Chapter Eleven, The Cold Call

The darkness in the dungeon was absolute, but the sounds and smells came alive for Charlie as her fifth sense was deprived. Gabriel had thrown her roughly to the couch and she could smell the leather beneath her and feel its cool touch against her heated skin. She could smell the smoke from the torches that had gone out in their sconces. And she could smell blood. It had a tangy, metallic smell to it; a little like iron shavings in wet earth. She wasn’t sure how she recognized it for it for what it was, but she did.

She couldn’t help but wonder how much of it was her own. She didn’t want to think about it, but images of what her back must look like floated before her mind’s eye and she cringed inside. Scars were bad enough. But learning how to move and sit and sleep while she healed would be horribly painful.

Along with the enhanced smells came the sounds. They stole her breath away.

They were chaotic sounds. Men were bellowing orders. Some were cursing. Some were chanting. Large things around her were scraping against the stone floor. She half expected the couch she was laying on to be lifted and thrown across the room, but it didn’t move. It seemed she was at the eye of a storm, immobile in the sudden, raging tempest.

Adding to the storm illusion were the brief flashes of light that punctuated the dark entropy. They would blast through her vision, searing it with red and white streaks, and then disappear again to plunge her into a darkness even more thorough than it had been seconds before. Each time the flash came, Charlie strained to look around, to get an idea of what was happening. But it was impossible. They came too fast and the only thing they gave Charlie was a sharp, burgeoning headache.

She wanted to run. She figured that this was her chance. She had a general idea of what vicinity the door was in. But she could hear and sense that so many people were in between her and it that she was positive she would only run into several on the way.

Still, it was worth it.

Slowly, she straightened, feeling the skin around the marks on her back pull and threaten. She ignored them and, when she felt and heard that it was clear ahead, she jumped off of the couch, just catching the next flash.

But that was as far as she got before a familiar, painful grip found her upper arms and she was once more pulled against Phelan’s chest.

The next flash that came was different from the others. It was not as bright, but it lasted longer. It blinded her utterly and completely and when Gabriel let her go, this time, she fell to what felt like a thick, plush carpet.

She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision. The sounds had gone, as had the darkness. And the only blood she could smell now must have surely been her own.

As she lay on the unfamiliar rug and hugged herself, waiting for her sight to return, she felt people move around her. She had no choice but to sit and listen to them.

“You left Cromwell, I see.”

“I don’t trust him. He was soon to betray me; it wouldn’t have been long.”

That second voice was David’s. Gabriel’s. But the first voice, Charlie didn’t recognize. It was a very deep timbre, somewhat gravelly, and sounded older.

Spots were swimming in her vision now and the edges of it were solidifying into identifiable forms. Charlie sat up and looked around. She was in some sort of sitting room. There were a few couches and love seats around her – a coffee table, it seemed. And, beyond, an open plan that led to a kitchen and a dining room. It was someone’s house. The colors were muted browns and beige’s. Simple and elegant and expensive.

“The Council intervened.” That was Gabriel again. Charlie looked up at him as she curled her knees to her chest and hugged herself. She couldn’t run now. She had no idea where she was, and she was naked.

Gabriel was pulling a cell phone from his front shirt pocket. She could see that the white suit shirt was stained with blood. She wondered whose it was. Hers? Some of it, at least. Or, had he pushed her onto the couch in the dungeon so that he could fight with someone else? The sounds had been so chaotic and angry. It was definitely possible.

She wondered just what had happened in that dungeon. And how the hell she happened to not be in it anymore.

“You were right to expect them.” This time, it was the younger man who had spoken. He stood about a foot way from Gabriel – the one that Phelan had referred to as the “warlock.” He was watching her. Their eyes met and their gazes held.

She really didn’t like him. It was one of those instantaneous, hard dislikes that made your top lip want to curl. There was nearly a vibration of wrongness coming off of the man; it was no different now than it had been in the dungeon.

“Yes, unfortunately, it seems I was. ” Gabriel sighed.

Charlie realized that if she were to believe that what she’d seen in that stone room were people transforming into wolves, then she had to accept that werewolves were real.

And then she had to accept that Gabriel Phelan was one. As was Malcolm Cole.

And so was she.

