The Breed Casstiel's Vow (16 page)

“You’re over reacting, you need to calm down,” he said
dismissing her the way he would have one of his employees, “We’ll talk about
this when I get back.”

Tessa reared back like she had been slapped in the face.

“I’m
what
?” she spit out at him, his arrogant
dismissal was the straw that broke the camel’s back, “I’m over reacting? Fuck
you. I never asked for you to bond to me, so you can shove that up your ass.
You guys try and make it seem like it has something to do with love and
companionship but it doesn’t. This is about control, about wanting to be
someone’s owner, and you don’t own me. After tonight I’m out of here, and I
don’t want to see you again.”

As she stormed off she heard a roar and what sounded
like a fist going through the wall.

~

Nora sat on a bench in the first floor bathroom, with
her head in her hands trying to rid herself of the images that her conversation
with Tessa had brought up. She refused to have another PTSD attack after she
had worked for thirty years to finally be rid of them.

No matter how hard she squeezed her eyes shut she
couldn’t get Billy’s face out of her mind, couldn’t stop thinking about how
crazed he looked the last night he came to see her… the night when he had
attacked her and changed her life forever.

Before Billy became a member of the Breed he was a
normal teenage boy, keeping the secret of his father tightly to himself.

She met him in 1905 in Tennessee when he began working
for the Laurens family as a plow boy. Slavery had ended, but life was still
very hard for anyone but a white man in America.

Luckily for her, her family had been working for the
Laurens’ for two generations. She had been raised alongside their oldest son,
Jonathan, who grew into a kind and generous man. Jonathan treated her family
better than anyone else in her position could hope for, and she loved him as a
brother for it.

She knew immediately that Billy had taken a liking to
her, but she was too busy with work for Jonathan’s pregnant wife to give him a
second thought. She was nineteen, old enough to be married and starting a
family of her own, but she had never been interested in that life.

At first he was friendly and flirtatious, offering to
walk her into town or run errands for her; but as the years went by and she
continued to reject his advances, he became more and more agitated, insisting
that they belonged together and that she needed to come to her senses and marry
him.

 She had now entered her early twenties and though
her parents had begun to insist she find a decent man and settle down, she
stubbornly opposed.

One day she and Billy got into an explosive fight. He
grabbed her and forcibly tried to take her back to his house so they could
discuss things between them privately. She had refused to go, honestly afraid
of him, and put a fight that would have made a boxing champion proud.

Jonathan saw the fight and ran outside brandishing a
rifle. He threatened to shoot Billy on the spot if he didn’t disappear and
leave her alone for good.

Nora wished more than anything that she could go back
and change the events of that day; if she would have just left, ran away, everything
would have been different, but she didn’t know then what she knew now.

 Billy angrily disappeared. He was gone for almost
a year, before he returned in 1909.

When he returned he was a different man. He had gone to
Memphis’, pack and joined them; he was of the Breed now.

Nora wrapped her arms around herself and rocked as she
remembered how Billy had come back, remembered the smell of gun powder choking
her, filling every breath that she took.

Cringing she could almost feel his hands crushing her body
under his as she fought with every ounce of strength she had to get away.

More than anything though, she remembered the blood; her
hands had slipped in thick pools of it as she desperately tried to escape.

You are mine
,
his voice raged inside her head.

~

Casstiel’s blood was boiling as he paced in his squad
room, his jaw clenching uncontrollably.

How could he have bonded with such a naive, stubborn,
absolutely incorrigible woman? She hadn’t even bothered to listen to a word he
said, completely throwing off the common sense that any other sane person would
have considered.

He just wanted to own her? What a joke. Did she think he
had become the leader of the defense team just because his family started the
embassy? She didn’t think that maybe, just maybe, he might actually know what
he was talking about?

Growling again he slammed his fist onto the top of his
desk. She was beyond infuriating.

 Casstiel looked up as his team shuffled in, he’d
been so pissed he hadn’t even heard them coming.

“Let’s go,” he barked, not wanting to look at any of
them, just wanting to get this trip over with.

Silently the men fell in line behind him and walked
towards the elevator.

Once the doors shut however, Jax quietly cleared his
throat.

Slowly Casstiel turned to stare at him, his eyes wide
with disbelief.

“Cass… you uh… you ok man?” he asked nervously, “You’re
looking a little.... rough.”

“I look like shit,” Casstiel cut him off angrily, “I
feel like shit, at this point I only want to catch this little fucker so I can
punch him in the face for making me and Tessa fight.”

He stared his men down, daring them to ask what was
going on, daring one of them to say anything negative at all.

Thankfully he ran a smart team who simply stared back at
him stony faced.

The elevator opened up to the sub basement and the sound
of combat boots pounding on pavement ricocheting off the walls.

Casstiel slid into the passenger seat of the blacked out
un
marked SUV and Kain cranked the ignition.

