Luminous

by Noelle Marie

  Katherine frowned. “Seriously,” she said, “this baby is sitting directly on my bladder. I have to go and soon.” She had no qualms about using her pregnancy to hammer the point home, not after Melanie had proved susceptible to the manipulation.

  “You went this morning,” Lukas pointed out, brushing her off. “I think you can hold it.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve drunk what was probably a quart of juice since then,” Katherine replied crossly. “If you don’t get me to a bathroom now, I’m going to piss in your car.”

  Lukas shrugged. “Go right ahead,” he said. “It’s not like the car is actually mine.”

  Katherine frowned. She knew the Buick wasn’t Melanie’s, but if it didn’t belong to her or Lukas, then...“Whose is it? Gerard’s?” she asked, testing the name out on her tongue.

  Lukas sniggered at the suggestion. “No. We have no use for cars where we live. I borrowed this doozy from an old man who was concerned for the well-being of a young, down-on-his-luck hitchhiker.” Lukas pulled a worn wallet from the back pocket of his cargo shorts, flashing Melanie a driver’s license. Katherine’s stomach filled with foreboding as she stared at the picture of an elderly man with a green newsboy cap on his head and a smile stretched across his weathered face. The license read Oliver Hampton.

  “He treated us at the motel, too.” Lukas added as Melanie took in the other side of the wallet that was lined with credit cards.

  “I-Is he-? I mean, you didn’t-?” she stuttered.

  “Let’s just say I don’t think good old Ollie will be reporting his car stolen anytime soon... or, you know, ever.”

  Katherine could read between the lines. The man was dead. Just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and having a tender enough heart to try to help someone he thought was in a jam. It was awful, and the sandwich she’d eaten earlier threatened to make a reappearance as bile churned in her stomach.

  Focus on the plan, Katherine scolded herself.

  “Yes, well, you may not care about the condition of the car,” she finally managed to say, “but you’ll still have to smell it when I soak the seat.”

  He waved off her “concern”. “I smell the same and worse all the time. There’s no fancy indoor plumbing where we’re going.”

  That gave Katherine pause. For the first time since it was revealed that Lukas and Melanie were taking her to the western colony, Katherine thought of Bastian’s comments about the place and its people’s primitive way of living. She recalled him claiming that they were more wolf than man. “Really?” she asked. Katherine could surmise well enough that they did their business in the woods, but... “How do you bathe?”

  Lukas rolled his eyes, like he was the one being forced to suffer the company of a stupid brat and not the other way around. “In the river, of course.”

  “But what about during the winter when it’s iced over?” Like now.

  Lukas shrugged. “We melt some water over a fire and wash up with that,” he explained like it wasn’t completely unhygienic to go months without a proper bath.

  Katherine glanced at Melanie, wondering if she knew of the living conditions of the western colony before agreeing to go with Lukas, but the girl’s expression hadn’t changed at all due to his words, so Katherine figured she must have already known.

  Katherine frowned. “Okay,” she allowed, “but are you really going to present me to this Gerard person reeking of urine?”

  It was the first of her arguments that gave Lukas pause.

  Before he could respond one way or the other, though, Melanie sighed from the front seat, likely as sick of the discussion about bodily functions as Katherine was. “For Christ’s sake, Lukas, she’s pregnant. You should have figured we’d have to stop and let her use the toilet at least once on this trip. I’ll just pull over at the next rest stop I see that’s secluded enough.”

  Lukas frowned – probably at the annoyance in Melanie’s tone that seemed directed at him – but conceded. “Fine.”

  Less than ten minutes later, Melanie was pulling off the highway and driving the car up a smaller, gravel road towards where a billboard advertised a rest stop.

  She parked.

  “Knife?” Melanie requested as she unbuckled her seat beat.

  Lukas handed the blade over to her, handle side first. “Just hurry it up.”

  Melanie nodded before leaving her seat. She opened Katherine’s door and let her outside. Although the sun was shining – it made the snow covered ground positively gleam – it was still bitterly cold, especially when the wind gusted. As such, the park they’d stopped at, and its restrooms, were vacant.

