Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed

by Madelaine Montague

  She certainly hadn’t recognized them!

  That thought brought home an unpalatable realization.

  She had recognized them. She just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that she did because she was terrified of the beasts they’d become—were, she supposed all along. She would’ve run, she realized, even if she had been absolutely, positively sure it was the guys when she’d run, because these were monsters, beasts, and there was no telling what they were capable of.

  She’d just thought they were scary when she’d thought they were part of a biker gang! This was way scarier!

  She was on her own.

  She was so fucked!

  Chapter Eleven

  Laurie’s scream brought the fight to a screeching halt as instantly as if someone had dashed icy cold water over the combatants. They froze, listening, as dismayed by the realization that the sound wasn’t coming from the bedroom, was in fact coming from a good distance away, as they were by the threat conveyed by the sound.

  When it wasn’t followed by another scream, terror galvanized them into motion. They broke apart and raced toward the door, jostling each other briefly in an effort to get through the opening at the same time and then spilled out onto the porch. Lifting their heads, they sniffed the air, listened.

  Laurie’s scent mingled with the scent of several others on the air—men—human men and the sweat of anxiety. The dull thuds of feet pounding against the earth were followed by the creak of a door. The men shot off the porch and down the driveway. They got to the curve just in time to see a car shoot backwards off the drive onto the main road and then speed off.

  “Get the tank!” Lucien bellowed, veering off the drive and cutting through the woods in a desperate bid to cut them off. Damien, he discovered after a few moments, was directly beside him. Fortunately, Kane and Basil were accustomed to actually following orders and since they’d vanished Lucien assumed they’d gone to retrieve the tank from where they’d hidden it.

  It wouldn’t do them any good if they lost sight of the kidnappers, however.

  Shut up in a car, Laurie’s scent was already fading fast and, with true desperation, Lucien poured on the speed.

  He managed to burst from the woods on the tail of the car that was carrying Laurie, unfortunately not closely enough to leap on it as he’d hoped, but close enough to choke on the dust and get a good look at the tag.

  That wasn’t going to be enough if they lost sight of the car, though. Laurie could be dead long before they managed to track the vehicle registration to the owner. And that was assuming they hadn’t altered the tag or stolen it or the vehicle.

  He and Damien immediately gave chase, but even in their beast form they were no match for a car. Someone fired several rounds at them from one of the windows and then the driver floored it and left them in the dust.

  Basil and Kane arrived in the tank before the dust had settled, screeched to a brief halt long enough for Lucien and Damien to dive in, and sped after the fleeing vehicle. They saw fairly quickly that the tank had an Achilles heel. It couldn’t match the other vehicle for speed. The best they could do was to try to keep it in sight and try to keep from being left completely behind.

  “That was really stupid,” Kane said after a tense half hour. “Now we’re going to lose Laurie.”

  “We aren’t going to fucking lose her. We’re going to stay on their tail.”

  “You think they spotted us?” Basil asked worriedly. “I mean I didn’t use the headlights, but it was pretty light when we got on the road. They could’ve seen the tank.”

  “As long as they’re running they don’t have the time to stop and kill her,” Damien muttered, more hopefully than factually. Because he knew they didn’t have to stop to kill her—just to dispose of the body, but he hoped like hell they were too focused on running to focus on her at the moment.

  “We’re still going to lose her,” Kane muttered. “She saw us. She knows we’re monsters now.”

  Lucien felt a little nauseated at the comment. He’d been trying not to think about that. “We’ll worry about that later,” he responded, “after we get her back.”

  “What I don’t get is how the fuck they managed to get the jump on us! Fuck!” Basil snarled, pounding on the steering wheel with his fist. “We combed the gods damned woods! For miles!”

  Lucien and Damien had both been worrying that over. “Something new? Something we aren’t familiar with? I don’t know. All I know is that they shouldn’t have been able to get close enough to grab her. We should’ve smelled them or heard them if we didn’t see them.”

  “Well, they didn’t have to get too damned close, did they?” Kane growled. “She ran right to them because we scared the life out of her with that bullshit fight!”

  “Give it a rest!” Lucien snarled. “We’ll settle that later.”

  “Settle what?” Damien growled, eyeing his brother challengingly.

  Lucien narrowed his eyes at his brother. “Settle who’s leader of the pack.”

  * * * *

  “It looks like they’re heading for the river.”

  Lucien had been thinking the same thing when he’d realized that they were headed east rather than south toward Atlanta. “You may be right,” he agreed with Damien. “We might have to ditch the tank.” He shook his head. “It’s a liability at the moment anyway, far more visible than the bikes would have been. Shit!”

  “Yeah! It’s a fucking shame they’re in Atlanta and it looks like we might be headed to Savannah,” Kane muttered.

  “Or not,” Basil pointed out. “At this point we don’t know where they’re headed. Could be the river. Might be some place this side of it or across the line in South Carolina.”