And if she accepted that much, then she might as well believe in magic, in general. With that final leap in faith came the recognition that it was the warlock’s magic that had brought Charlie and her captors to this living room in this unfamiliar home.

If he could do that, what else could he do?

Charlie stared up into his deep, deep blue eyes and felt stone-cold.

Suddenly, a very soft blanket was being draped over her shoulders. She turned to face the man who had covered her; the third and last man in the room. He was an older gentleman, dressed in an impeccable suit. His eyes shone a bright amber-gold.

Another werewolf.

“The Council’s interference was bound to happen eventually,” Gabriel continued. “I’ve been expecting it for years.” He flipped open his phone and pressed several buttons. “This is a loss I will feel more deeply than others.” He pressed the talk button.

An explosion sounded from somewhere in the not-too-far distance and Charlie’s eyes widened in shock as the rumble reverberated off of the walls and the floor beneath her. “What - what was that?” She somehow found the will and the breath to speak. There was a sinking feeling in her gut. She was certainly still in pain and she was definitely exhausted and she was more than a little dizzy and even a touch nauseated with the toll that the last several hours had taken on her body. But she wasn’t unconscious, and she wasn’t stupid. She knew that something pretty damned big had just gone boom. And she feared that she knew what it was.

“That was The August,” Gabriel answered, calmly. “A nice addition to my family of real estate, but one that had to go, I’m afraid.”

Charlie’s head swam. She stared up at him as he turned his attention from his phone to her and trapped her in his sapphire gaze. She started to see spots again.

Roman. Mary Jane. Kevin…

“Sweetheart, you’re white as a ghost,” he said slowly, calmly. He was watching her with ardent interest, his head cocked a little to one side, his gaze narrowed slightly in keen observation.

Charlie couldn’t breathe. Immediately, she curled in on herself, dropping forward on the carpet to tuck her head between her hands and knees and close her eyes. The world was spinning away and expanding lungs were no longer a part of it.

So many people…. There had been so many people in that hotel. Children?

No… oh, God, no….

The sound of Gabriel swearing softly reached her ears. But it was muted, as if traveling through cotton tunnels, and she no longer cared. Oblivion was finally – finally – hurrying toward her. She welcomed it with silent, dark, open arms.

And then Gabriel was jerking her up by her arms; the blanket slid to the floor. He quickly spun her around and then laid her back down, pressing her against the leather of another nondescript couch. She blinked languidly as more pain sliced through her body. Some from his touch. Some from the whip marks on her back, now shoved so ruthlessly into the cold, hard material of the sofa.

She could smell his cologne and feel him move above her. But shock was riding her hard, spreading throughout her body like a cold, numbing fire. She knew she was shaking, trembling violently, but only because she could hear her teeth chattering against each other – again, from far away.

“We can’t continue our session if you aren’t going to be awake for it, sweetheart.”

She closed her eyes as the smell of fresh blood wafted to her nose, reaching her senses in that subdued and muffled state. Something hard and wet was placed to her lips, covering them completely.

“Drink.”

The command and the touch came with more pain, this time worse than before. It was more urgent and insistent and, somehow, she got the vague impression that the mark on her arm didn’t want her to drink whatever it was he had pressed to her mouth.

But she was drowning and it didn’t matter, anyway. She would probably just choke on it and die. And death would be okay.

She parted her lips and warm, salty liquor burned over her tongue. The power of the alcohol – was it alcohol? – was so strong, it caused her to buck against the couch. The darkness in her vision began to recede and her senses of smell and sound came into sharp focus once more.

Charlie swallowed and the fire raced down her throat and burned her esophagus… her stomach…. She moaned low and long and tried to shove the offending liquid away, but a strong arm stayed it at her lips.

“One more, sweetheart.” It was Gabriel urging her to drink. His voice sounded more guttural now. Deeper. There was a touch of raw animal instinct lacing his tone.

Gabriel wanted her to drink. Gabriel the killer, her parents’ murderer, the man who had mercilessly tortured her and blown up an entire hotel filled with people, including his own men. He was the epitome of ruthlessness. The embodiment of evil.

Hatred fueled her fury, bringing strength to replace the withdrawing numbness in her limbs. She brought her right arm up and roughly shoved at him, managing to dislodge whatever it was he’d held to her lips. She tried to sit up then, opening her eyes.

