Beck stared blankly at his attacker, wishing he could clear his head enough to think and plan. And change.
Instead, he stalled again, with truth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Another punch, this time to the gut. Beck doubled over, retching.
“Where is she?” Same question, same intonation.
Tell us what we want to know, or we’ll torture you until you can take no more.
“Tell us. Where is she?”
“Who?” Beck cried out. “Come on, buddy. Give me a break. You have the wrong man.”
The tall, wiry shifter stepped back, adjusting his hat. He wore his inky black hair in a long, braided rope down his back. Flexing his fist, he glared at Beck before addressing the others. “I think he’s telling the truth.”
“No, he’s not.” The one with the battered hat leaned closer, giving Beck a whiff of sour breath and cigarette smoke. “Let me make this clear. We’ve got the woman. Now, we want the kid. Either you tell us where she is, or the woman dies.”
The woman? The kid? Beck closed his eyes, fighting back a wave of nausea and shock. “Listen,” he said and then attempted to lick his cracked lips. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. What woman?”
“The same one you’ve been looking for,” the tall man spat. “The vampire bitch and her demon offspring. Your daughter.”
His blood ran cold. “You must be mistaken. I have no children.” He had to try, God help him, to make them realize what nonsense they were spouting. What they spoke of was impossible.
“I have no child,” he repeated.
“You do. We’ve seen the photographs of your kid. Yours and the vampire’s.”
He couldn’t help himself. “Come on. Surely you know that vampires can’t have children. Everyone knows that.”
The three men glared at him, disbelief plain in their faces.
“We’re taking you to her,” the shifter with the long braid said, spitting a brown wad of chewing tobacco on the ground near Beck’s feet. “Maybe once you see what we’re going to do to the mother of your daughter, you’ll realize we’re serious and tell us what we want to know.”
Stepping around him, the two men shoved him out of the truck. The three-foot fall felt like a story as he hit the ground hard and lay crumpled in a heap. A moan of pain escaped him.
Ignoring this, his escorts jumped down beside him and yanked him up again, one on each side, supporting him. As they moved forward,
Beck stumbled and fell, earning a kick from the braided shifter.
“Let’s go.” He prodded Beck’s back with something sharp that might have been a knife or a stick. This one, Beck vowed silently, rage welling up inside him, would pay later. He’d change and fight him, wolf to wolf. And when he won, he’d have no compunction about ripping out the other man’s throat.
For now, he bent his head and struggled forward. One of his legs and three of his ribs felt broken. Luckily, shape-shifters healed quickly, so in a day or two, he should be good as new.
If they let him live that long.
Their nonsensical words had been exactly that—nonsense. He had no daughter. Even if such a thing were possible, Marika wouldn’t have kept his own child from him.
Yet she had disappeared…. He cursed them and then himself for believing such nonsense even for a second.
They urged him forward with a shove. He drooped, pretending to be weaker than he was, stumbling for good effect.
“How much farther?” he croaked, conserving his strength for later.
Striding ahead now, braided man barely spared him a glance. Again, Beck had to clamp down his fury. Though he truly thought he could take them all, he wanted to wait and see if they really had captured Marika Tarus.
And find out if he actually had a daughter.
He grimaced because the whispering thought wouldn’t go away.
“There.” His captor pointed to a building, looming above them in the darkness. “We’re keeping her inside the basement, in the dark where her kind belong.”
Stumbling again, Beck allowed them to steer him toward the entrance, all the while keeping his wolf and his rage in check. With each step, his anticipation grew. Could it really be Marika, the same vampire woman he’d sought for the past three years? What were the odds that these men had captured the one he’d hunted unsuccessfully for so long?
A thousand to one, at least. Even higher, since they kept babbling about some mythical child.
His child. Right. Again he shrugged off the thought. One thing he’d learned over the years was how dangerous it could be to allow himself to feel hope.
Keeping his head down, he let them lead him inside, his anger building with every step, fueling him, giving him energy. He was careful to give no sign of his rapid recovery, conserving his strength for when he’d need it.
Marika heard voices, muffled and faint, through her cement prison. They’d returned, the men who kept her here, believing she’d reveal the most precious aspect of her existence. Little did they know, she’d allow them to burn her to ash in full sunlight before she’d endanger little Dani.
Then, the faint grinding as they struggled to remove the sarcophagus lid. Ah, her time had come. Their hour of reckoning.
She held her breath while it slid slowly, painfully open, inch by inch. Even though they only used one small electric lantern, the new light seared her eyes, so accustomed to inky blackness had she become.
Slowly, she adjusted, blink by blink, peering through her lashes at the blur of human faces surrounding her. She didn’t move, not yet. Motionless, she bided her time, building her strength for the optimal moment to make her bid for freedom.
Then, once she was free, they would pay for daring to hold her here like this. She’d kill them all, one by one, and gorge herself in a fit of savagery on their still-warm blood, as her half-savage ancestors used to.
Just the thought gave her a burst of adrenaline.
“Get up,” one of them said, a hint of nervousness in his husky voice. “We brought someone to see you.”
Instantly she froze, a frisson of fear stabbing her. Not Dani, surely they hadn’t found her daughter. No, she would have known, in that place in her chest where the heart of a mother once beat. Not Dani. Who, then, and why? Had they captured another vampire?
Curious despite herself, she swallowed back the rage and pushed herself to her elbows, still pretending weakness.
At first, blinking in the dim light, she counted only the same three. The tall shape-shifter with his long, dirty braid. The short man, fastidiously clean, who always smelled of coffee and soap, and the other, pudgy and mean-eyed, ever-present cigarette smoldering.
Then,