  They thought they were completely fucked when the SUV carrying Laurie turned off the main road they’d been following and onto a dirt road that looked like it might be a private road. They’d had to drop further and further back as the traffic lightened, hoping against hope that they hadn’t been spotted. They wouldn’t have known the vehicle had turned off if not for their keen hearing. They’d lost sight of the vehicle. The SUV had disappeared around a curve and could as easily have disappeared around another since the highway they were following was an old, winding two lane.

  They backtracked to the dirt road and got out. There were fresh car tracks alright and they could hear the unique sound of the engine they’d learned to identify since they’d been following it for hours.

  Leaving the tank, they started jogging along the dirt road, trying to pace themselves so that they didn’t get close enough to be spotted but were still closing the distance that separated them from the SUV. They’d been following it about fifteen or twenty minutes when the engine died. Lucien and Damien glanced at one another fearfully, the same thought leaping into their minds.

  Knowing this might be Laurie’s moment of truth if she wasn’t dead already, they surged forward at a run. They’d just gotten close enough to smell the river when they heard another engine turn over, this one an outboard for a boat. They struggled to pour on more speed, racing to catch the boat before the kidnappers could pull far enough away to be beyond reach, but the boat had already hit its top speed by the time they got to the bank.

  “Shit!”

  “Fuck!”

  “Gods damn it!”

  Lucien felt his tension and anxiety mount, for it dawned on him as he watched the boat speed away that he was going to have to make a decision that might cost Laurie her life—might cost them more dearly than any of them had imagined when they’d agreed to the assignment.

  He didn’t know why he hadn’t realized instantly that Laurie was his life mate. His destiny.

  He’d crossed time—an entire universe to find her, and now it looked like he could lose her forever.

  “What are we doing here?” Damien asked, breaking into his morose thoughts.

  Lucien met his gaze for a long moment. He could see Damien was as worried as he was. Well, he hadn’t really thought this
was going to be a one on one sort of thing. He’d merely intended to exert his dominance as alpha and the privileges that came with the added responsibilities. He was alpha. It was his right to produce first off-spring. It was his right to decide if any of the others got off-spring off of Laurie!

  But they’d lived and breathed team as far back as any of them could remember. They were closer than brothers. They were like a single, four headed beast—all pulling in different directions much of the time but still connected in a way no one outside the hybrids would understand.

  He wasn’t sure of whether the changes since they’d passed through the vortex had emphasized their pack mentality or not, but Laurie was their woman not just his and he knew that was the way they thought about it—all of them. Not just him and Damien.

  Nodding slightly, he looked at Basil and Kane. “This is going to be tricky. I think we might hedge our bets by going downriver, though, to head them off. That’s what I want you two to do. Take the tank and head for Savannah. When you get there get us a boat and head back this way. You know what the boat looks like. Me and Damien are going to try to keep up with them/track them from this direction. We’ve got the walkies from the tank. If we discover they’d left the river or stopped along the way, we’ll let you know.”

  Kane merely nodded and immediately turned to jog back to where they’d left the Hummer they referred to as the tank. Basil looked at Lucien worriedly. “You think you can keep up enough to keep an eye on them?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Not in this form,” Lucien said grimly. After shoving his walkie into the pocket of his jeans, he peeled out of his clothes and tied them into a ball. He focused then on shifting to the form of a wolf. Catching the end of the belt he’d used to bind the clothes in a ball with his teeth, he set out at a ground eating trot.

  It took Damien a moment to grasp the plan, but as Basil took off to catch up with Kane, Damien shed his clothing as Lucien had, bundled them, and then shifted.

  He hated to admit it, but he was pretty sure it wouldn’t have occurred to him that he might need some damned clothes at some point and it would be easier to have them with him if the need arose.

  It was still unhandy as hell carrying them in his teeth. His jaws began to cramp after a few miles and it was harder to breathe when he couldn’t open his mouth to pant. They’d managed to close the distance between them and the boat sufficiently by that time, though, that he could just see them up ahead and he decided to ignore the discomfort. If he stopped to try to make any kind of adjustment, he was going to have to work harder to catch up again.

  * * * *

  Laurie supposed she should have appreciated the pain and discomfort she endured at the hands of her captors. She thought if it wasn’t for that she might have died of fright. As it happened, though, although it was fear that had sent her fleeing into the hands of her kidnappers, and fear had certainly reared its ugly head when the stranger had accosted her, after he punched her, threw her in the back of a vehicle, and trussed her like livestock, she was in too much pain and misery to worry too much about what would come next.

  Unfortunately, the pain from the blow had receded a good bit by the time the SUV braked to a halt and the engine died. Her wrists and ankles were killing her. They would have hurt worse, she was sure, if her hands and feet and legs and arms hadn’t gone numb, but the longed for condition of unconsciousness was denied her. She was fully aware of her surroundings as she was dragged out of the car and lugged to the river, aware enough that she knew far more terror than she’d ever felt in her life when she realized their destination.

  Oh god! They were going to throw her in with her hands and feet tied!

  She tried to fight them—for all the good it did.

