Wolfen Domination (21 page)

            Jesse lurched against the two panthers that held
his arms.  “There is no time!” he snarled.  “If you have my woman then you know
she has only just given birth to our son!  They hold him there to experiment on
him.  They are breeding more!”

            The panther’s eyes narrowed.  “
Si
!  I have
seen your woman.  She bears your marks.  If it is as you say, why would she
bear your mark?  You chose her as your mate!  Carlos is not likely to believe
your lies,
señor
Lycan!”

            Jesse ground his teeth, but he resisted the urge
to argue further.  It was useless to even speak to the leader’s lieutenant. 
Besides, if they had Erin he would have to go with them to get her back.  “Take
me to Carlos, then.  If he is intelligent enough to lead your clan, then he
will not be so stupid as to ignore a threat to us all.”

* * * *

            Erin knew she was in a state of shock.  As balmy
as the night was, she was shivering uncontrollably.  Clamping her teeth more
tightly together, she drew her knees more tightly against her chest, shifting
her buttocks on the deck to ease some of her discomfort from sitting on the
hard surface.

            To her surprise, the Lycans on either side of her
shifted closer to share the warmth of their bodies with her.  She glanced up at
Billy Ray in gratitude.

            At least, she thought it was Billy Ray.  He had
shifted into beast form and she had trouble distinguishing between the Lycan
when they morphed.

            “What do you think they intend to do with us?”
she whispered.

            His yellow eyes examined her piercingly for a
moment.  “They would have killed us already if they had been ordered to do so.”

            It was some reassurance but not quite what she’d
had in mind.  She peered through the gloom at the creature that was guiding the
yacht through the shallow waters of what looked like a cove.  She hadn’t
noticed it before.

            She wondered if Jesse had, if he would find them,
or return to discover the ship gone and believe they had abandoned him and
others.

            The screaming demons that had descended upon them
were not Lycan.  It had been hard enough for her to come to accept that the
werewolves actually existed.  To discover that there were others, werecats, was
a jolt and at least partly the reason for her shock.

            The assault had been enough to thoroughly
terrorize her, though.  Her own animal instincts had taken over from the moment
she had looked up to see the great, black beast crouching above her, ready to
spring.  Mindless with terror, she’d whirled and raced back to the main cabin--the
only avenue of escape open to her at all and that would’ve proven to be no more
than a trap even if she’d succeeded in barricading herself in before the thing
was upon her.

            She’d fought it, too mindless to realize that her
efforts were useless.  She was bleeding from dozens of claw marks and the thing
hadn’t even tried to savage her with them or its teeth.  She wondered if she
had any cracked ribs from the thing pouncing upon her and slamming her into the
deck.  She felt bruised.  Every breath pained her and every muscle in her body
protested to the slightest movement.

            Maybe that was why they hadn’t bothered to bind
her as they had the others?  They knew that, as a human, she was so frail next
to them that she was already too battered just from being captured to present
any sort of flight risk.

            She held on to that thought.  The hope that her
weakness might be turned to an advantage was all she had.

            The ship lurched abruptly as its prow dug into
soft sand.

            They’d grounded it.

            Erin shot Billy Ray a panicked glance.  Unless
the incoming tide released it, they were thoroughly trapped now with no way to
flee but on foot.

            As soon as the ship stopped moving, the panther
people who’d captured them swarmed upon them, dragging them to their feet.  She
screamed as she was tossed over the side.  The sound was cut off abruptly as
the air was forced from her lungs when she landed in the waiting arms of a man-panther
standing in the water below.  She was still struggling to drag air into her
lungs again when the creature tossed her over his shoulder and began to jog up
the beach with her.  The impact of her ribcage against the beast’s shoulder
forced the air from her lungs again and internal darkness swarmed up to swallow
her.

            A profound blackness like a cave greeted her when
Erin finally roused.  For many moments, she couldn’t focus beyond the pain
spreading through her ribcage and pounding in her skull, but when she’d managed
to shift slightly and relieve some of the pressure, the pain receded
sufficiently enough for her to assimilate the fact that she was still moving
and that the heat radiating into her came from the body of the creature that
was carrying her.

            They were moving quickly.  Around her, she could
hear sounds that indicated many others.

            How could they see where they were going?

            From the foliage brushing along her arm and
tangling occasionally in her hair to snatch painful strands loose, she knew
they must be deep within the jungle.

            Where were they being taken and what did these
creatures intend to do with them when they got there?

            She shied away from that thought, unwilling to
deal with it until she had to.

            The slim hope she’d nurtured that she might be
able to escape since they hadn’t bound her like they had the others died
though.  Even if the thing wasn’t carrying her, she couldn’t see her hand in
front of her face.  They obviously could see quite well.  She wouldn’t have a
chance in hell of outrunning them or hiding from them.

            After what seemed an eternity of suffering, Erin
began to notice that she could pick out darker shapes within the blackness.  At
first, she thought she was only imagining it.  Then she wondered if it was
dawn.  She realized shortly that it was neither.  The trees were thinning,
allowing some light from the night sky to penetrate to the floor of the forest.

            Abruptly, the creature carrying her stepped from
the trees and into a clearing.  The contrast was sharp.  She reared upward
again, bracing her palms on the creature’s back to look around.

            They were moving through a field of some kind. 
Around her, she saw others emerge from the trees, her fellow captives among
them.

