The Bear and the Unicorn (Supernatural Enforcers Agency Book 6) (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

“So you were spelled the whole time?” Mason asked.

“Still, yes,” hissed Zane.  He’d only been asked that five times!  His bear didn’t think he could be angrier than he was two hours ago when Melissa was trying to steal his seed, and yet… Okay, count to ten. 
One…

“For fifteen years?” said Mason.  The gorilla shifter’s huge eyebrows were drawn together in confusion.

He wasn’t the first to ask him.  No, many of his now ex-friends at the SEA had popped in to alternatively taunt him (Isis), laugh at him (Wayne), snarl at him for being an idiot (Cutter) and commiserate that he was indeed an idiot (Gunner).

This wasn’t his fault!  How was he supposed to know he was enchanted!  Fucking Melissa! 
Two…

Thank every bear deity that Sky was around to save him.  And he thought he was the one taking care of her - that she was the one who needed him.  Nope, he totally needed her, maybe more than she needed him.  Hey, it didn’t make him any less manly to admit that.  In fact, he actually felt a swell of pride from his usually unreasonable bear.

Although he was kind of pissed that Sky wasn’t around at that moment. 
Three…
  She was away being interviewed elsewhere.  He needed her next to him, soothing him, holding his hand. 
We have something better she can
hold
taunted his bear.

Damn horny bear.

Once out of there, they were taking her somewhere safe, somewhere they could strip her naked and spend the rest of the night and the whole next day loving her senseless, telling her she belonged to them – no arguments.

“How’s Melissa?” he grumbled.  Not because he was concerned for her in case his bear worried about that.  No, he was concerned that she might blab her big, fat, bitch mouth about Sky’s special beast.

“She hasn’t regained consciousness,” Mason informed him.  “She hit her head; doctors said she might not.”

“Better if she doesn’t.”

Mason huffed.  “I know you’re pissed, but she should have a trial – she deserves to be on trial for what she did.”

No, giving Melissa a platform to talk to her hearts content was not a good idea.

“We done yet?”

Mason nodded.  “It’s late; we’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Can’t wait,” he muttered.

He stomped through the SEA offices, searching for Sky.  He scented her, but it wasn’t fresh.  He grabbed a random agent – a mole shifter called Melman.

“Where’s Sky?” he snapped, fury rising on seeing the confusion on the little guy’s face.  “The female I came in with.  Long silvery hair, total fox – but not a fox shifter.”

“Oh, she said she was going to get you some coffee from across the street.”

“And you let her?!” he yowled.

The mole looked around wildly.  “Ah… was she supposed to be under arrest?”

“What?  No!” 
Moron
snapped his bear! 
He skipped the other numbers and went straight to ten.

“Is she not allowed coffee?”

“Shut up!”

Zane ran out of there cursing all moles on the face of the earth as he went in search of Sky.

*

Sky emerged from the coffee shop, humming with pleasure.  It had been quite an exciting night, but yay, the coffee shop had chamomile tea and chocolate chip shortbread!  Best point of the evening.  She wasn’t big on chocolate or sugary snacks, but chocolate chip shortbread was a definite weakness.  Along with a certain sexy bear.  She’d bought seven blueberry muffins and a jumbo black coffee for her big bear – he needed his stamina for what she had planned.

That was all shot to hell a couple of seconds later as a van screeched to a halt in front of the coffee shop.  Two huge males jumped out and grabbed her.

“What the…”

She kicked and screeched as a few people shouted ‘somebody help her’ –
no one did
.  But before her unicorn could even kick into action, a needle plunged into her arm.

Zane was not going to be pleased.

*

“How can she get taken from right outside the fucking SEA building?”  Zane paced up and down.  He was naked.  He went ballistic when he found out what happened, and he shifted, barreling through the SEA offices until he was finally wrestled to the ground by Gunner, Boris, and Cutter.  Gunner then sat on him for an hour until he shifted back to human.

Jessie tapped her tablet.  “I tried tracking the van, but the security cameras lost it.  It was found two hours later under the Darkling Bridge – on fire.”

Zane snarled and hurled a chair at a wall.  But even wanton destruction couldn’t ease his bear.  Particularly as the chair seemed actually to bounce off the wall and appeared to be fine.  His bear was frantic, fearful of what was happening to his mate.  Savage fear assailed him.  She could be in pain; she could already be dead.  His bear howled.  No, she couldn’t be.  She had to be alive.

Juliet sashayed into the room, a small frown marring her flawless features.  “What in blue blazes is happening in here?  I can hear the shouting from my office – ten floors up.”

