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“Is she dead?” a frightened voice whispered.
“I don’t know,” another answered.
“Oh god, it’s Essie. Please let her be okay. Please,” a third voice whispered brokenly.
I slowly raised my head and looked around the room to the gasps of the chained women. It had been a kitchen at one point. The remains of a sink and stove were sitting cockeyed against the decaying wall. The girls’ arms and legs were bound with silver and they were chained to old rusty pipes that protruded from the walls. Mottled red skin and dried blood around the shackles proved they were bound with the offending metal. Silver prohibited shifting.
“Essie, it’s me. Sandy Moongie. Are you okay?”
“Sandy?” That couldn’t be Sandy Moongie, or if it was she’d lost half her body weight and turned into a supermodel. “You look fantastic.”
“Um…thanks.” She blushed and looked down. “Weight Watchers and pole dancing.”
“Amazing.” I grinned and gave her the thumbs up and then remembered we weren’t exactly at a class reunion. Glancing around and listening for footsteps, I slowly got up. I was a little wobbly, but I was functional.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I told them and was greeted with quiet sobs. “What have they done to you?”
“They’ve injected us with something to make us ovulate at a rapid pace,” Frankie Mac told me as she stifled her crying. Jenny Packer and Debbie Swink nodded in agreement.
What the hell was going on here?
“Dragon Puck is a doctor and they harvested our eggs,” Sandy whispered. “They used no painkiller. We were awake the entire time. They plan to do it again today.” She winced and curled in on herself.
This was barbaric, and if they were doing what I thought they were doing it was horrifying. Shifters could not cross breed. The results of crossbreeding in the past had resulted in tragic and unspeakable deaths for the mothers and babies. Had the Dragons figured out the secret? I almost threw up in my mouth.
“They’re trying to create a super race. It’s not just wolves. They’ve tried this with Panther Shifters and Bear Shifters,” Debbie added, her pretty face as white as a sheet.
“Did it work?” I asked, trying to hold back my fury.
“No. They think the mistake was they actually impregnated the other women and had them try to carry the babies. They all died. Violently,” Jenny said sadly.
“How do you know all this?” I asked as I silently made my way to them.
“The Dragons like to talk,” Sandy spat with disgust. “Now they’re going to try to incubate eggs and sperm outside of the body and grow a baby. They’re convinced the failure stemmed from the mothers.”
“They’ll have a difficult time doing that if they’re dead.” I pulled on Sandy’s chain and winced. Silver burned our skin, but that was just too damned bad at the moment. Time was of the essence and I had no clue where my backup was. Wait, part of the story was missing… “Why are they doing this?”
“They want to cause an upheaval with the Council—destroy it. Introduce a new breed that wouldn’t be accepted and then petition for a new leadership,” Debbie said. “They want to rule the world.”
I shuddered at the thought and examined the chains.
“You can’t break them,” Sandy said. “We’ve tried.”
“So little confidence,” I muttered as I shook my head and sighed dramatically. “Who pulled the fire alarm six times in one day in the tenth grade?”
“You did.” Jenny giggled.
“That’s right. Who slipped a fake speech to that turdwaffle, Ted Head, at graduation?” I asked.
“You did,” Sandy gasped and laughed. “I about died when he dropped the F bomb three times during his speech.”
“So did the principal,” Frankie added with glee.
“Who spiked the punch at prom?” I was getting into this.
“Actually, that was me,” Debbie said.
“Oh, right. I forgot. Are you sure that wasn’t me?”
