“Austin, you have to find Phil now.
I’m in big fucking trouble here and I think that this slimy bastard is going to sho
o
t me.”
~~~
Austin stopped pacing and grabbed him.
Phil thought the man was in pain
,
but when he turned to look at him with the most heinous smile
,
Phil took a step back.
“I have her.
She’s shifted and is telling me to get to you.”
Austin grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen from the counter and began writing things down.
Phil leaned in and started reading the cryptic notes.
Coffin. Blair. Bitch Anye.
Walls of steel and silver dust. Superman???
Austin turned to him and looked worried.
“She said she’s bleeding at her neck that she thinks Anye did it to have her die slowly.
She wants to know what to do.”
“Tell her to seal it with her salvia and
—”
Austin was already shaking his head.
“She tried that
,
I take it.
Tell her that her blood
should heal her if she simply c
ut…wait
,
you said she had shifted.
Wouldn’t that take care of it?”
He had no idea.
There were things he knew about wolves and packs
,
but really not a lot about how they healed.
He looked at Austin as he shook his head again.
“A bite won’t heal if
it’s from a
vamp.
Not sure why
,
but there you have it.
I told her about the blood.
She said when she shifts back
,
she’ll try it.
But she said to tell you to get your ass to her.
She needs your superman suit.”
Superman suit?
Phil was pacing when something else occurred to him.
She was speaking to her brother but not him.
Steel walls would have blocked him.
Blair meant her boss was there.
He was more than likely working with his company to have her eliminated.
But that really didn’t make any sense either.
Superman suit.
Then it hit him.
“My armor.
She needs my armor.
Guns.
There are guns there and Blair is trying to…fuck.
How do I get to her?
Can you find her?”
Austin nodded then shook his head.
“Which is it
,
big boy, my patience
it
about at
its
end.”
“I can find her
,
but only so far.
If I can get you to where I think she is then you’ll have to find her yourself.
I can track as a wolf
,
but
that’s
not help much in a steel room with silver dust.
It will kill me and her if she inhales it.” Austin took off his shirt and handed it to him.
“My pack is coming.
Connor will take care of this mess for us and your buddy Myles is headed to my house.
There’s a basement addition we had put in for you to visit.”
Phil didn’t register much other than he was going to find his mate.
He nodded absently and then turned to Connor.
He needed to make sure there was someone there when Holly was brought home.
He didn’t want just anyone taking care of her.
“I will have Clint there. I know you don’t fully trust him
,
but he is my friend.
I knew him from…it’s been a long time
,
but I trust him.”
Connor stepped closer.
“I also have taken in your new friend Alexander.
He’s been checked out.
Also, there is a missing person’s report on him that I’m taking care of.
Luckily
,
he has no one looking for him other than another vet.
I think it’ll be easy to have him die, don’t you?”
Phil nodded.
He didn’t particularly care for the vamp
,
but he had helped Austin and Holly.
He turned around when the room seemed to expand around them.
Austin was standing in the doorway to the back room as a huge wolf.
The wolf didn’t go unnoticed
,
but Phil was able to take care of the scare he’d caused.
Once he and Dallas got Austin to the car and in the back, they took off in the direction that he’d said he had to go.
When he slowed at a stop sign, Austin came up front and clawed at the window.
Phil lowered it and the big wolf leaned out.
If the situation wasn’t so grave, Phil might have laughed.
He was driving down the road with this big fucking dog hanging out the window with his tongue hanging out and his face flapping in the wind.
He chuckled when he glanced at Dallas in the rearview mirror.
“If you’re thinking what I think
you’re
thinking, I’d not say it out loud.
He is very touchy about his appearance.”
“Why is he doing it then?”
Phil turned left when Austin barked twice.
It was a system that he’d worked out with him before they knew Dallas was coming along.
“He can smell her.
Even if you take him hundreds of miles from home, if he can ride like he is now, he can get back.
Dogs are much the same way. It’s why when people take their dogs out into the woods and drop them off
,
some of them return.
They get the scents on their tongue and can simply go in reverse.”
Phil decided that when this was over
,
he was going to sit down with this pack and learn all he could.
He was family now and he thought he should know.
He turned right at the next intersection when Austin barked again.
Dallas’ phone ringing startled them both.
“Fuck,” he said when he closed the phone.
“That was Gordon.
He’s taking Alexis into the hospital.
She’s in labor.
