First Time Train Wreck Page 13

The next ten minutes were the longest of her life. They were full of close calls and fear and anger and adrenaline. But the second she saw the courthouse on Main Street, relief flooded her. She could see a familiar truck, and the second she pulled into the parking spot beside it, her view of Helena behind her was blocked by another truck.

  A sob escaped her as she poured from her car into Cheyenne’s arms. “I don’t feel good, I don’t feel good.” God, she’d been trying so hard to stay aware on the drive, but her skin was cold and prickled like there were a thousand needles in her skin.

  “Baby, it’s okay,” Cheyenne murmured.

  Two Shots picked her up and put her in the front seat of his truck. “Annabelle, you have to get that bleeding stopped. Y’all get her to the hospital,” he growled as Cheyenne climbed behind the wheel.

  “You come back alive; do you hear me?” Cheyenne yelled as her mate shut the door on Amber.

  “Where are they going?” Amber murmured. Her voice sounded far away and had an echoing quality.

  “To bring Train Wreck home.” Cheyenne’s voice was grim.

  “Is that the bitch who shot you?” Annabelle asked from the back seat where she was opening packages of first-aid supplies.

  Stunned, Amber looked over into the yard of the courthouse where Raven had dragged Helena from her truck and was beating the ever-loving shit out of her. “I’m shot?”

  Amber looked down at her body, but other than some glass cuts on her arms, she seemed fine.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  Red was pit-patting against her jeans. Panicked, she reached for the mirror, but before she could pull it down and look at her face, Cheyenne slammed it back into place.

  “You don’t need to see it right now,” Annabelle said as she pressed something against her cheek.

  It was so cold and burned that Amber jerked away. Annabelle had expected it, though, and went with her, applying more pressure.

  “Raven! Not yet,” Cheyenne yelled out the window she’d just rolled down. “Y’all need to go.”

  Raven shoved Helena onto the ground and jammed a finger at her. “That’s a taste. Tell Sloane they’re coming.”

  “Who?” Helena asked, rolling onto her side and pressing her hand against her broken nose.

  “Karma,” Raven barked out as she strode in front of the truck. When she glanced up at Amber, her eyes were completely black like a monster’s. “We’ll bring him back.” There was a solid oath in her voice.

  It echoed through her whirring mind as she watched Raven climb in the backseat of Quickdraw’s truck. Quickdraw was driving, his elbow resting on the window as he gave Amber a nod. “You did good. We’ll let you know the second we have him.”

  “This is going to sting,” Annabelle said as Cheyenne pulled out of the parking spot.

  Yep, whatever she was packing onto her face felt like hellfire. But it was a welcome distraction from the terror of what was happening to Wreck.

  “Why did we leave Helena there without calling the police?” she asked. “She shot at me.”

  “Because she has something worse coming for her than prison. She and Sloane both do.”

  “What could possibly be worse than prison?” Amber slurred, leaning heavy against the window as Annabelle worked on her face.

  Cheyenne stared straight ahead at the road. “The Hagans. The only thing that kept your aunt and uncle safe was Train Wreck.”

  “He protected them?”

  “No.” Cheyenne chuckled and hit the gas through a yellow light. “He asked the Hagans to wait until he found the stolen ones.” Cheyenne cast her a quick glance. “The second Sloane captured Train Wreck? He signed his own death warrant. If Train Wreck is at a medical testing facility, Quickdraw won’t just call you and tell you he’s safe. He’ll give the green light to Raven’s people. Quickdraw will take the chains off the Hagans. You just saw your aunt for the last time.” Cheyenne shrugged. “Or we can go back and call the police if you’d like.”

  “No,” Amber said, remembering the look on Helena’s face as she pulled the trigger on her. She remembered how the woman had tried to run her off the road many times. She remembered the tag numbers of the shifters they’d sold for money. How scared she’d been when she’d seen Wreck’s truck and feared him dead. Amber gritted her teeth against the pain in her cheek. “Let Karma have her.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  There was something so sick about where Wreck had chosen to place the tracker. Dead had injected it into his shoulder because of the possibility of branding.

