Logan's Calling

by Abbey Polidori

  'Sarah?'

  Nothing. No reply.

  Maybe she had gone to work at her father's detective agency.

  Unlikely. She was usually home by three. It was almost six now.

  Logan found his clothes and put them on while he woke up fully. At least the throbbing in his shoulder had gone. In fact, he felt absolutely fine. The fever and tiredness had soon passed. Now he felt ready to help rescue Sarah's sister. He felt more than ready, he felt strong and fit and pleased about the challenge ahead. He needed to stretch, to move, to get out in the fresh air. He could hardly believe he had spent so long in self-exile from the world. What had he been thinking? There was no need to hide away like a haunted beast, afraid of society. Sarah had no problem with his scars so he really didn't care what anyone else thought about him.

  As he slipped the Harley Davidson t-shirt over his head, he left the room and went down to see if Sarah had left him a note or some other indication of where she had gone.

  There was no note but there was an indication of where she was and when Logan saw it, his heart thumped wildly in his chest and his legs felt shaky. He held tightly onto the stair rail for support and looked into the living room. It looked like a hurricane had hit the inside of the house. The glass coffee table was smashed and lying on its side. The sofa was overturned.

  It became all too apparent what had happened here. Logan had been wrong about Frazier not coming after Sarah. He had been fucking wrong. Unwilling to wait for Sarah to go to him, Frazier had come to her. He had taken her. He had fucking taken her.

  Logan stormed into the living room and drove his fist against the overturned sofa, wishing it was Frazier's face.

  How long ago had it happened? How could he get her back? The only lead he had was the address on the packet Frazier had used to send the locket. 229 Lakeside Road, Great Bear Lake. He knew roughly where the lake was in relation to Hope and he had maps of the area at home. He could find it. He had to find it.

  He couldn't believe he had slept upstairs while Frazier had come in and abducted Sarah. There had obviously been a struggle. Why hadn't Sarah just shifted and fought Frazier off? Because she would have revealed her secret and he would have contacted the Temple of Thul immediately, sure of what he had to offer them.

  So she had not shifted. But how had Frazier managed to take her? She was no pushover. Maybe Frazier had help. They had taken her and not bothered to check upstairs because they thought she lived alone. They also thought she was an unmated shifter. And that was wrong. She was Logan's mate now and he already felt a biting despair at her disappearance. He had to get her back, along with her sister Amy. Just because they were shifters didn't mean they could be treated like animals.

  He left the house and walked across the lawn to his own front door. Once inside, he flicked on the News Channel to see if there was anything about a kidnapping in Hope. Maybe someone had seen something and called the police. But if the police had entered the house, they wouldn't have left him sleeping upstairs.

  Logan checked the time in the corner of the TV screen and did a double take. The day and date were displayed above the time and there was no way they could be right. Could they? He collapsed onto the EZ chair and stared at the TV as reality hit him.

  He had been asleep for two days.

  That was why his shoulder felt fine. It had healed. He had fallen into some sort of fever coma while his immune system healed the bite. Or assimilated whatever it was that meant he was a shifter now.

  Oh fuck.

  He was a shifter.

  And he had been asleep for two days.

  The full moon was tonight.

  He got up and turned off the TV, heading for the basement door and feeling a growing dread in the pit of his stomach. If he had been asleep for two days, how long ago was Sarah taken? He might already be too late. No. He couldn't let his thoughts go down that road. He flicked on the overhead bulb and descended the wooden stairs into the basement. Fixed to the wall was a locked steel cabinet he hadn't opened in a long time. He opened a small combination safe that was cemented to the basement floor and dug past various legal documents and forms for the cabinet key.

  He opened it and looked at the guns inside. A hunting rifle with a scope and a Desert Eagle handgun. Unopened boxes of ammo were arranged in neat rows on the floor of the cabinet. Logan grabbed everything including the cleaning cloths and set about making preparations to rescue a woman he had never met and a woman who had become his mate.

  Outside, the sun began to sink toward the horizon.

