back at Risk. “But, you see, she made it — for a while anyway. Long enough for what I needed from her.” Lusse’s hand brushed the length of the younger male’s back. “Look closely, smell him. You’ll recognize the truth.”
Risk’s mind traveled back — to the time he most wished he could forget. Lusse had starved him for weeks; used every toy she could devise to break him; locked him in with a pack of rogue males all intent on winning the spot of leader, and not caring if there was any pack left to lead. Then she had chained him to a wall in her torture chambers and pumped every drop of anger and fear she could extract from her victims into his face. There was no escaping it. By the time she had unloosed him and tossed the bitch in heat into his cell, he was lost. There was nothing human left — nothing but animal.
He’d torn into the female, mounting her even as his teeth had sunk into her neck, ripping through fur and skin. The metallic tang of her blood only adding to his pleasure, he’d forgotten everything except the heady sensations of sex, blood and finally death. Or so he had thought. After, when he had calmed and was back in his human form, Bader had come in to drag the bitch’s lifeless form from the room.
Lusse had rewarded him by announcing his new position as pack alpha, but Lusse’s ploy, instead of committing Risk to his demon half, had done the opposite. Memories of that night filled him with self-loathing, feeding his need to contain his true nature.
He had refused Lusse’s position, instead accepting the torture that came with defying her. She had tried many times since to force him back to that place, but had never managed to push him that far.
And now Lusse was telling him the male in front of him was the product of that gruesome night.
“Still don’t believe me? Risk, your lack of trust is so disturbing. Come closer.” Lusse gestured with one hand.
But Risk didn’t need to move closer, didn’t trust himself nearer the witch. Instead, he closed his eyes and put faith in his senses. At first he smelled nothing more than hound — male hound, too close. Kill. Kill, his instincts yelled. In his hound form, Risk’s hackles would have raised and his lips would have twisted into a snarl, but as a human, he was able to tamp these reactions down, his nostrils flaring the only visible response to the scent of a potential challenger so close.
Kill. Risk sat still, his hands fisted at his sides, waiting for the impulse to lunge toward the other male to subside. When he was confident of his control, he inhaled again, delving deeper into the scent.
Anger. And pain, but not just physical…Risk frowned. Emotional pain was a human tendency, not something natural to a hellhound. A human weakness, Lusse would say. The type of weakness she accused Risk of having…
Damn. Could it be true? Then hidden under layers of anger, hurt and testosterone, he found it, his scent — Risk’s scent. Not exact, of course, but close — too close to deny.
The boy was his.
At the realization, his eyes opened.
“Ah, you see it now, don’t you?” Lusse grinned, her hands clasped in front of her like a schoolgirl being presented with an unexpected gift.
Yes, he saw it. He had done the one thing he had sworn he would never do — condemned another hound to a life of hell serving Lusse. He could imagine Lusse bent over the boy’s crib — if she’d allowed him that luxury — while she clipped the silver collar of her control around his neck. His mother dead, his father already trapped in bondage to the witch, leaving no one to stop her.
“So, are you proud of your little boy, Risk? He shows a lot of promise, you know. Not as strong as his father, but I suppose with the right training…” she pulled the gem-covered glove she’d used on Risk earlier from her pocket “…he might earn his keep. Or perhaps father more hounds, eventually I’d have to get at least one whelp without those annoying human sensibilities.” She knelt down, resting her gloved hand lightly on the younger male’s back.
“So, what did you say happened with the witch I sent you to retrieve?”
Kara sat back on her heels, staring at just a few of the strange objects her sister had tucked inside an innocuous-looking rubber tub: a small statue of a woman draped in some kind of winged cloak, a silk bag filled with polished stones, and most disturbing, a very sharp, polished dagger with a bone handle.
Setting the knife carefully onto the ground beside her, Kara sighed. What had Kelly gotten herself involved in? She reached into the tub again, this time pulling out a rough cloth. A nub of white chalk fell from its folded length and plinked onto the cement floor of their shared basement. Kara’s gaze followed as it rolled to a stop.
Well, that probably explained this, anyway. Kara stood up to retrieve the chalk then wandered to a space to the right of the stairs where the faint outline of a circle showed on the dusty floor.
Plopping down onto the cold concrete, Kara absently traced over the circle while her mind flitted back over the past few days.
After Risk had disappeared, Kara escaped the cabin — through the window. The door wouldn’t budge even though she’d seen no sign of a lock, and there were no other exits. Made her wonder how she had got into the cabin in the first place, but with everything else swirling through her head, she hadn’t wasted much time worrying over the trivial. She’d squirmed out the opening, and scurried to a small lean-to she’d found behind the house. Inside she’d found a Jeep with the keys conveniently in the ignition. Even though the vehicle had to be almost twenty years old, it had started without so much as a hiccup.
Not pausing to analyze her sudden change in luck, Kara had sped away, taking the only road she could — the one that dead-ended at the cabin. After an hour of bumping down the rutted dirt road, she’d finally hit pavement and a choice — left or right. Still having no clue where she was, she’d picked using pure instinct. As it turned out, her gut had served her well. Twenty minutes later she’d been back in familiar territory. Which, if she was allowing herself to analyze any of this too carefully, would be disturbing, since she had visited the gas station she found herself at many times last summer when she and Kelly had gone hiking, but she couldn’t remember ever seeing the road that led to Risk’s cabin.
Just an example of how little attention she paid to what was going on around her. A habit she was beginning to think she needed to break.
She paused for a moment, dusting the white chalk on her hand onto the leg of her jeans.
She’d escaped Risk’s cabin, but not the questions that had continued to pile up around her. Who was Risk? How had she wound up with him and what had happened to him last night? In under twenty-four hours she had seen, or thought she had seen, two very large living beings disappear right in front of her eyes.
The dog was one thing. She’d been near hysteria at the time. She could easily have imagined that — but Risk?
She dropped the chalk and stared blindly at the white line she had traced. Shouldn’t she be calling the police or something? He was missing.
She pressed a damp palm to her forehead. She could imagine the conversation. “This is Kara Shane, the woman who has been harassing you about her missing sister. I’d like to report a missing man now. No, don’t know his full name. No, don’t know his address, but I have his Jeep. Oh, and how do I know he’s missing? He kind of just evaporated in front of me.”
Yeah, that would work. She picked the chalk up and dotted it against the ground, leaving little white specks on the floor.
But he was missing, and for some reason, Kara felt responsible. She had to look for him, didn’t she? She glanced down at the nub of chalk in her hand, then at the almost complete circle.
Finish what you start, Kara. First, she’d find Kelly. Then she’d look for Risk.
With new determination, she dropped the chalk and strode back to the rubber bin. As disturbing as her sister’s belongings were, they were also the only hope Kara had of learning what might have happened to her. Even if the next thing she pulled out was a shriveled head, she was going to sift through every single strange object.
As her hand dropped back into the bin, her gaze drifted over to the almost-closed circle. Finish what you start. Nothing like a little symbolic gesture to put her on the right track. With a determined nod of her head, she
