Felix
I grasped the bars of the cage and pulled until I ripped the bars right off. The fans in the crowd began to scatter with many of them screaming and running straight out of the club. It was ridiculous how scared these cage-fight club attendees were of a real fight. There was a brave minority of fans who remained and began cheering wildly, thinking it was all a part of the show.
Dante, on the other hand, knew this was not a part of the scheduled programming. He also knew who I was and why I was angry. I could see it in his face. He was guilty. This motherfucker knew where my Chasity was. He ran out of the cage through the same place he had just entered. He bumped into Alex and Calix. Dante turned around, intending to run the other way but I was over there in a flash. I punched Dante right in his guilty face, knocking him out cold.
“Do you guys smell Chasity on him too?” I asked, half-hoping I was imagining it because I was terrified of the implications.
Why had this half-naked cage-fighter kidnapped Chasity? Surely, he was some kind of fucking pervert. I felt so sick just thinking about it. I couldn’t kill him right away because I needed to question him in order to rescue Chasity. Alex nodded gravely and Calix took a deep shaky breath. I could tell they were feeling as disturbed as I was.
“What now?” Asked Calix.
“We need to question him,” I said.
“We need to secure him first. We can’t have him running off. If he does, the first thing on his mind will be to relocate Chasity and we can’t let that happen. She’s most likely on our lands still,” said Alex.
Chance and Danny ran over to us. Grandpa Chance immediately kicked Dante.
“Asshole!” Yelled Chance.
“He’s unconscious,” said Calix.
“Oh,” said Chance.
We tied Dante up and put him in the trunk. We sped back to the pack house. I had never driven faster in my life. No one complained about my speeding though, not even traffic warden Alex.
There were cells in the pack house basement that were rarely in use, mostly because Mom didn’t want criminals in the house even if they were locked up. We put Dante in the first cell.
“Shake him awake, the sooner he talks, the sooner I can see Chasity,” whined Calix.
I had to agree with Calix there. I was thinking of pouring icy water on Dante’s face when he groaned. “Dante the Destroyer” was waking up. He looked around in confusion and then caught sight of us on the other side of the bars. He glared at us, eyes narrowed.
Alex and Calix flanked me as I stepped nearer to the bars of Dante’s cell. I could feel my eyes flickering to black.
“I’m going to give you one chance to talk on your own before I make you talk! It’s just one, simple question. Where is Chasity?” I said, enunciating every word very clearly.
I wasn’t in the mood to repeat myself.
“By the time you get to Chasity, it’ll be too late anyway!” Snarled Dante, a malicious look on his face.
I let out a growl. This crazy fucker had a death wish. Even Calix was black-eyed after that statement. He was taunting us! Alex bared his canines at Dante.
“Do we know anything?” Asked Chance anxiously as he and Danny descended the nearby staircase.
The grandpa and the private investigator had stopped on our way in to explain to Mom why we were dragging an unconscious man into the house.
“We will soon,” I promised them, reaching for my tool pack and removing a pair of pliers from it.
Maybe Dante had too many fingers and too many teeth or something, that was why he was slow to talk. Things were too easy for him.
“You don’t scare me!” Growled Dante.
I snorted with laughter.
“We’ll see about that,” I said with a shrug.
“I have nothing to live for anyway!” Revealed Dante, his tone a strange mixture of spiteful and sorrowful.
Was he feeling sorry for himself when he was the one who had kidnapped a sweet innocent girl who was minding her own business on the balcony of her pack house.
“Are you seriously trying to make me feel sorry for you?” I hissed. “You have something to do with my mate being missing!”
I was beside myself with fury. Messing with a wolf’s mate was unforgivable.
“There’s no worse pain than that for a wolf!” I snarled.
Dante’s response to this was just a humourless laugh. How fitting for a sicko like him.
“Think I don’t know that? My mate is dead!” He snapped.
He thought that made his actions justifiable but it was actually the opposite. That made his involvement in this even worse.
“Then you should know better than anyone how painful that is! Why would you ever want anyone else to suffer like that? When you already know it’s the greatest suffering?” I snarled.
Dante took a deep breath as he slumped against the side wall of the cell.
“I just want my mate back,” he muttered defiantly.
So he was robbing us of our mate?! No one could be happy because he wasn’t?!
“What does that have to do with Chasity?” Asked Calix, sounding exasperated.
“She looks just like her!” Said Dante, his eyes lighting up a little.
Understanding slowly dawned on me. Alex had caught the message a lot quicker than I had.
Alex
That was as good as a confession. Dante had lost his mate somehow which was awful, the worst pain imaginable for a wolf and yet he was keen to inflict that pain on three other wolves. He had kidnapped Chasity because she looked like his late mate. My wolf wanted to rip his throat out. Who knows what he had done to Chasity all because she looked like his dead mate?!
I burst into the cell and grabbed Dante by his throat, holding him up so that his feet dangled in midair.
“You took Chasity to replace your dead mate because they look alike?” I roared, tightening my grip on his throat.
I could just strangle him.
“DON’T KILL HIM!” Yelled Calix. “We’ll never find Chasity in time if you do!”
Calix’s words snapped me out of my murderous rage. I dropped Dante. He spluttered, clutching at his throat, while he tried to catch his breath.
“They’re not gonna kill her!” I surmised, looking at my youngest brother. “You heard him! She’s replacing his mate,” I snarled.
