The sound of the impact rang in my ears, my sensitive animal hearing amplifying the noise. The force of the collision threw me toward the dash yet again and then into my door, where my head connected violently with the window. I felt blood trickle from a tear in my skin as we pushed the Magnum back about thirty or forty feet, across the intersecting street and between the two buildings on the other side. When we at last came to a standstill, I could smell something burning, and turned to find that the front end of the Magnum was crumpled like an accordion, smoke billowing and hissing from its engine block.
I heard Race inhale sharply and he reached for me. “Shit, Juliette, you’re bleeding!” he said, his voice thick with alarm.
I reached up to the cut, tenderly touching the wound that was already beginning to close. “I’ll be fine,” I said even as I felt a powerful sense of rage suddenly build up within me. I knew this was Race, and I looked into his eyes just in time to see them shift from human to animal, fury burning in their depths.
I reached over to grab his face even as he was tearing his seatbelt. “Race!” I said loudly, desperate to get his attention. “Sweetheart, calm down. You have to calm down.”
“No,” he said, his voice not quite his own as one of his animal spirits powered to make him change. I could feel his muscles trembling, his canines extending under my thumbs into the kind of teeth made for rending flesh, his bones already beginning to shift.
“He made you bleed. I’m going to make him pay,” Race growled.
“Baby, he can’t give us answers if you kill him,” I pleaded. “We need him to talk first.”
A ghost of a memory flitted across my consciousness: Lochlan had said those very words to Saphrona on the Day of Hell:
“Don’t kill him yet, Saphrona. We need him to talk first.”
I trembled, forcing the memory to stop there. Now was scarcely the time to relive that nightmare. My anguish appeared to break through Race’s bloodlust, as he suddenly stopped trembling. His eyes remained wild, however, and he said to me, “First he talks. Then he dies.”
Without giving me a chance to respond, he shoved open the door of my Jeep. As he did so his anger intensified—I knew he smelled the same thing I did: werewolf. Confusion warring with anger, I freed myself of my restraint as quickly as I could and followed him out of the car, both of us stalking toward the Magnum. A brief glance showed that the Jeep’s hatchback was caved in and it looked like the rear axle was broken—we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Looking into the Magnum, I saw a dark-haired young man slumped over in the driver’s seat, blood on his face and shirt from what was probably a broken nose. The closer I got, the stronger the werewolf smell. I heard Race growl as he reached for the driver’s side door, yanking it open forcefully. When he reached in and grabbed the driver’s seatbelt, tearing it as he had his own, the young man started and his eyes widened in fear. He began to hyperventilate and whimper when Race grabbed him by the shirt and none too gently dragged him out of the car.
“Wait! Wait!” he begged, grasping desperately at Race’s wrists. “Please don’t kill me!”
Race’s answer was to slam him up against the side of his car. The werewolf screamed in pain, and I wondered why he didn’t shift to defend himself. Then I recalled how I’d been unable to shift and defend myself from Peter and Martin after my arm had been broken on the Day of Hell. This guy had just been in a car accident and might well have internal injuries I couldn’t see.
“You endangered my mate, motherfucker!” Race said with a snarl. “You deserve no less than death!”
To emphasize his point, he lifted the werewolf and slammed him into the car again. I stepped closer. “Why were you chasing us?” I demanded.
“I… I was told to follow you!” the wolf said, his voice high-pitched with fear. “I… I was supposed to cause an accident and then take you.”
“Take me? Take me where? To what purpose?” I asked.
The werewolf’s eyes darted from me to Race and back again, the pupils bright and dilated with panic. I could tell he didn’t want to answer the question, and Race, sensing my thoughts, slammed him into his car a third time and followed that with a punch to the boy’s face. “Answer her or I kill you now.”
“He wanted you out of the way!” the wolf cried out, almost screaming. “Kevin thought that if you were out of the way, the Beast Master would be willing to bond with his daughter!”
