The Strip (34 page)

Daniel shook his head. “Out of my jurisdiction,” he replied coolly. Then he turned around, pulled on his wrist watch, and shoved his loaded guns into the shoulder holster. “And I also don’t care.”

“Daniel, where’s my phone?”

“Good night, cher,” Daniel strode across the room, his long legs eating up the distance easily. He ran a hand through his wife’s soft, silken locks and pulled her in for a deep, possessive kiss. When he broke it, almost a full minute later, he gazed down into her golden eyes and whispered, “I’ll be home soon.”

* * * *

Cole re-pocketed the phone without giving it another thought and focused his attention once more on Charlie. Now was not the time to lose control.

Charlie, herself, was trying to be calm, and he was impressed with her bravery. She had no idea what was happening to her or what was
about
to happen, and yet she faced it with her shoulders rolled back and her chin raised and her teeth bared.

Right now, she had her hands wrapped around her wrists and clenched to her stomach. “You’re good at a lot of things, Malcolm, but I gotta say that diplomacy isn’t one of them,” she said softly through clenched teeth.

He moved forward and gently took her arms to gaze down at them. “I would have to agree with you on that one, luv,” he said. “Now, listen. I’m going to explain this to you, because I don’t know how much time we have.”

“Ah Christ luv, you’re about to be a hell of a lot more sorry. Because that curse may have been transferred to you.” He gazed deeply into her eyes. “And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

Charlie gazed up at him steadily as she seemed to digest this. And then she looked down at her arms. “You mean I’m going to pop into some gory, bloody place where a murder has just happened and get to see mutilated bodies of innocent women and children?” She barely whispered the question. It was as if she were simply thinking her worst, nightmarish thoughts aloud.

It tore at Cole’s heart in a familiar, horrible way. It was reminiscent of walking into the camp at Dachau for the first time or witnessing his first serial murder and not being able to get the stench of innocent shed blood out of his nostrils for what felt like months afterwards…. And now that sickening pain was back because he knew that Charlie would be feeling it
for
him.

His gut clenched tight and he felt nauseated. Desperate. His head began to pound with the frustrated helplessness that was riding him. He would do anything to prevent her from having to witness what he’d witnessed. But this was one thing he was powerless against.

“Charlie, we have to get you to safe ground,” he said quickly. He noticed that his voice was shaking. He had to get her to some stable place where no one would be walking and no cameras would be monitoring her and no one else could be standing when she popped back into place the second time. And he needed to do it fast. He looked up to find that his men were all watching him, their stricken looks reflecting his own. They couldn’t believe this was happening any more than he could.

In the next moment, Jake was beside him as if he’d sensed that something was wrong and had pulled himself away from whatever he’d been doing with Mary Jane. Jake gently took him by the elbow and drew his attention.

“The men’s restroom. We can rope it off – out of order,” the blonde werewolf suggested.

Cole nodded. It was the only place in the hotel that wouldn’t have cameras, and they didn’t have the time to make it all the way to the suites at the top. “That’ll do.” He took Charlie’s hand and began to lead her down the walk toward the six-foot wall that Caige had helped her down. He climbed up first and then waited for Jake to boost her up. His men climbed the wall around him and, as a large group, they headed back into the casino.

They passed a man in gray overalls with a mop and a bucket, and Caige stopped to speak with him. Cole left him to his bribery and continued through the casino, the rest of his pack in tow. When they arrived at the men’s restroom, he reached in with his mental feelers and forced everyone out.

Three human men left the lavatory, seemingly at once. When the last shuffled quickly past and out of the way, Cole hurriedly took Charlie inside. Jake turned his back to the door from the outside, guarding it until Caige and the janitor could arrive with their sign.

The door shut and Cole turned to his mate. “Charlie, listen to me,” he began. “The pain is going to get worse. And then you’ll experience a sort of…” He searched frantically for the right term. “A ripping sensation.” Even as he said it, he broke out into a cold sweat. Why did she have to hear this? Why did she have to go through this now?

