Pawn Among Wolves Ch. 15b

She had argued. She was half-Italian, after all, and well used to teasing Mac.

But this time - there had been something implacably cold in his voice down the phone. Dark. Mac hadn't argued back, just given her a stark ultimatum. The eerie stillness of Ada, Penny and Nils, waiting beside her, had been disturbing, almost frightening, crumbling the fire in her voice to a whisper. Bethan reassured herself again that she hadn't just folded.

She was lying. Mac's voice had been the truly frightening.

Ada wrinkled her nose as they passed a gas station. Bethan noticed the movement out of the corner of her eye, and opened her mouth to comment, again, but shut it with a snap. The damn skinnybunny had been refusing to give out practically any information - obviously the first rule of Mac's mob was you do not talk about Mac's mob.

That was what Kate had christened the motley little crew of hunters, each with their eager crowd of scruffy dogs. Bethan and Kate had speculated again on their way down to join them just which agency Mac belonged to, and why he was pulling together this small, secretive group to hunt for Gemma instead of going to the standard authorities. They had whispered loudly in front of their escort Nils, but beyond flickering a slightly amused eye their way, he hadn't responded.

Whatever - whichever organisation he worked for, Mac was obviously pretty senior, judging by the way the mob both referred to him and responded to him. Plus there was the ease with which he issued orders. He must have been under cover back home in Lemark, at Gemma's place. But thinking about it, Gemma's flatmate had always had that easy air of command, even though he had rarely used it.

No wonder he was so damn attractive.

One titbit that Ada had imparted was that the reason the hunt was so secretive was because Mac was under strict orders not to waste time on it: Gemma's fiancé was tied up in in charge of something pretty major going on further west, and the forest search was in some way prohibited.

Hah, thought Bethan, like that'd stop him. But then she seethed again. So why the fuck did you pull me and Ada away from the hunt, just when I had gotten started, Mr Mac?

"Left here," the stick-like girl beside her murmured. Ada's eyes widened, she looked almost shocked while she watched two pre-teen boys in jeans and t-shirts cycling around in the empty parking spaces to their right, showing off on their bikes. The boys were competing to see who could keep the front wheel aloft over the longest distance and jump onto the kerb, shouting and laughing to each other in easy camaraderie.

If Bethan was seething, Ada was almost stunned by the relaxed, sleepy atmosphere of this small town. Using the travel drug, she and Penny had sprinted down on public transport to join the young werewolf, and the Mackeld had been driving them relentlessly to assemble a pack of dogs to hunt for the Alfamme, his orders driven by in furious worry.

Then a snap of acute, visceral anguish had skewered him, recoiling on the entire pack. Even now, almost two days later, the piquant still lingered faintly in her head from the pain of that backlash of that blow. However, the pain it had wrought had been buried almost instantly by fear.

Seconds after, almost on the recoil of the staggering pain, the Alpha had slammed down his shields and locked them out. Everyone: Mackeld, Whites, the Wolflord himself could not break through without crashing him. Her heart had been keening since, a slight, constant tremor of fear - the whole pack felt the same, wordless fear. Fear for their Alpha. He had barricaded them all out, although the faint tug in her mind of her oath to him still held, and he still led the relentless tide of battle-melds to defend Marshmont. But it was like being sent commands by a computer. There was no emotion: the feeling in him was all smothered, crushed.

Please, my Alpha.

Ada jumped faintly, pulled out of her tense thoughts when the human driver beside her muttered irritatedly, "I heard the directions too," and took the corner a little too fast.

In contrast to the frozen atmosphere up front, on the back seat, the old dog suddenly awoke from his slumber, rolled over with difficulty onto his stiff and aching legs, and reached his head up to sniff loudly at the crack in the window. Almost like a young dog, Riley then surged to his feet, pressed his nostrils flat to the wide crack, and started to snort and snuffle eagerly, his tail beginning to wag.

Ada turned her tear-bright blue eyes to the beagle, and even in her fear a laugh was surprised from her when, with a burst of enthusiasm, the hound turned to poke his wet nose into her cheek and slurp a kiss on her jaw.

She squeezed shut her eyes. Why did this command of the A's feel like a form of farewell? Settling accounts?