  With no one around to have to hide the knife from, Melanie held it loosely in her hand as she followed Katherine into the brick shelter. The inside of the bathroom was in good condition, considering. There was a cobweb in one of the ceiling’s corners and a few dry, scattered leaves on the ground that had somehow got inside and escaped the snow, but besides that, and the usual dank smell that seemed a staple in every outdoor bathroom there ever was, it was clean.

  Katherine glanced into one of the stalls before turning to address Melanie. “I don’t suppose you’ll untie me.”

  Melanie raised an eyebrow. “No.”

  Katherine glanced down at the button and zipper of her jeans – or tried to, anyway, her belly was in the way – and wondered how she was going to pull this off with bound hands.

  “Do you need help?”

  Katherine grit her teeth at the sarcasm. “I’ll manage,” she muttered before entering one of the stalls. Melanie didn’t allow her to close it, so Katherine had to do her best to ignore her presence as she unzipped her jeans and tugged them down a little at a time. She relieved herself – she really did have to pee – before beginning the much more impossible task of pulling the jeans up. In the end, she had to bite her tongue as Melanie helped her.

  Afterwards, Katherine went to wash her hands. She cranked on the faucet, trying not to flinch as freezing cold water hit her bound hands. She watched Melanie through the mirror in front of her. The girl was resting on the wall behind her, her usually hawk-like stare absent from Katherine’s form as she seemed to be contemplating something or another, Lukas’s knife held loosely in her hand.

  Katherine directed her gaze to her own eyes, looking in the green orbs as she attempted to calm the sudden racing of her heart. This was it. It was now or never. If she’d didn’t try something now, there was no way she could escape before they reached the colony.

  Katherine took a deep breath... and then furiously slammed her bound hands into the mirror.

  It shattered with a crash, pieces of the reflective surface flying everywhere. Melanie startled at the sudden noise, but quickly leapt into action, grabbing Katherine from behind in an attempt to restrain her.

  Katherine clumsily wrapped her hands around one of the larger pieces of broken mirror, ignoring the way glass bit into her fingers. They tussled for a solid minute, evenly matched in size and strength, but Katherine had desperation on her side. Plus, Melanie seemed to be holding back in an attempt to be mindful of Katherine’s pregnant stomach – she hadn’t even attempted to use the knife.

  Katherine had no such reservations. When she managed to wrench herself from Melanie’s grip, she turned on her heel and plunged the glass shard into Melanie’s shoulder.

  The girl stumbled backward in shock, her eyes jumping from Katherine’s unrepentant expression to the piece of glass sticking out of her shoulder, then back to Katherine’s face again. She shrieked.

  And Katherine bolted.

  She hurried out of the shelter, peeking only once behind her shoulder as she sprinted into the thick of the forest behind the brick restrooms. She saw Lukas scramble from the Buick in response to Melanie’s scream, and picked up her pace.

  Katherine was fast. But she was also pregnant, and no match for Lukas’s speed. As she ran and carelessly swatted low hanging branches out of her way, she could only hope he chose to attend to Melanie ra
ther than give chase.

  It soon became apparent that wasn’t the case.

  She hadn’t made it far into the woods at all when she heard and felt him behind her. Katherine didn’t have time to brace herself before he leapt at her, wrapping his arms around her waist and tackling her to the ground. Her left hip connected hard with what felt like a rock buried under the snow, and a sharp jolt of pain shot through her belly. Fear for her unborn child squeezed at her heart.

  It was the last thing Katherine felt before Lukas’s angry fist came down at her head, and darkness reigned.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Her dream wolf. His belly was pressed flush against the snow-covered ground, his large paws covering his snout as he whined.

  A ball of pure emotion welled in Katherine’s throat at the sight. “Hey, it’s okay,” she attempted to sooth him, reaching out with a hand and laying it on the flat of his head between his ears.

