The Alpha's Desire 3 (5 page)

Somehow knowing which of the three he was, by instinct, or some other recognition, I watched him battle on. Back up on all fours, his stance shaky as he turned around, and I noticed a gouge in one leg. He didn’t even give in to a limp, though. His snarl wrinkled up his snout, and exposed dripping teeth, with long fangs of his own.

Bold, daring, or maybe foolishly brash, he lunged at one of the four around him at the moment. When his teeth sank into the other wolf’s meaty neck, Lex’s head shook back and forth like a dog with a bone. While this would snap the neck of smaller prey, the other wolf only shook him off, and with a leap of his own, took Lex to the ground. I heard his yip of pain, as he wiggled and got back up.

At this point, another of the four wolves came at Lex’s throat, but a wild shake of his head only let the teeth of the other wolf graze his hide. Still, red lines formed on the fur as blood seeped out of the wounds, slight or not.

Lex backed up, appearing to shake off the latest injury, but he backed into another wolf. This one jumped up with two paws on his back, making his legs bend, but he turned and fought back.  To my eyes, this still looked like two dogs playing, the way they leaped, went at each other’s necks, and so on, but I knew better, and the wounds on him, more fur red than any other color, told the real tale.

Every muscle in my body held tense, my own pain ebbing and flowing, both physical and emotional as I saw them play with my wolf until he could barely stand. And yet, he kept getting back up, fighting till his death, despite the odds, to save me. My bottom lip trembled, my first sign beyond the increasing burn in my lungs that I was crying. Not quietly sobbing anymore, but full-on hysterical sobbing, the kind that made your body fight for the air your hysterics deprived it of.

Tears stung my eyes, clearing the dust that had dried them, making the gory images, the brutal battle, even more vivid, horrendously clear. Trying to move again, my leg failed me. Unable to even wiggle the toes on my left leg, looking away briefly from the fight to look down, I saw that it was definitely broken, as if the pain hadn’t been enough of an indication. The constant throb of it took to the burning sting of a sharp blade when I so much as moved any part of me now.

Though, not thinking clearly, I actually went through scenarios of ways I could drag myself, my body and that leg, out to help them. About the same time, I became aware, through the unbelievable discomfort, of the stirring of warm energy, like a fire in the pit of my stomach. The flames licked up through the veins in my arms, surging there, desperate for a release of power. Regardless of whether I could even lift my hands to aim, I had no clear target. Unfocused and untrained, I could hit anyone over there, including the ones there to protect me. I couldn’t risk it, but I had nothing left to do, and I needed something to do.

Something came unhinged inside my brain, and my thoughts took some insane turn for the worse. Confusion just wasn’t strong enough a word to describe my attempt to find a way to hurt the ones who were hurting the ones I loved. With magic brewing angrily inside of me, a weapon of my own, though basically untested at this level of being distraught, I grew as determined as I was wary of what releasing it could bring. Yet, I had to get it out of me or explode.

A way to use it to walk, like a jet pack, to aim and fire it as precisely as a bullet... all these ideas flooded through me, the possibilities, the realities, the unknowns. Panting, crying out, moving, vibrating, the pain and confusion it brought blurring my vision again, I thought I’d started to seize or something. Unfortunately, all I managed to do was catch the attention of the wolves. Through the self-inflicted sunny fog, I saw Lex turn my way, only to be blindsided and thrown to his side, as the suit guy strolled through the middle of the sudden pause in battle toward me.

He kicked Lex as he passed him, making our cries ring out and meet somewhere between us like the sharp metallic crash of the cars had been. The sound pierced my eardrums, and yet, my throat dry, whether the sound continued from me or not, I felt the burn of it in my throat. I reached out my hands, positioned what looked like arthritic fingers in front of me, and aimed all the power boiling inside toward the man with balls big and dumb enough to walk toward me again. After a torturous deep breath in, I let it all go, my arms this time feeling as if they had actually burst into flames.

The usual light that emanated from me was brutal and blinding this time, but darker, dimmer, if that makes sense of a white light. It had streaks of reds and blues like lightning bolts through it. I blinked to clear my vision, to see the bastard fly backward, away from my Lex, hoping the backlash didn’t take all the wolves with it, though I couldn’t stop it now if I tried.

Yet, instead of seeing any of that, I only saw a wall of light form between us. I couldn’t see any of them any longer, as something akin to wind howled, sharp sizzles of electricity hissed, and rolls of thunder shook the ground around me.  Finally, after who knows how long, my arms hit the pavement hard. My head followed, the exhaustion too intense to fight. A dim version of the suit man came toward me again once my light dimmed. As dark spots floated before my eyes, he approached me, a sinister grin on his face.

“My sorcerer I spoke of, the one dying to meet a spitfire like you, fashioned me with a power of my own, a defense, a shield you might say, against your own magic,” the man said, his face now right in front of mine, as he’d knelt down beside me as he’d spoken. “While yours is fierce and untapped, I at least now have a steady defense. Your love, out there, he can’t protect you, and he can’t win. And, you look about done, magic and fight, from your injuries. So, my dear magical one, you are coming with me now.”

