My Heart Laid Bear (Blue Moon Junction) (10 page)

Clover ran her fingers through her hair, letting out a groan of frustration. “It’s not your fault. Is Autumn back yet?”

“No. Is everything all right? Do we need to call anyone?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Clover was reeling. Should she call up and report a kidnapping? Sapphire was their sister; the police might not even take it seriously. All she’d done was come and pick them up for lunch. Without permission, granted, but the police were hardly going to see that as an emergency.

Should she call Sam? Maybe he could find them by using Sapphire’s cell phone? Did she even have a right to call Sam after breaking up with him? Screw it, this was her family. And Sam would understand the importance of family. And he’d told her that she should stay away from Sapphire – there must be a reason.

“Oh, there’s Autumn!” Imogen said, pointing out the window.

Clover rushed outside as Autumn trotted up, still in coyote form. Autumn shifted and picked up the folded-up clothes she’d left on the front porch.

“Where were you? I was getting really worried.” Clover’s voice was shaking. Okay, at least she knew where one of her siblings was.

“I just wanted some time alone. What’s wrong? Why are you freaking out?” Autumn bent to fasten her sandals.

“Sapphire just came by and picked up the kids while I was out. She’s up to something. She brought laptops and cell phones this morning, and tried to give them to you and the kids, but I kicked her out of here because I knew she must have stolen them. She doesn’t have that kind of money. So while I was gone, she came by, lied to them, told them I’d changed my mind, and Twilight just texted me and said they’d be back after lunch. And now nobody’s answering. ”

Autumn was staring at her intently, her eyes wide with alarm.

“I’ll call Sapphire,” she said abruptly, and pulled her cell phone from her pocket.

“I just tried. It went to voicemail,” Clover said, but Autumn was already punching in the number. Imogen was standing in the doorway, looking worried.

“Hello?” Clover could hear Sapphire’s voice on the other end.

“Clover says you’re not allowed to take the kids out to lunch.  Clover and I need to come meet you immediately. Give us a place to meet up, or Clover says she’s going to call the cops and report you for kidnapping.” Autumn was frowning as she spoke, clenching her free hand into a fist.

“I’ll talk to her,” Clover protested. “Give me the phone.”

“Geez, uptight bitch, much?” Clover could hear Sapphire’s snarky voice on the other end of the line. “Fine. You guys can come meet me at the entrance to the Groveland Quarry. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. No need to get her big fat panties in a bunch.”

“Let’s go.” Autumn was already heading for Clover’s car.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Clover said.

“Yes, I do.” Autumn’s voice was grim.

“She has lost her freaking mind,” Clover groused as they pulled out of the parking lot. “I am going to get a restraining order against her. I’m not kidding. I don’t know what’s come over her these days, but this is insane.”

Autumn shrugged and stared straight ahead without talking as they quickly headed down the rural road that led to the quarry.

They were only a few minutes away when a car shot out of a small dirt crossroad and pulled straight across the road in front of them, blocking them. Then a second car pulled out and stopped behind the first one.

Clover slammed on the brakes and started to back up – but Autumn was opening the door.

“Autumn, what are you doing?” she cried, stopping the car. Autumn leaped out.

“Get back here!” Clover yelled, climbing out of the car.

Men began climbing out of the other car. Sapphire was with them, and her brother and sisters weren’t with her.

The men were wearing jackets with the Skullriders emblem on them.

Clover ran after Autumn as she jogged over to Sapphire. “Get back here! Stop!” she cried, panicked.

“Where are they?” Autumn demanded of Sapphire. “I’m here. You don’t need them, you need me. Bring them back, or I won’t go with you.”

“Like you have a choice.”Sapphire’s face twisted into a sneer as the five men with her crowded around them, uncomfortably close. Several of them were bear shifters. Too many for Clover to fight.

“What the hell is going on here?” Clover was so angry she was shaking.

“It doesn’t matter if you kidnap me.  If you don’t bring them back here and let Clover take them, I’m not telling you anything,” Autumn said. Her voice had a quaver in it.

“Oh, you’ll talk,” one of the Skullriders snarled, his eyes glowing amber.

“Come on, Autumn, just make it easy on everybody. Tell us where it is, and everybody gets to go home,” Sapphire said.

“Where what is?” Clover’s voice went low and deadly quiet.

“The crop of Somniatus.” Autumn’s face was a mask of misery.

“You were growing Somniatus?” Clover felt as if she’d collapse. This was a serious crime. Autumn could be stuck in juvie and then go straight to adult prison when she was eighteen.

“I didn’t mean to!” Autumn cried. “Mom and Dad called me up the day they went on the run and told me there was a bag of seeds hidden in their house that was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I had to get it and bring it to them. I went and got the bag and threw all the stuff away in the woods. The wind scattered it everywhere. I thought I did the right thing. I called up Mom and Dad and told them what I’d done, and I thought they’d just leave us with you and never come back.”