            She didn’t see the stone fortress until the
creature carrying her passed beneath the outer wall.  Vegetation gave way to
dusty, bare dirt and then to stones set into the dirt in a swirling pattern. 
Twisting her head, Erin saw a collection of shabby huts leaning against the
outer wall of the fortress.

            It looked ancient.  She wondered if it had once
been just that.  Or, perhaps, it had been a mission?  The style, from what she
could see, was Spanish, but then she’d heard the were-creatures speaking
Spanish.  She didn’t understand one word in ten, but she knew Spanish when she
heard it.

            She wobbled when the beast carrying her set her
abruptly on her feet.  Her feet and legs had long since lost circulation.  Her
knees buckled.  She would’ve collapsed on the stones except that he grasped her
upper arm.  It wasn’t enough support.  She sank anyway.  Hauling her upright
again, he wrapped an arm around her waist and half carried her while she
struggled to put one foot in front of the other.

            Stout wooden doors, looking as ancient as the
building itself, lay before her across a wide verandah.  Glancing around and
upward as she was shoved toward the doors, Erin noted details that seemed to
bear up her suspicion that this had once been a mission, dating back, no doubt,
to the Spanish conquest and colonization in the Americas.  It was too far inland,
she thought, to have been a fort, but she supposed she could be wrong.  Maybe
it had originally been built as both?

            The interior, she saw once they’d entered the
main structure, was lit with lamps.  Exposed electrical wiring and bare bulbs
testified to an attempt to modernize at some point, but she supposed so far
into the jungle electricity wasn’t easy to come by.  It would take generators,
and that meant a lot of fuel would have to be hauled in unless they only used
the electricity sparingly.

            Brightly colored rugs and dark, heavy furniture
littered the great room, which looked to be a gathering point for a large
household.

            Without pausing, the creature carrying her
crossed the main room and stepped through an arch.  A wide corridor lay before
them.

            Erin’s first taste of panic since she’d come hit
her when she glanced back and discovered the Lycan were being led off in a
different direction.  She burst into motion so fast, she very nearly managed to
break free.  “No!  Put me with them!  What are you doing?”

            The creature snarled.  “Be still,
gringa
.”

            She ignored the command, fighting him every step
of the way as he dragged her down the corridor and finally shoved her into a
tiny room.  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or more worried when he simply
stepped out again, slamming a heavy door and bolting it from the outside.

            Shuddering in reaction, Erin lay where she’d
fallen when he’d pushed her inside, struggling to calm her pounding heart and
catch her breath.  After several moments passed and the beast did not reappear,
she pushed herself up slowly to a sitting position and looked around.

            The room was dark except for a little light
spilling through a small, barred window high in one wall.  She could see that
the room contained nothing more than a narrow cot barely wide enough for one
and wooden stool.  Aching all over, she got up from the floor with an effort
and moved to the cot.  The springs squawked in protest as she planted her butt
on the lumpy mattress, and both dust and less pleasant smells rose from the
fabric.  She found she was too weary to care.

            Struggling up again, she ripped the thin coverlet
off and beat the surface haphazardly to make certain nothing creepy was lying
in wait for her and finally sprawled on the miserable cot and wrapped the cover
around herself.

            The tiny cell was bright when she awoke.  She lay
still for some time, staring up at the exposed beams in the ceiling above her,
listening to the sounds of movement around her and trying to identify something
familiar while memory slowly returned and her mind sharpened.

            They’d been taken prisoner and she had no idea
why.

            Hearing a flurry of new activity outside, Erin
sat up abruptly, trying to determine the direction the sound was coming from. 
She realized after several moments that the noise was outside the building and
glanced up at the window.  From the floor, she doubted she could reach it, from
the bed, maybe.

            Scrambling up, she stretched upward until she
could grasp the edge of the sill and then curled her fingers around two of the
bars set into the stone, pulling herself up until she could rest her chin on
the sill and look out.  Below, she saw a large group of manbeasts coming
through the gate of the outer wall.  A group of Lycans formed the center of the
group that had just entered.

            Grunting with the effort, Erin dug her toes
against the wall, trying to get a better view.  A sense of recognition, faint
at first, grew in her as she studied the Lycan at the forefront of the group. 
“Jesse,” she murmured, torn between despair at the realization that he, too,
had been captured and relief that he seemed unharmed.

            Almost as if he’d heard her, he lifted his head
and his amber gaze met hers across the distance.  She saw him tense, as if to
bolt into action and for several moments fear gripped her.

            Evidently it gripped the panthers, as well.  The
men she’d seen loitering in the courtyard, that she’d assumed were as human as
she was, fell to their knees.  Their bodies began to contort.  Within moments,
they rose up onto two legs as manbeasts similar in form to the catlike people
who’d captured her.

            “Oh god!  Don’t Jesse!  Please don’t!  You can’t
hope to win against them all!”

            Again, it was almost as if he’d heard her
whispered plea.  After several nerve wracking moments he seemed to force the
tension from his body.  As he relaxed his threatening stance, she saw the
tension leave the other Lycans.

            Reluctantly, Erin gave in to her protesting
muscles and lowered herself until she could touch the bed again.  Settling on
it, she blew on her burning palms absently, trying to think calmly about the
situation--trying
not
to think what their capture would mean to her poor
baby.

            She wouldn’t give in to despair.  Jesse still had
a chance to escape.  He was smart, and strong and capable.  He would find a
way, and when he did, he would go after Joshua.  She knew he would.