Alpha Bear Protector (Awakened Shifters Book 1)

by Keri Hudson

  Chk chk, blam!

  The buckshot sprayed into Marcus’ side, his shoulder, and haunch. But it failed to put him off his feet, and the time the man used to cock the gun again was all the time Marcus needed.

  Chk chk—

  Marcus swatted the gun out of his hand with one blow of his right front paw, then swung his arm up under the man’s groin to throw him up and over his shoulder to find another target.

  A big man stepped up to Marcus, graying red beard and bulging gut making him an intimidating obstacle to most men. But Marcus was not most men; at that point, he was scarcely a man at all.

  “Kill it, Big Jim!”

  Big Jim clutched a massive hunting knife, tight in a massive fist. “You just watch me!”

  Big Jim swung the knife and Marcus reared up on his hind legs, roaring as the fat man advanced, snarling and swinging that long, sharp blade. Once Big Jim’s arm was across his chest and in just the right spot, Marcus brought his left paw swinging down hard onto Big Jim’s hand. The knife went flying and Big Jim looked up in terror.

  Marcus dropped back down onto all fours, the two front legs landing on Big Jim’s chest and left shoulder. Big Jim flailed beneath him, punching at Marcus’ massive forelegs, Marcus screaming a roar into Big Jim’s face.

  “I’ll kill you,” Big Jim barely said, face turning red, “son’ bitch, kill you dead!”

  Marcus bit down hard onto Big Jim’s neck, his victim gagging and struggling in his deadly grip. Big Jim’s hefty legs kicked, fingers reaching for Marcus’ eyes to gouge, his lips to pull or tear.

  With a shake of his head and a loud crack, Big Jim’s body went limp, arms falling slack. Marcus dropped Big Jim’s body and returned his attention to the room.

  One man was on the run, but instead of making for the exit, he scrambled up the narrow wooden staircase leading up to the second floor. Marcus roared and leapt into a chase, bounding across the stairs and halfway up to pin the man, face down. He screamed under Marcus’ weight, the stairwell buckling and the two falling in and out of sight.

  Guards from the second floor started shooting into the cavity where Marcus and his victim fell in. Marcus took a few shots, ultimately harmless, turning to hold the doomed human up to absorb most of the shots.

  Reclining into the shadows, Marcus transformed quickly into his human form, shaking off the slugs and getting ready for a final assault.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Marcus could hear the men coming at him, but because the stairway was so badly damaged, he knew they were survivors of the battle to hold the first floor. And there were more upstairs. But in his human form, Marcus was stealthier and better in tight places. The man who’d been shot by the second-floor guards posthumously contributed his pants to Marcus’ cause.

  He stepped out of the little closet door leading to the small storage area under the stairs, which he’d fallen into and demolished with his ursine size and weight. He didn’t see anybody until he was upright, his back against what remained of the staircase.

  One man came at him with Big Jim’s fallen knife, twelve inches of gleaming steel. He stabbed at Marcus, missing his chest as Marcus grabbed his forearm and held it at bay. Marcus threw his knee into his attacker’s groin, and the man’s eyes burst open as his mouth dropped and closed.

  Marcus twisted the man’s arm, hard and fast. Crack! He dropped the knife and screamed out in pain. Marcus head-butted the man, forehead square onto the tip of his nose. He picked up Big Jim’s knife and turned just in time to see another man cocking a rifle, readying a shot.

  Marcus threw the knife across the room, a blurred silver circle before it landed in the man’s chest. The man dropped the rifle and grabbed the handle of the knife to dislodge it, but he fell back before he managed that final act.

  Marcus stood in the quiet of the house, bodies strewn everywhere, furniture overturned, wood dust heavy in the air. He walked over to the stairs, looking up and seeing no activity, hearing nothing. He knew the odds of an ambush were very real, but he had to get up there and find Sabrina and whoever else was there.

  Climbing up the damaged stairwell was no problem; Marcus agile and swift and well able to climb up the shards of the staircase. The top few stairs were still stable, and Marcus knew he’d need them with whomever he was to escort back down.

