by C. L. Bevill
The remainder of the women was quiet. Emma looked around and saw cameras in the corners. Someone was watching them. Perhaps they were listening to them, as well. She carefully straightened her shirt and pants. Wheeler had one of her knives. Martinez had knocked two from her hands as she fell unconscious. That meant she had three left.
Emma found one. Someone had searched her senseless body and taken two of the others. A light tracing of her fingers let her know that it was the Boker Speedlock. It was a switchblade that was illegal in all of the United States but Emma hadn’t cared about that when she’d obtained it from overseas. It had a 3 3/8 inch blade of stainless steel which was more than adequate to do bodily damage. And someone had failed to find it on her person.
Too bad. So sad. Doesn’t that make you want to cry?
Emma crouched and methodically looked over the room. There was always a weakness in every environment. Furthermore, she couldn’t get much information out of the other weres.
The next item on the agenda: Get out of the cage. Then kill some humans, and one particular were named Martinez. Then find Sage and go the hell home. Wheeler needs another kiss and I certainly deserve it now.
Chapter Four
The cat was created when the lion sneezed.– Arabian Proverb
Wheeler could distinctly recall the moment he’d first perceived Emma Lucia. He’d been in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There were businesses there he was interested in and his Clan had solid ties with the New Mexico Cat Clan. However, most of the New Mexico Clan made their homes in the mountains and disdained the larger cities. He stopped in the city for a meeting about an aerospace venture in which the Clan was deciding whether or not to invest in. Two hours later, he would have been in Taos meeting with the New Mexico Alpha, but an open window had halted him in his tracks.
The lack of weres in the city was the reason why Emma had gone unnoticed by the same. Eventually they would have confronted her and knowing her the way that he did, it wouldn’t have gone well. The New Mexico Clan liked its females somewhat more docile than Emma could even pretend to be. They weren’t cruel but they did have customs.
However, Wheeler found her first. He’d made Donovan stop the car they were driving in so that he could get out in the middle of the street and sniff. Even with the tens of thousands of scents in the city, he caught the simple fragrance that was so uniquely hers. It had taken him ten minutes to find the restaurant she worked in. He’d followed the markers from the hovel in which she lived to the middle class establishment in which she worked.
Wheeler had forsaken the aerospace venture because of Emma and had never thought twice about it. Instead he and two other weres had gone into the restaurant and been seated against a far wall.
Emma had appeared wearing a dirty apron and bearing a plastic bin for carrying away dishes. She was young and skinny. It didn’t take a psychotherapist to understand that she had been on her own for a while. She was making ends meet but barely.
But there was that intoxicating smell that made beads of perspiration appear on his upper lip. Sweet spices mixed with a potent female musk. It called to him and even the two Cat Warriors with him were aware of his extreme concentration. They’d sat against the wall of the restaurant and watched Emma working as a busboy.
“She’s starving herself,” Donovan said. The three weres watched her carefully. They could tell by the stiffening of her back that she had noticed. “Hungry weres are dangerous weres.”
“Rogue,” said the other Cat Warrior, Per. He was also keeping an eye on Wheeler.
“You know how some humans are made,” Donovan said carefully. “They don’t know who to talk to, and they certainly don’t want to advertise what they are. I’ve seen Lon Chaney movies.”
Per laughed. “The moon isn’t full and I haven’t eaten anyone for years.” He considered. “Well, not in a bad way.”
Wheeler observed as Emma put dirty dishes into a pan. She ran a rag over the table and stopped to put a tip into the pocket of her apron. Her shoulders were like a bar of iron. Unyielding. Unbreakable. Inflexible. She knew that they were looking. She knew that they were looking at her. It made her uncomfortable. In a few minutes she would disappear into the back of the restaurant and run because she hadn’t learned how to trust other weres.
“We’re leaving,” Wheeler said. He reached into his jacket and left a hundred dollars on the table. It was about seventy dollars too much for that particular restaurant and they hadn’t even received the drinks they’d ordered.
