Deceived By the Others

chapter 10



Coitus interruptus does not a happy camper make. I may have gotten my jollies, but I’d been expecting to do a lot more before Chaz and I were cut short. I sat in the meadow sulking for a few minutes, long enough to realize my back and legs were covered in mud and there was grass tangled in my hair.

Irritated beyond measure, I glanced around to make sure I was alone. Picking up my muddy clothes, I rose to rinse everything off, including myself, in the knee-deep water.

I don’t know how the frogs and fish could stand the cold. The goose bumps were so bad, I couldn’t tell right away if I’d gotten all the mud off my back when I reached to scrub. The cattail I’d picked earlier came in handy for that. Moments later, I screamed and rushed out of the water. A leech had latched onto my ankle, leaving me panting and cursing on the shore as I tore the little monster off.

Putting on my wet clothes was almost as bad as rinsing off in the water. I shivered on the stone bench for a while, but the cold from that seeped into my butt, too, and soon drove me to get up and pace. My socks and shoes were dry. Thank goodness for small favors. I braved the bench long enough to put them on, then stomped back toward the cabins. I needed a hot shower, coffee, and dry clothes. Maybe to get the fireplace going, too. Chaz may have been worried about danger, but I was more concerned with getting a Band-Aid for my leg and warming up.

As I was trudging along the path, carefully avoiding some poison oak I hadn’t noticed on the way earlier, something seemed different. It took a few minutes for me to put my finger on what was wrong.

The woods were unnaturally quiet again. Unnerved, I sped up my pace.

My heart jumped into my throat when I heard the bushes rustle behind me. Someone was there.

I broke into a run. The rustling at my back turned into a dull snapping of wet twigs, the quiet patter of feet rapidly catching up behind me on the path.

I didn’t look back.

Breath catching, I rushed down the trail, praying that whoever it was would lose interest, would head off on a different part of the path. For one brief second, I held on to the hope that it was that stupid reporter trailing me. If not him, then maybe it was someone out for a mid-afternoon jog, someone who wasn’t really after me. Stupid but, hey, a girl can dream. I tried to gauge how close my pursuer was by the even footfalls and snapping of twigs. With all the bends and twists to the trail, not to mention grasping branches that I was continually stepping over or dodging around, I didn’t want to risk looking behind me.

A heavy hand fell on my shoulder, closing on my upper arm and hauling me off balance. I caught a glimpse of leather and light gleaming on silver studs before I spun to my knees, hair whipping into my face, momentarily blinding me.

“Don’t make a f*cking sound,” came a harsh whisper as someone clamped his hand over my mouth and dragged me to my feet.

I squirmed as much as I could to break free. My left arm felt like it had just about been torn out of the socket, and the right was pinned to my side by whoever had grabbed me. I growled around the hand over my mouth, eyes narrowing when I saw one of Seth’s idiot friends in the trees, gesturing at the guy holding me.

One thing to be said for the boy who’d grabbed me: he might have been stupid, but he was fast and strong. Even without his Were strength, he had the build of a guy who’d spent too much time at the gym, muscles straining against his T-shirt and tight jeans. I couldn’t budge his grip on me, and we were moving into the underbrush faster and more quietly than I would’ve believed possible. Seth crept out of the shade from somewhere to our left, taking the lead. The other two idiots followed, dragging me along in spite of my efforts to dig my heels in.

We were quickly surrounded by thick underbrush and low-hanging boughs. Some of the evergreens scratched my arms since the guy pulling me with him wasn’t being too careful about following any kind of a path, only about keeping me from crying out or getting away.

We passed the bench and the waterfall, one of the boys making a crack that brought all the blood rushing to my face. They’d seen—or could smell—enough to know what Chaz and I had been doing. Seth growled something that made the others quiet their jeers and laughter, and we soon came to another clearing deeper in the woods. The fourth member of Seth’s little group of misfits, a lanky teenager with a Day-Glo blue Mohawk and some fuzzy scruff that might have been an attempt at a goatee, was waiting for us with rope and duct tape. My heart sank at that. They’d planned this. Waiting for a moment when I’d be alone so they could snatch me up. Despite what Chaz had said, these guys must have been the ones who had burned up and destroyed our stuff. What a peachy keen development.

