Another promise, more faith in their Clan, but that didn’t ease his pain or his grief.
“But what can they do to her before then?” Mundo rasped. “I can’t lose her, Mars, I can’t.” When his Prez wrapped an arm about his shoulder, more tears threatened to fall. If anyone could understand the agony going through him, it was Mars. A stray bullet shot from a cartel gun had almost killed Annette, Mars’ mate. He’d had to go through a blood sacrifice to save her life. Humans tended to adopt some of their Shifter mates’ powers, some to a lesser degree than others deepening on the strength of the bond. But for Annette, thanks to the blood sacrifice, she shared a lot of Mars’s ‘talents.’ Mundo was certain, though Mars had never confirmed or denied it, that they could speak to each other telepathically. Christ, how useful that would have been for him now. At least he’d know if Christie was okay. He swallowed back more tears, not wanting the others to see his weakness, and gritted out, “The bond isn’t fixed yet.”
“No, but it’s there enough to smell it,” Hank mumbled. “It’s a powerful scent. Even if Travis lost trail of the van, Kiko’s right, with his nose then he should be able to track her from that alone. I swear to God, Mundo, there’s no way no one couldn’t tell she was yours by scenting her.”
Mundo let out a quivery breath, his bear reacting viscerally to the news that Christie was almost fully claimed. “I hope so.”
“We know so,” Mars vowed, squeezing his shoulders again. “How strong’s the bond?”
This was said in a small voice, and Mundo’s reply was equally quiet. “Strong. You know only the strongest nab some of our powers? Well, we’re not fully bonded and she’s already fast as hell. She scared the shit out of herself this morning.” His laugh was a gurgle of pain when he thought back to those hours this morning when they’d been together, both at peace. How had things gone so wrong, so quickly?
“Maybe she can use that to her advantage?” Mars asked. “If she can get free, she could run, and if she can run as fast as you say, Riley or Travis might catch sight of her and might be able to get her the hell out of Dodge.”
“They might shoot her if she runs.”
“Not if she can outrun the bullet.”
Mundo gulped. “You might be right.” He edged up onto his hands and knees then forced himself back and onto his feet. Once he was standing, his head spun as blood rushed to it, but when he peered down and saw the state of his chest, he understood why he felt like shit.
The magic of the shift had healed a lot of the bullet wound, but it was still red, raw, and weeping. The crater in his chest hadn’t grown smaller, and as far as he was aware, the bullet hadn’t popped out, but the blood had ceased to gush. He was well aware that if he was human, he’d be dead now. There was no way he could have sustained that amount of damage and survived. An ambulance wouldn’t have been able to make it in time.
It was a dampening thought.
“The bullet’s still in him?” Mars asked Hank, tone grim.
“Yeah, it didn’t come out with the shift.”
“It must have been a close hit.” Mars peered at the wound, pulling a face as the tissues started to knit together in front of him. If the bullet was still inside him, then those tissues would be forced apart yet again. The healing process was swift, sometimes too swift as different parts of an injury sought to catch up. It could be a real bitch to get every bit of a wound up to par.
“Yeah. The fucker was a dozen feet away.” Mundo swallowed, tilting his head down to stare at the bullet wound. Yeah, this was going to be a real bastard to get right. It would take two shifts, maybe three to get it right again, and each shift took more energy—energy he couldn’t afford to spend on himself, not when his mate was out there in danger. Speaking of which, he hissed, “My guard was down. I’m on MC territory, for fuck’s sake. I never thought…”
“They were brazen motherfuckers, I’ll give them that,” Kiko snarled, striding down the length of the workshop. Mars, in comparison, was still. “You know what this means?” Kiko continued, as he picked up a spanner and started to tap it against the palm of his other hand.
Mars, though still, vibrated with the same rage Kiko was experiencing. “War.” He let out a hiss. “Fuck. I wanted to avoid this shit. The only good that will come of it is we lose a lot of brothers and we can’t fucking afford to weaken the clan, not with a gang of humans as the enemy.” He ran a hand through his hair, stress making him pull at the ends a little. “When we started that inter-cartel war, it was with the intention of taking the spotlight off us.”
Mars had used Annette’s paper to start a shit storm among the cartels, getting her to write articles that were like putting a cat among a flock of pigeons. Those articles had diverted attention from The Nomads and planted it firmly onto the Spanish cartels. The backlash from stealing the last shipment of females from the Martinez cartel’s human trafficking ring had, thus far, been light because of this diversionary tactic.
It seemed their time of grace had run out.
Mundo grimaced. “War isn’t going to do shit. We need to burn the motherfuckers.”
