Not Quite Free

by Kaye Draper

  Fin snorted. “It’s disgusting. I say just kill the asshole and be rid of him altogether.”

  I kept my eyes on the road. “No need,” I muttered. “He’s leaving all on his own, after we take care of this whole Carlyle mess.”

  I didn’t like the silence that greeted that little tidbit of information.

  I at least expected a “good riddance,” from Fin.

  “He wouldn’t leave,” Emerson finally said. “He can’t. You’re....”

  I flicked a glance toward him in the rearview as the ogre seemed to be having a sudden panic attack. “What?” I demanded. “Soul mates? Destined to be together? What other sappy crap is floating around in that head of yours?”

  His red-brown eyes were so sad that I couldn’t bear looking at him any longer. I glued my gaze back on the road. “Just because the stupid instinct is there, doesn’t mean you have to give into it,” I ground out. “A mate-called cur can say no.”

  Emerson sighed. “Okay, Sam.” He was quiet for a second, and I thought—hoped—that he’d just drop it. But then he opened his damned mouth again. “But it’ll hurt you, right? Won’t you both be hurting?”

  I snorted. “I’m not a fragile flower, Em. Neither is that cold, fishy asshole. I’m sure he’ll latch onto another victim soon enough.”

  The bitter words tasted like bile in my mouth. Even I was having trouble swallowing my lies these days. But then, that was why Angel was finally giving up on me in the first place, wasn’t it? I was broken...downright fucking toxic.

  Thankfully, we had reached the main lodge and I had an excuse to end this conversation. “Okay,” I said firmly. “Remember what we talked about. I do all the talking. Don’t expect a negotiation. There won’t be.” We had to say we’d tried. I had the formal papers to serve. But we all knew that was just a formality. “You guys point weapons at people but stay out of the way.” Fin and Emerson had insisted on being involved, since they were technically my guild. But most of the muscle was going to come from about a dozen well-trained association hunters and a couple dozen of Theo’s trained guards.

  Theo had wanted to come himself, but I had vetoed that idea. He was still in his weak phase, where his fiend powers wouldn’t keep him from dying fast in a fight. And besides, he had an appointment today to meet with the sheriff and some other city officials to talk about increasing security and managing the townsfolk in case there was an uprising. Him and Jules were also coordinating efforts to pin down Carlyle’s whereabouts, since he was next on our to-do list.

  I was trying not to think about how Theo had said goodbye to Angel, who was in the car behind me with some of Theo’s guards. They had put their heads together and whispered something to each other before Theo squeeze the back of Angel’s neck and told him to leave any actual fighting to the people who were trained for it. As we were loading up, my eyes had met Angel’s and the siren had given me an exasperated look, as if we were right back to old times. “Don’t be jealous, Sam,” he’d said in his fake-playful, seductive voice. “He was just telling me to take care of you.”

  I had laughed at that. Like I needed the pretty guy to protect me when I was a trained killer. This wasn’t my first hunt.

  But something inside me hurt. Angel had always been protecting me when we were younger. Maybe that’s part of why I felt like I had to prove myself every time I went out hunting. Was I really that pathetic?

  Huffing to myself, I checked my weapons, then flung open the car door. “You’re outside with the other hunters,” I reminded Fin and Emerson. I could sense the entire shifter clan closing in on us, just out of sight in the forest around us, watching, preparing to pounce on the perceived threat. But Alpha Baghinder would be in his lodge, awaiting me like a barbarian king on his fucking throne. A group of hunters and guards rapidly fanned out, surrounding the lodge, but mostly facing outward, toward the unseen threat lurking at the edge of the forest. A smaller group of guards and the couple hunters I trusted not to fuck up flanked me as I approached the lodge.

  Angel came to join us, his achingly beautiful face gone cold and hard, and his magic shimmering in the air around us in a way I hoped only I could sense. It wouldn’t do to let Alpha Baghinder know we could influence the minds of his whole pack. Yet.

