Captive Moon

by C. T. Adams

  Antoine lowered his head and felt small hairs rising on the back of his neck. “What are you talking about, Ahmad? Just say it and be done with it. I have nothing to hide.”

  All emotion dropped from the snake’s face until it was a cold, unreadable mask. “You think not? Very well. Did you or did you not have direct orders to hold Tahira a prisoner in this house until further instructed, and deny her family entry if they arrived?”

  “What?!” Tahira’s voice was filled with such hurt and anger that he couldn’t look at her immediately. But he could feel her eyes bearing down on him and her scent was a wall of emotion that pressed against him with the weight of the ocean. Instead, he kept his attention focused on Ahmad. The slow smile that came to his face unnerved the cobra.

  He flicked his eyes toward Tahira, who was waiting for a response with pained disbelief on her face. “Ahmad is absolutely correct. Those were my orders.”

  She reached out fast and hard, but he caught her hand before she could complete a slap across his face. “I can’t believe…I trusted you! You…bastard! If one of your precious people hadn’t been captured, would you have—”

  Antoine growled low in his chest and glared daggers at Ahmad’s smug expression. “Tahira, I haven’t lied to you. You can smell it. What I was trying to say is that I was instructed to hold you captive, and have been disobeying those orders—at great personal risk to myself, I might add.” He loosened his grip on her hand and locked his gaze with her flashing eyes. “Please believe me when I say that I don’t believe all orders are meant to be followed. Sometimes, you have to trust your instincts.”

  Tahira’s back straightened and she got an odd expression on her face. The confusion in her scent was being replaced with something completely different. It was a combination of odors that made Ahmad hiss low. He couldn’t help but smile.

  Tahira had just opened her mouth to reply, when the doors burst open at that moment, and Ahmad’s two guards came rushing in. One of them was still wearing his winter jacket and gloves.

  Ahmad stood in a flash. “What has happened?”

  The tall, thin guard whom Antoine knew as Hakeem sneered. “Nothing has happened…yet, my lord.” With lightning speed, the other guard, Bahir, threw his arm toward Ahmad and the cobra immediately froze with a startled expression. He slumped to the floor with glazed eyes. While Antoine was watching a trio of darts that reeked of some horrid, bitter scent hit Ahmad’s leg, Hakeem threw himself forward toward Antoine. He turned and moved, but looking at Ahmad had cost him precious seconds. A metallic rattle filled the air and then searing burns on his arms, neck, and chest tore a roar of pain from his throat as shiny chains were wrapped around his body and locked together with a padlock. Now he understood the reason for the gloves. The chains were silver and were burning his skin wherever it wasn’t covered by clothing.

  Bahir kicked Antoine in the face, causing pain to blossom in his mind and the rich copper scent of blood to fill the air. A nearly deafening cougar snarl was cut short when a second kick caught him in the stomach. As he wrestled against massive links as big around as his thumb, the pair raced to grab Tahira. But she didn’t plan to be taken that easily. She jumped over the table with blinding speed and ran to the center of the room where there was more space to fight. Babette moved to her side protectively and roared loud and long.

  Matty was also moving. He picked up the kylie and boomerang he’d carved, along with a spray can of some sort, and held them up threateningly. He might be human, but he had been raised with snakes. He knew their tricks.

  With both Ahmad and Antoine out of the way, the two traitors felt no need to hurry, and apparently didn’t have a high opinion of either Tahira or Matty. They did shy away from Babette, moving so that there was furniture between them and her. It gave Antoine an idea.

  He stopped struggling against the chains and concentrated for a moment. It took agonizing seconds to ignore the skin that was crisping under the silver. He just had time to scream, “This is going to hurt, Tahira!” before he threw a blast of power that shot across the room and hit her in the chest. The effort left him heaving for breath and caused the chains to dig in deeper.

