Markings (22 page)

“Hush, Lina,” he demanded.

Through the blackness came the sound of an engine. Headlights appeared, a car rumbling straight at us. I screamed as Aaron skidded to a stop just before the automobile hit the brakes. He hit the grill hard, causing me to be thrown over the hood. Pressed against the glass, I saw Brendon’s face staring up at me, jaw-dropped.

“Get in the car!” he shrieked.

I scrambled down as Aaron ripped open the door. Brendon was driving some old Camaro with pinstripes that I’d never seen before. Snatching me by the waist, we tumbled inside onto the passenger seat, Aaron yanking me into his lap. Brendon hit the gas, pulling a one-eighty as he shot up the trail where the jeep had come.

“Good timing, man,” Aaron said, patting the pale-faced boy on the shoulder. “Get us out of here.”

“Wait! What about Tom and Trinity and Raja?” I cried. “We can’t just—”

“The Alpha always comes first.” Brendon recited it like he’d taken an oath, like it was an unchangeable rule. And here I’d thought he was just a human who knew about us. “The clan is there. They’ll take care of Senneth’s little gang.”

I shuddered, trying to catch my breath. “Aaron, I thought you said Cain had been taken care of.”

“I did, and he is. That wasn’t Cain.”

“Really? Because he sure as hell looked like Cain to me.”

“Don’t yell at me. I know what I’m talking about.”

“Then why does he look like—Oh, God.” I let it go for a second, thinking of something more important. “What about Mom? She has no idea! They won’t go to the house will they?”

“I—I don’t know, Lina, I doubt they will when they already know where you are—”

“But my scent is there. If we lose them they’ll go where they think I’ve gone. Just because she’s not a Shifter what if they take her for association?” What if they used her as blackmail to get to me? I wouldn’t put it past them at all.

Aaron’s hand dug into his hair. His pupils stretched a little, turning to slits. The gold seeped out into his aqua eyes. “I don’t know, Lina,” he muttered. “I don’t know what to do. Give me a minute to think.”

“We need to go to Home Base,” Brendon butted in. “Many with young cubs and newborns stayed home tonight. They need to know our territory has been invaded.”

“I won’t leave my mom,” I snapped. “We go to the house first to get her, and then we go to—”

A shadow darted in front of the Camaro’s headlights.

Brendon cursed. He spun the wheel too fast, narrowly avoiding the black blob in the way. With no seatbelt on, the momentum stole me right out of Aaron’s arms, tossing me over the glove box. My body swept Brendon’s hands from the wheel.

The next thing I knew my head smacked the doorframe and gravity was meaningless. Aaron and I hit the ceiling as the car tipped over, rolling down a hill. Glass smashed as we tumbled across the ground, and a sharp, burning pain went through my side. I collided with Brendon, whose thin arms managed to catch and lock around me, holding me steady.

Finally the car fell still on its side. Brendon’s wimpy arms shook, and with a curse he let me go. I fell, laying where the driver’s side window had been. I groaned, trying to focus on something, anything, but everything looked like it was still moving. The world spun like a merry-go-round. All I could focus on was the pain. So much pain, and the
throbbing.

“Lina?” Aaron pushed himself over Brendon’s seat. Somehow, he’d managed to end up in the back. Blood streamed down from a cut in his forehead, bits of bloody glass shimmering in one arm as he reached towards me. “Oh my God, Lina.”

The horror in his tone said it all. I must’ve looked as bad as I felt.

Brendon, one hand still touching my waist, released his seatbelt. He fell half on me, half over the steering wheel. “Lina! Oh, shit, Aaron, look at this.”

A howl echoed outside the car. The smell of the enemy crept through the broken windows. I moaned, trying to sit up. This was worse than the other night, worse than the muscle pain from all the running. From the corner of my eye, I saw my dress turning black. My stomach had something shinny sticking out of it, oozing blood. It dripped down my thighs and I tasted it in my mouth. I nearly puked, but somehow forced the acid back down.

“Aaron,” I said, my voice raspy.

Brendon cocked his head as another howl joined the first. “Dammit, Aaron! They’re coming.”

Aaron wasted no time. Standing up, he jammed the door open above his head, ordering Brendon to climb out, who did as he was told, using the side of the front seat as a stepping stool.

Aaron leaned over me, slowly peeling me out of the mess. I cried out as the glass dug deeper into my skin. “Aw, Lina, I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice cracking. “I’m so, so sorry.”

I shrieked as he tore the shard from my side. His hand came up under my back, brushing pebble-sized bits of glass away. “I’m going to get you out of here,” he said, and while tears brimmed his eyes, he’d never sounded more determined. “Brendon! I’m passing her up.”

“Hurry up, man! I see them,” Brendon cried, head cranked over his shoulder.

