by Riley Storm
“Nobody is going to help me if I don’t help myself,” she said firmly.
There was still no light, no window with an indication of what time it might be outside.
“Hello!” she shouted.
The sound carried for a way but stopped much shorter than she expected if it was a warehouse. Either she had been wrong about that, or she was in some sort of office near a factory floor. Maybe a walled-off partition. It felt larger than an office.
Nobody responded to her shout, but she knew that didn’t mean a thing. A dozen guards could be just out of her hearing range and she would never know of their presence until it was too late.
Doesn’t matter. If they are present, I’m screwed no matter what. All I can do is operate under the assumption I’m alone. Don’t be helpless. What would Kincaid do in this situation?
“He’d flex and snap the ropes,” she muttered. That wasn’t an option to her though. Was it?
Carefully, slowly, she tested the bonds that held her hands behind her back. They didn’t part, but then again, that was never realistic to expect. She pulled her elbows apart, trying to stretch them, creating a picture in her head of how she was tied up.
Ropes under her armpit, over her hips and at her ankles kept her tied to the chair itself, while her arms were pulled back tightly until they were crossed, tied at the wrist. They were tight, but whoever had tied the ropes had tied them farther up her arms, instead of around both wrists. Haley found that by pulling her arms apart, she could force the ropes closer to the wrists.
It hurt. She could feel skin chafing itself raw, but bit by bit she was gaining more slack. Not much, but it might be enough for her to slip free. Ten minutes passed, and her skin grew irritated and every breath caused pain as her arms tightened against the bonds. After twenty minutes, she could feel it grow warm with heat. After thirty, it became wet, and the air gained a hint of iron to it. She’d drawn blood.
A minute or two later, and the ropes slipped down to her wrist. Loosely. The blood had been just what she’d needed. Haley worked herself free from the limp bonds as fast as she could. Even with the extra slack, she still needed to pull one hand free, without re-tightening them. It took her another minute, but she had the time. There was nobody around.
Finally, the rope fell free, and she brought her arms around, shoulders screaming at the sudden movement after being pinned back for so long. Haley gazed at her tortured wrists, blood welling up and dripping from where she’d worn the skin free.
Nothing serious, she decided, shocking herself at the cavalier attitude toward such painful injuries. Yet another change in herself that she was experiencing as her worldview widened with each passing day spent with Kincaid.
The ropes under her armpits weren’t actually secured to the chair for some reason, and they slid up the back of it easily. “Sloppy, Melanie, very sloppy,” she muttered, now free to reach around and undo the knot around her hips and then the ones keeping her ankles to the chair. It was a tedious process, but less than twenty minutes later, she was completely and totally liberated, slowly standing from the metal chair.
Muscles and ligaments protested, forcing her to move slowly, taking her time as she warmed them back up, preparing them to move. She might be free of the chair, but Haley still had no idea where she was, or what had happened to Kincaid. It was time to get the hell out of there and make a dash for freedom.
The room was pitch black, which presented the first obstacle. Haley thought about her situation, thinking back over every spy or thriller movie she’d seen where someone was captured. It was an odd thing to do, but that was all she had to go on. There was also one constant. Every time someone was tied up, they always seemed to be facing the door.
It’s not like I’ve got anything else to go on.
Shrugging her shoulders in silent helplessness, Haley found the chair, turned the other direction and then slowly started walking forward, hands out front, moving around in slow circles. She shuffled one foot out in front of her, felt around, then slowly transferred her weight forward and repeated the process.
“This is more nerve-wracking than being tied up,” she muttered, relying on the sound to help break up her fears. Anything could be out there in the dark, just waiting for her.
She jumped when her hand finally encountered something solid. A little more touching around showed it to be a wall. She decided to go right, but after five feet or so, she encountered a corner. Reversing her direction, she went left. It paid dividends. Not more than two or three feet from her original position, she found a hinge. Reaching lower, she found another. A door! Moving more confidently in the dark, she found the handle and twisted.
It didn’t move.
“Dammit!” she cursed, shaking the locked handle a few more times in frustration.
An idea came to her. Fumbling around blindly on the wall to the left of the door, her fingers encountered three little plastic switches. Closing her eyes and saying a brief prayer, she flicked the first one.
Nothing happened.
Angrily, she flipped the last two light switches in desperation. Although she’d been prepared for nothing to happen, a bulb flickered. It wasn’t above her, but near what she assumed was the back of the room. It was an older fluorescent tube, likely long exhausted of its gas, but there was a bit left. Just enough for it to flicker.
The strobe-like effect didn’t exactly illuminate the entire room, but it gave her enough to start forming a picture of the place. She was in some sort of office. It was large and only had the one door. Across the back were what she thought at first were mirrors, but after making her way to them, she realized they were windows—overlooking a factory floor.
Haley grinned. She was making progress. Now if she could just figure out a way to get down there, she could maybe find a way out. A way to freedom. To Kincaid. There was only the one door. It was locked, and she wasn’t strong enough to break the solid metal obstruction down.