  I resisted the urge to check my weapons for the dozenth time and squared my shoulders as I walked up the few shallow wooden steps to the lodge entrance. A couple of hulking shifter brutes had come to stand in front of the door and glare, low growls rumbling up from their naked, barrel-chested humanish forms. Black tiger stripe tattoos slashed across their inhumanly pure white skin, a mark of power and belonging that all shifters took upon coming of age. That my own skin was unmarked wasn’t an accident or a fashion choice. Even if I’d wanted to belong that way, I wasn’t allowed. I wasn’t a real shifter. I couldn’t access my white sabertooth tiger form, and a weakling like me wearing those marks would be an insult that the shifters wouldn’t let exist. Glowing blue-white eyes just like my own followed my every move as I halted before the threshold.

  “Out of the way, assholes,” I growled, making a shooing gesture with the paper I held in one hand. “I’m here on business.”

  I tried to project indifference, making my body look relaxed, confident, and at ease. But everything in me was bristling with anger, pain, and a deep-seated fear that I was always shoving down out of sight. These two assholes were about my age. It was highly likely they’d participated in at least one of my ongoing torture sessions when we were kids. Their eyes on me burned.

  “You can go in, mongrel,” one of the goons growled. “But your humans, and your hired guards, and that thing aren’t welcome in the alpha’s den.” He jerked his chin toward Angel to indicate “that thing.” The shifters around here weren’t too fond of the siren who may or may not have killed several of them when no one was looking.

  I arched a brow at the guy who had spoken. I think I recalled a younger version of his face hovering over me as I writhed on the dirty ground, burning up with fiend viper venom. Not projecting my movements, I dipped, then delivered a sharp, hard uppercut to the underside of his chin with the hand still holding my paperwork. It didn’t hurt him much, but it made his head snap back, and when he righted himself the barrel of my gun was pressed to his crotch. “I said move.”

  I hated these fucking games. Everyone here was always posturing, always following these little undercurrents of power and social hierarchy that made life a living hell for those of us who weren’t blessed with a couple hundred extra pounds of muscle. The other goon didn’t move to help his buddy. Stepping in like that would imply the other guy was weak and needed help. It wouldn’t do to make his friend look bad by saving him from getting his dick blasted off.

  The guy in front of me kept growling, but I stared him right in the eyes, not backing down. Slowly, grudgingly, he lowered his gaze.

  A tiny, evil smile lifted one corner of my lips at the small victory. I might not be as big and strong as a full fiend shifter, but I had noticed long ago...I was more dominant than most of them. If I had been able to shift, I might have ended up being an alpha myself. And it pissed them right the fuck off.

  “Get out of my way,” I said again, letting a bit of my anger flow into my words. The hulking asshole growled louder in protest, but he moved.

  “Your friend is smart,” Angel said softly, magic lacing his words as he spoke to the second flunky. “You should move as well.”

  It was creepy as fuck when Angel used his magic to compel people. But I had to admit, it was sure as fuck handy. The second goon slid over a few inches to let us through. I shouldered my way through the gap between the assholes and my people followed suit. Inside, the lodge was dimly lit by firelight and what little light filtered through the few windows. As predicted, Alpha Baghinder was lounging in a rustic high-backed chair by the fireplace, looking like a powerful barbarian warlord who was generously granting an audience. The firelight played upon miles of hardened, ropey muscle, highlighting
the black slashes of the tiger stripes that tattooed his entire massive body. A necklace of assorted teeth decorated his thick neck, a display of all the creatures he’d murdered with his bare hands. I rolled my eyes at the show-off.

  “Cur,” he greeted, his glowing white-blue eyes cataloguing everything around him, but zeroing in on me. “Come to deliver yourself to me?”

  I let out a short laugh. “Uh, no. I’ll never be that fucking desperate.” I held up a piece of paper stamped with the hunter association’s seal and endorsed by the sovereign, raising my voice to make sure every shifters lurking around in the lodge heard me. “I’m here to deliver a warning from the hunter’s association of Westhold.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Not a great idea coming into town and trying to start shit, Baggy. The association has allowed your clan to continue to live here only because you’ve been relatively well behaved. But that can change. They are within their full rights to issue a hunt at any time. Or to remove the clan from the woods.”