  Marcus stepped around the second floor, the sound of his footsteps the loudest thing in his ears. Hallways spread out to each side, and Marcus was unsure of which wing to investigate first. Lacking the keener senses of his ursine form, he couldn’t sniff out who or what might be behind those doors. But his instincts were still keen, and he reasoned the freshest captive would probably be in a room furthest down the hall, to prevent her screaming from disrupting the whole place.

  Marcus tried the bedroom door on his left at the start of the hall, ready for gunfire to burst out at him from the other side. He opened the door and ducked out of the way, no response coming from inside the room. Peeking in, he saw nobody worth killing or saving. The next room had the same result.

  But the third room revealed two girls, sitting with sad faces, arms slack at their sides. Their postures were slumped, shoulders round, sprits clearly broken. They stared up at Marcus as he looked them over, not even bothering to be afraid. It looked to Marcus like they’d been visited too many times to be worried about that; like they’d welcome death if it happened to come, but were resolved with whatever else would.

  Marcus said, “I’m here to help you. Can you walk?” The two girls, who didn’t look much more than twenty years old, looked at each other and then at Marcus, slowly standing up off the two little beds. At the doorway, he said, “Wait here,” then turned to the room at the end of the hall.

  Marcus tried to open the door, which was locked. He stepped back and threw a hard front kick into the door and it flew open in front of him. Marcus quickly checked every corner of the room, ready for an ambush. Finding none, he turned his attention to Sabrina, tied seated to a chair with a cleave gag in her mouth.

  Marcus made quick work of the knots around her wrists, Sabrina taking the gag out herself while he freed her ankles.

  “Oh, Marcus, I knew you’d come! Thank God, thank God!”

  “You can thank us both later. Do you know how many other women are here?” Sabrina shook her head, rubbing her red wrists. “Okay, there are two women in a room is this wing, but there are four more rooms to go. You stay with the women, I’ll check the rooms.”

  Sabrina rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Not that male-chauvinist crap again!”

  “I’ll check out the rooms!”

  Marcus led her out and down the hall, where she joined the other two freed captives. Marcus checked the other rooms, finding two more women, also scared and broken, dressed in rags, eyes wide and fearful, postures cowering, limbs quivering. But all were pretty, not long past eighteen years old, once the full blossom of young womanhood’s promise.

  Marcus asked, “Any of these girls your friend Kathy?” Sabrina shook her head, a sad and resolved expression on her face. “I’ll climb down first,” Marcus went on. “Help everyone else on the landing. Can you help these women down first?”

  Sabrina didn’t seem to need long to answer. “Yes, of course, anything.”

  Marcus nodded, his eyes locking on Sabrina’s. But the time wasn’t right, and those women had to be taken a safe distance before any Cajun cohorts stumbled into the mess Marcus had created.

  Marcus climbed down the top few stairs and jumped down to the first floor. Sabrina led one of the other girls to the stairs, but she shook her head, fearful and timid.

  Sabrina said, “You have to do this, honey. We can’t stay here much longer!”

  Marcus reached up with his strong arms, hands open and ready. “I got ‘cha!”

  The woman couldn’t do it, but another, a blonde, stepped up. “I’ll go first.”

  “What’s your name, hon?”

  “Rachel... Rachel Arnneux.”

  “Okay,
Rachel, down you go.”

  Rachel stepped down the first three steps and crouched down, nervous before finally shoving herself off the shattered stairs. But Marcus caught her and lowered her gently to the ground. The others came more quickly, until it was Sabrina’s turn. She showed no hesitation, no fear of the heights or the fall. Marcus caught her and lowered her, their eyes locking again. She was lithe and light in his grip, shorter, adorable as she looked up into the face of her rescuer. Sabrina’s eyes were wide and wet, lips quivering, brows cramped and sweet.

  They did a quick scan of the rest of the house but had to be resolved that Sabrina’s friend Kathy was not to be found. Sabrina’s sad face told Marcus that she realized what he already assumed. The girl had been sent up the line, and at a certain point could have been diverted to anywhere in the world, if she was still alive at all.

