He was staying in human form for now, so he’d be able to shoot if he needed to.
He was going to have to go wolf pretty soon if he wanted to be able to track Roy down, though. In human form, his scenting ability was very good, but not as strong as when he was in his animal form.
He definitely scented wolf here, and the unique scent of the Dominus Alpha said it had to be Roy. The stink was everywhere
Oddly, it didn’t smell like rage. It smelled more like overwhelming sorrow. Maybe Roy felt bad about the people he’d killed. Maybe he’d been out of control when he’d done it.
Didn’t matter.
Dead was dead. Roy had been their death sentence. And now Austin would be his.
A warm breeze swept through the air. He tipped his head back and sniffed at the wind, searching for her scent, but instead he smelled Roy – way too close.
He dashed from behind the pine tree, heading for another stand of trees about fifty feet away.
Then he heard an odd rumbling sound. He glanced up to see an enormous boulder hurtling straight down the mountainside towards him.
Scrambling madly, he ran for cover, and tripped.
He tried to climb to his feet and kept slipping on the steep hillside, which suddenly seemed to be made of Teflon. Above, he heard howls of harsh laughter.
He stopped trying to stand and rolled over and over. The boulder thundered past him, spraying him with gravel and missing by inches.
He scrambled to his feet and looked up to see Roy standing on a ledge. Fuck, that wolf was crazy strong. And also just plain crazy.
He was wearing jeans and boots, stripped down to his waist. He looked just like his pictures, with a squarish, handsome face, with horizontal lines creasing his forehead and dark hair streaked with white. His scraggly beard had a white stripe through it.
“Oh good, I was getting bored,” Roy shouted down at him.
Austin cupped his hands around his mouth to yell back at Roy. “If you come with me peacefully, I will do my best to see that you get treatment.”
“What, after I butchered all those people? No, no, I really think you should kill me.” Roy threw back his head and laughed again, a harsh, horrifying sound. It echoed off the hills and bounced back, a chorus of madness.
Was that Austin’s future?
Roy came rushing down the hill at him, shifting as he ran. His wolf was enormous, gray and white and snarling. Foam flew from his mighty jaws.
Austin tried pushing at him with his Dominus power, and immediately felt an enormous splitting pain in his head. He was trying to force Roy back into human form, and the results were hideous. Patches of human skin appeared and then disappeared on his flanks, giving Roy a revolting, moving quilt of pink bald splotches. Roy’s ears seemed to melt like candle wax, then reformed.
Roy slowed down, skidding on loose pebbles, and sent his own wave of power at Austin.
Austin felt as if he’d been hit in the head with an anvil. His whole body throbbed with agony. His fangs tore through his gums instead of sliding smoothly through the way they did during a normal shift, and blood ran out of his mouth. His claws punched through his fingertips, spraying droplets of blood. He’d never felt anything like this before. It was bizarre and hideous, more like the werewolf transition of a horror movie than the beautiful melding of his animal with his human form.
Roy was staggering but still advancing relentlessly. He was moving slowly, but he would get there, and Austin didn’t know how much longer he could keep this up. He had never encountered power like Roy’s before.
He felt fur shooting through his skin, and his bones snapped. He let out a scream of pain.
Nobody had been able to force him to shift since he was a cub.
It took every ounce of strength he had to force his wolf back down so that he could handle the gun, which was going to be his only hope.
He had really, foolishly hoped that his Dominus power would be a match for Roy. It wasn’t even close.
He fired at Roy. One dart didn’t do it. Roy didn’t even seem to notice.
He fired again. And again. Roy kept coming.
He had no idea how potent Savannah’s darts were, but he suspected that three darts would be enough to kill an average shifter. And Roy was still bearing down on him. This gun had one more dart. He fired it.
That one seemed to be the charm.
Thank God, because Roy was twenty feet away from Austin. But now the crazed wolf was staggering, his eyes rolling back in his head, tongue lolling in his mouth.
Austin stood there, gasping and wheezing like a hundred-year-old asthmatic. He closed his eyes and concentrated all his self-healing power, and his whole body felt as if it had caught on fire. He forced bones back into place, reattached muscles and tendons. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground.
Roy lay on his side, his flank heaving, eyes closed. A dart stuck out of his shoulder.
Austin could barely see or hear or smell. He swayed where he stood, gulping air, for several long minutes before he finally felt well enough to walk towards Roy.
When he got there, he looked down at the defeated wolf. He felt a wave of pity rush over him. He knew how strongly he felt about Savannah, a yearning that had only intensified after they’d had sex. He couldn’t imagine growing to love and trust and bond with a mate, then losing them. He understood why it had tipped Roy over into madness.
Still, he was here to do a job, and he’d do it.
“Sorry, old man,” he said.
Roy’s eyes snapped open, and he leaped gracefully to his feet. He shifted into human form in seconds, so fast that the air around him seemed to blur.
Son of a bitch. He’d been faking to get Austin closer. Those tranquilizer darts hadn’t even slowed him down.
“Sorry?” Roy said, with way more self-control than Austin would have given him credit for. “Why are you sorry? Because you fucked up and now you’re going to die?”
