are.

  I saw a cabin. And blood. A forest. And blood. A town—one stoplight. A store called Macon’s Hardware.

  A path into the woods.

  Trapped. The word was a whisper in my mind, and the second I heard it, Chase’s own instincts flared to life. Trapped, he echoed. He struggled not to fight the Rabid. Not to push him back.

  We needed to fight. We needed to get out of there. We needed to take care of each other.

  But first, I needed more. A cabin. One stoplight. Macon’s Hardware. A path into the woods.

  Tell me where you are.

  For the first time, the Rabid stopped in his onslaught against Chase. He paused, and I wondered if he smelled me, the way I smelled him.

  No time. I had no time. Chase was hurting. If the Rabid smelled me, he’d punish Chase. Hurt him. Hurt him more.

  No-Man’s-Land. Macon’s Hardware. Images flashed from the Rabid’s mind to mine. He pulled back, but once I got ahold of something, I never let go until I was ready.

  Macon’s Hardware. P
ath into the woods. And then, finally a name. A town.

  The Rabid roared, a noise more fitting to a bear than a wolf, and then he laughed a horrible, mad sound that made me picture blood running from his human lips, down his human face, soaking his human hands.

  My stomach rolled. This was a man who killed his victims and laughed.

  Time to go, I told Chase.

  I can’t. He’s too strong. Walls are gone. Callum helped me. I can’t—

  You can, I said back. Think of me, Chase. Think only of me.

  He did. He thought of me, and the Rabid thought of me, and their mental images mixed together in my mind. Wet cardboard and drain cleaner and the smell of little-girl fear. Brash and beautiful and home.

  That’s right, I told Chase. I’m home. Come back to me.

  I had to protect him. I had to undo this. There had to be a way. The panic rose in both of our throats. I saw Chase’s field of vision bleed into a dotty, hazy red.

  Trapped.

  This time, I grabbed on to the word. Made Chase hear it. We were cornered. We were scared.

  We would get out of this alive.

  Trapped. Escape.

  Survive, I whispered the last word, because Chase couldn’t seem to remember what it was, and his own instincts flared to life. He was a fighter. He fought. This man was nothing.

  He wasn’t all-powerful. He was Prancer.

  And we didn’t have to let him do this.

  Chase was mine. I was his. The Rabid wanted us both, and with that realization, I felt something snap inside of Chase. The Rabid could threaten him. The Rabid could torture him.… But he had no right to think of me. None.

  I felt the hum of power, a shift in the air when Chase slammed up his mental walls and caught the sliver of power that bound him to this man between his teeth. Like an animal, a hunter, he tore into it. Shredded it.

  And as it began to reweave itself, impervious to Chase’s attack, the boy I called mine took everything that bound him to this Rabid, and in a moment of perfect symmetry, he threw it at me.

  I’d felt the sensation before. A tilting of the world on its axis. An explosion in my brain.

  Echoing, seductive silence. Silence and Chase.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “YOU OKAY?” LAKE’S VOICE BROKE INTO MY THOUGHTS and brought me back to the present. To the back porch on Cabin 12, where I’d sat down to contact Chase. “At first, you were quiet, and then you were crying. Your body starting twitching, and then, you got real still.”

  I caught my breath. “I’m fine,” I told Lake. We’re fine. Back at Callum’s, I’d panicked and rewired our pack-bonds, mine and Chase’s, and just now, when he’d sensed the Rabid threatening me, Chase had done the same. Only this time, he’d cut his connection to the Rabid completely. The pack was still there in the depths of Chase’s mind, in mine, but the Rabid was gone.

  “You didn’t feel anything?” I asked. When I’d rewired my pack-bond, every wolf in the near vicinity had felt it.

  “Nope,” Lake said. “Should I have felt something?”

  I thought for a moment: of the pack, of Chase, and of the Rabid. “No.”

  This didn’t have anything to do with Stone River. This had to do with Chase and the man who had made him. The man whose name I now knew was Wilson. The man who was residing in a cabin in the woods, a mile away from Macon’s Hardware in a place called Alpine Creek.

  “Wyoming,” I said out loud. “That’s where we’re going.”

  Lake heard me. I repeated the message silently, sending it to Chase. He was exhausted physically, and I realized that he wasn’t in any shape to travel from Colorado to Wyoming on his own.

  He’d recover. Werewolves always did. But he needed time—and time was one thing we didn’t have. Sooner or later, the alphas would pay the Rabid a visit to collect on his end of whatever deal they’d made him. Sooner or later, Ali and Mitch would get suspicious about what Lake and I were up to.

  Worst of all, there was a part of me that knew the Rabid wouldn’t react well to losing Chase. He liked blood. He liked power. And since Chase had robbed him of the latter, someone would pay with the first.

  I hated that I’d been inside the Rabid’s head. Hated that I understood him enough to know that if the three of us waited, someone else would die.

  Lake and I are going to grab some weapons and borrow the keys to her dad’s truck, I told Chase. You can’t run all the way to Wyoming. You’re going to need some help.

  There was only person in Ark Valley that I trusted enough to ask for help.

