Twisted (Rogues Shifter Series Book 3) Read online

  As my knees buckled, Isaiah allowed me to slowly crumple to the floor where I curled into a ball and sobbed.

  Chapter Nine

  Bridgett: 2:00 AM Wednesday

  Garrett looked worried when he walked back into the room. I felt really bad for him. It was so obvious that he and Jackie were crazy about each other and he must be going nuts thinking about Kennet mistreating her. He'd managed to stay pretty calm, even with so much shit that he had to organize as far as the search and rescue was concerned. It was all over his face that what he really wanted to do was run out the door and vamp speed it up to where Liam was searching.

  I peeked over at William, hoping that he wouldn’t notice me looking. I wondered what it was like to be head over heels in love with someone. How long did Jackie and Garrett know each other before they kissed for the first time? I’d never kissed anyone seriously. I looked down at my way-too-skinny body and ran a hand through my messy hair. Who’d want to kiss me anyway?

  Garrett sat down and spoke, “I’m going over this once more. Rob will be here from dawn to dusk. He'll organize the search here at our home base, overseeing Sinc and Bridgett on the phones and computers or any other work that he feels is necessary. He's in charge, If he's called away for some reason, Sinc will step up."

  "Sasha is in charge in the evening." I couldn't help wincing, but luckily, Garrett didn't see it and neither did Sasha.

  Garrett looked at me and William. "You two will cooperate and follow their orders, do you understand?” We both nodded. Garrett looked back at Sasha. “Elizabeth may be in and out once in a while to check the sovereignty of her wards. Work on the new house is suspended until Jackie is back. The wolves will be contacting other packs to get information and will be calling the house. If something important comes in you'll get the info to me or Liam immediately.” Sinc nodded.

  “At night, Heinrich and Sasha will take turns patrolling the grounds. Sash, you, Will and Rick will have to take turns feeding. If for some reason it isn’t safe, you can bring a donor here to the house, but only as a last resort. Glamour them so they don’t remember where they've been. You'll lose your heads in a heartbeat if anyone gets injured. Do you understand?”

  "Yes Garrett," Sash answered.

  “Will, you’ll need to make sure communications get sent to the correct party when Rob leaves and Sinc and Bridgett are asleep."

  "Yes, Garrett. I'll go over everything with Sinc."

  “And this is the most important thing. Except to feed, no one leaves the grounds until I get back with Jackie. You're all stuck here together until this danger is past. I can’t be worrying about you and her.” It was obvious that he was stressed to the limit, and yet he was somehow holding himself together. His fists were clenching and unclenching and I wondered if he even knew he was doing it. I felt like I wanted to say or do something to help him.

  “Garrett, I know she’s alive. You’ll find her soon so don’t worry about us. We’ll do what Rob and Sasha and Sinc say.”

  He actually smiled at me, losing some of the tension in his face. “Thank you. I appreciate that. You can go and organize yourselves now. I’ll be leaving within the hour.” He stood and said, “Sasha could you come into my office for a minute?” He turned and left the room followed closely by his second in command.

  I felt a hand squeezing mine and I froze for a few seconds. When I turned to look at William, he was smiling at me.

  “What you said was perfect.” I smiled back and looked down at our hands joined together on the arm of my chair. “Do you want me to take my hand away?” he whispered.

  I looked up into his lovely light blue eyes and saw something there I’d never seen in the eyes of any other young man: admiration and maybe even…attraction? Maybe with a little fear thrown in for good measure. He was scared, like me. I felt too warm and my heart was beating faster than normal, but it was all good.

  “No. Leave it where it is.” His shy smile turned into a true grin and I watched him breathe in my scent as I turned my hand over and threaded my fingers through his.

