Wild Game (Wilding Pack Wolves 1) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (17 page)

“Yes, it’s all a game,” he hissed. “Only this time,
I’m
making the game map and the rules, not you and your kind.”

He lunged through the bars, reaching her at the back with his five-foot-long cattle prod. She screamed and twitched and thrashed against the bars while he electrocuted her. It seemed to go on forever, but was probably only a couple seconds. When he stopped, she slumped against the bars again. She couldn’t help the sounds that came out of her.
Fuck,
it hurt so much. She had to think a way out of this, but her brain was literally scrambled. For several minutes after each shock, she could barely get her tongue to work right, much less think straight.

The man stalked away from the cage, huffing in disgust. She assumed he was the Wolf Hunter‌—‌who else could he be? He had the mask and the crazy hate thing going on. But even her scrambled brain was starting to put the pieces together‌—‌the mask wasn’t quite the same as the other videos. And she knew she recognized him from somewhere, but she just couldn’t get her battered brain to figure out where.

After a few minutes, when she was able to get her mouth to work again, she shouted across the room at him, “What do you want from me?”

He was broadcasting this. Maybe she could work with that‌—‌not give him what he wanted, whatever that was. Maybe use that against him.

He hesitated a moment, staring at the workbench, then finally stalking back toward her. He faced the camera and spread his arms wide. “Entertainment, of course!” He turned to her. “And you’re the lucky girl who gets to pay for the sins of your fellow shifters.”

“What sins?” The lack of a cattle prod in his hands made her a little more brave. “What have shifters ever done to you?”

He shuffled across the concrete floor. “What have they done?” He asked this as if it was the most ridiculous thing she could say. “They
exist.
They take our jobs. They seduce our women for their half-breed monsters.” He walked back to the webcam, probably making his masked face loom for his audience. Nova didn’t know what kind of sick fucks would watch this sort of thing, but she was sure they were out there‌—‌he was probably streaming this on a Dark Web feed, the kind of place people went to explore the ugly side of their humanity.

He spoke into the camera. “These shifters are breeding with us, polluting our DNA with their genes. Taking our jobs, ruining our lives, destroying what it means to be human. They’re creating abominations just like themselves, and they’re taking over everything that rightfully belongs to humans. They have to be stopped before they corrupt the entire gene pool! This shifter is not only getting what she deserves… this is a lesson for all you shifters out there who think you can take over and become the dominant species on our planet. My fellow humans, wake up! This is fucking evolution, man, and it’s a battle to the death! It’s either them or us. We can do this‌—‌we’re way fucking smarter than they are, and tougher too‌—‌but we’ve got to fight! These shifters are just a bunch of filthy animals, and it’s time for them all to get back in their cages.”

His ranting was straight from the original video Nova had watched countless times. It was part of the manifesto of the Wolf Hunter. But she still didn’t understand why she was being targeted personally.

Personally.
That was it.

The fact that she recognized him, even a little bit, even if she didn’t know from where… that had to mean something. There was some personal connection between her and this lunatic.

“Wait, wait, wait…” she said, dragging herself up to standing as much as she could in the short cage. She hunched over and clung to the front bars, sticking her hand through to point at him. When he turned back to her, she was pretty sure everyone on the livestream could see her.

“I know who you are,” she said loud enough for everyone watching to hear.

He stared hard at her for a second, then whipped back to slam his hand on the keyboard in front of the screen. The small red light on the webcam winked off‌—‌he had turned off the recording. She shuddered, praying that didn’t mean he was about to kill her. Then he whipped around and rushed at her, stopping just out of arm’s reach again. He flipped up his mask and stared at her with eyes that glittered with his insanity.

“Do you, Nova Wilding? Do you know who I am?” He was taunting her. “Or am I just another one of those humans you brushed aside?”

She frowned. What the hell was he talking about? For a brief second, she thought maybe he was one of the humans she’d dated… but no. There had only been a handful, and she would’ve recognized them.

“Sure I do,” she lied. “What I don’t understand, is why all this?” She gestured to the cage and the camera. “When did you lose your fucking mind?”

He bared his teeth and growled at her, then he slammed his hand against the bars of the cage. It still made her jump, even without the cattle prod.

“I’m not crazy!” he shouted in her face. “I just finally figured out what was really going on. Why everything always went to shit. Life is a game that you shifters have stacked against humans. You’re the overpowered characters in a game humans are supposed to win. But we’re going to show you! The Wolf Hunter… he’s going to stop all of you!”

We?
And why was he talking about the Wolf Hunter in the third person? And overpowered characters? He was talking like a gamer. Did he play or… the light bulb went on.

“You’re that guy,” she said gesturing to him, eyes going wide. “The one who applied to work on the textures for
AfterPulse
.” She remembered him now‌—‌he applied for a job at Wylderide. She interviewed him. He seemed to know a hell of a lot about playing the game, and his resume was stacked with all kinds of degrees and experience, but when she looked into his references, they were vapor. It was all made up. She hadn’t said anything when she sent the standard rejection letter, but she should’ve known… he was living in some kind of delusional world already.

He sneered at her. “Yeah, the one you refused to hire because I wasn’t a shifter! I wasn’t part of your little club! Well, your fucking club is going to be missing a member now, isn’t it? And this is just the beginning! I’m not the only person who was ever denied a job because shifters are rigging the game. We see what you’re doing, taking over everything, all the good companies. I used to think Wylderide was the most fucking awesome place in the world. I played every game, every beta, every demo, and what did I get? The door slammed in my face. That was before I knew you all were shifters. But it all makes sense now.”

Oh shit.
This
was
personal for him‌—‌he wasn’t just crazy‌—‌and somehow that made the icy trickle of fear in her gut turn into a gushing waterfall. She wanted to say she didn’t hire him because he was a nut job with no actual experience in coding, but she was smarter than that. She knew he was a powder keg ready to blow, just like the explosives around her.