  Devon.

  Chase bristled, the way any male werewolf would have at the sound of another male’s name, so I repeated myself.

  Please, Chase. He’ll help. You know he will.

  Chase knew because I knew, and now, more than ever, he was in my mind the way I’d been in his.

  Devon, Chase repeated. Alpine Creek, Wyoming. We’ll see you there.

  “You done playing telephone?” Lake asked.

  I nodded, pulling back from my bond with Chase as he did the same with me.

  “Okay, girlie. Let’s weapon up.”

  The words weapon up were slightly terrifying coming out of Lake’s mouth, her voice a weird combination of resolve and glee.

  I shuddered, but gestured broadly with one arm nonetheless. “Lead on.”

  Lake didn’t take any more urging. It took her less than a minute to jimmy open the back door to Cabin 12, and when the door opened to reveal her father’s weapon’s cache, my mouth dropped open. I’d expected a couple of guns, an excess of silver bullets, and a knife or two. Instead, I saw a room as large as the cabin that Ali, the twins, and I were sharing. Letting out a low whistle, I took in the 360 view.

  One side was clearly dedicated to creating the weapons. I recognized a forge in one corner, and there were a variety of tools, and a few things I couldn’t identify that seemed to have a vaguely Frankensteinian feel about them. The other side—and three of the walls—were covered with weapons. Guns. Knives. Axes. Traps. Snares. And several things that I couldn’t even identify.

  Lake breathed out a happy sigh as she approached the row filled with guns. “Matilda was my first, but, ladies, you know how to make a girl want to stray,” she said.

  “Lake, could you please stop sweet-talking the weapons? It’s kind of freaking me out.”

  This room didn’t look like the cautious work of a dad who was afraid that someone might get a little fresh with his teenage daughter. It looked like the work of a man preparing for a brutal and inevitable war.

  Lake stuck her bottom lip out in a pout at my reproach but then shifted into business mode. “Silver bullets are in the chest on your right,” she said. Then she paused, picked up a container full of some kind of arrows, and poured them on the ground. “Fill this up. Grab a dozen or so silver arrows, too. I’ll take care of the crossbows and guns.”

  While I followed her instructions and started stocking up on ammunition, Lake hauled a large, empty duffel bag off one of the shelves and began throwing in the big guns. Literally.

  And some small guns.

  Three crossbows.

  “Lake, you do know that there are only three of us, right?”

  She snorted. “All of this is just for me. I’m getting to you. Callum taught you how to shoot on a nine millimeter, right?”

  I nodded.

  She threw several more guns into the bag, moving so quickly that her choices should have seemed haphazard but didn’t.

  “Is this good?” I asked Lake, after I’d pulled several boxes of handmade silver bullets out of the cabinet and gathered a few of the arrows off the floor.

  “Yup. You prefer a crossbow, a longbow, or old school?” Lake asked me.

  “I’m better with knives,” I said.

  Lake nodded, and then she looked at me very closely and said, “Stand up.”

  I did.

  “You’ve got two on you right now, correct?”

  I nodded, not botherin
g to ask how she could tell. “I don’t go anywhere without them.”

  “You’ll be better with your own than you are with mine, but I’ll bring a few extras, for throwing. First, though …” She trailed off, thoughtful. “How tall are you?”

  “Five-six.”

  “You’re a couple of inches shorter than me,” Lake said, “but you’ve got pretty long arms, so …”

  I had no idea where this was going, until Lake walked over to the workbench and picked up two metal wrist guards about the length and width of my forearms, but thin. “Let me put these on you,” she said. I complied. The metal was much lighter on my wrists than it should have been.

  “Can you lift your arms?” she asked me.

  I nodded.

  “Can you fight?”

  She didn’t give me a chance to answer the question—she just attacked me. In a room full of enough firepower to blow the whole reservation to kingdom come.

  I managed to dodge her blows and get in one of my own. The weight of the wrist guards didn’t slow me down, but I couldn’t put the same kind of force behind my blows.

  “With these, you won’t need to,” Lake said. “My dad made them for me. Just in case. Take a step back and then twist your wrists sideways, hard.” She demonstrated and, mystified, I obeyed. Four long, thin silver blades popped out of each of the wrist guards.

  “If you’re fighting something with claws, you might as well have some of your own,” she said.

  I stared at them and then began to experimentally move my wrists. “Your dad a big fan of the X-Men?” I asked.

  Lake shrugged. “Worse comes to worst, he wanted to give me an edge.”

  “You couldn’t Shift with these on,” I told Lake.

  Lake arched an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t need to. Land one or two good hits to a Were with these, and you’ve bought yourself some exit time.”

  Mitch had said that he didn’t know many werewolves who were even half as fast as Lake. If she took them off guard in her human form, they might not be able to catch up to her as a wolf.

  “Twist your wrists the other way, and the claws will retract. Now, let me throw in some explosives and we’ll be good to go.”

  As Lake added the finishing touches to our artillery and slung the duffel bag over her shoulder, I picked up the box I’d loaded up with ammo. “You okay?” I asked her.