He hated the world in that moment.

“When that happens,” he continued, though Charlie had visibly paled, “you’ll flash out of here and wind up somewhere else. I need you to do this one thing for me, Charlie. Promise me that you will keep your eyes closed. Don’t open them, little one. Not for anything, understand?” He gently cupped her face in his hands and implored her with his stark, verdant gaze. “Promise me, Charlie. Promise me you’ll shut your eyes tight.”

Charlie’s mouth opened as if she were about to speak, but no sound came out. And then her eyes widened and her body went rigid. Cole could hear her heart hammering hard and smell the adrenaline running through her veins. They both looked down at her wrists, as one, and watched as the marks etched there began to glow.

“No,
no
…
Charlie
….” Cole pulled Charlie into his arms and shut his eyes. He couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t let this happen. It wasn’t right. There had to be some justice in the world. At some point, the pain – the wrongness – had to end, didn’t it?

Charlie made a harsh sound, one of pain and fear, and Cole’s grip tightened. “Shut your eyes, Charlie!” he commanded, one more time.

And then things were changing around him. He felt drunk, suddenly. Topsy-turvy. The world slanted around him and fell away, flashing into a redness that was all-too-familiar. Confusion hit him hard, fuzzing up his consciousness, but his grip on his mate never lessened. It never let up.

She screamed beneath him as pain undoubtedly ripped through her body, riding up her spine – as it always had his. It was the most miserable moment of Cole’s life.

But it was short-lived. The world settled in around him once more, the bright reddish light melting into individual colors and the ground beneath them once more leveling itself out.

“What the –”

It was a man’s deep voice. Familiar and hated.

Cole opened his eyes and looked down. Charlie was still in his arms and, bless her, she held her eyes shut tight, just as he’d asked.

“Well, I must say that this is unexpected. You’re early, Cole. And you’ve brought company.”

Cole whipped around to face Phelan, his fangs and claws instantly extending, his eyes at once glowing like flame-lit emeralds. Across the room stood Gabriel, his demeanor and dress one of a man who had never been injured and was not about to do what he had obviously been planning to do.

Cole’s stomach twisted nauseatingly as his eyes fell upon the young woman strapped to a chair beside the werewolf. Her left eye was swollen and bruising. Her face was sticky with streams of dried tears. Cole could smell faint traces of blood and his eyes skirted down the woman’s form to find that her wrists had been rubbed raw where she’d attempted to wiggle free of the ropes binding her.

“
David
…” Charlie had stepped back from Cole and was glaring at Phelan, her body still giving off residual shock-waves of receding pain, her blood now more cortisol and adrenaline than white and red cells. She was livid and hurt and shocked and her lithe form stood rigid and trembling with pent-up emotion. The small, sharp extended fangs in her mouth and the glowing ice-blue eyes were testament to that much.

Cole’s gaze cut from her back to Phelan.

Gabriel was staring at Charlie. He was apparently as surprised as she was. But there was something darker in that gaze. Cole recognized it easily for what it was. He’d felt that kind of desire, himself.

Phelan’s gaze skirted to the red marks on Charlie’s wrists – and then to Cole’s wrists, which were bare. “My, my,” he half-whispered. “Isn’t this an interesting development.”

Cole’s growl was low in his throat, but it was so deep and powerful that it shook the windows, which rattled in their panes. Necklaces and Mardi Gras beads that hung from the mirror on the dresser began to tremble against the glass. One of the pictures of the little boy and girl slid from its casing and drifted to the carpet.

The woman tied to the chair whimpered. But there was hope in her eyes where there had been none moments before.

“You sick, ruthless bastard,” Charlie hissed, moving to take a step toward the man at the other end. Gabriel’s sapphire eyes flashed in challenge and the corners of his mouth turned up in anticipation.

