Enslaved in Shadows (28 page)

             
She bumped into a pair of shit kickers.
Someone grunted above her and then continued fighting.
If she had to
guess,
it was Dietrich.
Mean ass prick!
He’d called her a pussy; well she’d show him what a pussy was. But before she could do anything Draven was their yelling at her and picking her up in his arms.

             
“What the fuck are you doing outside the plane? Huh? Tell me why I had to look over to see my woman lying on the ground about to be pummeled?” Draven yelled.
He was running with her in his arms for the plane.
She couldn’t see a thing. Everything was going too fast, but it looked like they were winning.
From the corner of her
eye,
she saw a huge Lincoln Navigator with dark tinted windows.
She knew it was Marcus and she gasped as the car drove off.

             
“Fucking get to the plane!” She screamed.

             
Draven took the stairs three at a time. Oh dear God it was too late! They were too late! Her heart dropped out of her chest. Her entire world was crashing down around her like shattered glass.
Where her daughter should have been sleeping, was one of Marcus’s goons sitting in her place.
He had a cigar in his gloved hand and a gun trained on her and Draven.

* * * *

             
“Ah, it is so nice to see you again Mistress. Meister is in anguish without you, believe me
Gnädige Frau.
”
Oh dear God! It was Hedrick, one of her ex’s henchmen. He was known for his love of torture. He motioned with his gun for both her and Draven to get further inside the plane.
Her chest hurt, she felt death constricting her heart in a vice grip.
The bastard had taken her child, their child.
Revulsion spun its web around her; wove its way into her heart and festered. She would kill him slowly. Sever his
Achilles
tendon so he couldn’t run.
Feed him to anyone animal enough to eat him strip by strip until his flesh was shorn from his bones. Draven stood beside her, stone silent. No words left him as he pushed her to the side.
The veins in his neck were bulged, nostrils flared rhythmical with each breath. Jes took a few paces back and off to the side.
Was he was fighting the change?
Did Hedrick know Draven was a werewolf?
The question would be answered sooner rather than later. She felt the burn at her hip sear in pain as he let out a fierce roar.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, as she felt Draven’s power blast her with a swift burst of heat.
The feeling, powerful enough she felt shoved by its energy.

             
If the look of shock was anything to go by, she would say Hedrick had no clue Draven was a werewolf.
Maybe he did know and realized how stupid he was for signing up for death detail. The expression, bugged out eyes, applied to Hedrick in all manners. He was trying to scramble back in his seat, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. The silent scream on his lips had Jes cracking a smile.
Dumb ass you’re as good as dead.
How could he not know? Well, with the exception of Bells, all the men were fighting in their human forms.
Strange, usually Marcus was a lot smarter when gathering Intel on people he intended to hurt, maim, or kill. This was a first. Marcus must not have factored in all the variables in this particular order he’d given to Hedrick, or maybe he did.

             
With quick hands, Jesminda turned and held the chest of a now furry Draven. His dark fur felt silky smooth to the touch on his chest, less thick. He stared down at her with glowing gold green eyes. She stared right back. Hedrick knew the location of their daughter. She needed it.
Draven stilled at her touch, which gave her cause for some comfort.
At least he wouldn’t attack outright.
She needed to kno
w what Marcus had up his sleeve. She knew him.
H
e wasn’t sloppy.
Marcus calculated every move he made.
He did his homework like a good little thug.
What was the catch, leaving Hedrick here in the place of Faith?
Was Marcus hoping Draven struck him?

             
There was a noise at the front of the plane and she looked past Draven to Royce who’d come up the stairs. Royce rushed towards them but Draven turned and snarled. The wolf barely had the room to move he was so huge. Royce held his hands out in front he stopped short.

             
“Not trying to hurt you or your lady man.” Royce looked over at Hedrick who was still sitting in the chair un-moving. “He’s drugged. Marcus wants him to attack. Don’t do it man. The fucker is bait.”

             
“How,” Jesminda bit out through gritted teeth.

             
Royce stood there for a moment eyeing Hedrick, whose breath she could hear behind her. He was breathing at a rapid pace. There was a foul odor in the cabin. Did he fucking piss himself?
Gross.

             
“How,” Jesminda screamed. Panic clawed its way down her back. The wolf wasn’t moving but for how long?

             
“He’s been injected with Silver nitrate, not a high enough dose to kill him out right but enough it’s contaminated his blood. If Draven were to strike, it would take a miracle to cure him. Damn, you didn’t tell us that Marcus knew about the
Unit
Jesminda. That would have been information we would have wanted to know firsthand.” Royce’s frustration wasn’t making her feel any better.

             
“Like, I knew. He’s obviously knows about your team. The plan was to get away without being caught, protect my daughter, and start over again.” Jesminda blew out a breath. “Not this shit, I am going through now, running from Zombies, my daughter taken, and having an overgrown behemoth of a man try to tell me I’m his mate. I want off the fucking coaster of pyschotron!”

             
Royce looked over at Hedrick and grinned.

             
“Dude, fucking pissed your pants, that’s classic.”
What was Royce doing now?

             
“What are you doing?”

