Caught by the Cougar (The Alaska Shifters Book 3)

by Ashlee Sinn

  I smiled at him and hurried down the front stairs to join the others. But I stopped at my car first and grabbed my holster and work kit.

  “Come on, human,” Danika spat.

  I pulled out my gun to check the clip and made sure that she saw me doing it. Throwing my bag filled with ammo and other goodies over my shoulder, I jogged to the awaiting helicopter. Brandt helped me inside and then closed the door. There were just enough seats to fit all of us and once we put on the headphones, Julia asked the question I wanted answered.

  “Where are we going?”

  Danika looked out the window at the limited lights zooming by beneath us. “Anchorage and then on to Washington.”

  “D.C.?” Major asked, a perplexed look crossing his features.

  Danika glared at him. “State. Outside of Spokane.”

  “Why there?” Fiona asked.

  As if speaking took too much of her energy, Danika pushed her head back into her seat. “Because that’s where we think they’re taking shifters.”

  “Who’s taking them?” I finally spoke.

  Danika narrowed her gaze on me and then raised a brow. I knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say. “The New Life Scientists.”

  Even though I wouldn’t have thought it possible, my stomach twisted even more. “No,” I whispered to myself. I’d encountered this hate group once before. And it was what made me leave Texas and vow to protect shifters just like all of the other humans. They had no qualms about experimenting and testing on those different from them, and after I’d busted one of their labs outside of Waco, which our boss had secretly been donating to, I knew I needed to surround myself with different people.

  Danika watched me closely. She must have known my background. But I ignored her stares, and as she explained to the others who this group was, I looked out the window and watched the moon shine off the glaciers below. Calvin, I’m coming. I sent the message out into the universe and hoped we get there soon enough to save my cougar.

  My wrists ached with the cuffs they’d slapped on me. Plus, with my hands above my head and my feet spread and chained to the floor, the position itself didn’t allude to comfort. Not to mention I was naked.

  I’d been trying to open my eyes for hours now. Having lived through the sixties, I recognized the effects of hallucinogens and opioids. Only this mixture was powerful enough that my shifter metabolism hadn’t burned it off yet. I could only guess how long I’d been in here, two days maybe? This was the longest I’d been awake but time seemed to move at a different pace.

  Squeezing my eyes slowly, I let them adjust to the bright fluorescent lights blasting down from the ceiling. Behind my lids I saw red, and it burned. Shifter vision certainly had its advantages, but right now it was a handicap in my ability to adapt quickly. Minutes later, I could finally see well enough to take in my surroundings. I was chained in the middle of a small room about the size of Sutton’s office.

  Sutton.

  Oh, she was going to be so mad at me. Even though this little side trip hadn’t been my idea, I had no doubt she’d been fuming over my absence for our date. And I smiled thinking about her hot temper. And the way I would be able to make it up to her if I ever got myself out of here.

  Where was here? Where had I been taken to? Three walls of the room were concrete—the floor a dark gray and the walls to my sides and back were white. But the paint was chipping off in several places, and the smell of dampness and mold hounded my nose.

  I looked up at my cuffed hands. The chain dropped down from the ceiling and was held there by a plate of iron and four bolts. As though my captors knew the strength of shifters, the foot chains were equally as sturdy. The wall in front of my face was comprised of floor to ceiling windows. And guessing from the way the rest of the room was built, I’d imagine those were bullet proof—even cougar claws had a hard time breaking through that stuff.

  Trying to lift my leg, I found that I could only move a few inches. The iron cuff hugged my ankle, old blood staining the top of my foot from where I must have struggled before. The situation looked pretty grim, but I’d been a POW in Vietnam, and this time I actually had someone to live for. That is, if she could ever forgive me.

  Suddenly, the lights flicked on in a room across the hallway and I sucked in a pained breath with what I saw. Zane, chained up and naked like me, hung from his hands, head lolled to the side like he was unconscious. His body was covered in bloody gashes and what I thought looked like burns. My animal, who also felt the effects of the drugs, managed a small growl. Zane’s room mirrored mine, and for the first time, I noticed that we each had a glass door embedded into the wall of windows.

  Three people, two women and one man, dressed in white lab coats and black slacks entered Zane’s room. I watched in horror as they approached him and I couldn’t do a damned thing about it. The man grabbed Zane’s chin between his fingers and turned his head side to side. Speaking to the smallest woman with blonde hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, she jotted down some notes. And when the man slapped Zane across the cheek, she continued writing.

  I twisted in my chains, wanting so badly to rip their throats out. The sound must have alerted them to my awakened state because all three turned to stare at me at the same time.

  “Fuck,” I muttered to myself.

  But to my surprise, they redirected their attention back to Zane and continued poking and prodding him like a research subject. The man lifted a stethoscope that was wrapped around his neck and appeared to check Zane’s vitals. At the same time, the second woman, the one with close-cropped brown hair and glasses, walked to the side of the room and opened a hidden door. She disappeared behind the hole in the wall for just a moment before emerging with a cart in her hands. She pushed it over to the others, and in front of Zane in a position that blocked my view of him from the waist down. While I decided I’d tease him about that later, the fear growing inside my chest had me worried for what was in store for my friend.