  Chapter Ten

  Garrett: 4:15 AM Wednesday

  I jumped over the fallen oak tree branch and hit the ground without a break in my stride. Vamp speed was a definite perk and I was making the most of it tonight, racing through various towns leaving behind only the impression of a passing breeze. As I ran, I pulled up power from the lines in a constant stream so that my energy was continuously renewed in a magical loop. Liam had called Carol’s mom to let her know what town I was resting in during the day so that there would be a volunteer waiting for me when I woke up later this afternoon. Magic from the lines was a tool that I used to fight or travel, but it wouldn't sustain me for long.

  As I raced through the rainy night toward Liam and the others, I found myself thinking about my maker, Eleanor. I felt no guilt over her death or the manner in which I’d killed her. She’d murdered hundreds, plus threatened Jackie’s life and the Crescent City shifter community. We'd all agreed that she had to die. Her death had accomplished much that was good, bringing money for use in the community and added powers to help me protect those who needed my help.

  With rain soaking my clothes and stinging at my face, I thought back to the night I’d been kidnapped by her nest. My family and I were asleep, completely unaware that there were vampires who’d moved into our territory. They attacked three hours before dawn, forcing us into dirty cages in an abandoned mine. She'd appeared, exquisitely lovely, her seductive feminine charms a ruse to first entrap and then make you a victim of her horrible cruelty. Eleanor fed from me, allowing Antoine and two others to feed from my parents and sister, then had us tortured for everyone’s amusement. I will never forget the sound of my mother's and sister’s screams. After we’d healed, she moved us to her villa in Carmel, where she'd tried to change us one at a time by draining us to near death and then replacing our lost blood with hers. First my mother died, followed the next night by my father and then the next, my sister. By the time she came to me, I was ready to die, but that wasn’t what the fates had in mind for me.

  I was sent to hell, instead.

  When the rare mood struck her, Eleanor would play the benevolent despot, treating us all like favored underlings, laughing with us and actually seeming to enjoy our company. Unfortunately, those peaceful spans were brief, and sometimes, within only minutes, we'd be once again drowning in a desperate misery which, for some in the nest, was not survivable.

  Her ego bred a fantasy where the dozens and dozens of vampires whom she'd created would worship her, all of them grateful and eager to please her in any way they could. The reality was not as she'd imagined, and that made her furious and vengeful. When a human is changed against his will, he is not particularly grateful, nor eager to please, at least not at first. After a few rounds of punishments, a newly made vampire would either be dead or groveling. Even I spent years on my knees at the beginning.

  She was creative with her various tortures and they were usually done in front of all the others, the punishment combining pain with humiliation. Most of us despised her, some more openly than others. I was never completely successful at hiding my revulsion, and strangely, Eleanor respected me for my courage.

  Because I was unique, the only shifter to survive the change, she treated me as a favorite, which didn’t mean I wasn’t punished as brutally as the others, just not quite so often. But she would always force me to watch, and to me that was harder than enduring her cruelty myself. Sasha, and then eventually Heinrich, became her enforcers, but I often saw them lie to her about someone’s guilt to save that vampire’s skin. They hated what they had to do, yet we were all grateful that it was them performing her tasks and not one of the more sadistic vamps in the nest like Antoine. To discourage the friendship that Sash and Rick had formed, one was sometimes forced to punish the other.

  In recent years, young William endured the most. Eleanor enjoyed starving the weaker members of her nest just to see how long they could last. They would be fed very little, if at all, and were never allowed to hunt. We did what we could for them, but many died. Her attitude was that there were always plenty of humans around to change if her entourage grew too small. Will survived, partly because Heinrich brought him stray dogs. Yet as hungry as he was, he refused to take enough to kill the animal. And starvation wasn’t the only torture he’d suffered.

  I wiped the rain from my face, some of it having turned pink, as I remembered the misery of those dreadful times.

  In the end, the ones who'd survived were masters at disassociation. Our bodies were in pain, but our minds and our spirits were elsewhere. It got me though decades of misery, yet left me closed to many of my feelings. Rob and Liam helped me with their trust and their friendship. But it was another cheetah, running through the night on a deserted road, who gave me hope: who opened my heart again with her love and her strength and her trust.