And he was on her, growling in her ear, his fingers wrapped tightly around her throat, pinning her to the couch by her neck.

She tried to gasp, but the air got caught beneath his squeezing grip. Instead, she stared up at the most evil man in the world and, with all of her spirit and all of her soul, she wished him dead.

Whatever she had swallowed was working some kind of magic on her.

The liquid was healing her; she could feel the marks on her back closing. She could feel the ache in her muscles and joints begin to ebb away. Along with this no-doubt ill-gotten reprieve came an influx of strength. It was an unexpected boon accompanying the already unexpected healing and the new, memento-like throb that his touch and the angry mark on her arm sent through her form.

Charlie’s gaze narrowed as this new-found strength coursed through her straining muscles and she found the will to glare up at her captor. It was a challenge. A promise. In the space between his mind and hers, she threw a mental pledge at him and she knew that he could read it in her eyes.

One day, she was going to kill him.

His snarl turned to a nasty smile, flashing sharp white fangs that glistened threateningly above her. “I see you’re feeling better, Charlie.” His smile broadened. “That’s good. But never pull away from me, pet. You’re mine. You will learn to obey me. Surrender always comes – sooner or later.”

He punctuated his words with an appropriate tightening of his grip on her throat and she found her hands on his chest, trying to push him off of her. He was so heavy. Un-budge-able. She tried to think fast, but her thoughts were becoming fuzzy. Strained.

He was cutting off too much air.

And what could she really hope to accomplish by defying him anyway? Where would she go? Even if she beat him, what would the warlock do? And the other man?

He must have felt her body yield a little beneath him, because he let up on her throat. Her mind immediately began to clear. “That’s better, sweetheart.”

And that did it. She would not submit to him. She would not lay there beneath him and let him win. He’d taken everything from her. If there was anything she had left in the world, it was her own mind. Her own will. What there was of it, she was going to use.

“Get off of me, you asshole.” With that, she raised her left leg, bringing her knee up with such force that she surprised herself. His body was positioned so that she could not get him where she wanted to hurt him most. But if she went fast enough, she could get him in the kidney. Kidney shots were always a good second.

Her speed was lightning-fast and her aim was impeccable. It should be. He’d taught her how to do it himself. He noticed the move a fraction of a second too late and could not maneuver a block in time. Her knee connected and he momentarily doubled over, his grip going instantly slack.

She used the advantage to drive her hands forward once more, shoving him roughly off of her. He went flying back, but landed on his feet, and as she came up off of the couch, Gabriel straightened, seemingly affected much less than she had hoped.

She’d hurt him, but he was tougher than most men. Pain didn’t have as much of an effect on him as it did others. It was part of what made him who he was.

They stood that way, facing one another, the air between them crackling with hateful energy, and his cobalt gaze smoldered, swimming with unearthly, unspoken promises.

Charlie glared right back. Her body was healed; she could sense that now. She felt strong. Furious. Crazy. She wanted to kill him right then and there or die trying. She had nothing to lose.

As if he could sense her defiance, his head raised ever so slightly and his gaze narrowed. He studied her carefully for several silent moments and then took a deep breath, in and out through his nose. “Get her cleaned up and dressed,” he ordered, calmly. “Have her ready to go in twenty minutes.”

The handsome gentleman with the gray hair came forward then, and Charlie whirled on him. “Stay the fuck away from me!” she yelled at him, her body shaking with the rage she felt. If she had to kill him too, so be it. Blanket or not.

“Be nice to Ulrich, Charlie. Or I swear I will have Jesse Graves taken out into the desert and buried to his neck for the scorpions to find.”

Gabriel’s threat was softly spoken, calmly delivered, and caught Charlie utterly by surprise. Her ice-blue gaze flashed to him once more. He didn’t even smile. He just continued to watch her – daring her to not believe him.

Charlie didn’t really have to wonder how he knew about Jesse. Phelan was a very powerful man. He probably knew everything. He had killed her parents. He’d been watching her for fifteen years.

In the end, Charlie realized she’d been wrong. She had something left to lose after all. And she couldn’t risk it. She took a deep breath, just as Gabriel had done, and her gaze skirted to the floor.

It was enough to signal her surrender. At least for now.

“That’s better,” Gabriel said. “Ulrich.”

