by C. J. Pinard
I could now see perfectly clear inside the tunnel, as if I wore night vision goggles. But instead of pale blue and black, I saw red with a haze around the corners of my vision. I stalked toward the men, wondering why only my hands, and apparently my teeth, which were cutting into my bottom lip, had morphed into the wolf-girl. My fangs felt sharp and I suddenly had a craving for blood. Then I remembered this had happened outside the club when I was fighting with Jacquez’s goons.
The three men went to run, but I caught the one closest to me by the back of his shirt. He squealed like a little girl, and with my other hand, I wrenched his head back and ferociously bit into his neck. Blood squirted in an arc and painted the pale-gray concrete tunnel ceiling in fat crimson dots. He screamed, but I didn’t care. I pulled his vampire blood into my mouth until he stopped yelling. When I dropped his body to the water below, his head was hanging off his neck by just a few strands of sinewy bone and flesh.
The second vampire, a dark-skinned man who wasn’t Maurice, but smaller, was blitzing away. I quickly overtook him. and once I passed him up, I grabbed his arm and swung him around and back into the tunnel. A quick glance showed me that Phil was clamoring out of the tunnel and up onto the flat part of the backyard. I had no intentions of killing him, anyway, but I did think he’d make a nice hostage.
Oh well.
A stinging pain in my arm brought me back to the problem at hand. The vampire had his fangs in my hairy, musclebound arm and I laughed. “Got a death wish?”
“Werewolf blood isn’t toxic to us, you freak. I’m over a hundred years old. I don’t believe in old wives tales.” He kicked and punched against me.
“That’s not what I meant by death wish, you dumbass,” I growled. With my free hand, I pried the handcuff off my wrist and listened as the teeth slid out with a loud clicking sound. Once I had the cuffs in my hand, I used the sharp to slash a gash down this asshole’s face. He yelled in pain as he tried to wiggle out of my grip, but I was stronger than he was. I threw the handcuff down and gripped his face with both claws while I licked the wound on his cheek.
“Get off me, you bitch!”
“Shut up. Tell me where Linden is, and I’ll let you go. In fact, I was planning on escaping, but I’m feeling pretty wolfish right now, so why don’t you take me to him, and if you help me kill him, I let you serve me instead.” I started laughing like a maniac, but he just stared at me with big, dark eyes, almost wondering if I was being serious.
“Lady, you’re insane. I’ll do no such thing. I’d rather die by your hand, than by his. He’d probably torture me for days. Which is what he’s gonna do to you, if you don’t get the fuck outta here. Now let me go!”
“No,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. I could see a sickly yellow glow on his face, and knew my eyes were shining yellow.
He struggled again to get out of my grip, but I held him tight. “Tell me where Linden is.”
“Fuck that, I’m not dying for you.”
I’d lost my patience, so I replied, “Well, now, you kinda are.”
With one claw, I gripped his shoulder tight, and with the other, I punched him in the chest. I pushed hard until my fist burst through skin, blood, and bone. His eyes widened at the same time mine did when I reached his heart, the warm muscle beating in the fist of my hand.
“No!” he screamed. “I’ll—”
But he was too late, he didn’t even get another word in by the time he was dropping to the ground in a bloody heap and his still-beating heart was in my fist.
“Gnarly,” I whispered. I scrunched my nose in disgust, dropping it to the ground and blitzing toward the iron grate. I knew going back onto the property was suicide, so with a rebel howl, I yanked as hard as I could on the grate. It flew free, and I tossed it to the ground. I quickly ripped off the remaining handcuff, flung it behind me, and blitzed deeper into the storm drain.
Chapter 9
Sanja
As we drove down the dark, tree-lined street in Evan’s SUV, I couldn’t help but feel nervous. I knew this was part of being a supernatural, and that we always seemed to be in the shit time after time, but I owed it to Ayla. She would do it for me.
