Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed

by Madelaine Montague

  He released the man he’d been mauling abruptly and called to his men. It took a few well placed bites and kicks to convince them to break off the fight and retreat, but he finally managed to get them headed back the way they’d come. He discovered as they raced back across the battlefield that the other groups had also begun to leave the field. Spying a fairly dense forest in the distance, he headed for the cover it represented. They could catch their breaths there and assess the situation.

  And maybe they could figure out how the fuck they’d jumped off of a drop ship toward a frozen planet half way across the universe from home and landed on earth?

  Chapter Two

  Laurie had felt almost like she’d stepped into an episode of Twilight Zone from the time she’d set out that morning for Atlanta. Actually, before that—from the time she’d witnessed the murder, her life had taken on the quality of a nightmare, ceased to seem entirely real. That sense deepened when she discovered that she’d been forced by the traffic flow into a lane that was about to exit the freeway and she couldn’t get over.

  Telling herself she’d just get right back up on the freeway and stay on it until she found the right exit, she gripped the steering wheel more tightly, gritted her teeth, and followed the off ramp since she didn’t have a choice. Dismay and disbelief filled her when she reached the bottom, however. The ramp ended at a one way street. She gazed forlornly at the on ramp on the other side and looked up and down the street she had to turn onto for any sign of a crossing, but, as luck would have it, she’d ended up on the ‘bad’ side of town, dusk had already given way to night, and it was poorly lit. She didn’t see a crossing.

  She jerked the car forward when the bastard behind her blew his horn. It was like being goosed in the ass and she’d jumped instinctively. It rattled her even more when she narrowly missed side-swiping another car. By the time she’d recovered her wits a little, she discovered she was on top of the crossing she’d been hoping to find and still in the wrong lane.

  Anger flickered through her when she missed it, but she tried to calm herself. There would be another one soon. She’d just get over into the correct lane and be ready.

  She’d no sooner moved over than she saw a turn coming. Hopefulness soared through her. Unfortunately, the ‘must turn’ sign was followed by a ‘no u-turn’.

  “My god! It’s a conspiracy!” Laurie muttered when she found herself following a narrow two lane into no man’s land. The road connected, eventually, with another wide thoroughfare but by the time she reached it Laurie was so turned around she had no idea which way to turn to reach the freeway. Naturally, she chose the wrong one. She’d driven down several blocks before she realized there was no sign of the freeway.

  Two choices and she’d picked the wrong one! Trying to beat back a rising sense of panic, she looked for a place to turn around and head back in the other direction. She began to feel better almost immediately. She hadn’t traveled more than a couple of blocks before she could see the freeway ahead. Relief seeped through her—until she got close enough to see that there was no onramp onto the damned freeway!

  Struggling with a growing sense of panic, she pulled off at the next entrance to a business. It was closed down, not just closed, which was a severe disappointment, but she needed a moment to collect herself and assess her situation, she told herself. It would’ve been nice to have someone she could ask directions from, but a few minutes to calm herself and think might do the trick anyway.

  There was foot traffic along either side of the road, she noticed, automatically checking her door locks. It occurred to her, briefly, that they lived here and might be able to help, but she decided it was just too risky to stop a stranger on the street after dark.

  Her gas was low, she noticed with a fresh wave of dismay, trying to remember if she’d seen any place since she got off the freeway that sold gas. She couldn’t, but then she’d been focused on finding a way onto the freeway again. She might have passed a gas station.

  She needed to try to find her way back to the off ramp where she got off, she decided. Hopefully, she’d see a gas station along the way, but if she could get back on the freeway, she didn’t think that would be an issue. She should have plenty of gas to get to the hotel she’d planned to stay at and she could get directions from the hotel to the DA’s office for her deposition the next morning.

  She’d chosen a hotel as close to that area as she could so that she wouldn’t get lost the following morning or have to spend a lot of time driving in the morning traffic.

  Good plan! She was almost sorry, now, that she hadn’t simply turned off and gotten a room at one of the hotels on the way into town.

  Dismissing it, she pulled to the edge of the road again and waited for a break in traffic so that she could cross and head back in the direction she’d come from, trying to think of some landmark that would help her identify the first turn. She waited, and she waited. Any time there was a break in one direction, there was traffic in the other. Finally, she made a right and began looking for a break to cross and turn around. By the time she’d found an opportunity, she’d driven so far she was completely lost again.

  The combination of being in an unfamiliar city, the darkness that made visibility poor, nerves, and the confusing layout of the streets together were enough to get anyone lost, she thought with a mixture of fear and anger, turning onto another street and spotting the landmark she’d been looking for in the middle of the turn.

  ‘Don’t panic!’ had become a litany in her head and she wasn’t sure the internal pep talk was doing her any good at all. She knew it wasn’t when she managed to get the car turned around to head back to the street she’d turned off of. Just as she stopped at the next traffic signal, the car died.

  “Oh my god!” she muttered, glancing frantically at the gauges to see what had happened. The gas level indicator had hardly moved. She didn’t think that could possibly be the problem but of everything it might’ve been, that would’ve been the easiest to ‘fix’ and she would’ve felt worlds better knowing she only had to find gasoline. There were several red lights on, but she didn’t know if they meant anything besides the car being dead. She hadn’t even managed to get the damned thing out of the road!