  The hunt was probably less of a threat than the potential of losing their territory. They were very possessive of their forest, the only lush ecosystem of its kind remaining for hundreds of miles in any direction.

  Baghinder just sneered at me. “You think you can wander in here and make demands, mutt?” He twitched his fingers and a few of his hulking flunkies started creeping in closer, trying to encircle my people. Luckily, everyone I brought in here with me had survived years of hunting or playing guard. They had fanned out in a way that made it hard to get us hemmed in.

  None of the shifters were making any attempt to appear human—even if they could. Most of them weren’t wearing anything but the supple buckskin pants they favored. Their exposed skin was decorated with the dark, tattoo tiger stripe markings, and their fangs, ears, and claws were on full display. The hunters and guards kept their weapons trained on the monsters among them, and I could feel Angel spreading his magic out, taking the edge off the shifter’s natural inclination to kill first, rather than listen. The magic was mostly for the shifters outside the lodge. But the idiot siren had insisted that he come in with me, on the off chance he could manage to influence the alpha toward just leaving.

  I had no such hope. I knew for a fact the asshole would choose death—for himself and everyone he was supposed to protect—rather than surrender. And he wouldn’t respect any show of weakness from me in the way of nice words or pretty promises.

  “Oh, by all means just keep pissing people off, Alpha,” I said evenly. “I told you it was going to come to this one day. Please, give me the excuse to skin you and drag your pelt back to the association for money.” I pulled my gun and leveled it at his head. “Where is the fucker who hired you to start shit in town? Where’s Carlyle? Give us a location that actually pans out—not some fucking made up shit—and step down as alpha of the forest pack, and we’ll let you and your people live.”

  He growled at me and his eyes flared with power as he stood. I could feel him preparing to shift. “Refuse,” I told him in a loud voice, knowing at least a few of the shifters outside the lodge could hear what I was saying, “and we cleanse this whole fucking woods. You might take down a few of us, but we’ve got more firepower. Your choice, asshole. Slink off and lick your wounds, or die today.”

  Angel started humming beside me, the sound faint, but laced with power, reaching out to soothe the shifters around us and lull them into following my suggestion. The goons who had been slinking closer swayed on their feet as Angel’s voice rose. “Sleep,” he sang out. The nearest ones dropped like they were dead, sprawling on the furniture and toppling to the ground like rag dolls.

  “Well, Baggy,” I said, letting the paper drop to the floor. “What will it be?”

  He smiled at me, slow and feral and full of predatory glee. “Carlyle is long gone. The human plays human games, then he runs away to hide.” His fangs were lengthening to epic proportions, and I slid my free hand down to unsnap one of my leg sheaths so I could get my hand around the hilt of my knife. “Shifters don’t play those games,” he snarled, his voice deepening into a rumbling thing somewhere between a human speech and a growl as he started to change shape. “We stand and take what is our due.”

  Then the alpha beast in front of me was shifting and I ran out of time for talking. I braced my feet apart and shoved Angel back behind me and into the vee of guards and hunters, where he could use his magic without getting eaten. I had a brief second to appreciate the fact that Fin and Emerson were outside, away from the enraged leader of the pack, and that they had each other’s backs. I just wished I had said goodbye to them properly, because I didn’t know if I was going to survive a showdown with the monster who had orchestrated my hellish childhood.

  Bracing my feet apart and bringing up my gun, fighting against the stupid instincts inside me that thought I should cower in front of the raging specimen of alpha cat shifter, I squeezed the trigger. I got in two shots with the enchanted bullets Theo had given me before Baghinder was fully shifted, but I missed the headshot, so all I managed to do was piss him off even more and maybe slow his healing abilities a bit.

  He managed to fully shift, even while I was pelting him with bullets, and in the blink of an eye, a towering white saber-toothed monstrosity was surging toward me, intent on spilling my guts. I tossed my empty gun away and danced aside when he lunged, just missing a swipe from his massive paw that would have ripped my stomach wide open. Bending, I pulled both of my warded knives from my leg sheath, then whirled away, narrowly dodging another swipe from the beast’s massive paw.

