Rosko, Mandy - The Wolf's Pack [Sequel to Mate of the Wolf] (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Mandy Rosko

  The windows shattered. Glass sprayed inside the room in a shower of glittering crystal, and Alex swayed back before dropping to his knees, then falling flat on his chest on the carpet. Shelley had the presence of mind to note the three little green darts sticking out near his right shoulder blade just as a single sharp sting caught her near the collarbone. She looked down at her own little dart. She tried to lift her hand to pull it out, but her arm was suddenly as heavy as though it were being tied down, and then the floor came up and met her face.

  She was still aware of her surroundings for another several seconds, having only been hit with a single dart instead of the three like Alex had, so she caught sight of the figures in black coming in through the broken windows. They looked like they could be on a SWAT team with the way they moved and dressed, covered from head to toe. Sunlight protected. The vampires.

  Shelley recalled the venom that spread through her body when Pearl had bitten her the first time. Could the vampires have put that same stuff, only a whole lot more of it, into the darts?

  Chris grabbed Deena’s arm and was already running out the door with her. It was strange, Shelley was almost watching them go in slow motion, shouts echoing inside her ears, and she caught Deena’s terrified expression as she looked back at where Shelley lay. She wanted so much to run, Shelley could tell, but still fought her husband, hating that she had to leave her friends behind.

  Shelley didn’t blame Chris. She might be the pack alpha’s mate, and Alex and Jake might be his friends, but if she were in his place, her first priority would be her possibly pregnant spouse as well.

  Besides, Jake was still with her. He was still in the middle of his transformation, bones breaking and rearranging themselves, but he stood over her, looking ready to tear into anyone who so much as went near her.

  Go. Hide. Don’t let them get you, Shelley thought, willing Deena to disappear, even though human-to-human thought talking was impossible. That part didn’t register to her drugged brain.

  Finally, Deena stopped fighting, running off with Chris to hopefully a safe place, barely dodging the shower of darts that were shot at them.

  Shelley had only enough energy left in her to remember that she’d left Michael sleeping in their room. More helpless than anyone in the house now, because since this was a surprise attack, what little time there was left to strike back and defend oneself was gone, even to him.

  With that, Shelley fell into the pool of darkness.

  Chapter Seven

  When Shelley opened her eyes again, her entire body jerked upright. The darkness around her struck a fear in her that someone had shoved a bag over her head.

  She calmed herself. Had that been the case, her face would have felt hot from the heat of her own breath, and her entire body was shivery cold. It was just the darkness of the room. She hadn’t been moved. Jake was gone, and so were the vampires, and through the broken window, the cold night air breezed in gently.

  Shelley got to her feet, careful to keep her bare skin out of the broken glass, but was afraid to move any more than that. It took a couple of seconds for her night blindness to leave her then she watched the lace curtains flutter in the window, listening for anything that could give her a hint of what the situation was.

  There was no sound coming from outside, nor in the house. Commands, cries for help, nothing. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

  Finally, some rock-solid courage thrummed through her blood. Jesus, if it was dark outside, that meant she’d been out of it for hours. “Michael.”

  Shelley ran out of the room and down the hall. The power must have still been out because there wasn’t so much as a lamplight on, but she’d lived there long enough to know the way without it.

  Shelley might’ve known the way, but that didn’t help at all when she tripped over a heavy something and fell onto her chest.

  Air whooshed from her lungs, and the fear came back as she waited for something to attack her, but everything in the house remained motionless, the only sound the shaky inhale-exhale of her breath.

  What the hell was that? It was still under her legs.

  She turned around and righted herself, then wished she hadn’t. The night no longer blinded her so much, and she made out the form of a body easily. It was smaller than most of the others, a wiry frame, hair dark, male.

  Isaac.

  A black pool seemed to be blooming beneath him, and Shelley shivered when she realized it was blood. He was freshly dead if that was happening.

  But she’d been out of it for so long. How could—?

  The vampires are still here.

  She got back to her feet and ran for it. She burst into her bedroom, locking the door behind her. The bed was empty but for the rumpled sheets where she and Michael had made love. She was too late.

  Christ, even if she had made it in time to do anything, what could she have done? She was nothing. Not superhuman in any way, shape, or form that she could stand up to any vampire even on her best day.

  Shelley fell to her knees at the bedside, her face falling into the sheets where she could still smell Michael’s scent.

  She couldn’t call the police. They’d lock her up for being a lunatic. After she got hauled back to L.A. to answer a boatload of questions from both the press and her parents. Even then, Michael had been taken hours ago. Assuming the vampires who took him had immediately left with him, they could be God only knew where by now.

  And where the hell was everyone else? Had Chris and Deena escaped? Had they been taken as well? And what about Jake?

  Shelley clenched her fists in the sheets, anger taking over in place of the helplessness that surrounded her like a coffin.

  The texture beneath her fingers felt off, gritty. Shelley lifted her head and pulled her hands back, the fibers on the blankets sticking to the sweat on her palms.

  Not fibers. Hair. In the dim blue light of the moon, the silver hairs shined like polished jewelry.