“Hold her hands out,” the guy with the Mohawk said. “Do you want to tie her ankles up, too? Or just her wrists?”

“Nah,” Seth replied, looking back the way we’d come. He scratched at a reddened patch on his neck where a silver necklace lay; dumb shit was trying to look tough, I suppose. “Just the wrists. She has legs, she can walk.”

“Yeah, but she might run.”

“Let her try.”

I didn’t like the dark amusement behind those words. Though I pulled against their grip, the boys were too strong. Between the guy who was holding me pinned against his chest and the one who held my wrists so the third could twine the rope around them, I didn’t have a prayer of escape.

Quick, businesslike, as though they’d done this a thousand times before, the guy who’d waited for us tightly bound my wrists and pulled off a strip of duct tape. I twisted away to scream when the guy holding me moved his hand, but the other covered my mouth with the tape before I got out much more than a squeak. The big guy who was holding me shifted his grip to my upper left arm, tight enough to hurt. I glared into his dull brown eyes and kicked his shin, making him wince and shake me.

“Stop that, you stupid bitch!”

“Shut up, Gabe,” Seth hissed out. “We’re still too close. Someone might hear you. Let’s go.”

Once again, I found myself moving, though whenever I dug in my heels, the guy—Gabe—just dragged me along. I felt like a three-year-old having a fit about leaving the toy store, and my fighting was about as effective against his strength, but I did everything I could to slow our progress down.

Finally, I managed to hook one foot under a root, forcing him to stumble as I locked my leg and pulled him up short. Growling low obscenities under his breath, making the others chuckle, he stopped and hefted me over his shoulder. His shoulder was a little bony, but his grip was like iron, the heat radiating from under his creased leather jacket and the strong scent of musk marking him as close to shifting. Irritated, I hit his back with my bound hands as he started walking again. I jerked away when one of the others reached out to brush his fingers through my trailing hair.

“What a pain in the ass. Are you sure he’ll come after her?”

“Yeah. Ethan will keep him busy for another hour or two with all the bane I put in that herbal shit they were feeding him. Once it wears off, it shouldn’t take too long for someone to figure out she’s missing.”

Oh, that was just great. They were purposely making Ethan’s transition harder on him to distract Chaz and take me? Clever. Far more clever a plan than I would’ve given the little shit credit for thinking up.

We continued in silence for a while, and I could tell we were going down the mountainside by the incline and how Gabe continually shifted his stance to balance and account for my weight. I picked at the tape over my mouth, but every time I reached for it, he jostled me until I stopped. The birds singing in the trees quieted as we passed, and small, unseen animals rushed off into the underbrush. The four guys turned their heads sometimes to follow things I couldn’t see or sniff the air to take in scents too subtle for my poor human senses, but for the most part we kept to what I could now see was an old, mostly overgrown, deer run.

What felt like hours passed, though the sun was still well up in the sky when we came to a halt by a sheer granite cleft in the side of the mountain, overgrown with vines and eaten away by wind and water. Lichen crept up the stone and covered the trunks of nearby trees. Jagged pieces of stone were scattered along the ground or sticking out of the mulch where time and water had broken them off of the rock face. There were standing pools of runoff here and there, bugs idly buzzing over the still surfaces. It was a gloomy, spooky place, one nobody in his or her right mind would use to make camp.

Gabe set me down none too gently, and I ended up landing on my ass in the mud. I shuddered as cold and dirty water immediately soaked into my already wet jeans, glaring as the guys all laughed at my expense. Eyeing them in their shifting clothes—mostly cheap, faux leather biker jackets and stretchy sweatpants (which made them look more like the teenagers they were than the bad-asses they were trying to come off as)—I had a hard time seeing them as a threat instead of an annoyance.

Then Seth leaned down and grabbed under my arm, dragging me through the slick mulch until my back was up against the rock, the steely strength and rough handling reminding me that I wasn’t dealing with pushovers. Even low on the supernatural totem pole as they were, the four of them presented a terrible danger to me without my weapons or Chaz here to protect me.