“Never,” I think I got out. The thought entered my head that I’d rather die, and the burn in my throat indicated I’d tried to speak, but the sheer thump of my enraged heartbeat drowned everything else out.

“I will have you, Christina. One way or another, you are coming with me now. You have nothing left to fight with, so just give up rather than make this harder on yourself. Your leg is broken, and you have a nice gash on your head,” he said, the sickening grin making me insane, though I had not far to go to get there.

I squirmed, or moved in some fashion, as the increase in agony grew, when he reached out a finger and ran it over my cheek. From anyone else, it would have been called a caress, but from him, I could only think of torture. How animals liked to play with their food... that sadly came to mind. I begged for my powers then to surge again, but my limp body, only stirring with anger inside, remained lifeless. Even the last pitch of pain melded into one ball of incomprehensible sensations now. Losing consciousness, still, I reeled, fought for a thought, just a glimmer of an idea that would save us all. Stupid, insane, or at least foolishly hopeful despite my dire circumstances, I struggled internally even if it was all I had left. Hope. One could never give up on the hope of better things to come. 

“Just rest, my dear,” he said, his voice an egotistical hiss as he motioned to someone behind him to come to us. “My pack will get a stretcher, as we’d anticipated the injuries as unavoidable, and get you back to our den. There, my sorcerer will heal you, and teach you – make you one of us.”

I shook my head as two naked men walked to us, a stretcher of some sort in their hands. Damn devil had planned on injuries from the crash. Guess he’d been willing to gamble on the fact that I wouldn’t die. My vision came and went, as did the sounds around me. These men approaching caused another desperate skirmish behind the man in a suit. Though I could see nothing, I could hear them, the wrestling, the growls, all fainter, slower, though if that was from my state or theirs, or maybe a combination of both, I couldn’t tell.

“Get her. gentleman,” suit guy said as he stood, looming up tall over me as I looked up at him through squinted eyes.

“Christina,” came Lex’s voice behind him.

When the man turned around, I could see Lex as a mangled man, each cut and bruise, bleeding, swelling, and looking much worse on human flesh than covered in a furry hide. He tried hard to stand, to get to me, before he fell in a heap on the ground with Vivian and Riker still in wolf form, standing over him, shaking, weak, yet still poised to defend. I didn’t understand why he’d transformed back, and hadn’t the time or mental energy to think on it as the sounds and situation around me changed.

I fought the fog a moment longer, on mere adrenaline this time, as a hiss of sorts came from behind me. Whatever it was, I didn’t turn my head, watching as the guy in the suit turned, and looked past me. His tanned face paled, at least his lips did, and his body grew tense. The naked men on each side of him, the stretcher still in their hands, did about the same. Yet, they poised for battle, looking to their leader for instructions, I assumed, as my vision began to blur again.

Something touched me. Through the haze, mental and physical, I felt myself be lifted, floating maybe, thought the shift in pain at being moved made it hard to think at all. As I watched the ground shake and get farther away, my world went black again.

Chapter Four

The next moment, minutes or hours, whatever, as I floated in and out of consciousness, my heart took to fluttering in time with my breath, a mere panting. I wasn’t jostled as one would imagine as my captor fled with me in his or her arms, but instead I seemed to soar over the ground. Greens and browns zoomed by me so fast that I couldn’t make out anything distinct, as in trees or mountains, or any distinct landscaping markers. All I knew for sure was that this thing that had me, which I prayed was human with inhuman strength, stuck to woods of some sorts. Through it all, pain, the ebbs and flows of it, had me lingering between being unconscious and then awake.

Fits of delirium maybe would be the best I could describe my state of mind at this point. My world around me moved, and it moved at an incomprehensible speed, this thing carrying me as if I weighed nothing. It didn’t even grip my body to its hard one, but just enough to hold me in place, not like the thing had any trouble at all holding me. Sunlight warmed my skin despite the chill of fast moving air, not like wind, but like my body cutting through the air. I didn’t know how I knew the difference, but while some things were so unclear, others were crystal and made sense to me somehow.

Guess it was a case of losing some sense or abilities only to find strength in others. In my brief moments of clarity, my mind raced to figure it all out, what had just happened to me and why I’d been taken from the fight. When I wasn’t in a panic about being away from Lex, not knowing what had befallen him, I attempted to figure out my own situation, if what had taken me was a good or bad thing, as far as my fate went.

I guessed it could be one of the Royals, and hoped that Lex had been saved, too. I tried in vain to hold onto that hope, but some instinct, warped by agony at this point, knew I was being raced further and further away from him. In fits of consciousness, I mourned him, the loss of proximity first, and then in fevered bouts of panic, the fear of never seeing him again grew to be suffocating. Regardless of my thoughts, I found that with the speed we traveled, and the hold this thing had on me, that I couldn’t even squirm. Pain or not, I had been rendered defenseless.

