Chapter Eleven

The fear rolling down the bond was so powerful, Emmett felt like it was halfway to taking physical form and shoving the rest of his innards out of the way to make room. He wished he could be driving faster, but getting pulled over or into an accident would only slow him down when he needed to be travelling at the maximum possible speed—besides which he had two other people in the car. Raj and Francesca were silent as he sped through the city streets, Leo and Della right behind them. Now he knew the feeling he was seeking, it was almost absurdly easy to follow the bond in Petra's direction—as long as she was feeling things this intensely, at least.

A strange sensation cut through the fear that he was trying to ignore enough to drive safely. Some kind of additional pain, slowly growing in magnitude, and it had to be pretty significant for him to be feeling it through the bond to begin with. The car swerved, and Raj yelled, "Em, fucking focus!" He dragged the car back into his lane, immensely grateful that this street into Mystic City's industrial area was practically empty even in the middle of the day. He had to fight to ignore the pain coming from Petra, as well as the fury rising in him that she was in such agony. His mate was being hurt, and he wasn't there to protect her. His wolf was so close to the surface right now that he'd shift at the most minor of threats. He needed to find her. He needed to save her, to stop the pain she was in, to protect her.

He all but skidded to a halt outside the shell of a building on the very outskirts of the area. It looked like a warehouse that had been burnt out, and no one had bothered to rebuild it. The walls were partially collapsed, and the area around it was full of trash and debris.

Leo pulled up behind him, and the five of them gathered outside the fence surrounding the lot.

"Em, I don't think she's here," Raj said. "We can see all the way through this building. There's no one in there."

"She is," Emmett insisted, barely able to speak through the pain rolling down the bond. "She's… I think she's underneath it. Under the ground." He heard how that sounded, like he was suggesting or foretelling Petra's death, and another wave of fear spread through him. His wolf was frantic with the need to get to his mate, but he shoved it down. "There's got to be some kind of entrance in all that crap. Something that'll take us down to the basement or something like that."

Leo immediately switched into Alpha mode. "Em, Raj, you're the best fighters. You lead. Francesca, on the left, I'll take the right, Della in the center. No, don't argue with me. We all have teeth and claws, and you don't. You're in the middle. Watch your backs. We don't know what's down there. We find Petra, and we get out. I don't care if we walk into the middle of an alien orgy, we leave the minute we have her. Is that clear?"

"Clear," Raj and Francesca said together. Emmett nodded, and he saw Della do the same, clearly focusing on bringing up her magic from the well of it inside her.

Almost as one, the four wolves shifted. Della gestured at the gates that blocked the driveway into the lot and the chains holding them closed slid apart, the gates opening with a smoothness that suggested they'd been regularly used. Emmett tried to strangle a growl as he prowled through, moving with Raj into the half-collapsed building.

People had been here, too. He could smell them, even if it wasn't obvious from the lack of dust and the carefully arranged debris which, if you were looking for it, allowed a clear path through to the far corner. Emmett jerked his head at Raj, who surveyed the area and clearly noticed what Emmett had. The path wasn't wide enough for them to move side by side, though, so Emmett led their group into the shadowed corner.

There was a door there, hidden by a pile of pieces of collapsed wall and other debris. It swung open, and when he glanced back, it was to see Della nodding to indicate that this was her work, not some other witchcraft which might suggest they were dealing with other magic-users. There were still no hints of what they were going to find, other than the hidden entryway indicating that whoever had taken Petra was proficient at hiding. Possibly, she was not the first person they'd taken. Possibly, their group was dealing with an experienced group of criminals. The pain Petra was feeling, which was still pouring through the bond to Emmett like water through a broken dam, might be being inflicted by someone with practice in torture. He tamped down on the urge to sprint ahead, to get to her as quickly as possible and tear into bloody shreds anyone who had dared to hurt her.