Even though Mom had come with me to meet with everyone at the magic shop, she still wasn’t happy with the plan Evan, Karina, and Aden had come up with. Despite her not being crazy about vampires, she asked why Beckett wasn’t coming along for added protection, and I had simply told her that we really didn’t know where he was. After the incident at the Love is Love Lounge, he and his Elven boyfriend, Gavin, had gone up into the mountains. I was sure Beckett would kill us when he found out all of this had gone down, but nobody had time to worry about that at the moment. Ayla obviously didn’t have her phone, and if he had been trying to contact her, I surmised, he would catch on pretty quickly that things weren’t okay with her, and come in search of her—or seek out one of us at the very least. Not that we were exactly hanging out at Moon Chasers drinking and chatting like we usually did. Besides, Evan ensured us his brothers would be helping, too.
After Evan parked the SUV on the side of the road, we got out and began to head toward the metal fence that surrounded Linden’s property. We had about a hundred yards off the main road to reach it, but knew parking any closer to the fence would be a bad idea.
A guttural scream coming from somewhere ahead made us all stop in our tracks. “What the fuck was that?” Aden asked, his light eyes wide. His skin looked pale under the half moon above, especially contrasted with the black baseball cap and black clothing he wore.
“Shit, that couldn’t have been good,” I whispered, totally concerned for my friend and for Kellan, too. I looked at Evan.
He turned and looked at his wife, Karina, then back to me. “I think that might have been Ayla. It sounded part wolf, didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Aden said in agreement. “I thought I was imagining it. It wasn’t full wolf, though.”
I chewed my lip. “It sounded human to me.”
Evan sighed. “Not good, guys. We need to get to her. If she’s trapped somewhere, it sounds like she needs help.”
I nodded and followed as Evan, Karina, and Aden began to walk toward the property. Once we reached the metal cyclone fence, Evan looked at the three of us. “If it’s electrified, we’re fucked.”
Aden lifted an eyebrow. “And who’s going to be the unlucky bastard who finds out if it is?”
“Which one of us heals the quickest?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
We all looked at Karina.
“Really?” she groaned.
Evan grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Any better ideas?”
She shook her head. “No. I’ve been through worse anyway. Let me touch it at the bottom, might do less damage if I’m grounded somehow.”
She crouched down and put her hand on the grass and dirt. “One, two, three…” She put her finger to the metal pole and nothing happened. Then she put three fingers on one part of the metal hooking of the fence. Nothing. Then she grabbed it with her fist and nothing.
“Sweet. Gimme a boost,” Aden said, hopping up on it.
It wasn’t long before we were all over the fence and running toward the large mansion we saw looming in the distance. I half expected a bunch of Dobermans or pit bulls to come charging at us, but it was eerily silent.
We stayed to the trees along the edge of the property, darting around them. I couldn’t run at blinding speeds like Evan and Karina, but I was in pretty good shape, and tried to keep up as best I could. Aden could also run crazy fast, but I think they all kept it purposely on the slow side for me.
Another scream ripped into the night, and we all stopped in our tracks, dirt and grass flying up as we halted.
“That sounded human… ish. Male,” Karina said.
“What is this place?” I whispered while shaking my head with wide eyes. “Some kind of house of horrors?”
“Of that… I have no doubt,” Evan murmured, breathing heavily with his hands on his hips and sta
ring at the looming mansion that sprawled horizontally to the south.
I looked to the west and could see the jagged black mountain range set against a nearly black, navy sky, and a smattering of stars around the half moon. A few wispy clouds played around the tips of the mountaintops and would occasionally float in front of the moon, making it harder to see across the lawns and thickets of trees on the property.
“We have to keep going. Once we reach the back of the house, or if we run into anyone or anything, we have to stick to the plan,” Evan ordered.
“Agreed. Let’s go get our girl,” I said with more bravery than I felt. My stomach twisted into a knot. I’d never done anything so dangerous, but the loyalty and love I had for my best friend trumped my fear. Ayla was a very special girl, and comrade, and I couldn’t lose her. I would miss her too much. I vowed to use as much light or dark magic I had to in order to get her out whatever shit she’d gotten herself into now. Just as I knew she would do anything for me if I were in mortal danger.
