Timber Valley Pack: Lynx On The Loose( A Paranormal Romance With Shifters) (9 page)

              “One of us did this? A shifter?” a Pride Patrol bobcat named Bart hissed furiously.

              “Wait – they were after us, and also after the lynx shifter? Does that mean that she’s not a traitor?” Warden Roderick asked.

              “We won’t know for sure until a Shaman compels her to speak,” Warden Roderick said. “Of course, we’d have to find her first.”

              He pulled out his satellite phone and called the Chief Elder to inform him.

              “Let’s go find out,” Redthorne said.   He gestured everyone to come in close. “New mission. Our goal is to hit them hard, right now.”  He looked through his binoculars again. “There are two groups of them, setting up to come at us from two sides. See them? Good.  Bart, take the group to the north.   Kill as many as you have to, don’t compromise your safety, but try to save at least a couple of them for interrogation.  Marsh, everyone else, you come with me.”

              They shifted again and raced through the woods, carrying their weapons in their jaws or slung around their necks.

              They were right on top of the humans before they were spotted.

Shots rang through the air, followed by screams, and then chaos descended.  Redthorne launched himself, flying through the air, and took out a burly human, ripping through his throat and reveling in the taste of his blood.  Warden Marsh shifted to human form and, crouched behind a tree, began shooting at the humans, taking out several of them.

              Four human soldiers raced through the trees, and sprayed them with bullets.  Marsh returned fire, and two of the human soldiers fell.

              Then a gunshot cracked through the air, and Marsh gave out a cry and fell to the ground, bleeding from the shoulder. A Pride Patrol mountain lion fell to the ground, dead.  His body rippled and shifted back to human form.

              “Hands in the air!” A human soldier had his rifle pointed at Loren.

              Loren stared at him in, calmly, ignoring the soldier’s command. An Alpha didn’t beg or grovel. “Go ahead and shoot,” he said.  He could scent a dozen of his men headed his way. They wouldn’t get there fast enough to save him – but they’d make this soldier pay for declaring war on shifters.

              A human soldiers burst through the tree line, and Loren braced himself for the impact of a bullet.  To his shock, the soldier shot the mercenary who’d been holding the gun on him. The mercenary’s eyes went wide and his mouth opened, and then he went limp, crumbling to the ground where he lay in a pool of his own blood.

              Loren stared at him in confusion.  This human, a man in his thirties with close-clipped brown hair, had no scent;  he must have doused himself in noscentium. How did he know about it? Why had he shot the mercenary?

              “I’ll die before I let you capture me,” Loren told the man.

              “My English must be bad. I thought the proper phrase here was ‘Thank you,’ the man said.  He spoke in a heavy Eastern European accent.  “Now you should go rejoin your people.”

              Redthorne’s life had just been saved by a human?

              Bewildered, Redthorne turned and began making his way through the woods, half expecting to feel the sting of a bullet in his flesh.  Suddenly from behind him, he heard more shouting, and human soldiers clumsily crashing through the underbrush.

              He spun around.  The human who had saved him was surrounded. There were four soldiers there.

              Loren knew what he had to do. Honor demanded it. He had to defend the man who’d rescued him.

              He shifted to wolf form and ran back.  A shot rang out, and his rescuer crumbled to the ground with a cry of pain, clutching his abdomen.

              “You’re going to die nice and slow, Almassy! And I’m going to bring you back to the Colonel in pieces!” one of the soldiers yelled at him. “Or, no, maybe we’ll keep you alive for Horvath.”

             
Zador Horvath. These men knew where he was.

Loren burst through the bushes and launched himself through the air, knocking one of the soldiers off his feet and tearing open his throat.

              He felt a bullet sting his leg, but his rage was greater than his pain. He leaped at another soldier, who fell on his back, rifle firing into the air as Loren slashed through his jugular with his fangs. He descended into a red haze of rage, slashing, snarling, killing.

Dimly, he realized that he heard howls and snarls all around him now.

              The other shifters had come to his rescue, and killed the remaining humans – all except his rescuer. Several wolves stood around the injured human, snarling and snapping at him.

              “I can’t believe that I’m doing this,” he muttered to himself.

              He shifted back to human form.

              “Someone give me a bandage!” he yelled out to the shifters. “This human saved my life, and I need to know why.”

              “He’s wearing noscentium, isn’t he?” a coyote shifter asked, handing him a package of gauze from a bag that was slung around his neck. “How did he know about that?”

“Very good question,” Loren said, pressing the gauze against the soldier’s abdomen.  “We’ll find out after the healer works on him.”

He got on his satellite phone and called Warden Hopper, who was in charge of logistics. “Have the healers ready for us,” he rasped into the phone.   The healers were waiting in a trailer about a mile away, guarded by more Wardens.   Loren carried the man in his arms, cradling him and racing through the woods until he reached the trailer, with the Wardens and Pride Patrol jogging along behind him. His injured leg jabbed him with every step, and he felt hot blood running down, but he forced himself to keep running.

              As they approached the trailer, the healers were waiting outside.  The Wardens had bought half a dozen healers, in case things went very badly. 

              Loren knelt down and laid the human on the grass. Then he collapsed on the grass next to him with a groan.  He couldn’t run any further on his injured leg.

Virginia Battle, a female teenaged healer whose father was the Alpha of Timber Valley, took one look at his leg, cried out in dismay, and rushed over to him. Impatiently, he shook his head and gestured at the human.