“Zane’s girlfriend was kidnapped,” said Cutter.  “From across the fucking street.”

“Kidnapped?  Are we expecting a ransom?”

“Doubtful,” grumbled Zane, imagining his beautiful unicorn being dissected.  He clutched at the shoe he had found on the sidewalk.  The shoe her beautiful foot used to be in.  “She’s special.  Doubt they’ll want to give her back.”

“I’m sure she’s special to you…”

“More than that,” he snarled as his bear paced.  “She’s an unusual shifter, she’s… she’s a unicorn.”

The room silenced as everyone looked at him in disbelief.

“You’re joking?” asked Isis uncertainly.  “It’s a joke, right?  A lame joke because you have a terrible sense of humor.  But it is a joke.  Because you’re joking.”

“Not joking.  She’s a unicorn.”  A beautiful, perfect unicorn.

“No way, not possible,” growled Cutter.  “You’re full of shit.”

All his bear’s instincts told him to smash the wolf in the face, and Zane agreed that was a good idea.  However, Juliet’s interruption stopped him.

“Unusual, but not entirely unheard of,” she murmured.  “And she isn’t the only rare animal I’ve heard of recently.  Perhaps this is starting to come together.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Sky awoke on a lumpy mattress with a banging headache and a unicorn in a complete and utter flap.  The beast was pawing the ground and urging Sky to do something. 
Calm
, she soothed,
let’s just figure out how bad it is first.

She squinted to find a well-dressed human regarding her from behind bars.  Bars that formed a cage around her.

“Remarkable,” he muttered as avid eyes devoured her.

At that moment Sky was pleased to note she still wore the same pants and shirt she was wearing earlier. 
Thank.  Heavens
.  Although only one of her shoes appeared to have survived her journey to… wherever she was now.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes.  The human snapped a picture of her with his phone, and she stuck her tongue out.

He was joined by a tough gorilla shifter with a steely gaze and muscles that could even compete with her huge bear.  Her unicorn shivered slightly.  She wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley.  Or even a light one.

“We cut it fine, but she will be a goldmine,” gloated the human.

The gorilla shifter’s left eyebrow ticked but he inclined his head in agreement.

“A unicorn!  I can’t believe it.  I managed to send the picture Jones took out, and a lot of people are interested.  She’s quite pretty, too.  Make sure she becomes a little more presentable, she looks a little… soiled.”

“How would you look if you were kidnapped, you sick freak?” Sky snapped.

The gorilla sneered.  “Half an hour until the buyers turn up.  You’ll get some water and a new outfit.  Make yourself look good.”

“Screw you.” 
Buyers?!

“Look good or I will taze you,” he grumbled.

“Screw you with a cherry on top.”

His eyebrow twitched again.  “Fine.  Look good or I taze her.”  He nodded at another shifter in a cage who let out an eep.

Sky gasped as she rolled off her mattress and looked around the room.  It was huge, cavernous and filled with other shifters in cages, all of which appeared to be in their swimsuits while either cowering or prowling.  They looked to be in some kind of warehouse.  There were no windows and everything was illuminated by strobe lights – the cheap kind which never flatter anyone.

She jutted her chin at the gorilla who gave her a cold look before striding towards the large blonde shifter visibly cringing.  The large male shifter in the next cage roared, making Sky’s teeth vibrate.

The human shrugged as he regarded Sky.  “I’ll get more money from you than I could from twenty of her – if Booker were to kill her accidentally…”

“Stop!” Sky spat.  “Leave her alone.”

“Or maybe I’ll go after your bear,” rumbled Booker nastily.

Her unicorn panicked as icy dread shot down her spine. 
Zane!

“I’ll… I’ll be good.”  How she hated those words.  Words that only Zane should tease out of her with his tongue.

He smiled coldly.  “Good girl.”  He walked past a few of the other shifters, banging his fist against the bars of their cages.  “You all better behave,” he bellowed.  A few of them looked up and glared at him.  “Just remember, you all have families.”

Another large male snorted.  Her unicorn tried to sniff his scent – not easy in a room full of mixed, scared, sweaty shifters – but she thought he might be some kind of cat shifter.

Booker scowled at him before nodding at another black-clad goon.  “Shock him.”

Sky flinched as the male trembled at the pain of the electricity coursing through him.  But he resolutely remained standing and smirking at Booker.  The big gorilla shook slightly in fury.

“What are you going to do with us?” blurted Sky, diverting his attention.  She didn’t want to watch him getting shocked again anymore than she expected he wanted it.

