Magical Menages 1: Shifters' Captive (4 page)

The girl’s dark hair was braided tight, framing her small face. Her complexion was ash-gray. Sherrie could see her eyes moving behind the closed lids, watching the invisible dream world. Her breathing was shallow, her bird-chest rising and falling rapidly. An IV drip hung beside the bed, fluids running into the girl’s arm.

“Does she have a fever?” Sherrie started to move toward her, and Cox blocked her way.

“Brian!” John’s sharp bark made her jump. “Do you want her help or not? You’re the one who insisted we bring her here.”

The man backed up a pace to let Sherrie approach the bed.

“Her temperature’s been hovering around one hundred and two. Only a little high.” A woman’s voice came from the doorway. Sherrie glanced over her shoulder to see the younger woman from the kitchen.

“One hundred and one is normal for us,” Brian explained. “Our metabolism is different from humans.

That’s why we can never check into the emergency room when we’re injured. We tend our own sick and wounded.”

“How long has she been like this?” Sherrie asked, as if it would help her in making some kind of unqualified diagnosis.

“This is the tenth day. There’ve been a dozen other cases in the pack. The first took sick almost a month ago. He died last Saturday.”

Sherrie moved to the edge of the bed and took the girl’s still hand in hers. A jolt of pure energy shot through her, and she gasped. Images flashed in her mind so fast, jumbled and foreign, that she could hardly make sense of them.

Girl face-wolf face. Best friend. Playing dolls. Hunting. Night scents. Hunger. Prey. Pounce and
chase. Running, running, running. Gone.

Mother-Father. Warm, safe, home. Brother. Anger-yelling. Bike broken.

Stranger. Black-eyes scary. Danger. Running, running, running.

“Are you all right?” Walker grabbed her arm.

She let go of Liberty’s hand. “Yeah. Yes. She’s really hot is all. It surprised me.” What the hell had just happened? She’d never felt anything like the fragments of thought and memory pelting her like hail, and she knew without a doubt they weren’t her own.

The little girl lying under the flowered quilt moaned and shifted. Her lips moved and her eyes continued to move rapidly beneath her closed lids.

Mrs. Cox hurried over to the bed. “Did you feel something?”

“N-no. I’m sorry, but I’m no healer. There’s nothing I can do for her.” Sherrie wasn’t about to say she thought she’d tapped into the girl’s mind. She could barely fathom the unbelievable experience and sure as hell didn’t want to give false hope that she could solve anything for these people. Better to keep what had happened to herself.

“Please, will you lay your hands on her for a few minutes? Maybe your touch will wake her up. If Anna says there’s something special about you, it must be true.” Sherrie had never felt so useless in her life. She knew her touch couldn’t heal, but if it would help this woman feel better, she’d do it. Bracing herself for another influx of sensations, she clasped the child’s hand again.

Again she was walloped by thoughts and visions not her own. Filtered through a child’s mind, and a non-human child at that, the images reflected her good and bad experiences. She was mad at her brother for borrowing her bike. He was way too big to ride it. He’d broken it and Daddy hadn’t had time to fix it yet.

Suzanne’s bike was cooler anyway. Maybe Liberty could use this as an excuse to get a new one.

As Sherrie sifted through the girl’s consciousness, she skirted the memory of The Bad Man—a big, black cloud that overshadowed all other thoughts. But if there was a psychic component to the child’s illness, it was rooted there, so at last Sherrie pulled back the veil and glimpsed the face of evil.

He wasn’t human or shifter, but something else, a powerful entity which wanted even more power. He was siphoning off Liberty’s energy even now while keeping her imprisoned in unconsciousness. What The Bad Man was doing to her mind hurt, and she couldn’t tell her daddy so he could stop it.

Sherrie couldn’t stand the overwhelming feelings anymore. She broke contact, setting Liberty’s hand back on the bed and patting it gently, hoping no one noticed that her own hand trembled. She didn’t want to tell these people what she’d felt, at least not until she’d sorted through the experience herself. Perhaps later she’d tell John, but not the Coxes, not now when she scarcely had words to describe what had happened.