  Not that there seemed to be much traffic on that particular road, but that was hardly reassuring under the circumstances!

  After glancing around uneasily and seeing there was no ‘safe’ looking place to go for help or even anybody that she might ask for help, she put the flashers on and grabbed her purse, emptying it in the seat beside her. Her hand was shaking when she grabbed her cell phone, but relief flooded her, too.

  It was premature. She saw as soon as she flipped the phone open that it was dead.

  Resisting the urge to beat the thing to pieces and pitch it out the window, she tossed it back into her purse and began grabbing the other items she’d dumped out and shoving them in behind it, trying to decide what to do.

  She’d just shoved the last of the items into her purse when she heard a sound that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

  Motorcycles.

  With visions of scarred, pock-marked, crazed drug addicts dancing in her head, she straightened slowly and peered around. The headlights on the bikes behind her caught her attention at once. She stared at them in horror as they seemed to drive right up to her bumper and finally rolled her window down just enough to stick her hand out and motion for them to go around.

  Instead, she heard the engines of the motorcycles die.

  “Oh god!” Grabbing the window knob, she rolled the window back up and checked her door locks again. When she turned around from checking the passenger door, there was a man’s face in her window.

  She screamed. Actually, she sucked in a sharp breath that bordered a scream and choked on her saliva.

  The man motioned for her to put the window down.

  She stared at him owl eyed. Blinking after a moment, she glanced toward the bikes behind her car and s
aw that several more men had climbed off of them—four altogether—she thought.

  When she met the gaze of the man at her window again, she thought he looked disgusted more than angry. She couldn’t tell much about him beyond the fact that he was a lot bigger and scarier looking than she liked.

  “Pop the hood!”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He moved around to the front of the car. As he did, his companions followed him and she got a good look at the logo on their black leather jackets—Hell Hounds.

  She was certain it was the confusion of sheer terror, but they looked about seven feet tall and about four feet across the shoulders—except for the blond—who looked about seven and a half feet tall and about three feet across the shoulders.

  She discovered when the men had congregated at the front of her car that the man who’d almost literally scared the piss out of her was leaning on the hood, peering at her through the windshield. It was the look he gave her that inspired her to reach down and jerk the lever that released the hood lock, not the result of any decision made to trust them. She hadn’t in fact had one thought cross her mind from the time she’d spotted the first one at her car window beyond-–big and scary.

  The man beside him—who looked amazingly similar both in height, build, and even his facial features, unzipped his leather jacket and peeled it off as the first one searched the underside of the hood for the release, revealing a ‘wife beater’ t-shirt that was molded to an upper torso and huge arms that clearly belonged to a bodybuilder.

  She only caught a flash of an image of the ‘god’ before the first man shoved the hood up, blocking her view. Scooting down in the seat, she peered at the men illuminated by the light under her hood. About all she could see was four jean clad crotches but it was a hell of a view. Unless it was a trick of light and shadows or the jeans themselves, they were sporting some impressive packages.

  She straightened abruptly when one of the men straightened and looked at her.

  “Turn it off!”

  She gaped at him. “It isn’t on! The engine died.”

  “The battery will be dead, too, if you don’t switch it off.”

  “Oh,” she muttered, turning the key. She was tempted to try starting it again when it occurred to her that she’d been too panicked to try, but she could see that they were examining the hoses and belts with their hands.

  It still took an effort to move her hand away from the key and sit back. She glanced around again when she had, searching for threats and the possibility of salvation. A battalion of cops would’ve been nice to see right about that time, she thought unhappily. The only people she saw looked more disreputable than the bikers.

  Not that they actually did now that she’d had the chance to get a little better look at them—look disreputable—except for the tattoos and the motorcycles and the leather. All four looked clean—sort of clean shaven, as if they’d at least shaved that morning. Their hair wasn’t stringy and dirty and it seemed to her that they looked way too healthy for people that did drugs.

  Almost as soon as they’d settled to examining her engine, all of them had stripped off the leather jackets to reveal t-shirts stretched over bodies sculpted like she hadn’t seen outside of a gym—or a movie screen. Between the t-shirts and the snug fitting jeans she was having a very hard time focusing on the ‘life threatening’ part of the situation.

  A car pulled up behind the bikes and one of the men—one of the dark haired ones—stepped away from her car to look at it and signal the driver to go around. Highlighted in the car’s headlights, she had the chance to get her first really good look at him and decided she had to add ‘not at all hard on the eyes’ to her assessment. He wasn’t one of the pair that she’d decided must be brothers, at least, if not twins.

  She was focused on watching the play of muscles in his arms and chest while he directed traffic that she nearly jumped out of her skin when someone tapped on the passenger window. When she’d managed to collect herself, she discovered it was the same man who’d been at the driver’s window before.

  “How long since you changed the oil in this thing?”

  She felt her jaw slacken. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  His lips tightened. “I think we found your problem. The engine overheated because it ran out of oil.”

  “Oil?” she echoed. “It’s out of oil? I put oil in just before I left home!”

