“Fuck, that’s a lot of blood,” Richard said grimly. “Why hasn’t it healed up yet?”

“Silver,” Frank said, “that’s why. Uncles told me all about it. Nasty shit when it gets in us.”

“Why don’t you just shift, Cap, try to pop it out or something?” Jake asked.

“Because,” I said from where I was lying face down and shirtless on Jessica’s office desk over at the Curious Turtle, “shifters can’t shift with silver in their body. One of you is going to have to dig it out of me.”

We’d all finally gathered together. Matthew had managed to pull Mary and Rebecca from the school, even though he had to kill some janitor to do it. The guy had come at him with a silver knife concealed inside a mop handle. Clearly, he was a plant working for the hunters.

All around town, people were settling in, trying to figure out what was going on. The roads leading out of town had been blocked off by some military force, saying Enchanted Rock was under quarantine for a smallpox outbreak. State Police weren’t coming anywhere near it and the National Guard was apparently steering clear. No phone calls were coming in, no calls were going out.

I just hoped that, for their sake, Lacy and Gen had gotten out before the crackdown had happened, and that they were holed up in some motel room the next state over.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Richard said. “You mean someone hit you with a silver fucking bullet? One of those bikers?”

“Must’ve gotten it from the hunters,” Jake said, shaking his head in anger. “I mean, look at what they’re doing around town. Shit, they’ve got this whole place on lockdown. We’re not even getting TV signals in, just static and fuzz.”

“Can you believe how tight they got it locked down, though? It’s like your prom date before her first beer out there.”

“Feds say jump,” I mumbled, “everyone else says ‘how high, sir?’”

“Ain’t even the feds, though,” Frank replied.

“Think they know that, though?” I asked. “People see a badge, they believe the badge. Especially when it’s middle of nowhere podunk Colorado.”

“Shame about Peak and Glick,” Richard said after a moment of silence. “Can’t believe they took ‘em out like that.”

“Not that big of a stretch,” I said, wincing from the pain and gasping for breath. Even the tiniest movement seemed to multiply the agony a thousand-fold, and it was starting to spread. “Okay, guys, you really gotta get this thing out of me. I’m no good to you like this, and you all know it.”

“Who’s gonna volunteer?”

“One, two, three,” Frank said in rapid fire West Texan, “not it.”

“Not it!” Jake shouted.

“Jesus Christ, guys,” I groaned. “We’re really gonna do this now? Of all times? Tell you what, why don’t you get Matt in here? Jones has his EMT certification.”

“Oh, man, why didn’t we think of that?” Jake said. “Hold on.” He left the room and quickly pulled Matthew back in with him.

Matthew whistled low when he saw me with my shirt off. “Looks bad, boss.”

“Just get it out,” I said. “Okay?”

“Sure thing. Let me go get cleaned up first, alright?”

I’d experienced pain before. I’d gone through the Navy SEALs training program. I’d been shot. I’d even been in a couple Humvees when IEDs exploded right underneath us. Hell, I’d just been perforated in the back with a silver bullet. None of that compared to having Matthew Jones root around in my flesh and tissue with a hunting knife as he dug for the silver slug some biker had deposited in me. I bit down hard on the belt they’d stuck between my teeth, leaving centimeter deep indentations in the material.

Finally, though, there was the clink of metal on glass as Matthew dropped the bullet into an empty little paint vial they’d found in Jessica’s desk drawer. It tinkled and clinked again as he shook it, whistling low again.

“Nasty,” he said with a small cringe.

“Yeah,” I said, relief flooding through my body as my tissue began to heal. “Believe me, I know. I had that thing lodged inside me.”

“Pretty damn deep, too. See those little cuts on the side?” he asked, handing me the vial after I’d finally gotten up from the desk. “Must’ve had someone looking out for you on this one to keep it from fragmenting.”

