Shifter (32 page)

“Michael.”

“Who’s Michael?”

“One of the kids we’ve been playing with. He says that we are human and he isn’t. And he is better than we are. And that the only reason we are here is because Mr. Daniel and Mr. Dimitri don’t got good sense.”

“‘Don’t have,’ not ‘don’t got.’ Yes, we are human, and in a way, not everyone that lives on this land is human. Nevertheless, they aren’t better than we are. They are different, but not better.”

“I’d beg to differ on that,” a male voice says. I jerk Katie into my arms and turn in the direction of the river that is running south a few feet away from us and the direction of the voice. Two werewolves are standing on the bank of the river. One male. One female. How I know they are weres and not shifters I’m not sure. Maybe it is the menacing way they are staring at us.

They hadn’t been there a second ago. I slowly begin to back away. Dimitri didn’t say anything about the weres having the ability to appear and disappear at will. Mave must have given them this power or is aiding them in some way. There is no way they simply walked up. I would have heard them. Damn. I need to get this information to Dimitri.

“We are so much better than the shifter you are shacking up with and a hell of a lot better than you,” the female continues.

“Could we watch the content and language, please? There’s a child present,” I snap.

“Don’t matter. She won’t live long enough to ask what shacking up means or repeat any bad words I let slip,” the male says and takes a few steps toward us.

“Why would you kill her? It’s me you want.” I’m terrified but unsure of what to do. I scan the surrounding woods for a patrolling shifter, but see no one, hear no one…of course. I had been too adamant about being alone. Dimitri would have commanded our guards to follow at a distance. They’ll be here any minute. I hope.

“True, but she’s a witness,” he says.

“How so? She’s a child,” I say.

“She’s old enough to understand what’s going on here. Old enough to tell what we look like and what we say.”

“Look, I’ll go quietly. No fuss. No fighting. You just let her go.”

“Sorry, but we can’t.”

Fear engulfs me. I have to get her out of here. Get her to safety. I just don’t know how. I hold her to me and picture Dimitri. The cabin. I let my body feel how much I want her there with them. Safe.

“What are you doing?” the female asks.

I snap my eyes open. What am I doing? Something is happening. When I think hard about Dimitri and the cabin, a feeling as if I am there washes over me. My body feels as if it is trying to do that strange teleportation trick that the shifters do. I step back from the two weres, grip Katie tighter to me, and clear my mind, picturing only Dimitri and the cabin. When I hold the images firm in my mind, I think about how bad I want Katie to be there instead of here.

“Hey, stop that,” the male demands and lunges for me.

In the blink of an eye my arms are empty, and I am being tackled by the male were. The air in my lungs leaps out of me as I hit the hard earth beneath me. I throw a punch, but it is a feeble one. I am too disoriented from the strange magic I used to send Katie home. Magic I shouldn’t have been able to use. Damn it, why hadn’t I sent myself back home with her. I was so worried about Katie, about getting her to safety that the magic had only taken her.

I try doing it again, to send myself, but he punches me in the face and injects me with something. I am unconscious in seconds.

Chapter 30

~~~Dimitri~~~

“Carrie did you see that?” I call from the living room. Carrie isn’t in the room so, of course, she hadn’t seen it, but when you think you have seen something you know you couldn’t have, you always want to see if others saw it as well.

“See what?” she asks, coming into the room, carrying a groggy Maddox.

“Right there,” I say, pointing toward the entryway to the kitchen. “I think I saw Abby and Katie. It was a flash. But for a second I could have sworn they were about to pop into the living room from out of nowhere.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t...” The sudden appearance of Katie crying Abby’s name cuts her off.

“Oh my God, Katie,” Carrie shouts, rushing to her daughter. “How did you get here?”

Through giant heaves, she says, “Aunt Abby.”

“What? How?” Carrie stammers.

“You mean Abby brought you here the same way Mr. Daniel and my brother brought you from Abby’s house to this cabin?” I ask, rushing to her.

“Yes,” she sobs.

“How did she do that?” Carrie asks me.

“I’m not sure,” I answer, though I’m sure I do know how she did it.

“Why did she bring you back here that way? And where is she?” Carrie asks her daughter who is slowly calming down.

“There were two people at the river. They scared Aunt Abby.”

“How did they scare your aunt?” I ask.

“I don’t know. They said bad words and Aunt Abby scolded them, then they said they had to kill me because I saw them, and Aunt Abby got scared, and then I was here.”

I vanish in a flash. I feel bad for leaving them alone in the house not knowing what is going on, but I need to get to Abby. When I appear by the river, no one is there. I start running up and down the bank calling her name, using my supernatural sense to track her, and summoning my family.

“What’s wrong?” Devan asks, appearing by the river with my father, older brother Darius, and two other pack members.

“Abby’s been taken,” I say, looking wildly around for any trace of them.

“What?” my father demands.

“She and Katie went for a walk. Katie says two people met them here on the bank. One said something about killing Katie, and now Abby is gone.”

“How did Katie get away?” my father asks while my brothers split up, shift, and begin searching the area.

“Abby sent her home via magic.”

“Are you sure?” my father asks.

“Oh yeah. One minute Carrie and I are alone in the house with the boys, the next minute Katie is there crying.”

“Why didn’t Abby come through with her?” Devan asks, shifting back and shaking his head to indicate that he didn’t get a line on any of them.

“I’m not sure. I don’t think she knew what she was doing. If I know Abby, she was only worried about the kid, so the magic only took the kid.”

“Who do you think took her?” Darius speaks up for the first time.

“Had to be the wolves. Mave wouldn’t come here on her own,” my father answers.

“How do we find her?” he asks.

“We get Sam to scry for her. Devan, you go warn Sam we’re on our way. Darius, you go talk to the girl, see if you can get a mental image of the weres. Carl, Jackson, round up the pack.” When the others are gone, Dad comes to me and says, “The two of you are mated, huh?”

“I... I think so. I’m not sure how that is possible. She’s human. We don’t mate with humans, do we?”

“It’s not unheard of. It hasn’t happened to my knowledge in hundreds of years, but it explains how she can use your magic. If you’re mated, you should be able to sense her. Can you?”

I shrug my shoulders and close my eyes, sending out all of the metaphysical feelers I can, looking for her. “No, I can’t feel her.”

“Mave must be blocking her from you or your bond hasn’t completely sealed.”

“It’s not that, I don’t think. Abby has been pushing me away these last few days. She thinks she is going to lose me when this is all over because she isn’t part of our world. I think she is the one blocking herself.”

“She is part of this world now, if she can do what you said she did. You’re mated. She just has to open her heart to you completely.”

“I don’t think she knows how to trust anyone well enough to open herself up like that.”

“She does, just give her time. And she’ll have to if she wants to get through this.”

“What’s our next move?”

“You keep trying to reach Abby, and we’ll go to Sam.”

Chapter 31