  *

  Leaving the house hadn't been as bad as he had thought it might be. He had simply thrown the guns into the passenger side of the truck, got in, and driven off the driveway and onto Arroyo Street. He almost had a panic attack when he got far enough up the road that he was out of sight of the house but he reminded himself that Sarah and Amy needed him and he managed to calm himself down and steer the truck toward the outskirts of Hope.

  Now he was on the narrow road that led around Great Bear Lake, driving past the summer cottages on the lakeside of the road and a dense pine forest on the other. Full moonlight reflected off the lake like molten silver. He checked the map on passenger seat with a flashlight every now and then and checked the numbers on the mailboxes. If he was right, he should be approaching Frazier's place.

  Pulling over by the woods, he looked at the low full moon in the cloudless night sky. It had no effect on him. In a way he felt disappointed that he wasn't changing into a werewolf. It would have made his bond with Sarah even closer if they were both shifters. But the bite on his shoulder had obviously not been enough to change him; it had just given him a fever and made him sleep for two days.

  And now he had to find Frazier's cottage fast and get the girls out of there. He grabbed the guns from the passenger seat and stuffed the Desert Eagle into the waistband of his jeans. With the rifle in hand, he set off along the road, keeping to the shadows of the trees. Up ahead the dark shape of a cottage sat by the lake, a single lit window breaking the darkness around the place.

  Logan stayed low and crossed the road and crept across the undergrowth behind the cottage. Crouching beneath the window, he listened for any sounds coming from inside. A loon called from somewhere out on the lake and he heard voices speaking far away but the cottage was silent. He risked a quick glance through the window but all he saw was an empty kitchen and a doorway leading to an empty room beyond. No sign of life.

  If he was too late... if Frazier had already...

  A sound from within the cottage reached Logan's ears. A small sound. A whimpering sound. He risked another peek through the window and this time he saw movement in the room beyond the kitchen. A man in a dark blue suit walked past the doorway. Logan barely got a glimpse of him but assumed it must be Jensen Frazier. The angle from this window was crap so he edged his way around the side of the building slowly, staying low to the ground. The loon called out across the lake again.

  There was a large window that looked into the room beyond the kitchen. Slowly, carefully, Logan peeked around the edge and when he saw Sarah, his heart hammered crazily in his chest.

  The wood-panelled room was furnished with a sofa and a chair. These had been pushed aside and two iron cages had been placed on the floor. In one of those cages sat Sarah, dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt and looking like she was fighting an almighty internal struggle. Her eyes were cast down to the floor of the cage and she seemed to be focusing on one spot of the floor to aid her concentration. In the second cage sat a dark-haired pretty young woman who looked a year or two younger than Sarah. She was dressed in a floral print summer dress but her position mirrored Sarah's exactly. Eyes down, almost trembling with concentration. They were trying not to shift and give their secret away to the two men in the room.

  The man in the dark blue suit was tall and probably in his fifties. Distinguished flecks of silver ran through his hair at the temples. He had the look of a gameshow host or second-hand car sales
man but even through the window, Logan could feel power radiating from the man. It was as if a dangerous current ran beneath his skin and radiated outward to make the hairs on the back of Logan's neck prick up.

  The second man was dressed more casually, in dress pants and a shirt open at the neck. He was in his mid-twenties, about the same age as Amy, and was almost certainly Jensen Frazier.

  'It's going to happen anytime now,' he told the man in the suit. 'Look how much they're trying not to change.'

  That proves nothing,' said Blue Suit, 'Unless I see them in wolf form, I'm not interested in the slightest. The Temple doesn't pay handsomely for hearsay and empty promises, Mr Frazier.'

  Frazier grabbed the edges of Amy's cage with both hands and rattled it. 'Come on, Amy, you know you can't resist. It's a full moon out there and you aren't wearing silver. You have to change.' He rattled the cage again and turned away in frustration.

  'That's only going to happen if she is indeed a shifter,' Blue Suit said, 'and from what I've seen so far, I am distinctly unimpressed.'

  'I'm telling you, Mr DeRosier,' Frazier said almost pleadingly, 'I know they're shifters. Isn't there some test you can do?'