  A couple of the trained hunters were moving, getting on either side of the big cat and trying to line up a good shot, but the fucker moved too fast, surging right into our midst so they would have to risk shooting into our people to get to him. In the meantime, several of the others shifters in the room shifted, so my people had their hands full. Angel was flitting around, dropping shifters with his magic from a distance whenever it seemed like the shifters were getting the upper hand over one of our people.

  Fighting had erupted all around us, but I could only pay attention to the alpha and trust that the rest of my crew had the others handled. If we took out their leader, it would sap some of the strength from his underlings and the next couple shifters in line for the position, making it easier to take them down as well. And I had a sneaking suspicion that once the ones in power were removed, the rest of the forest shifters might be open to a few changes. Not everyone was happy with the way things were done around here, they were just all too scared to do anything about it.

  Baghinder prowled toward me, letting out a roar that had all my hair standing on end as the animal instincts inside me agreed with the human ones for once and insisted that we fucking run. I held my ground. “Come on, you mangey fucker!” I shouted over the chaos. “We’re way overdue for a little one-on-one.” I gripped my spelled knives in my clawed hands and bared my teeth.

  One of the hunters was finally able to get a clear shot at the shifter, but it missed its mark, the bullet plowing into Baghinder’s massive shoulder. The sabertoothed beast leapt to the side and knocked the guy down. I rushed them, but I wasn’t fast enough. The beast’s maw closed around the guy’s neck and it was over with one wet crunch. Baghinder tossed his victim aside with a shake of his massive fluffy head and turned back to me.

  I darted in, slashing at the cat’s neck, his eyes, anything I could reach while still keeping out of range of his powerful claws and deadly teeth. I might be a weak cur bastard, but I was fast, my lithe body able to contort and move faster than the hulking beast made out of pure muscle. I could feel Angel’s magic rising around us, but I was pretty sure the shifter was immune.

  I opened up a nasty gash along the alpha’s chest, not quite managing to get at the throat. His big paw slapped my hand aside, claws raking my skin and sending my knife clattering to the floor. I danced back, then crouched. “Fuck you, you overgrown house cat.”

  He roared at me again and I grinned at t
he death threat. “Oh, sure, but I’m taking your mangey ass with me.”

  He leapt at me and I rolled backward, bringing my feet up and planting my boots in his gut, using the momentum to heave his heavy ass over my head and into the wall. Rolling, I leapt to my feet again, bringing up my one remaining knife in preparation for his next attack.

  “Sam!” Angel’s shout was the only warning I got before one of the other shifters barreled into me from the side, slamming me into the wall and making me drop my knife. A burst of gunfire sounded, and the creature’s head exploded, splattering me with gore and leaving me staggering as the heavy corpse fell half on me.

  I shoved the dead shifter away, my eyes immediately going to the alpha. The hunter who’d just shot my attacker was squeezing off a few rounds at the enraged beast as it prowled closer, trying to keep him off me, but whatever was in the bullets didn’t seem to have much effect on the alpha, and he was dodging between people again, preventing a clean headshot. Then the hunter went down under an assault from another half-shifted fiend.

  I flexed my claws, the only weapons I had left, as I backed around a wooden chair and toward a more open space where I would have room to move. Risking a glance around me, I saw that Angel was safely with a couple of Theo’s guards not far away, and our people seemed to have the upper hand. It was almost over. We just needed the alpha down. And since everyone else was busy mopping up and subduing the few shifters who were grudgingly letting themselves be herded up against the far wall, thanks to Angel’s song, it was up to me to end things.

  Besides, this asshole and I had some unfinished business. I’d promised him it would come to this one day. And that I was going to be the one to end him.

  He swiped the chair aside with one powerful motion and it exploded against the wall in a shower of splinters. Then the alpha rippled, taking on his half-shifted form, looking like something out of a human werewolf horror movie...but with sabertooth tiger fangs. We circled each other, two hunters stalking their prey. Then he moved, rushing me. He was faster in this form than in his fully shifted form, and I wasn’t quite able to dance out of reach. His long, sharp claws connected, tearing a searing line from my shoulder to my elbow, ripping through my thick leather jacket and flaying my arm open to the bone.