AN: ¡Oh no, no lo harás! = Oh no you won't!
¡Oh, Dios mío! = Oh my God!
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CHAPTER 16
Now what
Eliot dug through his own go bag and the one Parker had pulled food out of last night. He'd found a half dozen protein bars in his bag, and he had to swallow hard so as not to drool when he opened Parker's bag. There were three steaks in a vacuum sealed bag. He estimated that they'd run nearly seventy miles last night. And the burger and lunch meat snack that Parker had provided had helped to take the edge off, but he knew a lot more calories would be needed before long.
He could feel how hungry Hardison was and he looked over the small pile of food. Using a fingernail-turned-claw he cut open the vacuum sealed bag. He pulled one steak out and gently tossed the remaining two in their bag to Hardison. "Bon appétit." He took half of the protein bars and held them out for Parker. "Not as good as pancakes but it will have to do."
Hardison had stared at the bag of raw steaks for a moment, but his stomach growled loudly, and he couldn't deny how good the steaks smelled. "This is one of the grossest things I've ever done." He closed his eyes and took a bite of one of the steaks, and he had to fight back a moan before he swallowed.
Eliot smiled and shook his head as he watched Hardison. He started on his own steak with much less fuss. He'd run out of steak all too soon and worked on ignoring how hungry he still was. He peeled open one of the protein bars and ate half of it in the first bite. He heard the crinkle of a wrapper and supposed that Parker had stolen one of his protein bars. He knew that a few protein bars weren't much of a breakfast so, despite how hungry he was, he determined not to growl at her about stealing his food. When he looked to see if she'd left him any, he was surprised to see two more bars than there should have been. "Parker, what's this? I know these things aren't the best, but I don't have anything else to feed you."
"I know Sparky, but I don't need that many and you're still really hungry." Parker leaned into Hardison's side and munched on her only protein bar.
Hardison opened his eyes and swallowed his last bite of steak. "I'm sorry. We should have split that last steak. I…"
"Don't fuss Hardison. It's my job to take care of you and so far, I haven't been doing such a hot job at it. I wanted you to have those steaks. I'll get us all some real food when this is over."
Hardison's tablet started vibrating and Parker scooped it up. After a quick look she handed it to Hardison. "It's said something about managing a call."
"Right. We go through phones so fast that I've got all our calls handled with VOIP. It's a…"
"Skip the geek speak. Is it a phone call we need to answer?" Eliot realized that his phone was sitting on the side table in his cabin.
Hardison rummaged in one of the drawers he kept spare devices in and tossed a phone to Eliot. "Hawthorn for you in…" He held his fingers up in a count down from three and pointed at Eliot a split second before the phone rang in Eliot's hand.
"What do you want Hawthorn?" Eliot tried to keep the snarl out of his voice.
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Chrissa had tried to look angry rather than scared when she'd been pulled up by her hair and she thought she might have managed it if their erstwhile guard hadn't been pointing a gun at Julio.
"555-7219. I don't know where Eliot is but that's his phone number." Julio gave Hawthorn the number, but he never took his eyes off of Chrissa.
Hawthorn looked smug as he exited the room.
Chrissa waited but the man holding her didn't loosen his grip in her hair. If anything, it felt like he pulled harder. She tried not to let on how much that hurt. She didn't understand what the man holding her was waiting for, but she saw something pass over Julio's face and he took a step back and slowly sat on the bench. Suddenly she was released, and she staggered forward. Julio reached out to her, and she went to him gladly.
She heard Hawthorn out in the hallway, talking to someone before his voice faded away. A moment later the man that had grabbed her by the hair left the room as well, leaving her and Julio with the same man that had been watching them all night.
"What's going to happen to us now?" She was sure that if Julio had given Hawthorn what he wanted they wouldn't have any more value for him.
"I don't know." He pulled her closer into his side and kissed the top of her head.
They waited in an uneasy silence for several more minutes and Chrissa started to relax against Julio. About the time that she thought they'd be in for another long wait they heard a car alarm going off. A few moments later there was the sound of yelling, but Chrissa couldn't make out what was being said. She sat up a little straighter and gripped Julio's hand.
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"Spencer. I'm glad you've figured out who I am. Moreau said you were smart and that I shouldn't underestimate you."
"He would know." Eliot pressed himself back against the rear door of Lucille. "What do you want Hawthorn?"
"I want you to pay for what you did to Steven."
"You think I haven't?"
"I think you're still alive and Steven is dead."
Eliot waited. He looked at Parker and Hardison and felt such relief that they were there.
"Meet me at your houseboat in twenty minutes or someone else will die in your place."
