Bad Seed: An Imp World Novel (Northern Wolves Book 4)

by Debra Dunbar

  The Alpha stepped forward and put his palms on either side of the man’s face. The guy’s eyes widened, and his hands came up to grip Jake’s wrists, but even though the muscles in his arms bulged, there was no way he could pull the Alpha’s hands away.

  “Where are they?”

  I felt it, some sort of compulsion that seriously made me want to kneel and confess all to Jake. The hunter shook, sweat beading on his forehead, but he didn’t reply.

  “Let me try,” I told Jake.

  It was my beast that wanted at this guy. Although I wasn’t sure I could do anything beyond what Jake was trying to do. If physical pain, if Jake’s weird compulsion trick didn’t get the man telling us all he knew, then I probably couldn’t either.

  Jake shot me a surprised look, then hesitated as though he saw something in my eyes that convinced him I could do this. He stepped away from the man. As I moved in close, I saw a fear in the human’s eyes that hadn’t been there when Jake had questioned him. My hand shot out, closing around his throat and pinning him in place.

  Then something weird happened. My beast took control, but instead of ripping the guy to bits in a fit of rage, she pulled on him—not on his physical self, but on something deep within him. The hunter gasped, absolute terror in his eyes. He trembled, and I felt something tear, as if I were pulling the insides out of his cells. Tiny bits of blood surfaced in red dots on his skin and he screamed.

  “Where are they?” I purred. “Where?”

  There was a garbled sound as blood dripped from the man’s mouth. His screams choked into wet bubbles of red saliva, as I began to ease the man slowly free from his body. Suddenly his mind was mine, all his experiences and memories. Everything he knew was mine.

  And he was mine as well, to keep forever, to play with, to torture and torment for all eternity.

  I smiled into the hunter’s eyes, saw the knowledge there of what was happening, then his gaze shot to Jake.

  “Kill me. Kill me. Please kill me,” he begged the Alpha. “Don’t let her have me. Don’t let her take me.”

  “No,” I whispered. “I don’t want you to die. I want to play. Don’t you want to play? You’ll never die. You’ll live forever in eternal torment. The only respite you’ll have is so you can contemplate the return of the pain, knowing that it will never end. Never.”

  “Kill me!” he screamed to Jake. “I’ll tell you anything. Don’t let her take me.”

  “But I already know everything,” I told the man. “He has no reason to save you. None at all.”

  “Tupper,” Jake said, his voice sympathetic. “If you have what you need, let him go.”

  No! He would not deny me my prey.

  “Tupper. Let him go.” There was a heaviness in the air as Jake forced every bit of his Alpha dominance into the command.

  I stayed my hand, turned my attention to my Alpha, and snarled. He would not deny me this. I would fight him for this.

  “Tupper.” Suddenly I felt him. It was as if Jake reached through the distance between us, past my skin to touch a hand to the head of my beast. “Don’t do this. I’m asking you to please not do this. I’ll let you kill him, but please don’t Own him.”

  I saw the choice before me. My beast wanted this man to Own, but she also wanted Jake. We both wanted Jake. And for once in my life, the non-beast part of me cast the deciding vote. I wouldn’t keep this man. I’d grant his plea for death. I’d do what Jake asked because I loved him and that’s what people who loved each other did. I’d let this man keep his soul, and instead take his life.

  But that didn’t mean I had to be merciful about it. I let go, and he snapped all the way back into his body. Then as he screamed, I dug my fingers into his neck and let him slowly bleed out, not letting go until he stopped thrashing and I felt him leave his body.

  It was a horrific death. And what I’d wanted to do to him had been even more horrific. I felt the rush I got from killing him, felt at one with my murderous beast. I lost myself to her and she stopped fighting me in return. I understood what Jake had been telling me during our sparring sessions. I’d been so afraid of trusting my beast, doubting that if I let her even a moment of freedom she’d go on a killing rampage. If I found a way to satisfy her nature, could we possibly coexist without tearing each other apart? If I let her have an outlet like sparring with Jake, like interrogating and killing this murderer, would she finally give me peace?