“Alright we’re gonna do this fast, I want a quick
thorough sweep. If by some miracle we happen to find this kid we’re going to
operate under friendly terms. I want no questions at all about Balor or his
pack until we’ve got him down in the squads interrogation room,” he repeated
the plan, not letting his anger stop him from leading his team.

The tires squealed as Kain took off like a bat out of
hell.

They needed to get this done and over with quickly so he
could get back and smooth things over. He had no idea how their fight had blown
up so quickly but hopefully when he got back she would be calmed down and they
could talk things out.

Why do all women think a man is trying to control them
when he’s trying to protect them?
He
thought viciously to himself.

He stared out of the clear pane of glass as everything
whizzed by in a blur, and wanted nothing more than to put his fist through it
and watch the pieces shatter.

A pain gripped Casstiel’s heart, like a hand literally
squeezing it, and he knew Tessa was upset somewhere. When you bond to someone
you become in tune to their strong feelings and emotions, and as the pain
continued, he slowly began to let go of his anger and feel regret for how
things had gone down.

“Hey Cass,” Jax called from the back seat, as usual
unable to keep his mouth shut.

“What,” he demanded, already having had enough of his
mothering for one day.

“She’ll get over it man, women always do. After spending
a little bit of time apart cooler heads will prevail and everything will turn
out fine,” he said is his most comforting voice.

“Jax?” he called out, not moving his eyes from the
scenery out of the window.

“Yeah man,” came the happy reply from the back seat.

“Go fuck yourself.”

They rode the rest of the trip in complete silence.

~

“I’m serious Nora,” Tessa raged, having found her in
their room quietly painting her nails.

She looked tired and worn down, but had insisted she was
fine, and that her fight with Casstiel was small potatoes in comparison with
everything else that was going on.

“I know you are, but I think you should just give it a
little more time before you make a decision like that,” her voice sounded far
away, like she was only half involved with the conversation.

“Whose side are you on? An hour ago you hated him and
the bond, and now you don’t want me to reject him?” Tessa demanded.

She was serious, amazing orgasm or not, she didn’t need
another prison warden to add to the list. As far as she was concerned she
needed to get as far away from him as she could before things really started to
get out of hand.

“I don’t hate Cass, never have. I just get a little
touchy with the whole bonding thing, especially since you’re a human like I
was. Anyway, it’s your life so do what you want with it, I just think you
should sleep on it for a couple of days before you make a rash decision about a
guy you really care for,” Nora shrugged.

 “Just be on my side,” Tessa replied, stubbornly
choosing to ignore the fact that Nora was right.

“I am on your side,” she said reassuringly, as she finished
the last coat of silver polish, “damn him and his pig like ways, who is he to
try and keep you safe from unknown and horrific dangers?”

Tessa almost laughed.

Her head was killing her from the stress of the day and
she hadn’t eaten since yesterday, what she really wanted was to sleep it all
off, but that was going to have to wait. Before she could sleep, they had a
more pressing issue to attend to.

She threw back on her faded green zip up hoodie and
headed into the kitchen for something to eat. As she tore open a box of granola
bars she heard a distant squeal of tires, and looked up for conformation.

“They’re gone,” Nora nodded, her eyes following a car as
it hurtled through the gates.

Tessa let out a shaky breath to calm her nerves, stuffed
the entire box of granola bars under her arm and looked up at her best friend.

“You ready to do this?” she asked, trying to keep her
voice from shaking.

“As long as you’re ready for the repercussions when they
catch us,” Nora said in a serious voice, “because they will catch us.”

“By the time they catch us we’ll already be inside the
subway, and it’ll be too late for them to stop us,” she gathered all the
courage she could muster, “Let’s go find my brother.”

Casstiel took a deep breath and was glad to be out of
the center of the humans. He never understood how they could like living so
close together; to him being in the subway was like being in an ant farm.

           
He began to walk down the track line leading to the abandoned subway line, and
heard his men jumping down behind him.

           
After walking fifty or sixty feet the narrow subway tunnel began to expand out
turning into a platform.

           
It was dank and dirty, and must have been abandoned for quite some time because
deep cracks ran along the walls, and the cement under his boot was crumbling.

Graffiti and garbage were everywhere he looked, and the
smell of rotting food and filthy humans assaulted his nose.

           
“What’ve we got down here?” Casstiel turned and asked Jax and Kain, the two
werewolves and best trackers on the team, both of which were wearing sour
expressions.

Kain immediately inhaled deeply from his nose and held
his breath. After a few seconds he slowly exhaled and looked at Casstiel.

“Besides all the dirt and filth, all I smell is humans,
and lots of them. At least eight in the next two hundred feet,” he replied,
then lifted his grey V necked shirt over his nose and inhaled a deep breath of
his own cologne.