“I’m sorry. Like I said, I can’t help. I wish I could.” Why was this happening to her? She wasn’t part of their world. Their savior should come from among them.

Mrs. Cox nodded. “Thank you for trying.”

“There must be something or why would Anna have sent us for her?” Brian Cox glared at Sherrie as if she was holding back on purpose. Her cheeks burned.

“We’ll figure it out,” John said. “It might just take some time.”

“Time is something we can’t afford. Liberty is getting weaker every day.” Sherrie pressed her lips tight. She wasn’t good at keeping secrets. If she could reveal anything that would help the child, she’d tell them. But she needed time to sort it all out. The experience was too strange and surreal—much like the rest of this crazy day. And if she told anyone about her experience, it would be John, because Cox made her too nervous.

“You’ll stay for dinner.” Mrs. Cox offered her hand to Sherrie. “I’m Lydia.”

“Sherrie. Pleased to meet you.”

Dinner with the Cox family was awkward and uncomfortable. She found it hard to make small talk when their little girl struggled for life upstairs, and Sherrie had been kidnapped, not invited. It had been easier to question John about what it meant to be a shifter than to ask banal, non-intrusive questions about the Coxes’ lives. “What do you do for a living when you’re not a wolf?” and “Do you enjoy hunting little animals?” didn’t seem appropriate.

Their son R.J. and his friend Spud stared at her with curiosity for only a few minutes. Then they wolfed down their food with teenage unconcern for something not directly affecting their immediate interest, which was getting back to their video game.

Sherrie found herself talking faster and faster about her life, how she’d gone out to L.A. and ended up here in Colorado. Didn’t they always tell a victim to make herself more personal and therefore harder to kill? Not that she believed John would kill her any longer. She’d spent only one very bizarre day in his company and yet felt a strange connection that assured her he was safe to trust.

Brian Cox with his constant glare she wasn’t so sure about.

At last the meal was over, and they were free to go. Sherrie asked if she could help clean up, as if she was a proper guest and not a prisoner, but John said they should be leaving.

It was a relief to walk outdoors, without a blindfold this time, and get into the passenger seat of John’s Blazer.

“I thought you’d drive a more eco-friendly vehicle,” she said when he’d taken his place beside her.

“It takes something with a little more horsepower to make it up and down these mountain roads.” Sherrie stared out the window at the forest surrounding them. She imagined the people she’d met today in their wolf forms running through the wilderness as a hunting pack. Even though she’d seen John’s transformation with her own eyes and felt his heavy, furry body on top of hers, it was hard to envision.

“Something happened when you touched Liberty, didn’t it?” he said after several miles of silence.

She debated lying, but hated lying and sucked at it. “Yes. I saw… I’m not sure what. Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before.”

“Tell me.” His voice was both commanding and soothing, inviting her to unburden herself. Sherrie spilled everything; Liberty’s childish thoughts, the scary man and the way he was feeding off her energy while she lay unconscious.

“It was like I was inside her head. I could recall her memories and feel the sensations she’s felt.”

“A psychic connection. Strange. Tell me more about this man she saw.” Having him accept her explanation without hesitation made Sherrie feel comforted and confident. She closed her eyes and tried to remember.

“I didn’t get an impression of his physical appearance. It was more like his essence and that was like a black hole sucking up energy, Liberty’s and others.”

“How does he do it? How does he choose his victims and get to them? Does he have a physical form somewhere or does he exist only on an astral plane?”

“How the hell should I know?” she snapped. It had been a long, exhausting day. Darkness was closing in around them and she wanted nothing more than to curl up in her seat and sleep.

“All right. We’ll try to figure it out in the morning.” She appreciated that he backed off immediately and didn’t question why she hadn’t said anything to the Cox family.

When they arrived back at the cabin, John took a couple of sleeping bags from the back of the Blazer.

Sherrie was surprised at how quickly night had fallen on the mountain. She was used to the city where there was always the glow of streetlights. Here, the stars barely lit the darkness, but John led the way as surefooted as if he could see the path in the pitch black.

“Sit down,” he ordered when they got inside. She was glad to sink onto one of the hard chairs and watch him move around the cabin. He lit a lantern and spread one of the sleeping bags over the dirty futon mattress.