The outcropping of trees stopped rather abruptly, and we halted at the edge of the tree-line and looked out over the massive green lawns. The area seemed to open; so exposed. We’d have to book it double-time in order to make it past that huge ol’ swimming pool and into the shadows surrounding the edge of the house to get there undetected. Then I spotted a ditch off to the east of the property. I couldn’t see where it led down into, but I thought it would make a good hiding spot.
“You guys, look,” I whisper-yelled, pointing east toward where the lawns seemed to drop off into a big gash set into the ground.
“What is that?” Aden asked as he set off toward it.
“I think it’s a drainage ditch of some kind. We used to play hide-and-seek in them when I was a kid, growing up in Texas,” I replied, jogging to catch up to him. He was definitely just walking fast and not running, and for that, I was grateful.
We reached it quickly, and as I was about to ask Evan which one of us was going to jump down and investigate, we heard another scream come from inside the tunnel. We all looked at each other with wide eyes and ran toward it, knowing someone, or something, in there needed help.
I watched as Aden crouched as if he was going to leap down, but Evan put a hand on his arm. “Stop, we need to stick to the plan.”
Aden’s eyes narrowed at the vampire-wolf hybrid, and he replied, “Fuck the plan. I’m gonna go get my sister.”
“But you don’t even know if she’s down there,” Karina said, her eyes shifting around as if expecting trouble to come at us at any minute.
I was feeling the same way. We were out in the open; so exposed.
Evan sighed. “We need to split up. Aden, you and Karina go down into the tunnel since you have the best eyesight. Sanja and I will find out where this tunnel lets out. Keep your phones on vibrate.”
Aden looked at Karina and made a face. He hated vampires, but I didn’t understand how anyone could dislike the soft-spoken redheaded Southerner. Instead of commenting, he simply nodded and jumped down into the drainage ditch.
Karina looked at her husband, leaned up on tip-toe, pressed a peck to his lips, and then followed Aden down.
Evan looked around and saw that the night was still quiet, and said, “You’re probably not gonna like this, but I’m gonna need to blitz to find the end of this. It’d be easiest if I just carried you.”
I looked up at him in horror. “You’re not carrying me. I can run really fast.”
He gave me a disapproving look—one I’d seen on my mother far too many times. “We were running slow for your benefit earlier. Now, it’s either the Officer and a Gentleman carry, the fireman’s carry, or a piggyback ride. Choose quickly, we have about ten seconds before someone comes out here.”
I followed his line of sight to see a light pop on in a window of the mansion.
“I don’t know what the first two are, so piggyback, it is.”
Evan crouched his large frame. I guessed him to be about six-foot tall, and I was hovering around five-seven, so I hopped on easily, and before I could blink, the world was whizzing by me at unreal speeds, while I held on and my breath for dear life.
“This has to be it,” Evan said, frustrated and definitely agitated as he paced back and forth along the shoreline of the lake. I looked up at the body of water, and squinting, I could see a spout of water shooting out of the side of a rocky mountain face above it, and it was flowing fast.
“No way that’s a natural spring or something,” I murmured to myself.
Evan stopped pacing and came to stand next to me. He put his arm around my shoulder and pointed at the chasm coming from the wall of rock. “Look at it closer. See the metal at the edge of the hole? That was manmade. That has to be where the drainage ditch comes out. It’s also a good twenty feet up. The hole is symmetrical too, no way nature—”
“Okay, okay, I get it, dude. I’m from Texas. Everything is flat. We don’t have cool things like mountain faces and stuff like this.”
Evan removed his arm from my shoulders and looked at me, amused. “So where do all those drainage ditches you have in Texas—which you spoke of earlier—lead to? I never played in them as a kid.”
I lifted my shoulder and let it fall. “Hell if I know. We never ventured far enough into them to find out. Either they were cut off with metal bars, or the scary stories we were told as kids about the trolls and snakes that lived in the tunnels was enough to scare us off.”
