Badlands: The Lion's Den (6 page)

Madison had probably come to Darwin first, as an act of rebellion, and now she was trapped, Flora mused. Flora knew what it was like to feel trapped. To find out that those who were supposed to love and protect you were the ones who had put you in danger.

“Come on,” Finn said. “Let’s go back to the club.”

“I want to stop by the grocery store first,” Flora said. “I need some greens to make a salad.”

Flora was back where she’d met Madison a couple days earlier, in the alleyway behind the abandoned warehouse. She was still in Hudson territory, but perilously close to the border.

There were no signs of bears. No boy bears, anyway. That was a good thing.

Still, Flora stood there warily, ready to duck back inside the building if she needed to hide. She scented the air, ready for trouble. Finn would be furious if he knew she was here. He had headed out early that morning to go on patrol, and she had pretended to be asleep in his bed so he wouldn’t ask her what her plans were for the day. She preferred creative avoidance to actual lying.

Madison, Sam and Sarah hurried down the alleyway, and Flora quickly handed Madison the bag of Starweed she’d bought at the grocery store the day before.

“Oh, wow, you really came back!” Madison said eagerly. She glanced at Sam. “Told you she’d come.”

“This time,” Sam said skeptically. “She probably won’t come next time.”

“Of course I will. Some people actually do what they say,” Flora said.

Sarah glanced at her and gave a hollow laugh. “Not in my experience.”

Sam nodded glumly.

Far off in the distance, they heard the clashing howls and snarls of wolves. Flora tensed up, ready to run. Madison sniffed at the air, then shook her head. “We’re fine. They’re a good thirty blocks from here.”

“I should get going anyway. I have to get to work,” Flora said. “But before I go, I just wanted to ask – have you guys heard of Cottonwood? One of the lions was telling me about it yesterday.”

“Yeah, what about it?” Madison said, trying to sound casual.

“It just sounds like a much better place for all of you. At least from the way Finn was describing it. You wouldn’t have to worry about being forced into anything you didn’t want.”

Madison glanced around quickly, then spoke with a lowered voice. “We’ve been planning to go there for ages. I just need to get enough Starweed together to last us for the trip. It’s on the other side of the state – there’s all kinds of territory we’d have to steer around, so it would take us anywhere from a week to three weeks, depending on what we ran into, and Sam needs this stuff every day. Ruben doesn’t like it when people leave his territory, though. So don’t tell anyone.”

Flora rolled her eyes. “Right, Madison, first thing I’m going to do is call Ruben and snitch on you. Because he and I are pals like that. Listen, if it were up to me, everybody would be able to leave this territory. But at least I can help you guys. I can bring you more Starweed if you want.”

“Can you? Let’s say three days from now. Just in case Ruben’s patrol saw us head in this direction, that’ll throw them off. I wish I could pay you back for all this,” Madison said, clutching the bag to her chest.

“There is something you can do for me,” Flora said. “I need to do an internet search. Can you help me out?”

“Yeah, I can bring a laptop here,” Sarah said. “I brought mine with me when I came to Darwin. It’ll probably take me half an hour to get it and bring it back here. Can you wait?”

It took closer to an hour, and Flora was on edge the whole time, sitting on the floor in the old warehouse. Would Ruben’s men dare to kidnap her, now that she was wearing Finn’s mark? She didn’t want to find out the hard way.

Sarah hurried up with a laptop bundled under her coat. She pulled it out and handed it to Flora.

“I’ll stand outside and keep watch,” Sarah said to her. “Don’t take too long. For some reason Ruben’s stepping up his patrols these days.”

Flora sat down cross-legged on the floor with the laptop, brought up the Google search engine, and typed in “license plate search in California”. Her typing was still clumsy and awkward. She’d learned keyboarding along with everyone else in school, but once she’d been sent off to live with the Wilkinsons, she hadn’t had the opportunity to practice.

She selected a license plate search website and typed in the plate number. It was the license plate of the car she’d seen on the Wilkinsons’ property last week.

She still shuddered to think what would have happened to her if she hadn’t left work early that day. She’d been working at the Wilkinsons’ roadside farm stand with one of the Wilkinson cousins, who’d fallen asleep. Impulsively, she’d left without telling her. That was against the weird rules that the family had for her – rules she’d been increasingly chafing against as she got older. She was twenty years old, for heaven’s sake. Why did they need to know where she was at all times? If it weren’t for the fact that she had no job skills and nowhere to go, she’d have left their compound the minute she’d turned eighteen.

