Autumn's Blood: The Spirit Shifters, Book One (27 page)

Ahead of them, one of the sets of
doors of a bank of elevators slid open. Blake and Autumn stepped
out.

“Chogan!” said Blake, as he stepped
out of the car and into the lobby. Chogan noticed the weapon held
loosely at his side. “Is everything going to plan?”

“Everyone is focused on the roof. They
did a great job. Where are the captive shifters?”

“They’re already out. I sent them back
the way I came in.”

Chogan nodded approvingly. “Good
job.”

“Now we need to find
Dumas.”

The early hour meant the majority of
the building’s workers hadn’t yet come in, however this was a
twenty-four hour business and the facility was never going to be
deserted.

From the corridor to their right, a
man in a suit approached. “Hey, can I help you guys?” He did a
double take on both Autumn and Blake, and recognition spread across
his features. “Wait. You’re … “

He started to back off, walking
backward.

“I don’t think so,” said Chogan, not
planning on allowing this guy to go and raise the alarm. He turned
to Blake. “Go, we’ve got this. Find your friend and kill that
asshole.”

Within seconds, Enyeto crouched, a
growl tearing through his body. His body began to swell and grow,
doubling, tripling, quadrupling in size. From the tips of his
fingers sprouted curved claws, a thick black fur covering what were
now dinner-plate sized paws.

The huge black bear stood on its hind
legs and roared, fragments of now destroyed clothes falling from
its body. Chogan caught Autumn staring in a mixture of horror and
awe as Blake pulled her backward into the elevator—the same
expression he’d seen on her face when she’d first watched Blake and
himself shift.

“Go,” he told them again.
“Go.”

The elevator doors slid shut, taking
Blake and Autumn with it. The sound of feet came running down the
corridor. More security headed toward them, guns drawn.

They must have been spotted on
security cameras, Chogan realized.

The men slid to a halt, shocked into
non-action at the sight of the massive black bear now standing on
its hind legs in the foyer.

“What the fuck?” One of the men
gasped.

A couple of shots exploded in the
confines of the building. One hit Enyeto in the shoulder, blood
spraying out onto the floor. The bear let out another roar and ran
at a huge, lumbering lollop toward the group of workers. They
screamed in terror, a strange sound coming from so many big, strong
men’s mouths. A different security guy got off another shot, but
the bullet went wide, hitting the glass separating an office from
the corridor. Glass imploded inward, the woman behind screaming in
fright.

Enyeto barely fit through the
corridor, his big, bustling back end filling the space. Chogan
followed, walking backward with his gun out held, literally
covering Enyeto’s ass. With the sound of the gunshot and breaking
glass, the couple of guards who had left their post to go outside
now came running.

“Hey, you there! Halt or I’ll
shoot!”

Chogan didn’t give them time to shoot,
squeezing off a couple of shots himself. One guard jerked back as
he was hit in the shoulder. The other had caught sight of the huge
bear and started to step away, clearly making his exit.

He knew they couldn’t take out a whole
department of people, and he didn’t intend to, but they needed to
create enough confusion and chaos to allow Blake time to find the
man he needed to, and, if he could, Autumn’s roommate as
well.

Chapter
Twenty-three

MIA PEERED AROUND the small room she’d
been locked in—some kind of storage closet, she suspected. The only
light came from the shaft filtering from beneath the door. In the
beam, she could just make out the man she’d been imprisoned with.
He appeared to be a few years older than her, perhaps in his early
thirties. Around his temples, flecks of white in his dark hair
caught the small amount of light. His features seemed to be strong,
though she struggled to distinguish much more. A white coat donned
his body, similar to one a doctor would wear, though it had half
fallen from his shoulders when he was thrown in here a little over
an hour ago. An identification card was pinned to the pocket. She
strained against her bonds to lean forward, trying to read the name
on the card by the light from under the door.

P… something … Paul?
Peter?
She thought the surname might be
Harvey.

The man worried her. He’d not regained
consciousness, and she struggled to hear him breathing.

She tugged at the cable ties securing
her wrists to some metal pipes on the wall. The plastic cut into
her skin, so every movement felt like someone slicing into her
wrists with a couple of blades. Pain shot up her arms and made her
groan against the cloth wrapped around her mouth. The gag had
grazed the corners of her lips and her tongue felt fat, her mouth
and throat painfully dry. Her arms had been pulled behind her body
for hours now, her shoulders aching, the muscles threatening to
cramp.

She couldn’t even begin to guess how
long she’d been here. Every so often, a man in military uniform
came in to give her a drink of water and place a bucket beneath her
to pee, an experience almost as degrading as the kidnapping itself.
The first couple of times, her bladder had frozen, refusing to
relieve itself, but after numerous hours had passed and she’d even
managed to sleep some, she’d woken to an almost painful need. That
time, when the man returned, she’d been able to go.

At least no one had tried
to touch her yet. That was her worst fear after the man who’d come
to her apartment, Calvin Thorn, brought her here—wherever
here
might be. A cloth
bag had been placed over her head, and she’d been bundled into the
back of a van. She’d tried to keep track of which way they were
heading, but after a couple of turns, she lost her sense of
direction.

She knew what was happening to her now
had to do with the missing boy, Toby. That she’d had her funding
cut right after accepting the case wasn’t a coincidence. Plus,
strange men didn’t warn you off a regular teenage runaway. But what
she didn’t understand—and what she couldn’t figure out, no matter
how many ways she turned things over in her head—was Autumn’s
connection in all this. She felt as though she was trying to put
together a puzzle with half of the pieces missing.