~~~Abby~~~

I wake, I’m not sure when, tied to a bed. I’m in a small house that seems to have one large room divided by curtains, furniture, and half-walls.  Looks like I’m in a cabin or small cottage, perhaps. The section I’m in looks like a bedroom. A large dresser with a high mirror blocks most of my view of the rest of the house. I can hear voices coming from somewhere. The voices are too low for me to understand.

I try to move my arms and legs, and the ropes they’ve used to tie me burns my skin, and I cry out a little.

“She’s awake,” a voice to my right says loudly.

I jerk my head in that voice’s direction to see a tall, medium-build woman sitting in a chair reading a paperback. My body instantly recognizes her as a were and as one of the ones who had attacked me by the river. She smiles a toothy predator’s grin at me but doesn’t get up or address me in any way.

Footsteps follow her words, forcing me to look to the open area beside the dresser where I see two people walking my way. I recognize them both. Mave, Dimitri’s psycho stalker, and the male wolf who met me at my mailbox not long ago. Both stop in the entrance and look at me. I instinctively jerk again, which only succeeds in waking up those limbs of mine that had fallen asleep, not a good feeling.

Mave’s glare bores through me so hard I can almost feel tangible pain from it. I can’t bring myself to look at the wolf. My skin crawls from the thought of his eyes on me. Even if a part of me feels compelled to look at him, I refuse to drop my eyes from Mave. She may be stronger than me with her magic backing every move she makes, but I still refuse to cower to her. If she is going to kill me, then I’m going to die fighting.

After a long moment, she laughs. “So brave for a mere human,” she says, stepping into the room. I guess she doesn’t sense the change in me. Good. Maybe my fear is overriding that. I’m not sure exactly what is going on with me, but I know deep inside that I’m no longer a mere mortal. Even if I had been able to explain my rapid healing and keen senses, there is no way I can explain away Katie’s disappearance. The wolves must not have told Mave about that.

“I’m curious. After all of this time you’ve spent running from me, why didn’t you let Dimitri pull you to safety like he did the brat?” Mave asks after a long moment of looking me up and down, judging me.

I don’t say anything. They had told her. She just believed it had been Dimitri and not me. Good.

“This bravado act won’t get you very far. I can make you answer the simplest questions if I want.” As if to prove this, she lightly touches my left leg, and mutters something under her breath. The skin beneath her fingers begins to burn, or at least feels as if it is burning.

I can’t stop my body from jerking, trying to get away from her touch, but I can keep myself from screaming. The woman in the corner puts her paperback down and positions herself on the edge of her chair, a look of extreme giddiness spreading across her face. I expect her to jump up cackling wildly at my pain.

Mave pulls away from me, takes a few steps toward my head, and leans down over me. The burning in my leg slowly ebbs but doesn’t go away. She has actually burned me. I can feel the burn blistering, and the pain is intense. “You’ll scream if I want you to scream,” she whispers in my ear. I believe her.

“Now, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve brought you here,” she says loud enough for everyone in the room to hear when she stands back up.

Her words are more of statement than a question or a demand, but I can tell that my lack of response and reaction is pissing her off. She thinks I’m weak and a human that she can easily manipulate.

“You stole something from me and have been lying to me about it for months.” She pauses and looks at me expecting a rebuttal. I ignore her, by turning my face away from her and pretending to examine the curtains on the window to the left of me. Her face reddens. “Don’t get me wrong, I know why you did it. If I had been in the same situation, I’d have done the same thing. Dimitri tends to bring out such actions in a woman. I pity you though. You actually believed you were doing the right thing. You actually believe he loves you. I hate to bust your little bubble, but Dimitri doesn’t love anyone but himself. Trust me, I know.”

“How?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“How what?”

“How do you know he loves no one but himself? You don’t even know him. You two met in a bar. He was drunk. You put out. He left you before you woke the next morning. You couldn’t have possibly gotten to know each other in such a short period of time.”

She grabs my ankle. The fire shoots up my entire leg, and this time I do cry out. Only once though. I snap my mouth shut so fast my teeth rattle. A few tears slide down the side of my face.

“How would you know? You weren’t there.”

“He told me. He told me he was drunk, and you were easy. And he didn’t think about you again until you showed up on his doorstep a month later in full on crazy mode,” I say through gritted teeth.