“Heal him first. He’s hurt worse than me.” At her questioning gaze, he added “He saved my life. Hurry!”

“He did what? The human saved your life? All right, all right, fine,” Virginia said as Loren shot her an impatient look.  The human was growing pale, his jaw slack and his eyes glazed.  He’d bleed to death if he wasn’t healed immediately.

              He glanced around as Virginia knelt down next to the human, placed her hands on his chest, and poured her healing energy into him. 

              “Good news,” Marsh said. “We managed to capture two human soldiers.  It was strange, though; there were a bunch more human soldiers who came and helped us, and then retreated. We didn’t go after them. Should we have?”

              “No, you did the right thing. Just interrogate the human prisoners that we have,” Loren’s breath was coming out in rapid pants now.

              Another healer rushed over to Loren, falling down on her knees next to him. She laid her hands on his leg, and immediately he felt the pain subside. His flesh began to knit itself, and in a couple of minutes, the wound had completely vanished.

              The healer, Maryanne, sat back. She was pale and sweaty, panting with exertion.

              “Thank you, Maryanne. Go rest now,” he said to her.  She nodded, and one of the Wardens helped her into the Trailer.

              Virginia knelt next to the soldier, whose wound was still slowly sealing itself up. Because his injuries were more extensive, it was taking him longer. He lay on the ground, dazed and blinking, looking around him.  It must have been quite a bizarre sight for a human. There were men walking around naked, pulling fresh, clean clothes on, and shifters pacing about in animal form, most of them with bloody muzzles, panting happily after a battle well fought.

              Loren needed to update the Chief Elder. He’d lost his satellite phone in the fray, so he borrowed one from one of his Wardens and walked away from the group to call Fleetfoot.

              “What did you find out, sir?” he asked him.

              “I’m afraid it’s as you suspected,” Fleetfoot said. “Fawn’s been taken into custody, and we’re interrogating her now. We’ll pass along whatever we find from her.”

              Redthorne felt anger and disappointment swirling inside him. He wasn’t surprised, though. She’d been top on the list of suspects. He’d felt like she was a little too attentive when he was calling the other Wardens to report new developments in the case; she’d seemed to pause whatever she was doing to make sure she caught every word.

              There would be no exile for her; she’d nearly steered him and his men into a fatal ambush. For the crimes that she’d committed, she’d be put to death. All that, just for pure greed. What a fool she’d been.

              He went over to the human soldier, who’d fully recovered now and was standing up drinking a bottle of water. He was a man in his forties or fifties, with short dirty blond hair and broad Slavic features.  He had a muscular build and the bearing of a military man, although he still looked slightly dazed and pale.

              “I need you to come with me,” he said to the solider.

              Cody was standing with a group of soldiers; Loren waved at him to come over, and then he led the human and Cody a safe distance from the group of shifters, so that nobody could overhear them.

              “Cody, I need to know why this human saved my life.”

              Cody looked at the man, staring him straight in the eye.  The man’s pale blue eyes glazed over, and his face went slightly slack. Cody was compelling him to speak.

              “What is your name, and why did you save this man’s life?” Cody said.

              “My name is Nicholas Almassy.  We fight the same enemy,” the man said. “My family were victims of Zador Horvath.  My men and I are here to bring him to justice.”

              “You’re human.  Why would he target your family?” Loren asked.

              “You know about the illegal experiments they did at the labor camp?” Almassy said.

              Loren nodded.

“They wanted humans to test their formulas on, so they kidnapped poor villagers who nobody would miss. Fifteen years ago, when I was a young man, the soldiers came to arrest my family on, how do you say, trumped up charges.  I escaped the soldiers by hiding in our barn.   They took my family to the labor camp.” His face went grim. “Every one of them died.”

              “I am sorry for your loss,” Loren said. “What is your mission here in the United States?”

              “My men and I are here to track down Zador Horvath and bring him to justice. All of my men were victims of Zador. He killed their families, or imprisoned and experimented on them.”

              “Are you working for the government?”

              “Only unofficially.  We are being financed by them, but they would deny all knowledge of our existence if asked.”

              “So your government knows about shifters?”

              “They know nothing of shifters; my men and I decided not to reveal anything about your existence, because of the fear that it would start a worldwide panic.”

“I heard one of the soldiers say that they would take you to Horvath. Where is he?”

              “We do not know yet.  We have information indicating that he may be meeting up with Colonel Bradwell in Idaho day after tomorrow, and the two of them will be flying out of the country together, to start over. We’ve been told where the rendezvous point is.” He stared intently at Loren. “This is our best chance to catch both of them.  I know that you have spies in your midst, who feed information to Bradwell.  There is no way that you can tell your men about this; if you do, he will be tipped off, and we may never catch him.”

              “How do you know about the spies?” Loren asked.

              “I have my own spies,” Nicholas said.

              The light suddenly dawned for Loren. “Isadora Mosswood. The lynx shifter. She’s one of them, isn’t she?”

              “Yes.  She’s one of my better operatives.” 

              “Why would she work for humans?”

              “Because I saved her from a kidnapping attempt by Colonel Bradwell’s men, and asked her to come work for me.”

              So that’s how she’d been making a living since her parents cut her off.

              “Why didn’t she just tell us that when we arrested her?” Loren scowled.

              “Because she knew that there were those among your ranks who would betray you, but she didn’t know who,” Nicholas said.

              Loren’s head was whirling with all of this new information. He had so many questions that he wanted to ask, but time was pressing. He was going to have to make some big decisions soon.