  Luckily, Tahira remembered him saying the same thing in the van when the police were behind them and leapt backward behind Babette just before she dropped to the floor with a scream. Babette had seen people shifting form too many times to be startled by it, but Antoine reached outward again, felt for her mind, and pressed the impressions of protect and fight with images of her cubs, Tahira, and Matty. She flicked her emerald eyes to him, and then to the cubs, huddled together in the corner. She snarled once and then roared again. With a powerful leap, she vaulted the furniture and grabbed Hakeem by the arm while her extended claws raked down his chest with a thick, wet sound. The air was filled with his screaming.

  Ahmad always surrounded himself with lesser alphas, but they could still shift form at will. Bahir changed to a snake in a burst. He opened his mouth with fangs extended, intending to inject deadly venom in Babette’s neck, but a whooshing sound was followed by a hard crack and he was suddenly flailing on the floor.

  It took Antoine a moment to recognize the chunk of wood that clattered to the floor in front of the fireplace. Matty had actually used his kylie to take down an opponent! Both Tahira and Matty pressed the small advantage as Hakeem continued wrestling with Babette. Tahira pounced on the snake and bit down again and again as he hissed and desperately tried to sink his fangs through her thick mane.

  Matty yelled for Tahira to hold Bahir still, and she pulled backward and wedged the cobra’s body between the couch and table. The snake hissed and spit a long string of venom, which Matty barely avoided, but while the mouth was open, he sprayed a long stream of product from the can. The cobra gagged and shuddered and began to twitch.

  “Wasp spray, mate!” Matty said to Antoine as he quickly backed up. “My cousins hated the stuff when my mum doused them for biting me.”

  Antoine didn’t have time to warn Matty before Hakeem broke free Babette’s grasp with a wash of blood and flesh. He did have enough time to throw a shield of magic up so that when Hakeem hit Matty hard on the back of the head, Matty went down in a heap but would survive. Hakeem raced forward and picked Babette up from the floor and threw her against the bookshelves hard enough for the entire wall to shudder. Antoine protected her, too, by softening the blow with a cushion of energy. Books rained down on her and the cubs as she shook her head and tried to right herself. But Hakeem had grabbed another two darts from a pocket and was coming up behind Tahira. Antoine was quickly growing tired, but he had to warn her.

  “He’s got darts!” Antoine shouted, and she moved in a blur. He struggled harder and harder, ignoring the blinding pain and scent of charred flesh as the chains cut through his clothing and skin. He began to feel the metal stretch, and he let out a roar of frustration and anger.

  But Hakeem was expecting Tahira to move as she did, and managed to sink both of the darts into her side as she passed by.

  “Antoine!” she screamed as she hit the floor, and then she was limp.

  Bahir slithered over to Antoine and extended his hood with glittering eyes. “I ssshould kill you now, but time is sssshort.” Antoine glared at the snake but didn’t move. He wouldn’t show fear, even as Bahir sunk fangs into his thigh repeatedly. But as the snake turned into a man once more, he threw a blast of power that caught Babette in the chest and toppled her again.

  As he had seen in his vision, Antoine could only watch helplessly as the two men dragged Tahira from the room. He didn’t dare continue to force power into her to keep her in form while unconscious. It might start a power drain that he wouldn’t be able to stop, and he needed every bit of energy he had. He could feel the men nearly drop her still form as she changed back to human, but then they continued on into the snowy night.

  While they were still connected, Antoine steeled his will and flung the door open in his mind. He tried to connect a vision with her, but
all he could see was a wall of rock and a creek that flowed out of it. Then a horrible pressure on his chest made him nearly pass out before air filled his lungs again. Torches burned in a massive cave that felt somehow familiar, but he’d never seen it before. There were whispers in the darkness that grew into chants in a language he’d never heard before. A guard walking by suddenly became alert and peered into the shadows where he stood, searching for a threat. Then he shuddered and backed away, moving closer to the orange circle of light on the floor.

  “Hang on, mate!” Matty’s voice seemed to come from a great distance. But to his great surprise, he opened his eyes and found his friend holding a pair of bolt cutters to snap the chain, the vision didn’t disappear. It became superimposed over the reality of the library. He could still smell the pungent trickle of fear and pain from the torchlit chamber, and see figures moving in shadows no matter where he turned his head.