Austin gathered all his strength, determined to take the bastard down with him.
And then it hit him – the darkness.
No! Not now, not now!
The vision swept over him, and he sank to his knees. All around him, he could see flames. Savannah was on fire, surrounded by darkness. Staggering. Screaming. Smoke swirling up from her hair.
He could smell the stench of her burning flesh, and it was driving him mad.
Desperately, he pushed back against it, as if Savannah were really burning, and erasing the vision would save her.
Panic and rage roared through him as he flailed through pitch blackness. Savannah disappeared into the ball of flames, but her wails grew louder and louder, calling to him, pleading.
He pushed harder.
Lloyd, his dead father, appeared, running towards Savannah with a knife in his hand. Jessica, his mother, stood next to him. She had an enormous martini glass in her hand. So big that it took two hands to hold it, and she was chugging from the glass. Horns swirled up out of her head, and her eyes turned bright red.
An enormous paw hit him in the head, and he felt agony as claws raked down the side of his skull. Real, nightmare, he couldn’t tell.
He fell to the ground. Then he heard a shout of rage. It sounded like Savannah. “Get the hell away from him, motherfucker!”
He tumbled into the darkness, gratefully letting it fold around him and swallow him whole.
Chapter Nine
“Austin? Austin?” A voice was calling him from far away.
Then ice-cold water splashed over his face. Austin leapt to his feet with a snarl, claws curving out of his fingertips. He shook his head, trying to clear his blurry vision, and the forest swam into focus around him.
“Whoa there, cowboy!” Savannah cried, standing back and holding her hands up defensively. She dropped the empty water bottle she was holding. It clattered on the rocky ground next to Roy, who was lying crumpled on his side.
There was a rifle slung over her shoulder, and a wary look on her face.
“How long was I out?” he groaned.
“Maybe ten minutes. You all right?”
“My head feels like a herd of elephants ran over it, but other than that, can’t complain.” He winced, looking down at Roy. Drool leaked from Roy’s mouth, and he was completely still, face slack. The gentle rise and fall of his chest was the only clue that he was still alive. “How did you knock him out?
“I shot him with a tranq.” She walked over to Roy and nudged him with her foot. “Actually, I shot him with two tranqs. And these are extra strength and double the size of what I normally use. That would’ve killed any shifter I know.”
Austin looked at her in confusion. “I thought tranqs didn’t work on him. I shot him with four tranqs, and it didn’t work at all.”
“And I thought you weren’t going to use them! You said so yourself! They were just decoy tranks, you idiot! I left them where they’d be easy for you to find, just in case. I have a backup plan for everything. And then I have a backup plan for that backup plan.”
“You sent me with fake tranqs?” Austin said furiously. He touched the claw marks on the side of his head; they were sticky with drying blood. “He nearly ripped my head off!”
“Excuse me?” Her eyes flashed with anger. “Nobody made you take them! You stole them from me and left me handcuffed to a bed in a hotel room, and you planned to leave me there for eight hours. And you trashed my car.”
Austin glowered at her. She was right, he just felt sour about having her outwit him, yet again. “All’s fair in love and war.”
“Awww, you looove me,” she crooned at him. “Has anyone ever told you you’re cute when you’re mad?”
His anger receded, and he stifled a laugh. “Okay. Okay. This round goes to Savannah Orman. How long will that tranquilizer last?”
She flicked a glance at the unconscious shifter. “I wish I knew. He’s like nothing I’ve ever come across. Are you asking because you think you’re going to steal him from me and take him in yourself?” Her tone turned sharp as she looked at him suspiciously.
“Something like that,” he admitted. “But I’ll give you a huge chunk of the reward money. Come on, Savannah, you know me. You know I’m good for it.”
She strolled up to him, and he felt his heart do the familiar thuddy thing that happened every time she was close. And every time he thought about her.
“I really, desperately need the money.” Her gaze bored into him. “It’s not that I don’t take your word for it, I just can’t hang my family’s future on a promise. Not only that, but frankly, after what I just saw, I know you can’t bring him in by yourself. I propose a truce. We take him, together, back to the pack, and we split the bounty.”
“Split it?” Anthony hurried from behind a boulder. “Wait, does that come out of my portion?”
Austin groaned. “Oh, great. You brought him?”
“Technically, he followed me to the motel and asked to tag along.”
“Why didn’t you just say no?” Austin squinted at the skinny, freckled fox shifter. Anthony gave him a wounded look. “He’ll just get in the way.”
Savannah shot him a sidelong look. “Because I can’t do this on my own either, but I’m not so stupid and stubborn that I refuse help when I need it.”“
“It’s not me being stupid and stubborn. I have an agreement that says I have to deliver him on my own,” Austin told her. “And if I welsh on the agreement, then my closest friends are going to pay the price. I’ve got to at least try.”
“Trying’s not good enough, Austin!” she snapped, looking frustrated. “I have a proposition. I travel with you until we reach the general area of the Washborn Pack. We take turns sleeping and keeping him tranqed. That’s the only way we’re going to make it. You can’t do this on your own. When we get close, Anthony and I get out of the truck. I let you take him in on your own, and I take your word for it that you will give me half of the bounty. And I don’t need to tell you what would happen if you screwed me out of my half of the bounty.”