Looking onto the abandoned platform make shift tents and
shopping carts stood every few feet; a hundred feet down four humans gathered
around a lit garbage can.

“We’re gonna have to check them all,” he sighed. There
was no way to know for certain that Quinn had joined the Breed, so they would
have to proceed as though he could still be human.

His men nodded in agreement, and began fanning out. At
this point Cass felt they all silently agreed that the faster they got this
over with, the better off they would be.

“Ghost how big is this place?” Cass asked, not really
wanting to know the answer.

“The equivalent of ten city blocks; after this straight
away it curves off to the right and expands into five or six more tunnels, part
of it eventually runs down into the sewer system,” he replied dryly. No one
wanted to have to go tromping around in the sewers.

The team each took a picture of Quinn and set to work.

Most of the humans in the tunnel were intoxicated to
some degree and cooperated easily and without asking questions. They allowed
the team to shine flashlights in their faces, and check them against Quinn’s
photograph. Cass thought they must have become used to this routine from human
police coming down here to search for runaway teens and criminals.

“You seen this guy?” he asked the first human he came
too.

The man barely rested his largely dilated pupils on the
picture before slowly shaking his head, and starting up a coughing fit that
could shame an eighty year old smoker.

By the time Casstiel had reached his third person his
eyes were burning with the smell of alcohol and urine. The place was a hell
hole he couldn’t wait to get out of.

The first thing he was going to do was take a long hot
shower, then he would go and find Tessa and work out this fight they were in.
Maybe he should snap a couple of pictures of this place just to show her what
he’d saved her from having to go through.

 
“Son of a bitch!”
Jax
cried out as he fell backwards, landing in a loud crash.

“Can you act like a fucking professional for five
minutes?” Casstiel snapped.

 “This lady tried to claw my face off when I went
to check her,” Jax grumbled as he looked down at his now heavily dirtied
jeans. 

 “Cass!” Kain called from somewhere up ahead, along
the bend and to the right.

“What now?” the pain in his temple spiked.

“Oh shit, I’m picking it up too,” Jax groaned, taking in
another deep breath and holding it.

“Cass there’s definitely someone not human down here,”
Kain called out.

~

 “You have to jump, it’s the only way down,” Nora,
who had already successfully landed on the railway, sighed.

“I’m gonna break my neck,” Tessa said nervously, even
though the distance was probably less than ten feet, for some reason it seemed
like she was looking down on the grand canyon.

“If you don’t jump I’M going to break your neck, now
hurry up before someone sees you and thinks you’re a suicide,” she grumbled.

She closed her eyes, let out a deep breath, and against
her better judgment jumped.

“See? It wasn’t that bad,” Nora laughed, helping her to
her feet.

“Speak for yourself,” she snapped, and began walking
down the dark dank hallway in front of her.

Her idea that going into the abandoned subway would turn
out fine, and that everything would go over smoothly, deteriorated with every step.

When she had pictured an abandoned subway in her mind,
she had imagined a clean well lit subway station that for whatever reason just
didn’t have any people in it and wasn’t used anymore.

 Instead, what she was walking into looked like
something out of a horror movie.

Graffiti littered every inch of the grimy walls, the
smell of rotting garbage instantly gagged her, making her hook her elbow over
her nose, and the only lights were from fires being burned, causing grotesque
shadows to flicker across the walls.

“Shit,” she mumbled nervously, feeling all the courage
she had built up drain out of her body.  Cass was right, this was no place
for her, but it was too late to back out now.

She had to get herself together.

“God I’m getting a weird feeling too,” Nora clutched a
stitch in her stomach, “it’s almost like I’m nervous and excited at the same
time. Shit my hearts beating so fast I feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

“Well it’s too late to go back now,” she cut her off,
sounding much braver than she felt.

“I’m not saying I want to go back, it’s just a weird
feeling,” Nora gave her a cold
look,
“I think your
nerves are what’s creeping me out, so knock it off.”

She found herself remembering every fact she had thrown
at Casstiel, and how ‘safe’ she told him she would be.

Way to go…
she
sighed to herself.

Nora agilely lifted herself up and onto the subway
platform then turned around and held out her hand.

“How the hell do you do that in a dress and heels?” she
grumbled.

Giving her a wink Nora easily hoisted her onto the
platform, lifting her as if she weighed no more than a bag of oranges.

“Alright what’s the plan now?” she asked, unsure how to
even begin looking for Quinn in such a massive place, especially while trying
to avoid Casstiel.

“Well they’ve already come down this way, and Cass is
thorough, so I’m pretty sure he’s checked all these people. With how huge this
place is I’m sure it branches off into different directions, so we’ll check out
whatever direction they didn’t take,” Nora tossed out the best option they had.

“Right, and hopefully Jax and Kain don’t pick up that
we’re here,” Tessa said, thinking her plan was sounding like mission
impossible.

