Hunger's Mate (37 page)

The elevator doors opened and Papplin stepped out first. He looked up and down the hallway then motioned for them to join him. Leo stepped out next, completing the same survey before nodding to Aidan to bring her out.

“We're going to stay close,” he told her, looking down at her with his raven-black hair and piercing brown eyes.

She swallowed. “Closer you mean?” she asked with an attempt at humor.

Aidan smiled back. “You got it,” was his reply as he stood to the side, motioning for her to exit before him.

Leo was right there as she stepped off the elevator, taking her elbow as they waited for Aidan. When they were once again all but locked together, the three of them walked quickly behind Papplin. There were several doors along the hallway, but Papplin continued all the way to the end of the hall. He turned another corner and there was another door about three feet away. Sliding his ID badge through the slim black swiping device, they heard a beeping sound and Papplin opened the door.

Ary watched the doctor who had become a close friend of hers walk through the entrance and give them the signal to follow. Leo went in first and she walked behind him after he'd given her a nod. Aidan was right behind her. Shya stirred the moment they were inside and when Ary looked down to begin the consoling process once more, she was surprised to see her daughter staring straight at her, shimmering hazel eyes flecked with green, all but glowing as Shya opened her mouth and let out a loud cry.

Ary's cat picked that exact moment to open its mouth to let loose its own battle cry, which rumbled in her chest like an imminent earthquake. To her right she heard a growl and looked to Leo. He grabbed her arm the moment Aidan yelled, “Rogues!”

And that was the last coherent word Ary would hear.

*   *   *

Darel had gotten the call about six hours ago and while he'd wanted nothing more than to toss that damned cell phone into the Chesapeake Bay and drive off into the sunset never looking back, he knew Boden would find him again.

That sonofabitch father of his—rather, the sperm donor that had taken pride in spreading his wealth all throughout the world—had come back into his life like a bad fucking nightmare, imposing his own perfected brand of sadistic torture. Sure it was all rooted in sex, but it was perverted and dark and humiliating, all things that Boden Estevez got off on. Him and that bitch Bianca.

Darel had known he couldn't trust her. From the first moment Sabar had introduced her he'd known she would be their downfall. And now, here he was, standing in the supply room at this freakin' hospital filled with dying and contaminated humans! This was not what he'd had planned for his life, not what the parents that had raised him had thought he'd turn out to be either. At least not his mother, she'd believed in heaven and hell, in supreme good and disdainful evil. And she'd tried to warn him, that is, until the already tainted substitute father had gotten angry and ripped her throat out right in front of Darel. The evil that had been running through his blood that his mother had tried valiantly to ignore sprung to life at that very moment. And now it boiled inside of him like some sort of divine potion about to explode.

Now his biological father was back in the picture, planning to wreak more havoc than Sabar or Darel could have ever imagined. He was going to bring down the Shadow Shifters if he had to wipe out half of the human population to do so. That may possibly be the only reason Darel hadn't slit his own throat the second Boden and Bianca had let him go. He didn't want to miss the ultimate demise of the Shadows, no matter how much he hated his genetic father and his whore of a mate.

So the second he scented those bastard Shadows coming into the lab, he'd pounced, leaving that silly little brunette with the piercing blue eyes that Bianca had informed him was out here to bring the kid back, tied and gagged in the supply closet. She talked too much, threatening to call someone named Crowe and to have him brought up on charges. Whatever, Darel had thought, thoroughly annoyed by the bitch. Whoever that Crowe person was could come and get her out of the closet once this was all over with. As for the lab tech that had so dutifully set up this little tag and grab, he'd been rewarded with a nice clean bullet to his temple.

Four more of Darel's men had been hiding throughout the room and the moment his signal was given they struck, going after the guards first. Those bastards were strong; Darel could see them putting up a hell of a fight as they were systematically drawn away from the circle they'd formed around the ultimate prey.