“How though? We got the press and the cops involved last time.”
“I’m being literal, Mars. We set fire to their shit and watch them burn.”
“That’s no fucking solution. What about all the people in their buildings? Not all of them are guilty fuckers. Some of them are innocents. Look at what we found in their warehouses. How would you feel if there was another shipment in there who burned because we avenged your mate through arson?”
Mundo closed his eyes, sickened by the memory of the way the cartel had kept the group of women they’d trafficked from Eastern Europe over to the States. A few of those women were still at the MC’s HQ in Channelview. They hadn’t dared leave, though many of the others who had been with them had tried to make it on their own in the big bad world.
Mars shook his head. “I need time to figure out what our next step is, but in the interim, we get Mundo’s mate back.”
Almost as though the demand in his words had triggered it, Hank’s cell phone beeped. Mundo’s head shot up and he tracked Hanks’ every move as he connected the call.
“Travis? Where the fuck are you?” Hank blinked then let out a sigh of relief. “You have sight of the van? Yeah. Okay. That’s great. Keep watch and send me the GPS coordinates.”
Mars strode over and snatched the phone out of Hank’s hand. “Do not engage, Travis. How far away are you? Greenspoint?” He looked at Kiko. “What is that? Twenty minutes away?” When Kiko nodded, Mars snarled, “We’ll be there in ten and we engage together. Unless you hear gunshots. Do you understand me?” He disconnected the call then let out a breath. “Mundo, shift once more to get the bullet out, and then we’re gonna go and get your old lady.”
In less than five seconds, a bleeding, enraged bear stood where a naked man had.
Shit was about to get real.
Chapter Nine
There was a bag over her head.
Over. Her. Fucking. Head.
What the fuck was going on?
Was this some kind of joke? Only, who the hell considered kidnapping a great way to pull a practical joke?
At the same time, she was hoping to God that Ashton Kutcher was behind all this, but she knew it was wishful thinking. This was real. This was happening. Someone had kidnapped her and shot her mate.
She was too frantic to be terrified, too oxygen starved for fear to take root. The heat of her own breath against her skin was making her feel nauseated, a sensation that was exacerbated by being tossed around in the back of a van.
Until three days ago, she’d led a boring, sedate, and some might say tedious life. The only new addition to her world that could have instigated her being kidnapped was Mundo popping up, which meant he was to blame for her all of this happening. Yet blame was difficult to cast when the man had just been shot. And she’d seen that wound. He would be lucky to survive it.
Air stuttered in her ch
est as she tried to breathe, but the thought was like a clamp around her throat. She managed to swallow it down, gasping in agony because the one man who had endangered her was the one who had saved her. While he was the one who had put her in this situation, he was the only person she wanted close.
She wanted to hate him for putting her through this. Sometimes, she could hear the click of a gun and had even felt one being pressed to her back. She’d shuddered, which had made the man in the trunk with her laugh and push her harder. When the guy had tried to tie her hands, she’d struggled, and as a result he’d tried to pistol whip her. But even in the darkness of the hood, she wasn’t completely helpless. She’d felt the whistle of the gun soaring through the air, both on its ascent and descent, and had smelled the tang of metal as it neared her. She’d forced herself into action, sliding her hand through the air in an attempt to dislodge the gun before stumbling back, preferring to fall over whatever crap they had in the back of the van than be hit on the head and fall into unconsciousness. The speed she’d somehow inherited from Mundo had helped her though. Her stumbling back had involved her hitting the back of the van, a few feet away, in less than a second. She’d had to grab on to the door to keep her upright.
Her spidey senses had saved her, and she knew she’d shocked the man holding her captive into a stunned silence, even if she hadn’t managed to dislodge the gun from his hold. She hadn’t heard the clatter against the floor of the van. There had been no sounds of laughter ever since, though, and she knew, if anything, he was watching her warily. He’d been quiet, so she had to be thankful for small mercies. His laughter at her expense told her he got off on her fear, so she was glad she’d shocked him into silence.
He must be wondering what the hell had happened to make her move so quickly, at a pace that was most definitely inhuman. If they hadn’t been in the back of the van and she’d moved at that speed, she’d have been far, far away from him, and that seemed to make him all the more cautious, all the more careful with her now.
The van came to a stop, but the engine ran for a good minute or so, far longer than was necessary at a red light or at a stop sign. She froze, likely scenarios running through her head as she tried to figure out exactly what the hell was happening and how she could use it to her advantage.
All those stupid cop procedural dramas she binged on had to be of some use, didn’t they?
This new spidey sense of hers surely had to be a plus in her column and a minus in theirs, right?
