Stained Minds

by Helen Scott

The entire shithole was easy to clean, large enough to make a small quantity of product, nothing too major. The neighborhood was crap. Perfect for staying under the radar.

  At my side, Marcella nuzzled into me, jerking me from my thoughts. I pressed a kiss to her forehead. If they were cooking drugs, then maybe the knife touched whatever the hell goes into Kronos?

  Yeah, Darius thought of that already. He’s been in touch with the council, put in a request for the recipe from the Malectos.

  I pondered that a second, wondered if the family behind the initial ‘recipe’ for the drug would share that with us to spare a brotherhood—I wasn’t holding out much hope, and I said as much. How much hope do you think we have of getting it?

  Darius isn’t sure.

  What’s the plan, then?

  To wait for you to wake up.

  Why?

  You’re going to need to speak with Elizabeth.

  I reached up and rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. Don’t pretty it up, Keir. You mean torture her.

  I didn’t have to see it to know Keiran was shrugging. You’re good at it.

  Gee, thanks, I told him wryly. You say the sweetest things.

  He laughed. That’s what your mother said too.

  Flipping him the mental bird, I carefully detached myself from Marcella’s side. She grumbled but let me go, and I did so with a regret that was twofold. One, I didn’t want to move away from her, and two, I’d taken too much blood.

  Sighing as I padded out of the room, I saw Barclay there, still in his wolf form. Though I cocked a brow at the sight of him, I didn’t say anything.

  There was work to be done, and no brotherhood ever worked a regular nine-to-five. Christ, that would be a vacation if it was the case.

  Chapter Two

  Barclay

  I was torn between my mate and my brothers. I couldn’t protect all of them. There was nothing good about this situation for anyone. Plus, no one seemed to notice that I hadn’t been in my human form in a while. Something that wasn’t altogether my choice.

  The fact that they didn’t notice made sense though, especially since they were all trying to do everything in their power to save Gid. Even Marcella, who thought I didn’t know when she cast her illusions and left her bedroom without wanting me to know. She was good. So good that I had missed the first time she had done it, only noticing when she was coming back. There was only one thing that gave her away. My mate never covered her scent, or maybe she tried but couldn’t because of the mate bond. It wasn’t something most people thought of, but it made her a beacon of light to cling to, one I held on to with all my might, as I remained stuck in this form.

  I had been racking my brain for any hints on why my wolf was refusing to give up control, but the only thing I could think of was that he felt the whole pack was in danger and wanted to keep them safe. He’d never locked me out like this before though. I felt a little like the Hulk without ScarJo to tell me about the sun getting low. Fury, worry, and stress swirled in me like a hurricane, which my wolf just fed off of.

  As my wolf pushed to its feet, I huffed and shook my coat, trying to calm myself enough to let the beast rest. It didn’t work, but I had to try. I padded forward and nosed the door open, scenting the room as I did so. Marcella was in a deep sleep. It was one she needed and that I didn’t want to disturb her from, so I followed Raven’s scent.

  The mind walker was going down to the basement again. He had practically been living down there since we got back, and I knew it was killing him to torture these people in the hopes that they would talk or tell us something of value. I had kept my presence hidden from the captives in the basement; most people didn’t feel comfortable around a wolf shifter, least of all people responsible for injuring one of the shifter’s brothers.

  To a pursang I was one of the lowest, and yet, most common types of salsangs. I felt like that said more about them than it did about shifters if I was honest. Pursangs were so quick to judge others, and yet were wonderfully blind when it came to themselves.

  After all, there wouldn’t be any shifter Stained if the pursangs would stop fucking shifters. They couldn’t be told though, and I would swear that most of the time when I encountered another shifter salsang, we almost all had the same stories.

  Daddy vamp didn’t want his progeny on the loose, creating more and more half and quarter breeds. It was even worse if it was mommy vamp and daddy shifter, like my own parents. Male shifters wouldn’t take care of their offspring if they didn’t have a mate, and full-blooded shifters were never fated to mate with pursang vamps, which made kids like me end up at Eastbrook with an almost ridiculous frequency.

