Authors: Celeste Anwar
She was almost sorry she’d mentioned it. The
comment drew all eyes to her breasts. Suddenly self-conscious, she sank
against Jesse’s chest again. When she looked up at Jesse, she saw that he was
studying her with amusement. “Point taken. Billy Ray, take two men with you
to retrieve the ship. The rest of us will hit the lab together, but you’ll
stay out the way. Clear?”
Erin nodded.
“And you’ll follow orders.”
Erin gave him a look. “For the raid, right?”
His lips twitched. “
Chère
,” he murmured
warningly, and then stopped abruptly as if he’d just realized they had an
interested audience.
“Let’s not fight about it now. Later you can
explain what Carlos meant about the marks,” she added in a whisper.
He nuzzled her ear. “You’re wasting your time
whispering,” he said low near her ear. “Lycan hearing is extremely acute … and
fighting wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
Erin felt her face catch fire.
Several of the men chuckled.
She tried to convince herself it was because of
something someone else had said that she hadn’t overheard, but she had a bad
feeling she was wrong.
* * * *
The Feds announced their arrival at dark thirty
with a bomb blast that shook the walls around the captives so hard debris
rained down all over them. The concussion rattled Erin’s teeth together. She
bit her tongue, wincing as the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. Jesse
curled around her until the chips of stone, splinters of wood, and sand had
stopped showering them and then set her away from him abruptly and came up on
his hands and knees.
Wakened so abruptly from a doze and still
disoriented, Erin lolled groggily against the wall, watching in growing horror
as the men in the cell began to shift into their beast forms. Within moments,
all signs of humanity vanished from them and surrounding her were snarling man-wolves.
Jesse launched himself against the door,
battering it with his shoulder. It splintered with the second blow and burst outward
with the third, falling into several pieces. The men poured through the
opening. Erin had pressed herself against the wall to avoid the stampede.
When the men had cleared the door, Jesse reached inside, grabbing her arm and
hauling her behind him as he strode down the corridor.
The noise outside the main structure was almost
deafening. Explosions and gunfire mingled with the hoarse cries and screams of
men and manbeasts. The air was a suffocating soup of dust, smoke, and
gunpowder. Blinded by the smoke, Erin stumbled along in Jesse’s wake, trying
her best to keep up with him, her heart pounding so hard with fear her lungs
labored all the harder to provide her with oxygen, making her dizzy.
Before the group could clear the building, a knot
of the panthers burst inside.
Both groups halted abruptly at sight of each
other, tensing to battle.
“This way,” the leader of the group bellowed.
“There’s a passage beneath the mission that leads to the caves. It exits at
the falls about a mile from the coast.”
The Lycan all turned to look at Jesse
questioningly. He nodded. Turning, they followed the panthers down the narrow
hall that led to the cell where Erin had spent her first hours at the
encampment. The door opposite her cell door opened to a narrow flight of
stairs that led almost straight down, more like a ladder than stairs. Swinging
Erin up into his arms, Jesse held her tightly to his chest as he raced down
into the darkness below the mission.
The cool air below soothed Erin’s eyes, but she
could see no better in the darkness. One of the panthers lit a torch. “I am
Carlos’ second. I can not go with you, but Juan will show you the way. There
are caves beneath the island fortress, as well. The gringos thought they had
sealed them off, but there is another way inside that he can show you.” He
grinned suddenly. “You should hurry and find your son before we send these
gringos scurrying for home.”
Jesse motioned for his men to follow Juan. When
they’d passed, he held out his hand to the man who’d helped them. “If you ever
find yourself in need of a friend, I am your man.”
The beastman took it in a firm clasp. “I will
remember … in case of need,
señor
Lycan.”
“Jesse.”
The man grinned. “Guillume.”
Jesse grinned back at him. “Good hunting,
Guillume.”
When Guillume had headed back the way they had
just come, Jesse set Erin on her feet. As she stared at him blankly, he knelt
on the floor. “We need to move fast,
chère
. Get on my back and hold
tight.”
Disconcerted, Erin nevertheless didn’t argue.
The faster they went the better as far as she was concerned and she knew she
couldn’t possibly keep up with him on her own. To her stunned amazement, he
began to shift once more when she’d climbed onto his back. In the blink of his
eye, he was no longer manbeast, but a great wolf that looked like any other
save for the fact that he was far larger than most wolves.
She was nearly unseated when he launched himself
into a run. Burying her face against his back, she tightened her arms around
him, unable to focus on anything beyond hanging on for all she worth. When
Erin finally nerved herself to open her eyes for a look around, she discovered
they’d left the smooth artificially formed corridor behind. The walls that
closed in far too closely for her peace of mind on either side of them were
pock marked, as if they’d been blasted.
The sound of rushing water grew louder and louder
as they traveled until it became a deafening roar. She could see no sign of
it, though, and finally decided that the water must be following some other
channel in the rock.
As the flickering light of the torch the lead man
was carrying finally sputtered and went out, the cavern descended briefly into
blackness. Erin realized after a few moments that it wasn’t a total absence of
light, however. Lifting her head, she saw in the distance a lighter patch. As
Jesse raced toward it, the area around them grew brighter and brighter and she
realized they were nearing the mouth of the cave.
The narrow stone corridor they were following
widened abruptly into a tremendous cavern. Water rushed along channels on
either side of them now, splashed and trickled down the walls, gusted from
natural spouts here and there. Within moments Erin was soaked to the skin with
the fine mist rising from the water, her hair plastered to her skull and
dripping rivulets of water along her cheeks and forehead.
