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Lauren had leapt to her feet after falling, but since there didn’t appear to be an immediate need to fight, she sat on the wooden floor of the cage, likely elevated above the Faraday surface, somehow.
There was limited electricity on Alfheim, but she didn’t know how widespread it was in the other realms. They weren’t in Hell, because it didn’t stink. She’d lived outside the human realm the entire time she’d been with herShifù, and it hadn’t felt that much different from the earth realm or human realm or whatever it was supposed to be called. Midgard, she remembered from her mythology class.
Lauren took stock of her weapons without touching them. Her nine mil was on her hip, a folding knife inside her pants pocket, and a few throwing knives in her cross-body purse. There was no one to shoot at the moment, and she considered her best plan of action. If she shot people outside her cage, someone would likely take her weapons from her. Clearly, they had someone strong enough to teleport people, so going into her head to stop her from shooting her enemies would be a cinch.
So, she’d keep her weapons hidden until either someone was threatening her personally, or until using them gave her a chance of getting away.
A door opened forty yards away, and Lauren watched a group of three men approach them. One of the men looked around and then announced, “We’ll begin processing the horses first, since they have more to a cage than is reasonable.”
“What’s to happen to us?” Lauren asked.
“Why is it always the humans who think they can speak with their captors as equals?” one of the men asked.
Lauren focused on him and saw vampire. Strigorii, which meant if they were still on earth, they were in a different time zone. She focused on the other two and saw another vampire and a freaking demon.Fuck.
“Not the cats?” Lauren asked. “What is it about curiosity and cats?”
“Even the cats have the good sense to keep their mouths shut and not draw attention to themselves. Humans don’t usually draw as much at auction as shapeshifters, but you’re an adorable little thing, so maybe we won’t kill you just for being annoying.”
Lauren watched helplessly as the three removed one of the male horses. Lauren assumed one of the Strigorii vampires was holding his mind while the others cut the clothes away and snapped a bracelet on his wrist — likely magicked to keep him fromchanging. A collar with a leash already attached went around his neck, and he was led away before one of the females was pulled from the cage and the process repeated. The horse shifters were taken, one by one, to another section of the large warehouse, with cages stacked four high and barely big enough for one person to lie in horizontally. There would be no way to even sit up, once warehoused in such a cage, and terror shot through Lauren’s veins.
No way infuckwas Lauren going into one of those cages, but if they dealt with the cages based on number of people in them, her cage would probably be the last to be processed. No, the second to last, because there were only two buffalos in their cage.
She considered how the captives were being handled. The Faraday cages kept the shifters fromchangingas well as telepathing, though Lauren assumed they were far enough away from anyone Gavin’s people might telepath, that part wasn’t important.
Other people came in several times, looking over the cages and occasionally taking someone from a cage, stripping them, putting a collar and leash on them, and then leaving with them. The visitors were mostly vampires, but one was something else, and the clues her subconscious gave her didn’t tell her much. The visitors didn’t speak to each other more than a few words here and there, but Lauren had the idea they’d been promised their pick from the new slaves, and they were picking.
She reminded herself that if someone chose her, she could shoot their ass and then try to work her way out of the building. Also, if she could get out of the Faraday cage, she should theoretically be able to call Mordecai to her.
She sat and waited, and didn’t draw attention to herself again.
Time passed, and eventually, the horses were completely processed and the cage with the nonpredatory birds was being gradually emptied when the main doors opened again andpowerrolled in with the occupants.
Mordecai had experimented around with Lauren in a Faraday cage once, when they were trying to figure out if she was a human with special skills or had the blood of some kind of supernatural flowing through her veins. She’d still been able to see someone and sense what they were, even when in a cage. So while she couldn’t feel the power rolling off of whoever came in, she could still sense it, as if it filled the room with his… not evil so much as dark energy. Dark wasn’t quite right, either, but it was as close as she could come.
The man was sex personified. His walk. The way he held his body. The shape of his body. The way he looked out of his eyes.
He walked to the individual cages with mostly horses first, and he talked to a few of them. He walked to the cage with the civet cats and bobcats, and sat on the floor and talked to some of them. He seemed lighthearted and nice, despite the fact he occasionally asked some really scary questions — like how someone felt about having their flesh cut from their bodies and not being allowed tochangefor a day or two.
And then he finally walked to the cage with Lauren, his head tilted a little to the side, judging or analyzing the occupants, no doubt. The man was sexier than sin, and when he spoke, his British accent resonated somehow, so it had the effect of a vibrator placed all around Lauren’s clit. “Three humans? Well, they’re gorgeous specimens, so it won’t have been a total waste, and the Asian’s tattoos add something, since shifters rarely—”
His words cut off as if someone had muted him, and he froze where he was standing. “Fuck me. Who’s the motherfuckingidiotwho kidnapped the motherfucking Harlequin’s daughter? She’ll kill us all, but most importantly, she will kill my son for this.”
He stepped closer to the cage. “You will tell your mother and Mordecai that theinstantI realized you were here, I freed you.” He looked around and shook his head. “I have no idea what you are capable of, so I dare not open the cage to get you out before I send you back. Also, I do not want to be accused of laying a hand on you, so I’m sending the whole damned cage to your mother. You will tell them I sent you back as soon as I was aware, yes?”
“I will, but it’ll be helpful if I know your name.” Lauren had a pretty good idea of who he was, but she wanted to be certain.
“Mordecai will be happiest if you call me X, but your mother should hear the name she knows me by — Xaephan.”
Yep. The sexy accent, the dreads, and the way her body reacted to him — The Lord of Lust had been her first guess.
“I will tell them.”
The cage stayed in place around her, but the landscape outside changed, and within moments, she recognized that she was on the road, the driveway, into Homewood, just far enough off the main road a passing car wouldn’t see.
It was night, here, which meant Gavin would be up. This also verified she’d been in another realm — one where time didn’t run parallel with the time here.
“Security will see us and someone will be here shortly,” she told the other two humans. “We’re safe now.”
