Netherworld II: Blood Potion No. 9 (20 page)

As he pushed my short schoolgirl skirt
up, he bounced my head off the wall again. Black crept in for an
instant, and Hazel muttered something incomprehensible. I realized
it was a spell. The dazedness passed, leaving only thudding pain in
my skull. He kicked my legs apart.

“That will keep you conscious. You’re
going to feel everything I do to you, you stupid cunt.”

He was yanking at the G-string I wore,
trying to tear it off me. I had an idea of what he was going to do
to me once it was gone. With his witchy skills, he could make the
agony so much worse. Fizz’s nonstop shrieks left me no doubt of
that.

I could have escaped Fizz’s body. I
didn’t have to endure whatever torture Hazel had in mind. But as
scared as I was, I had gotten her into this mess. You may ask what
good would it do for both of us to suffer at Hazel’s hands. Not a
bit. I still couldn’t leave her alone to face whatever horrors
Hazel had planned.

But I was every bit as panicked as she
was now. My struggles weren’t enough to free me of the psychopath’s
grip, and the G-string was finally ripped free. Hazel ground his
hips against mine, chuckling with breathless delight as I
sobbed.

“Oh yeah, bitch. It’s gonna hurt. It’s
gonna hurt good.”

“What are you doing with my property,
Hazel?”

Bane’s thick, growling voice was a
godsend, and I looked over my shoulder to see the big, bad wolf
stalking down the hall from the front of the club. Had anyone ever
looked so good? Sorry Dan and Tristan, but no. Bane, with his
golden eyes glowing bright, was absolutely beautiful.

Hazel bent my arm further up my back,
and I squalled in agony. “I’m teaching my employee a lesson in
sobriety. She’s went onstage fucked up.”

Bane snarled at him, flashing a
mouthful of sharp teeth. “She’s been sick all day. I made her take
some dope I got from Doc for it. So you want to teach me a
lesson?”

Hazel glared at him. I sensed how
geared up he was to hurt me, so much so that he was actually
thinking of challenging Bane. Bane seemed to feel it too, because
black and gray fur began to run out of every bit of naked skin his
vest showed.

His words growing more garbled by his
elongating muzzle, Bane warned, “That’s my ass and pussy and I
don’t share unless C.K. tells me to.”

Hazel finally relented, shoving himself
away from me. The menace disappeared, and he sulked like a teenager
denied the family car on a Friday night. “You owe me. God knows how
many customers walked out after that scene she did.”

Bane yanked his wallet from his back
pocket and drew three bills from it, flinging them on the floor. My
eyes widened to see they were all hundred dollar bills. Nice to
know I was worth so much.

Still more wolf than man, Bane stomped
towards the back door, passing me. “Come on, Fizz. Let’s get you
home so you can rest.”

He didn’t help me, but I knew he
couldn’t. He was playing a Beast, and I was playing property.
Ducking my head to avoid looking at Hazel, my throbbing arm cradled
in the other, I wobbled unsteadily after him. Neither Fizz nor I
relaxed until we got outside.

Once out the door, Bane waited for me
to catch up to him. I flexed my fingers, willing the ache to
dissipate. Fizz was shuddering and quiet in the corner of my mind.
She didn’t show any sign of wanting to come out. I didn’t blame
her.

I told Bane, “I’m glad you came along
when you did. Fizz is terrified of Hazel. I am too now.”

He rested a big hand on my injured
shoulder, gently rubbing the pain away. The fur he’d sprouted was
receding. “No doubt. The man is a sadist. He gets off on hurting
people. You should see his rap sheet. On second thought, you don’t
want to see his rap sheet.”

I had to ask. “How much danger is Fizz
in now?”

“Enough that I’m not letting you – her
– out of my sight. That means you get to tag along tonight. We’re
off to find the smoking gun.”

We reached his chopper, and he helped
me put the extra helmet on. I was grateful. The fingers on my left
hand alternated between numbness and sharp pain. They were feeling
pretty clumsy.

I took the opportunity while he
concentrated on my chin strap to enjoy his slowly humanizing face.
“Where were you that you could hear me scream? I know shifter
hearing is excellent, but the music in there was so
loud.”