He paced through the door, down a long stairway into the dark, feeling the tension in his body rise as the bond assured him that he was getting closer to Petra. Closer to whoever was causing her this pain and the opportunity to destroy them. It was so dark that he could barely see, and stairs weren't the easiest thing to navigate as a wolf, but he refused to shift out of his most dangerous form when he might need to fight at any moment.

The stairway was long, unlit, and he could sense the others behind him, moving as quietly as he was. He knew Della could have lit up the stairway with half a thought, but she as much as the rest of them knew the value of stealth in this situation.

The ground leveled out into a stone-floored corridor. The mixed individual scents of a number of people were becoming stronger as they progressed, mixed with the slightly sweet scent of blood. The corridor began to widen, and eventually Raj moved up beside Emmett, so they were once again moving shoulder-to-shoulder. Em was trying not to hyperventilate, even in his wolf form, from the combination of Petra's pain and his own fear and fury, but having one of the friends who were like brothers to him by his side, who he knew was an exceptional fighter, eased it just slightly. Between the two of them, anyone who approached was in for a seriously difficult fight.

They started hearing voices after moving down the dark corridor for what felt like hours. Della reached out and touched both Emmett and Raj on their backs, and both of them stopped. She gestured for all four of the wolves to come closer, and they crowded in close to her, their massive bulk making the witch look small. So quietly, it was barely above the sound of a breath, she muttered, "I'm going to cast a spell of silence over us, so no one will hear us coming. Try not to get too far ahead; this spell doesn't have much range. Is that good with everyone?" Each of the wolves inclined their heads, and Della made a complicated movement with her hands. Raj and Emmett started moving again. The voices in front of them started getting louder, especially because Emmett could no longer even hear Raj moving.

It took him a moment to realize that he could properly see the massive wolf beside him because the corridor was getting lighter. It was also starting to curve to the left, so they couldn't see more than a few meters in front of them, which made his hackles rise even more. Again, he had to tamp down on the urge to sprint toward the pull of Petra that was just as powerful, if not more so, when he was in this form. Silently, they moved closer and closer to the source of the light until an enormous arched doorway appeared, spilling flickering brightness out into the dark corridor.

Voices were coming through it too; several voices speaking words that he hadn't been able to understand from a distance but, now they were closer, resolved into words only made difficult to comprehend by the echoes that indicated the archway led to a large chamber.

"Erasmus, is this necessary? Surely, we can just slit her throat and be done with it?" asked one voice.

"And are you planning on cleaning up that mess?" another said. The humor in the tone made Emmett's blood boil.

"All right, so maybe not that, but we could just kill her quickly. Wolfsbane takes forever. We'll be here for hours."

"It's the middle of the day," a third person added. "What else were you planning on doing before nightfall? Surely, the protection of our coven is more important than a nap."

"I'm not saying it's not," the first voice said, now sounding petulant. "I just think we could do this more efficiently. Does it matter how much pain she's in? She's going to die anyway."

"Antony," said another voice, a voice that sounded younger but somehow held far more authority than the others. "If I want to watch the deviant in agony before her useless life is extinguished, we will bear witness to it. If you argue again, I will rip out your tongue."

There was a brief silence as the other speakers seemed to take in this casually described threat, before the first speaker—Antony—replied, "Yes, Erasmus. Sorry."

Then came the sound that cut Emmett down to his very soul. A repressed scream, the noise of someone in incredible pain, but trying not to express it too loudly. Petra.

This time, the fury that rose up in him would not be contained. With the briefest of glances at Raj, who inclined his head, teeth bared, Emmett lunged for the archway.

* * *

The pain was beyond any kind of expression, of measurement. It was like someone had filled her veins with acid, and it was slowly eating through every part of her. Like every inch of her skin was being pummeled by a champion boxer, and she couldn't move to evade the blows. She'd read about wolfsbane, about the horrific and painful death it caused, but never thought that it might happen to her.