“Yeah, what our little genius here didn’t realize is that Somniatus will latch on to anything and grow. All it needs is sunlight.” Sapphire looked amused. “By now, all of those seeds will be a fully ripened crop.”

“That’s why you were coming around trying to sweet-talk her,” Clover said with venom. “Trying to find out where the crop is. No wonder she didn’t want anything to do with you.”

“All she had to do was tell me where it was, and I’d have left you guys alone forever. But no, she has to be all noble.”

“You were trying to scam Jeffrey and find out where a drug crop is all at the same time?” Clover’s mind was reeling. Sapphire was dead to her now; their parents had warped her mind and crushed whatever chance she’d had of turning into a decent human being.

“What can I say? You’re not the only over-achiever in the family. I work all the angles, and something’s bound to come through for me.” Sapphire shrugged indifferently. Clover wanted to grab her and choke her. She was playing with people’s lives here, as casually as if she was moving monopoly pieces.

“And you gave your own brother and sisters to a gang of bikers so you could try to pressure Autumn into talking.”

“Oh, there’s no try. I’m pretty sure that I’ll succeed.” Sapphire glanced at one of the Skullriders. “Autumn comes with me. We’re headed to North Carolina. As soon as we verify exactly where the crop is, you can let the rest of them go,” she said to him.

“No! Let them go now! You don’t need them!” Autumn cried as Sapphire grabbed her by the hand and started dragging her towards the car.

It was hopeless, but Clover shifted anyway and lunged at Sapphire.  Her fur burst through her skin and her fangs snapped, aiming for Sapphire’s throat. Autumn shifted too, into coyote form. She could easily have run off, but she stayed behind, biting and snapping at the Skullriders as they shifted into bear form and piled on top of Clover.

Clover was buried under a mountain of bears, pinned down and helpless.  She heard Autumn’s yelps and howls, then she heard a door slam, then she felt a blow to the side of the head that sent an explosion of pain through her whole body.

And then there was nothing.

* * *

“She isn’t dead. She’s breathing. See?” She was lying on a cold floor. She could hear voices above her. How long had she been out?

“She’s moving. Clover? Please wake up. Clover?” It was Moonlight, and her voice was choked with sobs.

She felt around with her hands and opened her eyes. The room swam into focus. She was lying on her side on a cracked, peeling linoleum floor. She smelled sour rotting food and heard the buzzing of flies.

“I’m up,” she mumbled.

She heard Lennon’s voice in her ear. “Keep your voice down. There’s a guard outside our door. We’re in some mobile home out in the middle of nowhere.”

“How long have I been here?” she whispered hoarsely.

“You just got here a few minutes ago.”

She sat up, rubbing the sore spot on the side of her head. “How many of them are there?”

“Like, four or five of them.”

Clover blinked. The room was dimly lit; the lights were all turned off and the windows shuttered. She’d been dumped on the floor of the mobile home’s kitchen.

“Is Sam going to find us?” Twilight asked hopefully.

“He doesn’t have any reason to be looking for us, so we can’t assume that he will. If we get a chance to escape, we have to take it.  If I say to turn, you all have to shift at once. And run for it. Do not stay behind to help me, do not look back. Do you hear me?”

“I’m not leaving you,” Moonlight growled.

“No way,” Lennon shook his head.

Clover cursed quietly. They wouldn’t leave her, no matter what she said. She knew it. And they were no match for four or five adult male bear shifters. How were they going to get out of this? She couldn’t think the worst. She couldn’t give up, not with her family’s lives at stake.

“Have you looked for weapons?” she asked in a low voice.

“Of course.  There’s no guns and no silverware, not that knives would really help.” Lennon glanced around. “The electricity is off. No phone anywhere. And I can hear guys on both sides of the trailer.”

* * *

The car jolted over the road, and Autumn was thrown against the Skullrider bear shifter who was sitting next to her. He smelled bad and his lanky shoulder-length hair was greasy. Sapphire sat up front next to another bear shifter, ignoring Autumn.

Three bears against one coyote.

They were headed to the airport to fly to North Carolina. Sapphire had made it very clear that if Autumn attempted to alert anyone that anything was wrong, her brother and sisters would suffer for it.

Autumn had told them that she couldn’t describe where she’d thrown away the seeds because it was so deep in the woods, but she knew how to find it. She’d been lying to buy time; it seemed to have worked so far.

The plan was to meet her mother and father at the airport, then they’d all head through the woods and get the crop.

Sapphire even called her parents and held the phone up to Autumn’s ear.

“Now, Autumn, just cooperate with your sister and everything will be fine,” her mother said. “Your father and I are doing this for the family. We’ll have enough money that we never have to work again. We can live anywhere we want. How does California sound? Or Mexico? We’ll let you choose, how’s that? Won’t that be fun? Anywhere you want! And we’ll all have new names, and you can pick those too!”

Autumn felt nauseated by her mother’s sweet tone. She was sick of people trying to kiss up to her when they wanted something.  “You’re actually okay with your children being kidnapped and held captive by a biker gang to force me to talk?” She felt something stirring inside her, something dark and ugly.  She’d felt it for weeks and weeks now, rippling under the surface, ever since her parents had tried to involve her in their drug-dealing scheme.