Dante caught his breath. He slowly began to laugh, softly at first and then steadily growing in volume until his maniacal laughter was echoing through the basement.
“If you’ve touched Chasity, I will carve you like a roast!” Said Felix through gritted teeth.
“I haven’t,” said Dante, seemingly in earnest.
Massive relief washed over me.
“I want her willing,” revealed Dante.
“SHE’LL NEVER BE WILLING!” Roared Felix at the top of his lungs.
My brothers and I knew that to be true with unshakable certainty. Chasity was truly ours now.
“She won’t but Deidre will,” said Dante pointedly.
“What do you mean?” Demanded Calix.
Dante refused to answer. He just lay there on the floor of the cell with his eyes closed. It was clear to me that Dante was trying to stall. He was slowing us down with his antics. He was trying to buy time for something which meant he wasn’t working alone. He had just mentioned Deidre so she was in on this or at least the imposter of Deidre was.
A look of horror came over Calix’s face as we pondered Dante’s words.
Calix
It was all starting to make sense. Dante had chosen Chasity because she resembled his deceased mate. Chasity would never be willing but that didn’t matter because he didn’t want her mind, he just wanted her body. He wanted a shell that resembled his mate, a host body for some parasitic bodysnatcher to use. The situation would benefit Dante and the fake Deidre. Dante would get his mate’s lookalike and Deidre’s imposter would get a new, young, beautiful body. Deidre’s body was getting older. It was time to make a switch. That realisation horrified me. I loved Chasity with every fibre of my being and I loved every drop of her essence. Where would her personality, her mind, her consciousness go if her body was housing someone else?
“You…you just want her body, don’t you?” I whispered, feeling disgusted.
My elder brothers stared at Dante in disbelief. Dante fidgeted slightly as though this part of his plan unnerved him a little, as though he actually had a conscience.
“We’re not gonna kill her! She’ll be fine. Her consciousness will be transferred to something else in the meanwhile!” He said defensively.
Felix gasped. Alex was still in shock.
“So it’s true?!” Asked Alex incredulously. “You’re stealing people’s bodies? Bodysnatching?”
Dante sighed.
It was true. That meant Deidre’s body had already been successfully stolen years ago and was about to be retired. Had Chalice and Chase had their bodies stolen too? Is that why they had never come back for their little girl? Is that why they had stayed away from Chasity for nine years, missing every milestone including her coming of age?
“Are Chasity’s parents dead? Is Deidre dead?” I asked, hoping those who had had their bodies stolen were still alive in some form, somewhere somehow.
Dante slowly shook his head.
I felt a sense of relief. Hope blossomed within me. I would get Chasity back and I could get her parents back along with their friend Deidre.
“Where are they?” Asked Chance as eager as I was to free them.
“In the bodies of three moon snakes that Deidre keeps in a tank in her room,” said Dante, lowering his voice to a whisper and cackling madly in response to his own revelation as though that was so clever.
He made me sick.
“You’ve kept them sentient and locked up as snakes for nine years?” I confirmed, horrorstricken.
I couldn’t imagine what psychological agony that must be for Chalice, Chase and the real Deidre. Living as snakes in a tank in the room of the person responsible for separating them from their rightful bodies.
Dante laughed even more loudly. Was he totally unhinged? He had to be to go along with all of this.
“Snakes only live about nine years. That’s their natural lifespan so I don’t know if they’re still there. Maybe. They might live a little longer with werewolf consciousness in them,” he added casually.
I felt chilled to the bone. He was so dismissive of the fact that they had stolen the immortal bodies and likely also the lifespans of three werewolves. My brothers, Chance, Danny and I needed to hurry. Every minute mattered. Chalice, Chase and the real Deidre were elderly snakes if they were still with us.
My wolf was furious. I was trembling as he tried to come forwards. My eyes were black. I had to hold back though. There was no time. Chance, on the other hand, could not hold back. His daughter and his granddaughter had been kidnapped by these people.
“I’ll kill you!” Yelled Chance just as his control snapped and he rushed towards Dante.
Alex grabbed him in the nick of time, pulling him from Dante’s cell and securing Dante inside.
“There’s no time, Grandpa!” I bellowed, dragging Chance away from the cell.
Chance was still struggling, trying to get to Dante.
“And where are there?! In LA?” Asked Felix, his voice panicked.
Chance stopped fighting to get away from me to listen to Dante’s answer.
“Deidre has a branch of her spiritual model retreat nonsense in LA but she’s housing everyone at the branch closer to home,” whispered Dante tauntingly.
Felix went to fetch something from his tools. He returned with a determined look on his face and a blowtorch. With a meaningful look at Dante, Felix lit the blowtorch. Dante actually recoiled, looking scared for the first time. Felix walked towards the cell.
“Where are they?” Asked Felix, taking a step closer with each word.
“You’ve been there already!” Yelped Dante, his tone accusatory.
“WHAT?!” Asked Alex, raising his eyebrows.
I gasped. The paintings of the foxes and the beautiful women came to mind. They were in the business of stealing beautiful women’s bodies! An untold number of those “models” from Deidre’s centre might have stolen their forms from poor unsuspecting beauties.
“The abandoned castle we smelled Chasity in with all the fox paintings isn’t abandoned,” I said confidently.
Dante’s maniacal laughter filled the room again. With a wicked grin on his face, he pointed his index finger downwards. I glanced at the stairs nearby. I knew where we had to go. Underground! That mansion had to have a basement. We just had to find the hidden door.