  DeRosier sighed and flicked an imaginary speck of dust from the shoulder of his suit. 'There is but not here. I would have to take them to one of our Lodges. The test is here, tonight, Frazier. As you say, if they are shifters they have no choice but to shift during a full moon as long as they aren't wearing silver. Those conditions have been met but I'm yet to see any fur or fangs.'

  Logan had heard enough. It was time to act. He pulled the Desert Eagle from the waistband of his jeans,checked it, and flicked off the safety. He stood up and used the butt of the rifle to smash the window, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.

  Frazier whirled around to face Logan, his face a mask of surprise. DeRosier took a couple of steps back but looked unfazed. Sarah and Amy jerked their heads up and Sarah shouted, 'Logan!' but the commotion had broken her concentration and she began to writhe on the floor of the cage, the shift that she had fought so long finally taking hold of her. Amy also began to shift, her eyes turning wild and green and a low growl issuing from deep within her.

  Logan leapt through the broken window, the Eagle swinging in an arc between the two men, keeping both of them in his sights. 'Let them go,' he told Frazier.

  Frazier put up his hands but he made no move to free the girls. 'Look, I told you. They're shifters!'

  DeRosier appeared to be the calmest person in the room and the air of danger radiating from him was not lessened at gunpoint. In fact, now he was closer to the man, Logan sensed a wave of evil hanging around DeRosier like an ice cold black aura. It seemed to creep up Logan's spine like a questing spider.

  'You don't want to do that. Put the gun down,' DeRosier said calmly.

  'Fuck your Jedi mind tricks,' Logan said. But the creepy sensation crawling up his spine felt like it had lodged itself in his brain, letting DeRosier in. The Desert Eagle wavered in his hand. Fight it. Fight him. Got to stay in control.

  'Put the gun down,' DeRosier repeated more firmly. It felt to Logan as if the man was speaking to the coldness that had crept into his mind and that coldness could control him. He lowered the gun even though he didn't want to. His arm felt too tired and the gun felt like it was made of lead.

  In the cages, Sarah and Amy had shifted into she-wolves and they pulled at the steel bars, growling and snarling at Frazier and DeRosier.

  Logan felt totally at the mercy of DeRosier. His feet were rooted to the floor and his arm was so heavy he couldn't move it.

  DeRosier looked at him as if he were regarding a bug in a jar. 'Shoot yourself in the head.'

  Logan's arm, working of its own accord, lifted the Desert Eagle slowly toward his temple. He tried to resist the movement but his limbs were controlled by DeRosier's powerful will. The she-wolves started to go crazy in their cages, howling and gnashing their fangs.

  The gun lifted up past Logan's shoulder and up along his neck.

  The cold steel brushed through the hair above his ear and pressed to his skull.

  Don't pull the trigger. Don't pull the fucking trigger.

  Was this it? Had his life come to an end now? After all the scrapes he had survived in the war, was his destiny to just shoot himself in this cottage by the lake at the whim of an occultist? His biggest regret was that he had only just found his mate and now he was going to lose her.

  Don't pull the trigger. He tried to control his fingers but they felt disconnected.

  Don't pull the fucking trigger.

  'Pull the trigger,' DeRosier commanded.

  Logan felt his finger inch toward the cold metal trigger. He couldn't stop it. And as he wrapped his finger around the little deadly crescent of metal, he wondered why the moonlight flooding in through the broken window behind him had suddenly become so intense that he had to close his eyes against it. A sudden heat ran up along his spine, burning away the cold spider hold that DeRosier had on his mind. And as the heat flooded his brain he saw a wave of silver light behind his eyelids and he heard a howl and realized that it came from his own throat. Sharp pain stabbed at his face and neck and upper arms, travelling down through the rest of his body. His skull felt like it was stretching and remolding itself. He dimly heard the gun clatter to the floor as he fell forward onto all fours.

  Then a voice cut into his mind. A voice that calmed him and soothed the panic that ran through him. Sarah's voice.

  'Logan, open the cages. There's a latch on the outside of the doors.'