“Okay,” Donovan said, with a curious glance at Emma.
Thirty minutes later, Wheeler waited alone at the back entrance for Emma. When she came out her head was down and frustration fairly leaked from her pores. She hadn’t liked the three men scrutinizing her and it had rattled her nerves. What that truly meant was that Emma wasn’t listening to her were instincts and it said much about her state of being.
Wheeler stayed about a dozen feet away and said, “Don’t be afraid of me.”
Emma froze. She glanced up at him and then looked rapidly over her back at the door. It had locked itself behind her. Teach her to be more security conscious, he thought. “Next time, check the alley before the door shuts,” he said softly.
“I’ll scream,” she said and it was an icy breeze coming from those ruby lips.
Wheeler would have smiled but he thought that she would take it the wrong way. “I’ll be brief,” he said and folded his hands in front of his abdomen, attempting to appear as harmless as possible. “You have an odd ability that no one knows about. You’re a shifter, like I am.”
Emma stared at him. Her eyes were an exquisite color, a shade of blue that was vibrant and bright. In the dimness of the alley they wouldn’t be appreciated. But Wheeler could see them very clearly. Her face was starkly lined. Her chestnut colored hair was cut raggedly. She was a tiny thing, a foot less than himself in height. Her bony collarbones could be seen under the light t-shirt she was wearing. Whatever she’s doing with her money, it isn’t paying for a fancy place and nice clothing and a bite to eat.
Drugs? The thought migrated across Wheeler’s mind for a scant second and then disappeared. He could smell her. She smelled like Mexican food and her natural, intoxicating aroma. There wasn’t anything there that wasn’t supposed to be there. But there was also the slight acrid scent of fear and Wheeler took a step backwards. It was a step that he forced himself to make.
“What’s a shifter?” she said in a little voice.
“An individual who can change their form into an animal,” Wheeler said softly. “Something bit you once and you’ve never been the same. There are others. We can help you.”
Her mouth opened. It was natural to deny the incomprehensible truth. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had, but instead she finally said, “I couldn’t trust him.”
Wheeler’s mouth tightened. “I don’t know who changed you. I know that we keep to ourselves. We protect our own. You’ll have a say and you won’t starve yourself in order to make ends meet.” Furthermore, I’ll protect you. No one will ever hurt you again, if I have anything to do about it.
“He was in Central America,” Emma said in that same diminutive voice that made his stomach clinch in irascibility. Somewhere underneath the fear that made her stink, there was a girl who wasn’t afraid. He could tell by the steely rigidity of her shoulders.
“Jaguar? Cougar?” Wheeler asked. “We don’t typically allow people to be changed without complete foreknowledge.”
There was a tiny smile that curled across her lips. If Wheeler hadn’t seen it, he wouldn’t have believed it and it gave him a tiny flare of hope for the future. “It was a little smaller than that,” she said referring to the animal that had changed her.
“It doesn’t matter,” Wheeler said. “I can scent what you are. There are many others in the world. There is a New Mexico Clan who will take you in if you’re not interested in coming with me.” On the inside, he was thinking, You’ll come with me. You
have to come with me.
“Coming with you?” she repeated. The smile vanished and he could tell there had been no foreknowledge of her transformation. It had been worse than that, he suspected, and it would be a long time before he knew the rest of the story.
The real truth of the matter was that Wheeler was lying to her. She was a girl whose name he didn’t yet know. He would never leave her here for the New Mexico Clan. While they wouldn’t force her, they wouldn’t leave her be either. She would join them or be forced out of the state. And where would she go? She could disappear into a hundred different places where weres weren’t kind and didn’t care that she’d been forced into her present state.
“My Clan lives in Colorado,” Wheeler said. “There’s an estate with room to wander. The cats have free range of almost a thousand acres on the mountains. There’s a place for you there. No one will hurt you. No one will do anything to you. My word.”
