Saving Autumn (19 page)

“What about
Tala?” asked Blake. He hated the sight of his twisted sister, the battle that was of her own making going on inside her body.

“I’ll stay with her,” said Mia. “You guys go and get my best friend back.”

Peter glanced anxiously at Tala, still writhing. “You don’t know what’ll happen to her. She might hurt you.”

“I’ll be fine. Getting Autumn back is more important.”

“I don’t know, Mia,” he said. “Perhaps Toby can stay as well?”

“No, you need me, too,” interjected the boy. “I can get ahead of them and I’m designed to hunt in the dark, but I can’t shift in here.”

“Okay,” said Blake. “We’re all going. And we’re going as our guides.”

MIA WATCHED THE men and the teenage boy leave the cabin.

She was curious, and Blake’s sister would be fine for a few minutes. It wasn’t as though she could actually do anything to help the other girl. Besides, Tala had brought this upon herself.

Hurrying to the open doorway, she stopped to watch the four men and the boy. She felt awkward as Toby stripped, not wanting to feel like some kind of pervert, focusing her attention, for the moment anyway, on the more familiar lines of Peter’s lean body. It was a sight she struggled to tear her eyes from, her heart filling with a mixture of emotions she could barely hold on to. She’d have sworn she could actually feel the organ swelling in her chest. Amazement, fascination, lust, and love … could it be love as well? He glanced over his shoulder at her, offering her one last reassuring smile before falling forward onto all four. His skin began to prickle with fur, golden in the moonlight. He face reshaped, his hind legs lengthening. A tail emerged from just below the dimples between his buttocks and lower back. The fur thickened, becoming sleek and glossy. Rounded ears unfurled from the top of his head.

Peter turned to her, wisdom in his coal-ringed amber eyes. He blinked slowly before he sprang away, joining the two wolves and tiger at his side.

She turned her attention to Toby. The boy no longer looked much like a boy. Plush, honey-brown fur covered his torso. His arms were outstretched, but they no longer looked much like arms either. His skin had turned black and almost translucent. Beneath the paper-thin skin, his bones began to elongate, growing long and thin. His palms became part of the arm bone—or perhaps it was the arm that became the hand—and the fingers, too, began to grow, lengthening and spreading apart, becoming bone-like. The boy’s head curved, his nose flattening against his face. His ears grew, becoming huge and pointed, rising high above where his now furry head stopped. A row of spiked teeth filled his mouth. His feet grew curled and clawed.

Mia stared.

Toby lifted his strangely deformed arms into the air and swiped them down. Like a giant banner being unrolled, thin, black skin filled the gaps between the spread finger bones.

Wings.

Mia found herself staring at monstrously-sized bat, even bigger than the boy had been. The bat’s body was at least the size of a full-grown man, the wing span stretching multiple times that size. The bat beat its wings and the wind its motion created swept against her face. The creature lifted into the sky, emitting a high pitched shriek Mia’s human ears only just picked up. It lifted between the trees, silent and swift. The two wolves and the big cats also paused to take in the sight of the giant bat.

No wonder the boy had left his apartment in the middle of the night to go to the woods near his home. Being nocturnal, it must have been the only place the creature would have felt at home. This was its natural habitat. This place … at night. She only hoped that advantage would help bring back her friend.

Chapter Twenty-six

THE MAN HAD his arm wrapped around Autumn’s throat, dragging her backward through the forest. The arm was thick with muscle and fearsomely strong, but that didn’t stop her from fighting against it. She battered his forearm with her fists and tried to get her footing so she could kick back and catch him in the shins.

“Let go of me, you son of a bitch,” she croaked. “I’m capable of walking!”

The man snorted. “And have you run off as soon as you think our attention might have wavered? I don’t think so.”

“There are six of you and one of me. Do you really think I can just slip away?”

“You’ve slipped away before,” he growled. “I’m not taking any chances.”

She couldn’t decide which was worse—the situation with
Tala, or what was occurring now. The phrase about fires and frying pans flashed into her mind. These people were clearly powerful and she doubted any chance of escape. Whatever they wanted to do with her, they would, and they’d proven their ruthlessness by the shooting at the cabin. At least in the cabin, with Chogan at her side, she’d had some support, though the helplessness she’d experienced earlier in the day had been even more terrifying than what she was going through now. The unknown had terrified her. In this situation, she understood the evil she faced—or the people behind it anyway. She didn’t doubt these guys were military. The way they held themselves reminded her of Blake, and the thought filled her with a combination of guilt and longing. But she’d kissed Chogan; did that mean there was no going back for her and Blake?

