Her mind flashed back to Cullen as she’d last seen him. He’d been unconscious the entire flight to Mexico. Well, she assumed it was Mexico. They’d flown south, and she’d watched the landscape change to jungle, finally landing at an institutional brick building in the middle of a clearing that Summer had to assume was the same one Ashlee had barely escaped from when she’d kidnapped the witch to save Tristan. One of the flying demons had taken Cullen away as they’d walked into the Institute. She’d been terrified the whole time they walked that the creature who held Cullen’s unconscious body in its claw-like hands, was going to touch him with the acid-secreting glands on those fearsome maws, horrified by the possibility that her mate could burned like Theo had been.
They’d zapped him with a strange instrument that emitted a glowing light before they’d all taken off and he wasn’t answering her telepathic attempts to communicate. She looked around the room where the four men who had taken her from the demons had brought her. To her right, there was a silver operating table with restraints falling to the floor from both of its long sides. Fluorescent lights gave the room a hard radiance. She could see the floor was stained with red and brown splotches; Summer didn’t want to analyze too closely what could have made those stains.
But it was the object in the center of the room that had her wishing she could scream. A large metallic cage with its back end pushed up against the wall stood out in front of her. Suddenly realizing that was her location, Summer started to struggle harder. No way would she be anyone’s victim. They weren’t sticking her in that cage without a fight.
She growled and opened her jaw wide, baring her teeth. The man holding her left paw flinched and she knew he was her target. Swinging her head around, she threw all the weight towards her skittish captor. She startled him and he let go with one of his hands. She bit down hard on the loose hand. Two thoughts struck her. One, biting someone was a strange sensation. Maybe if she’d had her wolf with her she wouldn’t have been so freaked out by the feeling. As a human being, she hadn’t consciously bit anyone since she’d been a toddler. The second thought was that it had worked. Her captors, in their worry for the man she’d bit, had loosened their hold on her.
She twisted in their arms and yelped when one of them in an attempt to hold onto her twisted her back leg. She fell to the floor and tried to jump up. Three of her legs responded, but the twisted one sent pain shooting up her spine. If she could get her teeth in the SOB who had caused the excruciating pain in her back leg, she’d kill him.
There were two choices. She could endeavor to kill all four people in the room and very likely wind up dead, which would cause Cullen endless amounts of pain until he could follow her, or she could run away. The idea of leaving the four of them here unharmed ate at her gut but not as much as potentially causing Cullen distress did.
For the moment, her choice was simple. She would flee the room. Hobbling as fast as she could on three legs, her retreat was blocked by the man who had twisted her leg. She narrowed her eyes and lunged forward on her front paws, rejoicing this time in the feeling of her canines connecting with his leg. He let out a wail that could only be described as agony and she bit down again, this time knocking him down with the effort.
He swung at her with his hands but she dodged his attempts to hit her. Instead, she plunged through the open door of the room and into the hallway. She really could have used some of her wolf senses at that moment. It was so unfair. She had no time to wallow in self-pity, not with at least four people chasing her down the hall. Their dreaded footsteps echoed behind her with every torture-filled step she took.
She had no idea where she was going. Cullen. She needed to find him and dug deep into her soul to find his courage and know-how. This situation would be nothing for him to handle. Hell, he wouldn’t be in this situation. The whole lot of them would have died in the room they’d tried to hold her captive. That settled it.
She wasn’t running anymore and she wasn’t dying either.
She stopped in the middle of the hall and swung around to look at her pursuers. The four men from the room came to an abrupt halt in front of her. One of them held a rope, tied at the end, and she knew immediately that they intended to get that around her neck like a leash and drag her back to the room with the cage. There was no way in hell that was happening.
When the first man moved forward, she examined him closely as she knew Cullen would do. He was small-statured, and had she been in her human form he would only have been a few inches taller than her five feet. Blond hair and pock-marked cheeks, his skin was splotchy like he spent too much time out in the sun. She also noted his hands shook. That she could use to her advantage.
“Here puppy-puppy.” His voice was infused with enough condescension that Summer wanted to gag or snarl. She wasn’t sure which but either way she knew she wanted to rip out his beady brown eyes.
She leapt at him first, aiming for his face. He ducked slightly and her front paws collided with his neck. She tore at it, at first disgusted with the feeling of her wolf claws making contract with his bare skin. But she quickly found she could handle the sensation if she focused on her goals. She needed to eliminate these men so she could find Cullen and escape. Anyone who got in her way was fair game. Besides, this man had been part of the group that had sent demons to kidnap her.
Whatever else she felt, on this matter she was justified.
Peripherally she became aware of one of the foolish men behind her as tried to grab onto her back. Letting go of the man beneath her, she knew he would bleed to death in moments. With a growl, she lunged at her next target. This one was tall and completely bald as if he shaved all of his hair off on a regular basis. No time to focus on that, she tore at his stomach. His arms wrapped around her neck and he squeezed. Summer felt her throat tighten up and she knew if she didn’t stop his attack he would strangle her to death.
She would not die today.
Pushing her back feet forward, despite the pain in the left one, she clawed at the bottom half of his body, trying her best to attack his most sensitive parts. Finally, she got one good kick into the region right near his testicles. He swore and loosened his grip on her neck, but didn’t let her go.
“Are you out of your mind, Jason?” Evidently the baldheaded man was called Jason. “Kendrick said she’s the most important part of the operation. Get your hands off her neck. If you kill her, he’ll skin you alive.”
“She tore into my gut, you asshole. I’m bleeding here.” True to his word, he dropped Summer to the ground. As Summer backed up, forcing herself to growl like she was a rabid wolf, her shaved-head attacker raised his hand off of his mid-section, covered in blood.
What would Cullen do in this situation? They were distracted. One guy down on the ground .injured, the other dead. Their callous attitude about their fallen comrade confirmed for Summer what she already knew—these were not particularly caring people. Two others remained standing. The one who assisted Jason was distracted. His long grey hair fell over his eyes hiding most of his face as he knelt on the ground and examined the other man’s wounds
She looked up to locate the fourth man, keeping the growl in her throat. It vibrated inside her body, and it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. If she was going to have to attack again she was at least going to have to seem scary. Even though it caused her a huge amount of pain, she crouched back on her hind legs, ready to pounce if she needed to.
Summer looked in his eyes, gratified to see his terror. Maybe there would be no need to kill him. Cullen was right. Ending that man’s life, as necessary as it had been, was going to haunt her when she had time to think about it. If she could avoid doing it a second time, she would. She crouched low to the floor and increased her growl as she stalked the fourth man. For a moment she was actually surprised she knew how to do what she was doing. She didn’t have her wolf with her, at least not consciously. But she’d seen Animal Planet and she knew what wolves did when they attacked. She’d also seen Cullen do it when he’d come to rescue her from Claudius.