“You all right, sweetie?” Ain asked.
She nodded. “Yeah. But the guy already talked to the woman,” she said.
“Huh?” all three of them asked.
She dragged herself up to a sitting position. She’d need a quick shower before she went to bed. “The vision I had before, of that guy talking to the woman we’ve seen in our vision? Before, it was blue. I just saw it again, and it wasn’t blue anymore. That means it happened.”
“Oh,” they said.
She nodded. “Oh.” She held up a hand to Brodey. He helped her up off the sofa. “Someone please help me to the shower,” she said.
Brodey immediately scooped her into his arms and started carrying her. “I got you.”
She draped her arms around him. “I didn’t mean carry me, but I won’t argue.”
Cail and Ain followed. “Good,” Ain said. “Glad you’re not going to argue.”
After a quick group shower, Elain called Lina and Mai and updated them and agreed to meet there at Elain’s early the next morning. Then Elain snuggled in bed with her guys.
“I love you. All three of you. You realize that, right?”
“We love you, too,” Ain said. “What brought this on?”
“Today.” She kissed him, then leaned over to kiss Cail, then Brodey. “I love you.”
Brodey reached up to stroke her face. “Love you, too. You kicked ass today.”
“Ditto,” Cail said. “Love you so fucking hard. You scared us, but in a way, it was a relief. I’m still going to worry about you, but knowing you can take care of business is a huge burden off me.”
She looked at Ain, who nodded. “What they said. I don’t like not being there to protect you, but I’m glad you can protect yourself. It makes it a tiny less stressful on us.”
She smiled. “A tiny less?”
He held up two fingers almost touching. “Tiny.”
She snuggled between Ain and Brodey. “I need to work with Lina and Mai. Mai can throw lightning bolts. I hope I can do the fire and ice thing Lina does.”
“Lightning would be cool,” Cail said.
“Word,” Brodey agreed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’m not in Kansas anymore, Jasper.
Elain wasn’t sure if the dog could hear her thoughts like that, but when she looked she saw he’d cocked his head as he stared at her.
Everyone else in the house was asleep. Elain knew that Micah and Kael were patrolling the grounds. Kitty, Wally, Mark, and several other shifters, from Arcadia, Maine, and elsewhere, were converging on the cockatrice meeting point in Georgia to try to find the guy who’d hired them. Elain had fudged her way around that info, saying the guy had told her the meeting place before he died.
He’d told her it was in a text on his phone, so…technically, close enough.
She made sure not to specifically test that loophole on her three men, though, and had directed her comment to Kael to pass along.
Regardless, Elain was sure he’d prove to be the guy she’d seen in her vision talking to the woman who detonated the bomb.
The property patrol was unnecessary, but Elain wasn’t going to tell her guys that.
She’d slipped out of bed after casting the “don’t wake them” bubble around her men so she could go review the video she’d had the cockatrice leader make. With a pair of earbuds plugged into the phone, she was curled up on the bed in the last guest room, Jasper next to her and also watching.
The phone had been locked with a passcode, but when Elain concentrated, the numbers came to her and she opened it on the first try.
She found the video and hit play.
Her stomach rolled as she watched herself, watched what she did. Listened to what she said.
And how her eyes had flashed to dark blue as she got started.
How…cavalierly she’d killed them.
Jasper put a paw on her leg. “Dark Ones kill innocents. You did good.”
“Thanks,” she whispered. Still, she had to jump up and rush into the attached guest bathroom and puke.
That woman on the video wasn’t who she wanted to be. In the heat of the moment, it’d felt right.
It’d felt fun.
She couldn’t let her power go uncontrolled like that again. She’d end up hurting an innocent person, and that wasn’t something she could deal with.
After she felt steady once more, she e-mailed herself the video and then locked the phone again, turning it off and tucking it in a bottom drawer in the dresser. No one would look for it in there. Once she edited the video, she’d transfer it back to the phone and then send it to the person who’d hired them.
Jan and Rick, with Brodey tracking, had found the nearby house the cockatrice had been using, a piece of property that had sold several months earlier. Ryan was working on that angle for them now, to track down any principals involved in that.
There weren’t any clues as to who the men worked for. It looked like they’d packed up their vehicles and were just waiting to complete their mission to bug out.
Thankfully, their plans had been shot to hell by Elain.
She headed to their home office, Jasper on her heels, and grabbed her laptop. Fortunately, she still had her personal Mac she’d used while working at the TV station.
Including her own copy of video editing software for when she wanted to work on stuff at home.
She took the laptop back to the guest bedroom, downloaded the video, and started editing it.
She had to go dry heave in the bathroom toilet twice in the process.
Elain was glad she was covering up her eyes with the blurring. There was something downright fucking spooky seeing them change color like that.
No wonder poor Brodey had done a double-take when he’d first seen her in the kitchen.
She didn’t blame him in the least. Hell, she wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d backed right the fuck up.
Once she finished the task and ran the audio through a filter to disguise her voice, she saved everything and transferred it to the phone.