They parked up two minutes later.

Both girls walked Riley into the feed store to which Adam had directed them, Ada with a hand on the suddenly rejuvenated dog's collar. Bethan cast up her eyes and held her mouth in a straight line as the medium sized-hound towed the slender waif eagerly in through the open double doors past a weatherworn 'Dogs Welcome' sign.

As soon as they entered, Riley rushed off down a high aisle stacked with chicken feed bags towards a side door to some inner sanctum, dragging Ada sideways, causing her to hop off balance on one foot after him and out of sight. Bethan could hear the other girl muttering, "Wait on, wait on!" under her breath.

Bethan sighed in exasperation. Then she grinned. Ada had been sent along to look after the dog, so on her head be it if she wasn't up to the task. She herself was merely the chauffeur on this idiotic trip, and would be glad to see the back of it. So she left the pair to their struggle for leadership and approached the cashier counter instead.

"Excuse me?" she said.

A square, capable-looking older woman wearing a bright, soft cotton shirt and jeans was standing behind the desk. She looked up enquiringly as Bethan stepped forwards.

Bethan gestured behind herself, to where they could both hear the other girl simultaneously cajoling and heaving the dog back up the aisle, "We found this dog on the road south of town and he seemed to be headed this -."

The shopkeeper's eyes had already dropped to the beagle being dragged reluctantly around the corner, and the dog looked up and spotted her at the same time. He changed direction and bounded eagerly forwards, yanking the girl still clinging to his collar into a patter of quick footsteps before Ada let go with a short laugh. The woman's pale blue eyes lit up in answer.

"Riley!" she cried in delight, darting out from behind the wooden desk to fall to her knees on the hard floor, returning his exuberant greeting with one of her own as the dog launched himself onto her.

"Oh Riley! Oh - thank-you, thank-you, we've been looking everywhere, where did you find him?" cried the woman, not looking up, her words muffled by a bombardment of ecstatic love while she rubbed her face in the dog's short fur and hugged him back.

"South of here," repeated Bethan. Dammit, she really couldn't keep the smile from twisting her mouth, but her eyes were sombre as she watched. "Glad to be of service. He was headed this way and we just gave him a lift, thought the feedstore the best place to ask if anyone knew him," she lied glibly.

"Oh, thank-you so much. Can't I give you a coffee, a drink, anything for your trouble?" asked the woman now sitting unselfconsciously on the concrete floor with her legs curled to one side, turning her happy, tear-streaked face up, her arms cuddling the equally happy hound who had crawled onto her jean-clad lap and was snuffling her ear with repeated licks.

"It was no trouble," Bethan smiled at her. Which was a lie. She wasn't about to tell this woman just how far south Riley had been.

Ada bent to run a hand over the dog's short coat one last time, also smiling, a little sadly. "It's good to see him so happy to be home," she added in a soft voice.

They were looking for you, she told the old beagle. There were posters asking for news of him everywhere, she had seen them on the lamp-posts as they had driven through the little town.

Riley didn't reply, he was too busy making sure Jane knew how much he'd missed her. Besides, he didn't think the comment worth responding to. Of course they'd been looking. He was family.

Ada sighed a little wistfully as she turned to follow Bethan back out of the door, popping another of the travel pills the Fealden Alfamme had fedexed her.

Through the windshield, Bethan lifted a hand to the woman standing with her dog waving farewell in the doorway while she backed to circle out of the car park, then her face fell back into grumpy creases as she turned the car towards the main road. "I can't believe we just wasted two days dropping off a bloody dog in the middle of this hunt," she growled impatiently.

Ada sent her companion a cool look, reminding her in a crisp tone, "Riley is no longer needed: we have other dogs who know the scent now. Mac decided that it was time he got home safely. That hound's was horribly homesick, and he's too old for this, but did wonderfully tracking Gemma from here despite his aching bones."

Bethan snorted. By the time they got back it would be four whole days wasted, when she could have been hunting for Gemma! Mac didn't seem to know what was important, any more.

Ada looked out of the side window and her eyes crinkled slightly as she remembered the happy tilt of the beagle's head, the look in his filmy eyes when he'd scented his home again. Riley had helped the Alpha immensely: without him, the hunt would have been impossible. Mac did know what was important.

