“Don’t know if you want advice,” she said, “but I put in a card for a drug rehab program attached to one of the free clinics in Nashville. Most of the judges are more likely to be lenient if they can see you’re voluntarily getting help. Your lawyer might even be able to get the charges dropped, if you explain to the victims you’re in rehab.”
Victims. The smell of blood was suddenly filling her nostrils, making her want to gag. She couldn’t have hurt anyone very badly, though, could she? Not if they were letting her go.
Lissa nodded. “Thank you,” she said. She knew the woman meant well, but drug rehab wasn’t going to fix what was wrong with her. Maybe the clinic could, though.
She walked out of the office toward the waiting area, hoping no one was there waiting for her. Hoping she could just walk out to the nearest road, stick out her thumb, and get the hell away from this town before her past caught up with her.
But there was someone waiting for her. A huge hulk of a man with messy blond hair and scruff on his face, looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.
Tank rose from his chair in the waiting area as Lissa came out the door. She stopped dead when she saw him, looking shocked. She was carrying a battered manila envelope with her things in it, and she looked even more hollow-eyed and exhausted than before. He could smell the blood on her.
He felt a sudden urge to just sweep her up in his arms and carry her off. His bear wanted to feed her and tuck her up and curl up around her, holding her so she wouldn’t be scared and nothing could hurt her.
But he had to be careful. He was painfully aware of the security camera in the corner of the room. If he set her off again, they might not let her leave, and if what he suspected was right, they couldn’t risk having that on video.
“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s get out of here.”
He saw her eyes flicker briefly towards the camera. Of course—she was a thief. She would always know where the cameras were.
She walked with Tank toward the door, her holey old sneakers slapping on the linoleum where one of the soles was coming loose.
Note to self: get her some new shoes. And warm boots for winter. And some of those sexy high heels that looked good with dresses. No—no sexy heels. Or dresses. He was just helping her out, not becoming her sugar daddy, for fuck’s sake.
He ushered her out the front door, reaching over her head to hold it open as she walked outside. The temperature had dropped from the day before, and it was chilly out. The cold didn’t bother Tank, but he saw Lissa shiver in her thin t-shirt, and he had to resist the urge to put his arm around her shoulders and pull her close.
Don’t get emotionally involved, he reminded himself. You promised Flynn you wouldn’t. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t.
She didn’t say anything while they walked to his truck, just kept giving him sidelong glances. He went around to the passenger side and opened the door for her, but she pushed it shut and faced him.
“Why did you bail me out?” she asked him bluntly. Those huge blue eyes looked up at him, staring into his as if she could see right through him. “How did you even know I was in jail? Was it on the news or something?”
He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair. This next part was delicate, and he was going to suck at it.
“No. I saw you run out there, in the middle of all those people at that party, and I couldn’t get there in time. I couldn’t stop it, and I felt like shit about that. So I tried to do the next best thing.”
She frowned at him, confused. “You were there? At the party?”
He shook his head again.
Her eyes narrowed, and she took a step back. “Were you following me?”
There was no sense in trying to deny it. He nodded. “Yeah.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Have you been stalking me?” she demanded. She sounded pissed, but underneath he could smell a tiny bit of fear, well-concealed.
He ran his hands through his hair again, frustrated. He’d never been good at explaining things, and he didn’t want her to be scared of him. Even if she should be.
“It’s not like that,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows, still inching away from him. “Steaks? Fancy shampoo? Lurking by my squat to follow me at night? What would you call it?”
“Okay, it’s kind of like that,” he admitted. “But it’s not creepy, or anything,” he assured her.
“I’m pretty sure you’re not the one who gets to decide that,” she snapped. Her confidence seemed to be coming back.
“Fine,” he said. “Fuck. I suck at this. I kept trying to forget you, okay? But my b—my conscience wouldn’t let me. It kept telling me to check up on you and try to help you. I didn’t even want to,” he added. That wasn’t true. Part of him wanted to, and part of him didn’t want to feel anything.
She tilted her head, studying him. “Why am I picturing you wandering around like cartoon Pinocchio, with an annoying cricket on your shoulder telling you that stalking is in some way a good thing?”
Tank snorted at the thought of his bear as a singing, dancing Jiminy Cricket. “No idea,” he said. “Because you have a bizarre imagination?”
She just kept backing up.
“And anyway,” he added, “it was a good thing. Otherwise you’d still be in jail.”
“All right, well, thank Jiminy for me,” she said. “But I’m okay now.”
She was about to bolt—he could tell. He recognized the look on her face. Hell, every other shifter in his crew had it.
The one that said she was all alone, and she couldn’t afford to be dependent on people. She had to rely on herself to survive.
Only this time, if she didn’t let someone help her, she wouldn’t survive.
“Dammit!” he snapped. “You’re not okay. Why the fuck won’t you just let me help you? You sure as shit need it—more than you probably even realize.”