  Well, she supposed it did her some good. The bastard carrying her set her on her feet and punched her again, that time hard enough she fell backwards since she was bound hand and foot and unable to catch herself. When she landed she hit something hard enough with the back of her skull that she blacked out.

  Merciful oblivion!

  The boat didn’t seem to be moving when she next became aware of her surroundings.

  “If you’ve killed her, you stupid fuck, the boss is going to have your balls!”

  “She screamed. I had to shut her up! I didn’t hit her that hard. She’s just playing dead. Aren’t you sweetheart?”

  Laurie’s stomach pitched as awareness returned and dizziness came with it. She puked—right on the guy that was shaking her head and making her dizzy.

  “You fucking bitch!”

  She managed to get one eye open in time to see the bastard draw his fist back to hit her again, but he never completed the threat. The man with him cold-cocked him with the butt of a pistol. His eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the swaying deck. “Stupid fuck,” he muttered, kicking him a couple of times, she supposed, to see if he would come around.

  The ‘rescuer’ grasped her face between his thumb and forefinger and lifted her head. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  Laurie focused on his hand with an effort. “Two?”

  “Do you know what day it is?”

  Laurie considered that for a couple of moments. “I think it was Friday when you caught me.”

  He grunted. “Well, I guess I won’t have to kill the bastard. That’s a shame because I don’t like the son-of-a-bitch worth a fuck.” He reached down and grasped her around the waist, hauling her up. “Up we go now.”

  He helped her straighten but the minute he let go she wilted to the deck again. Shaking his head, he hauled her up a second time, tipped her over his shoulder, and then straightened with a grunt.

  Surprisingly, since her skull was pounding fit to bust, her mind seemed to clear as the man started walking with her and she saw that the boat she’d spent most of the day in was tied to a sizeable dock—the sort of dock that wasn’t for private use but rather commercial, although it certainly wasn’t big enough for anything like the huge commercial vessels—maybe something like the shrimpers used? When she twisted her head, she could see that there were several rundown looking buildings close by that looked like they might have been factories at one time or possibly had never been used for anything but warehouses. Regardless, the buildings seemed to bear up her conclusion that she was in some old warehouse or factory district. Unfortunately, it was so rundown it was easy to see it was abandoned for the most part if not completely.

  She thought the man must be carrying her to a building similar to those she could see and wondered for the first time why she was still alive. For the first time since they’d taken her she was both calm enough to think and alert enough and she realized that nothing that had happened made any sense considering the scenario she’d been given when she was taken into protective custody.

  Why take her anywhere if they just meant to kill her? They could have choked her, cut her throat, or shot her when she’d run to them. They didn’t need to take her anywhere at all!

  They could’ve killed her and disposed of her body anywhere along the way if they’d felt the need to remove her to a new location. They’d been traveling most of the day.

  So if it wasn’t a murder …. What? Kidnapping?

  She didn’t see that that made any sense either. Why would anyone kidnap her?

  And did that mean she had a chance of living?

  The men hadn’t covered their faces, she realized with a deep sense of foreboding. They also hadn’t blindfolded her to keep her from identifying them.

  That seemed to be very bad news for her brief hope of surviving.

  The man carrying her was huffing and puffing like a winded horse by the time he dropped her on a cracked leather couch inside a dilapidated building. Dust rose in a cloud when she hit it, the springs letting out a loud protest. Laurie sneezed and kept on sneezing while the man sawed through the plastic zip tie that had been used to bind her wrists. Unfortunately, her arms were so numb she still couldn’t pick them up to cover her face. She fin
ally twisted her head and burrowed her face against her shoulder to protect herself from the dust.

  The man moved to her ankles and sawed that tie off. “There’s a working bathroom of a sort just through that door. You can use it when you’ve got enough circulation back to walk.”

  Laurie was so grateful she felt like weeping. Part of the misery of the day had been the most horrible thirst and an equal desperation to empty her bladder. She struggled upright and swung her legs off of the couch. Pain shot up from the soles of her feet through her knees the moment her feet touched the floor. She gasped. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she shook her hands to try to force the blood flow through them at the same time and endured until she thought the pins and needles were subsiding.

  Her feet still felt like blocks of wood when she pushed herself up and stood on wobbly legs, but she was more desperate than before to get to the bathroom now that there was a possibility of relief.

  There was only a partial door to the bathroom. She was dismayed that she didn’t even have the comfort of privacy, but she was in no shape to refuse because there wasn’t a door. She used the toilet, feeling somewhat protected by the voluminous t-shirt she was wearing and then got up to use the lavatory. It was dim in the room, but even so she could see that the water that shot out was rusty. It was malodorous, as well.

  Her throat closed, but she couldn’t bring herself to drink the water she knew had to be contaminated. It cleared a little after it had run for a few moments and she decided she could at least rinse her face off.

  It was as she was splashing the water on her face that she heard her captor on the phone.

  “We got her. You can make that call now and make the other half of the deposit in my account. I’ll get a picture you can send her old man as proof as soon as she gets out of the bathroom.”