“Autumn, you have to realize this is your fault. If you’d just told us where you threw the seeds, none of this would ever have happened.” That was her father’s voice in the background. “Sapphire is not going to let anything happen to your brother and sisters. Everyone will be fine.”

“You think Sapphire has any control over an entire biker gang?” Autumn screamed into the phone. “You stupid bastard! Rot in hell!”

Sapphire hung up and cuffed her on the head.

“Don’t you dare talk to our parents with such disrespect,” she growled at her.

Now they were riding in silence, and Autumn could feel fur rippling under her skin. Her bones shifted, aching to re-form themselves. It felt different from usual. Something had changed. Something was wrong.

“I gotta take a piss,” the biker sitting next to her growled. “Pull over.”

They pulled over to the side of the road and he slid out. Autumn quickly slid out too.

“Hey!” Sapphire yelled at her.

“Stretching my legs,” Autumn said in an indifferent tone.

The biker walked off into the tall grass, headed for the treeline. The driver climbed out too.

“She’s not going anywhere, if she wants to see her family again in one piece,” the driver said to Sapphire.

The dark, angry thing rumbled inside Autumn and begged to be set free. She closed her eyes and thought about what Clover looked like when she shifted. The enormous bear, towering, swiping with her paws, claws carved like cruel daggers…

She opened her eyes again. Sapphire had climbed out of the car and was walking towards her with long, angry strides.

“I know you’re pretty stupid, but exactly how stupid are you?” Autumn said to Sapphire. “They’ll kill every last one of us as soon as I show them where the crop is. They won’t leave us behind as witnesses.”

“No, they won’t. Clover won’t rat them out, so they’d have no reason to harm them.” Sapphire didn’t look convinced as she said that.

“You expect all four of them to keep their mouths shut? You think that all these dirtbags are going to risk their lives and their freedom in the hopes that Clover won’t talk? And Imogen will know that something is wrong and she’ll have called the cops by now. We were supposed to be back ages ago. You just handed your entire family over to be slaughtered. Probably Mom and Dad too; why should these guys share? And why should they share with you, for that matter?”

Sapphire’s scowl wavered and she glanced over at the Skullrider standing next to her.

“How do I know you won’t kill my parents and me and take everything for yourselves?” she asked. No concern about her siblings, Autumn noted with disgust.

His answer was a vicious punch to the head, which laid Sapphire out flat.

Now it was only two bears she had to deal with, Autumn thought as the dark anger inside her got harder and harder to control.

The Skullrider looked at her. “You’re going to take us to the crop. Your family can die quick, with a bullet through the head, or they can die slow. We can force them to shift and then skin them alive while you watch.”

That did it. Autumn exploded. Fur burst through her skin and her bones lengthened. Instead of dropping to all fours, she shot up in height.  Her ears were rounded instead of pointed, and her claws curved from her massive paws, long and cruel.  Her latent bear, from their mother’s side of the family, came roaring out, and her bear was mad as hell.

She towered over the shifter, who was gaping up at her, so shocked that he hadn’t even shifted yet. Autumn lunged forward and with one mighty swipe of her claws ripped his throat open, leaving him gurgling and drowning in his own blood. He staggered a few steps and then pitched forward onto his face.

Autumn quickly shifted back into human form.

She glanced over into the woods; the other shifter was emerging from the treeline, zipping up his pants. He ran over, gaping at the dead bear and at Sapphire lying facedown in the dirt and groaning.

“They got in a fight!” Autumn cried. “I think she killed him!  What should we do? Is she dead?”

The bear swore explosively, running over to kneel down next to Sapphire. “Hey, wake up, you stupid bitch!” he yelled at her, shaking her hard. “Wake up so I can kill you!” Sapphire moaned, her eyelids fluttering.

Autumn shifted back into bear form swiftly and silently, and before he could move, she’d ripped open his neck as well. He toppled over to the ground with a heavy thud, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he was still. The air reeked with the coppery scent of blood.

She stood there for a few seconds, breathing hard. She’d killed two shifters. She’d killed them.

Law of the jungle,
she thought fiercely.
They were going to hurt my family.
She should have just told Clover about that crop weeks ago, but she hadn’t wanted to see her mother and father go to jail.  She’d just never dreamed that her parents would stoop this low to get what they wanted.  Her mistake.

This was on her; she had to make things right again.

She went over to the front of the car and reached in to find the lever next to the car door. She found it, popped the trunk open, and dragged Sapphire over there. She stuffed her in the trunk and then climbed behind the wheel. She’d borrowed a few cars in her time, joyriding them and putting them back where she’d found them. She wouldn’t even have to hotwire this one; the keys were dangling in the ignition.

She climbed behind the wheel and roared off, pressing her foot hard on the accelerator. She was naked, but she wasn’t going to take the time to try to find clothing. 
Don’t let it be too late, don’t let it be too late
, she prayed to herself.