  Michael had woken up. He’d had time to transform and defend himself. There was no time for Shelley to celebrate that fact, because it still left too many questions open to her. Had he escaped? Was he hurt? Had he returned to his human form?

  She still didn’t know where anyone was.

  Well, she was going to find out. So far as she could tell, there was no blood in the room or on the bed, which meant there hadn’t been a struggle. Then her eyes found the claw marks along the wall behind the bed.

  She tried to piece together what that meant, but she wasn’t a detective by any stretch of the imagination. The door wasn’t smashed open, and the windows weren’t broken, so someone would’ve had to open it for his wolf to have gotten out.

  The vampires had either come in, prepared to drug him, and had messed up, allowing him to run out the door by mistake, or they’d done what they came to do and dragged Michael out by the scruff of his fur.

  She wasn’t going to sit around wondering which it had been. She left the room, keeping her ears open just in case someone, or something, tried sneaking up on her.

  The faraway slam of a car door halted her in midstep. Shelley’s foot stopped before it could touch down on the carpet, and she listened again. There were people outside. Shelley heard frantic voices shouting out commands, a wolf’s bark, then a pained whine. Shelley ran for the nearest window.

  There were no lights on outside, and the high lampposts that should have lit up the gravel drive and lawn were just as affected by the cut power as the house itself. Shelley knew this place had a generator for backup. The vampires must have taken it out when they ambushed the house. They would have preferred to work in total darkness.

  The moon was Shelley’s lamp, and she could see clearly how quickly and silently the vampires worked. Most of the werewolves of her pack were in their wolf forms, unconscious, tethered to the ground with chains and spikes. The remaining ones in their human forms were in similar condition, some naked and some still clothed, hands tied behind their backs with chains that
were also piked into the grass.

  The thing that made Shelley’s heart jump was the white truck parked on the dark lawn. It was an animal transfer truck, with cages lining up the back.

  Alex was still conscious, but in wolf form. Shelley cringed as she watched two vampires struggling to get him into one of the cages. He was muzzled, and they each held on to him with long snares. He fought and snarled and shook around in a mad frenzy, desperate for escape, but they lifted him into the truck and slammed the cage door on him, locking it with a padlock in case he returned to his human form.

  Alex rammed the cage bars with the weight of his body, causing the metal to dent and the vampires to jump back. One stepped forward and stuck something through the bars. There was a flash and a loud whine, and Alex stayed down. A Taser.

  The next wolf they had took less effort to get into the cage because he was limp and unmoving. The coat of the wolf shimmered in the moonlight.

  Michael. Everything inside Shelley dropped, and she bit down on one of her knuckles. He hadn’t gotten away. He must have made them chase him around the land like crazy for it to have taken so long for them to bring him to the truck, but they still got him.

  Shelley bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out, the muscles in her legs tensing with the urge to run out to him, grab him, and take him away from those monsters, but there was nothing she could do. She watched helplessly as they picked him up by the fur and threw him into his cage with a heavy bang.

  “Careful, you idiots!”

  Shelley ducked down as Pearl came into view, hair as purple as the last time Shelley had seen it. She still wore the creepy cloak from yesterday, but with the threat of sunshine gone, she wore it open, exposing her tight-fitting black T-shirt with a Hello Kitty skull, leather pants, and ankle boots. Shelley could hear the woman’s angry shouting from across the lawn even with the window closed.

  “The pelt needs to be undamaged. I want no stretching and no holes!”

  Shelley shivered. Jesus.

  Then her breath caught and eyes flew wide. No way. It was almost as bad as seeing the vampires hauling Michael away. Jake. Their Jake, in his wolf form, was sitting at Pearl’s feet. There were no chains on him that she could see, and he was just sitting there.

  Had Jake been drugged up, even a little, he would still be on the offensive, swaying a little drunkenly perhaps, but definitely not sitting with his back straight, chest puffed out and proud, looking ready to defend Pearl from even her own men. Whenever one of her vampire minions came a little too close, Shelley caught the way his lips lifted in a fang-revealing snarl.

  He did nothing to help his pack, or his alpha, though he did look up toward the cage as the vampires locked it up, then reached up and pulled down the sliding metal door that would conceal the wolves from the drivers, locking that as well.

  Pearl got on her knees in front of Jake, rubbing his ears between her thumbs and fingers, the way Shelley had done with Michael in an obvious show of affection.

  But Pearl looked at him differently, not with love, the way Shelley would look at Michael’s wolf, but with a curious sort of wonder.

  Then Shelley got it. It was the same when Michael’s wolf first came across Shelley in the woods. It hadn’t mauled and killed her because she was his mate. Jake was doing the same. His wolf would never harm his mate, even if she was harming his pack, and now he was caught between loyalties.

  Did Pearl even know? Maybe Jake’s loyalty to her was the reason why most of the werewolves on the lawn were still alive. If he wasn’t fighting Pearl, then the others wouldn’t have had any reason to do so either. They would have been so easy to take out.

  Poor Isaac must’ve fought them too hard.

  Not now, she thought, wiping away the building moisture at her eyes, going back to watching the vampires pack up, as casually as though they weren’t kidnapping two people.