“Fucker’s selling us like animals,” growled the cat shifter.

“You’ll be auctioned to the highest bidder,” explained Booker calmly.  “The potential buyers will be arriving soon, so you better pretty yourself up.”

“Yeah,” sneered another shifter.  “We’re to sit in our cages and be good, then they’ll send us upstairs, parade us around, get us to shift and sell us to perverts.”

“Silence!” roared Booker.

“And I thought the day turned weird when a skanky witch tried to make my boyfriend her sex slave,” Sky muttered.

Apparently, things can get worse.  Her unicorn whimpered.  Hopefully, Zane was safe at least.

*

“What is that place?”

Zane frowned through his binoculars.  They were ten miles outside of the city, crouching atop a small, dusty hill while spying on a large monstrosity of a building.  It looked like an MMA amphitheatre.  He’d lived in Los Lobos for years and never known about it.  It was kind of out of the way, but still.

“Thirty years ago it was a hockey arena,” said Juliet, waving her phone around trying to get a signal.  “It was only open for a year before an altercation between fans got out of hand, turned into a riot and caused massive structural damage.”

“I can believe it of hockey fans.”  Of course, they were angry – they liked hockey instead of football. 
Obviously, something was wrong there
.

“Actually, it was during a production of The Little Mermaid on Ice.  It started with one of the mothers talking on her phone while Sebastian was singing and quickly escalated from there.  Anyway, the owners couldn’t afford to fix the place, and nobody wanted to buy it – there was a rumor about it being built on an old burial ground or something.  I thought it was still abandoned.”

Evidently not.  It was lit up like the sky on Fourth of July, surrounded by a high fence, patrolling security guards and various cars were pouring into the parking lot – after getting past the security guards armed with automatic weapons on the gate.

Juliet pursed her lips.  “Christian Hawk would have enough money to repair it.”

Christian had managed to dodge his tail earlier that evening, so they had no idea where he was for certain.  They followed one of the people he had been meeting with there – a rich toothpaste manufacturer who had once been arrested on suspicion of keeping a slave.  The case fell apart when the young girl in question denied everything, but it was greatly suspected that she was paid off, and the SEA lost track of her after that.  Juliet’s suspicion that Hawk was behind everything they were seeing was further fueled by the fact that they were now watching just about everyone he had been meeting in the last few weeks show up.

“You think Sky’s in there?”  His bear chuffed. 
Go get her, get our mate.

Juliet hesitated.  “I suspect so, but… it is just a suspicion.  I have no actual proof.”

“I need to get in there.”

He tried to stand, and Lake pounced, pulling him back down.  “Take it easy,” breathed the arctic wolf.

Zane growled and struggled.  Gunner and Cutter then piled on him too, but still his bear wouldn’t stop struggling.

“We can’t fight our way in,” hissed Juliet disdainfully.  “For one thing, we’d be mowed down with bullets before we even made it past the fence.  They strike me as the types to shoot first and ask questions never.”

“What are we supposed to fucking do?” snarled Zane as quietly as he could manage.  “They have my mate!”

“We
suspect
they do,” trilled the vampire with maddening patience.  “We suspect they’ve been abducting rare species, but we don’t know for certain.  And we can’t walk up to the gate and ask to be let in.  Without a warrant, they can tell us to take a hike, and no judge will give us one based on a tenuous hunch.”

White hot rage burned through Zane’s body.  Words – stupid words and no action.  He needed to do something. His bear needed to do something.  He couldn’t wait much longer.

“We can’t underestimate them.  They were bold enough to abduct your girlfriend off the street.  They must be very confident that they are not going to get caught.  But if we go in there, we could get caught and killed.”  Juliet bit her lip.

“They could kill Sky!”

They could sit out there debating the problem all night, and they still wouldn’t get anywhere.  The time for talking, thinking and logic was over – now it was time for action.

“But we can’t arrest anyone without real proof which we can’t obtain legally,” she argued.

“Sky’s in there.  I can feel it.”

And he could…
sort of
.  When he found out she was abducted, he felt like his body was being pulled apart.  But now, he felt like he was closer to her.  She
had
to be in there.  He felt it in his chest – in that organ that pumped blood around his body.  What?  He wasn’t girly enough to admit his heart ached without her… even if it did.  Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking on his impatient bear’s part.  If she weren’t in there, getting in and tearing into a few people would certainly alleviate his mood a tiny, tiny bit.  Like 0.07% or something like that.

Juliet sighed.  “Then let’s make sure she stays alive long enough for her to swoon into your oversized arms.”