  I shook off the melancholy I was feeling now that I was unable to interact with the world as a human. I turned, paws padding to Gid’s room of their own accord since my wolf apparently wanted to briefly check on my brother. He smelled awful, and I wasn’t sure if it was whatever was on the blade that had done this to him, or the fact that there were only so many sponge baths that would keep a man clean.

  With my two wards sleeping, or unconscious in Gid’s case, I finally made my way to the stairs to the basement. Opening doors was awkward as all hell without thumbs, but at least I still had human knowledge and understood how to ask my wolf to do something that allowed me to move around the world. With the door successfully opened, I made my way downstairs with an unwieldy gate.

  Raven’s mind slipped against mine in greeting. It was like a weird, ghostly pat on the shoulder or grin from across the room. He only ever did it when he was concentrating and couldn’t break away from whatever it was he was doing.

  Keir was down there with him, which surprised me. I’d expected Darius. I felt for him through our bond with Marcella and knew he was outside, but that was the extent of my deductions. My wolf was able to pick up on Darius’s location occasionally based off smells and sounds, but with my brotherhood it was different. I was able to tell exactly where they were almost all the time, but from something innate, something that screamed Pack when I tried to label it.

  As soon as my feet touched the bottom floor, I felt the shift in the room. The humans and pursang had noticed me already, which could only mean that whatever Rav and Keir were doing wasn’t being as effective as we’d hoped. My eyes took in the scene before me and part of me wanted to flinch, while the rest of me wanted to help my brothers.

  The scents in the room were enough to make any pursang turn their nose and run from the room, let alone a shifter salsang. It wasn’t just the fact that they didn’t have any facilities they were able to use; it was the fear and stress and anxiety that were choking me.

  It took me a moment to find the strength to get closer. The whitewashed floor and walls were stained and disgusting enough to my sensitive wolf nose that I didn’t even want to set my paws on the ground, let alone anything else. It was the small whimper that finally made me move though.

  As I took in the sight in front of me, I didn’t flinch. It spoke of a lack of humanity, I guess, that we could do this but needs must. Pragmatists, that’s what we were, and this was more than just necessary.

  The woman, Elizabeth, Darius’s squire-in-training, was strapped to a metal table, her eyes flicking this way and that like she was in REM sleep, while Raven’s hand encompassed most of her head, so much so that the base of his palm was resting against her forehead, while the tips of his fingers were curved well past her crown. Although I knew he was a bigger guy, I’d never been more aware of the fact than when I saw him standing next to Marcella, or now, Elizabeth.

  I hip-checked Keir as I got close enough and felt his hand in my fur. It was a familiar sensation, and something I would only ever let my mate and brothers do, but it helped ground me in the basement setting even further. My wolf moved toward Rav, my claws clicking on the floor in the otherwise quiet room. The only other sounds came from the humans and salsangs that were positioned on the side wall, tied to their chairs, breathing heavily around their gags, coughing a littl
e. They were wrecked, destroyed, and I knew death would soon be a kindness.

  Unlucky for them we weren’t kind. But they should never have messed with the big boys, so I felt no shame whatsoever in what would happen to them. They deserved their fates and had sealed it by harming one of my brothers.

  While I didn’t want to greet Rav the same way I’d greeted Keir, I still wanted to let him know I was close by. I tapped my nose to his knee and immediately my world turned upside down. Everything seemed to shift and tilt as my stomach rolled, and I struggled to find a point I could fix my gaze on.

  I shook my head, trying to clear the fuzzy sensation, but it didn’t help. My pulse pounded in my ears, or so I thought at first. I could feel my pulse though, and the noise I was hearing wasn’t lining up. There was nothing I could do to escape it either because when I moved, it followed me.