Aaron pulled me against him, and I started seeing black and purple spots. They were the kind you get when you stare directly into the sun then look away. I tried to wrap my bloody hands around his neck, but my joints didn’t seem to work. My limbs felt cold, lifeless. I couldn’t feel Brendon’s hands as he pressed me into his lap. Strangely enough, the pain began to subside. The sensation traveled upward. Before long, I couldn’t feel a thing. Aaron shouted orders as he, too, climbed out of the car, but I couldn’t hear him. It was as if my ears had been submerged in water, hearing only garbled noises.

The spots clouded my vision. The last thing I saw was a cluster of snarling black figures coming through the bushes, and a tan cougar looking over his shoulder at me, something like grief in his gaze.

Chapter 24: Bastet’s Eye

W
hat is that smell?

My eyes opened to see a low, cement ceiling.
Whoa, where am I?
This didn’t look familiar, not even in Home Base. I peered around the small room. No portraits. All cement walls, except for the one on my right that was floor to ceiling windows, viewing lush foliage outside, but they were barred. Each window had poles across it.

The odor of wet dog clouded the air, along with something salty. Not salty like blood—though I smelled that, too—salty like sea water. I sat up on the spongy mattress and yanked my leg off the bed. A heavy, metal ring was clamped around my ankle. Attached to the ring were chunky, steel links that snaked across the floor, cast to an iron ball.

Had I been captured?

I jumped up and nearly keeled over, feeling like someone had punched me in the stomach. I was wearing a silky black dress, one that did not belong to me and I did not remember putting on.

Aaron, what happened to Aaron?
Brendon. The Iew Keftey. I remembered all of it clear as crystal, except for the car wreck. Those details were fuzzy and made my head throb. Or maybe it was the large bump on my skull giving me the headache.

A clicking sound moved outside my room. My tiny, bare cell had a door made of barbed wire, and a shadow crossed the wall behind it. A massive, black animal lumbered into view. I curled my lips back, letting out a primitive snarl. Leaping back against the wall, my chains jerked noisily across the floor. The creature stood up on its back legs, fur receding. He held a tin pan in his mouth, which he placed in his front paw—a paw that extended from animal toes to human fingers. His face pulled in, spine shortening as the tail curled up.

A young man with russet hair and eco shorts now glared through the wire. The muscled build and golden eyes were familiar. He had been one of the boys at Cain’s table at Mt. Hood. “Well, look who’s awake,” he said. “We were starting to wonder if you’d just died in your sleep. Would’ve made all the work removing the glass from your scrawny waist a waste of time.”

Removing glass?
I made a face, running my hand over the dress. I could feel the rough outlines of bandage beneath the fabric.

The
Keftey
had removed the glass from my side? All of it?

“Don’t think it’s a favor,” he said quickly, guessing my thoughts.

I narrowed my eyes. He frightened me, but my anger overrode the fear. “Then why do it?”

He pulled something off the wall that I couldn’t see. Turning back, he stuck a key through the lock, pushing open the wire door. I snarled again, realizing how feline the sound was. I sounded more animal than the day I hissed at Aaron in the woods.

The boy shot me an annoyed look as he came in. “Don’t give me that, cat.” It was a warning. “Piss me off and Senneth will have no control over what happens to you.”

Senneth.
The pack leader. My growling lowered to a faint rumble. I had been taken,
kidnapped.
And as I looked at this boy who was in on the scheme I thought,
he could kill me
.

The boy dropped the tin pan at the edge of my bed and stood back. “Breakfast.” He grimaced, heading back out.

“Why?”

“Why feed you?”

“No.”

“Why save you?” I nodded. He shrugged. “It would rain on Senneth’s parade. He’d prefer you weren’t withering and bleeding on his upholstery. Plus, nobody likes crunchy, inedible stuff in their dinner.” He smirked, slammed the wire door shut behind him and disappeared.

I stopped pressing against the wall and sulked onto the scratchy, wool sheet on the bed. Dinner? Inedible stuff in their dinner, which meant . . .

They were going to eat me.

My head gave a painful throb as I leaned forward to see what Russet Hair had left behind. “Eww.” The tin plate cradled a leathery steak and some other piece of overly cooked meat. My stomach gave a little growl, but as if.

Exhaling a shaky breath, I stared through the bars of my windows.
Aaron, where are you?
I closed my eyes, feeling the moisture gather behind them. What if the worst had happened to him and Brendon? If I was the only one in this room, did that mean I was the only one left?

Suck it up, Lina.
I wiped away tears. I had to get out of here. I eyed the door. No, not even. And the bars on the windows weren’t even questionable.
Have to come up with something else.
As I stood up, my chains rattled. “Damn it,” I growled. Those stupid things had to go first.