  All I knew was that two seconds ago, she had been in charge and I’d enjoyed it. And when it was over, she’d been happy to let me take the wheel without any kind of fight.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up into Jake’s ice-blue eyes. They were warm with approval and affection. As much as I wanted to take that man’s soul, this look in his eyes was more than an adequate trade.

  “You know where they took Mir and the others?”

  I nodded.

  He took my face in his hands and it struck me how very different this was than when he’d done the same to this hunter. “You were amazing. Watching you was…well, it was the closest thing to a religious experience I’ve ever had. You’re fierce and beautiful, like a Valkyrie, like an avenging angel.”

  I caught my breath, shocked that he’d felt that way watching me go on a killing rampage, then almost rip the soul from a human and torture it for all eternity.

  “You’re amazing,” he repeated. Then he kissed me. I swayed, then stepped forward to press myself against him, my hands reaching around to grip his waist. He deepened the kiss, one hand sliding around to hold the back of my head and the other skimming down my back to grip my ass.

  When he finally let me up for air, I was barely able to stand.

  “Later,” he said, leaning down for another quick kiss. “After we find Mir and the others, I am going to haul you off to my bed and never let you leave.”

  Later. Because I’d seen not only where those men had taken Mir, but what they had planned for any shifter children they’d managed to capture.

  Mir first. Sex—no, making love—later.

  Chapter 24

  “I know where they are. I know where they are.” It was like a mantra as I paced the floor, struggling to keep my beast inside. We couldn’t leave until we’d taken inventory and found out how many the hunters had taken with them. It wouldn’t do to mount a rescue attempt, only to find that we’d inadvertently left some of our pack mates behind. So while Jake and the others did a count, I cleaned as much blood off of me as I could and put on some clothing before returning outside to wait impatiently for our go-ahead to leave.

  “Soon,” Jake said coming up to me. “Almost everyone is accounted for.”

  “Only two are missing,” Jamie said, panting in between words as she suddenly appeared before us. “Mir and Emma.”

  Mir, I knew. Emma must be the baby. I closed my eyes and envisioned her in my mind. Any child younger than six was a baby in my mind, but from what I saw of Emma, I was judging her to be less than two. Truly a baby.

  I’d absorbed that hunter’s mind. I knew what they had planned for Mir and Emma. I knew that they’d planned to take more—as many male and female young children as they could find as well as any teen girls. Sexual slavery for the teen girls. The others would be sold as pets, and that most likely included sex for some perverts with enough money to buy one as well. Emma was so tiny, but it was the remembrance of what that man had wanted to do with Mir that made my beast ready to kill every living being I could find.

  I needed to get out of here. There wasn’t enough time, and I was terrified that without magical transportation of our own, they’d be gone by the time we arrived. If they moved Mir and the baby somewhere that the human I’d read hadn’t had knowledge of, we’d never find them.

  Correction. I’d eventually find them. Because I’d spend the rest of my insanely long life tracking Mir down and punishing those who had anything to do with kidnapping her or hurting her. And as far as my beast was concerned, vengeance for Mir’s suffering extended t
o friends and family of those hunters. No one was innocent in her mind—not even my own pack who she felt should have done more to protect the only friend I had.

  Jake turned to me. “Where are they?”

  I opened my mouth only to shut it with a snap. Visions of land stretched before me. Mountains—not as tall as these, but still tall. South, in the lower forty-eight. I knew exactly where they were, but couldn’t articulate it.

  Wait. A sign. In the vision I saw a sign. Grabbing my phone out of my pocket, I typed the name into the search engine, then pulled up the images. Yes, that was it.

  “Philipsburg, Montana.”

  Jamie and Jake both peered at my phone.

  Jake growled. “I can fly us in to whatever airport has the next flight out of Alaska, then we’ll rent a private jet if we need one to get to Billings, then rent a car. We’ll get there. I’ll get us there.”

  My vision blurred with tears. I honestly think this was one of the only times in my life I was ever on the edge of crying. “There’s no time for that. We need to be there now before they move them, or we’ll never find them again. They’ll be sold. And there’s not any doubt in my mind that those guys who vanished with them will recommend stuffing Mir and that baby into a big box and onto a truck to take to Minnesota, or Phoenix, or even Mexico until they can get the highest price for them. We don’t have time to fly to Montana and rent a car. We don’t have time.”