“Are you cold?” he asked. “I don’t think the chimney on this woodstove’s ever been cleaned, but I could start a fire.”

She shook her head. “No. I just want to sleep now. But first, I need to take care of business.” He escorted her outside and around to the back of the cabin then stood facing the other way while she peed. It was weird squatting in the dark, noisy with insects and strange rustlings in the undergrowth.

As she pulled up her underpants, she glanced at the broad back of her kidnapper, now ironically standing guard like a protector. How had her attitude toward him shifted so completely in a few hours? A lot of it had to do with seeing the state of that little girl and understanding these people had done what they felt they must to save her.

A loud rustling in the weeds made Sherrie shriek. It might be only a raccoon, but with images of wolves in her mind, she stumbled backward. She caught her heel on a rock or root and started to fall, arms pin wheeling to keep her balance.

Hard hands caught her. Walker hauled her upright.

“You all right?” His voice was near her ear, and she felt the vibration of it rumble through his chest into her back. His body was solid and warm behind her. Tangible energy crackled between them, and he continued to hold her after she’d regained her balance.

“Yeah. Good,” she muttered and leaned into him. Lust pulsed through her with every heartbeat. She wanted him with a ferocious desire that was way outside the realm of normal. Her tiredness was gone.

Every cell in her body vibrated with energy.

Like a marionette she turned on invisible strings to face him, pressed her hands against his chest and lifted her face. She couldn’t see his features in the dark, just the gleam of his eyes and the dark silhouette of his head against the starry sky. But she heard the intake of his breath, rough and ragged, before his mouth covered hers in a long, breath-stealing kiss.

Wrong. So wrong,
she thought, but her body insisted nothing had ever felt so right. She gripped his shirt front, remembering how the hard body underneath had looked naked. She wanted to feel his bare skin beneath her palms.

He pulled her tight against him, hands cupping her rear and lifting her nearly off her feet as he kissed her harder and deeper. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and his erection pressed into her belly, solid and thick.

He wants me. He wants me
, her heart chanted joyously even while her mind scoffed,
He’s male. Of
course he does
.

Arms like steel bands bound her to him and then he did lift her off her feet, sweeping her up and carrying her toward the cabin. Sherrie wrapped an arm around his neck and rested against his chest. In the midst of this outrageous day and with the very person who’d kidnapped her, she felt more secure and protected than she’d ever felt in her life.

John turned the latch and kicked open the door hard enough that it bounced off the wall. He strode across the floor and laid her down on the futon. A musty smell permeated the protective layer of the sleeping bag, but Sherrie didn’t care. She wouldn’t have minded if he’d ripped her clothes off and taken her outdoors on the bare ground.

She unbuttoned her ugly polyester uniform and wiggled out of the dress, while kicking her flat-soled shoes off her feet. In the orange lantern-glow, the golden flecks in John’s eyes glittered as he gazed at her body clad only in bra and panties. He sat beside her on the bed, his hip against hers, one leg on the floor, and traced a finger along the scalloped edge of her low-cut bra. Her breasts swelled and her nipples tightened at his light touch. It was good, but she didn’t want him to be careful and take his time with her, not now.

Sherrie thrust her chest toward him and whined, a needy little sound that made his hooded gaze grow even darker. A hungry growl rumbled from his throat, and her skin prickled at the primitive sound. What insanity was she getting herself into? Could he be aroused without unleashing his inner beast?

But he didn’t tear off her underwear with gnashing teeth like she’d pictured. He reached beneath her to unhook her bra and take it down her arms then grasped the flimsy bikini panties and slid them down her legs. She lay nude and trembling on the lumpy mattress and watched while he stripped off his own clothes, revealing his lean, taut body once more.

Her fingers clenched in the sleeping bag, bunching the material, and her hips lifted involuntarily, she wanted him inside her so badly. It was almost as if she was drugged, helpless to resist the onslaught of powerful lust. She’d always been a sensual woman with a healthy enjoyment of sex, but this was beyond normal desire. All her synapses felt fried with an overload of sensation, and absolutely nothing mattered but getting that big, hard cock inside her now!