Autumn worried about Chogan and the other injured shifters they’d left behind, despite the part they played in her abduction. As she’d been dragged out of the door, some had been moaning in pain, others, more worryingly, had been silent. She’d managed to catch a glance of
Tala, but the woman had been on her knees, her face pressed against the wooden floor. She didn’t think Blake’s sister had been shot, but to say she’d not looked well would have been a huge understatement. The quick glance she’d gotten had revealed Tala’s face to be pointed and blackened as if covered in a shiny mold. Her arms had been elongated and twisted like broken wings, flapping uselessly at her sides. Spikes, like dark quills, protruded from the skin left bare, blood seeping from the wounds.

My blood did that,
Autumn reminded herself. There had been no need for laboratories and expensive scientific equipment. Tala had been right, though she was now suffering the consequences. Something had changed when she had injected herself—Autumn had both seen and felt it—but did that mean Tala was like the others now? She couldn’t say for sure. Until Tala’s shift completed, if it ever did, she wouldn’t be able to confirm that the injection of her blood created true shifters.

“Do you want us to go back for any of the others, Thorne?” one of the men asked, directing the question at her captor.

“Not for the moment. We know where they are if we need them.”

The name jarred her.
Thorne? As in Calvin Thorne?
She remembered the man being with both Blake and Maxim Dumas during the time she’d spent at the government facility. Was that where these people were from? Did Calvin Thorne plan on continuing Dumas’ good work?

“Calvin Thorne,” she spat. “What the hell do you want with me?”

The man laughed in her ear. “Ah, so Blake’s little piece of ass remembers me, then? I must have made more of an impression than I gave myself credit for.”

She struggled some more, but it did no good. He was far stronger than her. “Don’t give yourself any credit. You went to my apartment and abducted my friend, Mia. You should be in jail.”

The man snorted. “The government does what it wants, and it wanted to protect me. I guess they figured they had better things for me to do than languish in a cell. No one knows this project better than me. Even Dumas didn’t really appreciate me, he preferred that idiot, Blake, which just shows how much he knew. Others above him figured out I could be of more use.” He continued to drag her as if her weight meant nothing, even though she was hardly the petite type. Her heels scraped a groove through the fallen pine needles, revealing a scar of red mud beneath. “Anyway, I guess I got dealt my own punishment by one of your little pets.” With his free hand, he lifted his mask.

Autumn twisted her head to see what he was trying to show her. Five knotted scars, new and angrily red, ran down his cheek.

“Would you believe a fucking cat did this? It was a big fucking cat, but a cat nevertheless. I always did hate cats.”

She felt no sympathy for him. “You deserved worse! When Blake and the others discover what you’ve done, they’ll track you down and kill you.”

He laughed again, the sound infuriating her. “Do you hear that, boys?” he said, raising his voice to address his comrades. “She thinks her little friends are going to come and find us.”

“I don’t think, I know! And when they do, they’re going to rip you to shreds.”

Thorne snapped his hand in toward him, wrist pressing tight against her throat. She was already bumped and bruised from her earlier experiences. The pressure was painful and made her choke. “Don’t be so sure about that.” He wheeled her around and her eyes widened.

Her stomach crawled into her throat as realization dawned. They must have been planning this all along.

Chapter Twenty-seven

THE TRAIL OF numerous men was easy enough to track. They hadn’t made any attempt to mask their path, and even without
Chogan’s extra wolf sense of smell, he’d have been able to follow the obvious tamping down of the fall leaves where the men’s feet had trampled.

It felt strange to be running with his cousin at his side again, though the tension between them remained. Flanking the wolves, the other two shifters ran. At Blake’s side was the mountain lion, Peter. At
Chogan’s side ran the tiger-shifter, Rhys.
Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
he thought, understanding what the line may have been inspired by—gold and black stripes in the moonlight.

Above their heads came the almost silent beat of leathery wings.

Though Autumn’s abductors had a good head start, the shifters would be faster. As long as the military men didn’t reach the edge of the forest first and disappear in their vehicles, they would catch them. Chogan couldn’t say what would happen to Autumn then, but he would do everything in his power to protect her.

