Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (3 page)

The combination of being in an
unfamiliar city, the darkness that made visibility poor, nerves,
and the confusing layout of the streets together were enough to get
anyone lost, she thought with a mixture of fear and anger, turning
onto another street and spotting the landmark she’d been looking
for in the middle of the turn.

‘
Don’t panic!’ had become
a litany in her head and she wasn’t sure the internal pep talk was
doing her any good at all. She knew it wasn’t when she managed to
get the car turned around to head back to the street she’d turned
off of. Just as she stopped at the next traffic signal, the car
died.

“
Oh my god!” she muttered,
glancing frantically at the gauges to see what had happened. The
gas level indicator had hardly moved. She didn’t think that could
possibly be the problem but of everything it might’ve been, that
would’ve been the easiest to ‘fix’ and she would’ve felt worlds
better knowing she only had to find gasoline. There were several
red lights on, but she didn’t know if they meant anything besides
the car being dead. She hadn’t even managed to get the damned thing
out of the road!

Not that there seemed to be much
traffic on that particular road, but that was hardly reassuring
under the circumstances!

After glancing around uneasily and
seeing there was no ‘safe’ looking place to go for help or even
anybody that she might ask for help, she put the flashers on and
grabbed her purse, emptying it in the seat beside her. Her hand was
shaking when she grabbed her cell phone, but relief flooded her,
too.

It was premature. She saw as soon as
she flipped the phone open that it was dead.

Resisting the urge to beat the thing
to pieces and pitch it out the window, she tossed it back into her
purse and began grabbing the other items she’d dumped out and
shoving them in behind it, trying to decide what to do.

She’d just shoved the last of the
items into her purse when she heard a sound that made the hair on
the back of her neck stand on end.

Motorcycles.

With visions of scarred, pock-marked,
crazed drug addicts dancing in her head, she straightened slowly
and peered around. The headlights on the bikes behind her caught
her attention at once. She stared at them in horror as they seemed
to drive right up to her bumper and finally rolled her window down
just enough to stick her hand out and motion for them to go
around.

Instead, she heard the engines of the
motorcycles die.

“
Oh god!” Grabbing the
window knob, she rolled the window back up and checked her door
locks again. When she turned around from checking the passenger
door, there was a man’s face in her window.

She screamed. Actually, she sucked in
a sharp breath that bordered a scream and choked on her
saliva.

The man motioned for her to put the
window down.

She stared at him owl eyed. Blinking
after a moment, she glanced toward the bikes behind her car and saw
that several more men had climbed off of them—four altogether—she
thought.

When she met the gaze of the man at
her window again, she thought he looked disgusted more than angry.
She couldn’t tell much about him beyond the fact that he was a lot
bigger and scarier looking than she liked.

“
Pop the hood!”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He moved
around to the front of the car. As he did, his companions followed
him and she got a good look at the logo on their black leather
jackets—Hell Hounds.

She was certain it was the confusion
of sheer terror, but they looked about seven feet tall and about
four feet across the shoulders—except for the blond—who looked
about seven and a half feet tall and about three feet across the
shoulders.

She discovered when the men had
congregated at the front of her car that the man who’d almost
literally scared the piss out of her was leaning on the hood,
peering at her through the windshield. It was the look he gave her
that inspired her to reach down and jerk the lever that released
the hood lock, not the result of any decision made to trust them.
She hadn’t in fact had one thought cross her mind from the time
she’d spotted the first one at her car window beyond-–big and
scary.

The man beside him—who looked
amazingly similar both in height, build, and even his facial
features, unzipped his leather jacket and peeled it off as the
first one searched the underside of the hood for the release,
revealing a ‘wife beater’ t-shirt that was molded to an upper torso
and huge arms that clearly belonged to a bodybuilder.

She only caught a flash of an image of
the ‘god’ before the first man shoved the hood up, blocking her
view. Scooting down in the seat, she peered at the men illuminated
by the light under her hood. About all she could see was four jean
clad crotches but it was a hell of a view. Unless it was a trick of
light and shadows or the jeans themselves, they were sporting some
impressive packages.

She straightened abruptly when one of
the men straightened and looked at her.

“
Turn it off!”

She gaped at him. “It isn’t on! The
engine died.”

“
The battery will be dead,
too, if you don’t switch it off.”

“
Oh,” she muttered,
turning the key. She was tempted to try starting it again when it
occurred to her that she’d been too panicked to try, but she could
see that they were examining the hoses and belts with their
hands.

It still took an effort to move her
hand away from the key and sit back. She glanced around again when
she had, searching for threats and the possibility of salvation. A
battalion of cops would’ve been nice to see right about that time,
she thought unhappily. The only people she saw looked more
disreputable than the bikers.

Not that
t
hey
actually did
now that she’d had the chance to get a little better look at
them—look disreputable—except for the tattoos and the motorcycles
and the leather. All four looked clean—sort of clean shaven, as if
they’d at least shaved that morning. Their hair wasn’t stringy and
dirty and it seemed to her that they looked way too healthy for
people that did drugs.

Almost as soon as they’d settled to
examining her engine, all of them had stripped off the leather
jackets to reveal t-shirts stretched over bodies sculpted like she
hadn’t seen outside of a gym—or a movie screen. Between the
t-shirts and the snug fitting jeans she was having a very hard time
focusing on the ‘life threatening’ part of the
situation.