  But Sabrina was alive, and four others rescued from a dismal and terribly short future.

  Click.

  Marcus and the others turned to see a lone survivor, pistol in his hand, quivering with the last of his strength. “I… I kill you all!”

  Sabrina was the first to act. She dropped to the floor, where one of many errant guns sat. She shot from the floor, four quick shots that sent the man tumbling back. The flurry of violence passed as quickly as it had come, Marcus’ heart quickening with the explosion of action.

  “What the—where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

  “Father was a cop.”

  Marcus nodded. “And you waited ’til now to tell me this?”

  Sabrina looked him squarely in the eye. “Would it have made a difference?”

  Marcus had no answer and Sabrina didn't seem to need one. She’d made her point, in more ways than one. It was time to get back to her rental car and get out of there while they still could.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Marcus hit the highway and headed straight out of Houma for New Orleans, where the girls could be delivered into uncorrupted hands, way above the local chicanery. Marcus knew it all too well, and he wasn't about to deliver Sabrina into their hands.

  Sheriff Barnard Le Croix of Orleans Parish leaned back in his chair, wood creaking beneath him, metal spring squeaking. The office smelled of his body odor and stale coffee. Hours in the holding cell had kept them up way past midnight, and the sheriff’s bleary eyes told Marcus that he was as impatient with the delay as Marcus and Sabrina were.

  “All right,” Sheriff Le Croix said with a long, Louisiana drawl, “let’s see if we can’t make sense o’ this, shall we?”

  Marcus and Sabrina sat on the business side of his big desk, papers strewn all over the top, a black landline telephone in one corner. But Marcus said nothing, waiting for the sheriff to continue.

  “Shall we start with how you come to know each other?”

  “Marcus here found me when two of your locals chased down me and a friend of mine, Peter Ott. Your associates in Houma found him shot dead on the highway the other day, by my abandoned car.”

  “That's right,” the sheriff said, looking her over. “You’re a person of interest in his death, matter of fact.”

  “And I’m happy to co-operate all I can,” Sabrina answered. “Look, I talked to cops in Houma about this, that Peter’s sister disappeared. They brushed us off. Now I have an inkling that those cops are corrupt, maybe they’re in on the whole thing!”

  “What whole thing?”

  “A kidnapping ring,” Marcus said. “White slavery. I can already identify a local ring, and they’re certainly connected to others.”

  Sheriff Le Croix shrugged. “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that—”

  Marcus said, “You’ve got five victims in your custody right now!”

  “Six,” Sabrina corrected him.

  “And you, Mr. Reilly, where do you fit in all this?”

  “I told you,” Sabrina said, “he rescued me from the two men in the pickup truck that your Houma sheriffs found near my car.”

  Sheriff Le Croix shook his head. “Didn't find any truck; report said just a Honda Civic hatchback and a dead body next to it.”

  Sabrina said, “But—?”

  Marcus put a hand on hers, wordlessly quieting her. “Anyway,” the sheriff went on, “t’ain’t my jurisdiction, and I don’t appreciate you comin’ in tellin’ me stories of dirty cops in my own state.”

  “We don’t mean to agitate you,” Marcus said, seeing the necessity of calming the sheriff. “You asked, we told you; simple as that.”

  “Simple as—? I’ve got seven dead bodies in a farmhouse outside Houma, you’re telling me you killed two more, probably left their bodies in the swamp—”

  “That’s precisely what we did,” Marcus said.

  “We had to get away,” Sabrina said. “Well, I passed out.”

  Marcus glared at Sabrina, too late to keep her from saying too much. It got the sheriff’s attention too. “Why’s that?”

  Sabrina seemed to be thinking fast. “Well, um, I was being kidnapped! Don’t you get it? Pete and I were investigating his sister’s disappearance and they came after us! They would have got me if Marcus hadn't stepped it.”

  Sheriff Le Croix turned his attention back to Marcus. “And what were you doing in the swamps at that time, Mr. Reilly?”