“Hopefully they won’t pick up that I’M here, your scent
will blend in with the other humans. I think the only one who could identify
you is Cass, but hopefully this place stinks enough to drown out your scent,”
she began the walk through.

Every human they passed Tessa gave a quick examining
glance to, just in case.

“They’ve definitely checked all these humans, their
scents all over them,” Nora confirmed, “I’m not completely sure yet, but I
think the subway splits off into a sewer, I’m
smelling
a lot of water and sewage.”

Up ahead the tunnel began to veer right and from what
she could see, came to a rounded end with entrances to five smaller tunnels.

The hallway before them must have been some sort of
drain runoff for the sewer, because deep puddles of brown murky water pooled
every couple of feet in the rounded entrance. On the walls someone had smeared
the brown substance into ‘rainbows’, and just before the hallway split a
mattress lay folded in half with all the stuffing and springs ripped out of it.

Nora immediately unstrapped her high heels, buckled them
together and slung them over her shoulder.

Tessa rolled her eyes and kept walking, every now and
then accidentally plunging her foot into the filth.

“Can you tell which way they went?” she whispered, as
they approached the five tunnel run offs.

“Of course,” Nora replied, and once again took in a deep
breath through her nostrils, and held it.

“They’re down this one,” she said pointing confidently
to the one furthest to the right.

 “Ok so we should go down this one,” Tessa pointed
to the tunnel furthest to the left, wanting to be as far away as possible.

“Wait a minute,” Nora shook her head, back tracking
towards the way they had just come, “Something’s not right.”

“What’s going on?” she whispered, confused.

“Stay there and be quiet,” Nora gave her a serious
glare.

She took in a shaky breath in the dark and silently
berated herself for coming up with the award winning idea of coming down here.

Nora crouched low to the floor and silently made her way
to the end of the tunnel where it would take her back to the main subway line.
She took in another deep breath, then peered her head around the bend and down
into the original tunnel.

“What is it?” Tessa moaned as her heart hammered in her
chest.

“At least nine human men covered in black Kevlar, each
carrying weapons and wearing night vision goggles,” Nora reported quickly then
ducked her head back.

“Oh my god….terrorists?” she choked out.

“Worse,” Nora gave her a hard look, “hunters.”

~

Casstiel could smell it now, somewhere farther down was
a member of the Breed and they were wounded, he and Ghost had picked up the
blood trail the moment they had entered this tunnel.

Kain, who was at the lead of the team, stopped and took
in a deep breath of air.

“We’re within seventy feet. It’s a male, and he’s
cleared out the tunnel. He’s the only thing that’s down this way,” he reported
as Jax nodded in agreement.

“Alright, the wound isn’t that serious. It’s not fresh
blood we smell which means he’s healing up, so he could still be dangerous.
Let’s announce ourselves, and hopefully he’ll cooperate,” Casstiel ordered out
and stepped to the front of the team.

As always, he would go in first.

“Everybody keep your weapons out of sight. The last
thing we want is for this guy to react on instinct because he sees us as a
threat,” Casstiel pulled the two flaps of his wool coat closer together to hide
the chest holster full of hand guns he was carrying.

As he began walking he heard his team behind him
shuffling to hide everything they were carrying as well. They had only brought
a minimum amount of weapons since they were only going to canvass the subways,
but even their minimum was impressive.

When they had walked another thirty feet the figure of a
man finally appeared. He was huddled into a corner, his eyes locked onto
Casstiel’s team. His hair was over grown and knotted, with his pale skin
stretched tightly over his bones, he was mal nourished and in bad condition.

“You’re not human,” The stranger called out as they
slowed to a standstill. His voice cracked as he spoke as though he hadn’t used
it in days.

“No we’re not, and we’re not here to hurt you, we know
you’re wounded,” Casstiel explained, keeping his voice calm and steady.

 “Why are you here?” the man asked suspiciously,
and though his body stayed perfectly still, his eyes darted to the open tunnel
to his right.

If this was Quinn, he could move faster than anyone on
Casstiel’s team, and if he chose to flee into the open tunnel and down into the
sewers they would lose him.

“We were sent by a family searching for their lost son,
are you Quinn Roberts?” Casstiel asked cautiously, not wanting to spook him
into running.

The man erupted into laughter, great hearty bellows that
bounced off the empty walls of the tunnel and caused an eerie echo.

“Quinn Roberts is dead,” he laughed harder.

~

“Hunters?” fear strangled the words in her throat.

Nora slowly nodded her head, and for the first time she
looked as fearful as Tessa felt.

“We need to find Casstiel,” she said, throwing all
thoughts of punishment for coming into the subway to the side. If the hunters
were half as bad as everyone had made them seem, they were going to need his
team to make it out of the subway alive.