She didn’t dare loosen her grip on Jesse even for
a moment, though. She was still trying to blink the water from her eyes so
that she could see when they emerged from the mouth of the cave. The night sky
was like a great, midnight blue bowl above them, sprinkled liberally with winking
silver specs of light. Rising just above the trees, the full moon was a huge
golden-orange globe of light that lit everything beneath it like dawn.
The water rushing through the cavern burst forth
into nothingness and dropped below them to drop some fifteen to twenty feet to
form a round pool. The others had vanished when Erin opened her eyes, but she
saw them swimming toward the banks.
She had just enough time to utter the words,
“Jesse don’t you dar--,” when he leapt from the ledge toward the water below.
Her arms and legs tightened around him spasmodically. She sucked in a breath
to scream and strangled as they hit the water and plunged beneath the surface.
Releasing her grip on him, she pushed off of him and swam frantically upward.
By the time her head broke the surface of the water, she could do nothing but
cough and splutter, pounding the water around her desperately to stay afloat.
Two very human hands caught her around the waist,
hauling her against a hard chest. “Are you alright,
chère
?”
She couldn’t stop coughing. “I think I filled my
lungs with water,” she said in a hoarse, choked voice.
“Next time close your mouth. It works better.”
She would’ve slugged him if he hadn’t been
holding her from behind. She had to content herself with elbowing him in the
ribcage. He grunted, but she was fairly certain that was more to appease her
than because she’d actually managed to knock the breath out of him. The
resistance of the water was working against her.
Without another word he began towing her toward
the bank where the others had gathered to wait for them. The moment they saw
Jesse nearing the water’s edge, however, they took off once more. Three of the
pack split off and followed the bank of the stream. The others plunged into the
jungle headed southeast.
By the time Erin had managed to expel most of the
water from her lungs and drag in a decent breath of air, Jesse had shifted into
the form of a wolf once more. She would’ve far preferred to walk at this
point, but Guillume had suggested they should hurry and she had a feeling that
he was right. The Feds were sure to pull back to the island the moment they
realized they were taking the worst of the beating.
Without complaint, she climbed onto Jesse’s back
once more, clutched him tightly and prayed it wouldn’t take them long to reach
the shore. Guillume had said it was only about a mile from the fall.
The first fifteen or twenty minutes was rough
going as Jesse plowed through the undergrowth, bounding over some of the brush,
pressing through other areas. In time they landed upon a narrow trail and the
going was easier. As the trail began to take a more northerly turn, though,
Jesse left it, pressing through the thick jungle growth again.
Erin was exhausted just from the effort of
holding on while Jesse ran. By the time they finally emerged from the jungle
onto the beach she could barely cling to him. The tide was in and very little
beach was visible. Grateful that that much of the ordeal was over, Erin
slipped off of Jesse’s back and sprawled in the loose sand. She didn’t get the
chance to actually rest, however. The other Lycans had already retrieved the
dingy and pulled it into the water.
Jesse shifted from full wolf to manbeast, rising
up on two legs. “Get into the dingy,
chère
, and lie on the floor.”
Erin nodded. Pushing herself to her feet with an
effort, she followed Jesse across the narrow stretch of sand, waded water until
it was almost to her knees and yelped when Jesse yanked her off her feet and
deposited her in the dingy. Juan and the Lycans surrounded the boat and began
moving deeper. “You’re not getting in?” Erin whispered uneasily when they made
no move to do so.
“It’s not designed to hold so many. Don’t talk.
Sound carries on the wind.”
Erin fell silent, staring up at the stars and
trying not to think about the possibility of sharks. Lulled by the rocking of
the boat and the soft splash of water, Erin found some of the fear that had
gripped her since they’d fled the panther compound dissipating. As it did, a
sense of excitement began to grow in her. Soon they would have Joshua.
She couldn’t allow herself to think otherwise and
could not bank her rising excitement. She knew he was alive. She didn’t know
what they’d done to get the information out of Dr. Wagner, but she didn’t doubt
for a moment that it was true.
It flickered through her mind to wonder what
they’d done with the man, not that she particularly cared what happened to him
as long it was something bad. He might not have been able to stop the
research. He might not have been able to prevent anything they had done to her
and her baby, but the fact was he hadn’t tried. He had treated them all as if
they were of no more importance than lab rats.
When it seemed to her that enough time had passed
that they must be nearing the island and she’d grown bored with imagining what
it would be like to be reunited with her baby at last, Erin turned over
carefully and lifted her head just high enough to peer over the edge of the
boat.
She caught a brief glimpse of a rock looming
upward from the sea and then a hand landed on the top of her head and shoved
her flat again. Fuming silently, she lay still, but the resentment didn’t last
more than a second. Her heart was pounding with joy and excitement. Almost
there! Only a little while longer and they would have Joshua!
The sound of waves crashing against the shore
finally overshadowed the noise of lapping water around the boat. Erin tensed,
listening as it occurred to her belatedly to worry that they might be spotted.
That was why Jesse had made her lie down in the
boat and why the others had swum the distance, buoyed by the boat they guided
through the water, because Jesse knew there was still danger that they might be
spotted and come under fire. She felt like an idiot. She knew nothing about
war tactics, or soldiers, or security. From the sound of the battle at the
compound she’d assumed they’d thrown everything they had at them, but they
wouldn’t have done that. They might have taken most of the men and left only a
small group to guard the island, but they would have left armed men to guard
the facility.