I was flexing my foot, trying to see if I could slip my leg out, when footsteps entered the hall again. The figure that appeared was not the russet-haired guard.

I gasped and went still.

Cain leaned against the wall outside my door, looking average in jeans and a black jacket. He was barefoot, his feet so callused one might question if he’d ever worn shoes. His talon-like fingernails slipped through the wire, all broken and yellowish in color. He threw me a sexy smile.

“Aw, Lina,” he said. His voice was huskier than I remembered. Holding his arms out, he added, “Welcome to my domain.”

“And here I thought you were dead, Cain,” I snapped. I didn’t understand why Aaron had lied, saying this wasn’t him, saying he had gotten rid of him.

“Cain?” Cain gave a nod then rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I can see why you’d think that. He was my twin brother.”

“
Brother?
” I squinted at him.
That has to be a joke.
They looked exactly the same.
Wait.
As he tilted his head, his hair showed a red tint that Cain’s did not have. The gold in his eyes was darker, not so yellow. “You . . . You’re Senneth?”

“Very good, little Alpha. Very good.”

•   •   •

I’d almost preferred the ball and chain my ankle had been locked in. As I was handled roughly down the hall by Russet Hair and another muscled boy with a shaved head, the ropes around my wrists broke skin. It was hard not to squirm as I lost circulation in both hands.

Senneth sauntered in front of us, running his fingers along framed portraits on the walls. Unlike the ones in Home Base, these portraits had a very gothic edge, some too gruesome to look at—like people wearing cockroaches, or monsters chewing on human body parts.

“Don’t you love them?” Senneth gazed up at a naked young woman lying in a cemetery. Outlines of what were once wings extended from her back, the feathers torn out and scattered around a gravestone. “The misunderstood are such black, pitiful creatures, wouldn’t you say, Lina?”

I didn’t answer.
He’s just trying to scare you.
I kept my eyes on the black carpet, trying not to let Senneth or his darkly-decorated mansion get to me. If I became terrified and inferior, my chances of escape were much less likely.

“No.” Senneth’s tone lowered as he glanced back, watching my struggle to hold it together. “You’re a different type of misunderstood, aren’t you? No excruciating horrors to look forward to on your eighteenth birthday, no lust for blood after your first transformation. For God’s sake, you don’t even
feel
the change when your kind shifts!” His footsteps slowed to a stop before the last portrait in the hall. “Go ahead, Lina. Tell me this isn’t your type of misunderstood.”

Don’t panic.
Holding my breath, I prepared to see some kind of sick Shifter battle, another creature chewing on a cat leg. But as I tilted my chin up, my breath came whooshing out of my mouth.

A woman. A young woman with frosty skin and thick, white hair. It fell down to her waist in ripples, and she wore nothing but a long tee as she sat on the back of a white wolf, whose coat nearly matched her skin. In the right light, the gold paint making up the wolf’s eyes glowed. It was the most beautiful portrait I’d ever seen, but also the scariest.

Mostly because this woman was me.

“Confused?” Senneth smirked. “You shouldn’t be. It should be more than obvious your connection to this woman.”

“H—how am I up there? Who painted this?” I stammered.

“Oh, it isn’t you, Lina,” Senneth assured. “But you’re getting warmer. Her nose was a little bigger than yours, I think. And her ears were wider, according to my grandfather. You do share a lot with this woman though, including a name.”

It felt like the floor had been pulled out from under me. “My great-grandmother.”

“Celine Marie, the fearless queen,” Senneth said, taking his golden eyes back to her face. “She was the last female to rule the Western Clan, and—might I add—she made her rule
known
. She was powerful, your great-grandmother. No one crossed her without fair warning and good reason. It was said that when she first shifted, her coat glowed like the moon, and there was often debate over whether she was silver or white.”

There should’ve been debate whether she was
human, I thought. If this portrait was accurate, how had she blended in with the public? Everything about her screamed abnormal. She was too beautiful, too ethereal.

“Do all Alphas shift silver or white?” I never thought I’d be asking a Keftey that question.

Senneth snorted. “I see the clan has taught you well,” he said. “Alphas shift white. Few have been recorded with silver coats. And her coat was not her only specialty. On very rare occasions, an Alpha will inherit what is known as
Bastet’s Eye.
Your grandmother was said to catch glimpses—whether in dreams or travels through the woods—of the future. By seeing what was coming, she could prepare and protect her clan. It was a sixth sense, a warning system built into her mind.” The pack leader’s face darkened, looking almost thirsty as he glared at me. “And I happen to know that
you
possess this same gift.”

My lip started to tremble, so I bit down on it. It took all my concentration to hold his gaze, to not let loose the waterworks. “Why do you assume I have Bastet’s Eye?”