  After an awkward silence, Marcus answered, “I live out in the swamps, in a shack outside Houma.”

  “Really?” The sheriff looked Marcus up and down, shirtless in a dead man’s pants. “You don’t seem the type, but… I s’pose I can see that.” After another thoughtful pause, the sheriff went on, “So yer just a… a good Samaritan, like that?”

  Marcus repeated, “Something like that, yes.”

  The sheriff’s eyes shifted from Marcus to Sabrina and back, Marcus certain of his skepticism. “And you killed these other men, in the farmhouse?”

  “Well,” Sabrina was too quick to say, “not singlehandedly.”

  The sheriff asked, “You had a hand in this?”

  “Self-defense!”

  Another long silence passed, and Marcus knew she was right. No jury would convict her of anything, there was little doubt. Nor was there much doubt about what the sheriff was fishing for.

  “I see.” The sheriff sighed, scratching the back of his thick neck. “So, did you rip one man’s hands off at the wrists, or did you gut the other guy, his bowels strewn all over the floor?”

  Marcus and Sabrina glanced at one another before Marcus said to the sheriff, “I thought this wasn’t your jurisdiction.”

  With a cold snarl, Sheriff Le Croix answered, “I got friends in the department o’er there.” Sabrina swallowed hard.

  “Not me,” Marcus said.

  “No,” the sheriff said. “I figured that.” After another long silence, Sheriff Le Croix closed the manila folder on the cluttered desk in front of him. “Well, I don't really know what the hell's goin’ on here, but I got nothin’ I can hold y’on nah, so… I reckon yer free to go. But I ain’t done with this, friends, not by a long shot.”

  He stood, and Marcus and Sabrina stood too. “Good luck on your investigation,” Marcus said before leading Sabrina out of his office.

  *

  Marcus led Sabrina down the hall, the matter of their next move quickly rising to the fore. “What do you mean,” Sabrina asked, “you’re just going to leave me here?”

  “You’re safe now. And you’ll be even safer once you’re out of Louisiana.”

  “But… I grew up here, I don’t know anybody outside of Louisiana. And I don’t have any money.”

  “You’ve got credit. No savings?”

  “A little.” After a long moment of doubt and reason, she asked, “I’m still not safe, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I should think you are, Sabrina, yes. But if you choose to stay, do take care.”

  Marcus turned and Sabrina said, “So you’re really just… just going?”

  “I have to get back to my work, Sabrina, you know that.”

  Sh
e seemed flummoxed, stammering, “I… please… I… I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “What if there are more of those creeps out there?”

  “There are,” Marcus said with a shrug. “But men like that, they don’t keep records, they don’t take names. If anything, they’ll be looking for me in my other form, and none of the girls saw me in that state, I don’t think.” After a somber moment, Marcus had to add, “Probably they’ll just move their operation somewhere else. There’s only so much we can do.”

  Sabrina nodded. “But… as for me, well, um… to be honest…”

  “Have you not been honest with me thus far?”

  “No, of course I have been, and I’m being honest with you now. I… I like you, Marcus. And it’s not just some silly thing about… about all this, but… I’ve been lonely a long time, Marcus, and… you’re… you’re a special kind of person, obviously, and—”

  “Sabrina, I’m flattered by what you’re saying, but—the person, the… the life I lead, it’s not safe. I don’t want you to be involved in the things I have to face.”

  “I… I’m already involved! And you have to admit, I’m… capable.”

  “Capable?”

  “Yes, capable! It’s not my fault they pulled me out of that motel room. Lord knows how they found me there.”

  “Maybe the motel clerk,” Marcus said. “Hard to know.”

  “Then they have my credit card! And you’re saying I’m not safe?”

  “Move.”

  “I can’t… I don’t want to… I want… I want to stay here… with you.”

  “Sabrina—”

  “Please, just… just come back to my apartment for a few days, just to make sure.” Marcus did give it some thought, and Sabrina was clearly ready to take advantage of the fact. “Don’t tell me you like living in that shack out in the swamp, wearing that crazy rag.”