The man in the suit came forward and Charlie’s hands clenched into fists at her sides as she forced herself not to fight him.

* * * *

Malcolm stopped in the shadows of a neighboring alley and watched as two vans stopped by the back entrance to The August and a dozen giant werewolves climbed out of the vehicles.

The Council.

They were accompanied by a woman. Malcolm could smell the magic on her. A witch. Lily had been right. They were involved now. The witch must be very powerful; she must have taken the territory spell down from a distance.

Malcolm ran a hand through his hair.

“Cole!”

Malcolm turned around to see James Valentine striding down the alley toward him. His expression was very, very grim. His silver eyes were glowing. He looked a tad frightening, and the waves of power rolling off of him were tinged with the sharp electric vibration of fear.

“Lily just called. The August is going down. We have to get everyone out.”

Malcolm blinked. “What?” He hadn’t given Caige or Scrubs the go-ahead on blowing anything up. What the hell was Valentine talking about?

“You heard me, Cole. Everyone out. Now.” Valentine brushed past him and headed toward the hotel, running straight for the female that Malcolm had pegged for a witch.

Malcolm watched him go, his head spinning. Valentine had sent Lily back as soon as she’d told Malcolm about the territory spell being down. This time, she hadn’t argued.

If she’d called Valentine with this news, then it must have been another vision. She was taking them in rather rapidly today.

Cole shook himself and forced his mind to think fast. Jake was beside him, and the rest of his pack, except for Lucas Caige, were further down the alley – waiting.

He turned to Jake. “I have to go in and find Charlie. You take six men and help Valentine clear the hotel. Check the pools.” Children always went swimming with sitters while their parents were out enjoying a break. “Get the kids out. Keep in touch and let me know when you’re in the clear.”

Jake nodded and waved a few men over. They were gone within seconds. The rest of Malcolm’s pack gathered just behind him, awaiting his next command.

“Cole!” Again, Valentine was calling him, this time from where he stood beside the witch. Malcolm joined him without prelude.

“Dannai says that Claire is in the basement. The Council’s enforcers have already gone in ahead of us. They should be making it in right about now.”

Malcolm glanced from Valentine to the woman beside him. She was a starkly attractive young woman, possibly in her late twenties to early thirties. Her hair reminded Cole of a raven’s wings and fell in thick waves to the middle of her back. Her complexion was smooth and clear and just dark enough that it was a good bet one of her parents had been black, and she had the unexpected eye color to prove it. It seemed to be a speckled amalgamation of blue, green, gray, and brown.

They were pretty, but odd enough to be somewhat disquieting.

Malcolm assumed that this was Dannai. “You can sense her?” he asked.

The woman nodded. Once.

“Then can you tell me how many people are in the hotel, in general?”

“Not many,” she said. She had a beautiful voice; deep and rich, but a touch shy. “There’s a show going on down the street. Big opening thing; most people are there this morning.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Maybe about fifty… mostly on the first few floors. Majority are in the casino.”

Malcolm nodded and turned to his men. “Clear out the bottom floors and then get out.”

Adam Trenayne, a younger but very hard-hitting member of Cole’s pack, stepped forward. “I want to go with you. You can handle Phelan, but not his entire pack.”

Cole eyed him. Trenayne knew that Malcolm was going down to the basement to retrieve Charlie and that Gabriel Phelan would probably be there as well – along with most, if not all of his wolves. Adam was never one to shy away from a fight; the slimmer the odds, the better.

Malcolm nodded, accepting the offer. “Valentine,” he then turned to the guardian werewolf, shooting him a meaningful glance.

James Valentine nodded; he would join him as well.

“You can control human minds, Cole,” Dannai suddenly said, pulling his attention back to the witch. She gazed at him steadily. “At least to some extent. I can help you expand your reach – you can make the humans in the building want to leave immediately. No werewolf interference required.”

Cole blinked. Shit. “You can do that?”

She nodded again, all confidence.

She was good. And she knew too much about him. For a human, she was very, very much within the werewolf community’s circle. She was important enough to be working directly for The Council. It made Cole wonder.

“Fine. Do it,” he told her. He waited as she came forward and placed her hand, palm-down, on his chest. Electricity seemed to buzz through her hand and onto his skin, spreading and sinking until his entire mid-section was encompassed in a cocoon of rather brawny legerdemain.