She was a pretty little thing, Nick Delgado's wife, that is. Her brown eyes zeroed in on him immediately, shifting to the golden eyes of her cat, but she did not shift. Probably because she had the baby in her arms. The package that Darel had come for. He moved slowly toward her then, ignoring the fighting going on around them both, the glass shattering, furniture crumpling beneath the weight of shifters immersed in battle. She turned to run to the door the second he was about five feet away. It was futile, she should have known. Darel caught her without much effort, grabbing her around the neck and squeezing until she was gasping, one arm reaching up to scratch his face, her cat struggling to get out with roars mingling with her human screams for help. Her other arm held tight to that baby, the one that was staring up at Darel with glowing eyes of her own. The minute gunshots sounded in the background he knew it was time to get this shit over with. Bianca was adamant that they needed the baby alive and unharmed, so Darel squeezed Ary's neck tighter, simultaneously reaching around her to grab the baby out of her arms.

When a bullet pierced his side, Darel roared. He grabbed that damned baby, tucking it under his arm and ran for the exit, kicking the door down just as another bullet whizzed past his cheek. He was out in the hall running to the exit he'd already marked, heading for the service elevator to take him down and out of the facility while alarms blared throughout overhead speakers, a result of the gunshots and breached security.

Darel ignored all that, including the pain searing through his body and the cat pressing so hard for release his teeth and claws had already appeared. Under his arm he held tight to the baby, who had ceased its crying and now only stared at him as if she was seeing something he didn't see.

*   *   *

“Thank you for doing this,” Ezra said as they sat in the backseat of the truck leaving the house Jewel had shared with Lawrence Crowe.

The buckets of gray powder had been found exactly where she'd told them they would be—in the back of the basement against the wall. To anyone just walking in the basement they would have seen these containers, opened one of the top ones, and thought they all were filled with the same base paint. But Jewel had seen Larry down here on a couple of occasions, she'd watched him scoop the powder out, dab it to his tongue, and one time sniff it like cocaine. She'd thought about getting rid of it because almost always immediately afterward, he would want sex and lots of it.

Ezra had grimaced as she'd told him, Bas, Priya, Syfon, and Paolo about that part of her life. If seeing her in the doorway of the meeting room at Rendezvous hadn't been shocking enough, the calm, almost serene way in which she'd recited how she came to live with Larry, all that he'd done to keep her there and why she'd taken so long to leave definitely had. Even Priya had cried as she listened to Jewel talk of the degradation and mental abuse that Jewel had endured. For Ezra, it had been doubly grueling to digest all that Jewel had gone through, because on some level the degradation and mental abuse had been mirrored in his own life, in those days he'd spent wrapped in Acacia's merciless grasp and the moment he'd found out it was all a game. At that moment he'd felt closer to Jewel than ever, more connected to this woman than he'd even felt to his twin or anyone else in his life.

They'd wasted no time climbing into the trucks to leave and Jewel would listen to no argument presented about her staying at Rendezvous until they returned. Ezra clearly remembered her pushing past him and getting into the back of the truck, telling him he was wasting time with his futile protests. Bas had chuckled at that, slapping Ezra on his back and saying, “Now you know how it feels to be blatantly disobeyed. I knew there was a reason I let her stay at Perryville. The woman's got a lot of spunk and is braver than some shifters we know.”

“She's a human,” Ezra had replied, knowing that what Bas was saying was actually his sort of blessing for Ezra having found his mate.

“And so is my
companheiro
. They are what they are, the same as we. You can spend your time trying to fight it, or you can concentrate on making her happy, for once in her life. This time, the choice is yours, guard.” The FL had walked away then, sliding into the front seat of the first SUV that would take them to Crowe's residence in Phoenix.

Now, hours later, they were about thirty minutes away from Rendezvous with what they believed was unpurified damiana. Tereza, the veterinarian, and Dyson, the computer tech, were their best bets for analyzing the powder and verifying what it was. There were no chemists at Rendezvous and Bas hadn't wanted to call any in.

The press had been all over the fire at Perryville as the death toll continued to rise there. Bas and Priya had gone back to the city only twice to talk to lawyers, shifter ones of course, that were deflecting some of the questions and accusations from him for the time being. The couple had already discussed the fact that a press conference was imminent, but per the Assembly Leader, finding and stopping Crowe was the priority now. Damage control would have to wait.

