Lilith Saintcrow: Taken

Mark? Maybe. He had money. But why would he want her kidnapped? He’d want something far more personal, wouldn’t he?

Oh, yes, he would. Unless they were taking her to him. Oh, God. If they were taking her to Mark, it was all over.

“I’ve got a little over a thousand,” the driver said. “Could be more or less, I wasn’t keeping close track.”

“We’ll drive for a while, then we’ll stop for food.” The one holding her loosened up a bit as the van took a sharp turn and accelerated. “We’re on the freeway now, sweetheart. Just be nice and easy—you’re safe.” He let up on her mouth again, but kept his hot fingers on her cheek, ready to gag her. The wet warmth slicking her cheeks and fogging her glasses was tears, she discovered, and blood smeared around her mouth. Had she drooled, too?

Did getting kidnapped and half suffocated make you drool?

I’ve gone insane. It’s the only explanation.

“Please don’t hurt me.” Much to her surprise, she sounded steady. Her tank top— Lucy’s tank top—was all rucked up, her bare skin against his T-shirt. He was warm, and the van was heating up. Her naked legs prickled with gooseflesh.

“We’re not going to hurt you.” The young boy crouched on the seat swayed as the van kept going. He swiped at the tears on his cheeks, scrubbing them away angrily. “Zach, are you sure? She’s a bleeder.”

“She’s got the mark, I can smell it on her. If I can, you can, too.” His hands fell away, and Sophie was suddenly aware she was half lying on him; he was wedged up against the closed side door. Her eyes flicked toward the passenger’s side in the front—there was an open seat there, and maybe she could signal or get away somehow, if she could just get that far.

Think, Sophie. Think!

“A shaman.” The driver sighed. “God dam mit.” There was a sound—palm striking steering wheel, sharply. “Kyle.”

“We’ll sing him to the moon as soon as I’m sure we’re safe. We’ll hold Silence for him until then.” The guy she was lying on—Zach—sighed, too. “It’s just us now. But we’ve got a shaman. Julia, find her a coat. Brun, gather up the money. You’ll hold it for me.”

The crying boy hopped off the seat, grabbing the roll from the girl’s hands. He paused and ducked his head when his gaze drifted across Sophie’s. That streak in his hair looked oddly familiar. He seemed not to notice he was weeping, even while the tears dripped on his denim jacket.

“Please,” she whispered. “You can just let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

“She’s whining.” The girl’s lip lifted. White teeth glimmered. “What a bleeder .”

There was a confused sense of motion, and Sophie landed hard on her side, her head hitting something. A burst of starry pain rocked through her skull, and the weird rattling growl crested again, drowning out the engine.

Her ears roared, too, like a high wind in acres of trees. A familiar sound, one she’d heard many times before, usually while Mark was yelling. It was always so loud when he started in on her, the screaming robbing her of breath and light, closing down her vision into a tunnel.

“Shut up, Julia!” Zach snarled, but Sophie slid down into a darkness starred with weird spangled lights, and was gone.

An hour later, they stopped at a drive-through at the city limits.

They held the Silence for Kyle, none of them speaking unless absolutely necessary. It was to keep his spirit from lingering, but it meant Zach had too much time to think.

It also meant he couldn’t explain much to the new shaman. Not that she seemed disposed to listen. She shrank frantically away any time one of them came near her, and her eyes roved the inside of the van when she thought he wasn’t watching her.

Looking for escape.

He cursed to himself every time he saw her flinch. She had an oil-stained rag clasped to the side of her head. She really was a pretty little thing, curved in all the right places, her hair a tangle of sandalwood curls and those little librarian glasses—thankfully not damaged; Brun had picked them up from the carpet—perched on her adorable little nose, over two wide, pretty eyes. It was too dim to tell what color the pale irises really were. Something too light to be green, and the wrong shade for blue.

He wanted to find out.

Unfortunately, the bruise spreading down the side of her face from hitting the seat didn’t do much to help her looks. But he’d had to shut Julia up before he was tempted to hurt her. So many times now he had glanced over to gauge Kyle’s reaction to the new shaman, to Eric’s driving, to Julia’s soft sobbing in the backseat, curled up in a ball—and found an empty place where his little brother should be.

This is your fault, not Julia’s. He wasn’t hard enough to lead, and especially not to rule a traveling Family without a shaman. You know that. You still let him take the alpha, because…why?

He knew why. Because of the smell of smoke and the sound of Kyle’s agonized howl as Zach held him back, as the fire ate their home and their parents. It was right after a fight with a small wandering band of upir, both the alpha and the shaman wounded, the shaman too deep in a healing-trance to wake up in time. Smoke inhalation could kill any Tribe, and the old alpha had thrown Zach clear with the last of his strength. Dad had succumbed with his last mate, their deaths an agonizing rawness in the center of Zach’s memory.

The fire had left them homeless, without shaman or kin. And it had left Zach with the deep shame of failure. He was strong enough—he should have saved Dad or gone up in flames with the shaman. He’d made the instinctive choice, not the right one.

And an alpha couldn’t ever afford to be instinctive instead of right when it came to choices like that.

Eric handed the bags of food to Brun, who had settled in the passenger’s seat, not daring to comfort his crying twin. The shaman potential, who wouldn’t give her name, perched on the other side of the bench seat, dry-eyed and dazed. She smelled too good to be true, and he had to stop himself from taking deep lungfuls every time the air in the van shifted.

I have screwed this right up, haven’t I? But he hadn’t been thinking, just reacting to the beast’s roar of possessiveness. It had happened so quickly, and she smelled so good, brunette and cold silver light. That smell meant comfort to a Carcajou. It was the shamans who could hold the beast in check, the ice and moonlight in them taking the edge off sharp claws and blood-hunger. Already it was easier to think clearly, even with the numbness in his chest, the part of him that didn’t believe his little brother was gone.

And as soon as she was triggered, she’d belong to them. It wouldn’t take long, not with as strong as she smelled of the potential now. A stray gust of air brought him another load of the silver-smell, and he inhaled gratefully.

Kyle. I wish you were here to see this.

But he wasn’t. And they broke the Silence temporarily to break their fast. Maybe he could talk to the girl, coax her somehow.

“Dead cow ahoy,” Brun said, thrusting three huge wrapped loads of overcooked, oversalted meat and processed bread into his hands. The van started again, Eric wolfing double hamburgers almost whole. The tank was full, courtesy of the stop-and-rob across the street, and they were ready to strike out south. As soon as they finished eating they could keep the Silence again.

“You want some?” Brun had crouched, his head well below the woman’s, submission and conciliation evident in every line of his body. His pheromone wash was submissive, too, tinted with softness. He was the one she was least likely to be terrified of. And the closer he could get to her, the more they could all get their pheromones on her, the sooner she’d trigger and be theirs in truth.