  As the rain grew heavier, battering my body with cold hard pellets. I took my mind off of my discomfort by visualizing the scene that Liam had described to me: Jackie alone in a simple bedroom, unhurt. I hoped that, like Eleanor, Kennet had a tiny spark of kindness in his sad excuse for a personality and that he truly wouldn’t hurt her.

  But if he did, I'd spend the next ten years torturing him slowly. If he killed her, it would be five hundred years; although, I’d have to leave those years to Liam, because I wouldn’t be able to live without her. I'd walk into the sun the first chance I had after she was pronounced dead. If there was an afterlife, I would search for her throughout eternity until I found her.

  I shook off my ramblings and focused my mind on reaching my destination and continuing the search. Pulling up a burst of energy, I ratcheted up my speed and flew past the SUVs and tractor trailers on
the highway, a breezy blur, forgotten by their drivers a second later.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jackie: 3:45 AM Wednesday

  After I’d cried myself out, I ran to the bathroom and heaved up the last meal I’d eaten. I was shaken to my core. What Kennet had done to me was worse than my long ago attack by two thugs, worse even than the rape I’d endured from a foster brother. Kennet had forced me to kiss him and enjoy it. My body had turned traitor to my heart and my mind. When we were kissing, my body had wanted more, and I couldn’t do anything to stop those responses, as hard as I’d tried. If he’d told me to strip and lay spread-eagled on the bed, I would have done it, and smiled. I pushed down another wave of nausea, feeling helpless and dirty.

  I washed off my face, then crawled onto the bed and started to curl up into a fetal position. A movement caught my eye and I noticed that Isaiah was still in the room, sitting in a chair at the small table.

  “Go away.” My voice was hoarse from the acidic burn in the back of my throat and the crying jag.

  “Sorry, healer. I've been told to stay in case you try to harm yourself. And we still have much to discuss, you and I.” He crossed his right leg over his left and settled back in the chair.

  “I don’t want to talk to you, so fuck off.”

  “I see. So you will curl up into a ball and hide your head under the pillow and wait for him to come back and torture you again? You have two days and you've already wasted an hour with your purging and your hysterics.”

  Furious, I sat up slowly and took another look at him. “What do you propose that I do with these two days that will make any difference in the end?”

  He leaned toward me and whispered. “I can teach you how to access the lines; even though he has placed a block on them which a certain petulant cheetah shifter can’t get through.”

  I quickly crawled down to sit on the edge of the bed, feeling a tiny shred of hope begin to stir in my chest. “Why would you do that for me?”

  “I despise him every bit as much as you do.”

  My mind was suddenly spinning. "I don't understand."

  "I am magically bound to obey him, but it is possible..."

  "We can work out something between the two of us that doesn't interfere with his orders? Some way that allows you to teach me?"

  He seemed to be amused by my desperation because he smirked and said "Yes."

  "Then teach me. Right now."

  He laughed at me. “You must be patient."

  "But..."

  Holding up a hand to stop my protest in mid-sentence, his entire manner switched into business mode. "First we’ll create a serious, binding agreement. All terms will be laid out clearly so you know exactly what I require of you and also exactly what I am giving to you in return. The agreement will be bound in blood.” In his hand appeared a bowl which contained a knife and a black candle.

  I sighed in frustration. “I'm not a complete idiot. Before I make any bargains I have to know more about you. Are you a sorcerer?"

  He chuckled. “I’m not like any breed of supernatural you've so far encountered, Healer.

  “Why are you here serving Kennet? How could he bind you to him?”

  “He summoned me.”

  “Summoned you? Like you’d summon a demon?”

  His eyes glowed with bright amber. “Exactly like you’d summon a demon, Healer.”

  I opened and closed my mouth twice, then shook my head and crawled back up the bed, curling up. “Why am I not surprised?” I closed my eyes, too tired and depressed to be afraid.

  “Where are you going? We need to work out our agreement.” He sounded angry.

