“Dad!” Katherine wailed into the phone. “Roxanne’s forgetting things like every five minutes. What do I do? Apparently some of the werewolves can erase memories, but they can supposedly also bring the memories back. Do the Gunds have someone like that?”
“I’ll ask them when I call them,” her father said. “Now, we need to decide on a rendezvous point.”
* * *
The world was fuzzy and blurry. There was an annoying ringing sound in Steele’s ears, and the ground was hard, and he needed to wake up because there was some emergency, but he couldn’t remember what it was.
The baby!
Steele sat bolt upright, panic shooting through him. Roxanne had been kidnapped. His baby was missing. Roxanne was the only person who could help them find the baby, and she was gone, and he had no idea where those people were taking her. How long had he been under? Would he have time to catch up with them?
His cell phone was ringing. Without thinking, he fumbled for it. It lay on the floor next to him.
“Hello?” He pulled himself to his feet. A wave of dizziness rolled over him, but he fought it off.
“Jeez, it is about freaking time!” Isadora yelled at him. “Get in your car and start heading north. I’ve still got them in my sights.”
“Who?” He had a metallic taste in his mouth, but the dizziness was abating.
“The humans who kidnapped Roxanne! I haven’t called anyone else yet, because you told me you were going to leave town forever and I thought that maybe the wardens had some kind of kill on sight order out on you. What the hell is going on?”
“I’m getting dressed while I’m talking,” Steele said, stumbling through the living room towards his bedroom. “How did you know about the humans?”
“I saw their car pass me while I was leaving, and I was like, what the heck are those people doing here in Timber Valley? So I doubled back and followed them and I saw them pull up in front of your house,” Isadora said. Steele, still woozy headed, pulled on jeans and a shirt as Isadora talked.
“I parked by the side of the road and shifted so I could get closer, and I could smell that one of them was human and one was a wolf, which is weird as hell. I saw them shoot you with that tranquilizer gun. When they left, I ran over and pulled the dart out, but I couldn’t wake you up, so I ran back to my car and started following them,” Isadora said. “Also I put the phone by your head and I kept trying to call you. Jeez, you took forever to wake up, you lazy bastard.”
“Isadora, I take back everything bad I ever said about you,” Steele said.
“Nah, it’s all true, and then there’s all the stuff that you don’t know about,” Isadora said cheerfully. “Okay, I’m going to give you directions, and you should be able to catch up to me pretty easily. Whee! Road trip! If only you were more fun, this would be a really good time.”
Chapter Fourteen
“My legs are stiff, and I need to pee,” Isadora said crabbily.
“Suck it up, buttercup,” Steele replied, shutting his car door. They’d been following Roxanne and her merry band of kidnappers due north for seven hours straight, until they finally pulled in to a rest stop. She and Steele had briefly pulled over in a convenience store parking lot so she could get in his car, and he’d filled her in on everything as they drove, including the fact that Roxanne had given birth to his child and might know where all the missing shifters were.
“Thanks. Next time you get shot with a trank gun, see if I save your ass,” Isadora said loftily. “I am going to do like lynxes do and pee in the woods.” She dodged into a stand of bushes.
Steele glanced around cautiously, but the woods were fairly thick and she should be safe. It was night time, and while parts of the parking lot were bathed in pools of light from lamp posts, they were in one of the darkened areas.
Still, he didn’t like anyone to shift when humans were around. It was always risky.
The rest stop was fairly busy. There were long lines of trucks parked at the far end of the parking lot, with truckers resting up or walking around, and a gas station, restaurant and convenience store. Steele and Isadora had parked closer to the other end, where Roxanne and her friends were standing next to an empty picnic table.
Roxanne was pacing back and forth, near her redheaded friend, and a group of people were walking towards them.
One of them was a redheaded man, who looked like the father of the redheaded girl. He was tall and rangy, same body type, same facial features, and he hugged the girl in greeting. The people with him…Steele stared. It couldn’t be. There was a scent drifting his way…
“Oh my freaking God,” Isadora said, trotting over to him. “Those humans are hanging out with wolf shifters.”