  Babette was lying against his side and nuzzling his cheek, chuffing nervously. As Matty unwound the long length of chain from his body, he winced at what he saw. Antoine couldn’t disagree with the reaction. As the metal pulled away from him, the outer layer of skin, still black and smoking, went with it. The raw, bloody stripes that crisscrossed his body were painful, but he’d endured worse. He sat up to make it easier for his friend to remove the chain, and once his arms were free, he helped the process along.

  It was disconcerting to have his brain try to process the scents from the dank, smoky cave in the warm, brightly lit room, but after some concentrating, he could determine which scents and sounds were from which location, if only by distance. But it was the least of his worries at the moment.

  As soon as the last of the chains fell onto the floor, he was up and racing over to where Ahmad lay. Whatever the drugs were, they hadn’t killed him, but he was having a hard time metabolizing them. Antoine pulled the darts from Ahmad’s thigh. Ahmad’s powerful muscles went from being still and cool to twitching wildly enough that Antoine had to hold his arm on the floor to keep him from hurting himself.

  “Can you follow my finger?” he asked and slowly moved it from side to side past the dark eyes. “Do you have any idea what was in the darts?”

  Ahmad tracked the finger adequately, but with his dark irises, it was difficult to tell if his pupils were dilated. He was able to move his jaw enough to hoarsely whisper the word “venom.”

  While it was no surprise, it was a worry. Without a healer, it would take Ahmad days to recover—unless…

  He slowly rose to his feet, wincing as the burned tissue stretched and the cobra venom in his leg stung with force. But if he was lucky, Fiona had more than one specialty Wolven drug in her bag of tricks. He just had to find it upstairs.

  But before he could get to the door, Matty was in front of him. “Whoa, whoa, mate! You’re stark raving mad if you think I’m going to let you move around until those burns heal. Now you sit your arse right back down. You’re in worse shape than either Ahmad or Babette, and in no condition to—”

  He placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, seeing it through the image of rock and fire. The image of the cave was unmoving. Nobody was in sight and only the flickering torches and scent of fear and pain made him realize it was really happening in some other place. Bits of black skin were slowly giving way to puckered, brilliant pink new skin on the thin flesh of his wrist, but he knew that the chest and arm wounds would be there for days. They might even wind up scarring, as weak as he’d made himself from throwing power around. “Matty, I’m fine. But there might be a drug upstairs that will speed up Ahmad’s healing. I have to check. Fiona would have hidden it, so I’ll have to go by smell. It wouldn’t do you any good to go in my place. Just keep an eye on Ahmad and yell for me if he gets any worse.”

  Matty growled, sounding very much like the animals he tended. His worry, fear, and anger were nearly glowing in the air around him. “Yeah, right. Antoine, that is so patently untrue that I’m not going to even bother to comment. If you’re not back in five minutes, I’m coming up to get you.”

  Antoine let out a short snort of air. “If I’m not back in five, you’ll need to. I’ll poke my head in Margo’s room, too. I’m hoping she’s all right. I worry that she didn’t come down during the battle. It was violent enough to shake the walls. Did you shut her door?”

  Matty frowned, and his worried scent increased. “No, I didn’t. I wanted to be able to hear if she called out. Yeah, dead-set sure—you’d better check on her. I can’t imagine that those blokes would consider her a threat, but considering the things they did for laughs around here—I nearly felt sorry for the mice, and I hate squeakers.”

  Antoine walked out to the entry way and looked up the staircase. It hadn’t seemed nearly so far up earlier, but he’d had both legs working properly. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The vision overlay wasn’t too bad until he looked down. That was a little too much for his equilibrium to handle, and the dizziness wasn’t worth dealing with.

  At the top of the stairs, he debated whether to check on Margo first or to search for the drug. Friendship won out and he walked nervously down the hall to where the massive oak door was standing wide open. “Margo?” he called out lightly, not completely hiding his own fear. She’d been his assistant for nearly ten years, and a good friend besides. There was no answer.