“Kevin Tracey sent you after us?” I asked, stunned by the confession. If this was true, he’d followed us all the way from home, and it had taken more than an hour to get to Columbus. “That’s just stupid—he knows damn well that he can’t force the Beast Master to bond with Anna!”
“I will never bond with another!” Race said hotly. “And if someone took my mate I would not rest until I had searched to the ends of the Earth for her!”
The werewolf held his hands up in supplication. “All I know is he said he had proof that the Beast Master could bond with more than one person—some journals from some ancestor or other he says he has.”
I looked up at Race, my eyes going wide. He looked down at me with the same shocked expression, and we were both thinking the same thing: Marian. Lochlan’s old friend was apparently a direct ancestor of one of the most hardcore traditionalists I’d ever met, and it appeared she had left documentation of her findings about the chimaera to her kin.
“Please don’t kill me,” the werewolf said again. “I didn’t want to do this, I swear I didn’t! But you know how hard it is to resist an Alpha’s orders—I didn’t have a choice!”
I placed a tentative hand on Race’s shoulder. “He’s right about that,” I said slowly. “If Kevin issued a direct command, he wouldn’t have been able to resist it.”
Race turned a hate-filled glare back at the werewolf. “I’m not sure I give a shit. This fucktard could have killed you. Maybe that’s what Kevin Tracey really wanted, huh? What did he plan to do with Juliette if you’d brought her to him? Huh? Answer me!”
“I don’t know, I swear!” the wolf replied. “He just told me to cause the accident and to take her—I’m supposed to call one of the pack to come and get us.”
“And just how did you propose to keep me restrained?” I wanted to know. “Even if the accident had knocked me out, I’d have woken up eventually and you can believe I would not have let you take me anywhere!”
The wolf’s fear level suddenly skyrocketed—I could smell the emotion pouring off of him like a waterfall into the sea. Once again, he was frightened of what answering might mean. And I knew if he didn’t answer, Race was going to kill him. His hands were already tightening in the young man’s bloody shirt.
“Just tell us the truth,” I said softly. “You might just get to live if you do—I don’t want Race to kill you but I’m not strong enough to stop him. If you don’t answer or you lie to us, I can’t help you.”
“Oh, what does it matter?” he moaned. “I’m dead anyway! Kevin’s gonna kill me if I don’t check in and tell him I have you. If I go back without you, he’s going to kill me.”
“I’m going to kill you in about two seconds if you don’t answer the question,” Race snapped.
“There’s GHB in the car, okay?!”
A chill went through me, and I took a reflexive step backward. Race looked at me as I moved, his concern for me flooding my mind. I tried to grab onto that to remind myself that the werewolf hadn’t had a chance to use it, but the chill wouldn’t go away.
“Jules, what is it? Honey, talk to me—your thoughts are moving too fast for me to follow,” he said softly, his tone when he spoke to me much softer than what he’d used when he spoke to the werewolf.
My eyes wide, my breathing shallow, I looked up to the man I loved slowly and said, “GHB is more commonly known as Rohypnol, or the date rape drug. It’s one of the few chemicals that can inhibit our ability to change form, if administered in large doses. My mother’s a nurse, she…she explained its effects to me
after…after I’d been beaten and tortured by Peter and Martin. They’d drugged me with it so I couldn’t fight back.”
A bellow of rage erupted from Race and he slammed another fist into the werewolf’s face, and then to his gut. The man fell to the ground, coughing and sputtering, and I heard a tiny clicking sound as one of his teeth hit the pavement. Race kicked him hard, flipping the man onto his back, and then he kicked him again.
“Drugs, huh?!” he screamed. “Were you planning to take advantage of what they’d do to her?! Did you think you’d get away with drugging and raping my mate?! That I’d let you live when I found out what you’d done?!”
He emphasized his anger with hard, ferocious kicks to the wolf’s ribs. I heard more than one of the bones break, and though for a moment I was frozen in place, the inconsolable rage surging across the bond eventually snapped me out of my haze, and I lurched forward to grab Race by the arm.