“Yes, they are. Hopefully that means they won’t shoot us if we go talk to them,” Steele said, and began walking towards them.
“How confident are we of this theory?” Isabel scampered after him.
“Hey! You two!” Dash stepped out from behind a parked SUV. He was in uniform. He’d driven his SUV there, but it was unmarked.
“What are you doing here?” Steele demanded, shocked.
“I could ask you the same question,” Dash said. “Isn’t that your human over there?”
“She’s not my – okay, yes she is.” She was his if she wanted him, anyway.
“Why is she here? Is she talking to a bunch of shifters?” Dash stared in amazement. “I thought you were holding her at your house so her memory could be wiped. She knows about our existence, and she’s walking around free?”
“How did you find us?” Isadora demanded, hands on her hips.
“I saw you speeding out of town, and I was going to pull you over, but then I saw Steele catching up to you, so I just hung back and followed you. And followed you. I thought we were never going to stop.” Dash looked uneasy, as if there was something that he wasn’t saying.
“Why are you continually hanging around trying to find dumb excuses to bust my furry ass?” Isadora glowered at him.
“If your furry ass would stop speeding through town, you wouldn’t have anything to worry about, would you?” Dash glared right back at her.
Steele looked at Dash, narrow eyed. Dash looked uncomfortable, but he didn’t flinch.
“Dash. You’ve been in touch with the Wardens while you followed me, haven’t you?” Steele asked.
“Could be.” Dash met his gaze with a cold stare.
“Excuse me, what?” Isadora stared at him, appalled.
Steele folded his arms across his chest and scowled at him. “How far behind us are they?”
“Not far. I can’t let you or the human leave.” Dash shook his head. “I’m sorry, Steele, but with everything that’s been happening, with shifters being kidnapped, with the risk of exposure to our race – my loyalties have to lie with shifters. Where do yours lie?” He raised an eyebrow and glanced over at Roxanne and the group of humans and shifters.
Steele let out a low, angry snarl.
“Watch how you to talk to your Alpha,” he rumbled.
“Sir, with you allowing a human to leave our territory while she was aware of our existence, I can no longer consider you my Alpha. You’re not even my boss any more. The Wardens have relieved you of your command, as is their legal right.”
“You backstabbing bastard!” Isadora hissed. “All he was doing is trying to stop them from scrambling his girlfriend’s brain! And she’s the mother of his baby! Did you know that?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Dash said irritably. “Obviously she’s lying about that. She’s human, she can’t have given birth to Steele’s child. Whoa, Steele – settle down! Not here!” At the suggestion that Roxanne was lying, Steele’s face had started to go hairy, and his fangs descended.
Steele swallowed his rage and quickly shifted back. He glanced around. Fortunately no humans were nearby.
“She’s not lying,” Steele growled at him. “And watch what you say about her, because I can kick your ass in human form just
as easily as I can in wolf form.”
“Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on,” Isadora spit at Dash. “I was actually starting to like you.”
Steele turned and walked towards Roxanne, with Isadora following him. Dash hurried after them.
“I did what I had to do, and I would do it again,” Dash said angrily. “Wait – you were starting to like me? What the hell does that mean?”
Isadora’s only answer was an uplifted hand with the middle finger prominent. She didn’t bother to look back at him.
The humans and shifters were huddled around the picnic table, some sitting on the benches and some on the table. They were drinking coffee and scarfing down snack food.
Katherine looked up with alarm as they approached. “Dad,” she said urgently. “That’s the sheriff who Katherine went to see in Timber Valley. The one we shot with a tranquilizer gun.”
“You did what?” Roxanne asked her. “You shot him with a gun? What’s wrong with you?” She added in a low voice to Katherine “He’s actually pretty hot, don’t you think?”