“Go,” she ordered, closing her eyes.

Malcolm closed his eyes as well and reached out with his power, spreading it around himself like invisible feelers, until he sensed that it had gone much further than it normally would have gone. The witch was assisting his coils of influence, making them thicker, longer and stronger.

He found a human mind and dove in deep, causing the human to throw down his cards and fold, pushing away from the table at which he sat. Others followed suit. Within a few minutes, slot machines found themselves abandoned and Craps tables were empty. Bouncers began to head toward the exits, wondering what was happening.

None of the burly guards were werewolves. They were unsuspecting humans, hired to protect an enterprise that was about to be blown to smithereens. Cole attacked their minds, scrambling their thoughts until all they knew was that they wanted to go outside and take a walk… just like everyone else.

How much time do we have? Cole asked, knowing instinctively that the witch who was now touching him would be able to hear his thoughts.

Minutes… I don’t know. St. Claire is the seer, not me.

He opened his eyes and she removed her hand, stepping back. “I’m going in,” he announced as he turned to Adam and James. They nodded, in unison, falling in behind him as he raced through the entrance to the back stairwell of The August.

Cole’s werewolf hearing immediately caught the sounds of struggle somewhere below, deep underground.

He could smell blood and would be willing to bet that the other two men with him could as well. They sped down the steel and concrete stairwell until they came to a set of double doors that had already been torn off of their hinges.

Malcolm followed the sounds ahead, sprinting down a long dark tunnel to another set of doors. These too had been ripped open. Beyond was a final hallway, this one lined with sconces that held torches now extinguished and smoking in their brackets.

The stench of more blood assaulted his senses. But, this time there was a delicate ribbon of scent attached to it that Malcolm instantly recognized. It was Charlie’s blood.

With a roar of rage, Cole flashed into wolf form and drove into the fray beyond the last, arched doorway.

Immediately, another wolf met him in combat, going for his throat. He easily knocked the silver wolf aside, slamming the other animal’s body against the stone wall. Then he looked around, his vision having shifted into perfect night sight so that the forms in the chaos of the large room were easily discernable.

Charlie was not among them.

And, though he still had no idea what the other alpha werewolf looked like, Cole was certain that Gabriel Phelan was not in the area, either. The entire room had been outfitted as a dungeon, complete with racks and restraints and a large variety of torture implements lining the walls. The vast, dark space reeked of black magic. There was either a warlock currently in the room – or there had been recently.

As Malcolm pondered this, he caught the slender waft of Charlie’s blood once more and whipped around to follow it.

He bounded forward and was caught, mid-flight, by another body crashing side-long into his. The two fur-covered forms went sailing at a right angle and hit the ground rolling, their blurred bodies an entangled flurry of black and gray.

Malcolm wasted no time in gaining the upper hand; his strength was greater, and his need more desperate. His claws found purchase in the other wolf’s belly and his fangs found the other wolf’s neck.

He bit deep and pulled back, ripping his attacker’s throat out. He didn’t wait to watch the man flash back into human form. Instead, he bounded away and sniffed the air, locking once more onto the scent of Charlie’s suffering.

And then he located the source of the offending aroma. A long black bull whip lay coiled on the ground beside two leather restraints that had been sliced from their straps in the ceiling. Both the restraints and the whip were painted with Charlie’s blood.

Malcolm Cole had never felt a kind of rage like the one that overtook him then. Never. He’d seen a thousand murders, killed a thousand people, and never – not once – in his near century-long life, had he ever felt the kind of hatred or mind-numbing malice that he felt in that instant.

It was like breathing bile.

All around him, the world turned red.

He looked through that red world and allowed his instinct to take over. He had no choice. It was too strong; the wolf was in charge now.

Across the room was a man that Malcolm recognized. It was the black-haired wizard he’d spoken to in an alley on The Strip. He worked for Phelan.

Cole went for him, transforming back into a man as he moved through the fight with blinding speed.

* * * *

Vincent Cromwell shoved at the Council enforcer in front of him, managing to catch the giant red-haired man off guard long enough that he could focus some of his energy into his palm. When the enforcer came at him again, Vincent rammed his hand into the man’s chest and let loose with his magic. The brief, painful electric shock that charged the larger werewolf took him by surprise and he staggered back, shaking his head as if to clear it.