I nodded in agreement, looking at the lump of silver in the paint vial. You’d never have realized it was silver, not with all my dried shifter blood coating its surface. But, disfigured and misshapen as it was, it still was whole. “One stray fragment, and that’d be it. You’re right. I was lucky.”

“You want us to leave the room while you shift, Cap?” Jake asked. “We can give you a moment if you need it.”

Shifters naturally healed quickly on their own, but if we wanted to speed up the process, we could shift into our wolf form. Something about the transformation healed our tissue even faster than just our bodies at rest. But right now wasn’t the time for any of that. Transforming took time and energy, and would remove my focus from the most important task ahead of us. Like getting Vanessa and Jessica back from these shifter hunters crouched up there in the mountains, and figuring out what do with the pile of dead bikers on Main Street.

I shook my head. “No, just help me clean some of this blood up, would you? Seem to be healing fine on my own for the time being, don’t see any need to.”

“I got you, boss,” Frank said, grabbing a wet towel we’d set aside and coming up behind me. He can began to wipe of the dried, caked on blood around the formerly open, sucking wound. “Looking better already. Starting to close up well around the edges.”

“Alright,” I said as my pack mate gave me the weird sponge bath. “We know they’re at Burton’s Folly. What else do we know?”

I went over to my go-bag, which they’d grabbed from the back of the Bronco when they’d dragged me in here. I opened it up, pulled out a spare t-shirt, and slipped it on as the guys began to rattle through the details.

“We know they’ve got enough men to lock down a town the size of Enchanted Rock.”

“From the descriptions Ashley and Elise gave, they’re nearly military quality in their training and gear. And they really do have that giant you were iffy about.”

I frowned at the last part. None of this was good. We might not have been outclassed, but we're definitely outgunned. And if those bikers had silver bullets for their guns, that meant they might have silver in their own firearms.

“And from what Elise and Ashley say,” Jake added, “they’re not looking to kill us. They want to bring us in alive. Capture us, is what they said, which is why they were able to hold themselves hostage the way they did.”

“That’s what don’t make a lick of sense to me,” Frank replied from where he was leaning back against the wall, arms crossed in front of his broad chest. “Y’all said every other attack on every other pack has been a kill. Where they went in, mutilated ‘em, left the bodies. Why change now?”

I frowned again. “I don’t know. Maybe they need something from us? Information maybe? Perform experiments?” I looked around the room. “Whatever it is, I have the sinking suspicion that their getting a hold on us is going to be a hell of a lot worse than just getting killed, like we’d originally expected.”

“Well I’m not going in some fucking cage,” Jake said. “I’ll put a bullet in my head before that happens.”

“Reckon I feel the same,” Frank added.

“That goes for me too,” Matt replied.

Richard, though, was curiously silent. I could tell from the look on his face that he was thinking the same thing as me. They had our women under lock and key. Were they torturing them? Were they performing those same experiments we were worried they’d perform on us if we were captured? And that look on his face said it all. He’d give up every moment of his life, forsake all sense of freedom or future, if it meant that his wife would be free.

And I felt the exact same way.

The worst part of it, though, was that I knew we were just playing into this Mr. Finney’s hands, whoever the hell he was.

“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to shoot down their views or lower their morale any further. “Alright, first things first. We need to get our gear inspected and put together. Jake, Frank, get on that. We need to get everything from the truck, and we need it here five minutes ago.”

“Front of the store’s pretty packed,” Jake replied. “Gonna be some people asking questions if I start bringing in those crates.”

“Your old truck should fit in the back alley,” Frank said. “We can just pull it around and unload from there.”

“We’ve got some folding tables in here, too,” Richard added. “We use them for gallery openings and stuff. I’ll set them up so we can lay out the gear.”

“Good. Get on it.” I turned to Matthew. “You and me, let’s go see what we can do about cleanup.”

Matthew nodded. The five of us dispersed.

“Pete?” Mary asked as Matt, Jake, and I headed out front through the gallery. “You okay?” she asked again as she nearly threw herself at me.