All I had left was to analyze, to think, when I could manage, so I clung to that like a drowning woman would an anchor, if you will, as that was about as useless as my efforts were for all the trouble and exhaustion they caused me. Still, I continued on, let my unstable mind reel around the facts, the possibilities, until I became certifiable, yet couldn’t quit thinking, this my last shred of control over my life.

Something held me for sure. Hands. Yes. I felt hands, fingers, cold, slim, holding tight to one arm, though not tight enough to hurt, just to cradle and hold stable, safe. I liked the word and took a momentary comfort in it. The other set of frozen, ice-like fingers were on my hip. Even through my pants, a thin silky material, I could feel the extreme chill of them. It made no sense that a human would be so cold, especially not moving so fast in this sun. It wasn’t a summer day, but a beautiful spring one full of sunshine. As such, it had held such promise just hours ago. I begged whoever could hear my mind, despite the futility of it, to let this ice monster be a savior, meant to take me to the Royal island, to lay me down to heal by my love who an ice monster had also saved.

I even let myself imagine it for a time, healing in a luxurious bed, the best of everything offered to us, the hours of endless conversations or holding each other gently as we healed by some magic faster than we should. The image of this brought me comfort. I needed something to hold onto. Sometimes hope is all we have, and I latched onto it in order to continue breathing. Otherwise, in times when reality sunk in, of me being taken by something unknown and undefeatable, of my Lex using his last ounces of life to fight for me, my heart threatened to cease beating.

I wondered how I could have fallen so head over heels for a virtual stranger in such a short time, so much so that mere thoughts of being without him threatened to end my own life, to make my own vitality unwilling to continue on. With that winner of a thought, I had to wonder whether, if I survived this, I’d be worth anything at all save for a strait jacket.

In order to catch a real breath at this speed, I instinctively rolled my face into the cold chest, I guessed, of the thing that had me. I took a little comfort in the show of survival instincts, still. Though, I floated, coasted, body, mind, and soul, for a time. I may have whimpered, or what had me did. Either way, the noise of it shocked me.

“You have been badly injured,” the voice at my ear whistled, a female tone with a low timbre, gentle and kind.

I let the words sink in as best they could. At least they made sense. The voice had a soothing effect, my heart rate calming as if forced, confusing me if I thought on it too long, the fact that it seemed to disobey how I felt it should go, expecting it to continue to thump in my chest until it gave out. While this strange fact alarmed me, my breathing slowed, as well. I’d lost all control, of either my thinking or my body. I suddenly found even fear in the face of these odd, extraordinary circumstances hard to grasp.

“I’m here to help, not to cause you further harm, my dear. Please, understand that,” the voice of this self-spoken savior claimed. “Take the peace I offer you, my child. Don’t fight the gifts I have to offer to you.”

The phrasings of the words, let alone the sentiments they carried, seemed off. In a moment of clarity, I rolled my head to the sound of the voice.  The face of an angel or something that I’d somehow expected to see didn’t greet me, though. There was no shimmering blond hair, angelic blue eyes, or even wings fluttering that would have maybe explained the speeds we were moving at. I guessed only a belief in Heaven, though most of my life that had been a shaky endeavor, could have explained away all that seemed to be happening with this self-proclaimed Good Samaritan.

An angelic being of some sort was the only way for my mind to go. I had a wolf protector, one born of magic, so could a guardian angel be so hard to believe?  The fact that my pain was somehow lessoning, my mind made these grasps at some sort of truth of this situation possible. Yet, no gossamer sheen or halo existed around the face I saw. Instead, the slim face of an ordinary brown haired, brown eyed woman came into focus with the blue sky and clouds moving at unthinkable speeds over our heads. There was no aura of any kind to be seen. I blinked my eyes hard, thinking it a ruse, as a woman with this slim, plain face could neither hold my full figured weight, nor move at this extreme clip, even without holding a generously sized woman.

It all made such little sense, less so as my thinking cleared, that I forced myself to go through the facts as I saw them again, thinking I was missing something vital here. I went through it again. This fierce, yet attractive in her own way, woman who, from what I could see of her from the neck up, seemed to have a slim neck and face, and yet held me like I weighed nothing, and moved us faster than I could comprehend. Yes, I wasn’t wrong there. Feeling suddenly unsteady the more things grew clearer, oddly enough, I rolled toward the woman, wiggling my fingers to grab onto something. I watched my bloody hand barely grip onto her shirt.

I heard a noise like a sniff, and the next thing I knew, shiny, pointy spikes pierced at her bottom lip. My mouth fell open, as fangs appeared in hers. I blinked, thinking my vision blurring again, but I couldn’t get rid of the sight, nor make sense of it. In a flash, as if someone had thrown a switch, my pain flooded back through my body. In response, my breathing, heart rate, and mental capacity all returned to as they had been when she’d first grabbed me.

The word ‘vampire’ went through my mind as I lost consciousness again.