“I was in Hazel’s office, not out in
the club.” At my gasp, he grimaced. “Yeah, I used your distraction
of bad dancing to get into Hazel’s computer. It took all I had to
not charge straight to your rescue when I realized you were in
trouble. I had to slip out the back door and come around the front
so Hazel wouldn’t realize where I’d been.” A growl slipped from his
lips, and his transformation to more man than wolf halted for an
instant. “Sorry you had to suffer like that. How’s the
arm?”

I rotated my shoulder a little to
loosen the still cramped muscles. “It hurts like heck, but I can
put up with it. We’re lucky Hazel didn’t dislocate the shoulder.
You found something on his computer?”

Bane mounted the bike and waited for me
to clamber up behind him. “No, I didn’t have that much time. He
left his tablet out though, and I checked his calendar. He’s
meeting someone at the wharf tonight. He might be getting a
shipment of tainted blood in.”

I snuggled up behind him, but not
because I was feeling particularly amorous for a change. Hazel had
meant to hurt me and hurt me bad. I was looking for security, not
sex. “Are we going there now?”

“Yeah.” He started the bike. After its
initial roar of wakefulness, the engine purred like a kitten. Bane
turned the upper part of his body to look me in the eye.

“Brandilynn, you have to do whatever I
say tonight. If anyone sees us, the best case scenario is my cover
is blown.”

I swallowed. “Jeez, do I want to know
the worst that can happen?”

He held me with those golden eyes. “Me
and Fizz are as dead as you.”

Chapter 11

Even though it was late, Fulton Falls’
port was as busy as a kicked-apart anthill. Bright lights set up on
high poles buzzed with white-hot illumination. Forklifts raced
around the asphalt prairie between barges and warehouses amid the
shouts of workmen. The air was alive with the sounds of pallets
scraping concrete, cranes on the ships whining under their loads,
and men yelling their conversations to be heard over the din. This
place was hopping.

It was a regulated area, and Bane had
come prepared with a hardhat and coveralls in his saddlebags. In
Fizz’s schoolgirl stripping costume, I was woefully overdressed.
Not to mention those heels. Jeez, I’d stick out like a peacock in a
flock of turkeys. But Bane surprised me with a couple of warded
crystals slung on cords that we could wear around our
necks.

“These should get us past everything,
including the wards used by Customs to get into the gate. The
bigger problem will be getting past the detection spells used by
private practice witches. I’ll have to hope one in my collection
will work on those.” Bane patted the pocket of his vest, hidden
beneath the coveralls. “Let me stay half a dozen steps ahead of
you. If one of the protections gets past my ward and makes it so
I’m seen, you head back to the bike.”

“Okay.” I was excited to be able to
walk around in a physical body without anyone noticing me. It
wasn’t that the wards made us invisible. They simply encouraged
people to kind of glance over us. It was like a bullet-proof vest
in which eyesight sort of bounces off you. You’re there, but yet
you’re not. Such wards are only legal for the feds. I was feeling
very Charlie’s Angels right now.

We walked past the gate and the
guardhouse with a uniformed man drinking coffee from a cup the size
of a silo. Okay, maybe not that big, but it was a huge cup.
Graveyard shift is a bear. The guard's bored expression never
changed as Bane stalked silently by and I clippity-clopped in
stilettos, my pleated skirt floating around gooseflesh-bumped
thighs. Darn, it was cold. I sure was missing panties right now
too.

It was a bit of a haul to Dock 56,
where Hazel’s shipment was supposedly coming from. It was the site
of some of the more frenzied activity, what with forklifts racing
back and forth between the hulking barge parked there and the
nearby warehouse. The well-loved brine scent of the river mixed
with exhaust and Bane’s pleasant animal aroma.

As one orange forklift barreled out of
the warehouse close enough that I could have jumped on for a ride,
I paused to slip one shoe off and rub my aching foot. I noted the
forklift's tines securely speared through a pallet covered in
crates.

I observed, “You got the wrong dock,
Bane. They’re loading that barge, not unloading.”