Vincent took the opportunity to begin casting a spell that would get him out of the dungeon, altogether. But he had only begun to chant when his world was suddenly blurring around him in horrid, quick-silver motion, and an iron band was tightening painfully around his neck.

Malcolm Cole had him by the throat and was rushing him backwards as he simultaneously cut the flow of oxygen from his body. Vincent grimaced, swallowing a cry of pain as his tall form was slammed into the stone wall behind him. Stars swam in his vision and he tried to flash into wolf form, but his body wouldn’t respond. He was too stunned.

“Where. Is. She.”

Vincent blinked a few times and when his vision came spiraling back into focus, he stared at the man in front of him. In that instant, he knew what it meant to look death in the eye. He was face to face with his own imminent demise. It was snarling at him.

A flurry of thoughts raced through his head. He knew that if he didn’t give Cole what he wanted, the alpha would kill him. He also knew that if he did give Cole what he wanted, then Gabriel Phelan would kill him.

He thought of Claire St.James, the female-born dormant who had been unwittingly trapped in a game of cat and mouse with a man who thoroughly enjoyed batting around his mice until they no longer moved and he grew bored enough to finally eat them. She didn’t deserve this. She wasn’t a bad person and, frankly, she could be a cold-hearted killer and not deserve what Phelan had done to her over the last fifteen years.

He thought of the wolves in this room – half of them were Council enforcers, which meant that The Council was involved. And that meant that if Cole didn’t kill him and if Phelan didn’t kill him – he would be brought before the Overseer and his life would be as good as forfeit.

In the end, and in the space of a few short heartbeats, Vincent Cromwell came to a decision. If he was going to die anyway, he was going to go out as a good man.

He opened his mouth to answer Cole, but no sound made it past his lips. No air was moving through his body. Cole had him too hard.

With his eyes, he implored the stronger werewolf to let up on him. To let him breathe. But Cole’s entire form was radiating wrath, like a hurricane condensed into the space of six feet, four inches and draped in the façade of a man. It wasn’t going to hold. And there was no reasoning with it.

As Vincent’s vision began to fade, he felt Cole drag him away from the wall and lift him, still by his throat. Vincent’s arms came up, his fingers curling around Cole’s forearm, his claws digging into the other wolf’s muscle and drawing blood. “Recall… stone,” Vincent managed to gasp out through clenched teeth. It was all he could say.

Cole’s fury was lashing out around him like whips of flame, searing Vincent’s skin as if he was actually being held to some kind of magical fire. He knew that the alpha had smelled Claire’s blood. There could be no other reason for fury this strong. His anger was understandable, but he wouldn’t find Claire like this. Not in time, anyway. Not before Phelan worked on her enough that she finally broke and gave him the permission he needed to remove Cole’s mark.

Vincent’s head was pounding now, his lungs burning, his heart beating hard and fast and erratic. He was going to lose consciousness. He wondered how long he’d be out.

“Let him go, Cole. He can’t help us if he’s out cold!”

Vincent closed his eyes as a deep voice of reason cut through the sound of blood rushing through his ears. Cole’s grip slackened, and the sudden influx of oxygen and blood made Vincent’s head pound even harder. His lungs expanded greedily and he wanted nothing more than to slump forward and gulp in air, but he knew he didn’t have the luxury. He used what strength he had to speak. “Phelan’s… house…” he croaked. “North of town.”

“We have to get out, Cole.” The voice of reason again.

Malcolm did not answer. Instead, he grabbed Vincent by the shoulder and spun him around, shoving him roughly toward the exit. Vincent took the hint and made his legs move, falling into a brisk run toward the hallway beyond the dungeon. As he moved, his lungs drew in more and more air and his pulse evened out. His strength was returning.

Others were joining them now; a mass werewolf exodus from the dungeon. Someone must have sounded an alarm.

For what? Vincent wondered. But he had neither the time nor the inclination to stop and ask. Instead, he half-followed and half-lead the congregation of werewolves from the underground cavern, noticing that none of Phelan’s men were among the survivors now pouring from the underground passage and climbing the stairs. The men around him were all either Cole’s wolves or Council enforcers.

Phelan’s pack must have been defeated.

Vincent was the only one left.