"You already killed Hardison." Eliot drew in a deep breath that mingled Hardison and Parker's scents. "Who else do you have?"
Hawthorn hung up.
"Why wouldn't he tell you that he has Julio and Chrissa?" Parker moved to sit next to Eliot.
"He's afraid that I wouldn't come if I knew." Eliot draped an arm across her shoulders.
"So we've got a few minutes before he's expecting us." Hardison tapped at his tablet a few more times before setting it to the side.
"Expecting me." Eliot sighed. "If this goes right, he'll never know you were there."
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Julio couldn't help looking toward the door where they were hearing the sounds of whatever was going on outside. Before long they could hear the tromp of feet downstairs as men hurried this way and that. He wasn't so caught up in the unfolding drama below them though, that he didn't notice the feel of someone watching him. At first, he assumed it was their guard keeping an eye on them to make sure that they didn't try to get away in the midst of whatever was happening below. But when Julio glanced at their guard, he saw the man was just as focused on the doorway as he had been a moment ago.
A flicker of movement caught Julio's attention and he focused past the guard and out the window. There was the same woman that he'd seen hanging upside down last night. This time she was working on something outside the window and Julio noticed the thumb latch in the center of the window start to turn. She saw him looking and motioned for him to go back to looking out the door.
As he turned his head his eyes locked with the guards and Julio lunged at him. He'd seen the guard start to reach for the gun in his shoulder holster and Julio knew he needed to stop him before the guard could use one of them as leverage against their rescuers.
Julio was fast enough and heavy enough that he drove the guard back into the wall. There was a rack of free weights against that wall and when they knocked into it Julio thought he might be able to use the odd angle it put the guard in to his advantage. Before he could adjust his grip, the guard grabbed one of the weights and swung it toward Julio's head.
"¡Oh no, no lo harás!" Julio blocked with his right and punched the guard across the jaw with his left.
When the guard dropped the weight, he'd been holding, Julio jerked him by the collar, and they lurched toward the window.
"Drop him!" Parker shouted.
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Eliot waited until Parker and Hardison were in the tree line before he went down to the path that led to his houseboat. He could feel the itchy sensation on the back of his neck that told him he'd have his hackles up if he was in his wolf shape. It was the scent of Hawthorn and his men on his akdkd path, in his home, in his territory, that was setting his wolf off. When he was near the gangway that led to the dock, he tapped his earbud on. "Parker are you ready?"
"Just a second Sparky. I see Hawthorn and three of his men on the first floor. I bet they still have a guard on Julio. I'm waiting for one of them to leave the kitchen so we can access the porch roof on that side."
Eliot waited.
"Okay. Give it to the count of twenty before you call. We're on our way."
Parker wasn't quite whispering but her words were quiet. Eliot waited as requested and slowly counted to thirty just in case it took Parker and Hardison longer than expected. At thirty he called Hawthorn. "I'm here."
"Funny, I don't see you."
"You might want to come look at your cars. This is the kinda place where people will call the cops if a car alarm goes on for too long." He pressed the button on the fob Hardison had given him and a second later everyone in the vicinity could hear the racquet of the alarms blaring. Eliot watched as two men rushed out of his house and across the trail. He crouched down in the brush and neither man noticed him as they rushed up the gangway. Once they were down the dock, he yanked the frame of the gangway and heard the metal latches that fastened the gangway to the dock start to groan. A second later he felt the give as the metal snapped and then the gangway fell into the water. This wouldn't prevent the two men from coming back but it would certainly slow them down. They would have to swim through the icy water or find the two-track road near Tom Miller's place and hike the long way back. Either way this whole thing should be done by the time they made it back.
Eliot walked the path back to the edge of the clearing. He heard pffft of a gun with a suppressor and a split second later he felt the burn as a bullet cut a path across the top of his right shoulder. "I thought you wanted to talk?!" Eliot yelled as he dove for cover behind a thick grouping of trees.
Hawthorn stepped out onto the porch. "Talk or not, mostly I want you to pay for what you did to Steven." He didn't yell but his voice carried just fine.
"Is that why you killed Hardison?" Eliot needed to keep Hawthorn talking and the two remaining men with him focused out here and not where Parker and Hardison should be.
"It's a start. But a friend just isn't the same as a brother."
"Steven was a brother to me."
Two more suppressed shots landed bullets in the trunks of the trees nearby.
"You killed him! How can you claim he was like a brother when you killed him?"
"You weren't there." A bullet slammed into the tree Eliot was sheltering behind, so he moved with werewolf speed to the next group of trees. "They'd been torturing us for…" for a second Eliot could swear he could smell sand and heat and burnt flesh. "a long time. Griff was so burnt and cut up that he couldn't move. Couldn't live." Several more bullets rained around him and Eliot moved again. "I didn't want him to die like that. In pain for days while his wounds festered, and the rats ate him piece at a time."