She hoped her friend was all right.
The man she’d seen briefly on the news looked like the same one
Autumn described a couple of nights ago over dinner. She’d seen how
Autumn’s eyes lit up when she’d spoken of him. Her roommate was
normally a pretty good judge of character. Would she really have
been interested in someone who was actually a kidnapper and
involved with men like Calvin Thorn?

None of it made any sense.

Muffled pops came from outside the
room, like a distant car backfiring or firecrackers, but she knew
deep down those weren’t the reasons behind the sounds. Screams and
men yelling followed, the slap of footsteps running down the
corridor outside. Shadows flicked past the bottom of the
door.

Mia tried to yell against the gag, but
only managed to issue a muffled groan. Straining against her bonds
sent fresh pain spiking through her body and she moaned again, her
body heaving in a sob.

Somewhere in the building, an alarm
went off, an undulating rise and fall of a wail.

Something was happening, but what? Did
it have to do with her—someone coming to help her perhaps? Or was
that just wishful thinking? She wanting to give herself a little
piece of hope, but, as she had no idea what these people wanted
from her, she struggled to see who the hell would even know she was
here.

From the other side of the
room, the man with the salt and pepper hair gave a groan. Mia
sagged in relief.
Oh, thank God, he’s not
dead.
For a while, she’d started to
convince herself she was locked in this room with a corpse, the
idea threatening to snatch the final threads of control she had
over herself.

The man moaned again and began to
move. He rolled to his side and curled up in the fetal position
before getting to his knees. He stayed in that position, his head
hanging down, and gave another groan which sounded strangely like a
growl.

The hairs on the back of Mia’s neck
prickled. Something wasn’t right. She didn’t just hear a growl, did
she? The man began to twist and writhe, his shoulders jerking back
and forth.

Oh God, they’ve put me in
here with a lunatic!
That’s why they
hadn’t bothered to tie him up. They figured he’d kill her and save
them a job.

A horrific sound, like
flesh tearing, and an awful cracking filled the small space. Mia
whimpered against the gag and instinctively squeezed her eyes shut,
wanting to put her hands over her ears.
What’s going on?
She forced her eyes
open, making herself assess the situation. Though her insides had
turned to water and she wanted nothing more than to curl up into a
ball and try to pretend she was somewhere else, she thought doing
just that would probably get her killed.

Staring into the dim
light, her brain struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. The
man’s shape seemed to be changing, the texture of his skin
completely different from anything she’d seen on a man before. Then
he lifted his head, and his face …
Oh God
… his face!
It no longer looked human, the
jaw longer, sharp canines protruding from beneath the lower lip.
Her eyes strained so wide she thought they might pop from her head.
Surely this wasn’t happening? She must have passed out and was now
having some kind of crazy dream. Yet, if that was true, why did her
wrists still feel like someone was slicing into them with
razors?

The man continued to
change, growing larger. Something whipped out from behind
him.
Surely not a tail?

His clothes fell from his body in
tattered shreds.

She froze with terror, her breath
trapped in her lungs. Bright amber eyes, lined in black, stared at
her through the gloom, regarding her with something greater than
human intelligence.

Mia tried not to pass out in the
presence of the largest mountain lion she’d ever seen.

The animal trotted over to
her.

Oh God. Please don’t eat
me, please don’t eat me.
She whimpered
against the gag and shuffled back as far as possible, her back
meeting with the pipes. But the big cat didn’t snarl at her.
Instead, it nudged her with its head, pushing her out of the
way.

Oh no, it’s going for the
blood,
she thought.
It can smell the blood from my wrists.
She wanted to fight back, but with her hands bound, there was
little she could do. Heck, even if her hands
weren’t
tied, this creature could
rip her apart in less than a minute.

But instead of taking a
chunk out of her hand, the cat started to chew on the cable ties
attaching her to the pipe.
This isn’t
happening!
Hot breath warmed her skin,
whiskers tickling the sensitive inner-wrists, sharp teeth grazing.
She tried not to hyperventilate, her breath escaping her body in
tiny, frightened gasps, stifled against the gag.

The cable ties suddenly popped,
freeing her arms. Without allowing herself time to think yet, she
yanked the gag from her mouth. Finally able to move, she had to
stop herself from groaning in pleasure while she rolled her stiff
shoulders and released the kink her neck had been suffering with
for goodness-knows-how-long. She was so relieved she almost forgot
about the giant mountain lion now sitting beside her, a low purr
grumbling in its chest.

Almost.

“Oh shit, you’re actually real, aren’t
you?”

The purring intensified in volume.
From outside the door, more shots were fired. The cat got to its
feet and padded to the door. It nudged the solid wood with its
head.

“Really?” she said, still struggling
to believe she was actually talking to a mountain lion. In a
storage cupboard. Where there had been a man only minutes before.
“Are you sure you want to go out there? Oh crap, what the hell am I
talking about?”

She got to her feet, a rash of pins
and needles flooding up through her toes and calves. Flexing her
feet and legs as she made her way over to the door, she reached out
and tried the handle. It wiggled, but the door didn’t budge. The
cat took a few steps back, and then leapt forward, barreling its
shoulder against the door. The door bowed with a crash. The animal
repeated the motion, again and again, while Mia stood out of the
way as best she could, her knuckles pressed against her mouth. The
door cracked and eventually splintered open. The big cat lifted its
paws and padded through the hole, then turned back to her as if to
say, “You coming?”

Mia stepped over the remaining shards
of wood, careful not to catch herself. She found herself in a glass
corridor she didn’t recognize. A quick glance to her left and
right, and she saw two men running toward her. Did she cry for
help, or were these men involved in her kidnapping?