He wished he could send his spirit guide on ahead to scope out the scene, but that was impossible when they were as one. Though his speed, strength, and senses were all hugely improved when he merged with his wolf, the one disadvantage was no longer having an invisible, silent watcher to relay information back to him.

The scent of humans ahead filled his nostrils, growing stronger. He glanced to Blake who gave an almost imperceptible duck of his head as he ran. Chogan had known his cousin long enough to understand what the nod meant. He smelled them too. Humans, lots of humans. How many had taken Autumn? He felt sure he’d only seen six or so men. Were others around, and if so, how many?

It doesn’t matter how many there are,
he told himself. He’d keep going until he got Autumn back. The memory of the kiss they’d shared burned on his brain. Right at that moment, he no longer cared if Blake hated him. He’d been punished for years for something he didn’t do and then rebuked again for keeping a promise to someone they’d loved. Why not give his cousin something real to hate him for? After all, he’d probably hate him anyway.

The dark forms of men appeared between the shadows of the trees.
Chogan’s heart picked up a notch. The men didn’t appear to be running. If anything, they seemed to be stock still and facing the shifters now upon them.

The shifters all skidded to a halt, claws skidding in the mud, crunching dried pine needles beneath their paws.

Facing them was a line of soldiers, each holding a weapon pointed directly at them. The men created a perimeter, wide enough to disappear into the trees.

Stood in their midst was a man Chogan barely recognized. He had removed his balaclava and helmet to reveal a ridge of five scars down the side of his face, a horrific
injury that must have happened recently. Chogan sensed Peter tense at the sight of the man, a low cat-like growl of warning emitting from the mountain lion’s throat. And he didn’t think it was just because the man had hold of Autumn, his arm wrapped around her neck. In his other hand, he held a pistol of some kind, the muzzle pressed against her temple.

Chogan growled. They stood no chance of attacking the man to get Autumn back like this. Numerous guns were trained upon them, and then there was the gun pressed to her head. If they tried to attack like this, someone—either them or Autumn—would get shot.

The man made no move except to smile triumphantly. He looked like he wanted to talk.

Chogan struggled with the decision, but he had no choice. He needed to find out what the man wanted, what he planned on doing with Autumn. He couldn’t converse with him in wolf form.

He closed his eyes briefly and willed his wolf away. Pain encompassed his whole body as the change came. His bones shattered like glass, only to reform in different shapes. His skin stretched in places and shrank in others. His fur melted into his skin. Chogan bit down hard, grinding his rapidly blunting teeth to stop the howl of agony bursting from his mouth. He would show them no weakness.

Beside him, Blake must have also come to the same conclusion. His cousin was more vocal in his change, and Chogan could see the soldiers lined up before them start to shuffle uncomfortably at what they were witnessing, at the howl and roar of white-hot agony which cut through the quiet of the forest.

With the change complete, both men stood straight. Peter and Rhys had remained in their animal form, flanking the men like two terrifying exotic pets.

Blake was the first to speak. “Calvin Thorne! I should have known scum like you doesn’t just disappear.”

Chogan was less interested in the man and more interested in Autumn. “Are you okay?” She nodded as best she could, though clearly she’d been weakened by everything she’d been through in the last twenty-four hours. He wanted nothing more than to snatch her out of the grip of this asshole and hold her in his arms. To take the hurt and fear away.

“She’s fine, aren’t you, sweetheart?” The man, Calvin Thorne, pulled her closer into him, and planted a rough kiss on top of her head.

Chogan gritted his teeth and balled his fists “Don’t you touch her!”
I’ll kill him,
he promised himself.

Thorne grinned. “We just wanted to welcome you to your new home, boys!”

Blake snarled. “What the hell are you talking about? I suggest you let Autumn go and step back before we shifters rip you to pieces.”

The man threw back his head and laughed. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this one, you bunch of freaks. I always knew there was something up with you,
Wolfcollar. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew.” The smile vanished. “You are surrounded by a circle of soldiers, a mile in circumference around the cabin. Each soldier is armed and instructed to shoot to kill. And those of you who fly,” he glanced up at the dark sky, to where the giant bat swooped, “will be taken out by one of these.”

As if on command, the thrum of a military helicopter could be heard, the thump of the rotor blade beating the air. An Apache twin engine attack helicopter came into view, hovering above them and forcing Toby to alight in one of the trees. Even from where he was, Chogan could see the weapons attached to the bottom of the chopper.