She’d seen that the cockatrice were supposed to meet up with their employer tonight. She’d wait until morning to send the video to the person’s phone if their people hadn’t caught up with them yet. Maybe then she could track them down with that.
Her powers might be able to permanently fuck up someone’s day, but she still wasn’t sure how to use all of them. Sending the video too soon might trigger something worse before they were ready for it.
After returning her laptop to the office, she headed for bed, Jasper peeling off to sleep in the hallway between the two open nursery doors.
* * * *
It was just before daylight the next morning. Elain had slept very little, nerves and power still surging through her. When Cail had started to sit up, she grabbed him and pulled him in for a kiss.
Then there was a flurry of motion, and before long she was sixty-nine on top of Ain, with his mouth and tongue doing delicious things to her clit, while Brodey fucked her and she sucked Ain’s cock.
She wrapped her fingers around Cail’s cock, and periodically stopped sucking on Ain’s and took Cail’s into her mouth.
“Fuck,” Cail whispered. “That’s so good, babe.”
Ain grabbed her hips and held her in place as he started aggressively licking and sucking her clit. “Mate, come!” he ordered through their mate-bond.
Elain’s orgasm slammed into her. She deep-throated Cail’s cock until her nose was pressed against his stomach. He let out a groan, his hand dropping to the back of her head as he started fucking her mouth. With her other hand stroking Ain’s cock and keeping him hard, she eagerly worked to get Cail off.
In her pussy, Brodey was taking his time, slow, teasing strokes as he withdrew before slamming hard and deep into her.
“That’s it, baby,” Brodey said. “Prime just got one out of you, so it’s my turn. Come!”
She howled with pleasure around Cail’s cock. He started fucking h
er mouth harder, faster, now in total control of her and using her the way she wanted him to.
She’d just started spinning down from that one when Cail’s strained voice spoke. “Mate, come!”
Elain whined, helpless to disobey their edicts. She knew she could engage in a little turnabout with them and edict the three of them to come, but what was the fun in that?
She wanted them to last a little longer.
Cail’s cock felt even harder as it slipped through her lips, against her tongue, salty pre-cum leaking from the slit in his thick head.
Finally, he pulled her hard and deep onto his cock and held her in place, his low, satisfied moan rolling through the center of her soul as he shot his load down her throat. She eagerly swallowed, milking every last drop out of his balls.
Once he finished, he grabbed her hair, pulled her off his cock, and guided her back onto Ain’s.
“Finish that, baby,” he said in her ear. “Suck his cock now. Such a beautiful mate you are.”
She deep-throated Ain, his happy growls as she did rumbling through her clit and triggering another orgasm.
“Oh, she came again,” Brodey said, chuckling. “Didn’t even have to edict her that time.”
She was trying to rock back and forth on top of Ain and meet Brodey’s tempo with the way he was fucking her, but both Ain and Brodey held her in place, in charge of her body.
Blessed relief for her brain, albeit temporary, to take her out of her head and eliminate all other thoughts except for the pleasure she was giving and receiving and the love surrounding her.
Nothing felt more right than this moment. Being their love, their mate, their wife, the mother of their children.
She never understood before, but she did now.
It wasn’t that her life before them was wrong, but for her, now that she got it, she realized this felt right.
She’d never trade the pleasure and love she now had in her life for a career. That was the right choice for some people. Before she met her men, it’d been the right choice for her.
This, however, was what she wanted. These three men. This passion and love. The protective fury they still felt, still washing off of them like a powerful aphrodisiac.
Sure she could take care of herself, but she also had three Alphas who wanted to take care of her and their children.
No one could pay her enough money to ever want to give that up.
Brodey had shifted angles and now his cock was hitting her G-spot with every thrust, sending her into orbit one more time. Ain quit holding back and started thrusting his hips up against her face. Brodey picked up the pace, too, and finally, as she came one last time, her orgasm milked Brodey’s from him, and her moans around Ain’s cock finished him off.
Brodey’s cock exploded, filling her with his cum as she swallowed a load from Ain. Breathless, pulse racing, she slumped to the side so she didn’t suffocate poor Ain while Brodey went the other direction.
Cail curled up behind her. “Good morning, baby.”
“Good morning, mate.” She laced her fingers through his.
“I hate to be the voice of reason,” Brodey said, “but Elain, Mai, and Lina need to get back to work.”
Ain sighed. “Agreed. We also need to find out if the others caught the guy the cockatrice were going to meet with.”
“There’s something ironic about me wanting to be the one to lie in bed and fuck around all day,” Elain said, “while Brodey is the one urging me to not do that.”
“Yeah, I know.” Brodey sat up and yawned. “But my libido isn’t as important as stopping a bomb or figuring out who the fuck sent those goddamned assholes yesterday.”
Elain remembered the video. “True,” she softly said. “We do have things to do.”
A quick call by Ain confirmed the others had not yet tracked down the other man in Georgia.
While the guys were getting ready, Elain used the excuse of going to check on the kids to get the hidden phone and send the video.