She tried not to make too much noise, tried not to give them the satisfaction of the proof of her suffering. She wasn't always successful; sounds escaped her every so often, and as the pain increased—increasing, it was always increasing, every time she thought this must be the worst possible agony—the small part of her mind that was still functional outside of the torture tried to distract herself by thinking of other things. Her friends, her family. Emmett. Emmett. The short time she'd spent with him, watching him laugh, seeing his smile, hearing his stories. The time he'd told her he'd be happy to stay bonded to her forever. Another wave of pain rolled through her, and as she tried to strangle a scream, she remembered the way he'd touched her, the feel of his body against hers. The way he looked at her as they finally came together, after so much denial of the connection between them. Well, that last functional part of her wanted to laugh-cry, she'd gotten what she truly wanted. She'd been able to stay bonded to him for the rest of her life.

Because that was what she wanted, wasn't it? If she got out of this—if somehow, impossibly, she escaped these beasts who were reveling in watching her life painfully fade away—what she really wanted was Emmett. The way he touched her and held her like she was the most precious thing in the world. She didn't care anymore that someday he might need more than her to be satisfied. She would accept it without question if she got to be the mate he came home to afterwards. If she got to call herself his and say that he was hers. She would, she swore, tamp down on the possessive wolf part of herself if she just got to have him and hold him and love him again. If the gods saw fit to somehow get her out of this before her life blinked out in this maelstrom of pain, she would accept him any way she could have him.

The pain increased, increased, increased. Petra found herself sobbing, as silently as she could. It was too much. She surely couldn't survive this level of agony for much longer. The end must be coming, and soon. She tried to muffle a scream.

And suddenly, the room around her was alive with noise.

* * *

In an instant, Emmett took in the chamber beyond the arched doorway. Vampires. There was a cluster of vampires in the center of the room. Others lounged at the perimeter of the space. Petra cried out again, and what sounded like a laugh rose from the crowd in the center. The anger that rose in him was like nothing he had ever experienced, and without a single conscious thought, he lunged, throwing aside the pale figures like they were nothing, his fangs and claws tearing through ice-cold flesh like paper. Della must have released her silence spell, because he could hear the other wolves carving their own tracks through the crowd, snarling and growling as they ripped through the spectators to Petra's pain. He saw figures thrown back against the stone walls by Della's magic, where they sank to the ground and didn't move again; saw the smaller wolf that was Francesca attacking with a ferocity he would never have imagined. The vampires took a moment to realize that their hiding place had been invaded, but they quickly turned to repel the attack. Some carried weapons, blades concealed beneath their everyday clothing, while others relied on their strength, speed and bared fangs and came at the attacking wolves with snarls of their own.

He tore through the arm of one who had been wielding a long knife and ripped out the belly of another who tried to bite him. The taste of vampire flesh was rancid, but it only fed his hunger to punish those who were keeping him from his mate. With the element of surprise now lost, the vampires fought with shocking ferocity, their accentuated speed and strength enough to damage even a full-grown werewolf. The clash became chaos as the two groups merged. Emmett heard a snarl turn into something of a whimper and turned his head to see Raj with a blade sticking out of the meat of his shoulder. Without hesitating, the larger wolf tore out the throat of the vampire who had stabbed him, and shot a wolfy grin at the next, as though daring him to come closer.

Emmett's distraction had cost him—a pair of the vampires had taken advantage of it to corner him against the wall, one on each side. The one on the left lunged first, almost too fast to see, fangs extended, and Emmett drove his shoulder into it as it approached, sending it flying backward. The one on the right had used his focus on the first attacker to throw a series of punches at Emmett's unprotected abdomen, each one with the strength of a titan behind it. He flinched from the impacts, feeling bone crack beneath his skin, and swung to bury his fangs in the vampire's shoulder, biting down, hard, until his attacker cried out, trying to shove him away. He swung around and slammed it against the wall, hearing something crack with the impact, then repeated the movement until the vampire was no longer moving.

For a brief moment, he stood in a tiny island of calm within the chaos. They were far outnumbered, it was true, but all four of the wolves were trained fighters, and they had a very powerful witch on their side. Slowly, he thought distantly, they were beginning to overcome the vampires.