Lissa’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t need anybody’s help,” she said. “And I don’t need some great big Incredible Hulk deciding I can’t survive on my own. I’ve handled that since I was sixteen, thank you very much. So you,” she pointed her finger at him, “don’t get to decide what I need. Even if you did bail me out of jail. Which I didn’t ask for, so I don’t owe you shit, Mr. I-helped-you-and-now-I-own-you. You don’t.”
Tank stepped in and took her by the upper arms. “You have no choice,” he said. “You can’t be on your own—”
“Hey!” she said, trying to pull away. Her eyes flashed red-gold, and then returned to their normal blue, but they were glazed over, as if she didn’t know where she was anymore. She swayed on her feet, and Tank caught her just before she fell.
Shit, this was all about to go sideways.
He opened the truck door and bundled her inside, buckling her into the passenger seat. She was emanating little growls, which would have been cute as hell if it didn’t mean there was an animal trapped inside her, trying to fight its way out.
Tank ran around and jumped in the driver’s seat, and roared out of the parking lot as fast as he dared.
Chapter 8
Tank kept one eye on Lissa as he drove, muttering every curse word he knew. She had something inside her, and he’d bet money it was a bear. From the looks of it, she had no control over it whatsoever.
She might not have ever Changed before. That happened sometimes, when someone was Turned into a shifter instead of being born one, like Tank was. They managed to survive the bite and the infusion of shifter magic, but they fought the Change so hard they suppressed their animal, which just fought harder and harder to get out.
It rarely ended well, and the longer it went on, the less chance of a happy ending. But he couldn’t let her try to Change until he had her somewhere safe and contained.
Somewhere that wasn’t in his truck in the middle of town.
He reached over to touch her, trying to reassure her animal, and she bared her teeth at him and snarled. Her eyes were glowing red
and her canines were elongated.
Holy fuck. She wasn’t going to make it to the compound. Even if she only half-changed like she had last night, teeth and claws only, she was about to go berserk. He couldn’t restrain her while they were inside the truck, and he sure as hell couldn’t let her out, even if they made it to the woods. She’d hurt herself, or run off, and this would just turn into a bigger mess.
A garish sign caught his eye: The Barbecue Palace.
Food.
Meat calmed her down. Her bear wanted to kill, but if it couldn’t, it went for cooked meat.
Tank took a hard right into the parking lot and gunned it up to the drive-in microphone. He rolled down the window and started belting out orders, one eye on Lissa.
“Give me two super-size orders of beef ribs. No, make that three. And burgers, those big half-pound ones. Four. No, six. And some Coke or something. Two of them.”
After an excruciatingly long pause, the bored voice of the employee read the order back. Tank yelled “yes!” before they even gave him the total, and moved forward to the window, where he handed over his debit card.
Tank drummed his fingers nervously on the steering wheel, trying to think loud enough that Lissa could somehow hear him. Don’t shift. Don’t shift. Don’t growl. Don’t look at the teenager in the drive-through with your scary red eyes.
He could swear she was a bear, black bear maybe, but he’d never seen eyes like that on any shifter. They gave him the willies.
Finally, after what seemed like two or three years, the food was handed out the window in two huge bags. Tank pulled forward, then popped the lid on a container of ribs and handed them over to Lissa. “Here,” he said. “Eat this.”
She gave him one feral look and tore into the ribs like she hadn’t eaten in days. Hell, maybe she hadn’t, despite the money and food he’d left her. For all he knew, she was doing drugs or something and not eating.
He pulled over to the far corner of the parking lot and cut the engine. He kept the ribs and burgers coming, taking away the empty containers and replacing them with full ones. He managed to snag most of an order of ribs for himself, hoping it would steady his bear, but Lissa being all riled up riled him up as well.
Don’t shift. He didn’t even know who he was talking to this time.
He let her stuff herself until her lap was a mess of paper wrappings, cardboard takeout containers and uneaten buns. Even though she barely knew he was there, feeding her satisfied something deep inside him.
Finally she slowed down, and the glazed look faded from her eyes. She glanced over at him, as if startled to see him there, and then looked at the mess of food wrappers in her lap.
She bit her lips, like she was trying to think of something to say.
She didn’t meet his eyes, but she smelled embarrassed, and confused, and scared.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
She shrugged, and he could see her putting on her armor—the “I can take care of myself” attitude that she needed to survive. “Fine,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “Because it’s perfectly normal to have your eyes go red, and growl at people, and eat more meat in one sitting that somebody your size should be able to eat in an entire day.”
She shrugged again, but he could smell how upset she was. “I was hungry?” she offered in a small voice.
He took a deep breath. “You’re not fine,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure I know what’s wrong with you.”
She gave a snort, but still didn’t look at him. “I doubt that.”
Slowly, carefully, he reached out and grazed his fingers over her left shoulder, right where it met her neck. “Let me see,” he said softly.
Lissa couldn’t help it. When he touched that spot, panic flared through her, and she flinched away.
His fingers froze, but he didn’t pull his hand back. “I won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice so low it was almost a whisper. “But I need to see.”
She finally managed to meet his eyes. Those soft green eyes held her gaze, and she felt something relax inside her that had been coiled up tight with fear ever since she’d first laid eyes on Brother Damien.