She’d headed back to the main house that day, and as she approached, she’d felt something was off. An odd, fearful feeling had rippled through her. Instead of walking up to the front door in human form, she’d shifted and slunk up through the underbrush towards the side of the house.

There had been a strange car parked in front of the house. A human had been leaning on the car, scanning the area. A gust of wind had carried the smell to her – silver and lead. He was armed, and he had silver-coated bullets. Why?

Then she’d heard angry voices coming from the back porch, and when she’d snuck over there, she’d heard a strange human yelling at Loren. The human had been tall and skinny, and worn a dark suit.

“Are you trying to milk us for more money?” the human had demanded angrily. “Are you stalling us? Because this is bullshit. You should have had her mated and moved to our property the day she turned eighteen. She could have popped out half a dozen cubs for us by now. More, with the right fertility drugs.”

Flora, who never got cold, had felt a chill like ice water running through her veins.

Whose property? After the mating ceremony, she and Loren were supposed to move to his pride’s property in Northern California. That was what he’d always told her, anyway.

“Not much I could do when she kept putting me off,” she’d heard Loren say. “Not like I can force her into a mating, when that nosy council bitch checks in with her every month.”

“You had one job,” the man had said, his voice dripping with contempt. “Make her fall for you. Too hard? Do you need lessons?”

“I’ve been sweet-talking the fat bitch until I want to puke,” Loren had retorted. “Don’t worry. She’s one hundred percent set on the mating next month.”

Flora had felt sick to her stomach, and furious. She’d never loved Loren, and she’d felt horribly guilty about it. The Wilkinsons had waged a campaign to convince her that he was far too good for her and she was lucky he’d even look her way. Sweet, handsome Loren who supposedly worshipped the ground she walked on.

“She’d better be,” the man had snapped. “Costing us a god damned fortune.”

“Are you sure she’s even worth it?” Loren had asked him. “She’s being watched twenty-four hours a day here, and nobody has ever seen her start a fire.”

“Those blood tests didn’t lie,” the man had said coldly.

And then it had all made a horrible kind of sense. Six years ago, scientists had come to Flora’s house and taken blood tests from her and everyone else in the family. They’d claimed that they were concerned about contaminated water. But they’d come shortly after that fire in the field – the one that Flora had taken the blame for.

And a few days after the blood tests, her family had sent her to live with the Wilkinsons. At the time, she hadn’t connected the two events. But apparently something in her blood indicated that she was a Firestarter. Most likely, Krystle was the real Firestarter and Flora was some kind of latent, but these people either didn’t know that Flora was latent, or didn’t care. They wanted to force her to breed for them – so they could use her and her cubs,
her babies
, to experiment on.

Hell, no. Over her dead furry body would she ever let that happen.

She’d fled that day, looking for Krystle. When she’d found out that Krystle had moved to the Badlands a couple of years earlier, she’d headed straight there. She’d needed to get away from those people and warn Krystle. Someone might figure out the truth, and go after her next.

She heard a rattling at the window, and started, her heart hammering in her chest. It was just a gust of wind, but it reminded her that she needed to hurry up so she could get back to safety.

She glanced down at the website. The car that had been parked in front of the Wilkinsons’ house was registered to a corporation called TerraDyne, Incorporated.

An internet search for TerraDyne revealed surprisingly little. They were incorporated in California. Their website was bare-bones, and provided next to no insight into what they did; everything was written in broadly generalized gobbledygook. They described themselves as “a cutting edge research company dedicated to providing a wide range of services and solutions by utilizing the latest in modern technology”. Meaningless. What kind of research?

Sarah stuck her head through the doorway. “There’s a patrol headed this way,” she said urgently. “You’ve got to go.”

The outskirts of Darwin were mostly deserted on the northern side. Gusts of wind blew a crumpled, yellowing newspaper down an empty street. Liam, Finn and Jose strode past the shells of burned-out buildings, lost in a fire a dozen years ago, and followed the sounds of deranged howls coming from the tree line. There was a wolf shifter there who’d been living in the woods by himself, and of course he’d gone feral. He’d attacked several people already and then fled into the woods; it was time to put him down.