Her heart began to shiver again as she worried just why her Alpha had decided that the hunt for his mate was no longer the highest, utmost priority for them all.

***

There was a slightly yielding, smooth surface under her back. The surface was buzzing faintly, vibrating against her frozen skin. Frozen. Her blood felt petrified, congealed to heavy slush in her veins, only the faintest hint of movement of red blood cells seeping between the packed, unmoving crystals of ice. Pain numbed by cold.

A dim sense of alarm trickled through her as the vibration continued to gently shake her frozen body, a muffled shouting beating at her ears, then slowly dimming, as though she was sliding her head into a box. The loss of sensation sounded a vague alarm somewhere inside her.

After some moments within the depth of numbness, Gemma realised on a panic that she wasn't breathing, and the shock drove a sharp, gasped intake of air to flood into her lungs, lifting her chest.

Her chest screamed.

Raw, ripped edges - screaming, bleeding pain through the frozen cavity - if the rest of her hadn't been an ice statue, the rake of the pain would have lifted her into a piercing, howling arch to try to ease that agony. Inside her ribs, she felt grated. The hole inside, where her heart had once been connected, all of the arteries and vessels were choked or ripped off, discordant, mutilated. Each raw nerve speared directly into her mind, stabbing her again and again with a twin, nauseating, unbearable ache.

The feeling of immediate dread rang louder through her as with a faint hissing noise below her feet, the voices dimmed further. But her ripped heart and mind couldn't respond, she couldn't take this pain, couldn't move - couldn't.

Still, her ears absorbed the words that the female standing somewhere below her feet was shouting across at the male. A name caught at her, drawing together her shredded brain to slowly percolate some meaning from the shouts.

"... lost your fucking temper! Now it's dead we have lost our bait for the Mackeld too, you spineless whelp!"

The words swirled in her throbbing head, dull and almost senseless, held together by the name.

That name.

A tiny speck of heat struggled within the broken ice-shards in her chest.

A second creak of moving metal, and a blast of air hit her from the right. Her brain began to absorb the other urgent messages from her senses. The dusty scent surrounding her was - curdling, and Gemma's awareness was jolted by a sudden, new fear. Realisation dawned: "It's dead".

It.

The werewolf.

Her.

Realisation dragged a splintering fear in its wake, the name of her mate echoing more loudly through her. They thought she was dead.

Her Mac.

That was the pain: she couldn't sense him. At all. Never before had she been aware of the thread of feeling between two wolfmates. Until now, when it was gone. She couldn't sense him.

So he couldn't sense her.

The old warning from Valerie thudded through her veins: "When you die, early or late, then so will he, in grief, and guilt."

Her brain catapulted into full alert, leaden lids peeling painfully open revealing unyielding darkness, but the scents aligned her. She was lying nearly smothered in an enclosed, heavy box, on a conveyor belt of metal rollers. A shuttered vent beside her was blasting air in just below the surface on which her body was lying. The whole tiny space smelt of ash. Fine ash and overheated metal.

The fear quadrupled, lifting the hairs on her human skin, and Gemma was on her side, tearing weakly at the shorn, mangled shutter with her bare human fingers. The gashed, broken metal fell away and she squirmed desperately to scrape her small, sick frame around the ninety-degree bend into the vertical air duct as she heard a click of a new valve opening behind her. Terrified by the half-recognised scents, the blood now pounding in her ears muffling the continuous, vitriolic shouting match that had erupted in the room below, she had no idea how far or how fast she managed to jam her way up through the solid metal chute against the blasting air, before heat seared at her feet and legs, blistering them with pain.

She erupted into a T-join in the square ducting, terror and pain driving her, and crawled some feet along a slightly wider shaft before she was brought up short by a second, fully closed valve leading away from the torrent of air behind her. This one was undamaged. Belatedly recognising the heavy claw-marks that had shredded the valve at the bottom at some time in the past, what it meant, that some wolf had clawed desperately at that vent from the inside, trapped in the inferno -. Gemma's heart cramped in revolted realisation, her stomach heaved, and she was violently sick into the tiny shaft in which she lay.