  I didn’t bother sitting up. “I’m not making a blood bargain with a demon. You’ll eat my soul for breakfast. Plus, I’d be trading one evil jerk for another.”

  He laughed so hard that I thought he was going to go into convulsions. “Jackie, you are so entertaining.” He was instantly sitting cross-legged on the bed next to me. I sat up in a rush and tried to move away, but he grabbed my wrist. His grip was stronger than I'd expected.

  “I am not going to hurt you. I have been ordered to protect you and I cannot go against Kennet’s orders.” He snorted in disgust. “He gives such generalized, ridiculous orders. ‘Guard her’, Protect her’, ‘Watch her’. They can all be interpreted in so many ways. We love to twist things to our purposes and Kennet has little experience dealing with my race. It will be his downfall, in the end. But meanwhile, I can be very patient, while you have less than two days: forty six hours to be precise. I need your help and you need mine. At least allow me to lay it out for you and then you can decide.”

  He was speaking very reasonably and so I thought, what the hell? “Fine, tell me what you want from me, and it better not be sex.”

  He laughed again, releasing my wrist. “I am growing quite fond of you Jackie, but no, I don't want sex from you. What I want is much more valuable, in fact it is exactly what you want. I want my freedom and my revenge. And right now, you are the only one who can give those things to me.”

  “And in return you’ll train me in the next forty six hours to access the magic so that I can escape? I can go home? That’s the deal?”

  “Oh there’s much more.” I scowled. “Let me explain. Kennet can summon me here because he knows my True Name. He purchased it from a goblin prince who carried a grudge against me.” A fire was burning in his eyes as he spoke, then disappeared when he noticed me scooting away from him. His hand flashed out, grabbing my wrist again as he shrugged.

  “But that is a story for another time," he continued. "Using a special ritual, he can summon me whenever and wherever he wants. He can command me to do almost anything and I cannot go against his wishes. That is, unless I outsmart him, like I am now. He has not commanded me to keep you from learning new skills. Only to guard, protect, watch, yada, yada. He is an imbecile.”

  I smiled at hearing a demon—A DEMON—using an expression like yada, yada. “So how do I help you?”

  “I give you my True Name and you summon me. That will cancel out Kennet’s hold on me. Then you order me to capture Kennet. He won’t have time to summon me again so you’ll get away through the lines and I’ll take him with me to my realm. I intend to enjoy myself with him for quite some time before I kill him.” He looked excited in a way that gave me the creeps.

  “You’ll have to take me through the lines.”

  “You'll take yourself.”

  “But I can’t travel through the lines without a fae touching me.”

  “Kennet doesn’t know what you are, Jackie, and apparently neither do you. You have other blood in you besides shifter.”

  “Someone would have told me that if it were true.”

  “This blood is difficult to notice unless you know it well. You’ll have to take my word for it. With training, you’ll be able to travel within the lines just like the Seelie Fae and the higher levels of demons.”

  “So you’re saying I’m part fae?” This couldn’t be true. Liam would have sensed it immediately.

  “No, Jackie, that’s not the blood you carry.” He beamed at me and I felt a cold shiver creep down my spine.

  I didn’t say anything for several seconds, deciding to dismiss what he'd said as BS, but still curious to know more. “How is this possible? Wouldn’t I know if I was evil?”

  He snorted. “I didn’t think you’d be one of those people who immediately think evil when someone says demon. Frankly, I’m disappointed.” He crossed his arms and pretended to be angry. What was actually radiating off of him was eagerness. I wondered if he knew that I could read his emotions so easily.

  I narrowed my eyes and moved in a little closer. “You don’t seem particularly evil, but then I hardly know you, Isaiah. And how can I trust you? You may have me summon you and then turn on me.”

  He spoke to me as if I were a child. “That is the purpose of the agreement: to protect both parties and to make sure that there are no misunderstandings. Also if you summon me, I’ll have to do as you say.”