“He was as beautiful as you,” Emma said slowly. She stepped away from him and Wheeler nearly followed her. He made himself stop. “He made promises as well. There was no choice in that matter. It didn’t matter to him that I screamed.”
I’d like to snap his neck for what’s he’s done to you. Wheeler took out a business card and carefully laid it on the ground. Then he backed away, desperately trying to show her that she was safe from him. “I’m leaving now. My name is Christopher Wheeler. You can reach me at those numbers. Anytime. We’d like to have you come see us. There are other female weres who would like to meet you. And most importantly, you will be safe.” I want you to come to me. You don’t know it yet, but you’re my mate.
The lion were snapped to the present and he looked around the spot where Emma had made her fight. She’d killed two humans before she was taken. She’d been darted with an animal sedative. There were still pieces of her Bluetooth ground into the dirt.
That had been two days ago.
In the interim the Cat Clan’s best soldiers had been busy. Sage Ingram’s roommates knew nothing about who she was recently speaking with. Her cell phone records were sparse. She couldn’t afford more than a pre-paid phone that was irregularly used. Her college classmates knew little about her except that she liked to study and her major was computer science. Her professors spoke well of her. Her family in Washington State was concerned with her absence, but not so much that they’d come to help find her.
The New York Clan was active on their end. They tracked the same group of people and had come up with little to point in any direction.
They’d tracked Emma’s scent to the airport. A chartered jet had been taken. It had landed in Chicago. Private vehicles had taken away the people on that charter. The Illinois Clan was helping but they didn’t know anything about kidnapped weres.
Emma’s trail was dead and Wheeler didn’t know what else to do.
•
A man came into the room where the female weres were being held the day after Emma woke up. She guessed at the time frame because some anonymous human had recently served them a haphazard lunch, sliding little plates through a slot at the base of the cage door. Some kind of freeze-dried mess, it hadn’t been appetizing and she hadn’t eaten much.
Crouching down, she tried to find a mental focus so that she wouldn’t go mad. Weres didn’t do well in cages and despite being a turned were, she was still a were.
The other females didn’t share much information. Marielle, the blonde-haired, brown-eyed feline from New York, had pointed to the cameras and shook her head.
“Is there a rule about speaking to each other?” Emma had asked.
“Not as yet,” the wolf shifter had said. Her pale blue eyes glittered restlessly. “They don’t want us to cooperate with each other.”
The bird were had said, “They hunt us.”
For a moment Emma had thought that the bird were meant that in the outside world the mysterious group of humans were actively seeking out weres. Then she perceived that the short statement meant something else.
“For sport,” Emma had said.
The bird were had nodded shortly.
Marielle had said, “That’s what some of the older ones said. The ones who didn’t come back.”
And that was the end of that conversation for the time being.
Then the man came. He was a human in his fifties, dressed in a three piece suit. Emma knew just enough to realize that the suit didn’t come from a rack in a mid-tier department store. It had been hand crafted for the man. His hair was deep brown flecked with silver. His eyes were an austere brown. He came into the room as if he owned it and the contents of the room, as well. Perhaps he thought that he did.
His first stop was in front of Emma’s cage and she realized that the other human male was behind him. He was the caregiver who had told her the rules.
The man in the suit looked at Emma with a smug regard. “She’s quite interesting. I would have thought that she would be taller.”
Emma smiled at him. “Five feet four inches in my stocking feet,” she said politely. “My name is Emma Lucia. Yours is?”
The man in the suit laughed. “And bold as well!”
The caregiver snorted. He hadn’t forgotten Emma’s comment about disemboweling him. But that was all right. She hadn’t forgotten it either.
“Whitfield Dyson,” the suited man said. “I believe you’ve met my employee, Scott.”
Emma moved a little closer and Scott sidled to the right. “Yes, he said something about rules, I believe.”
“You’re an ocelot in your alternate form,” Whitfield said, peering closely at her. Another inch and Emma would claw his eyes out, silver wire or not.
The wolf shifter moved in her cage. Her intense gaze was also on the pair.