That didn’t mean I’d sit back and take whatever they wanted to dish out, though. I used the rock to help lever to my feet, and he stepped back to watch me, not bothering to help or hold me down. I grabbed at the tape, pulling it off with a sharp jerk, grimacing at the pull against my skin. “What the hell do you nut jobs think you’re doing? What the f*ck do you want?”

Gabe leered. “What do you think we want?”

“Shut up, a*shole,” Mohawk said, giving Gabe a shove hard enough to make him stumble. “I’m not dying today. I don’t care what the plan said. You touch her, you know he’ll kill us all.”

Before I could say anything, a chunk of wood thicker than my torso slammed into the two, sending them sprawling.

“You aren’t fighting him. I am. I am going to win this,” Seth snarled, muscles and bones bulging under his skin in sickening waves. “This is my fight, not yours.”

The two kept their eyes down, heads bobbing like those of marionettes on strings in their haste to show their agreement. Seth’s anger gradually abated, the shifting and grating of bone popping back into place making my stomach lurch. His eyes, when he turned to face me, held a subtle yellow glow that was terrifyingly familiar. Jesus, he was close to going Were. Something about what he was doing had him wound up near to the breaking point. There were no guarantees that he would be able to control his instincts to hunt and kill if he tipped over the edge.

After what felt like forever, Seth looked away and patted down his pockets, pulling out a battered pack of cigarettes. He didn’t offer them to anyone else, just lit up and took a deep drag. Within a few puffs, the others had gotten to their feet and settled down cautiously on big rocks or tree stumps nearby. Seth chose a perch on an uneven slab of lichen-covered granite, his attention firmly fixed on the path we’d taken.

“How long do you think he’ll take?” Gabe ventured to ask.

Seth didn’t bother to look at him. “F*ck all if I know. We left an obvious trail. Shouldn’t take too long.”

I dared a question, meeting his eyes when he glanced at me. “If you want to fight Chaz so badly, why didn’t you do it back at the cabins?”

He smirked at me, shaking his head and returning his attention back to the path. The others gave me furtive glances, but didn’t dare speak.

Anger soon replaced my fear. Who the hell did he think he was? If not for him, Chaz and I could have been busy discussing the terms of the contract. Or busy doing other, far more pleasant, things.

“I see,” I said, taking a few steps until I could assume an indolent lean against a nearby tree. I hoped my expression was as disdainful as I was going for. The trick would be to keep them worried about Chaz without pissing them off enough that they would hurt me. “You’re planning to cheat, aren’t you? You wanted to lure him out here so you could ambush him.”

“No,” Seth said, turning sharply to face me. “Shut up. You don’t know anything about us.”

“I know you won’t win.”

“I will win this,” he snarled, fists clenching at his sides.

“Doesn’t matter what you try. He’ll still kick your asses.” I kept my voice as level as possible, hoping what I was saying was true. My faith in Chaz would undermine Seth’s confidence if I played my cards right. Little enough, but it could turn the odds more in Chaz’s favor once he came to save me. “He’s the only Were to fight Rohrik Donovan and live.”

“Give me a break,” Seth said, his anger shifting abruptly into an amused smirk. “Rohrik didn’t want him dead. Somewhere under the influence of the Focus, he had to have known what you were there for. Why don’t you just sit down, get comfortable, and shut up. We’re not going to hurt you unless you do something stupid, and he won’t be here for a while.”

Cursing softly under my breath, I took a look around, wondering how far I’d get if I bolted. They were alert now, watchful for escape attempts. It wouldn’t do me much good, since I already knew they were faster and stronger than I was. They might tie up my ankles if I ran. Or possibly take a more violent turn. I wouldn’t put it past them, though they hadn’t actually hurt me—yet.

Irritated, I stalked over to a fallen log, sitting down on that instead of in the mud. Wrenching at the ropes around my wrists, I brought the knots up to my teeth to work myself free. Nobody made a move to stop me, and I guessed that they didn’t consider me much of a threat with or without free hands. One of them even pulled out his cell phone and started fiddling with it, like he was playing a game or texting. Genius.

