Saving Autumn (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-five

BLAKE RAN, HIS arms and legs pumping, toward the open door of the abandoned lodge. Where initially his fears for Autumn had filled his mind, now his concern was for his sister. His wolf guide sent images of her kneeling on the floor, a hunched form, her forehead against the wood, arms over her head. The wolf prowled around her, its hackles raised, a low growl emitting from deep in its barrel chest. The animal poured emotions and images into Blake, and all of them shouted the same thing—wrong!

Something had happened to Tala, and the wolf didn’t like it one bit. The scent of her was different, like catching the waft of meat that hadn’t quite gone off, but was just on the cusp of turning.

And that wasn’t all. The bodies of shifters surrounded
Tala, blood smeared the wooden floorboards. Blake realized he recognized a couple of them—Enyeto and Kasa! Damn it! What happened here?

He raced through the open doorway and skidded to a halt. Carnage surrounded him. The muffled groans of the injured filled his ears, the scent of blood assaulting his sensitive nose. He dropped to his knees beside
Tala.

“
Tala? What the hell happened?” The air stank of gunpowder, burned flesh where bullets had entered bodies. But Tala was different. Whatever was wrong with his sister, she was hurt in a way different from the others.

He reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, but the moment his fingers made contact, he recoiled. Her shoulder bulged outward, growing huge beneath his hand before retracting again.

The others arrived, blocking out the small amount of moonlight in the open door.

The curve of her back lifted in an arch, her spine elongating and twisting, far bigger than should have been possible for a human. A bone cracked, skin splitting.

Tala’s body shook, her shoulders heaving as if she emitted great sobs, though he heard nothing. The realization of what she might have done came to him and he forced himself to reach out again to her slowly shifting body. When he shifted, it happened in minutes. The change was agony, but at least it was over quickly. His sister’s shift appeared to be in slow motion and he couldn’t even imagine the sort of pain she was in.

“Oh,
Tala. What have you done?”             

She lifted her head slightly and turned her face toward him. “It worked,” she said, half laughing, half crying. “I never knew this much of the world existed.”

He understood what she meant. Having a spirit guide opened up a person’s mind to a new level. She was seeing through the eyes of her spirit guide as well now, or at least had been able to before she’d started to shift.

Her body bucked and she let out a scream like a rabbit caught in a trap. Her right arm shot out, fingers stretched. The bones began to snap and twist, joints forming where there had been
none before. The fingers stretched, becoming longer, some merging. Black spikes appeared from her toes and began to grow, creating claws. Her legs grew thinner, twig-like.

But then it all started to retract again. Returning back to human form.

“It’s fighting inside my head,” she cried.

“What’s happening to her?” asked Mia in alarm.

“She’s forced the shift,” he said, looking up at the small, dark-haired woman who was Autumn’s best friend. “She’s used Autumn’s blood to make herself a shifter.”

“Autumn!” said Mia, staring around to try to find her friend in the carnage. “Have you seen her?”

“They took her,” Tala managed to say. “The men who did this—” She let out another shriek of pain as the shift restarted.

Peter ran to one of the injured people, Mia following suit. Toby just stood in the doorway, staring at the horror, his face drained of blood. Candles flickered around the outskirts of the main room, lighting the blood and the hurt, dead, and dying faces like some kind of ritualistic Satan worship.

“She was in the cellar,” Tala said, letting out a whimper as something inside her snapped and reformed. “We put her—” But her scream cut off her words and her neck jerked, snapping to the side at an angle it should never have been at. She froze in horror. Her neck snapped back and then forward again in sharp, jerky movements she had no control over.

“The cellar.” Blake looked up at Mia. “Where’s the cellar?

A threadbare rug covered the middle of the floor. “There,” said Tala, gasping. “The entrance is under the rug.”

Peter sat, his hands covering the bullet wound in the chest of a big man with tattoos up his neck. He gave his head a slight shake to say he couldn’t move. Mia got up and ran to the rug, pulling it back. The material had covered a big metal slab. She bent and took hold of the metal ring in its center and yanked with both hands. The cover didn’t budge.

“Blake, I need your help.”

Even though
Tala had said Autumn was already gone, it seemed important he knew where she’d been in the moments before. He left his sister and stood at Mia’s side, took hold of the ring and heaved with all his strength. His muscles strained, the veins on his neck popping. The metal slab shifted and finally pulled free, and he threw it back on its hinges.

Someone was down there—a shape sprawled on the ground in the darkness. A couple of dying candles sputtered their last light. Despite
Tala having already told him Autumn was gone, he couldn’t help hoping …

Steps ran down into the cellar. He’d already gotten half way down before he realized there was no way the figure was Autumn. And not only that, he knew who it was.

Chogan!

Why had he not noticed the absence of his cousin before? He’d been too preoccupied with Autumn missing and the change
Tala was going through. Fresh anger surged through him. What had Chogan been doing down here with Autumn? Why hadn’t he done more to protect her?

Why hadn’t you done more yourself?
A little voice whispered in his head.
If you’d manned up and not let things get to you so easily, you would have been the one at her side, not Chogan.

Blood spilled from the wound on his cousin’s forehead, though it had already begun to clot. Chogan groaned and lifted a hand to the gash. Blake stomped down the remaining steps toward him. He came to a halt at his cousin’s head.

“Christ, that hurts,” Chogan groaned.

“Tell me what you’ve done with Autumn or I’ll hurt you worse.”

He groaned again and rolled to his side before getting to his knees. “I didn’t do anything with Autumn,” he said, lifting his head. “It was your goddamned sister, Tala, who took her.”