“Well?” Whitfield asked impatiently.
“I didn’t realize it was a question,” Emma said calmly. “And hasn’t Martinez already informed you of that?”
“Martinez doesn’t always share everything,” Whitfield said. His brown eyes studied her, as if seeking out her inner character.
Did that mean something about Sage? Emma thought. Has Martinez ‘kept’ her like he said he might? She wanted to curse. She wanted to bite something. And here was a warm, living being in front of her who was actively keeping her in a confined area. He would do.
“You’re the only one of those we have,” Whitfield went on, as if he were talking about an interesting skill that one of his employees possessed. “I’ve never even heard of another one. Will you breed true?”
Emma fought for a moment to silence her tongue. The question made her shudder inside. Not only did these humans want some kind of reserve of ready game, but they wanted to make more. It was why they were aggressively seeking out female weres.
Whitfield regarded her silence with aplomb. “I won’t ask again. Scott will go and fetch the dart gun. He’ll shoot you with two of the darts and we’ll wait until you’re unconscious. Then I’ll have my doctor look over your reproductive organs. Artificial insemination can be performed easily.”
“The DNA is selective,” Emma said slowly. Feline reproduction for weres wasn’t exactly the topic of choice for Emma at the Clan’s compound. “It depends on the parents.”
With a minute shrug, Whitfield rubbed his chin. “Does it matter if the father is human or another were?”
I’m going to disembowel Scott first. Then I’m going to strangle you with his intestines, Whitfield. I’m going to take a photograph with the compact cell phone in your pocket as a present to Sage and all the other females you’ve taken.
“That’s a look full of rage, wouldn’t you say, Scott?” Whitfield asked calmly.
“It’s better if the father is a were,” Marielle said quickly. “Two weres will almost always produce were offspring.”
“Shut up,” the wolf shifter said.
“What difference does it make?” Marielle questioned. “They’re going to kill us.”
“And what if,” Whitfield pointed at the female bird
were, but his eyes had fixed on Marielle, “the mother is a bird-based shifter? What if the father was a wolf or a cat?”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Marielle said. “Bird weres are rarer than most.”
“The DNA is selective, as the little cat said,” the wolf shifter said slyly. “Shall I bite you to see if you maintain your life? Are you truly…worthy?”
Whitfield turned to watch the female wolf. “No, I don’t think that’s a viable option.”
The wolf made a chicken noise. “Bawk. Bawk.”
Emma laughed. She thought she might like the wolf shifter.
Whitfield turned back to Emma. “It’s true you’re not pets. Nor are you human. The laws of humanity could scarcely be applied to you.”
“We are human,” the bird were said. Her voice was full of resolve. “We’re more than human.”
“More than human,” Whitfield said as if the notion was quaint, “I like that.” Then he pointed at one of the cougar weres two cages down. “Let’s see, we have a tight schedule here. We have clients waiting on an order. Take that one and prep her for the clients.” Then he looked closely at Emma and pointed at her. “And this one. Take her. I believe I would like a litter of ocelot kittens.”
Scott pulled a weapon out of his belt. It was similar to a pistol but held the familiar dart in the end. Then he came close to Emma’s cage and pointed the end through the silver wire at her.
Chapter Five
Beware of people who dislike cats. – Irish Proverb
Wheeler stood in Emma’s room. It was a Spartan affair. She made a decent salary through the Cat Clan, far more than she had ever made before she joined the Clan. However, her expenses were minimal. Part of her salary was spent on her beloved Jeep; that was the same Jeep he was going to have to replace because he’d torn the door off and part of the frame with it. She continued with private lessons in Krav Maga and Jujitsu. She liked to read but he could only see a Nook and a Kindle sitting together on the nightstand. Her clothes were plain and multipurpose. There was a high-end laptop on her little desk. A stash of expensive knives under the bed was secured in a box. She lived as if she expected things to be ripped away from her and he frowned with that sudden realization.