“I did not get this far just to lose now,” she pronounced, looking around the room with a fierce stare, looking for anything. She could probably break the windows, but where would that leave her? There was nothing she could use to climb down. Jumping and breaking her legs wouldn’t exactly improve her predicament. No, there had to be another solution first.
A slow survey around the room, waiting for the flickering light to illuminate it for her as she moved, produced only one option. There was a large air ventilation inlet against the one wall. It was tight, but if she could just get to the other side of the door, maybe she could get out of there.
Haley spent a few minutes fiddling with the screws, trying to undo them with her fingers, and having no luck.
“Why are you trying to do it that way?” she growled to herself, sitting back and kicking the shaft with her foot. She’d not had any time to grab shoes before being abducted, but she did have thick, warm socks on, and those provided a bit of cushioning. It hurt like hell, but the grille gave way on a corner.
Grabbing it, she grunted and yanked, finally tearing the metal free at last. It was going to be dark and scary in there, and she would be going entirely by feel, but there was simply no other option. It was either that or jump at least thirty feet to the ground below.
“I’ll take the dark claustrophobic tunnel please and thank you.” Decision made, she crawled headfirst into the air shaft, sliding forward slowly.
Bits and pieces of ragged metal scraped at her stomach, her back, her sides, and especially her hands and feet as she slowly moved herself along, but she fit, and that was the important thing. The shaft came to a t-junction, going left, right, and also down. It was a tight squeeze to maneuver herself around the corner without plunging who knew how far down, but she made it.
Twenty minutes later she sliced her palms open bashing in a grate that led into another room. It was dark again.
“This is getting really tiresome,” she complained, forced into feeling her way around the room again. She found light switches, like
before. This time though, one of them worked.
“Yaargghhh!” she yelled as bright light flooded the room, blinding her. “Shit, that’s bright.”
It took her at least a full minute to adjust before it stopped hurting. When she finally could open her eyes, she realized that it wasn’t even that bright, it was just light. Actual light.
She was in a hallway. Stairs to her left went down, and she took them without hesitation, emerging onto the factory floor. Some of the light from above filtered down the stairs, but also through several windows in the hallway above where it ran past the office she’d been trapped in. It wasn’t much, but enough to guide her to the exit. She could see the beautiful sign above it, unlit, but reflecting enough of the light to be visible.
To Haley, it was the equivalent of a fifty-foot high flashing sign that said Exit Here. She’d never seen anything so wonderful before in her life. Stumbling forward, she tried not to feel too excited. She wasn’t home free, not yet. Still, she was proud of herself. Proud of what she’d accomplished, of getting herself free without anyone’s help.
It was so unlike her, so unlike anything she’d ever done in her life. Haley was terrified, but truthfully, she also felt like a bit of a badass, like one of the heroes from the movies she’d been thinking about earlier. Captured and at the mercy of her enemies, she was now free, ready to link up with her allies—Kincaid—and stop them from doing anything like this ever again.
“I think in the future, I’ll let Kincaid handle that part, but damn—I’m good,” she said, mentally patting herself on the back as she reached for the bar to push the door open.
“I’ll check it out.”
Haley froze as the door opened before she could get there, letting a voice—and a damn cool blast of air—inside.
“It’s probably just a short of some kind. The whole place is screwy, it’s so old. I—Hey!”
The huge figure, visible only as a hulking shadow outlined by the not-quite-pitch black background, jerked in surprise as it saw her standing there.
“She’s free!” he shouted and lunged for her.
Haley threw herself to the side, trying not to panic as she darted through the barely-lit factory, moving around, under, and in one case even over the machinery, hoping there was nothing that would slice her open and kill her accidentally.
“Come back here, you bitch,” the man snarled, closing on her with every passing second.
“Absolutely not,” she shot back, finding a loose piece of metal on some conveyor belt or another and hurling it backward in the general direction of the sounds.
It clanged into something, and she heard a stream of curse words. She’d hit him!
More doors opened and other men came inside. A half dozen, maybe, there could be a few more or a few less, she wasn’t sure. Either way, they all immediately began closing on her position. Overhead lights started to come on, slowly illuminating the space as they warmed up. Most were burnt out, but a few still worked. Before long, she’d have nowhere to hide.
“Stop running!”
“Why the hell would I do that?” she spat, trying to avoid all her pursuers. They were quickly closing the noose around her, though. There was nowhere she could run, no lucky sewer grate to flee into or hole in the wall to jump through that only she could fit. Haley was well and truly trapped. Shit.
“We’ve got you now. There’s no point in trying,” one of them said, coming around a large piece of machinery. It was the same asshole who had lifted the bed off her at the safehouse.
Haley set her face in a grim line and raised her tiny hands in fists. She wasn’t going down without a fight, however useless it might seem.
“Your courage is admirable, but it won’t…” the man said. No, she corrected herself, he’s a shifter. A Canim. A werewolf.
She was so busy thinking, that it took her an extra second to realize he’d stopped speaking and was looking around. Haley was momentarily lost until she picked up on what was going on.
“Why the hell is the ground shaking?” she asked.
A split second later, the far wall exploded inward in a hail of brick, wood, and metal as a bone-white behemoth came barreling inward, announcing its presence with an ear-shattering roar.