“You should have known better, Blake.” Thorne continued addressing his ex-colleague, shouting above the noise of the aircraft, “Of course we knew the boy had hacked into our intranet. And it didn’t take us long to figure out that wherever Doctor Anderson went, you would follow.”

“You son of a bitch.” Blake started forward, but Chogan put out a hand to stop him. He didn’t want his cousin getting shot.

“You’ve brought this on yourselves,” shouted Thorne. “We tried to warn you off after the stupid stunt your cousin here pulled.” He smirked at Chogan. “The wanna-be television star. We sent men in to scare you back into secrecy, but obviously that didn’t work. That idiot just decided to try it again.”

Chogan clicked onto something he’d wanted to know all along, though he’d never guessed the military would be behind the botched assassination job. “How did you know where we’d be?”

He laughed again, mockingly. “Ah, yes, the traitor in your midst. I think it’s fairly obvious now.”

Tala
.
Chogan didn’t want to believe it, but she’d already gone so far against his wishes, he had little choice.

“For some stupid reason, the girl actually
wants
to be like you!” Thorne said. “I did promise that we’d make it happen for her if she got all of you freaks into one place. Including Autumn, she’s a bit of a deal breaker. We had no idea Tala would get started on her own.” He chuckled. “Never mind. She’ll make an excellent test case.”

“What are you saying, Thorne?” said Blake. “That you’re going to keep us all here like prisoners?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I knew you weren’t all just muscle, that there was a brain in there somewhere. An announcement will be going out nationwide to state that the shifter problem has been brought under military control. I’m sure you’ll be joined by others as the days go by and more freaks reveal themselves. Soon, similar camps will be constructed all over the country.”

“Why did you not just shut us down?” said Blake. “You could have silenced the television studios, stopped the broadcasts. Wouldn’t that have been easier than this?”

“The problem is that the internet is not so easy to control. Once you had decided to make your existence known, it was going to come out at some point, whatever we did to stop it. Plus, the population knowing you exist has its benefits for us. People think of you as monsters and we’ll do nothing to change that perception. In fact, you’ve done nothing to improve that viewpoint yourselves. People don’t care what happens to those they hate. Take terrorists and Guantanamo Bay, nobody cares what happens to them. They’re the enemy, just as you are now also the enemy. As long as people feel safe in their beds at night, they’ll not give you a second thought.”

“We have friends and families,” Chogan yelled. “You can’t expect them not to fight for us. They’re not going to sit back and allow this to happen.”

“Anyone consorting or siding with a shifter will be considered a traitor to their country and imprisoned.”

“You can’t do that!”

“Watch me.” Thorne paused. “Actually, no, you can’t, because you’ll all be contained here, in the middle of nowhere, where no one will hear the gunshots which I promise you will go off if you try to escape.”

Chogan’s
eyes were drawn to Autumn’s terrified, pale face. “What are you going to do with Autumn?”

“This lovely lady will be coming back with us to the labs. Only this time, she’ll be a test subject instead of a scientist. I’m sure she’ll enjoy experiencing things on the other side of the fence.”

Autumn struggled against him, but it was no use. “I won’t do anything for you, you bastard!”

“You won’t have much choice in the matter. I would have thought you’d learned that by now.”

She gave a scream of frustration, kicking out at his ankles.

“Stop that,” said Thorne. “You’re starting to irritate me. Now, say goodbye to your friends. It’s time we got going.”

With that, he turned from Chogan and the others, breaking through the line of soldiers to head toward the area where the chopper had appeared from, and where, Chogan assumed, they must have military vehicles waiting. Thorne pushed Autumn forward as he walked, and she threw a brief desperate glance over her shoulder at him as she stumbled onward.

His heart contracted. Him. She’d looked at him, not Blake.

He started forward, but the line of soldiers closed in, the gap where Thorne had pushed through vanishing as though it had never been there. Someone barked an order and he sensed as well as saw numerous rifles lifted and the safeties clicked off. 

One of the soldiers, a big man, the one who had shouted before, stepped forward.

“You are detainees of the United States Department of Defense. Return to the cabin or you will be shot.”

Chogan stared, unable to believe this had happened. He’d envisaged a revolution, but instead he’d lost the girl he loved and gotten himself and all the other shifters he knew imprisoned in a building barely fit for rats.

This won’t be the end,
he swore. Whatever else happened, the government wouldn’t win.