Amber's Ace (2 page)

So who was this Siren calling to him? Some painted jezebel in a skintight scarlet sheath, boobs spilling out of her bodice when she licked her crimson lips and tossed her ebony hair? Holy cow. Archaic language. And a fantasy image of Jessica Rabbit. He was totally losing it.

Shake it off, Riley
.
Don’t think about that now
.
No-hitter’s on the line
.

He raised both hands to his face, the glove on his right hand hiding his left hand’s grip on the ball, and went into his windup, preparing to deliver his trademark slider and put an end to the lousy inning. To escape the torturous path his addled brain had started down.

Mine
.

The ball slipped from his fingers again, this time headed straight toward the center of home plate, a big, fat pancake with just enough speed, all wrapped up like an early Christmas present for the Philly Phantoms, the Kings’ biggest rivals. The Phantoms’ shortstop uncorked a bullet.

Craaaaaaaack
.

The other guy, a player with a plummeting batting average who was probably one out away from being sent down to the minors, got the thick part of the bat around on the ball and sent a frozen rope ripping straight back to the pitcher’s mound. Too fast for Riley to get any leather on it.

Instinct had him fielding the baseball barehanded, trying to save two runs.

Holy fucking shit!

Fuck, fuck,
FUCK.

Pain roared through his fingers like a locomotive, shooting through his wrist and straight up his arm.

Pop. Pop. Pop
.

Maybe he couldn’t
really
hear the sound of his tendons and ligaments bursting and shredding, what with the explosive clamor of the crowd and all, but he sure as shit felt it. Smash, crash, and burn. Excruciating pain lit him up, his whole fuckin’ Lloyd’s-insured left arm on fire. The force of the contact shoved him back on his ass, the fingers of his left hand yanked every which way, muscles tearing and rupturing. His dominant hand. His pitching hand.

So much for the stellar career of the New York Kings’ renowned South Dakota Southpaw.

Done.

He writhed on the mound in agony, so sick to his stomach he retched, his injured hand jabbed by thousands of red-hot daggers. His inner wolf howled, trying to force him into a healing shift that could not happen. Not on national TV. Not with a mangled paw.

The manager, coaches, and trainers raced toward him, followed by the team doctor. In another second, the dugout emptied and his teammates poured onto the field, surrounding him, their faces white, expressions grave. Even the Phantoms clambered onto the field. The boisterous crowd went totally silent.

Fuck. He’d never even been on the disabled list in his entire career, always playing through his pain, never missing a game, his wolf able to heal whatever minor injuries he’d sustained on the diamond. He’d earned the respect of teammates and opponents alike, anyone connected to major league baseball. And most especially the fans. Year after year, he remained the fan favorite, their Iron King, ready and steady, always capturing far more All-Star Game votes than anyone else in either league.

Not this time. This time he’d disappoint them all.

He shut his eyes. Blackness tugged at the edges of his consciousness.

A warm, wet muzzle nudged Amber awake. Huddled in her wolf form under a threadbare blanket, she shivered despite the growing late summer heat in the hideaway she’d made beneath a narrow cot in one of the unoccupied huts in the compound. Maybe it was only psychological, but it always seemed cold here in the darkest part of the forest, no matter the season. Craving the forgetfulness of sleep, she wriggled and wrapped the ragged coverlet tighter.

Her twin whimpered, the low whine at once fraught and urgent. Amber blinked open an eye as her sister’s jaws clamped around the frayed cotton. The red she-wolf tossed her head back and forth, trying to loosen Amber’s grip and drag the thin material from her slumber-slow body.

“What is it, G?”
She telegraphed the internalized growl in their secret twin language.
“This place better be on fire, with Magnum’s sick and mangy hide kindling the blaze.”
Older by four minutes, Amber had tried her best to protect her sister. But her best efforts had not been enough. Both had become prisoners of their crazed Alpha, Magnum Tao.

She rolled toward Garnet, who moved away from the bed. Shaking off the last vestiges of uneasy sleep, she stood on all fours in the center of the rustic, nearly bare hut, ears up and alert. Surveying her sister, she sniffed at the air, trying to guess the problem that had Garnet rousing her from the usual fitful nightmares obliterating any semblance of peaceful dreams. No whiff of smoke. A weird energy seemed to crackle through the compound, though.