“Why this cavalier shit?” I asked again after the rope loosened and I didn’t need to tug at it with my teeth anymore.

Seth ran a hand lightly over the scruffy stubble on his jaw, not paying me much mind. “I want control of the pack. I won’t get it unless I fight him for it. Too many back there would make it into a bloodbath instead of letting us work out right of ascension.”

“Too many of the pack would try to stop you, you mean.”

He glanced in my direction, giving me a wry grin. “That’s what I said. I want a pack to lead, not a bunch of broken bodies and sore losers who would fight me for right of ascension as soon as Chaz is out of the way.”

I curled my lip in a sneer, taking the rope up into a snarled tangle and throwing it as far from me as I could. “What makes you think you can beat him? He’s bigger and stronger than you.”

“Big and strong doesn’t always equal faster or smarter. We’ve got you. He might just turn over leadership without a fuss if we press him right.”

Meaning, if they threatened to do something to me, he might just give in and turn over leadership without a fight. I rubbed at my chafed wrists, staring down at my hands while I tried to think of how to get away.

“Why are you talking to her? She’s just bait,” Gabe asked, peeling the leaves one at a time off a branch he’d broken from a tree.

“You have anything better to do? I’m bored; she’s listening.”

“She might use it later.”

“How?” The guy who had tied up my wrists earlier asked, looking up from his cell phone. “She’s not going anywhere.”

“She fought Rohrik and that vampire, asshat. She’s tougher or smarter than she looks. She’s dangerous.”

I rolled my eyes, stopping when I saw Seth doing the same thing. Making a little mulch pyramid with the toe of my sneaker, I propped my elbows on my knees and put my chin in my hands, staring at Gabe. He might be a danger to me later. Maybe I could use his wariness of me somehow. That in mind, I gave him a grim smile, narrowing my eyes.

“You afraid of little ole me? Big, scary Were like you? Jesus, Seth, you need friends with backbones.”

Gabe straightened, dropping the branch and clenching thick fists at his sides. “Shut your mouth. Nobody asked you.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here, then. Later, just you and me, we’re going to have a little talk. I’ll make sure you walk away with a lesson in manners you’ll never forget, you dumb shit.” Lord knew how I’d manage, but sometimes the threat was as good as the deed. Royce had taught me as much.

Gabe clenched his fists together so tightly, I could hear his knuckles cracking. He looked at Seth, silently asking permission for something. The other Were shook his head, a smile quirking his lips. “I see why Chaz likes you. You are one brass-balled bitch.”

“Hey, I’m a New Yorker. What did you expect?”

“You should be afraid,” Gabe said, his voice gone deeper, guttural with anger. Seth turned around, watching, but not saying anything. I think he was more curious how I’d handle a pissed off Were than worried something might happen to me or his friend. “You aren’t one of us. Don’t you know what we could do to you?”

“Try me, Fluffy. I’ve fought your kind before. You kids don’t know who you’re messing with.”

Gabe snarled and started closer, but the other guy, the quiet one, reached out an arm to bar his way. “She’s trying to rile you up. Don’t fall for it. We’ll need you later.”

The angry Were stopped, staring back at me, his eyes taking on a subtle greenish luminescence. When he spoke, I took note of the hint of upper and lower fangs peeking between his lips. “You must have a death wish. Keep it up, and I’ll oblige you later, once your boy toy is out of the way.”

“Yeah, right. If there’s anything left when Chaz is done with you, come talk to me.”

I think the fact that I managed to pull off appearing bored, keeping the waver out of my voice, was part of what was making him so mad. That, and because I most likely had touched a sore point with him. He was worried that Seth wouldn’t win, that Chaz would hurt him, and had no one to take it out on. His worry would become their worry. It would eat at them, make them doubt. It would give Chaz a better chance at coming out on top.

As the other two guys looked at each other, I saw the unspoken hesitation there. Even Seth seemed nervous now, absently twining his fingers through a thick chain at his belt, something he hadn’t been doing before.

It was enough to make me smile.