Nick reached out and stopped Jane mid-call. “What are you doing?”
“Calling the sheriff. We need backup.”
“Do you want to put more humans in danger? I can take care of the wolf. Gabriel and Adam are on their way, too.” He released her hand to focus on his driving. “Frank’s likely got Dom at a cabin outside wolf territory, where their former alpha…their leader used to keep stray wolves before bringing them into pack territory.”
Jane stared at the side of Nick’s face. “Most of what you’re saying makes absolutely no sense.”
He waved a hand in the air. “It’s all a wolf thing. I don’t know enough about it to explain it. What you need to know is that the bastard who kidnapped you was banished from the werewolf pack and, according to the current leader, that’s a punishment worse than death. It also means he can’t come back inside any of the pack territory. But the damned motel is outside both mine and pack territory.”
“And this cabin we’re going to?”
“Also outside pack territory. Which is why Frank can go there and why Gabriel thinks that’s where they are.”
She raised a hand. “The details are confusing me. Just tell me why I can’t call in the sheriff.”
“Frank is a lot more dangerous now that he’s been banished.”
“Doesn’t sound like he got much of a punishment then.”
“It is for a wolf. Apparently. He wasn’t supposed to be a threat to any of the humans in Eirene because he can’t get anywhere near the town now. Gabriel gave me the impression Frank wouldn’t survive long after being outcast.”
“Survived long enough to hurt Dom.”
Nick snarled and grunted. “And that will be something the alpha and I discuss after we get Dom back.”
She swallowed hard, afraid to say this out loud, but she had to. “He might have already…” She couldn’t say it. She just couldn’t.
Nick glanced at her. “If all he’d wanted was to kill Dom, he would have done it at the motel. The fact that he took him somewhere means the wolf is looking to torture Dom.”
“Well that’s not good!”
“But it means Dom will still be alive. We just have to get to him.”
“Speed the hell up then. And you still haven’t said why I shouldn’t call in the cops.”
“First, this is outside their jurisdiction so they can’t officially do anything.”
“That’s not the real reason.”
Nick snorted. “I don’t want the sheriff—or anyone else for that matter—outside of Eirene until I’ve killed Frank.”
“You don’t want to get arrested for killing Frank either.”
“Doubt the sheriff would bother. But that’s another point.”
“What if I kill Frank?”
He glanced at her. “Same argument. Dom would kick my ass if I let you get arrested. Or hurt. Which means you need to do everything I tell you when we get there.”
She raised her brows.
“Jane, I mean it. You aren’t used to the shifter world. You have to listen to me or you’ll get hurt. I can’t have that.”
“I’m good with my shotgun,” she pointed out.
“Bullets don’t work well on werewolves.”
“Silver ones do.”
He frowned. “You have silver bullets.”
“Nick, we know about werewolves. Of course we have silver bullets.”
“What, everyone?”
“Everyone in Eirene with a gun.”
“Well hell. Why didn’t I know all this?”
She shrugged. “You weren’t paying enough attention.”
He scowled at her. She stared back. He shook his head and focused on his driving again.
“If we can’t call the sheriff,” she said, “why don’t we call in your family?”
He hesitated for long enough, Jane narrowed her eyes at him. He glanced at her and winced.
“I don’t want Tiana to know. Okay. I have Mitch keeping her busy so she doesn’t notice anything is wrong.”
“She won’t take kindly to you trying to wrap her up in cotton wool like that, you know?”
“Which is why I don’t want her to know about this, so don’t tell her. She’d come rushing in to help, and I don’t want her anywhere near danger right now. Not while she has Chrissy to protect. That’s her job. I can take care of the damned wolf on my own.”
“You’re so confident you don’t need help, why are you taking me?”
He gave her a deadpan glance. “You’ve already proven you’ll just follow me even if I try to leave you behind. Better to have you where I can keep an eye on you.” He glanced down at the shotgun in her lap. “Besides, you came prepared.”
She snorted at that. “Damn straight.”
They turned off the highway onto a dirt road. Without the sporadic highway lights, the forest was pitch black. She couldn’t see a thing beyond Nick’s headlights—and realized even if she’d called the sheriff, she wouldn’t have known where to send him.
“You sure you know where you’re going?” she asked.
“We’re almost there.” He waved at her gun. “How much ammunition do you have?”
“My pockets are full. But I only need one clean shot.”
He slowed as the truck bumped over uneven dirt. They were climbing to a higher elevation, the rough road moving at a sharper angle the farther they went into the woods. Jane squinted out the side window, trying to see into the trees, but mostly she just saw blackness.