“
Tala’s upstairs, you moron.”

“She took Autumn the first time and brought her here. I had nothing to do with it. It was
your
people who took her from here—military men.” He coughed and shook his head, wincing at the pain. “You only just missed them. They can’t have gotten far. We need to go after them.”

“Don’t be stupid. You’re not going anywhere.”

Chogan rose to his feet, unsteadily at first, but quickly regaining his equilibrium. “We’ve both let her down, Cuz. I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to do so again.”

Blake’s teeth gritted. “It was your fault I let her down!”

“Bullshit. You had her, cousin! You had the girl who has the power to change the world. And not only that, she happens to be smart and beautiful and sexy and just about everything a man could ask for in a woman, and you threw it all away over someone who died ten years ago!”

Blake stared at him and realization dawned. “You’ve got a thing for Autumn.” It wasn’t a question.

Chogan smirked. “I’m a hot-blooded male, aren’t I? Who wouldn’t have a thing for her? And anyway, what do you care? You’ve already told her that you don’t think the two of you have a future.”

“Not for you to step in and take my place,” he growled.

Chogan shook his head in bemusement. “What have I ever done to you, Cuz? Okay, you thought Shian and I were seeing each other, but you know now that was wrong, you’d just jumped to conclusions. I stayed with your father and sister, saw them through hard times when you weren’t around. So what is it I’ve done to make you hate me so much?”

“So what if you weren’t seeing
Shian? You still betrayed me. You lied to me for years!”

Chogan pointed a finger. “No, that’s where you are wrong. I never lied to you. I simply never told you her secret.”

“That’s just as bad! Lying by omission.”

“She made me promise not to tell you. Right before she died, she made me promise. What was I supposed to do? Break that promise?”

“Her family knew. The only one in the dark was me.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Shit happens.”

Blake’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Shit happens? Is that the best you can say? I lost the girl I’d thought I would end up marrying and the baby we could have had together, and all you can say is ‘shit happens?’”

“It was years ago, Blake. If you’d stuck around, perhaps we would have told you the whole truth in the end, but you didn’t.” Chogan took a deep breath and slowly let it out through his nostrils. “Let it go. Move on.”

“But not with Autumn?”

Chogan challenged his stare. “I guess that’s her choice.”

“And you think she’s going to choose you?”

“She kissed me.”

Blake felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach. No, she wouldn’t do that. Chogan was behind this, just as always. “You kissed her, more like!”

Chogan shook his head. “No,
Cuz. You’re wrong. All those years ago, you were wrong about Shian and me, and you’re wrong about Autumn too. You might have pushed her away, but she had feelings for me before that.”

Blake barked a laugh. “You think she has feelings for you? You’re insane.”

“No, you’re the one who is insane for pushing her away.” He shook his head. “I told myself she deserved you, that you were the better man. But I was wrong. If you were the better man, you’d have done everything in your power to protect her with every inch of your body and soul. Instead, you’re the one who has hurt her.”

“Yeah, right. What do you think all your antics did to her? If it wasn’t for you, those psychopaths would never have even known of her existence. You talk about not hurting her, but you almost got her killed.”

Chogan glowered. “I hate myself for that. But I will never let it happen again. From now on, I will do everything I can to take care of her.”

A female voice came from behind them, yelling down the cellar hole. “Hey, when you two have finished having your little heart-to-heart, you fancy getting your asses back up here so we can figure out what to do about getting Autumn back?”

The two men glared at each other. Chogan got to his feet. “I’ll get her back if it kills me.”

“But you’re hurt.” Instinctively, Blake reached out. Even though he wanted to punch Chogan himself right now, he was still the cousin he’d grown up with.

“It’s fine,” he said, shrugging him off. “Just a flesh wound, and anyway, I heal quickly.”

He was right. The head wound had already started to heal. Blake knew he’d never be able to get Chogan to do anything other than what he wanted anyway. What was the point in even wasting his breath?

“Fine, but we need to move. If you say they only left ten minutes ago, then we can still catch them. They must be on foot because we couldn’t get a vehicle through here, the trees are all grown over and there’s no landing place for a chopper.”

“They came by foot and I never heard any signs of a chopper nearby.”

“If we go by wolf, we’re bound to catch them.”

Without any more discussion, Blake turned and ran back up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Chogan followed, picking up speed the more he moved. They reentered the main room and Blake watched his cousin’s reaction as he took in the sight of the injured and dead shifters, and
Tala as well. For the moment, she seemed to have halted her shift, and lay panting on the floor. From Chogan’s expression, Blake guessed that he must have known what she had done.

“Why did you let her take Autumn’s blood?” Blake said.

“It wasn’t like I had any choice in the matter.” He glanced around at the people remaining. “And I did try to stop her, but she had me severely outnumbered. Besides, she’s a grown woman. She makes her own choices.”

Mia put her hand on her hips. “Will you two stop standing around chatting like we’re at some freakish tea party? We need to do something!”

“They can’t have gone far,” said Blake. “We need to go after the people who took her.”

The man Peter had been nursing sat up, pushing Peter away. “I’m going too. Those sons of bitches shot me.”

Chogan glared at him. “Don’t be an idiot, Rhys.”

“The bullet passed right through and I’m healing already. Look.” The tattooed man showed them where the flesh had already started to knit. “I’m strong and I’m fast.”

“The more of us there are, the better,” Blake said.

“I don’t trust him,” Chogan said with a scowl. “He’s one of the traitors who put me in that hole.”

Mia snapped, “You’re going to have to sort out your differences after we get Autumn back.”