She grabbed her bag and emptied it on the bed looking for anything she could use as a tool or a weapon but there was nothing there, not even a nail file. He had gone through her things and the thought just made her angrier. She had suffered greatly at the hands of this madman before and she wasn’t about to do it again.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, closed her eyes and tried to slow her breathing. Her anger was getting in the way of her thought process and she needed to cleanse her mind.
Think, Summer, Think!
The door handle couldn’t be removed from this side, there were no screws that she could see. When he came for her she would need to pay attention to the noise as he unlocked the door to determine what type of lock it was.
She heard faint footsteps in the hallway and listened carefully to see if they were coming her way. They stopped outside the door and she heard whispered voices but couldn’t make out what they were saying. He was aware that she was listening and knew about her enhanced hearing ability so she couldn’t use that against him.
There was a scraping of metal against metal and then a thunk before the door swung inwards and she saw the position of the heavy bolt near the top of the door before he closed it behind him again. He was alone and she guessed whoever he was talking to was outside the door, probably with a gun. Another one of Danvers’ thugs.
“Hello again Serena, it’s been way too long,” he said as he came toward her and took her hand, lifting it to his lips and pressed a kiss there.
If she didn’t know what an odious being he was, she would never have guessed by his appearance. He looked a little like Finn, a little like Liam and a lot like Lexi. He had an air of confidence that only the rich and privileged seem to possess and his arresting good looks had fooled more than one woman in the past. She was ashamed to admit that she had failed to see beneath his carefully crafted veneer at first too.
“Not long enough, Danvers. We should have finished you off when we had the chance to. What do you want from me?”
He lifted her chin with his finger and forced her to look at him and she could see the madness dancing in his clear blue eyes.
“I want to pick up where we left off, my little witch, but this time I will incentify you to carry out your work. You do as you are told and you will live a life of luxury here with me and a few associates. If you disobey me or try to escape, then I will have no choice but to punish your friends for your transgressions. I will start with your brother and then with your lover.”
He reached out and traced the line of Connor’s bite and Summer saw a flash of anger in his eyes and then just as quickly it was gone. He was jealous of Connor!
“I haven’t practiced in almost three years,” she said sadly knowing she had to let him think she was still the meek compliant little witch she was back then.
“You will have one week to get up to scratch, Summer. I have to get back everything they have taken from me and you are going to help. Then I can make plans for my future.”
“I am a little rusty and there are a lot of things I will need.”
“Make a list and I will see that you have everything necessary,” he reached into his pocket and handed her a notepad and a pen. “I will get you anything you need, for your craft or for you personally. I want you to be happy here with me, Summer.”
“I will never be happy being kept as a prisoner.” she raised her arm and gestured around the room. “This is just a gilded cage and I will never give up my freedom willingly.”
“That’s such a pity to hear you say that. You have so many in the pack that you care for and I will snuff out their existence without a second thought, remember that when you think about trying to escape. I also have someone here that I would like you to meet, you have a lot in common and will be spending a lot of time together.”
He walked to the door and knocked. Someone opened the bolt and she saw the guard when the door swung open. He was human, that was a bonus at least. A fully-fledged shifter would be too strong to overpower but she could handle a human, even one as big as this one. He turned back to her before the door closed again.
“I’ll expect you for dinner at seven, my friend here will escort you to the dining room. There is a closet full of clothes for you to choose from, but it won’t be too formal. It’s not a request.”
He closed the door behind him and the heavy bolt slid back into place. She sat down on the bed with a sigh. She knew he would be impatient to get started on his heinous plans for her and she needed to get a solid plan in place before he realized that she would die before she would help him hurt another living soul.
She made a list of basic equipment and ingredients, not for him but to help her formulate a plan of escape. She needed to be able to communicate with the pack to let Connor and Lukas know that she was okay but there was no way he would be stupid enough to leave a phone lying around, she would need to get creative and find another way.
She didn’t know where he had taken her so even if she could get a message out somehow, she didn’t know where she was being held. It obviously wasn’t some shack but the view from her window gave nothing away either, there was nothing but trees as far as she could see.
She had thought that they had stripped him of his funds while he was locked up, at least that was the plan and she shuddered as she thought about the people that owned the beautiful house she was now staying in. What had he done to them? She was one of the few people who knew just how far Rob Danvers would go to get what he wanted and he wasn’t above murder. The thing that set him apart from others was the sheer pleasure he got from torturing and hurting others, there wasn’t a scrap of goodness in him.
She added some more items to her list to pass the time but she had no intentions of helping him in any way, she would just need to pretend that she was still afraid of him and go along with it for now. She remembered the awful things he had been planning for little Everly and she shivered. A man without a conscience was the most dangerous creature of all.