  The wolf jerked away from the touch, peering up at her through his paws. When Katherine caught sight of his eyes, she suddenly couldn’t breathe.

  The wolf’s – Bastian’s – lovely blue eyes were completely black. It looked like even the whites of his eyes had been swallowed by his pupils as he stared. And then he started growling. Spittle hung from his sharp teeth as he bared them at her. It was clear to Katherine that the animal in front of her was rabid. He slowly got to his feet, taking one threatening step towards her and then another.

  Katherine squeezed her eyes tightly shut at the sight, pressing the palms of her hands into her sockets as she wished with all her might to be out of this nightmare.

  “-don’t know what he was thinking.”

  “-she’s so little-”

  “How am I supposed to-?”

  Katherine felt like she was underwater as her ears strained to pick up snippets of a conversation. The words sounded slurred to her waterlogged brain, and her understanding of them was murky at best.

  She only knew that she didn’t recognize the voices – or voice, really, as what she seemed to be hearing was a singular person talking to herself. It was with that thought in mind – that she didn’t know who the voice belonged to – Katherine forced herself to open her eyes. She tried to, anyway. Her left eye was sealed almost completely shut.

  What in the world?

  Katherine’s hand darted up to her face, fingers gently probing the hot, puffy skin around the eye in question. It sparked a memory.

  The isolated rest stop surrounded by trees. Melanie staring at her with a piece of glass sticking out of her bloodied shoulder. A sharp pain in her belly. Lukas’s fist hurtling towards her face.

  She’d been kidnapped, and her escape attempt thoroughly thwarted.

  Katherine pushed herself up to her knees, resting a hand on her belly. A little foot or hand poked at her from the inside, and relief flooded her. Thank God.

  Assured that her baby seemed to be okay, Katherine glanced around the strange space she’d awakened in, wondering if they had reached the western colony. As she took in her surroundings, she figured they must have.

  Katherine was kneeling in what appeared to be a hut of sorts. Wooden poles were stacked on top of each other in an intricate pattern to create walls seven or so feet up from the ground before they began to form a dome-like ceiling. Cracks between the poles were plastered in with mud that had long since dried. Every inch of the dirt ground inside the hut was covered with animal pelts, except for the very middle, where a fire pit had been dug. A low blaze was simmering in it, smoke from the fire billowing up through a small opening in the hut’s ceiling.

  Overall, it was a crude, primitive dwelling, but impressive in its own right.

  As Katherine looked around the hut – as much as she could, anyway, considering she only had a sliver of vision in her left eye – she spotted the silhouette of a person. The person in question was standing in one of the shadows naturally formed by the fire. When they stepped forward, the tall, thin form of a woman was revealed. As no one else seemed to be in the hut, Katherine deduced that the voice she’d heard earlier must have belonged to her.

  “You’re awake,” the woman blurted. She seemed shocked.

  Katherine carefully observed her. She was young, like her – maybe a few years older judging by the stress that pulled at her otherwise pretty features. Her skin was a lot darker than Katherine’s own – a beautiful toffee color that spoke of Hispanic descent – and her dark hair looked similar to Melanie’s in cut and color, but was thick and textured instead of thin and brittle. Her eyes were a warm chocolate. Ultimately, the woman reminded Katherine of a thinner, darker version of the Amazonian Sophie.

  “Here, let me,” she said, taking two steps forward and kneeling in front of Katherine. She brought the damp piece of cloth she was holding in her hand to Katherine’s nose, dabbing delicately underneath it at what Katherine assumed was dried blood. “I’m sorry to be meeting you this way. I’m sure you must be scared-”

  Katherine, finally managing to shake off her own shock at the woman’s – girl’s? – attempt to treat her injuries, swatted her hand away. “Who are you?” she demanded.

  Her eyes softened. “I’m Serena,” she said, introducing herself quietly before glancing down at Katherine’s belly. She frowned. “I’d say it’s good to meet you, but I don’t think those sentiments would be returned.”

