I ground my teeth, wrestling with the stinging net.I had to get to my phone, had to let Linc know.
“Holy fuck,” one of them shouted.
The net was spinning fast enough to make me lose my sense of direction.
“Did we get another one?”
The bundled-up shirt was stuck under my armpit.I could smell my own blood as I tried to get to it.There was no purchase to be had against the ropes, and they were getting slippery with blood.It was as if they’d been wrapped in barbed wire.
“Get the tranq.Hurry!He’s still moving!”
“That’s a big one.The redhead.”
I couldn’t make out their faces.It was two people, standing around me.
I took a deep breath.“Marcus!Marcus!”
“Do—”
His voice, no doubt, cut short.
I growled, bared my teeth.“What have you fucking lunatics done with him?”
“Got a temper, this one.Probably should put this one in the zoo.”
I could smell the men, and I faintly recognized them as having been in the diner when I’d taken Marcus to town.I caught movement, someone running with a gun.I wanted to shift back, shivered with the need, but something held me back.If I was people-shaped, maybe they’d hesitate before they pulled the trigger, maybe long enough to give me a chance.
“Marcus!”
He didn’t answer this time.
They raised the gun.They did not hesitate.
33
Iwas pretty sure I kept blacking out for seconds at a time.My arm hurt so much, and the angle it was bound at wasn’t making it any better.I had to keep my eyes open.They had given Ell some kind of injection, drugging him while he was still out from the Taser.I couldn’t see him now.They’d moved him.
They had stuff here.It was like a campsite, roughly circular.There were tents.
I tried to remember how many days it had been since we’d first run into these guys, since I’d come here, but I couldn’t concentrate.My head was pounding.
The werewolf hadn’t shifted, but he had padded over.His eyes were mostly yellow, golden if I was in a poetic mood.I so fucking wasn’t.I had to keep swallowing so I wouldn’t throw up, and staying conscious was a similar challenge.
I saw the wolf sniffing the air, but he was subtle about it.His tail was low to the ground.I only had Ell, Dom, and Linc to compare him to, but he seemed smaller, thinner.
A click, then beeping and a mechanical whirring sound made me look around.
“Son of a bitch,” one of the men said.There had been another two here.One of them looked young, about the right age to be one of the twinks Steven had cheated with, perhaps.
Though that was me making light of this seriously fucked-up situation.All of these men had weapons, and when they looked at me, they barely even recognized me as a person.Even Steven’s inane venom was better than the way they tried not to see me at all.
They were running.Pain pulsed in my shoulder, threatening to make me sick all over again.
“Please,” I said, then I whined.It hurt so damn much.
At first, when Dom called my name, I thought I was hallucinating, but then things came into focus.They were looking for me.They could help Ell, get him help.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Steven, that ugly grin plastered on his face like shit stains dried in a toilet bowl.