“Your name is Tommy, right?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level. “I remember that now, from the application.”

He squinted at her and pulled back, but didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, I remember it.” She shook her finger at him like she was just now putting it together. Her frazzled brain tried to spin up a good lie for him. “You know what, you’re right, that was a mistake. We got your file mixed up with some other guy. We were supposed to have sent you an offer letter, but somebody deleted your file accidentally. One of my idiot shifters, I’m sure, probably in personnel. Probably was jealous of what you could do with the game and didn’t want you on board. But you’re just the kind of man we need for
AfterPulse
.”

He stood a little straighter. “Damn straight.”

Her pulse quickened. “Yeah, totally, that’s amazingly clear to me now.” She swallowed. “Let’s just forget this whole thing. We really need someone like you working on getting all the kinks worked out of the beta of
AfterPulse.
Come in, and we’ll get you started. Heck, you could start tomorrow.”

He was nodding, and a small smile snuck onto his face. “I’m glad you’re finally seeing the truth about that.” Then he gave her an evil leer. “Too bad it’s too late.” He chuckled as he turned his back on her.

Shit.
She’d laid it on too thick‌—‌he was crazy but not stupid.

He went back to the camera attached to his screen and tapped something into the keyboard. His body blocked the screen, so she couldn’t see what he was doing. After a moment, he turned back to her and slowly strolled back to the cage.

“I’ve put the feed on a twenty second delay. If you say my name on camera, it’ll be Game Over for you. I’ll hit the kill switch, shut the livestream down, and set the timer to blow you up thirty seconds after I leave the room. So keep quiet. And fucking shift for our audience.”

He flipped down his mask and turned his back on her again.

A sick horror crept through her‌—‌her time was very, very limited now. He tapped a few keys, and the camera’s red light came on.

They were live.

“Sorry for that brief interruption, folks, but we’re back again, and I promise you the show is just going to get better from here.” He turned back to her and prowled up to the cage. He pointed a finger at her, but also turned so he was facing the camera. “You shifters are denying jobs to ordinary humans. You’re taking over everything, shutting us out because we’re human. Like we’re not fucking good enough. But
you
are the animals, not
us.
And now the Wolf Hunter is going to take
all
of you down.” He spread his arms wide again, embracing his audience.

The way he was talking about the Wolf Hunter‌—‌it kept striking her as strange. Like maybe he was just a vigilante following the Wolf Hunter’s instructions?

He turned back to her. “There’s only one way this ends‌—‌you dying for our audience. But the longer you wait, the more pain there will be. Which works well for my audience and for me. It’s time you shifters suffered for what you’ve done. But if you shift now, I promise I’ll actually kill you before I dissect you.” He gave a small smirk to the camera. He was lying completely about that.

“I’m not doing what you want, no matter what you say.” She was saying it for the audience, too. Because if this was truly streaming, she prayed Brad would find it.

And come for her.

She had no idea how he would find her‌—‌she was in a barren basement, no windows, no clues. Her only hope was to hold out until he arrived.

Her torturer raised his hands again, maniacal glee on his face for the camera. “Oh, I was hoping you might say that, little wolf. You’re not so big and bad after all, are you?”

He strolled over to the work bench and snatched up the cattle prod again.

Nova squeezed her eyes shut, and prayed Brad would get there soon.

Before her resolve gave out, and she let this madman kill her to end the pain.

Owen was going mad trying to not look at the screen.

Jace was watching the livestream of Nova’s torture‌—‌almost no one else could bear it. Even he was making low growling sounds almost continuously. He wore headphones so he could hear what was happening without the rest of them‌—‌Owen, Noah, Brad, and Brad’s pack‌—‌having to listen. But
someone
had to keep watch, partly to make sure Nova was still alive, and partly to scan the livestream image and sounds for clues as to the location of the torture chamber the psycho had constructed for her.

It was past midnight. Owen would’ve thought no one would be up to watch this kind of sick “entertainment,” but apparently the thing already had thousands of views. Which he really couldn’t think about
at all
without losing his mind. He had to
focus
if they were to have any hope of getting her out alive.

It was all he could do to keep his beast contained.

“Okay, I’ve got something here,” Noah said, sitting at one of the Wylderide screens. He pointed to a series of images he pulled up on email. “Jaxson says they tracked down the security footage from Nova’s apartment and isolated an image of a blue sedan leaving about the same time Nova was snatched. No other vehicles in or out in a twenty minute time span.”

“Good.” Owen nodded. “Plates?” He paced next to Noah’s cubicle, unable to stand still. The pacing helped keep his beast from leaping out, too.

Noah squinted up at him. “Only a partial. Just a couple numbers.”

Owen’s fists were already curled up, so he shook them out and kept pacing. “Have Riverwise run it through their databases.”

“On it,” Noah said. “And Jared’s already running his facial recognition thing on the driver. There’s a pretty good view of his face.”

That stopped Owen in his tracks. “You have a picture?”

Several of the wolves at desks around him looked up.

“Yeah.” Noah tapped the keyboard and brought up a fuzzy security-cam image. Owen reached him in two quick strides and stared at the picture. It was black and white, and the face was washed out, but you could definitely make out the features.

“No mask,” Owen whispered.

Noah nodded. “Right.”

Owen clapped a hand hard on his shoulder. “Good work.” Then something jogged his memory‌—‌something Nova said on the livestream. He’d been trying to block it out, but it came rushing back. “She said she knew him. Right before he cut her off.” He hadn’t been able to watch much of the livestream, but he caught that part before he had to temporarily leave the office to smack his face, splash it with water, and get his head in the game.