Finn was in a foul mood. He was trying to keep his distance from Flora, working on the opposite side of the club from her, keeping his conversations with her short and polite and noncommittal.

It wasn’t working. His need for her burned through his veins like fire, distracting him, needling him like a thorn. He’d be standing in the bar watching her clean tables and just a glimpse of her sweet smile, the musical tinkle of her laugh, would make his heart race faster.

And then he’d see Jennifer looking at him with that expression of haunted sorrow on her face, and it would fill him with shame. What right did he have to be happy, to love someone else?

Jennifer seemed to be hovering near him everywhere he went in the club, these days. Just watching him, not talking to him. Was it because of the anniversary? She hadn’t acted like this last year.

“Mind if I offer you some advice?” Jose asked.

“Yes,” Finn answered shortly, hurrying ahead of him and Liam. He heard Liam shouting for him to wait, and ignored him.

As he ran, he shifted, sinking to all fours. He raced towards the thickly wooded area next to the houses.

The wolf came shooting out of the bushes at him, massive and maddened. Ropes of saliva dangled from its snarling jaws, and it lunged straight for him. Crazy. A wolf taking on a lion.

Finn wasn’t the kind of cat who played with his prey, especially not when his prey was a pathetic, slavering creature who’d fallen away to madness.

He leaped forward and grabbed the wolf’s neck in his jaws. With one mighty, violent shake he’d snapped its neck and it fell to the ground limply, eyes dull.

Finn spat out the creature’s blood and looked down at its pathetic corpse, lying in the dirt with its legs splayed out. And then the world came crashing down on him as memories flooded through his mind.

Finn grabbed his comm unit and tersely relayed his orders, then checked his equipment. He risked another glance around the building and saw the insurgents moving towards them in a loose but clearly well-disciplined formation that took full advantage of the available cover. He made brief eye contact with each of the soldiers hunkered down with him. He didn’t need any words, and wouldn’t have been able to find them anyway.

On his signal, the squad broke cover. Heavy boots hit the sand. Brown roared defiance, fur rippling over the massive swells of his biceps as he let his animal come to the fore. Bullets flew and screams of anger and pain cut through the air. Someone laughed, a horrible, hysterical sound of half-mad desperation.

Time seemed to slow down. Finn saw Jensen, his fox-shifter sergeant, cut down by automatic gunfire. His feet tangled and he tumbled to the ground, red-black blood gouting onto the sand. He died silently, a look of profound puzzlement on his face, as if he couldn’t understand why he was no longer on his feet. Brown shifted into his monstrous bear form and with a deafening roar tore out a man’s throat with a swipe of his massive paw before turning, snarling, on a pair of approaching insurgents, undeterred by the rounds slamming into his gigantic bulk. Blood and fur flew in gory arcs as he snarled his defiance.

Finn pounded forward, heart thundering in his chest, sand puffing up around his feet as he charged towards his target…before a metallic glint in the sunlight caught his eye, dazzling him. Carried forward by his momentum, he had one interminable second to realize it was a half-buried land mine.

A slight figure in desert camo darted in front of him, a brown and beige blur, and the world flashed white as an explosion rocked Finn off his feet. The roar of sound punched into his eardrums and all the air was driven from his body as he was thrown several feet through the air and landed hard. The world rang and swam, his brain buzzing with incoherent static as he groped for understanding through the receding thunder.

He struggled to his hands and knees, retching onto the sand, bringing up nothing but frothy drool from his empty stomach. Slowly and painfully, he raised his head, knowing deep in the bitterest depths of his heart what he would see. Praying he was wrong.

Marybeth lay sprawled on the ground like a broken doll, her arms and legs splayed, her flesh hideously torn in dozens of places. Shrapnel studded her body, gleaming silver in the unforgiving light of the midday sun.

“Marybeth,” he cried hoarsely. “Oh fuck, no. Please, no. What have you done?”

He belly-crawled to where she lay twitching slightly, her breathing shallow, greasy perspiration beading her pale brow. Where it wasn’t cut to ribbons, her face was ashen. Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks like butterflies with broken wings.