  Katherine licked her dry lips, wondering what in the world she was supposed to say to that. The woman – Serena – seemed to know that she hadn’t been brought there of her own free will, but she wasn’t doing anything to aid Katherine, either, in spite of her apparent sorrow over it.

  As she finally took note of her unbound hands, though, Katherine realized that she didn’t need her help. Pushing off the ground, she shakily got to her feet, ignoring the painful twinge that shot through her left hip.

  “What are you doing?” Serena asked, sounding fretful as she stood as well. “Please, sit. You don’t-”

  Before Katherine could make a run for it – before Serena could even finish her sentence – they both froze at the sudden sound of loud footfalls, and even louder voices, approaching the hut. Serena snapped her mouth shut.

  “I better not be disappointed, Lukas,” a masculine voice drawled.

  “I swear, alpha, you will be so pleased.”

  “That’s a bold thing to say. You know the consequences if you’re wrong.”

  Then the thick animal skin flap that served as the hut’s door was spread open, and two people stepped inside. There was Lukas, of course, and another man whom Katherine had never seen before. Judging by Lukas’s submissive stance – he held himself with his head bowed slightly to his chest – and the almost reverent way he regarded the other man, he must have been none other than Gerard.

  Gerard was... big. Standing at what had to have been six and a half feet tall and with bulky muscles bulging underneath the animal furs he was draped in, his physique practically screamed alpha. He had brown hair that fell in tangles down to his shoulders and gleamed gold in the firelight. It matched his beard, which while not especially thick, was certainly more than just stubble. He had noble features, with an angular nose that was just the tiniest bit crooked. It told Katherine that it had likely been broken a few times too many to heal completely straight. His eyes were dark brown, like Serena’s, but unlike hers, they weren’t warm in the slightest. They left her feeling cold, a shiver of something more than just apprehension tingling down her spine as they took her in.

  When his dark eyes finally connected with hers, Katherine jerked her green ones away from him. Instead of meeting his intrusive stare head on, she focused her attention of the lesser threat in the room: Lukas.

  “Where’s Melanie?” she demanded. She couldn’t help but wonder about the severity of the injury she’d inflicted upon her.

  Lukas looked something between shocked and offended that Katherine dared to speak to him without first addressing Gerard. He glanced timidly at the man in question before answering
. “She’s resting,” he bit out snappishly, “although she’s lucky to even be alive. You nearly nicked an artery.”

  Katherine raised her eyebrows in disbelief at the accusatory tone. “You’ll have to forgive me for my lack of remorse,” she muttered sarcastically.

  Lukas bristled at her impudence, while Gerard merely snorted. “This is all you could find?” he asked, speaking for the first time since entering the room as he turned to face the blond man.

  “She’s pretty under all the bruises,” Lukas defended.

  “Yeah, just like I’m sure you’re a real catch under all the excess body hair and jackassery,” Katherine spit out, addressing Gerard for the first time. It was much easier to do without the intensity of his stare directed at her.

  In retrospect, antagonizing the man who looked like he could crush her puny body with the same amount of exertion as it took for him to lift a pinky finger probably wasn’t her smartest idea.

  Before Katherine could blink, he had his meaty fingers wrapped around her bicep and was throwing her to the floor. She just barely managed to protect her pregnant belly from impact and catch herself with her hands. Before she could push herself back up, however, he’d lifted his booted foot and pressed it to the side of her face, the grooves of his well-worn footwear digging into the sensitive skin of her cheek as he ground it against the floor. “Now that wasn’t very nice. After all, you don’t even know me,” he said. The man didn’t sound mad, but rather... amused. The realization sent a jolt of fear through Katherine stronger than any she would have experienced if he would have spoken with anger lacing his voice. “Say you’re sorry,” he demanded.

  Despite the fear swirling in her gut, Katherine pressed her lips together and remained silent.

  Gerard grinned at her reaction – or lack thereof – and he turned to once again face Lukas. “Stubborn thing, isn’t she?”

  “I thought you might like that about her, alpha.”

  “Hm,” Gerard hummed. It wasn’t a denial, and Katherine felt sick.