Cole’s hand shot out to press against Charlie’s chest, staying her in her advance. He turned a warning glance on her. She pulled her gaze off of Phelan to stare up at Malcolm and he hoped that she would understand.

He saw it in her eyes. She understood.

She just didn’t care.

He could sense the string of reason snap within her a sheer, split second before she bolted into action. He should have been expecting it. She’d been through too much at Phelan’s hands. There was only so much a person could take, werewolf or not.

Charlie’s form blurred beside him as she yanked off the sweater he’d given her and then raced toward Phelan, all fangs and claws and deadly intent.

Gabriel crouched low and met her, his arms up in defense, his own sharp fangs extending as she took them both to the ground in a flurry of indistinct and hazy forms. They moved far too fast for the human eye to follow and Cole could tell, with a single glance in her direction, that the human woman tied to the chair was bewildered. Perhaps she thought she’d gone mad and had snapped beneath the traumatic pressure of this nightmarish series of events.

Everything was happening too fast, even for him. Nothing made sense. Charlie moved with a speed that, until now, only Malcolm had ever displayed. Her moves were sharp and impossibly quick and incredibly strong. In the space of a few short seconds, she and Phelan seemed to become one super-human fighting machine.

Cole pulled his gaze off of them long enough to focus on the woman in the chair. He moved forward to untie her when someone spoke behind him.

“You always let your women fight your fights for you, werewolf?” Cole spun to face the source of the foreign voice.

Half a dozen human males were standing in the doorway just inside the bedroom. In their hands were automatic weapons. Cole could smell the gun oil, the gun powder, and the faintest hint of weapons discharge. He registered all of this as all six men opened fire on him, emptying everything they had into his tall, strong form.

Cole’s body jerked violently beneath the impacts, but he managed to turn once more and dive toward the woman in the chair, knocking her surprised form to the floor behind the bed as he went down in front of her.

Bullets ricocheted within the room, bouncing off of door handles and the metal frame of the bed. Cole heard the pinging and the thunder of the weapons as if through a tunnel. It was distant and rumbling and reminiscent of wind chimes. He had been hit far too many times. He knew that. He was losing too much blood and with it, he would lose consciousness.

He had no doubt that when that happened, the Hunters would kill him.

* * * *

There was no forethought to Charlie’s actions. It was as if that part of her brain – the part capable of weighing things carefully before she acted – was simply turned off. Blocked off. Burned out.

She saw the woman in the chair and the pictures on the dresser and felt the receding pain that had burned through her body and she remembered the whip across her back and the years of David Reese, aka Gabriel Phelan, touching her as she was trapped in his arms. She thought of her father. Of her mother. Of the funeral on that sunny Sunday that had seen the last rays of light before a storm had come that night and washed away every flower left at their graves.

In that moment, something inside of her changed. Something went away.

Before she realized what she was doing, she was racing across the room toward the man who had trained her, built her up, and made her into the vessel of rage that she had become. She didn’t know where the strength and speed had come from. They should not have been her own. But it was inhumanity at its finest, faster than she could control, stronger than she could have dreamed.

She and Gabriel went down like weights. They hit the floor with a fierceness that splintered the hard wood beneath them. Sound went away and the world painted itself red. Charlie’s hands flew on their own. An upper cut. A shot to the solar plexus. Her palms boxed his ears.

Phelan rolled beneath her, shoving her hard and sending her flying into the opposite wall. A distant reverberation like a motorcycle engine shook the air around them, shock-waves of something repetitive and quick. But the sound was muted and all that existed was the slow-motion alacrity of their furied struggle.

Something hard and sharp sliced through Charlie’s left arm. Another went through her right leg. She ignored them; all pain was dulled or nonexistent. She shoved away from the wall and lunged once more. Phelan met her dead-on this time, his own hands flying with a swiftness that defied logic. A back-hand, an elbow to the back of her head, a crunch somewhere in her left thigh and Charlie fell, rolled, and came up once more.