Only one of them was unmoving, standing over what Emmett could now see was a stone table that had been at the center of the circle. And on it… Petra. She was alternating between thrashing and complete stillness, there were tears on her contorted face, she was bound hand and foot—his mate. They'd done something to her, something that was causing her immense pain even though no one was touching her. The vampire who stood over her watched the chaos with what looked like amusement on his youthful face, surveying the fight as though it was a performance for his enjoyment.

He must be the Master of this coven, watching as his subordinates were brutalized without moving to assist them. This must be the one who had threatened to tear out the tongue of one of the other speakers, and had wanted to watch Petra in agony until she faded into death.

This was the one Emmett was going to kill.

New strength coursing through him despite the pain in his body, he carved a path through the vampires in his way, not caring what injuries he inflicted upon them or they on him as long as they stopped obstructing his path to his mate. They tried to protect their Master, but Emmett didn't care. He was a creature of devastation, a wolf kept from the one he was bound to protect, and as blades sliced through his skin and blows slammed into his body, he shrugged off the pain and left a trail of bodies in his wake.

By the time he was standing before the vampire Master, facing him over the table where Petra lay, there was blood dripping from slashes to his side, his face and one of his legs, and he was pretty sure he had several broken ribs, but he still felt that massive burst of strength rushing through his body. This was the one he had to destroy. This was the creature who had reveled in his mate's pain. His growl was low and threatening, but the Master only smiled, showing his fangs.

"You must be the Beta boyfriend, then," the vampire said, his mocking tone as even as though they were meeting over a table of cakes at a morning tea. "How did you find us?"

Emmett only growled again.

"It's no use trying to intimidate me," the Master said, looking down at Petra as though dismissing Emmett completely. "Firstly, your mate here is mere moments from death. From the amount of wolfsbane in her bloodstream, I am surprised she has lasted this long. Secondly, I am a hundred times faster than you could ever dream of being, mutt. Try to attack me and I shall be gone before you can blink." He ran a hand through his hair. "So, you see, you pose no threat to me, you useless dog. Destroy as many of the others as you please. I can always make more. I have been on this Earth a dozen lifetimes, and I will outlive anyone you bring against me as a threat. There is no way that you, a mere werewolf, can stop me."

Ignoring the threat, Emmett lunged, leaping over the table where Petra lay. The vampire moved, almost faster than Emmett's eyes could follow, but before he'd gone more than a dozen paces, he was completely frozen, coming to a halt so suddenly that he tipped over, still in the running pose in which he'd been stopped. His eyes still moved, frantically scanning the room as he clearly tried to work out what had happened, fighting his sudden inertia.

Emmett was suddenly aware of the silence around them.

"Perhaps not," Della said, her own tone as conversational as the Master's had been as she strode to stand over his inert body. "But I can." She glanced over at Leo who, even in wolf form, was looking at her with undisguised adoration. "Glad you brought me now, big guy?"

The Alpha growled and shifted back into his human form. The rest of them followed, until there were five figures in human form, all at least a little battered and bleeding, surrounded by the bodies of the vampires they'd carved through. Some of the vampires were making noise, but all of them were injured enough that they were unable to pose a threat, or pretending to be.

Emmett lifted Petra off the table, holding her close to his chest even as she began to thrash, crying out. "I'm here, my love," he murmured to her. "I'm here. I'll take care of you." He looked up at the others. "We have to get her to a hospital."

"What did they do to her?" Francesca cried.

"Wolfsbane," Emmett said. "She doesn't have long."

"Della, can you heal her?" Raj said. "Help with the pain?"

"Not much, especially while I'm holding the spell on this one," she gestured to the vampire Master. "He's intensely powerful. I can try, though."

Magic glittered over her like starlight as she laid a hand on Petra's forehead and closed her eyes. The rest of them were silent as Della worked. Eventually, she opened her eyes again.

"I've bought her some time," she said. "You have to go now."