Evan snorted. “Trolls? No. Snakes… in Texas… definitely.”
I turned to look at him. “That’s right, you’re from there, aren’t you?”
He licked his lips, put his hands on his hips, and nodded, his dark-blue eyes scanning the water. “Yes. Born, raised, and turned there.”
I let out a small gasp. I had no idea what had happened to him, and I was suddenly curious. Instead of delving into the supernatural part, though, I simply asked, “What part?”
He looked down at me. “Dallas. I met Karina at the junior college there.”
I let that sink in as I looked away from him and over the lake. Aside from where the heavy stream of water was shooting out onto the surface, the lake was relatively quiet. Still, I scanned its glass-like surface for anything.
Finally, I said, “You two have been together a long time, huh?”
He nodded slowly. “She’s been my one and only.”
I looked up at him with eyebrows raised. “Seriously?”
Evan put two fingers up. “Scout’s honor.” Then he made a scoffing noise. “I wasn’t even entirely human when I lost my virginity.”
I cleared my throat, feeling uncomfortable, but unable to do anything about it. “Uh, okay. Wow, well, thanks for sharing?”
He chuckled. “Sorry. I was out there for a minute. It was a long time ago. Still feels like yesterday, though. That’s what stress does to me.”
“How long ago?” I asked.
Evan’s eyes scanned the water, like a hawk trying to catch its prey. “Over ten years, at least. Probably more. I don’t keep track much these days.”
I lifted an eyebrow and stared at him. “You don’t keep track of what year it is?”
He sighed and looked at me. “I don’t expect you to understand. Witches live normal human lives, just with all the cool parlor tricks. I had no idea what the future held for me, until the years passed, and—”
I had been listening to him, sympathizing with him, really, until a movement on the lake caught my eye. I pointed toward the bottom of the gush of water coming from the mountainside. It looked like something had been thrust out of it. “Oh, my God, look!”
Evan’s head whipped around to where I was pointing at a body pouring out of the hole in the side of the mountain and into the lake.
Chapter 10
Kellan
Listening to the screams and howls outside were worse than the beating I’d endured since Linden had ordered me to be brought to this house. But none of those had anything on the fear I had for Ayl
a, and my inability to do anything about it. I wasn’t even really all that sure where I was, as I’d been covered and cloaked as they’d driven me here in the boot of a car. But I knew I was on the property still, as I could still hear things with my exquisite hearing.
The small, bungalow-type house was furnished moderately with modern amenities, but, just like what had happened a hundred years ago, Linden had spelled the doors and windows so I was unable to escape. I wore no restraints, and the refrigerator in the small kitchen was stocked with bags of blood. As before, it seemed as though I was meant to be a comfortable prisoner, and knowing Linden so much better than I had back then, I realized that his reasoning behind this was so that his prisoners wouldn’t really be too motivated to escape. But he’d underestimated me this time. I had a much bigger reason to want to be let out, and that was a sassy blonde hybrid who I had fallen in love with.
When I’d first arrived, Phil and two other vampires had shoved me into the house and then closed the door behind them. Daylight had still been lingering, and I had wondered briefly why they hadn’t waited until sundown to bring me here, but being that I suspected Phil had been spelled with an obedience curse, he probably hadn’t had much choice. I had no idea who the other two vampires were, as I’d never seen them before.
Unfortunately, even at my age, I hadn’t been a match for three on one, and even though I’d fought as hard as I could, Phil had held me down as the other two had beat me with fists and floggers until the sun had gone down. Once it was dark, they all had left the house, with Phil leaving last.
“He says you’ll understand why this was done. He says you’re no stranger to being beat into submission, and he hopes you remember who owns you.” The strange look in Phil’s eyes as he’d left me on the floor, unable to move and lying a pool of my own blood, had almost looked apologetic.
“You’ll learn to control it,” I had whispered as he’d stared me. “Servitude doesn’t mean slavery. There are loopholes, my friend.”