“I stabbed him, so he's hurt. Maybe he's at a hospital,” Jewel's voice interrupted Ezra's thoughts.

“Then at least he's not working on his project from there,” Ezra told her, not really believing that's where the bastard was, but wanting Jewel to have any measure of comfort she could.

“You're sure you got everything out of the labs?” she asked.

“Whatever I couldn't get off that computer in time, I destroyed. So unless there are more flash drives out there, yes, I'm sure.”

“And you killed everyone in there? The soldiers, all of them?” she persisted.

There was a tinge of sadness to her tone, a spot of fear in her eyes as she looked over to him.

“We don't set out to kill, if that's what you're really asking me,” he told her, a little agitated at either the fact that she was looking at him like he might kill her, or that she was judging him for what he was. He couldn't pick which one, but a muscle in his jaw clenched regardless. “Crowe is a maniac. He's a trained killer and he's using that training to control something that's out of his league.”

She nodded, looking away from him to stare out the window. “Yes, I know that. He's not stable on good or bad days. He's going to be hard to stop.”

“But make no mistake, I will stop him. I will end this project of his and I will take him down. For everything he did to you, for all that he's doing to innocent humans, and all that he's trying to do to the shifters. I will kill him.” Ezra was deadly serious. He hadn't been able to fake how adamant he was about his course, wasn't willing to lie to her in any way.

She shrugged. “It must be done.”

“Jewel,” he began, sliding across the seat until his side was touching hers, his hand going to the nape of her neck.

It was the first time he'd touched her since they'd made love on the table in that room, the first time he'd allowed himself to enjoy their combined
calor
. The flash of heat was instant, the need intense, but not overwhelming as the darkness in him, the effects of his own encounter with the damiana drug were steadily subsiding. “I want you to know,” he began, only to be stopped by her fingers on his lips.

“No,” she told him. “This time there's something I want you to know. I—” she began, but was cut off by the shrill ringing of a cell phone.

Ezra looked around, wondering where the ringing was coming from. He'd thought for sure he'd dropped his phone in that lab when he shifted, had figured it was lost. But this was a familiar ring. It was Jay-Z's “Holy Grail,” and that ringtone had been programmed specifically for his brother.

After Ezra had looked on the floor and in the pockets of the seats in front of them, Jewel had finally put her hands between the seats and pulled the phone free. She handed it to him and their fingers touched as he took it from her. She smiled at him and everything inside Ezra said he should lean forward and kiss her, to take his mate, tell her he loved her, and let the rest be damned.

But the ringtone persisted, his brother called, and Ezra answered.

“What's up?” he answered after putting the phone to his ear.

“Shya's been kidnapped.”

 

Chapter 26

The chair soared across the room slamming with a loud thunk against the far wall where Leo, Aidan, Caleb, and Brayden had the good sense to duck. At the other end of the room X stood directly behind Nick, his hands folded in front of him as he watched his friend being torn apart by helpless rage.

At the table, Ary sat, crying as Kalina wrapped an arm around her in an attempt to console her. Rome stood at that moment, boldly placing a hand on Nick's shoulder just as the Lead Enforcer was about to pick up another chair and toss it.

“We're going to get her back,” Rome said as calmly as he could manage.

Tension was thick in the room, like a heavy fog had been draped over them all. When the truck that had carried Ary and Shya out of Havenway just hours before pulled up with a screech of wheels, Dr. Papplin was rushed to the medical center for attention to a gash at his side where one of the rogues had apparently taken a bite out of him, and Eli had known something bad was about to jump off. In seconds there was an eruption of noise, and screams, and crying and then Nick arrived and was told that his daughter had been taken. After that, all hell really broke loose. For at least fifteen minutes, the Lead Enforcer had stormed through Havenway, not really believing that his daughter wasn't there, even though his mate was beside herself with worry. When he'd finally accepted the truth, the roar that ripped through him was phenomenal, echoing throughout the entire facility and alerting everyone close by that there was big trouble ahead.