Axel reported, “A few guards several meters from the entrance. I smell gun oil, carbon. Rifles, maybe a pistol or two.”
She nodded and checked her weapon, reloaded it, and set her mental guards for stealth mode. She couldn’t worry about the morality of it all. Not now. She had to concentrate on saving Monty. The Hunters normally had orders to kill Ac-taw on sight. She would do the same to them.
“Be careful.” Rafe licked her hand as she passed.
She nodded and entered the cave, her rifle at the ready. Her first shot sounded overly loud to her enhanced hearing. But the ones that followed bothered her less and less, especially with Axel’s encouragement.
It was the absence of smell that alerted her to move back. And just in time. A bullet shattered the rock wall where her head had been.
“Not her, you idiot.” Uncle Ted’s booming voice still had the ability to unnerve her.
“I’ll circle around,” Axel said and slid into a crevice she hadn’t noticed.
Then arms appeared out of nowhere and hauled her inside a place she could only describe as Monty’s Hunter hell.
Chapter Nine
Monty glared at the bastards on either side of him. Fucking Norris was taking no chances of him escaping this time. Their guns were trained on him and the leather collar bolted to his neck was attached to not one, but two iron chains affixed to stone walls.
The place looked like a reject from a backwoods horror movie. Dead bodies were piled up in corners, some human, some not. He’d seen and heard men fucking during the night, when Norris steered clear of the pit. Monty had been kept in a solitary cell that made him want to scream. Ever since his time with Norris, he couldn’t stand small spaces. But the wolves with him who’d survived had it worse, crammed into a tiny cell barely big enough to sit in without touching something vile.
God, the smells. Death and rot and evil. The noxious return of Hunter’s Folly. Blood, guts and entrails had a particular odor when combined, and fuck if it didn’t make him want to vomit. He’d been forced to watch cats and coyotes scrapping for two straight days. They were saving the wolves, apparently, and he had a bad feeling he knew why.
Sheridan would come after his wolves. So would Burke. God willing, Sophie would stay home. He wondered if his little mate would try to come after him. She worried, he knew that. And she’d offered to help him, but he couldn’t see her tromping through the woods with a gun, looking to shoot Norris. He was a bit disappointed she wasn’t stronger about all this, then swore at himself for wanting her to be something she wasn’t.
Sophie loved him. That was all that mattered.
He glanced at his captors and curled his lip. After three days of shitty food, little water and more than his share of punches, kicks and bruises, he felt more than ready to get to work and annihilate Hunters. Hell, none of this would have been an issue if a dickhead alpha wanna-be hadn’t fucked up their stealth attack.
The wolf had jumped into the middle of everything after following them from a distance. Instead of ordering the idiot to go back, Monty had stupidly agreed to let him stay, thinking the gray wolf only wanted in on some Hunter action. He’d had no idea the guy planned on using their supposed victory as ammo against Rafe, to take over the order. Rafe really needed to work on his leadership, something Monty would be happy to discuss with him when, not if, he returned.
Monty should have been hip-deep in Hunter carcasses, but instead he watched Ted Norris laugh and drink with his old buddies, nearly fifty fucked-up men who thought killing an entertaining way to spend the weekend.
The fear he’d expected at being so close to Norris had come back, but with it was a distinct separation of self. Monty felt his unease and this time embraced it. There was no shame in wanting to give evil some distance. To his surprise, Norris watched him with clear satisfaction, but the man had yet to directly speak to him. He spoke of him, of his demon wolf finally returned. Like Monty was his fucking lost pet.
All around him lanterns flickered as the oil began to run out. Men refilled them, and Monty put his time in this place at close to the fourth day. Down here he couldn’t see daylight, so he judged time by the lantern refills. The fights continued in the center of the main cavern, which he could no longer see from this position, high up on a ledge and back from the main cavern. Dug ten feet deep, a pit twenty feet by forty feet allowed combatant Ac-taw room to maul one another. He knew it was only a matter of time before he joined them. But he had no intention of killing his kind, not with Norris so close.
The bastard raised his head and looked straight at Monty across fifty feet of space. Light gray eyes pierced the gloom, until it was just Monty and Norris with nothing between them but hate and revenge.
Norris grinned, showing flat white teeth. The man looked clean, and a good twenty years younger than he should have. Monty had been puzzling over Norris’s health. Even five weeks later, Burke’s brutal bite into Norris’s cheek should have left some scar. Yet nothing marred the guy’s face.
Norris winked at him and whispered, obviously knowing Monty would hear, “Soon, Demon. We’re just waiting for the fun to really get started.”
Monty’s heart raced. The man next to him kicked him in the side, and he felt his bruised rib literally crack. Fucker.
He snarled and snapped and managed to draw blood before the other guy smacked him in the head with the butt of his rifle.
Monty saw stars and shook his head before he realized the crowd had gone quiet.
“That’s gunshots.” One of the dozens of Hunters present frowned at the corridor directly behind Norris. There was only one way in and one way out, that Monty knew of. “Want me to send my guys out?”
“No, no. My boys are out there.” Matt and Charley, but Brett, the big bastard who’d kicked Monty, stood next to him. Norris’s favorite son, and the first one Monty planned on killing.
More gunfire and the familiar snarl of wolves. The other Ac-taw in the cages built into the walls started howling, spitting and snarling.
“Shut up!” Norris fired his pistol into the ceiling, but it was his inhuman growl that caught Monty’s attention. Damn it all if the guy didn’t sound almost wolf-like.
An odd notion crossed his mind, but more gunfire distracted him.
“Dave, go take care of that, would you?” Norris motioned to the corridor.
Three men raced behind Dave to obey Norris, their guns at the ready.
Shots followed. Norris turned to see something, and then he shouted, “Not her, you idiot.” Norris’s wide smile worried him.
Shit. If the older guy was happy, trouble surely would follow.
And it did. In the form of Monty’s mate.
“Honey, I’m so happy to see you.” Norris grabbed Sophie in his muscular arms and hugged her tight, ignoring her struggles.
That the bastard seemed to know her increased Monty’s unease, but he kept himself and his wolf stock-still. Norris kept on eye on him, as if waiting for a reaction. Monty had played this game for years. He refused to give him one.
“Get off me!” Sophie managed to connect with Norris’s mouth, drawing blood.
The others around them froze.
Norris chuckled and wiped his mouth clean while easily restraining Sophie. “Now is that any way to talk to your uncle? I was worried about you when you left with those wolves. But now I know you were just setting them up. Bringing me my Demon, weren’t you, honey?” He sounded overjoyed.