#Chapter 330 – Protecting my Own
Sinclair I growl down at the man before me, who is younger than I thought he would be, for one with such power. He has thick black hair and a day’s worth of stubble on his thin cheeks. The man glares up at me with dark, angry eyes and opens his mouth to speak but before he can, I slap him – hard with an open palm.
–
The man gasps with surprise and pain, his eyes going wide as he stares down at the floor, and I smirk. I doubt this man has been slapped anytime recently, if ever. He has the smug look of someone used to being in charge.
But he’s in my house now.
“You’ll speak when we tell you to speak,” I growl, and then I turn to the head of my reconnaissance team, who is standing against the wall, his hands on his knees, panting a little. Craig isn’t a small man to see him so undone by the efforts suggests that this diminutive priest is, indeed, powerful in other ways.
“How did you catch him?” I snap. Craig looks up at me and does his best to straighten up.
“We followed the leads, sir,” he replies, looking me in the eyes, “that we gleaned from the conversation with the other priest, who wished to remain anonymous. They were…fruitful. We found this one’s lair, for lack of a better word. It was actually in a sewer -in an abandoned maintenance room. He was living there doing…” Craig hesitates and then shrugs. “Forgive me, Sir, for the dramatic language, but ‘arcane magics‘ are the only words coming to my mind now. Lizard skins…and and snail shells, in jars – he had a cauldron –”
“Thank you,” I say, interrupting and nodding towards the head of my investigative team. “You will give your details to Alastair, as soon as you can. For now, though I want everyone here for the interrogation.” I lean forward towards the priest, who watches me with wary eyes and a clenched jaw.
“An interrogation,” I continue, lowering my voice and slowing my words, “will be long, and bloody, if need be.”
The priest proves himself a brave man, then, by baring his teeth at me in a little snarl. But I just laugh at him, which makes him faulter. And then I step away, secretly grateful for it, because each of my muscles are tensed, ready to rip this man’s head off. Roger steps in to take my place.
“Tell us,” Roger commands, his arms crossed as he looks down at the man strapped to the chair,” who you are. And what your people want with my brother’s child.”
The man just grins at Roger, a too–wide expression that shows all of his teeth. “No,” he growls, a little laughter in his voice now. Roger stares at him blandly for a moment and then shifts his eyes to a member of the reconnaissance team standing behind the priest who whips forward a taser and places it swiftly against the priest’s neck.
The bolt flies through the priest’s body, making him shriek and twist in pain, but my man, well trained, pulls it away quickly. The priest goes a little slack in his chair, panting.
“Let’s try again,” Roger says, kicking the leg of the chair to get the priest’s attention. “What do your people want with my nephew.”
My eyes narrow, though, as the priest looks up at Roger again and just huffs a short, humorless laugh. “It doesn’t matter,” the priest says, shaking his head and holding his gaze. “Because,” he pants, a smile growing on his face. “You are already…too late.”
And then he starts to laugh – really, truly laugh, as a crash of glass sounds and a scream erupts upstairs –
And my heart stops as I recognize it, instantly, as Ella.
Ella
I was just sitting here, tense, in my rocking chair by Rafe’s basinet, one hand on the edge of it –
as it always is – shushing him quietly as he falls asleep when –
–
I heard a little tapping sound at the glass of his window –
I looked towards it curiously, expecting a little bird – maybe a squirrel –
But terror flooded me when I saw a black–masked face calmly tapping on my window, grinning at me. I gasped, my body turning to ice as I froze, as he quietly pointed to the basinet and mouthed “I’m coming for him.” (2)
–
And then it seemed to go so fast – the man pulled back his arm, and made a fist, and crashed it through the window –
I don’t know how he did it – it should have broken his hand – Sinclair paid to have those forced his body, head–first, into the room through the hole he made with his fist, the rest of the glass of the window cracking and shattering around him.
–
But the moment he hit the floor, only half an instant later, my instincts came back to me, and I pulled my child’s rolling basinet behind me and screamed –
I shove the rocking chair away and back into the corner now, Rafe in his cradle behind me, as the man gets to his feet at the foot of the window. As he stands, my heart jumps when I see that
there are more more men behind him, working their way up to the window and through it –
moving unnaturally fast –
The man in the lead is on his feet now, grinning at me, starting to prowl towards me –
And all of my wolf instincts kick in, all of them, at once. And suddenly I’m snarling at them, the nails on my fingers elongating to claws, my teeth sharpening in my mouth. It’s not a full transformation – not yet – but it’s enough, now, to make it clear to the men who gain on me –
That they will not take my child –
Not ever.
Not even over my dead body. I will never let them take him.
“Here, kitty kitty,” the man says, menacing, only a foot from me now. “Hand over your little kitten, like a good girl –”
–
I roar and swipe at his face, stepping only one foot forward so that I’m still protecting Rafe with my body but enough that I catch his cheek even though he flinches back. My claws open three long, deep cuts across his face that I can see through the mask, marks that stretch from his ear downward, across his nose and his mouth.
The man flinches back in pain and then, at least eight men behind him now, glares at me again. “You’ll pay for that, bitch,” he snarls.
But I just open my mouth and roar at him, at all of them, fury in every line of my body, ready to shred them with my bare hands – every single one –
My message couldn’t be clearer.
Come at me.
But the man in the lead just laughs, and then they do.
I’m overwhelmed almost at once, pressing my back to Rafe’s basinet and swiping with my claws, tearing at whatever flesh is closet to me, my mouth open in a constant roar. But there’s too many of them for me – I’m pulled away from the basinet and feel something cut harshly against my back.
I scream again – in pain this time and turn to see – I gasp the basinet –
–
– one of those men, reaching into “RAFE!” I scream, reaching for him.
–
But something grabs me, hauling me away, as one of the black–masked men lifts my child into his arms and turns to smile at me.