  He opened his eyes and leapt forward, reaching Sarah's cage in a single bound. Whatever control DeRosier had over him in his human form was gone now that he was a werewolf. He swiped at the lock on the cage and it clicked open. Sarah burst out of the prison and stood on all fours in the center of the room, snarling and growling, the fur on her back bristling.

  Frazier backed up against the wall so quickly he slammed into it and knocked a painted landscape onto the floor. Even faced by two werewolves, DeRosier looked calm. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a revolver.

  Sarah's voice sounded in Logan's mind again. 'He has silver bullets.'

  Logan propelled himself at DeRosier and the two of them went crashing through the window in a crash of splintered glass. As they hit the ground outside, the revolver discharged with a loud bang. Logan waited to feel pain as a silver bullet pierced his skin but he felt nothing. DeRosier had squeezed the trigger reflexively and had missed.

  Logan shook himself, glass shards flying from his fur. DeRosier scrambled to his feet, still wielding the gun.

  Logan prepared himself to leap at the occultist again then froze as three sets of headlights cut through the darkness, blinding him with their glare. His vision adjusted and felt a sudden fear. Three black SUVs were parked on this side of the cottage. DeRosier hadn't come alone. The doors of the vehicles opened and black-clad men with guns climbed out.

  'Sarah, where are you?' Logan thought.

  'We're right behind you.'

  He turned to see Sarah and Amy standing by the front of the cottage.

  'Run!' he told them.

  They ran for the trees as the men from the SUVs opened fire. Bullets ripped into the ground and trees around the three werewolves as they reached the pines and fled into the forest, leaving Frazier, DeRosier and the agents from the mysterious Temple of Thul behind them.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wild

  They padded among the trees in the moonlit woods, following scents they picked up on the night breeze and listening and smelling for signs of the men from the cottage. By midnight they were deep in the woods, in places where the only tracks were those made by animals.

  Logan had become used to the telepathic communication and he felt more free roaming the woods in this new wolf form than he had ever felt in his life. He felt connected with everything around him, as if he were a part of the world again but in a more profound way than he had ever be
en a part of the world before.

  The telepathic conversation ranged from Amy's feeling guilty over allowing herself to be fooled by Jensen Frazier to Logan telling the girls how he had slept for two days and missed Sarah's abduction from her house. It seemed Frazier had gone to the Temple of Thul before he was sure about Amy and Sarah and they had taken Sarah from the house. So Logan's theory about Frazier not kidnapping Sarah had been correct but he hadn't counted on the Temple members being involved before Frazier had proof about his suspicions. He mentally chastised himself for not being more careful at the cottage and thinking DeRosier had been there alone with Frazier. That had been a stupid notion. Once the girls had turned out to be shifters, how was DeRosier going to transport them to his Lodge if he was alone? And Logan should have realized he hadn't seen any vehicles at the cottage. If he had noticed that fact at the time, he might have checked the other side of the building and seen just how many vehicles there were. Stupid.

  They found a place to sleep and Amy curled up in the undergrowth, telling them how tired felt.

  'How about you?' Sarah asked Logan. 'Feeling tired?'

  He looked at her and detected from her scent and body language what she wanted. 'No,' he thought, 'I feel like discovering new things now I'm a werewolf.'

  She set off through the trees and he followed, his senses alive. He lost sight of Sarah for a moment and followed her by scent alone. When he caught up with her, she was waiting for him in a moonlit clearing. On her belly. Ass and tail raised.

  He mounted her immediately, pushing inside her and finding her already wet and willing. She growled with pleasure and he pushed all the way in, servicing her with quick deep thrusts of his cock. The night breeze ruffled his fur and his heightened sense of smell made Sarah's pheromone signals even more powerful as he thrust rapidly into her. He nipped at her neck and she let out little yelps of pleasure.

  They came together, both of them howling at the moon as they enjoyed each other's wolf-like bodies and the unity they shared. The telepathic communication made Logan's orgasm even more powerful as he could sense some of what Sarah was feeling as her own climax ripped through her body.