Talon (Rise of the Pride, Book 1) (20 page)

“Let me go!” Liberty yelled, reaching at her
hip for her gun. She slid the cold metal free and jammed the
business end of the weapon into the man’s gut. “You heard me!”

“Unless you have silver bullets in that gun,”
he paused to laugh, “You won’t hurt me. Go ahead…pull the trigger,
bitch.”

“Fuck you,” she snarled, pulling the
trigger…twice. To Liberty’s astonishment, the man hissed, but
remained upright, his hold on the back of her shirt never easing
up.

“You’re going to regret that,” he growled,
punching her in the eye.

Don’t pass out! Don’t pass out!
She
kept repeating the demand in her head, but her vision narrowed. Her
body hit the ground and the gun was jerked from her hand by a man
twice her size. He leaned over her and she could barely make out
his features.

His unshaven face reminded her of a grizzly
bear, but his eyes glowed yellow like Talon’s when he was close to
shifting. This man’s eyes didn’t hold any friendliness…only
hatred.

“Where’s the girl?” she yelled. “You promised
to bring her.”

“Not a promise,” he sneered, grabbing Liberty
by the back of her neck. “Come on, little cat. We have places to
go.”

She didn’t correct him. If he thought Liberty
was a shifter, maybe he would go easy on her. She knew how fragile
a human was in shifter’s eyes. If this man knew she wasn’t one of
his kind, he’d kill her for sure.

She struggled as the man drug her across the
lot. There was an old brown pickup truck with a cover over the bed.
As he approached, another man slid out of the driver’s side, walked
quickly to the back of truck, and dropped the tailgate.

“Who the fuck is this?” he snarled. This
second man was even more haggard looking than the guy pulling her.
Thankfully, he dropped her to the ground, but when Liberty tried to
scurry away, the man put his booted foot on her chest.

“That dumbass panther sent a woman to handle
his business,” he laughed in disgust. “Give me the tape. Their
females are harmless. A little duct tape will hold her.”

The other man tossed the first guy the tape
and leaned against the truck while the one that seemed to be the
leader wrapped her wrists behind her back and then restrained her
ankles.

“Grab her feet,” he ordered. The other man
did as he was told, but Liberty wasn’t going out like that. She’d
seen a house up the road and tried to scream loud enough to get
someone’s attention.

The moment he touched the bare skin on her
broken ankle, Liberty screamed out again from the burning pain from
the male touching her. He didn’t seem to care that he was touching
a mated female, and that alone sent her fear up about a thousand
notches.

“Damn, she’s loud,” the second man cringed.
“Want me to tape her face?”

“Hell, yes,” the first guy answered.

She struggled as hard as she could as he
moved forward with a strip of the tape, slapping her face a little
harder than was necessary. Liberty’s eye was already swollen closed
and the side of her cheek burned from his rough handling.

They tossed her into the bed of the truck as
if she was nothing more than a sack of potatoes. The engine started
and the vehicle lurched forward, sending Liberty rolling towards
the tailgate. She tried to keep her mind straight, paying close
attention to the turns the truck made so she could possibly get
away and tell the police where they’d taken her. She only hoped
they were taking her to the same place they were holding Evie.

She didn’t know how long she’d been in the
back of the truck, but by the time it stopped, Liberty thought
maybe twenty minutes had passed. The tailgate dropped and both men
reached in for her. They’d gone down a bumpy road for quite a
while, and her body throbbed from all of the jarring of the
journey.

Liberty had hoped they’d taken her up into
Memphis so she could find some sort of landmark, but when her one
eye cleared, she realized they’d probably gone east or south.
They’d taken her to a wooded area. Everything was pitch black,
there was only a faint yellow glow in the distance.

“Come on, bitch,” the guy who she’d shot
said, waiting for the other man to grab her feet.

She was rendered speechless and unable to
move around because of the tape. They’d wrapped her wrists and
ankles several times.

Soon they entered a tiny cabin, tossing her
onto a mat on the floor. Liberty struggled to sit up and when she
finally did, she cried out in horror. Evie was laying on a mat next
to hers. The girl’s short blonde hair was covered in blood and she
was laying there in a daze, her eyes glazed over. She was panting
heavily.

Liberty started screaming when she realized
they’d clamped some sort of collar around Evie’s throat. The
material was thick and the inside was impregnated with several
sharp spikes. Tiny pricks of blood had dried beneath the collar. It
didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize they’d placed it on the
girl to keep her from shifting. Because if she did, the spikes
would kill her instantly.

“Drug her,” the one she had shot commanded,
pulling his bloodied shirt over his head. Liberty’s eyes widened
when she saw that the two bullet holes were now closed over.
Whoever this man was, he sure as hell wasn’t human.

The other man retrieved a bag from behind the
old wooden door. He took three steps to reach her. She frantically
looked around the small room, hoping to find a way to save her and
the girl. She had to get out of there.

“I’m going to drug you,” he taunted,
uncapping a syringe. Liberty bucked and swung her restrained legs
over to try to knock the needle out of his hand, but the man was
quicker. “It’s going to be fun playing with you.”

The needle sunk into her leg, causing tears
to well in her eyes. She struggled for another minute before her
vision dimmed and everything went dark.

Chapter Thirteen

“Boss, we have a problem,” Winter told him,
sounding panicked.