  He poked his head inside the door, fearing the worst. But she was on the bed, under the comforter, and she was most definitely alive. The wave of relief quickly passed as the cave started to flow with activity. Tahira was being carried in by four men, one holding each limb. She kicked and flailed viciously, and the scent from the men was frustration and barely contained fury. She very nearly managed to get away after a few well-timed blows, but then froze so quickly and completely that he knew someone was holding her with magic. The men let go as she glided through the air to disappear inside the chamber entrance. No matter how hard he pushed forward in the vision, he couldn’t seem to follow inside.

  It’s time to end this.

  Antoine walked over to the bed and sniffed Margo’s face and breath. Her sweat smelled very similar to the bitter venom that had hit Ahmad. Her breathing was shallow, but her heartbeat was steady. Considering it had been nearly an hour since the original attack, her condition was probably as bad as it was going to get. He quickly smelled around until he found the bite mark. It was on her shoulder, under her shirt. Fortunately, the bite itself didn’t seem to be causing her any distress, so the venom must have some sort of paralysis agent without being toxic.

  To be safe, he let a bit of his magic flow into her and was pleased that her breathing became stronger and the sweating stopped. It was all he could afford to do for the time being. He wasn’t a healer and needed every bit of his power for what was to come.

  He sprinted down to Fiona’s room and started to search for his sister’s backup supply of chemicals. He knew she would keep some in the house because of the security normally present. He found himself wondering how Ahmad could have been blind to his own men being traitors. He was careful to the point of being paranoid, so the deception must have been long-standing. He pulled out drawer after drawer in the bureau, flipped the mattress off the bed, and opened wide every door in the place. But the kit was nowhere to be found. Could it be in a safe or in a different room?

  “No,” he said out loud to the empty room. “She’d keep it nearby. It has to be within reach of the bed.” The bed was the most inconvenient location in the room, the most indefensible, so that is where Fiona would want the most protection. He sat down on the edge of the empty bed frame and looked around more carefully. Fiona was amazingly fast for her size, but sleep would dull the senses if an attacker came at night.

  Ahmad was right. He did think more like an agent than an administrator. But that mind-set would be valuable to them both today. Fiona wouldn’t trust something as simplistic as taping it to the bottom of furniture. There wasn’t much in the room, anyway, and the decor was subject to change
by the owners.

  “So, that means—” he whispered, and turned to the stone walls. The reddish tan laced with white limestone deposits of the cave gave a strange, fuzzy hue to the gray stone in front of him. He carefully scanned the wall, searching for anything out of place. He found what he was looking for under the large framed print of wolves running under the moon that had been painted by Star, a famous artist and one of Charles’s daughters. One of the massive stone blocks was loose. It took some wiggling and two chipped nails before the stone slid out on tracks inside the wall, It was quite clever, really. He looked inside the hole and was surprised that it had obviously been built when the castle was. The stone had been hollowed out somewhat, and there was a black nylon case stuffed in the opening.

  He set the stone on the floor, being careful not to break off any edges, and opened the case. Inside, in carefully padded pockets, were a variety of small vials of viscous fluids. Each one was labeled with a different code—obviously ones she had developed to prevent theft. But he did know how his sister thought, so when he spotted two labels with RBT-01 and RBT-02, he knew he had found the right compounds.

  Next to the special cologne that Wolven chemist Robart Mbutu had developed, the chemical cocktail that was affectionately named Rabbet was the most widely used by the agents. While he didn’t know the exact ingredients, he did know the effect. He took a deep breath and pulled out the tight plastic stopper from the glass test tube and threw the contents down his throat, praying that none of it would land on his tongue. The taste was hideous. He quickly moved to lean against the wall, bracing one hand on the corner so he wouldn’t fall over.

  Antoine started to shake all over as the powerful Rabbet stimulants coursed through his body like an instant adrenaline high. He watched as his Sazi metabolism began to speed up until his fingers and eyes were twitching like a rabbit’s nose when frightened, and his chipped nails actually filled in and started to grow as he stared. Healing was intensified not by actually fixing the wounds, but by putting his Sazi body’s natural ability into hyperdrive, forcing along the already fast mending process. His breathing was so rapid it was as though he was absorbing air through his skin, and his heart was fluttering so fast that he could feel the blood vibrating in his veins.