"You fucking bastard!" Hawthorn charged off the porch and onto shore.
"I couldn't stand for him to die like that, so I stopped his pain." Eliot gulped back the bile that tried to rise, and he stepped out from between the trees. As expected, Hawthorn charged at him. Eliot let Hawthorn tackle him and they rolled until the brush stopped them. Immediately Hawthorn started hammering at Eliot with his fists. Eliot blocked as many of the blows as he could, but he couldn't stop them all and he grunted with the hits that made it through. The frenzied attack started to slow, and Eliot kicked out to get Hawthorn off of him.
The sound of the fight continued, and it took him a second to realize the sound was coming from his earbud so there had to be a fight wherever Parker was at. He saw movement from the corner of his eye and squeezed the side button on his phone in sequence and a second later an explosion rocked his houseboat. Shortly after they'd moved to Portland, he'd placed several explosives in his houseboat. The bombs could be set off individually causing localized damage, or if all of them were set off together it would sink the houseboat. The bomb under the stairs was designed to take out the staircase without taking out any of the exterior walls, but the way that it rocked the entire house had been unexpected. He hoped he'd stopped Hawthorn's man from making it up the stairs, but he'd have to find out later.
Hawthorn got up and charged at Eliot again, but this time Eliot stepped to the side and used Hawthorn's momentum to swing the man face down on the ground. Eliot pinned Hawthorn so that he couldn't move and could barely breathe. "I didn't kill Griff because I hated him. I loved him like a brother. I couldn't stand to watch him suffer and his death has haunted me ever since. You've done what you came for. You killed Hardison, harassed my friends, and stirred up old ghosts. This is your one pass, because I know Griff wouldn't want me to hurt you. But if you ever come near me or mine again, I will end you." Eliot growled the last words and tightened his hold so that Hawthorn was rendered unconscious. Eliot pulled large zip ties out of his pocket and trussed up Hawthorn with zip ties around his wrists and ankles, so that he couldn't leave if he woke up too soon.
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Julio barely had time to drop the guard and stagger back before he heard the snap of electricity from Parker's stunner. Suddenly the whole house rocked and jerked against its mooring. Julio fell back onto the bench and he and Chrissa slid off onto the floor. For a moment Julio's confused mind tried to figure out how Parker's stunner had done such a thing, but his hearing quickly informed him that there had been an explosion somewhere nearby.
Rolling to hands and knees he'd just started to regain his feet when he saw a man hanging partway in the window frame. The man's dark face made his wide round eyes stand out. Julio recognized the man as another friend of Eliot's, and he hurried over to help. Leaning out the window he grabbed at the man's waistband and hauled back into the room. They both tumbled in a heap to the floor.
A yip near the door drew their attention and Julio looked up to see one of Hawthorn's men holding Parker against him. The man he'd just helped into the room leapt up with an animalistic growl and, with a speed that Julio couldn't believe, lunged at the man holding Parker.
Parker was knocked free and Chrissa who'd just regained her own feet steadied Parker. They could all hear the crashing sound of a fight in the hallway. The sounds didn't last for long and a thump and a groan seemed to mark the end. A moment later Hardison came back in the room and Parker ran to him.
Chrissa gasped and Julio looked to see if she'd been hurt. When he turned to her, he could see that she was entirely focused on Parker and the man he'd helped through the window. Looking back at the couple he saw what Chrissa had. The man's arms and neck were covered in fur, not thick human hair, it was definitely fur. And his hands seemed somewhat misshapen but that was nothing next to the long sharp claw at the end of each finger.
Hardison held Parker to him for a moment until he could feel his wolf settle with the knowledge that Parker was safe in his arms. "Par…" He started to say her name, but he bit his tongue.
Parker looked up at him and brushed her hands across his cheeks. "Are you okay? You're looking a little wolfy."
Julio couldn't help the shiver of fear that passed through him, and he pulled Chrissa behind him. He kept his eyes on the monster in front of them but slowly walked them back toward the wall. The monster was between them and the only door out of the room.
There was another crash from the hallway and Julio watched as the monster gently pushed Parker behind him the same way that Julio had done with Chrissa. A moment later Eliot came through the door, and he pulled the monster and Parker into a brief hug before he looked them over for damage. When he looked up at the monster again his eyes went yellow too.
"¡Oh, Dios mío!" Julio hadn't meant to speak out loud but the realization that Eliot was a monster too just shocked it out of him. Both monsters turned to look at him.