She couldn’t wait one more day
,
could she?”
Phil laughed. “No
,
she couldn’t.
But hers and Gordon’s child will be a blessing when this is finished.”
Phil turned when Austin indicated then stopped the car when Dallas told him to.
He went around and opened the door for the big animal and waited while he sniffed around.
He was about ready to yell at the stupid mutt when he went to the same area three times until he took off running.
Phil went with him. He could hear Dallas close behind.
They ended up in the middle of a field.
There was nothing
;
no tire marks, no house, nothing to indicate that Holly was anywhere close to them.
She could be anywhere.
He closed his eyes and reached for her and felt the smallest of connections.
“She’s here.
Somewhere…I don’t know how close
,
but here.”
He dug deeper
,
reached further
,
and found her again.
He turned to Dallas when he cleared his throat.
He turned to his left when he was suddenly knocked down.
He started to throw Austin off when he heard a sound.
It was Anye.
She was standing in the field not twenty feet away from them.
He hadn’t seen where she came from
,
but if she was here then they were on the right path.
He watched as she disappeared and still Austin didn’t move.
It wasn’t until Dallas stood over them that Austin moved off him.
“Did you see where she came from
?
” Dallas asked.
Phil shook his head.
“We can track her.
If she came on foot.
I know you vamps have a mode of travel that we don’t have.
It’s hard to track—
”
Phil hit the ground
,
covering his head with his hands.
Holly.
It was Holly and she screamed for him.
He looked at Austin when he whimpered.
“She screamed for me.
We have to find her now.
She is in a great deal of pain.”
He’d shot her
,
the fucking bastard.
Baring her teeth at him made her want to latch her canines around his neck and snap it.
She would
,
too
,
if she ever got the chance.
This sucker was a dead man.
“You have one more minute before I sho
o
t you again.
Now shift or whatever it is you do to make yourself human again.
I have to get you out of here and I think you’re a bit stronger than me in your current body.”
He grinned at her again.
“Of course
,
you will have to learn to obey me in either form
,
but just so you know, I’m going to take great pleasure in making you obey my every command.”
He rubbed his cock again. He’d been hard since she’d shifted.
She wondered if the guy had an animal fetish and decided that there were some things she just didn’t want to know.
Pacing close to the wall
,
she whimpered.
Just as he raised his gun again, Holly felt Phil coming.
She only hoped it wasn’t too late.
The bullet ripped through her front flank.
She knew that had he hit her where he was aiming
,
he would have killed her.
Didn’t the guy have a fucking clue where her heart was?
She whimpered again
,
this time to cover the sounds coming from above.
Phil was crashing through whatever was above them like a demolition crew.
“This is the last time I’m going to tell you
,
bitch.
Change back or I’m going to end this relationship I was forming right fucking now.”
He waved the gun at her just as she heard Phil on the other side of the door.
“It ends now.”
Phil crashed through the door just as the gun went off.
If the bullet hit him
,
he didn’t show it.
Blair was suddenly in pieces.
Not big ones either
,
but small bits of him all over the room.
When his gun slid toward her
,
she simply stared at it.
There was no way he’d ever be using it again.
When Phil knelt before her
she scooted back.
Not that she was afraid of him
,
but she was hurting and she was afraid.
“Come on
,
baby.
Let me lift you up.
I need to get you out of here before Anye returns.
And your brothers are still a bit behind me.”
She was being lifted when suddenly
,
she was being dropped
again
.
Before she could ask him, she saw why.
“You should have moved a little faster
,
Phil.
But I do not appreciate you killing my friend over there before I got my money.
However,
now I have two bargaining chips.
You and the bitch.”
Anye moved into the room and looked over at her.
“She’ll be dead soon enough.
There is no way that a wolf can heal from a wound from a vampire.”
Phil wondered how she knew that and thought of Jose.
Okay, this meeting between him and the pack was becoming more and more necessary.
But he glanced at Holly before he continued.
“She won’t die from the bite
,
dumbass.
She’s my mate and I bite her daily.”
He was bluffing and hoped she didn’t have an answer for that too.
“As a matter of fact
,
before you became stupid, or should I say stupider
,
we were just going over her training for her to do all sort
s
of things I can do.”
Another lie
,
but again
,
he didn’t think she knew.
He leaned back against the wall and reached for Holly.
He was trying his best to keep Anye occupied until Holly could move out of the small cavern.