Neglect and improper nutrition had matted Garnet’s once sleek-and-shining crimson fur, now thinning and mangy in spots. Amber supposed her own golden hide appeared equally unkempt and untended. Survival had long been more important to the sisters than any beauty regimen.

Perhaps their once-heralded looks had landed them here so long ago as teenagers, the young princesses of a dysfunctional shifter family. Perhaps it had been their Northridge name. Magnum had always seemed to take such joy from the destruction of their family. Who knew anymore? Who really cared? They’d long ago stopped trying to figure it out. At least the beatings had ceased.

Amber shifted in order to speak aloud and nudged her sister in the flank until Garnet did the same. In human form, both their stomachs rumbled. The tattered T-shirt Garnet wore swamped her, but the sharp angles of her collarbone and shoulder blades, of her rib cage, stood out when she moved. Both their bellies gurgled again.

“What?” she whispered. “What’s wrong?”

“Listen,” Garnet said. “Something’s going on. The gate opened.”

Amber’s ears twitched. Though more acute in wolf form, her senses still far exceeded the abilities of the average human. An electrified barbed-wire fence surrounded the compound. The gate rarely opened anymore. She could count on one hand the number of times anyone had ventured through it in the last year. But a truck with balding tires and a muffler on the way out roared and whined past the sisters’ hut.

Cracking open the door, she stared out. An old Dodge Ram pickup screeched to a halt in front of the caretaker’s cottage near the gate, emitting the odor of dirty fuel. The stench made her eyes water. Ozzie, one of Magnum’s most disgusting henchmen, leaped from the truck. Reaching into the backseat, he dragged out two squirming, crying toddlers.

“He’s brought new prisoners,” she said to Garnet. “Children. Shifter young.”

“Young?” Garnet jostled her for space at the sliver of doorway. After peering out, her twin edged away and squeezed her eyes shut. “Goddess, no.”

They’d been teens themselves, barely out of puberty, when Magnum Tao, the insane Alpha of the Black Hills Wolves pack, snatched them from their homes in Los Lobos, away from friends and family, and brought them here. They’d had no contact with those left behind. Impressed into slavery, they’d been forced to cook and clean and cater to Magnum and his gang of disgusting cohorts. Today, they were young women who could not stand to be near anyone, except each other. Who could not bear anyone’s touch, except each other’s.

They hadn’t seen Magnum at all in more than twelve cycles of the moon, Amber realized. His lieutenants had also vanished for the most part. She and Garnet had been left more or less alone to scavenge from cabin to cabin for food and clothes and other necessary supplies.

“Stay here,” she hissed to her twin. “I’ll see what’s going on.”

Before she could move, Ozzie jumped back into the dilapidated truck and clattered off alone. The electrified gate slammed shut the moment the vehicle passed through.

“What the fuck?” Their jailers’ baffling decisions and whims were never rational, but this move fell off the bewildering chart. “He just dumped them here? Great Luna. I don’t think they’re much more than a year old! Too young to slave for Magnum and his wretched crew!”

“Let’s go see, A.”

Keeping to the shadows, the women slinked toward the caretaker’s cottage and peeped in a grime-streaked window. On one wall, a big, flat-screen TV blared. In the center of the room, two tiny, fluffy fur balls—one a precious little female cougar kitten and the other a chocolate-brown wolf pup—shifted back and forth from their animal to human forms, snuffling, whining, and whimpering.

“They’re so cute,” Garnet murmured. “Look at them. So sweet and innocent.”

Amber agreed, but panic seized her. The precious little female kitten would not last long in the compound. It was a mercy Magnum hadn’t killed her already. He’d never allow a cat onto pack lands. Although…Amber had never been quite sure where the compound was located. Pack lands or not, they were under Magnum’s thumb here…and the only thing Magnum despised more than a cat was an impure, mixed-breed wolf.

The male pup curled himself around the tiny kitten protectively, and the pair snuggled together as though they’d done so since birth. Like siblings. Amber wasn’t sure how that could be, but somehow there was the look of family about them. Dear sweet Mother Luna. Were they the product of an illicit mating? A wolf and a cougar? Had Magnum destroyed their parents? What would he do to these adorable little ones? He was so beyond insane, he could tear them limb from limb and eat them alive then wear their pelts as some kind of sick trophy.

Nausea enveloped her. Could she and Garnet help the little ones in some way? When they couldn’t even help themselves?