Her stomach heaved convulsively, repeatedly. Her mind swirled, nose twitching, dimly absorbing - something else amiss. Curling as far in on herself as she could in the mercilessly hot, cramped space, almost screaming at the pain in her heart, her mind fragmented under the agony which surged back to overwhelm her now as the immediacy of death sank back.

Distantly through the sick stupor sinking back through her limbs, her ears absorbed the roar of the gas inferno in the small cremation chamber from which she had escaped, and beyond, the continued bellows of fury between the antagonists.

Mac, her mind whimpered.

Her heart was bleeding, raw. He was gone.

Ripped away.

Gemma bit hard on her tongue to keep from screaming as the pain of that tear surged back to the fore while her sick body heaved with the compulsive, violent retching. She lay shivering, the weakness in her limbs smothering her to the hot metal as she exhausted herself holding in the anguish bludgeoning through her. Tears lit her eyes. The ice in her veins was helping her remain still, smothering her, but it couldn't entirely douse the agony.

Never before had she realised how deeply he was entwined in her. Had been entwined: now he had been ripped out. Half of her ripped to furious, agonising, savaged shreds.

The wolf inside her was keening, sinking deeper and deeper through waves of depression, alone, sick, sick to death. No pack. No mate.

Shut up, she cursed herself. What do you think he's going through?

Her wolf.

Her mind clamped into clarity, furious. And carefully, she pulled her physical self together again, lying in an exhausted, shivering heap, face contorted against the pain of the ice in her veins and the blistered burns on her feet and calves.

She had to get to him, let him know. Somehow. Gemma shifted wolf, to tear out the valve above her head with her claws.

Nothing happened.

She tried again, desperately, a hand sweeping sluggishly up across her human skin to check for the Argen collar, but it wasn't there, she was completely naked.

Why couldn't she shift? As she lay shivering, her hand landed in a pool of liquid. Ugh. But... her nose and mind slowly filtered an oblique answer to her question. A vile answer. She had just vomited into the shaft in which she was lying. But she couldn't smell the result, only feel it. The only thing that blocked scent for a wolf was silver. Silver.

She couldn't shift because she had been silver poisoned. That was why she was 'dead'.

So she couldn't move. Couldn't reach him.

The tears were rolling down her hot cheeks.

Eventually the roaring beneath her stopped, and Gemma heard a click above her head, the scrape of metal on metal. Her mind sorted through her options, and she realised that the searing, agonising burns on her legs and buttocks were not fading. Her feet were still scorched agony, feeling tortured. Sickness dragged at her, making her feel sluggish, maimed. She couldn't heal. Couldn't shift. Couldn't sense her mate, or anyone, all alone in her head. She felt human.

The lonely echo within her, the pressing walls of metal and the impenetrable blackness drove the despair in stronger and stronger waves through her head, shuddering through her screaming limbs even as her heart sank slowly beneath the desolate isolation. Trapped. The wildness within her shuddered, beginning to shake out of control.

Stop it, she cursed herself, focusing fiercely on her mate. She had to get out.

The traces of dried tears of her cheeks tingled. Inside her, however, the faint tang of blood in her mouth tasted of life, and her remaining heart was slowly growing more fiery, burning with fury.

She was not human. The wolf was there. Trapped in her heart, in furious sorrow. All of her was igniting, the need pulling her together, one whole being. They - the scheming wolves below, had stolen her from her mate, torn him from her. They had severed them.

Mac would be in such pain too.

Worse pain.

She had to get moving.

Gemma finally recognised, now, what she had never completely trusted before. Mac loved her. She knew this. She didn't need that bond to know. It was simpler than the deep tie of songmate. He loved her. The wolf knew. She knew. No doubts.

But she also knew, the dread heavy in her stomach, that if she didn't stop him - her heart was thundering in terror at the idea: Mac following her into death. The terror eclipsed the pain and the fear of the cramped space clawing at her internal wolf, and the fear of the darkness pressing on her human psyche. Gemma felt around above her head, feeling the open slats of metal where air was now free to travel. She gripped one thin slat and began to twist it, trying to force her sluggish, pain-drenched limbs to break a way through into the dark vent, seek a way out.