  “It’s burning oil, then?”

  Laurie chewed her lip. Apparently, he decided that was a yes. He shook his head at her. “Put it out of gear. We’re going to push it out of the road. You’ll have to get a mechanic to have a look at it.”

  He was gone before she could object or even fully digest what he was saying.

  She was stranded?

  The blond slammed the hood down and then struck the hood to get her attention. “We’re going to push you in there,” he said, pointing to a driveway ahead of her, on the other side of the traffic light.

  She didn’t want to be pushed into a dark parking lot!

  She discovered she didn’t have any options, however. She put the car in neutral as instructed, but once the men got behind and began to push the car, she tried the key in a desperate bid for freedom and discovered the starter wouldn’t do anything but churn. She gave up after the second attempt when she realized they were going to shove her into the curb if she didn’t focus on guiding the car.

  They pushed the car into the turn and then, when she’d straightened the wheels, gave it a push toward a parking space. Laurie guided it into the space, but her mind was searching frantically for a solution to her very big problem.

  Maybe one of them had a cell phone, she thought with an abrupt surge of hope?

  The big, scary man appeared at her window and tapped on it with his knuckles, making her jump again. She discovered when she whipped her head around to look, however, that she had a view of his hard belly and two very large, hands coated with black grease. He wiped his hands on his jeans and twisted, pulling a wallet from his back jeans pocket.

  Wondering if he was going to solicit—or offer to give her money to help her out—she stared at the wallet as he opened it and pressed the ID to her window.

  “Here’s my ID, ma’am. Can you read it?” he asked, leaning down to look at her through the window.

  Disconcerted when he addressed her as ‘ma’am’, Laurie looked at the ID again. According to the ID, his name was Lucien Terrell. It looked like a government ID of some kind. “You’re a cop?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Not exactly, Ms. Stone. We’re in … security, you might say. My pack … team and I are private contractors but we work for the government—In this case the DA hired us to check out a rumor and provide protection if needed for a witness—you.”

  Laurie missed pretty much everything after he called her by name. “Wait! Wait! Run that by me again?”

  “The DA ….”

  “The state DA?”

  “Yes, ma’am. If you’ll just come with us, we’ll get you to your hotel and get you settled in.”

  Anger surged through Laurie, chasing most of her lingering fear. “You’re trying to tell me the DA sent you to collect me?”

  “Not exactly, ma’am.”

  “If you ma’am me one more time …! You scared the living hell out of me! And now you’re saying ….” She stopped abruptly, feeling a chill creep through her. “Exactly how did you manage to stumble on me when I broke down?”

  Amusement flickered in his eyes but a spark of anger, as well. “Like I said … Peoples sent us to check out a rumor and keep an eye on you. We escorted you here … in a manner of speaking. If you’ll get out, we’ll take you to your hotel and answer any other questions you might have. I left my bike standing in the street,” he reminded her.

  Laurie was a long way from convinced. She didn’t see that she had a lot of palatable options, though. She could hope the ID he’d shown her was real and take her chances with them, or she could take her
chances with the strangers in the area … and they looked a lot more disreputable than the bikers.

  Besides, it occurred to her that there was nothing standing between them but a pathetic piece of window glass. If he’d meant to do anything, wouldn’t he have attacked already?

  Still deeply distrustful and on edge, Laurie unlocked the door. He opened it for her and she stepped out. “You have a bag in the trunk?”

  “Uh … I brought a couple. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be here.”

  “You want to pop the trunk?”

  Not really. Not that she had anything to be embarrassed about!

  When she didn’t move, he leaned into the car, found the latch, and pulled it himself. Unfortunately for Laurie’s already battered equilibrium, he had to rub all over her to do it because she was still standing in the door—and it was a rub, not a light brush. She was pretty sure she felt every hard, bulging muscle in his chest graze her hers hard enough she knew he had nipple rings, not just tattoos.

  She looked down to confirm it when he straightened and noticed his package looked a good bit bigger than it had before. She sent a startled look in the direction of his face, but he’d already turned away. She noticed he was scowling. She also noticed the surreptitious adjustment he made just before he rounded the end of the car.

  Abruptly remembering she’d packed everything she thought she might need for at least a week, she darted toward the trunk when Lucien lifted the lid. He sent her a look. “I see you brought everything.”

  Resentment flickered through her. “I didn’t know how long I might be here and I didn’t want to have to go shopping if I’d left something!” she said irritably. “Or do without. I was just going to say I can make do with the small one for tonight.”

  “Your car might not be here in the morning,” he said dryly. “If there’s anything in here you want, you’d better get it now.” He lifted his head and looked over hers. “Damien! Kane! Basil! We’re going to need some help here.”

  Laurie had already reached for the small bag when he lifted it from the trunk. The bottles and cans inside clanked together when he did and he sent her another look, which she decided to ignore. As if it was his business if she liked to bring all the stuff she needed to make her coffee so she didn’t have to go out in the morning before she’d had it! And it cost twice as much to get stuff out of the vending machines as it did at the convenience store! Which was saying something when everything cost nearly twice as much at the convenience store as it did the grocery store!