“You have good night vision?” she asked Nick.
“Excellent. And on that note…”
What little light there’d been from his headlights went out. Jane gasped and faced him. “What the hell?”
“We’re almost to the place we’ll need to park. Frank will hear us coming if we try to drive any closer. I need to let my eyes adjust to the dark.”
She realized as her own eyes adjusted, the packed snow between the trees did reflect a little light, but not enough for her to see well. “Is there a long way to go?”
“Not too far. I can carry you and move quicker. Or you can wait here.”
“Well that last part’s not happening.”
He snorted an almost laugh. Then he stopped the truck in the middle of the road.
“No one’s likely to be coming this way—except Gabriel and Adam. And there’s nowhere to pull off that isn’t covered with deep snow.” He looked at her, taking in her thick ski jacket, jeans and boots. “You’re going to get cold on the run.”
“I can take it. Let’s go. My gut is churning, worrying about Dom.”
He climbed out without another world. She circled the truck to join him, where he stared into the trees.
“What if they’re not here?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“I can sense Dom,” Nick said. “They’re here. Dom will know we’re coming.”
“And the wolf?”
“Depends on his sense of smell.” He took her shotgun then turned and squatted down a little, motioning her up onto his back. “Come on. We’ve got some ground to cover.”
“Haven’t had a piggyback ride since I was eight.”
He snorted as she settled with her legs around his waist and her arms around his shoulders. “Hold tight. Keep your eyes closed so you don’t get disoriented.”
“Yeah, I remember that.”
She squeezed her eyes tight and pressed her forehead into his shoulder. She still gasped when he leapt forward and had to grip tighter to keep from falling off. The air bit sharp and cold against her bare hands as they moved through the trees, but she kept her eyes firmly shut and counted slowly in her head, concentrating on reaching Dom before it was too late.
*****
Frank went to a corner of the room where shadows had concealed an ax leaning against the wall. He hefted the tool in one hand, swinging the big, heavy thing like it weighed nothing. Then he looked over his shoulder at Dom and smiled.
Dom’s gut tightened. Tigers could heal from a lot of damage but a severed limb was gone. They didn’t regrow body parts once they were cut off like some shifters could. He snarled, an instinctive reaction, and though he was still trembling from the last bolt from the cattle prod, he scrambled against the wooden floor, trying to get his feet under him so he could stand and face the threat.
Frank chuckled. “I like that, kitty. I like smelling your fear.” He stalked closer, carelessly swishing the ax back and forth at his side. “Got any idea what it’s like not to have a pack? Like there’s something crawling under your skin. Makes you want to tear and bite and claw the little fuckers out. Except there’s nothing there to get out.”
Casually, as if he was poking Dom with a stick instead of a weapon, Frank applied the cattle prod to Dom’s side, sending another punch of electricity through him. This time, Frank held the prod in place, burning the hair and skin under it. Dom roared, the sound loud in the enclosed cabin, but he couldn’t move away from the damned prod.
Frank’s eyes gleamed, faintly yellow. “Smells like barbecue in here now. Wonder what kitty meat tastes like.”
Dom barely heard him through the pain racking his body. He felt like he was on fire, burning from the inside out and his tiger roared again as the shock dragged Dom’s logic under his animal’s instincts.
Even after Frank pulled the prod away, Dom couldn’t control his limbs. The burns on his side started to heal immediately, but the heat and pain still robbed him of breath. Panting, his jaw tight, he struggled to make his body work, to get his legs under him. He had to get out of this. Frank had threatened his mate. If he couldn’t get free, Jane might be hurt.
The thought sent adrenaline racing through his system, scattering the pain fast. He forced his muscles to work, using the momentum of trying to sit up to jerk at the chains. He felt one bolt start to give. He lunged forward, with as much strength as he could manage, and that bolt gave way, freeing one of his legs from the wall.
Frank, who’d stalked away, swung back to face him. “Strong kitty. Guess you need a little more heat.”
He leapt forward and shoved the cattle prod into Dom’s shoulder. Dom roared and fought, but his body jerked out of his control again. Spots danced in his vision, the cabin filled with the smell of burnt skin and hair, rancid in the tight confines. Frank laughed and swung the ax up high, dropping it into the wood in front of Dom’s nose.
“Oops, missed,” Frank said.
Dom knew he’d missed on purpose, a part of him recognizing Frank wanted Dom to experience the dread of what would happen as much as he wanted to physically hurt Dom. As his tiger took over more and more of his thinking, Dom realized Frank’s ploy was working. He could almost feel the ax cutting into his limbs, anticipated the pain and shock without Frank having to do more than threaten. He struggled against the remaining chain, panic starting to edge in past his anger and fear for Jane. Pure, animal panic.