Kincaid had arrived.
37
Seven figures scattered as he made his entrance, diving for cover behind any sort of machinery they could find. Kincaid didn’t care about six of them, he had eyes only for the seventh.
Haley!
His bear translated that into a bellowed roar. She might not understand, but the Canim in the room certainly would. It was doubtful that another reminder was needed of who he was and why he was there, but Kincaid wasn’t leaving anything to chance. This was his mate, and he wasn’t leaving without her.
Charging forward, he crashed into the closest piece of machinery that he knew hid a shifter behind it. The massive metal construct ripped free of its anchors and slid backward against the floor, crashing into another hulking pile of steel, pinning the werewolf between them. It must have caught the shifter mid-change because the scream that filled the warehouse was neither wholly human nor wholly animal.
There was no time to gloat though, because he heard the scrabble of claws on the cement floor and knew that at least one of the others had finished shifting. Five on one was not ideal odds, but it would have to do. Kincaid hadn’t waited around for Melanie to give up any more information. The instant she’d uttered the location, he’d taken off, ignoring both Kaelyn and Kvoss’ protests. There was no time. If they showed up, they showed up, but he wasn’t going to wait on them.
A white wolf leaped onto a workbench nearby, snarling at him, lips pulled back to expose the three-inch-long canines. Saliva dripped from its jaws as it snapped and challenged him. More shapes moved in the darkness—he only belatedly realized his entrance had killed the power to the building.
“Kincaid?”
Be quiet! He sent the mental command knowing Haley would not hear him but hoping she’d understand. Staying quiet was her best bet now. If the wolves were distracted from his presence, they’d realize all they had to do was go after her to get him to surrender. Kincaid was banking on their long-seated hatred of his kind to keep them focused on fighting his bear, but he feared it wouldn’t be enough.
And it won’t be if you just keep sitting around doing nothing. You have to attack. Keep them on their heels.
Kincaid swiped at a loose metal box, a toolbox perhaps, and sent it flying at the white wolf. Before he was even done with that, he was charging to his left, at a wolf as black as night, a huge beast even bigger than the white. It had to be nearly five hundred pounds of lethal killing machine. If he let it get around to his rear, Kincaid would have a hard time holding it off.
The wolf waited as he bore down on it, only dodging aside at the last second. Kincaid knew that was going to happen, it was a standard tactic for a wolf when a bear was coming at it. Which is precisely why he flung all his body to the left a fraction of a moment before the wolf engaged its trigger muscles.
Gotcha, he thought triumphantly, only to sail past the huge beast as it went the other direction.
Kincaid hit the empty ground and slid for twenty feet before hitting a big metal storage cabinet of some sort. The metal side panels crumpled inward under his impact. Quickly getting to his feet, he spun and met a leaping wolf with a meaty paw. The hapless wolf had misjudged his speed, thinking it had time to jump onto his back and hurt him.
Claws dug to open the skin, blood spraying from the grievous wound as Kincaid flung the shifter down. The wolf bounced off the concrete and rolled out of his grip, very slow to get to its feet. Blood matted the stone-gray fur, swiftly running down its face and chest. Kincaid had time to see its legs wobble and the wolf go down, leaving a huge red mark on the floor as it tried to get up again. It might survive, but it was out of this fight.
Two down. Four to go.
He was reminded of that fact as another wolf lunged i
n from one of his blind zones and ripped a chunk of meat from his hind leg. Kincaid whirled instinctively, but the wolf was already done, ducking back out of range as it spat its prize onto the ground.
The wolves were organizing. Another came at him as he’d turned, but Kincaid was ready for that one, kicking out with his other hind leg, forcing the wolf back unless it wanted its skull crushed in.
Staying on the defensive would ensure his doom. A wolf was no match for a bear, just like in the wild, but that was why the wolves didn’t run alone. They moved in packs. Kincaid needed to go on the offensive. The one thing that differed between him and his feral cousins, besides the size difference, was that he was powered by a human brain. He could think of things that normal bears could not.
Using his strength, he grabbed the entire metal cabinet, puncturing it with his claws to get a grip, and spun, tossing it in the direction of two wolves. The huge canines yelped in surprise and ducked out of the way of the half-ton of flying metal. Tools spilled out of it as it whipped through the air, striking the wolves.
The wrenches and other implements didn’t do any damage, but they did serve to distract the Canim. Exploiting that to its fullest, Kincaid charged forward. The metal machinery limited the directions the wolves could use to get out of the way, and he had one of them now trapped between two rows. There was no time for the obsidian creature to turn and run. Its only option was up. It would have to jump onto the assembly line if it wanted to escape, and Kincaid knew this. He was planning for it.
The instant the creature jumped, he altered his direction and slammed into the conveyor-belt-like apparatus. The entire thing jumped and heaved just as the wolf landed, spilling it back off to the side.
Kincaid hit it like a dump truck. They went down in a tangle of paws and jaws. The wolf might be tough and quick, but this was a fight Kincaid won every time. His massive foreleg batted aside the feeble defense of the upended shifter, and a second later he ripped its throat out in a welter of blood and gore.