He moved his fingers to the collar of her t-shirt and pulled it aside. He dropped his gaze to the exposed skin.
She knew what he’d see there. A bite mark—the one Brother Damien had given her that horrible night. She could still feel his teeth deep in her neck muscle, the pain and the fear and the blood pouring out…
Tank was staring at the mark. “Who did this?” His voice was low and deadly.
“A man named Brother Damien,” she said in a small voice. She closed her eyes. Her secret was out now.
His voice got lower and more gravelly. “Did he explain to you what it meant?”
Her eyes flew open and she stared at him. How would he know what it meant? Did he know what Brother Damien had done? Why she was like this?
She said, “He told me he was the Bear God Incarnate and I was his consort. He said—he said it would make me worthy of him—that it would put the spirit of the bear in me too. He did the ritual and then he—he ripped my shirt off and he bit me. Then he tried to take the rest of my clothes off. I knew he was going to rape me and I—I fought. I got away, and I never went back.”
Tank was staring at her. “Where was this?” he demanded.
“At the cult where I used to live in Arkansas. The People of Ursus.”
Tank pulled her shirt back to cover the scar and sat back in his seat. “Fuck,” he muttered, running his fingers through his hair. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking out the windshield. “That’s pretty much what I said.”
She watched Tank out of the corner of her eye. He had his lips pressed together, as if he was trying to keep from saying something.
“You know what he did to me, don’t you,” she said. “You know why I’m like this now.”
He sighed. “Yeah.”
“Please tell me I’m not really the consort of the Bear God Incarnate. Or a zombie queen.”
Tank gave a huff of not-very-amused laughter. “No,” he said. “And, no.”
That was a relief—kind of.
“Then what?”
He shook his head. “It’s complicated.” He started the engine and put the truck in gear. “We can’t do this here,” he said. “I’m taking you home.”
He pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the road that led out of town. As they neared the abandoned service station, Lissa started hunting around in the mess of garbage for the manila envelope that held her belongings and her paperwork. That still had to be dealt with, and she wasn’t looking forward to it.
She looked up just as they were passing the squat. Lissa turned to watch it go by, then turned back to Tank. “That was it, Hulk.”
“I know.”
“I thought you were taking me home.”
“I am,” he said. “I’m taking you home with me.”
Chapter 9
Lissa leaned back in the seat and waited for the panic to hit her. Strangely, it didn’t. For the first time in a long time, she felt…safe.
She sat there for almost ten minutes, exploring the feeling. Tank gave her occasional sidelong glances, but he didn’t say anything else. Finally she said, “This is very disturbing.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Tank said.
“No, I mean it’s disturbing because I have extremely good creep radar. Even the charming ones that fool everybody—I can tell they’re creeps.”
Tank looked amused. “And you think I’m a creep.”
“No,” she said. “That’s the confusing part. You have no creep vibe at all. You have nice-guy vibe all over you.”
He snorted at that.
“But you keep doing creep things, like stalking me. And kidnapping me and taking me to your evil lair. Hell, that’s beyond creep, it’s serial-killer level shit. And my creep radar is not going off at
all.”
He was grinning now. Well, half a grin.
“Maybe it’s broken,” he said. “Or maybe I’m just that good at serial killing. You know, the guy who has a hundred and eight bodies in his yard and everybody’s like, “But he seemed so nice! He even lent me his chainsaw that one time!”
That surprised a giggle out of her. “You don’t really have a chainsaw, do you?”
“Of course I do,” he said. “I live in the woods. But pay no attention to the wood chipper.”
“Nope, definitely not a serial killer,” she said. “They have no sense of humor.”
“I’m just pretending to have a sense of humor,” he said. “Because I’m, you know—”
She finished with him. “That good.”
He gave another reluctant huff of almost-laughter. She remembered the first time she’d gotten a good look at his face, and thinking it looked like he hadn’t smiled in a while.
It turned out she liked making him smile, even a little.
“So,” he said, glancing over at her. “Tell me about this cult you were in.”
She never talked about it to anybody. Who would she tell? But suddenly, she wanted to tell Tank everything. She was so tired of being alone.
Tank drove slowly, listening to Lissa talk about the People of Ursus. She was explaining the drum ceremonies and the prayers to the Bear God. “Of course, I didn’t believe all that shit,” she said. “I just stayed because there was plenty of food and I had a cubicle all to myself.”
Tank gave a huff of laughter and shook his head. “And they had flush toilets?”
She grinned. “The Taj Mahal of cults,” she said. She settled back in her seat. “No, really, they were nice—at first anyway. Some wacky dude like, a hundred years ago, believed he was the Bear God Incarnate. The way they could tell this was, supposedly he could turn into a bear. I guess he was right out of Barnum & Bailey or something.”
Or something. The cult had probably been founded by a bear shifter. Whether he really thought he was some kind of god, or was just a maniacal narcissist, Tank had no idea.
Bad Blood Bear (Bad Blood Shifters Book 1) Page 5
