“Where are you taking us?” I asked after they’d settled us into the back of the black SUV and sped us away from the scene of the crash, where the bikers lay lifelessly. “What’s going to happen to us?”
They’d cuffed both me and Jessica. To my left was a black clad man with a submachine gun across his lap. To my right was Jessica, our flanks pressed tightly together.
The frigid chills, the overwhelming sickness, still had its grip on my body, and there was no sign of it letting up. It was like the flu, but a million times worse, as sweat beaded on my forehead.
“Back to our base of operations,” the man with a British accent who’d been speaking to the bikers earlier said. “And you would do well to remember that silence is nearly sacred. I don’t want to gag you, Ms. Springer, but I will if I have to.”
“Fuck you,” sneered Jessica. “Where the hell is your base of operations?”
“Oh, Mrs. Murdoch, the same warning applies to you as well. And please don’t forget, you traded your life for your husband’s. That means yours is forfeit if I so choose, and, unlike Ms. Springer here, I have no use for you other than bait. I may be able to draw blood from you, but yours is as much use to us as juice from a turnip.”
“Bait?” I asked, wincing again as a horrible pain shot through my side, growing wider in its scope. Now it was in my hip, up into my shoulder blades. I wasn’t sure what had happened to Peter, but I was hoping to God right then that he’d get it taken care of before it somehow managed to kill us both.
“Yes,” the stranger replied, not even bothering to turn around in his seat. “Bait. Are you all dullards this side of the pond? Do I need to repeat myself like I did with your silly little mate?”
I felt Jessica slump in the seat next to me, a whimper escaping her throat.
He certainly didn’t need to explain. Both Jessica and I knew exactly what he meant. We may have held off the capture of our mates, but the hunters were still after them. Which meant Peter and Richard were still in danger. And, knowing them, they’d be stupid enough to try and storm these hunters’ headquarters in an attempt to save us.
“Where’s the giant?” I asked.
“Oh,” the stranger replied, “he’ll be along. Klaus rides in his own special vehicle. He doesn’t exactly fit well in your standard factory model seat.”
I turned and looked at Jessica.
The fear was rolling off her, filling the car with its aroma. And the tears, too, were beginning to trickle down her face again.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Don’t. Crying right now’s not going to do anything.”
She reached up, wiped her tears a little with her manacled hands, and sniffled. “I know,” she replied. “But what else can I do? We’re still in just as bad of a spot as before.”
“The guys will get us out,” I said, my voice nothing more than a whisper. “You’ll see.”
Up front, the stranger giggled a little, a soft tittering noise like you’d expect from a schoolgirl.
“Don’t listen to him,” I said. “You know your husband’s going to do everything he can to get us out. And so is Peter.” Almost on cue, though, the pain in my back grew even more painful and hotter, spreading through all four of my limbs with an intensity I’d never experienced, making me cry out in pain.
“Sympathy pains for your mate?” the stranger asked, tittering again in sick amusement. “Don’t worry, the further we get into the mountains, the less pain you’ll begin to feel. In all of our experiments, the furthest your shifter connections have stretched is two miles. By the time we reach our destination, it’ll all be a distant memory. A painful one, mind you, but still distant.”
“Experiments, huh?” I asked, licking my cracked and dry lips. “Done a lot of those over the years?”
The stranger snorted. “The years? More like centuries. We’ve been as entwined with your race of people as much as peanut butter is with jelly in this sad, forsaken country. Without you, there’d be no us. We’ve experimented long and hard, excruciatingly hard, on your people. How fast you can heal tissue damage, how quickly you can change. And that was around the time Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel and Da Vinci was figuring out he liked boys more than girls. You wouldn’t believe the things we’ve thought to test on you and your ilk in recent years.”
This line of conversation with the stranger was sickening. It was almost as bad as the pain in my side, and the knowledge that Peter must be going through ten times worse. I swallowed hard, turned and looked out the window as we trucked down the highway.
There I was, a captive of the people who’d been hunting mine like dogs. The ones who’d killed my pack, murdered my sister, and left me an orphan when they killed my mother and father. Forced me to go on the run, to become a criminal, to live a life that was broken and unfulfilled. Empty of love and trust, empty of my mate.
And what was my captor doing? Gloating. Gloating about how many shifters they’d killed. How they’d run experiments on them like mad scientists. I almost leaned down between my legs and threw up. But, no, I couldn’t give him that pleasure, that satisfaction. Because I knew that’s what the stranger would get.
Creatures like him only experienced joy when it came from someone else’s torment. Like children plucking the wings off flies with tweezers, or burning ants with magnifying glasses.
They were sick. A cancer on the world. And what did you do with cancer? You cut it out, killed it by any means necessary.
And, as we drove higher and higher into the mountains, farther and farther away from my mate, I knew that we’d get our revenge. We’d cut these bastards out from the body of the human race. No matter what.
As I sat there, envisioning the death of the stranger, warm hands enveloped my chilly one as Jessica laid her head on my shoulder and began to quietly sob.
“It’ll be okay,” I whispered as we drove, the pain in my back still as bad as ever and showing no signs of lessening. “I promise.”
Too bad it wouldn’t be. Not for a long while. And all of us would suffer in our own way before this thing was through.
“And, Mrs. Murdoch, Ms. Springer,” the stranger said as we continued our long drive up into the mountains. “You may call me Mr. Finney.”