“Race, stop! Stop it, please!” I hollered, desperate for him to hear me.
Race turned sharply at the sound of my voice, his eyes wide with fury, his chest heaving from the exertion. “Why, Juliette? This piece of shit would’ve done to you what them fucking leeches did if he’d had the chance!”
“We don’t know that,” I said, shaking my head. “There’s every possibility that he and his friends would have just drugged me and locked me up somewhere so Kevin Tracey could try and convince you to mate with Anna, if that’s even possible. But it doesn’t matter what they were going to do, okay? They didn’t get the chance. I’m fine. Please don’t do this. Killing him isn’t worth it.”
“We can’t let them get away with this shit, Jules!” Race retorted.
I shook my head again. “And we won’t. We’ll think of something. We…we can go to Tom and Martha and they can file a protest with the Council of Families—”
“Fuck that! I’m not fucking waiting for some bullshit politics to drag this shit out when I can take care of it myself. That fucking prick is gonna pay for this!”
I knew then that there would be no reasoning with him. Race’s inner beast—or beasts, all things considered—were screaming for vengeance. His mate’s life had been threatened and that was a challenge to his ability to protect me he could not let go unanswered. One way or another, Race would spill more blood before the day was over.
Taking a deep, resigned breath, I said slowly, “Well, if we’re going to confront Kevin, we’re going to need help. Neither of these vehicles is operable.”
“Call your brother to come and get us. I’ve got ten grand that says he’ll want a hand at kicking that bastard’s ass once he hears what they were going to do to you,” Race replied.
“It’ll take him over an hour to get here, Race,” I pointed out. “We can’t stay exposed like this—someone’s bound to see us, and quite frankly it’s a miracle the cops aren’t here already.”
Race growled in frustration. “Then what the fuck do you propose we do?”
I didn’t want to think it, let alone say it, but the only solution to our problem that I could see was someone that neither one of us trusted in the least. My mate read my thoughts and immediately started shaking his head.
“No. No fucking way,” he said firmly.
“What choice do we have, Race?” I countered. “I’m sorry to say, but I don’t know anyone else in Columbus who can help us. Do you?”
When his only reply was to growl again and kick the Magnum, I took that as a no. Reluctantly I took my cell phone out of my pocket, flipped it open, and then looked up the Mackenna Corporation’s number, which in retrospect hadn’t been such a bad thing for Saphrona to suggest I put in my cell phone. I scowled as I put the phone to my ear—I’d been hoping it would be a long time before I had to see or even speak to Diarmid Mackenna again.
The phone rang only once before it was picked up. “Why, Miss Singleton—thrice in one day. Whatever have I done to earn this gift?”
I hadn’t realized that the number he’d called Saphrona’s house from was Diarmid’s direct line. Bristling at his solicitous tone, I took a breath and said, “It makes me ill to have to say this, but I need your help.”
Before he could make one of his patented smart-ass comments, I launched into an amended account of our ordeal, doing my best to ignore the dark expression on Race’s face as I did so. I finished by telling him where we were and what we needed.
“Say no more, my dear. I’ll have a team there in minutes,” the vampire said when I’d finished.
After hanging up with Diarmid, I dialed my mother’s cell phone. We needed to know where Kevin Tracey lived—I hoped she would have the address, as our pursuer was in no condition to talk. My stomach flip-flopped every time I looked down at the broken and bleeding young man on the asphalt at my feet.
“Juliette, sweetheart… I was just about to call you and ask if you and Race would like to join me for lunch. Yesterday was great, but I’d like some alone time with the two of you,” my mother said as soon as she’d answered.
Regret filled me and I had to take a breath. “I’m sorry, Mom, we can’t. Rain check, though.”
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
I shook my head, sighing. I hated bringing more trouble to her door after everything that had happened and how much I had made her worry about me. Clearing my throat I said, “Mom, I need to know if you happen to know Kevin Tracey’s address.”