She bit her lip, grimacing when she tasted sweat. She was boiling under this hood. It would be so easy to whip the fabric off her head because her hands weren’t tired, but she didn’t want to distract the guy guarding her. If they’d stopped for real, she didn’t want to waste any advantage she might have.
She paused, trying to focus all her senses on hearing what was happening. There was talking—distant, but it was there nonetheless. Spanish, by the sound of it. Unfortunately, she’d had French classes, not Spanish, so she couldn’t understand what they were saying. She felt the van buckle a little, as though extra weight was climbing into the vehicle, and then the engine started up again.
Feeling more and more nauseated thanks to the dark, the heat of the hood, and the swaying of the van, she tried to curl into a ball, to stay as small and as stationary as she possibly could. With her back against the cold metal, her arms around her knees, she moved with the van rather than falling here, there, and everywhere. It helped a little, but not a lot. Whatever advantage that new speed of hers would afford her would be wasted if she was too dizzy to stand up straight!
Instead of focusing on her stomach and how queasy she felt, she tried to listen again. Ignoring the talk in the front of the cabin, she tried to hear what was going on outside. She heard nothing out of the ordinary—only cars, a few people hollering, a song playing loudly as a car drove by, and even a bike or two. The latter made her heart clutch. There was no way it could be Mundo, not with that bullet lodged in his chest. More nausea flooded her at the thought, but she took comfort from the fact she felt nauseated and not like she was dying. Because surely, if he died, she would too. They weren’t fully bound, but she knew Hank had been shocked at the depth of their scent. That meant they were tied—a fact she could feel in her very bones, even though she was going to kill him when she was back home.
And she would make it back home. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he or one of his brothers would come for her.
She just had to cling onto that hope.
A squeaking sound broke her concentration, she felt the van decelerate, and she realized they were idling for a second, super slowly turning left.
Almost like they were heading into a driveway.
This was it.
This was her chance—her one advantage before she was transferred into a house or something.
Didn’t they always say that in situations like these where a woman was snatched, the situation worsened when they were taken to another location? Or maybe she was making that… but it made sense.
The instant she was in wherever they wanted to ‘store’ her, she was screwed. But if she made a dash for it, there were people out there, people who might help.
She knew there were two problems with that plan. One, they were probably in their gang’s territory, and because she could hear a few sounds of kids playing, she realized this was a neighborhood, which meant all the people here were probably their affiliates. Two, the people who’d taken her, were undoubtedly aware that this was when they were at their most vulnerable, that this was when she’d try to make her escape.
But they didn’t know her hands weren’t tied, and they didn’t know about her speed.
She decided to risk lifting the hood a little to try to discern her location. She inched it up, higher and higher, and when the guy made no bones about her moving the fabric, she managed to peer out and look at the interior of the van. But she also saw the body.
The corpse.
Her stomach twisted, literally twisted at the angle of the man’s neck. It was… had she managed to break it when she’d hit out at him? Her hand had ached a little, and she knew she’d connected with him, but she hadn't realized she’d murdered him.
“Oh God,” she whispered, pushing her hand against her mouth, and she realized that the stench coming from him was what had been exacerbating her nausea. She pinched her nose to stop inhaling the smell, but when she did, she felt how her fingers were bruised and realized though the way she’d hit out hadn’t been hard, it had been fast. Super, super fast.
She’d killed him. Without meaning to, but he was dead. Because of her.
His body was… She gulped. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a dead body; she’d seen too many during college. But she’d hated those dissection classes, and it was the first time she’d seen one out in the world, so she swallowed… fresh. And the first time she’d killed it someone whose cadaver was mere feet away from her.
Air whooshed in and out of her mouth, and she knew she was dangerously close to vomiting and hyperventilating. She didn’t know if the body can do both at the same time, but she knew she had to get out of there. She had to get of there now.
The vehicle had come to a stop. She felt the van buckle again as the people in the front got out, and knew this was her time to move. She made herself approach the body, which was slumped against the door, and knew she could use that to her advantage too. As she neared the man, she got a deeper whiff of the waste his body had released and felt like gagging. Shoving her hand against her mouth, she crouched against the side of the door, waiting for it to open, waiting for them to try to transport her into wherever they intended on storing her.
She didn’t have to wait long, but those seconds felt endless. She was precariously close to a corpse, for God’s sake. Of course it felt endless.
Oh, dear heaven, she was going to kill Mundo when she saw him.
Well, not kill kill.
Apparently, she had to make the justifica
tion in her head because she had killed someone now.
Kenny (Shifter Football League Book 2) Page 67