And then the door to the cabin exploded inward, shattering into splinters of sharp wood.
Dom’s panic was so strong, he’d never even sensed Nick’s approach. But there was his older brother, crouched in the middle of the cabin’s bare floor as the remains of the door settled around him. Nick was in his human form, but his eyes glowed in the unforgiving illumination from the cabin’s single bare bulb.
Frank faced the threat, snarling. “More kitties to play with. Come on, you fucker.” He swung the ax with one hand, a wide arc that sliced the air in front of him, and held out the cattle prod in his other.
Dom struggled to get his body working again as his brother distracted the wolf. Nick didn’t have any weapons, just his hand-to-hand fighting skills, and while those were significant, they weren’t going to help if he got incapacitated from the damned electrical prod. Dom jerked at the remaining chain still holding him to the wall, pulling hard and long as the bolt started to give.
While he was still struggling to free himself, a scent reached him through the remains of the door. Jane! No. What was she doing here? The wolf would smell her, use her again. Dom roared and jerked at the bolt, the thick metal finally giving.
Dom lunged free, the cuffs still on his forepaws, the chains tangling around his feet as he finally made it to a standing position. He shook himself hard, releasing the remains of the pain. And charged Frank’s back.
Frank turned and tossed the ax at him. Dom dodged but not fast enough to avoid the sharp edge all together. The metal bit into his back hip, before hitting the wooden floor with a hard thunk.
The shock of pain only slowed him for a half a beat before he leapt toward Frank. The wolf dodged away, thrusting out with the cattle prod. But this time he missed. Nick came up behind Frank before the wolf could move and wrapped his arms around the wolf’s upper body, keeping his arms low and pinned. Frank stuck the prod into Nick’s foot, and Nick howled, his hold on the wolf loosening.
Frank leapt away, facing both brothers from the opposite side of the cabin, his gaze focused on them, tracking their movements as they neared. Dom lowered into a crouch, readying to jump, but before he could, Frank raced toward the front door. Dom spun to cut him off, only to realize Jane was there, standing square in the middle of the only way out of the cabin.
And Frank was barreling right for her, so fast Dom couldn’t get between them in time.
Jane felt the tiger’s angry roar in her bones, but she didn’t take her eyes off the blur of movement swarming toward her.
She couldn’t really see the werewolf, he moved too fast, but she’d had a split second when she’d come through the door, a second when all three shifters were motionless and she could tell which blur was which.
She’d already had her gun raised and aimed when Frank charged her, which was just as well because she fired without thinking, an instinctive compression of the trigger that wasn’t actually associated with conscious effort.
That reaction saved her. The shotgun jerked upward slightly but she was used to the kickback, so her second shot was only a little off her first. The blur that was the approaching wolf froze, stopping so suddenly, she blinked at the solidness of him. He stared at her, then looked down at his chest, at the gushing, smoking hole that was the size of her fist.
She couldn’t tell if she’d hit him with both cartridges, but at least one had been on target. At first, all she could see was the blood. She didn’t hunt, though she’d learned how to handle a shotgun when she was a teenager. And since moving to Eirene, she’d practiced at the shooting range a lot with the shotgun because she refused to have a weapon in her house that she wasn’t completely confident in using. She’d even ensured Ben knew how to handle the thing just in case. But she wasn’t a hunter. She’d never actually shot another living thing. And watching the blood pour out of the wolf made her gag.
Then things got a lot weirder. The wolf howled, the cattle prod he still held dropped to the ground, and the smoke around his wound got stronger, like his insides were on fire. Jane gaped as the thug dropped to his knees, his chest heaving in and out, the movement too big for a human body to manage. She had the horrific thought that it was like watching a human-shaped balloon expanding past the popping point, except this balloon was smoking and burning and then…
His body exploded in a rain of blood and bones and putrid-smelling fire.
It happened so suddenly, despite the fact that she could see it coming, and she was too shocked to think about moving. A white blur materialized in front of her, rising up so high she couldn’t see around it. For an odd moment, she thought it was an albino bear. But that wasn’t right. In the next instant, she realized it was Dom, standing on his hind legs, blocking her from the gory explosion.
When he settled back onto all fours, she blinked past him at the bloody mess in the middle of the cabin. Then with a calmness that surprised her, she turned back out of the cabin door, went to the end of the porch railing, leaned over it, and threw up.