             
“I gotta post this on Facebook. Hold up.”

             
Royce snapped a pic with his camera phone and began typing on the screen. Was he fucking for real? Her daughter was missing, there was Hedrick with a gun, and a big ass werewolf she was still holding back with her hand. A werewolf that offered no arguments.

             
He licked her arm. Warmth and the rasp of his tongue smoothed down her arm.
Gross!
She smacked Draven’s head away with her hand and stepped back turning to pin Hedrick with a glare.
Fucking Facebook photo time was over!

             
“Start talking Hedrick, or I’m going to let Royce have at you, and he’s not a werewolf.”
Hedrick sneered at her as if she couldn’t make him talk.
Draven’s wolf stayed close to her back growling and making licking noises with his chops.

             
“It would be my supreme honor, my lady to make him talk; shall I make him drink my blood?” Royce asked with a raise of his brow.
That was wrong on all fronts and something she did not have time to stick around and see. They could be running out of time.

             
She suppressed a
shiver;
she remembered his blood, the taste of warm nectar coating her throat in a lover’s caress. What would it do to Hedrick? “Is it going to have the same effect on him as it did on me?”

             
Royce faked being hurt.
“Hell to the no! It will have the opposite, as he is male.
He will writhe, but not in ecstasy or sheer bliss, due to my sexual prowess.
No, he will writhe in agony, and it will make him talk.”

             
Royce looked at her and winked.
He was enjoying this way too much for her taste. She needed to find out where Marcus was taking Faith and that was all there was too it.

             
“Royce, be serious, please.”
Jes took a step towards Hedrick.
             
             

             
“You heard him, you want to writhe in agony, or just tell us where my daughter Faith is being taken.”

             
Hendricks face twisted into a slimy grin.

             
“Why miss, I don’t know where they are going to take the little one. I do know Marcus plans on letting Enri have her.
You know how Enri is, doesn’t care what age a wee little one is. He will take her just the same.”

             
Jes lashed out in a fit of rage, she didn’t see anything but a haze of anger so thick she zeroed in on Hedrick. Her hand shot forth and clipped him in the jaw.
His head snapped back and through the haze, she could h
ear
Royce cheering her on in the background.
She launched herself in the air to rain
Hell
on him, but Royce was holding her back. She wanted to scream, and wail, and beat the
ever-loving
shit out this man.

             
“Let me have the fucker! I will show him pain!” She screamed. Somewhere in the back of her
mind,
she knew she needed to remain calm, but the thought of her daughter with Enri, that malicious bastard sent her into a fit of utter rage.
With swift movements, Royce was in front of Hedrick and had the other man off his feet and up against the wall by his neck.
Royce stood there as the other man struggled for breath, not saying a word. Royce tilted his head to the side as if listening.

             
Royce looked over his shoulder at her. What she saw froze her in a moment of fear. An animal so dark and feral, she took a step back into the wolf’s personal space. Royce was not a man at all. He was something else.

             
“Your daughter is on her way to a cottage where, Marcus is holding the other vampires. He intends to bleed her out for her half breed blood.”
There was a distinctive snap and then Hedrick was falling on the floor at an odd slump.

The others were still out fighting off the horde of death walkers, as Jesminda took off after Royce and Draven’s wolf. She didn’t know where they were going and her fucking ankle was still tweaked.
But as long as Royce knew the location of the house, they’d get to Faith in time, before Marcus drained her.

             
“Jes, stay here with Draven, he’s not going to change form until we’re able to track down Marcus. Once we get Faith back, I will instruct Bells to take her to Draven’s mother’s house where she will be safe.”

             
Everything would have to be okay.
She needed it to be.
They just had to get Faith back,
no matter what. Jes didn’t want to stay with the wolf she wanted to be out there with them searching for Faith. In the end she got her way, Draven had taken off in the direction of the vehicle. He didn’t wait for instructions, he just fled. Dietrich and the others killed the remaining death walkers and Royce looked pissed.

             
“Well, now you get to come along.”

             
He pointed at the others and told them to follow.

Chapter 17

             
Draven in his beast form was a primal.
He saw everything in shades of red, orange, purple,
blue,
and yellow.
His lack of human vision didn’t downgrade his ability
.
N
o, instead it heightened his sense of sight.
The thermal light did what it was meant to do and that was tracking heat signatures. Add a touch of werewolf and what did you get? A wolf who could not only track thermal light as it tried to escape him, but could also track past signatures that were left behind.
They would be faint, but he would still be able to detect them.

             
He did that now as he ran in the direction of the metal contraption with wheels. In the darkest corner of his mind, his human half called it an SUV. Fuck an SUV it was a metal contraption that held his cub.
Whoever dared to drive it with his cub trapped inside would pay the consequences. He didn’t care about the humans that were trailing behind him. Didn’t matter if some were more than mere mortals, as far as Draven’s wolf was concerned he was the top of the food chain and everything and everyone else was beneath him.
He was from House Canidae. His kind was of the original strand. They came straight from Lycaon the bastard King of Arcadia himself. Who’d attempted to feed Zeus the human flesh of his son to test the God’s power.
What a fuck up that had been.