  Having finished him exam, the man set his stethoscope on the cart and picked up something that looked like a device used for a spinal tap. The large, metal needle reflected in the false lights, making my knees go numb. After being tortured for months in a war I didn’t want to fight in, I had a hard time witnessing any kind of poor treatment of people. Especially when this particular person wasn’t even conscious.

  I watched in stunned silence as the three “doctors” loaded the needle with a silvery liquid from inside a beaker. The man flicked at it several times, removing the air, and then he injected it directly into Zane’s right shoulder. I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing my friend would stay unconscious, but his grizzly roar reverberated through my room and I knew what was in store for him couldn’t be pleasant.

  Forcing myself to watch, I tried to find Zane’s eyes to let him know that I was here too. But he couldn’t see me right now. He was in pain, and his arm visibly shimmered with his shifter magic or whatever it was called. The three humans stepped away from him, one of the females lifting up a camera to film. Zane never opened his eyes, but he screamed as though he were awake. And that scream…that scream pierced my ears and crushed my heart. What had they injected him with and where the hell were we?

  Zane continued to scream, his body contorting and twisting yet not being able to move very much. His knees buckled, putting most of his weight in the wrists hanging above his head. He opened his eyes briefly and looked over at the place where they’d injected him. And to both our horror, his arm started to sprout hair.

  “Oh, my god,” I whispered to myself. “No.”

  Zane’s mouth hung open as he panted through his pain. I’d never witnessed a natural shifter experience only part of a shift. But whatever they’d just given Zane had somehow forced only his arm to change. Zane screamed when the metal cuff squeezed tightly against his grizzly wrist, forcing it to contort around the shackle and snapping the bone in the process.

  “Stop!” I shouted at them, but the humans never moved. I
nstead, a static hissing filled my room and pierced my ears.

  “Good evening, Mr. Baptiste,” the voice said.

  I lifted my head, trying to find the speakers or the camera. But I think my mind was still too foggy to process every little nook and cranny in the room. Maybe it was coming from the light…

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” I growled.

  “I would like to ask you not to shout, Mr. Baptiste. It disturbs our other guests.”

  “Guests?” I snapped. “You do know that I will fucking kill you, right?”

  “I hardly think idol threats are necessary,” the voice replied.

  “Oh, I do,” I muttered, feeling another wave of nausea roll through my gut.

  Zane roared his grizzly’s call and that drew my attention back to the room across the hallway. The man had just injected that giant needle into Zane’s left thigh, and I knew what would be coming next.

  “What is this place?” I asked the voice.

  “A laboratory.”

  “That mutilates humans?” I spat.

  “That researches shifters.”

  “Bull shit.”

  “I understand that you’re angry, Mr. Baptiste. But you alone can make this a miserable experience or a worthy one.”

  “You’re fucking insane,” I mumbled.

  Just then, the static disappeared and I heard the audible pop of the speaker being turned off. Zane let out another howl and when I looked over, I saw that they’d changed his left leg into his grizzly’s, again trapped in the iron cuff locked on his ankle. The three humans left the room, the short-haired lady pushing the cart.

  And then they stepped next to my door.

  I froze, terrified more than I’d been in a very long time. But I swallowed down the lump in my throat and put on a brave face. As they walked into the room, I caught the scent of Zane—his anger, his fear—along with the acrid smell of death and decomposition wafting in from somewhere else.

  The three humans paused while the man entered something into a panel hidden from sight. A door on the wall to my right appeared, and four men with a hospital bed rushed inside. Seven of them. Seven of them and one of me. I liked those odds.

  “Mr. Baptiste,” the man said calmly, “we are here to take some samples.”

  “Like hell you are,” I yelled.

  “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” I looked at the petite blonde woman and flashed my teeth. She blinked several times but stood her ground. “I’m guessing you’re going to choose the hard way.”

  While I loved Sutton’s strength and sassiness, in this tired excuse for a human being, it simply angered me. “You guessed correctly,” I spat.

  She exchanged glances with her counterparts in my room and shrugged. “Arthur.”

  The original man opened a metal drawer on the cart and pulled out a pair of large sheers…like the kind someone might use to shave sheep. I huffed my objection and tried to pull my legs free again.

  “You cannot break through those,” the blonde scoffed at me. “They’re designed to subdue even the strongest of your kind.”

  I knew she was right, but I didn’t want to let her win. “Have you ever caught a cougar before?”

  Arthur stepped closer to my right foot. “No, actually we haven’t, which is why we need some samples from you.”

  “Samples?”

  “Tissue samples,” the blonde said with an evil smirk.

  She would be the first one I killed.

  “What are you doing with them?” I asked Arthur.

  He snapped the sheers together a few times before looking at me. “We’re learning how your kind works.”

  “What do you want to know? I could just tell you.”

  The man smiled at me, his beady little eyes showing anything but pity. “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.”

  Without saying another word, the four new men jumped forward and held my leg while Arthur bent down and chopped off my little toe. The pain was instant and brutal. Sheer agony pulsing up my leg and into my chest.

  “You mother fucker,” I pushed out through my pain.