“Yeah,” I said, after embracing her and taking a deep breath, “of course I am. Nothing’s going to keep me down, you know that.”

She laid her head against my chest, sniffling a little. Frank gently touched my shoulder, letting me know he and Matt would be outside.

I turned my attention to the sweet teenage girl I’d grown to love like a daughter over the last year. “Why are you crying?” I asked as I stroked her hair, straightening and smoothing it with a big, callused hand. So soft, so ephemeral. Moments like these were the kind that reminded you life was over in a blink. That you should have hugged your loved ones more, should have told them how much you cared when you were given the chance. Because everything could change in just one moment.  “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” she asked incredulously. “You’re really going to ask me that?”

“Look,” I whispered, “we’re going to get them back.”

“Promise?”

I kissed the top of her head. “You have my word.”

The women had taken it upon themselves to start cleaning up the front gallery while the guys had conferred about the best person to dig the bullet out of my back. Glass had gone everywhere during the raid and stray fragments still crunched underfoot despite their best efforts to sweep up the remnants.

Now, as I shifted my attention from Mary, I realized the other three women were looking at me. They all had the same look in their eyes. It was a look of fear, of not knowing when the other shoe would drop. Of wanting to run, but having nowhere to run to.

But I also saw resolve in their eyes, knowing they needed to stay and fight. That this was war, and that wars on your doorstep demanded you stand up for what you believed in and those you cared about.

“Think they’ll be okay?” Rebecca asked as Mary and I broke our hug. She swallowed hard and ran a hand back through her dark brown hair. “Think they’ll hurt them?”

“I don’t think they’re going to hurt Jessica,” I admitted after a long moment. “She’s there as bait. And, from the way they struck at us out of nowhere, going right around our plans, boxing us in like this, I have a feeling they know more about us than we think they do. There’s just nothing for them to gain by hurting her.”

“What about…?” Ashley asked, but trailed off.

“Yeah…” Elise agreed.

No one seemed to want to say Vanessa’s name, as if saying the words would somehow make it more real. But it was real, and ignoring her name or the fact that she’d been taken wouldn’t change that one iota.

I started to respond, but Matthew interrupted me. “Hey, Peter. Need you to come out here.”

“On my way in just a second.”

“No, I need you now. Chief Beckett’s here. I think you’re going to want to talk to him yourself, explain what’s going on.”

Shit. Chief Beckett, head of the Enchanted Rock Volunteer Fire Department, and technically Matthew Jones’s other boss. The closest thing we had to law enforcement that was still left alive after they hit the sheriff’s office.

How was I going to explain this?

Chewing my lower lip, I turned back to the women. It was now or never. I needed to say something that would keep their morale high, keep them from breaking under the pressure of this war that had suddenly sprung to the surface.

“She’ll be fine,” I replied, nodding slowly. “We’re going to get her back. No matter what.”

Yes, they probably were hurting Vanessa. Experimenting on her. Doing whatever horrible things these people were going to do to all of us if they ever had the chance. They were monsters. The kinds of things that skulked in the shadows, the stuff of nightmares. And I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to get her back. She was my mate, my partner. And, as surely as she had put a gun to her own head to save me the heartache of being captured like this but had willingly given herself up to protect me, I was just as certain that I’d get her back in one piece.

And nothing was going to stop me.

Not giants, not castle walls, not guns filled with silver bullets.

But still, as I turned to head outside, to try and come up with a believable line of bullshit that Chief Beckett would swallow hook, line, and sinker, I was worried. How much torture could Vanessa take before she broke? Could she hold out against these bastards?

Because you never really knew how much you could take until you were put to the test. And, for her at least, that test was now.

No matter what the outcome of it was, deep down I knew that I’d be there for her. I’d get her back. And whatever pieces there were to pick up in the aftermath, I’d be just like the people here: sweeping up and rebuilding.