A car pulled up behind the bikes and
one of the men—one of the dark haired ones—stepped away from her
car to look at it and signal the driver to go around. Highlighted
in the car’s headlights, she had the chance to get her first really
good look at him and decided she had to add ‘not at all hard on the
eyes’ to her assessment. He wasn’t one of the pair that she’d
decided must be brothers, at least, if not twins.

She was focused on watching the play
of muscles in his arms and chest while he directed traffic that she
nearly jumped out of her skin when someone tapped on the passenger
window. When she’d managed to collect herself, she discovered it
was the same man who’d been at the driver’s window
before.

“
How long since you
changed the oil in this thing?”

She felt her jaw slacken. “I don’t
know. I can’t remember.”

His lips tightened. “I think we found
your problem. The engine overheated because it ran out of
oil.”

“
Oil?” she echoed. “It’s
out of oil? I put oil in just before I left home!”

“
It’s burning oil,
then?”

Laurie chewed her lip. Apparently, he
decided that was a yes. He shook his head at her. “Put it out of
gear. We’re going to push it out of the road. You’ll have to get a
mechanic to have a look at it.”

He was gone before she could object or
even fully digest what he was saying.

She was
stranded?

The blond slammed the hood down and
then struck the hood to get her attention. “We’re going to push you
in there,” he said, pointing to a driveway ahead of her, on the
other side of the traffic light.

She didn’t
want
to be pushed into a
dark parking lot!

She discovered she didn’t have any
options, however. She put the car in neutral as instructed, but
once the men got behind and began to push the car, she tried the
key in a desperate bid for freedom and discovered the starter
wouldn’t do anything but churn. She gave up after the second
attempt when she realized they were going to shove her into the
curb if she didn’t focus on guiding the car.

They pushed the car into the turn and
then, when she’d straightened the wheels, gave it a push toward a
parking space. Laurie guided it into the space, but her mind was
searching frantically for a solution to her very big
problem.

Maybe one of them had a cell phone,
she thought with an abrupt surge of hope?

The big, scary man appeared at her
window and tapped on it with his knuckles, making her jump again.
She discovered when she whipped her head around to look, however,
that she had a view of his hard belly and two very large, hands
coated with black grease. He wiped his hands on his jeans and
twisted, pulling a wallet from his back jeans pocket.

Wondering if he was going to
solicit—or offer to give her money to help her out—she stared at
the wallet as he opened it and pressed the ID to her
window.

“
Here’s my ID, ma’am. Can
you read it?” he asked, leaning down to look at her through the
window.

Disconcerted when he addressed her as
‘ma’am’, Laurie looked at the ID again. According to the ID, his
name was Lucien Terrell. It looked like a government ID of some
kind. “You’re a cop?” she asked doubtfully.

“
Not exactly, Ms. Stone.
We’re in … security, you might say. My pack … team and I are
private contractors but we work for the government—In this case the
DA hired us to check out a rumor and provide protection if needed
for a witness—you.”

Laurie missed pretty much everything
after he called her by name. “Wait! Wait! Run that by me
again?”

“
The DA ….”

“
The state DA?”

“
Yes, ma’am. If you’ll
just come with us, we’ll get you to your hotel and get you settled
in.”

Anger surged through Laurie, chasing
most of her lingering fear. “You’re trying to tell me the DA sent
you to collect me?”

“
Not exactly,
ma’am.”

“
If you ma’am me one more
time …! You scared the living hell out of me! And now you’re saying
….” She stopped abruptly, feeling a chill creep through her.
“Exactly how did you manage to stumble on me when I broke
down?”

Amusement flickered in his eyes but a
spark of anger, as well. “Like I said … Peoples sent us to check
out a rumor and keep an eye on you. We escorted you here … in a
manner of speaking. If you’ll get out, we’ll take you to your hotel
and answer any other questions you might have. I left my bike
standing in the street,” he reminded her.

Laurie was a long way from convinced.
She didn’t see that she had a lot of palatable options, though. She
could hope the ID he’d shown her was real and take her chances with
them, or she could take her chances with the strangers in the area
… and they looked a lot more disreputable than the
bikers.

Besides, it occurred to her that there
was nothing standing between them but a pathetic piece of window
glass. If he’d meant to do anything, wouldn’t he have attacked
already?

Still deeply distrustful and on edge,
Laurie unlocked the door. He opened it for her and she stepped out.
“You have a bag in the trunk?”

“
Uh … I brought a couple.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d be here.”

“
You want to pop the
trunk?”

Not really. Not that she had anything
to be embarrassed about!

When she didn’t move, he leaned into
the car, found the latch, and pulled it himself. Unfortunately for
Laurie’s already battered equilibrium, he had to rub all over her
to do it because she was still standing in the door—and it was a
rub, not a light brush. She was pretty sure she felt every hard,
bulging muscle in his chest graze her hers hard enough she knew he
had nipple rings, not just tattoos.

She looked down to confirm it when he
straightened and noticed his package looked a good bit bigger than
it had before. She sent a startled look in the direction of his
face, but he’d already turned away. She noticed he was scowling.
She also noticed the surreptitious adjustment he made just before
he rounded the end of the car.

Abruptly remembering she’d packed
everything she thought she might need for at least a week, she
darted toward the trunk when Lucien lifted the lid. He sent her a
look. “I see you brought everything.”

Resentment flickered through her. “I
didn’t know how long I might be here and I didn’t want to have to
go shopping if I’d left something!” she said irritably. “Or do
without. I was just going to say I can make do with the small one
for tonight.”