  When the fuzziness of my vision started fading, I was finally able to make out where we were. It looked like a lab of some sort. Formulae and recipes were pinned to a board on one wall, while all kinds of equipment that I wouldn’t even have the faintest idea how to use, were stacked up on the table and next to the sink. Elizabeth was there, humming something upbeat and poppy to herself as she mixed ingredients. But the noise I heard, one that throbbed along the soundwaves, was her pulse. I could practically see it leaping from the side of her neck.

  She wasn’t in withdrawal here, not even in the slightest. I was in one of her memories. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew it had something to do with Raven’s powers. We had all been struggling with the flux of power and how we all felt supercharged ever since Marcella had sealed the bond with Gid. Part of me was actually nervous about what would happen when she slept with Darius. Not that it was important now.

  One thing about not being in complete control of my body was that it made it harder to focus since I didn’t have all the normal sensations to ground myself. For instance, the area around my physical form changed, but I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to figure out what was different. The side of me that had walked through Elizabeth’s memories called to me, and it pulled with some force because I had nothing to anchor me in the present.

  Sure, I could see, smell, hear, and feel what the wolf was doing, but I almost felt paralyzed. I couldn’t feel the same satisfaction of wiggling my big toe as I could if I was in full control. The wolf would only take so many suggestions from me as to what it was going to do, other than that I was forced to sit back and enjoy the ride.

  If I wanted to, I could let go, fall asleep in a way, until I could shift back or the wolf needed to retreat for some reason, then my human side would be forced back out. Most of the time when that happened, however, I never heard of the shifter becoming human again. They seemed to choose to let go of their human consciousness and become solely the animal. I knew that even while I worried about what the increased power meant to each of us, I would never lose myself to the wolf, because it knew, as well as I did, that it was the human side of me that brought Marcella the most happiness.

  Still, even that conscious knowledge didn’t help me now. I was dragged from that memory into another, and while we were in the same room, this time Elizabeth was freaking out. Everything was gone. There wasn’t even enough left of the drug for her to get a hit. Something I only knew because the feeling resonated through the memory, and there was no doubt that was what this was. It wasn’t just a craving though, it was the twisted need of addiction.

  She dropped to her knees on the floor, her hands squeaking over the metal shelf that sat under the table top as she looked for more Kronos. I knew as soon as she saw me that it wasn’t supposed to happen. Elizabeth, or the memory version of her, froze. Her eyes were locked on me as I watched her slowly move around the edge of the counter. When there was nothing between us, I took a step forward. She scooted backward as fast as possible, her back pressing against the fridge as though she was going to try and climb inside.

  “Elizabeth, tell me where this is.” Raven’s voice was suddenly behind me. My wolf jolted in surprise and spun to face the threat, baring its teeth and raising its hackles. My brother’s gaze dropped to me and confusion pinched his brow as he realized that I was really there. Even though his confusion bled into the words, his tone hardened as he stated, “Elizabeth, the wolf will only hurt you if you don’t answer.”

  “It’s the biggest fucking wolf I’ve ever seen,” she whispered, as though she didn’t believe that Raven had any control over me, which was true to an extent. She also sounded as though this wasn’t the first time she’d interacted with Raven, even though I hadn’t seen him in the vision or memory before.

  When Raven nodded at me, my wolf turned and walked toward Elizabeth. I could feel my lips pulling back in a silent snarl, one that was sure to display my gleaming white teeth. My mouth was salivating and it was dripping onto the floor, I knew because her gaze tracked the drops a couple of times as I edged closer. By the time I paused, her eyes had widened to the point that I was worried they might just pop out of her head.

  “I’ll tell you! Please, just call off the wolf!”

  I felt a wave of satisfaction from Raven before he gave me a push. Suddenly, I was back in the conscious world, with Keir tilting his head as he looked at me. A frustrated huff left my mouth as I began to pace back and forth.

  I needed to be able to talk to them, to communicate more effectively. I don’t know why he finally understood I was trapped in this form, but at last, Keir piped up, “Are you stuck as a wolf?”