Finn gritted his teeth as he dragged her into a sheltered area between a tumbledown wall and a low stone well that had long ago run dry. The pain of the silver shot that had blown past and through Marybeth to puncture his flesh was nothing to the shards of pain that stabbed into his heart at the sound of his friend keening with pain. It was a high, helpless, animal sound.

He laid her back as gently as he could, supporting her with his arm. Her thin face was set in hard lines of agony, her dry lips stained a shocking, heart-stopping scarlet.

“Those bastards,” he growled. “IEDs loaded with silver. Those sons of bitches.”

“Rex…” Marybeth’s voice was thready, and bright red arterial blood bubbled between her lips with each labored exhalation. He could see a weak, rapid pulse fluttering in her throat. “Finn, I…”

He shook his head, stroking her damp hair back from her forehead. “Hush, Marybeth,” he murmured. “Don’t try to speak. You’re going to be fine.”

But she wasn’t. He didn’t need a medic to tell him that she was all broken inside, torn by shrapnel, bones cracked and organs ruptured by the hellish force of the blast. The blast she’d taken instead of him, throwing herself in front of his body to save him.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I always have.”

He gripped her hand in his. Even though the heat beat down on them like a hammer, her fingers were cold. They felt so tiny against his rough palm.

“I know, Marybeth. I love you too.”

She gave a sad, trembling smile, and his heart broke.

He did love her. He loved all the soldiers under his command. But that wasn’t what she meant, and they both knew it.

They’d shared a single night of lust back when they’d first been assigned to the same squad, limbs tangled together in carnal defiance of the mortal danger into which they were being deployed. For Finn it had been a sweet, necessary release. For Marybeth it had been so much more. She had fallen for him, and fallen hard. He’d thought it was an infatuation. She’d insisted it was love. He had believed that by treating her as he would any other soldier under his command, he would spare her pain. Spare her pain? She lay dying in his arms because of what she’d felt for him. Her love for him had killed her.

He rubbed gentle circles on the back of her hand with his thumb, but her eyes had taken on a dazed expression and he didn’t know whether she could feel it. He didn’t know whether she was looking at this world or the next.

Her lips moved, but no sound came out. “I’m so thirsty…”

He had no water to give her.

Then the light went out of her amber eyes, leaving them lifeless and dull and seeing nothing at all.

Somewhere, far away, someone was calling his name…

Then Finn felt an enormous smack on the side of his head, so hard he staggered and let out a growl.

He looked up, dazed. Liam and Jose were standing there staring at him. Finn shook himself hard and forced his lion back inside him. Fangs sank back into his gums, his mane shrank into his skull, claws retracted, and he was kneeling before them, naked, with the taste of blood and fur in his mouth.

“What the hell, man?” Liam demanded angrily.

“It’s okay. He gets like that sometimes,” Jose said, calm as always. That guy would be calm if a grenade went off next to him.

“Not when he’s on patrol with me, he doesn’t,” Liam growled. He looked at Finn. “We’re a team. You go on my say-so and not before. You don’t run off by yourself. If you can’t be one hundred percent here with us, if you’re going to freak out like this, then you put the rest of us at risk.”

Finn bit back an angry response and forced himself to stay calm. To stay human. “You’re right,” he rasped, his voice shaking. “It’s the anniversary, I guess. That’s not an excuse, though. If you want me to stop working security for you…”

“No, jackass,” Liam said angrily. “I want you to get your shit together.”

“It’s not the anniversary,” Jose said. “Last year you didn’t freak out like this. It’s Jennifer.”

“Jennifer?” Finn snapped at him. “What does she have to do with it?”

“Come on, man,” Liam chimed in, impatience lacing his voice. “Open your eyes. She’s pissed off that you’re with Flora, so she’s deliberately messing with your head. I’m putting her on a different shift than you.”

“No, don’t. I can handle it,” Finn said quickly. He couldn’t be that weak. He had to be able to handle it. Marybeth hadn’t sacrificed her life just so he could screw up his.

“You’ve got a good thing with Flora,” Jose said to him. “I’ve never seen you like this before. You should try to keep her around.”

“So now you’re giving out relationship advice? When are you going to grow a pair and tell Krystle how you feel?” Finn growled, and stormed off without an answer.

Even as he did, he knew that he was being an asshole. He’d apologize later. Right now, it was all he could do to keep his lion caged within his skin.