“And you gave your own brother and sisters to a gang of bikers so you could try to pressure Autumn into talking.”
“Oh, there’s no try. I’m pretty sure that I’ll succeed.” Sapphire glanced at one of the Skullriders. “Autumn comes with me. We’re headed to North Carolina. As soon as we verify exactly where the crop is, you can let the rest of them go,” she said to him.
“No! Let them go now! You don’t need them!” Autumn cried as Sapphire grabbed her by the hand and started dragging her towards the car.
It was hopeless, but Clover shifted anyway and lunged at Sapphire. Her fur burst through her skin and her fangs snapped, aiming for Sapphire’s throat. Autumn shifted too, into coyote form. She could easily have run off, but she stayed behind, biting and snapping at the Skullriders as they shifted into bear form and piled on top of Clover.
Clover was buried under a mountain of bears, pinned down and helpless. She heard Autumn’s yelps and howls, then she heard a door slam, then she felt a blow to the side of the head that sent an explosion of pain through her whole body.
And then there was nothing.
*
“She isn’t dead. She’s breathing. See?” She was lying on a cold floor. She could hear voices above her. How long had she been out?
“She’s moving. Clover? Please wake up. Clover?” It was Moonlight, and her voice was choked with sobs.
She felt around with her hands and opened her eyes. The room swam into focus. She was lying on her side on a cracked, peeling linoleum floor. She smelled sour rotting food and heard the buzzing of flies.
“I’m up,” she mumbled.
She heard Lennon’s voice in her ear. “Keep your voice down. There’s a guard outside our door. We’re in some mobile home out in the middle of nowhere.”
“How long have I been here?” she whispered hoarsely.
“You just got here a few minutes ago.”
She sat up, rubbing the sore spot on the side of her head. “How many of them are there?”
“Like, four or five of them.”
Clover blinked. The room was dimly lit; the lights were all turned off and the windows shuttered. She’d been dumped on the floor of the mobile home’s kitchen.
“Is Sam going to find us?” Twilight asked hopefully.
“He doesn’t have any reason to be looking for us, so we can’t assume that he will. If we get a chance to escape, we have to take it. If I say to turn, you all have to shift at once. And run for it. Do not stay behind to help me, do not look back. Do you hear me?”
“I’m not leaving you,” Moonlight growled.
“No way,” Lennon shook his head.
Clover cursed quietly. They wouldn’t leave her, no matter what she said. She knew it. And they were no match for four or five adult male bear shifters. How were they going to get out of this? She couldn’t think the worst. She couldn’t give up, not with her family’s lives at stake.
“Have you looked for weapons?” she asked in a low voice.
“Of course. There’s no guns and no silverware, not that knives would really help.” Lennon glanced around. “The electricity is off. No phone anywhere. And I can hear guys on both sides of the trailer.”
*
The car jolted over the road, and Autumn was thrown against the Skullrider bear shifter who was sitting next to her. He smelled bad and his lanky shoulder-length hair was greasy. Sapphire sat up front next to another bear shifter, ignoring Autumn.
Three bears against one coyote.
They were headed to the airport to fly to North Carolina. Sapphire had made it very clear that if Autumn attempted to alert anyone that anything was wrong, her brother and sisters would suffer for it.
Autumn had told them that she couldn’t describe where she’d thrown away the seeds because it was so deep in the woods, but she knew how to find it. She’d been lying to buy time; it seemed to have worked so far.
The plan was to meet her mother and father at the airport, then they’d all head through the woods and get the crop.
Sapphire even called her parents and held the phone up to Autumn’s ear.
“Now, Autumn, just cooperate with your sister and everything will be fine,” her mother said. “Your father and I are doing this for the family. We’ll have enough money that we never have to work again. We can live anywhere we want. How does California sound? Or Mexico? We’ll let you choose, how’s that? Won’t that be fun? Anywhere you want! And we’ll all have new names, and you can pick those too!”