I knew she was frowning by the tone of her voice as she replied, “As a matter of fact, yes. I’ve visited there with Tom and Martha a time or two. Why do you need it? What’s happened?”
“I give you my word I’ll explain everything when we get home, but suffice it to say Race and I need to see him. Can you text me the address?” I asked her.
Mom sighed. “All right, Juliette. Please be careful, whatever you’re about to do.”
I tried not to laugh as I glanced at the two wrecked cars I stood near. “Promise, Mom. We’ll be careful. I love you.”
My mother repeated the sentiment and hung up, but I knew I’d only given her something to worry about. And though I knew she would now be tempted to call around to find out what was going on, I also knew my mother respected me too much for that. My having given her my word that I’d explain was good enough for her, though she would wait for my return with nervous anticipation.
True to his word, a team of pretender vampires working for Diarmid Mackenna showed up within minutes after I’d finished talking to my mother. Two were tow truck drivers, which I’d expected, but what raised my eyebrows was the appearance of two expensive-looking sedans and a limousine. I had a feeling that one of the sedans was meant for Race and I so that we could leave town, but I couldn’t figure what the other one was for. The limo’s reason for appearing was soon made clear when the driver got out and opened the back door.
Diarmid. I should have known, I thought sourly.
He came to stand beside me as Race and one of the muscle who’d driven a sedan acknowledged each other silently and then hauled the werewolf off the ground none-too-gently, literally throwing him into the back seat of the car.
“Do whatever you want with him,” Race said darkly. “I honestly don’t give a fuck.”
No, I told him silently, and stepped forward. “Actually, all you need to do is keep him from using a phone for the next three or four hours. Then you can let him go.”
Race’s head snapped around. “Juliette, what he’s done is inexcusable!” he yelled.
I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin. While I understood my lover’s anger, I wasn’t about to back down—there was no way I’d agree to allowing the vampires to kill our attacker in cold blood, same as I wouldn’t allow him to do it, and he knew that.
“What he’s done, Race, is follow his Alpha’s orders,” I said firmly. “We may not agree with those orders, but the fact remains he had no power to resist them. I don’t like what he’s done any more than you do, but we’re not going to allow our anger to bring us down to the same level as the ma
n who gave those orders.”
“How magnanimously noble of you, Miss Singleton,” Diarmid put in. “Though I daresay if you let him go, his master will simply do what you will not.”
I turned to him, feeling my eyes blaze with fury as I fisted my hands on my hips. “That boy is not to be harmed by you or your men, and once Kevin Tracey is dealt with, he is free to go. Is that understood?”
The vampire looked over my shoulder at a no doubt fuming Race, and an expression came to his countenance I could not quite read. Or maybe I didn’t want to. But when he looked back at me, it was with a conciliatory gaze. “You’re putting a lot of faith in Mr. Covington’s ability to best the werewolf king, but it will be as you wish. We’ll not harm him in any way.”
He then stepped back and gestured toward the waiting limousine. “Your chariot awaits, my animorphic friends.”
Resisting the urge to scowl at him, I exercised the manners my parents had taught me and said “Thank you.” Race walked (okay, ‘stalked’ would be a better descriptive term) past me to climb through the open door first. Sensing a fight might be on the immediate horizon, I sighed and moved to follow. As I was reaching for the door to close it, Diarmid placed one hand on the door and the other on the frame, and leaned down to look in at us.
“George has been instructed to take you straight to your destination once you have given him the address. He is human, so you’ll not have to worry about raising their hackles. He will also transport you home when your business is concluded.”
I cleared my throat. “Thank you,” I said hesitantly. “I appreciate your willingness to help us, though the use of your limousine was not necessary. One of the other cars would have sufficed.”
Diarmid chuckled, once again looking past me at Race for a brief moment, then back at me as he said, “Oh no, my dear. I should think it will come quite in handy. That button there with the white arrows will lower and raise the privacy screen should you require any…privacy. Good luck to you now.”
From the Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) Page 22