  “Sorry about that,” Arthur said, dropping my toe into a small, white container blondie held open for him. “But, you’re a shifter. It will grow back.”

  “You idiots!” Spit flew from my mouth as I felt the cougar waking up inside. “We heal faster than normal but we can’t regenerate our fucking body parts!”

  After glancing at each other, the blonde simply shrugged. “Well, good thing you have two kidneys then.”

  “W—what?” I whispered.

  “Told you,” she brushed her tiny hand along my cheek but quickly pulled away when I tried to bite it. “Tissue collection.”

  I felt a sharp prick in my neck and immediately tried to fight whatever they’d just drugged me with. “I will kill you all,” I slurred.

  The blonde smiled while my legs grew weak. Within a few seconds, I couldn’t feel my arms or my feet. So when they uncuffed me, I couldn’t fight them even though I wanted to more than anything else in the world right now.

  The four men lowered me onto the bed and immediately strapped me in. My hands, ankles, and chest were constricted underneath the restraints. If only I could shift right now, I’d be able to slip through these straps and—

  “The drugs are preventing you from shifting, so don’t waste your energy,” the blonde cut off my thoughts.

  They started to wheel me out of the room and I tried to find her with my eyes. “How?” I asked.

  She opened her mouth, but Arthur cleared his throat and forced her to stop.

  “Trade secret,” she said instead.

  A sharp pain sliced through my left bicep and I immediately screamed. “What the hell?” I looked over fast enough to catch the brown-haired woman slicing a piece of my muscle away. “You can’t just chop me up into little pieces!”

  “I suggest you calm down,” Arthur said. “Otherwise, you may have a difficult time during the surgery.”

  “You will not…you won’t…operate on me.” My mouth felt heavy and I could barely form words. “I will kill…you.”

  The hallway they were taking me down started to fade in and out. My cougar was totally gone, the drug affecting him first. I had a feeling they’d designed it specifically for that reason, and somewhere, deep inside my mind, I tried to force myself to remember this detail. The ISC needed to know.

  Wait! The ISC!

  They would find us, right? We turned a corner and that smell of death overwhelmed my nose. I tilted my head to the side, wanting to see the source, needing to find it. And there, in a room similar to mine, I got my answer. Dead bodies, at least twenty, piled on top of each other in a reckless heap. Men and women, some in human form, some permanently stuck as their animals. But all dead and mutilated.

  “Who…who are they?” I whispered, barely able to get the sound out despite wanting to be so angry.

  “Failures,” the blonde quipped.

  Failures? My brain could no longer process a cohesive thought, and as my vision tunneled into a black hole, I wondered exactly what they considered a failure.

  Despite the five-hour flight and luxury ISC jet we flew in, the time ticked on more slowly than I would have ever thought possible. I couldn’t allow myself to enjoy the leather seats and VIP services while my Calvin had been captured by the New Life Scientists.

  “What do you know about this group, again?” Major asked Danika. It’d been hard to get her to calm down, despite her outside appearance. To a stranger, she may have seemed collected and professional, but her eyes had yet to change back to her human form and I swear I saw her stretch her back every few minutes.

  Now that we were driving out into the middle of nowhere, she finally answered him. “They’ve been hiding out for a while but recently started to surface all over the globe. They claim to be progressive new-age scientists that can solve the mystery of shifters.”

  “So they were around before the
reveal?” Fiona asked.

  “Yes,” I added, and everyone snapped their heads around to look at me. “I encountered a branch of them outside of Waco, Texas. It’s what made me take this job.”

  Fiona set her hand on my shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. “And what do they do?” Major asked. I think he was having a hard time accepting that he’d been kept out of the loop on this particular shifter issue.

  “They torture shifters in the name of science,” I whispered.

  “I’ve been working with the vampires for the last few weeks, trying to learn more.” Danika finally started to sound more like her focused self.

  “Vampires?” I asked. What the hell?

  Everyone ignored me and Major asked Danika, “Viktor?”

  She nodded. “And Sophia. They had someone infiltrate a branch of these terrorists in New York. They will be meeting us at the site.”

  “Wait, vampires are real?” I tried to get someone to answer me.

  “You wanted to come with us,” Danika growled. “Deal with it.”

  “You know, I get you’re upset that Zane’s been kidnapped, but you don’t have to be such a bitch about it.”

  I heard a distinct rumble in her chest that I’d never heard from any of the other shifters before. Major moved in his seat to put his body between the two of us. “Danika, we’re in a closed space. Please don’t lose your shit.”

  I glanced at Fiona who shrugged and slunk back into her seat. Danika continued to rumble underneath her trademark trench coat, but Major eventually calmed her down. Our driver, someone new from the ISC that met us at the Spokane airport, said, “We’re here.”

  Coming to a stop in the middle of a pine forest, I wondered if maybe he was wrong. But then the second SUV carrying the rest of our friends pulled up beside us and I knew we’d come to the right place, even if I couldn’t see any kind of structures around here.

  I jumped out of the vehicle and stood next to Julia. She’d already dropped all of her extra clothing in preparation for the shift. I glanced down at her boots and had an idea. “What size are you?”