Then she shut off the ringer and tucked the phone into her pocket. Either the person would respond, or they wouldn’t.
Either way, they would hopefully think twice about sending someone after them in the future.
If they lived that long.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Aliah had dropped the truck off at the truck stop in Marston and left it there after setting the timer on the detonator, just in case. She also activated a countdown timer on another untraceable phone so she wouldn’t lose track of when it’d go off.
She’d have plenty of time to get well out of range. If her plan to get rid of Carl’s mother didn’t work, the bomb would still go off and cause mass confusion.
She’d already put fake plates on Carl’s SUV, which she’d left in a nearby parking lot on the other side of the Interstate. She parked the big truck where she could see it from one of the security cameras there at the truck stop to keep an eye on it.
She walked into the store, bought a soda with cash, and then left, heading back to the SUV.
She’d have to boogie pretty fast to get down to Georgia to meet the guys. If they arrived before she did, they were to call her and she’d direct them where to wait. But she’d told them when she’d hired them to be damned careful once they left Arcadia. To lay lots of false trails, double-back, and take their time, making sure absolutely no one followed them. They should be arriving at the meeting place early the next evening if they followed directions.
As she put distance between herself and the truck, she relaxed. Finally, something would fucking go right.
This would work out better anyway. Once she’d put plenty of miles between herself and the truck, she pulled over into a rest stop just north of Atlanta a little after daybreak the next morning to check her e-mail. She’d had no messages yet from her guys in Arcadia.
That worried her. It should have been done and over by now.
No missed calls, no voice mails, no texts from them.
What she did have, however, was an e-mail to the anonymous account, sent not too long before.
The e-mail contained a video. When she hit play, Aliah literally felt the creepy crawlies roll across her flesh.
Fuuuuck.
She assumed the woman was the wolf cunt. Her face was obscured with some stupid blurring, and it was obvious her voice had been altered.
But…what the hell had she done to kill the guys?
It looked like…
But that wasn’t possible! She hadn’t even touched them!
Holy…shit…
Now feeling horribly exposed and like she was about to wet her pants, Aliah got back on the road to find a hotel. She needed to think, to try to contact her guys.
That had to be a hoax.
Had to be. The wolves were trying to draw her out. They probably had her guys held captive, and were realizing they couldn’t get any info from them except where the meeting point was.
Nothing that could identify her, or Carl.
A hoax. Special effects. That had to be the answer. No one had that kind of power, she didn’t care who the hell they were or what the fuck kind of shifter they were.
It just wasn’t possible. Not even the Grimoire Lilitu had spells in it that could do that kind of thing, and it was the most powerful fucking book on the planet!
After finding a hotel room, Aliah got her shit set up and tried contacting her guys again from the burner cell.
Nothing.
She didn’t dare leave messages.
She pulled the battery and sim card from that burner and grimly activated another burner. She had to work on the assumption that she wouldn’t be getting her baby back today.
Not that she was willing to give up just yet, but maybe a massive disaster would help her cause. A distraction. Give her some cover to find him herself and grab him. She checked the time left on the detonator timer. Then she made herself a cup of coffee and took a shower. Once she did that, she sat on the bed. There were sixty minutes left on
the detonator’s timer.
Taking a deep breath, Aliah texted the phone number and four-digit code to the phone Carl’s mom had. Moments later, Syrena responded.
OK
One hour, either way. One hour until life as these pitiful humans knew it in the US changed forever.
She sat back to wait…and gloat.
* * * *
“The company that purchased the property is a shell company,” Ryan said early that morning.
He laid copies of documents out on the Lyalls’ dining room table. “Carl Shupe is the guy’s name. From what I found out, he’s a cockatrice.”
Lina clapped her hands together and eagerly rubbed them. “Great. Gimme an address, devil dude.”
Ryan arched an eyebrow at her. “I don’t have one exactly. But he is cockatrice. And I have a picture of him from his driver’s license. However, the address listed is for an empty warehouse in Bangor, not a home. My men already checked it out. I’m still working on tracking down his residence.”
Elain snatched the picture up almost as soon as he’d laid it down. “That’s him!” she screamed.
“Who?” everyone else asked.
“The guy I saw in my vision a few weeks back. The guy talking to the woman who detonates the bomb!”
“Great,” Lina said. “We have a fucking name, we have a fucking face. Let’s find him. Time to barbecue him.”
“Can we get some help?” Elain asked Ryan.
He nodded. “I’ll go round up more assistance.” He’d no sooner left than Baba Yaga showed up.
“You found him?” Baba Yaga asked.
“Great,” Lina drawled. “Just the person we don’t need. Hey, thanks for your stellar lack of assistance in this matter.”
“I did the best I could. What do you have?”
Elain chose to take the high road, shoulder Lina out of the way, and take over again. “We have a name. Carl Shupe. Cockatrice.” She showed her the picture.
Baba Yaga frowned. “That name sounds familiar.”
“Ryan’s got people looking for him now.”
“Have you as the Triad tried looking for him or the woman in New Madrid?”
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