Something even stronger pulled at Amber’s emotions when she observed the little wolf in either his human or animal form; a familiarity she could not place. His chocolate-brown coat and dark eyes reminded her so much of someone, the way he held himself, the expressions crossing his small, fierce face. Someone from the past, from before their imprisonment. But who?

A pang struck her heart—a numb organ that had not felt much of anything for a long time. The vise of foreign emotion gripped the useless muscle. Her heart cried out. She longed to hold him and the little kitten, too, to snatch up both cubs and clutch them against her chest, filling her empty arms.

Beside her, Garnet sniffled, tears streaming down her face. “We can’t let Magnum hurt them, sis.”

“They’re related to each other, I think. They look alike, somehow. Do you know them, G?”

Her twin shook her head. “No, how could I? We’ve been trapped in this prison long before they were born. But oh, no, Amber. The poor kitten. You know he’ll never let her live. Is that why he had them brought here? How can we save them?”

“We will have to. We’ll have to think of something. Fast. Magnum’s probably killed her parents already. Maybe both their parents. They have a look about them…don’t they, G? The pup especially…the little boy….”

“He reminds me of someone, too.”

“Who?”

“I…don’t know….” A pain tore through her head as she tried to dredge up old memories.

Garnet’s features twisted into a grimace, and Amber suspected she endured the same agony whenever she attempted to rake up the past. She stared at the little one, and tears welled in her eyes, burning, momentarily blinding her to everything but one thought. “Brick,” she whispered. “Oh, Goddess, G. He looks just like Brick did. Remember?”

Garnet responded to the mention of their youngest brother with a howl of pain. “Yes,” she agreed, her voice raw and soft. “Brick.” Her tears fell to the ground unheeded. “He’s Brick’s cub. Our nephew. Oh, Amber…do you think the kitten’s our niece?” She moaned. “Oh, no, Brick, what have you done?”

Amber shook her head. Magnum clearly despised the Northridge family, the reasons for which she could not fathom. She’d thought all her siblings save Garnet were dead. But had Brick been alive long enough to take a mate? She shuddered. No way Magnum would have let him live if he’d mated with a being other than a wolf. No question Magnum would have seized any excuse to beat Brick senseless, to rip out his throat, and stomp his bleeding, lifeless body into the ground, to leave him dead and decomposing as a warning to the rest of the pack. Her belly clenched in agony. They’d never see their brother again.

“We have to do something, Garnet.”

“But what?”

“I have no idea. But…something.” She called upon all her inner strength, the well of fortitude that had kept her alive thus far, and watched as Garnet also steeled herself. “Even weak as you and I are, we can take Ozzie between us. If no one else comes. Let’s go.”

They stationed themselves outside the cottage to make sure no harm befell the tots. So peculiar that Ozzie had dropped them, apparently to fend for themselves. And yet, typical Ozzie, really. His actions always skated the thin ice of bizarre.

“We should feed them,” Amber mused.

“Yes,” Garnet agreed. “Not sure we’ve got anything left from the last scavenge. I’ll go look.”

After her twin departed, Amber remained vigilant at the window. She could not tear her gaze from the small cubs. Could they really be Brick’s young? Her nephew and niece? She couldn’t get over that. How many years had passed since she’d seen her brother? Any of her siblings or family besides her imprisoned twin?

A short time later, the sick, twisted Tao henchman returned in the truck, this time with a gun trained on a young woman. He dragged her from the vehicle and threw her inside the cottage.

The little pup and kitten stopped whimpering and gazed at the new prisoner with recognition and something akin to glee, as if they suspected they were all playing some kind of game.

Something about the woman comforted Amber. Perhaps she had saved the cougar cub from Magnum’s wrath? Had she taken the kitten in? Could she take care of the little ones as Amber and Garnet could not? A new thought shook her. Maybe Magnum would punish the woman for what she’d done. Was that why Ozzie had brought her here, too?

Amber narrowed her eyes. More foreign emotions rippled through her. Did she know the young woman? Maybe. The newcomer seemed about the same age, perhaps a couple of years older. Was she from Los Lobos? Had she been there when Amber and Garnet had been stolen away? Was she Brick’s mate? The little fur balls’ mother? No. Despite the tiny tots’ joy at seeing the woman, their reaction said “friend,” not “mama.” Whatever the relationship, Amber could not let the same fate befall the newcomer that she and Garnet had long endured.