Bane put a finger to his lips and
pressed me back around the side of the warehouse. He lifted me up
and carried me when he realized I couldn’t move too fast with one
bare foot leaving me five inches short on one side.

He whispered, “Hold up. Hazel’s coming
out of the warehouse with the dockmaster.”

I stilled. Warded or not, Hazel was a
witch and might be able to see us. After my earlier encounter with
him, I was in no hurry to test the efficacy of the government’s
spellcasting.

I heard his nasally voice carry in the
breeze. “No, not all of them go to Liverpool. The other half goes
out tomorrow night on the ship headed for Dakar. Didn’t you get the
revised orders I faxed over?”

A gruff voice answered, “Fax machine’s
on the fritz. Come on over to the office and we’ll get this
straightened out. Let me tell the foreman meantime.”

The voices faded as they moved along,
and I relaxed. I mused out loud to Bane. “Hmm. He’s sending stuff
out to Europe and Africa, not bringing bad blood in. I wonder what
he’s smuggling?”

Bane considered. “Whatever it is, if
Hazel is involved, I’ve got to get in there to find
out.”

With that, he pulled off his coveralls,
and to my shock, started disrobing entirely.

“What, naked?” I averted my eyes as he
yanked down his jeans and underwear in one move.

“I’m going to shift. Even if the ward
fails, anyone who sees me will think I’m just a stray
dog.”

“Good idea.” I peeked to see him
stringing the extra wards around his neck. My eyes started to drift
southward, and I forcibly pointed them at a stack of pallets. Nope,
nope, nope, wasn’t going to look. All my body parts were going to
remain true to my boyfriends.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back,” Bane
said. Then came that stretchy moist sound that accompanies a were’s
shift, and I had just had to watch that because it’s so
fascinating. Limbs stretching, face elongating, fur sprouting to
cover all that skin … including parts best left to the imagination.
Wow. Watching the transformation from manimal to beast never gets
old.

He looked amazing. A gorgeous
black-furred wolf with gray markings stood where Bane had been, his
golden eyes liquid metal in the worklights. Beautiful or not, I saw
a problem right away with Bane’s hope of appearing to be a dog.
Should he be seen no one would ever mistake him for a mutt. More
like an escaped pony.

“Good God. Stray dog, my butt. A stray
moose, maybe.” I shook my head at him, noting the intelligence in
his eyes. Weres might be more prone to wilder instincts in full
animal form, but human intelligence remains. No shifter is allowed
to hide behind his beastly alter-ego when it comes to crimes like
assault or murder. Science has proven they are fully cognizant of
their actions unless mental illness is already present.

Bane was awe-inspiring as a wolf, but
it was still him. Agent Levi of the ATF reigned supreme, fur and
fangs notwithstanding.

He gave me a wolfie smile then
deliberately licked my cheek. He wheeled around and trotted around
the corner to investigate the warehouse, leaving me to wipe wolf
spit off.

“Gross!” I called after him.

I waited. And waited. And waited. The
minutes slipped by, then they stretched into years it seemed as
Bane didn’t come back out. I was dancing in place, trying to keep
warm. Jeez, I wish I had reclaimed Fizz’s coat from her locker
before we’d taken off. At least my arm had stopped
hurting.

Still no Bane. I realized we should
have arranged a deadline for me to come looking for him or go
screaming for help. Surely looking into the contents of a crate or
two shouldn’t take so long, right? I got even more freaked out when
I heard Hazel’s voice coming close. I scooted to the nearby stack
of pallets, praying he hadn’t somehow been alerted to our
presence.

I saw him accompanied by a couple of
Beasts enforcers I’d seen before, a werehog and bear. Hazel looked
like a stick bug between two big cockroaches, but I wasn’t fooled
by his lack of muscle. I knew just who to fear in that trio. He
walked away from the dock to the parking lot, his escorts lumbering
in his wake. I was glad to see him go.

And still no Bane. Forklifts continued
to buzz back and forth, loading the ship with Hazel’s cargo. I
shifted from foot to foot, concern growing with every passing
second. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms furiously, desperate
to be discorporate again where temperature didn’t matter. My ears
strained to hear yells of discovery. Darn it, he should have been
back by now!