“A tranquilizer gun,” Katherine said defensively. “You called me and said you were being held captive by a werewolf, and I didn’t know where to find silver bullets on short notice, or actually even on long notice, so I thought that a tranquilizer might work.”
Steele shot Katherine a look of contempt. Humans.
“Silver doesn’t affect us,” he informed her. “You’ve been watching too many horror movies.”
There were about a dozen people sitting around the picnic table or sitting cross-legged on the ground, and they all looked enough alike that they were clearly related – blond hair, Nordic looking, tall and lean with ice blue eyes – but only some of them were shifters. How was that possible?
A man who looked to be in his fifties walked up to Steele and held out his hand. “I am Sven Gund,” he said. “And you are like us. I can smell it. I thought we were the only ones in the world.”
“What is your pack?” Steele asked. “I’ve never heard of you.”
Sven looked surprised at that. “A pack, like real wolves? This is my family.”
“I see. I want to learn about your history, but first things first. Roxanne gave birth to our son in February, and she said she believes that he is being held in an underground facility. I desperately need your help in finding him.”
“I have a grandson missing too. His name is Axel, and he disappeared two years ago,” Sven said somberly. “From what Katherine tells us, Roxanne described a mine system to her, but the problem is, there are hundreds of possibilities. There are mountains nearby that are riddled with tunnels and shafts. We need to narrow it down before we stage a rescue attempt.”
“Wait, what? I had a son with the hot guy?” Roxanne’s head swiveled to look at Katherine for confirmation.
“Yes.”
“Go, me!” Roxanne held her hand up for a high five. Katherine gave her a weary smile, and high fived her. Then Roxanne looked around. “But where is he? My baby? I don’t remember what he looks like. I need to see him.” Her smile vanished, and she looked around anxiously, then stood up and scanned the area.
Katherine raised an eyebrow. “Roxanne. Did you hear the part where he’s being held in an underground facility?”
Roxanne’s face went pale. “Are you serious? We’ve got to go get him! Now!”
Katherine looked at her despairingly, then turned to Steele, glowering at him. Her eyes were brimming with tears. “She’s getting really bad. She literally forgets things every minute or so now. How can she function, how can she take care of her son even if you do find him? You people did this to her, damn it!”
Steele grimaced. Seeing Roxanne like this was like a punch to the gut. “One of our people screwed up. We have these people that we call Shamans, and we use them to erase people’s memory if they accidentally spot one of us changing to animal form, because we cannot risk exposure,” Steele said. “The man who messed up her memory was not someone that I chose. The man who could fix her will be back in town in…”Steele glanced at his watch. “Tomorrow morning. Less than twelve hours. That’s our best shot at fixing her memory and finding out where all these missing shifters are being held.”
Katherine looked at Sven. “Do you have anyone who can do that?” she asked him.
Sven shook his head regretfully. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. I wish we had someone like that. Right now, our families stay in the woods and hide from the modern world because of fear that we will be discovered.”
“It isn’t something that just anyone can do, and Roxanne is a special case,” Steele said. “Since her memory has been messed up, we can only trust the absolute best that we have to fix her. The man who is coming tomorrow morning is the best that we have.”
“I guess we have no choice, but you’re not taking her away with you,” Katherine said, putting her hand defensively on Roxanne’s shoulder.
Roxanne looked at Steele hopefully. “I wouldn’t mind,” she said.
He sat down next to her. “You and I are together,” he said. “When our Shaman comes back, you will remember me, I swear to God. And when you do, I hope you still want me. We will get our son back, and we will be together.”
He saw the way that Dash was looking at him – with contempt and anger. He couldn’t even blame Dash. Before he’d met Roxanne, if he’d heard of a shifter who wanted to marry a human, he would have been enraged.
“You can sit down,” one of the humans said to Dash, gesturing at an empty spot on the picnic bench.
Dash shook his head, standing stiffly. “No, thank you,” he said.