She threw the notebook on the bed and walked to the window. The sun was low in the sky and dipping behind the endless rows of trees. She knew by their uniformity that it wasn't a natural forest and wondered if the owners realized how difficult it was to replicate the sheer beauty that mother nature created so flawlessly.
She closed the blinds and went into the vast closet to find something to wear for dinner. She had learned the hard way that to disobey him meant harsh punishment and she shuddered as she thought about the awful ways he had dispensed his justice in the past. She still had the scars to prove it and would for the rest of her life. The mental scars were the hardest of all to bear.
The clothes still had the tags attached and were the correct size, making them look as if they were brought there just for her but the shoes on the racks beneath were a half size bigger than she normally wore. She shuddered at the thought of wearing someone’s clothes when she didn’t know what had happened to their owner. She chose plain black jersey pants and a white silk blouse, both with the labels attached but refused to wear shoes that belonged to another woman whose fate she didn’t know. She had plain black sandals in her bag that would have to do and screw him if he was offended by her choice of clothing. She wore a simple necklace with a small moonstone that her mother had made for her protection and given to her before she died. She closed her fingers around it and chanted.
“Protect me from my greatest foe and all who cross his path
All his deeds and words of hate will now become his own just fate
By the power of the moon and sun, let it be done.”
Summer knew she needed to try something she had never done before but she thought it would be dangerous to reveal that she was deliberately shielding her full abilities and it would be next to useless without her full complement of tools anyway. But she still had to try, as soon as he brought her the basics she asked for, she would try to contact the pack members by telepathy. She had no idea which of them, if any, would be receptive
to her, but she had to try.
Wolves weren’t known for their telepathic abilities. Maybe Hope would be attuned to telepathy seeing as she was an empath. Who knows if it was even possible, but she just needed to be able to reach one of them? She suddenly wished she had been more open-minded to her mother’s teaching when she was young but telepathy had always seemed like such an intrusion to her that she had balked at trying it.
She heard the guard coming along the corridor and took a deep breath as the door swung open and he gestured for her to walk in front of him. She took in the expensive wall coverings and paintings lining the hallway, every detail was important.
She wondered who it was that Danvers was so keen for her to meet at dinner and she suddenly had the awful thought that he might have captured Annalise again. She wasn’t so sure that Imogen and India’s mother would survive another round of Rob Danvers perverse hospitality and she prayed to the goddess that she was safe with her pack.
He took her past several other rooms along the corridor but the doors were all closed and gave her no clue as to whether anyone else was up here with her. The solid wood floor had plush rugs in blues and greens and a matching runner held in place by brass rods on the stairs. She was making a mental map of everything around her, knowing it would be crucial when planning her escape.
The guard hadn’t spoken a single word to her and she had no desire to exchange pleasantries with him anyway if he was an associate of Danvers. They reached the bottom of the stairs and he gestured for her to turn to the left where she could hear Rob Danvers voice.
They had descended only one flight of the massive ornate staircase and then toward the back of the house but judging the height of the ceiling she knew couldn’t escape from the second floor without breaking both of her legs in the process. She suddenly wished the children's storybooks of witches who could fly on broomsticks were true. She had mastered basic levitation when she was quite young, but only from a standing position and never under stress.
The guard backed off when they reached the dining room and Danvers stood up and took her hand as if she was an honored guest and showed her to her seat. She resisted the urge to snatch her hand away just in time as she remembered how awful his punishments had been for even the slightest transgression. Once she had pushed his hand away when he rested it on her arm and he had held her forearm over a gas flame until she screamed in pain and promised to be obedient.
There was another woman seated there already and as Summer took her seat opposite she realized she was barely more than a child, sixteen or seventeen at the most. She had dark, almost black hair that hung down to her waist and there was something vaguely familiar about her but she was sure she had never seen her before. Summer smiled and said hello and the girl answered quietly. She raised her head to look at Summer through huge dark brown eyes and she realized that the girl was also a witch. She caught a glimpse of terror in the girl's eyes before she shielded and her heart plummeted. Her rage was growing by the second, what had he done to this child.
“Serena, I would like you to meet your new assistant, her name is Raven. Perhaps you remember her mother from when you were a child.”
His smile was as black as his heart and Summer cast her eyes downwards to hide her rage and he relaxed as he mistook her stance as acquiescence. She was going to kill this bastard and rid the world of his evil once and for all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Connor
Summer had been missing for several hours already and they were still no closer to knowing where the hell she was. Danvers was a certifiable nutcase and he had taken his newly found mate to god knows where. He wanted to ask Lukas about her imprisonment with Danvers before, but he was afraid of the answers her brother would give. He felt as though he was going to burst out of his skin and he knew he was driving everyone crazy with his constant pacing.
The Den was full of shifters just hanging out waiting on their orders from Seann, but so far they had almost nothing to go on.