  Cade

  “What the fuck is going on?” I grumbled, digging the heel of my hand into my eye as I staggered down the steps to the cellar where it stank of piss, shit, and, at a guess, vomit. But that sour smell was mixed with blood and other nastiness, so it kind of marred the bouquet.

  I almost snorted at the thought.

  Bouquet?

  Yeah.

  Right.

  This stench made durian fruit look like it smelled of fresh citrus, and the fact that Barclay was in here was just plain odd because if it was fucking with my senses, then it had to be messing with his.

  “I think Barclay is stuck as his wolf,” Keiran explained, looking up at me from my stance on the staircase from the torture chamber down below.

  I mean, I was joking, but it pretty much was.

  We’d make the Spanish Inquisition look friendly, but that’s why you didn’t fuck with a brother in a Brotherhood. If you did, the rest of them came at you with hammer and tongs. As well as ice picks. Who do you think smoked Trotsky off this mortal coil, hm? A brother. Probably one of the Cavalry to be fair. They’ve been around since forever, and they were sick motherfuckers.

  “Why would he be stuck as his wolf?” I asked, and took a seat on the bottom step. I was still shaky on my feet, and though it pricked my pride to show any weakness in front of the scum we were, ya know, torturing, I couldn’t help it.

  Whatever had happened in the bank was still messing with my abilities, and that just pissed me off even more.

  They were lucky I was so damn weak, I couldn’t even pick up the sledgehammer that was tempting me to smash their knees to bits.

  Violent?

  Yup.

  See, most people thought we were like Edward. Thought we glittered and ate stags like we were some kind of vegetarian Vampire, but we weren’t. We were inhumane, and we’d do anything to get the answers we needed.

  Barclay came over to me, settling between my legs and turning around so he was watching the show. It was second nature to start stroking his head, flicking his ears in a way that had him eying me, and silently telling me to stop messing around and scratch.

  “I don’t know,” Keiran mused. “I have no idea why he would be stuck, but I haven’t seen him in ages. Have you?”

  “I’ve been asleep,” I admitted on a yawn. “You know that.” And though I was a lover of being in bed, especially if Marcella was in it, even I was getting sick of being horizontal.

  “Yeah, I do. But
I wondered if you’d seen him. He spends most of his time between you and Gid.”

  “No. I’ve only seen the wolf, and I’ve felt him taking up way too much damn space in bed.”

  “Think it’s tied to Gideon?”

  “Could be.” I shrugged, since there were no answers, not without Darius in the room because he was decrepit enough to maybe know something we didn’t about shifter salsangs. I jerked my chin at Raven who was doing a good impression of a Jedi mind trick as he continued walking through Elizabeth’s brain. “What’s he doing?”

  “Barclay touched Raven and something happened.” Keiran shrugged. “I don’t know what because he dove right back in. I’m just grateful she stopped screaming.” His nose wrinkled. “Can we throw some bleach down here yet? The smell is starting to get gross.”

  “It’s not up to me,” I retorted with a huff. “I hate being out of the action.”

  Keiran rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I really feel sorry for you.”

  He hated torture. Always had, always would. It was the nature of his gift though. He liked to fuck with people’s heads, not their bodies. Raven was the same, but he and I were similar in that we didn’t have a problem getting our hands dirty. Especially if someone had hurt one of our own.

  I rubbed my chin. “Maybe splashing bleach on them would make them stink better.”

  “Might also burn their skin off, dumbass.”

  “Exactly,” I said with no small amount of satisfaction.

  “Maker, do you all have to be so damn bloodthirsty?”

  I tilted back to stare at Marcella who, with a pout, was stomping down the stairs in a shirt that looked like it had been pilfered from my case. She looked fine as hell. All long legs and tits. Well, that was what I saw at first. I got a glimpse of her ass, too, and I was relieved when my cock twitched—the damn thing hadn’t been working since she’d tried to recreate the moon in the bank.

  “Thanks, babe,” I told her, smirking when she frowned at me.