“I believe some acquaintances of mine are coming soon,” Steele said. “In the meantime, Mr. Gund, why don’t you tell me about your pack, I mean your family? Where do you live? How is it that you weren’t aware of other shifters?”
“We live near Lonesome Pines. Our family emigrated from Sweden. My ancestors came to Montana in the 1800s, to prospect for gold,” Sven said. “They had a farm deep in the woods, and several other families, who had also emigrated from Sweden, came to live with them as well. One day, so family history has it, our ancestors found a little girl wandering around by herself in the woods. She was so young she wasn’t even speaking yet. They took her in. When she grew up, she married one of the sons of the family. As far as we can figure out, she was the last surviving member of a family of werewolves who had been wiped out by hunters. She gave birth to fourteen children. About half of them were able to shift into wolf form at will, and so were their children. The families decided to keep it a secret for fear of having their children taken away from them by the government.”
He glanced at Roxanne. “Your father was a distant relative of ours.”
“You’re the Gunds, aren’t you? I think I remember my father telling me that.” Roxanne frowned, still looking bewildered.
“This is a first for our kind,” Steele said. “Humans and shifters have had sexual encounters, despite our best efforts to keep to our own kind, but we always thought it was impossible for such a union to result in children. There has never, in recorded history going back a thousand years, been an instance of humans and shifters being able to have children together. Your family must be a special genetic strain that is able to successfully breed with wolves.”
Steele saw that Katherine and the blond shifter who’d shown up on his doorstep were standing next to each other.
“So, you two are together?” he said.
“Oh, no,” Katherine said hastily, and the young man moved away from her. “We’re just friends.” She glanced after him. The look on her face said that she’d like more. Maybe the young man didn’t share her interest, or maybe he felt that he couldn’t. It was hard to tell.
“Sir, with all due respect, you’re revealing too much about us,” Dash said, biting the words out. “The Wardens will not be pleased.”
“Dash. They’re shifters, the same as us,” Steele said. “We need to welcome them into our co
mmunity and offer them protection, and the chance to meet others of their own kind.”
“How can that be, when half of them are human?” Dash shook his head.
Steele had to admit that it was a serious dilemma, but the Council of Elders were just going to have to figure it out. It wasn’t fair to leave these people hiding in the woods, isolated forever.
“You call yourself shifters,” Peter observed.
“Yes. The term werewolf was invented by humans, and it comes with a number of inaccuracies. We don’t need the full moon to change form, for instance, although we often do feel compelled when the moon is full. Silver doesn’t affect us. We live longer than humans do, but we’re not immortal.”
Sven gestured at Isadora. “You smell different, not human, but not wolf either. You are also a were – I mean, a shifter?”
“Don’t answer that,” Dash said quickly.
Isadora raked him with a look of disgust.
“I turn into a lynx,” she said to Sven.
“That’s fascinating!” Sven’s eyes lit up. “So people can turn into other animals!”
“Oh, gosh, all kinds,” Isadora said, settling down onto a spot on one of the picnic benches. “Hyenas, jackals, wolves, bears, lynxes, mountain lions, bobcats. I hear in New Orleans they have gator shifters, although we’ve never met them. Our climate’s too cold in Colorado.” Dash was giving her dirty looks, but she ignored him.
The redheaded man walked over to Steele and extended his hand. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Raymond Bertelsen, Katherine’s father. I’m also the mayor of Lonesome Pine.”
“Katherine says that she thinks that your police chief was involved in Roxanne’s kidnapping,” Steele said. “And Roxanne thinks that the town’s doctor had something to do with it. Is that true?”
“We believe she’s correct,” Mayor Bertelsen said. “Some of the Gunds have picked up the doctor and they’re…questioning him. We’re holding off on approaching Chief Fennell just yet. He never goes anywhere without a couple of his officers by his side these days, and we want to be sure of ourselves before we make so bold a move as to grab a police officer off the street.”
Hard As Steele (A BBW Paranormal Romance) (Timber Valley Pack) Page 10