  Pearl went to her sleek silver Porsche and opened the driver side door, letting Jake hop in and settle himself in the passenger seat before getting in herself, starting up, and pulling off the lawn where she’d parked. The animal transfer truck followed her, as did a black car with the remaining vampires.

  Shelley made her move. She couldn’t lose them! If she lost sight of them, Michael was dead.

  She flew down the hall, avoiding Isaac’s body this time, but nearly tripping over her own feet at the sharp turn that would take her to the front door.

  Please be there, please be there, please…yes! The keys to Michael’s truck were still hanging on the key rack. She snatched them up and flew out of the house and down the stairs of the deck. They could’ve slashed the tires of his truck, for all she cared. She was driving it and following them even if she left a shower of sparks behind her.

  With a silent apology to everyone in the pack whom she left chained in the grass, Shelley ran to the garage. The doors were shut. She’d just bent down to lift them when a hand gripped her shoulder and spun her around.

  She screamed before recognizing Chris, who jumped back at the painful screech she no doubt put in his ears.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, shaking it off and bending his head to crack his neck. He was naked, meaning he’d just come from a transformation.

  She threw her arms around him. “Perfect.”

  She had to assume Deena was safe if he was bothering with her. Shelley couldn’t spend a second on anything but getting Michael back. “You’re going to help me,” she said, bending down to lift the garage doors.

  They were heavy, but then Chris bent and, with a single hand, had the doors flying up so fast she half expected them to fall right out and crush the cars.

  “You’re following their cars?” he asked, already heading for Michael’s truck.

  There was nothing wrong with the tires. The vampires probably hadn’t thought to do anything to the cars with the wolves chained down. Not to mention they were a little preoccupied in getting their werewolf hostages off the property.

  “Yeah. I’m going to kill that bitch,” Shelley snarled. She’d work out the details of that one later.

  Chris snatched the keys from her hands before she got to the door. “I’m driving. I saw them locking the cages. There’s bolt cutters on the wall. Grab ’em.”

  Shelley wasn’t about to argue with him. Not with precious seconds being wasted already.

  She saw what he’d pointed at amidst the variety of tools hanging from hooks along the wall. A pair of heavy-duty cutters. No doubt they could cut through the locks. Whether or not Shelley would be strong enough to use them was another factor entirely.

  Worry about that later. Shelley grabbed them and hopped into the passenger side of the truck. Chris already had the engine humming and nearly pulled out before she had a chance to jump in. He shifted gears and pressed the gas pedal down to the floor, launching the truck out of the garage like a rocket.

  He drove it like a pro. She had to give him that, even as she bounced around on her side. He avoided the other wolves still stapled to the ground and got them onto the road leading off the property.

  Then he took a sharp right onto a dirt path.

  Shelley’s blood spiked in alarm. “What are you doing?”

  “The way they went is the only road leading from this house into town. This way we can catch up to them before they get there, because”—he sent her a crooked smile—“I don’t really want to have an all-out brawl on Main Street naked.”

  Shelley had almost forgotten about his lack of clothing. She was getting way too used to seeing naked men walking around. That, and she had other things to keep her brain occupied. “And when we catch them?”

  “I’ll distract them.”

  Right. Neither of them had thought this through.

  “All you need to do is get them out of the truck and get back to the house. Deena should be untying the others right now.”

  “But they’re drugged.”

  “Smelling salts,” Chris explained, reaching over to the glove compartment and pul
ling out a tiny bottle. He handed it to her. “Works really good after a bad transformation. Sometimes the shock of the whiff can even force a transformation.”

  “You guys hide these around the house, too?” Shelley asked, thinking of all the pairs of clothes kept under every nook and cranny.

  “Just in the cars and medicine cabinets. There they are.”

  It was all happening so fast. Shelley looked out the window, and there were the three vampires’ vehicles, the Porsche leading the way and the white transfer truck in the middle. They were on the road at the bottom of the hill, going past the speed limit in an attempt to get away with their cargo.

  They were so close. The top of the Porsche was down, and Shelley could see Pearl’s purple head. Her lips were moving. There was no way she was talking to Jake, who was still in wolf form in the passenger seat. Then she reached her hand to her ear, and stopped talking.

  An earpiece. She was probably calling her father to let him know that she’d finally caught the werewolf with the silver pelt. Shelley clutched the shears tighter in her fists, imagining herself driving them into Pearl’s heart.

  “How do we stop them?”

  He tilted his head. “These roads are going to intersect in the next twenty seconds. I’m pretty sure this truck doesn’t have airbags. You should buckle your seat belt.”

  “Jesus.” Shelley put the little bottle of smelling salts in her pocket. She hurriedly reached behind her, scrambling to catch hold of the buckle in her shaking fingers. She tried yanking it down in her haste but had to calm herself and slow the process before it would cooperate. She wound it around her waist and strapped herself in.

  Chris took his hand off the wheel long enough to press a button on the stereo. Guitars strummed, and Axl Rose began to sing “Welcome to the Jungle.”

  Shelley glared at him.

  “I need this, okay?” he snapped. “It centers me. This isn’t going to be easy.”