“Jay has checked out all of the places we have come up with, even his parent’s house but there is no sign of him,” Lukas said frustrated. “The truck Connor saw him in was abandoned in Bear Falls but there haven’t been any other vehicles reported stolen so he must have had another vehicle waiting for him.”
“Finn and Lexi are here,” Kandis said from the window. “Maybe they will have some idea of where he could have gone.”
Connor stopped pacing as they came into the room and Finn looked as guilty as Connor felt but for a different reason. Like Liam, he hated the fact that Danvers was his brother as if that somehow made him responsible for his actions.
Lukas filled him in quickly on the places they had already checked out but neither Finn nor Lexi had any idea where to look next.
“I wish I could be more helpful but the truth is my brother is a stranger to me. Most of his known associates were killed during our last run-in with him. Rob doesn’t really have any friends but he pays well and attracts others like himself,” Finn said sadly.
“I would like to know where he got the money to pay anyone?” Lexi added, “I thought he was stripped of all his assets when they locked him up.” she scowled and Connor thought how like her brothers she was when she was angry.
“Someone like him would have more stashed away, he would never leave anything to chance. Could he have gotten his hands on your Mom’s money?” Liam asked.
“No, I don’t think so. I transferred it to another account and it’s still intact. He must have had it stashed from before or he has stolen it from someone else.” Finn accepted the cup of coffee India handed to him. “My father had paintings and artifacts all over that house that were worth a lot of money and to be honest I never paid much attention to them, but he could have been selling them off under our noses and I wouldn’t really have noticed.”
“What makes you so sure he even has any money?” India asked him with a frown.
“Rob couldn’t go to the movies without a few thousand in his pocket, he wouldn’t know how to function without it and there is no way he would hole up in some dump. He will be living in the lap of luxury because he doesn’t know how else to do it. Like my father before him, money is his god. Slumming it in anything less than a five star would probably kill him.”
“Summer was locked in a filthy cell the last time he held her against her will. I can’t bear to think of her like that again.” Lukas clenched his fists to stop his claws from emerging but his eyes were glowing and Hope went to his side and wrapped her arms around him.
“He did the same to my mom too,” Imogen said as she hugged little Everly closer to her chest and Connor wondered what kind of sick monster could do the things he had done, especially to target a helpless baby.
“I’m going to go meet Jay and see where the truck was abandoned, I can’t sit around here and do nothing.” Lukas picked up his keys.
“I’m coming with you.” Connor followed him out the door before Lukas could form an argument. He was still limping but already he was beginning to heal and nothing was going to prevent him from going after Danvers. He was never going to hurt Summer again.
“I thought you were going to try and leave me behind,” he said as he got into the truck beside Lukas and clipped on his seatbelt.
“You wouldn’t have listened to me even if I had tried,” Lukas said matter of factly as he put the truck in gear and pulled out of the courtyard and onto the main road. “I know you will do anything in your power to protect her from Danvers and that fact alone makes us allies, Connor. We can work on the rest when we get my sister back home and rid the world of the scum who has taken her.”
Connor knew Lukas was a little wary of him. Hell, he would be wary of him too. He rolled into Summer’s life like a steamroller and suddenly they were mated before anyone could blink an eye. Being a shifter too, he knew Lukas understood how the fates could throw you a curveball. He hadn’t been on the lookout for a mate but he had found her, nonetheless.
They drove the rest of the way in silence and Connor ignored the stabbing pains in his thigh as the truck barreled down the quiet roads toward Bear Falls and the waiting police chief.
Jay Donovan was as capable as any man Connor had ever encountered and he trusted him implicitly, but this wasn’t Jay’s mate whose life was on the line and he wanted to make sure that he was doing everything possible to find her.
He was standing by the abandoned truck, the one Danvers had taken Summer in. He was imposing, like his nephew, Seann, but as they approached Connor could see the empathy in the older man's eyes as he reached out his hand to him and shook it firmly.
“We have one witness that saw them getting out of this truck and into a dark blue Ford. She didn’t pay much attention to them at the time but she remembered the man and identified him by the photograph we showed her. She didn’t get a good look at Summer but confirmed the clothes she was wearing and the length and color of her hair. We also picked up a report of a stolen truck that fits the bill from the day before in the city but there is no way of knowing if he also ditched that and picked up another. I have an APB out on the truck anyway now that we have the tag but so far nothing back.” Jay said as he opened the back door of the abandoned vehicle.
Connor leaned in and took a sniff.
He would know that sweet scent anywhere, Summer had been here such a short time ago and he felt as helpless as a baby that he didn’t know how to help her. There had to be a way to find out where Danvers might have taken her. He took another sniff of the driver’s seat and committed the smell to memory.
He would locate him and rip his fucking heart out.
“Summer’s scent is all over the truck,” Lukas confirmed as he closed the door.
Children of the Moon: Book Six Page 6