  I was on the edge of hysterics at this point. Jake grabbed me and folded his arms around me, crushing me against his chest. “I’ll go find Gwylla and see if she can teleport us. I don’t know where her sanctuary is, or even if I can find it, but I’ll try…”

  He knew as well as I did that traipsing around the Alaskan wilderness for days looking for a sidhe’s hidden Shangri-La wasn’t any better than flying commercial.

  “Sir.” Jamie cleared her throat. “That archangel down in Juneau…”

  Jake pulled away from me and yanked out his phone. “Brent,” he barked into it. “I need Raphael. The hunters attacked our compound and a few of them teleported away with a sixteen-year-old girl and a twelve-month-old baby. They’re in Montana, and I need a teleport down there for Tupper and me.”

  I heard Brent’s response and winced. Evidently angels were all about trading favors. This Raphael guy might want to help out of the goodness of his heart, but angels were weird creatures.

  Who was I kidding? I was a weird creature. If it hadn’t been Mir who’d been kidnapped, I would have been shrugging my shoulders and saying “so what” myself. For all I knew, this Raphael was the same.

  “I will owe him a favor, whatever he asks of me as long as it doesn’t go against any other vow or promise I’ve already made.” Jake’s tone sounded oddly formal, as if he knew how important this was. Then he stuffed his phone back in his pocket and turned to me.

  “He may refuse, but I think not. His mate, Ahia, has a soft spot for children and he in turn has a soft spot for her. He’ll be here.”

  I clenched my jaw, wondering how much of a delay there might be until this angel showed up, wondering if he’d agree to transport me once he saw what I was, wondering if Mir would still be alive when we got there.

  Stuffing down the panic, I tried to think of something else, like peeling the skin off every hunter who had touched Mir, who had even thought about touching Mir.

  I didn’t need to wait long. We’d barely made it out into the center of the compound, when the angels appeared—both of them. My pack mates were dealing with the injured and starting to clean up the bodies—both of our own and of the hunters we’d killed. Our clean and neat home was a mess of blood and destruction. The angels looked around in astonishment, the female’s brows lowering when she saw our dead.

  “Take us there,” I demanded, hardly able to stand a second more of waiting.

  “Wait.” Jake put his arm in front of me. “This rental car place in Philipsburg, Montana.” He showed his phone to the male angel. “I don’t think it would be wise of us to just pop in without knowing what we’re facing.”

  I closed my eyes and envisioned the route the dead hunter had taken from Philipsburg to the cabin in the mountains where they’d intended on holding the kids. Half an hour. I wasn’t happy about that, but Jake was right—it wouldn’t be wise to just teleport in and find ourselves blown up, or shot full of magic bullets, or turned into frogs.

  “We can’t stay and help you.” The female angel seemed quite pissed at that. “There’s some fucking meeting we have to be at. You’re lucky you caught us before we left.”

  I snarled, letting my beast right to the surface of my skin. “Just get us there and I’ll do the rest.”

  The female angel blinked in surprise and I heard the male angel laugh softly. “I almost feel sorry for the hunters. Okay, folks. Next stop: Philipsburg, Montana.”

  Chapter 25

  The angels dropped us off at a car rental place in a town that didn’t look like it had many more residents than the Swift River Pack compound. Jake and I dry heaved for a while dealing with horrible vertigo from the teleport, then we rented a car.

  He drove. I navigated. The road was a series of winding switchbacks, and then a dirt road that ended up so completely washed out into gullies that we could go no further in our little rental truck. Which was okay with me. I’d rather hike the next mile to the cabin than drive up to their front door while getting shot at.

  I was too panicked, worried that they might have relocated Mir in the hour and a half between when they’d vanished from our compound to our attack at their cabin. What if they’d teleported here, immediately stuffed Mir and the baby into a magic cage, and driven away? I kept telling myself we would have passed them on the road, but my beast was still terrified that they’d slip through her claws and we’d never see Mir again.