“What is it?” he demanded. If another man had
touched Liberty, he was going to kill the son of a bitch.

“Liberty’s gone,” he replied.

“What?” he roared, standing up from his seat
behind the desk. He grabbed his keys and rushed toward the front of
the house.

“Nova said she wasn’t feeling well,” he
started to explain. Talon had already started his truck and was
backing out of his spot from in front of the house within seconds
of the call. “She went home, but when we got here, her car was
gone. Savage hadn’t seen her come home, but we’ve searched the land
and the house for her. She’s not there.”

“I’ll be there in five,” he growled. “Protect
Nova.”

“Hurry, alpha,” he added, his voice choking
up.

It was after one in the morning when he
arrived at the old farmhouse not too far from his own property. His
truck slid sideways as he slammed on the brakes in the gravel
driveway. Nova was on the porch, sitting in a rocking chair,
covered with a thick quilt. Her eyes were glistening with tears. As
soon as he stepped out of the truck, she came running toward him.
He grabbed her and let his alpha power loose to console the human
female.

“She’s gone, Talon,” Nova cried. “Please find
my sister.”

“I will find her,” he promised, looking over
Nova’s shoulder at Winter and Savage who were just coming up from
the side of the house. Both men were pulling shirts over their
heads.

“Anything?” Talon asked.

“Nothing,” Winter said, shaking his head.
“Her scent is old. She hasn’t even been here for at least twelve
hours.”

“Let’s get inside,” he directed, looking down
at Liberty’s baby sister. He didn’t want her out in the open. He
had to protect her as if she were one of his females.

As he stepped on the porch, his phone rang
from its place in his front pocket. Talon’s heart raced, hoping
that it was Liberty, but frowned at the screen when it was his
healer.

“Harold?” he answered.

“Alpha,” Harold growled. “I found your mate’s
car. It’s at the old abandoned gas station on highway 309, south of
the interstate.”

“Any sign of Liberty?” he asked, trying to
hold on to whatever sanity he had left. Nova gasped and turned,
looking up at him as if he had the answer she needed.

“It doesn’t look good,” Harold began. “The
car door has been torn open and her shoe was lying next to the back
tire. Boss…there’s blood.”

“Son of a bitch!” he roared.

“That’s not all, Talon,” the healer said. It
wasn’t like Harold to call his alpha by his first name, so whatever
he knew…it had to be bad.

“What?” Talon demanded.

“It’s the wolves,” Harold answered. “Their
scent is all over this lot.”

“Fuck!” he shouted, his heart plummeting into
his stomach. “I’m on my way!”

“I’ll wait for you,” he stated. “Just in
case.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Talon
hung up the phone and his panther shoved forward, causing him to
stumble into Winter.

“Steady,” Winter urged.

“Winter, stay with Nova,” he ordered.
“Savage, call Noah and Booth…have them meet us. Tell them to
hurry.”

Nova was rushed into the house by Winter.
Savage didn’t speak after he called the two men, climbing into the
passenger side of Talon’s truck. They turned south, choosing to
take the back roads over instead of the highway. They needed to
stay out of sight. The last thing they needed was to have the local
police involved in shifter business.

Harold was pacing next to Liberty’s car when
they arrived, his already disheveled hair was in a mess on his
head. He approached the truck and stopped Talon from rushing to
where she had last been before she was taken from him.

“It’s a small amount of blood,” he said,
shaking his head. “It looks as though she may have been dragged to
an awaiting truck. There are tire marks leading out of the
lot.”

“Show me,” Talon demanded.

Sure enough, there were two marks that looked
like a body had been dragged about thirty feet. Where they ended, a
faint outline of a body was right next to the beginnings of tire
tracks. A small amount of blood stained the white rocks that made
up the parking lot of the old building.

“They turned south out of here,” Winter
observed, looking down the road. “That road leads toward the Holly
Springs National Forest.”

“Do you know how many old hunting shacks are
in that forest?” Talon growled in frustration. “That’s a lot of
land to cover.”

“We could call in the pride,” Harold
suggested.

Talon’s phone chirped with an incoming
message. He quickly removed it from his pocket, his heart seizing
in his chest when he read the text from an unknown number.

Your females are being held in a cabin at
the end of Evans Road. Hurry…

“Who sent that?” Winter asked.

“I have no idea, but we have to go now,”
Talon warned, jumping into his truck. He knew exactly where they
were being held. Who would’ve sent that message?

Harold was ordered to stay close, in case he
was needed, but not to go any further in than the main road leading
down to the cabin. There was only one way in and out by car. If
they could keep these wolves in the cabin, they’d be as good as
dead.

“Wake up, little kitty,” the man chuckled.
Liberty had been pretending to sleep ever since the drugs had worn
off earlier. Earlier could’ve been an hour ago or ten minutes ago.
She was still too groggy to really tell any sort of time. She only
knew that the sun wasn’t up and she prayed that she hadn’t been out
for an entire day already.

“Boss said we have to keep that one alive,
Lenny,” the other man, the one she’d shot, smiled. The few teeth he
still had were stained and she felt her stomach revolt at the
thought of the man touching her. If she’d only told
Talon…
No!
She couldn’t think like that. It was best that she
gave herself. The pride needed him.