Austin snorted. “Yeah, yeah, the same thing your mother threatened me with if I break your heart. Every fox in the country will come after me.”
“Oh God, she said that?” Savannah looked horrified. “I am really sorry about that. I wouldn’t let her do that. Whatever is between you and me, is between you and me.” Then she hugged herself, and her expression softened. “I know you wouldn’t try to run off with the bounty. I’m just really stressed out about the whole loan thing. I’m sorry. You’re a lot of things, but you’re not a thief.”
What kind of things am I? Austin wanted to ask. An incredible lover? Completely irresistible? Those were some answers he’d definitely accept.
“What is between you and him?” Anthony asked, suddenly looking way too interested. “I’m a young man and I never had anyone teach me about the birds and the bees.”
Austin stalked over and cuffed Anthony on the side of the head, wrenching a pained yelp and a reproachful glower from him. “As far as you are concerned, Savannah is a nun, and you do not think about her in that way, ever. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal.” Anthony scowled. “Geez, I guess I’ll just die without ever getting a date.”
“Works for me,” Austin said briskly. “Okay, let’s start hauling him back to the car while he’s still out.”
Austin grabbed Roy by the feet and started dragging him downhill as fast as he could.
“He faked it before when I shot him with the darts, to get me close to him,” he grunted. “We’re going to need to keep a really close eye on him this time, to see when he starts waking up again.”
Savannah trotted along next to him.
“Do you want me to help?”
“Nah, I got this.” Austin glanced up at her and winked. “I want to impress you with my macho manliness.”
She laughed, and it made his heart sing. He loved it when she laughed. He loved it when he made her laugh. It was like a little gift she wrapped up just for him.
“Well, color me impressed, big boy. Very impressed. Also very angry about the fact that you handcuffed me, but we’ll deal with that later.” She nimbly leaped over a falling branch, and he admired the bounce of her full breasts, smiling as he remembered how sensitive they were.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing at all.”
Anthony was trotting along with them, panting for breath. He was nowhere near as graceful as Savannah in navigating the treacherous downward slope. “I’m taking notes!” he sang out.
“Well, stop it!” Savannah snapped at him. “You’re creeping me out.”
“I thought you loved me like an annoying cousin,” he protested.
Savannah punched his shoulder, hard. “I think I said incredibly annoying cousin, just to be clear. And I’d say the same thing if you were my cousin. You little weirdo.”
“Savannah said she loooves me,” Anthony sang, then promptly tripped when a loose rock flipped up under his weight, and Austin laughed out loud and didn’t offer to help him up.
When they made it down to the bottom of the mountain, Austin pulled the hard cover off the bed of his pickup truck, reached in, and yanked out a bag full of chains. He had restraints of every kind. He put several pairs of maximum strength, reinforced handcuffs on Roy’s wrists and ankles, along with thick steel chains wrapped around his entire body. He wrapped Roy up like a mummy with chains instead of bandages, then tossed him into the back seat.
He looked down at Roy, who was still unconscious, thankfully. It had been about half an hour now since he’d been tranqed, he estimated. He glanced at his watch. He’d have to time him, see how long the sedatives lasted.
“You watch him and keep that rifle pointed right at him,” he told Savannah. “The minute he wakes up, we’ll know how long the tranqs last. It should be at least a few hours
per round, if he reacts anything like a normal shifter does when he’s sedated.”
“We can hope,” she said doubtfully. “I brought several dozen darts with me, and I’m going to be honest with you, I can’t promise they’ll last us for two full days.”
“Is there any possibility that you could get your mother to bring us more?” Austin winced at the idea, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
“Aside from the fact that she’d never agree to letting me do this, no. We don’t usually bother to grow a big batch of the stuff, because we don’t need that much. We have another crop that’s about halfway ready, but it’s not full strength yet. We’re on our own here.”
Savannah climbed in next to Roy in the back seat, and Austin shot her an uneasy glance. Normally, he knew, Savannah was more than capable of taking care of herself, but he’d just seen what Roy could do. He didn’t want his mate – that is, he didn’t want Savannah – anywhere near that crazy bastard. But they didn’t have much choice.
He climbed into the front seat. “If he even twitches, holler.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
Anthony got in the front seat with Austin and promptly feel asleep, letting out low snores that fluttered his lips.
Austin pulled out onto the main road, then made his way down a long, skinny back road, then crossed private property owned by a shifter pack, until they reached Rural Route 7. All the access routes to the road were through private, shifter-owned property.
Scowling, he tried to concentrate on the bumpy, pot-holed road, instead of on the fact that he’d just called Savannah his mate – in his head, at least.
She wasn’t his mate. She couldn’t be his mate. He wouldn’t do that to her. For God’s sake, what if his madness was hereditary? What if he survived long enough to get her with kit, or with cub, and then he went crazy and left her to raise a cub that was cursed to go mad?
And when had his thinking progressed from “Damn, she is one fine piece of fox flesh, I’d like to lick her from head to toe” to thinking about putting his claiming mark on her?
The Billion-Were's Foxy Forever Page 10