  There were two Jeeps parked in front of the cabin along with a huge, jacked-up pickup truck with a cap over the bed. I smelled six humans. I smelled the baby, Ellen, or Elaine, or whatever her name was. I smelled Mir. My beast raged against my skin and I was fighting a losing battle to keep her inside.

  “Let her go,” Jake murmured. “Do what you do best, Tupper.”

  I yanked off my clothes and exploded into fur and talons and a broad mouth with a double row of sharp, serrated teeth that had more in common with a shark than any mammal. With a furious roar, I charged, smashing the door clear off its hinges.

  The humans were unprepared, but there were six of them and they were too spread around the cabin for me to take all of them at once. I grabbed the closest one, unhinging my jaws to wrap them around his thick waist. Then I closed them, shaking my head to shred through tissue, muscle, and cartilage, then biting down hard to hear the satisfying crunch of pulverized vertebrae.

  It took seconds, and seconds was all the others needed to grab guns and begin shooting. I’d been shot before, but these bullets burned their way through my body, rotting everything they touched and demanding that I become a wolf.

  I almost laughed. If my beast wouldn’t list to my demands regarding what sort of animal form she took, I doubted she would obey a bunch of magicked bullets. Still I felt fur sprout from my weird leathery skin, felt my body heat to an abnormally high temperature as it tried to fight the magic. All the while my body was recreating flesh just as fast as the magic on the bullets destroyed it. Karl had been right. I wasn’t immune, but I was oddly resistant, and I had no doubt that I’d overcome this magic in a matter of minutes, no matter how many bullets they pumped into me.

  I lunged for another human and heard a voice off to my right scream.

  “Angel!”

  For a second I thought they meant me, then I saw Jake. He’d come in through the back door, and was holding one of the hunters by the neck, the man’s toes dangling two feet off the floor. He was glowing as if he had a weird silvery-white aura, his eyes nearly neon blue. But it was the wings that had the hunters scrambling for some magazines on the table.

  Damn, I lo
ved those wings. Someone was so gonna get laid tonight.

  Later. After we rescued Mir.

  I got an idea what was in those magazines the hunters were slamming into their rifles, so I finished off my prey with haste, dropping his broken body onto the floor.

  Jake had done the same to the man he’d strangled, and grabbed another, spinning him around as a human shield and bringing his rifle up across the man’s neck. I didn’t trust that those angel-specific bullets weren’t going to go clear through the human and into Jake, so I did something totally weird—I shot out a giant ten-foot long sticky tongue and wrapped it around the other guy’s rifle, yanking it toward me just as he pulled the trigger.

  Bullets sprayed into the cabin walls, inches away from Jake. I reeled my tongue in like I was deep sea fishing, then dug my talons into the man’s waist and yanked them upward. Guts spilled onto the floor and the man screamed, dropping the rifle.

  I didn’t have time to finish him off, because the last guy had bolted and was heading for the vehicles. I hadn’t a doubt in the world that I could run him down, even if he floored it going down that insanely rocky gulley of a road, but I didn’t want him to get that far.

  He saw me coming and quickly realized that he’d never get the Jeep started and in gear before I was on him, so he ran for it, dashing around the house and into the kitchen where he grabbed something that looked like a cross between a sword and a giant fucking fillet knife.

  I had a bad feeling about that knife. He swung it at me wildly, like the guy was far more used to shooting his victims than trying to stab or slash them. For the first time in my life, I was cautious jumping back and biding my time, ducking under one wild thrust to slam him against the wall, digging my talons into his wrist with enough force to make him drop the knife without severing his hand.

  I had no doubt the guy Jake had been strangling along with the one I’d abandoned disemboweled on the floor were dead, which meant this guy was the only one left alive. I’d been absolutely aware the whole time I’d been fighting that Mir hadn’t been in the room. I hadn’t heard her. And although I could smell her, that scent could have been from before we’d arrived. My stomach twisted at the thought that we were too late, and I suddenly regretted my impulsive killing of the other humans. What if this guy knew nothing? What if they’d snuck my only friend out of here and the dead guys were the only ones who knew where she was?