“Because.” Senneth traced the face of the wolf on which my grandmother sat. “This world is based on balance. No shadows without light, no land without water. This universe is held together by delicate threads of balance, which is why when the day comes that each of you Miews are destroyed, the Iew Demos will be no more. We were not born of animal as you, therefore when the balance that Bastet worked so hard to keep is tipped, all traces of her will be gone. Her children, the Miew Demos, will be
poof
, and so will the curse. We will resort back to being what we were meant to be: human.” Senneth’s gaze softened, and for just a moment the animal, the cursed ravenous creature inside, was nowhere to be seen. He appeared calm, normal.

When Aaron spoke of the Iew Keftey, when I saw them tearing across the field, I had never thought of them as hurt souls, or being anything other than what was mounted on the mansion walls: monsters. It never crossed my mind that they could be something else, something domesticated.

Something who just wanted to be human.

“The rules of balance are why I dreamt of you,” Senneth continued. “Only when an Alpha of the Miew Demos is capable of seeing visions can an Alpha of the Iew Demos have them as well. How do you think I knew where to find you? How do you think I knew exactly when to send Cain to the resort? I might miss things now and then, which is why it took me so long to pinpoint your exact whereabouts, but I knew in time. And now . . .” A ferocious growl slipped through his teeth, taking the human right out of his features. “You and your clan are mine.”

•   •   •

I crouched in the back of the iron cage, finally letting the tears run. The Keftey skulked about Senneth’s courtyard, busily working to prepare this evening’s “feast.” I had had moments of being hopeless in my life, like the time I knew I was going to fail my math final, or when I knew no matter how much I wanted my parents to stay together they weren’t going to.

Those moments were nothing compared to this.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Judging by the salty air and the forest pressing against the courtyard’s walls, we were somewhere near the ocean. Quite possibly near my old home.
A home I’ll never see again . . . It’s over.
That two-word phrase played repeatedly in my head.
It’s over, it’s over.
My life, my clan, its meaning dwindled away with the minutes. All the effort Aaron and Trinity and the clan had given to protect me had been a waste. The clan, who I may or may not have ever successfully ruled, was in the hands of the Keftey.

It’s a horrid, gut-rotting feeling to know your hours are numbered, that all the dreams and plans you had set up were never going to happen. It was an even worse feeling wondering if you were the only one left alive. I might never know if others had escaped the field, the invasion. I might never know what happened to any of them. Like a weakling, I’d passed out right in the middle of it.

I banged my head against the cage bars. I hated that the universe chose me to be a Shifter. I hated it! But the worst part was knowing I wouldn’t take a normal life back even if it was offered to me. My heritage had given me new friends, like Trinity and Alison. I’d learned one of few known wonders of the universe—that fantastical beings do live among us. I’d met Aaron. Aaron, who wanted to know about me when my Shifter scent caught his attention. At least I’d gotten to hold him, hug him,
kiss
him.

As the afternoon rolled in, so did the rain. I lay on my back on the metal floor, my tears blending with the sky’s. I reran my favorite memories through my head. They started from the moment we moved into Wildcat Country. I remembered Mom’s face the first time she stepped into our new kitchen, how she smiled as she realized she was finally free of Dad. I thought about the time Kat got poison ivy on a camping trip while peeing in the woods, then of my sweet sixteen when she brought over her karaoke machine and belted out the lyrics to Katy Perry’s
California Girls
with her mouth half-full of cake.

I had just gotten to my memories of the shelter when I realized the rain had stopped. Some barks and snarls caught my attention. There was commotion near the double doors to the house. Sitting up, I saw the courtyard had been turned from simple slab of pavement into a pre-bonfire slash party area. The rain-covered tarp protecting the pile of wood said it all.

They were going to roast me.

Rotisserie-style.
This shouldn’t have made me snort, but it did. Glancing towards the doors, I watched as a herd of wolves came running out, hackles raised. They did that a lot, I noticed, fluffing up their fur and flashing their teeth at each other. There were only a few people outside, and they were talking in quick, low voices. From the tone of things they didn’t sound happy.

Suddenly more wolves filed into the courtyard. They stood back from the doors, snarling and snapping their jaws. Something threatening lingered just inside. I tried to catch a scent since I couldn’t see what it was. The damp air made it difficult for smells to carry, and the trees blocked the breeze. It wasn’t until Senneth stepped outside, looking smugly in my direction, that I caught the scent of mint mixed with spicy cologne and pine.

Following the pack leader, Russet Hair and a guy with tattoos stepped into the courtyard, dragging a new prisoner with them. Blue and yellow bruises fattened the boy’s left eye, shorts clawed, fang marks bleeding down his freckled, bare chest.