  He tossed his head again and looked at the awful mark, still swollen and bleeding. They’d put a ring in his nose, and a rope was attached to it, dragging him down a hall. His head was throbbing, and his hide from the brand, but his head was clear. Rage did that for him.

  Amber.

  If he didn’t make it, he was thankful for the few days he’d had with her. She’d made his life good. Even if it was just the end of it.

  Would Dead figure out he was missing? Would he check the app he’d downloaded onto his phone and see he wasn’t where he was supposed to be?

  The hallway was long. He passed rooms with big windows with iron bars. Bulls were trapped behind them in white rooms. Some were lying at the back of the rooms, pained faces from whatever the lab had been doing to them. Some were standing near the window, watching silently as he passed. Some were pacing like being caged like this had driven them mad. In one room, what he saw broke his heart. There was a little white calf with a black nose, and one of her horns and ears was missing. That entire side of her face was stitched. She didn’t even lift her head from where her nose rested on the tile floor. She only tracked him with her fear-filled brown eyes.

  He balked against the rope again, but the nose ring was so sensitive. He would wait to rip it out when he had someone to take down in front of him. There was no one in the hallway with him right now. Just the rope, pulling him smoothly, as if it was attached to some kind of pulley machine in the room at the end of the hall.

  His hooves clopped on the slick floor. He trailed mud and blood, dirtying the sterile white tiles beneath him. Kicking out a window to one of the holding rooms wouldn’t release a bull. It would only break the glass, but wouldn’t hurt the iron bars. Those were what really held the bulls in place.

  So many Hagan brands. How were there any left out in the world?

  The rope pulled him into the room at the very end. It was some kind of cleaning station with tile floors and walls and shower heads that were already turned on. Streams of frigid water blasted against his skin, and he bucked and kicked when it hit the new brand. Pain was like electricity shooting right through him.

  He closed his eyes under the rotating water nozzles and imagined that he could feel the tracker sitting right under the skin of his shoulder. That thought kept him steadier. He’d never done well feeling trapped, and between the rope and the shower walls that slid closer, confining him between the jets of water, he was doing his best not to panic.

  The water was so cold that steam wafted from his hotter body temperature. When he was pulled through the bull-wash to the other side, it opened up into a big room, and he could see the pully that was guiding the rope in his nose.

  Three men in lab coats stood on the other side of a gate, taking notes on clipboards and talking quietly.

  “You can understand me, yes?” one man called out.

  Train Wreck twitched his ears, head down as he yanked against the nose ring.

  “This is the bucking bull shifter?” another asked. “What was the dose he was given?”

  “This one took forty-five milliliters.”

  The first lab coat looked surprised. “Have we done a blood draw on him yet to see how fast he is burning it off?”

  “Yep, they took a few vials during processing. The lab is running it through now.”

  “What do we want to do with this one?”

  “Sloane wants him dissected.”

  “Dissected?” the first o
ne demanded. “For how much the lab paid for him, we will dissect him after we finish. This one isn’t a Hagan. He’s more. Look at him. He is in peak physical condition and a superior athlete. We aren’t wasting him. How long was he in a holding pen after processing?”

  “Three hours. His brand began healing almost immediately. We took samples of skin from his ribs, too, and those are almost completely healed.”

  “In four hours?” the first asked, his dark eyebrows lifting high as he jotted down notes.

  Wreck’s tail twitched so hard it swatted him on those same healing ribs. He hated these men. Fucking hated the monsters talking about him like he was a germ in a petri dish and not a living, breathing, feeling thing.

  The way they treated shifters was disgusting.

  “He can understand us, too. He kept his mind. You can see it in his reactions to us,” the second lab coat said.

  Wreck wanted to kick the man’s glasses off his stupid face, so he swung suddenly to the side and flung his legs out as far and hard as he could. Gong! His hoof slammed into the gate, and the entire thing bent inward.

  The nerds went flying backward as the gate slammed onto them, and pain rocketed through Wreck’s face as the nose ring pulled on him. He couldn’t stop now, though. He was too angry, too enraged from everything he’d endured, and everything the others had endured, at the hands of these assholes. He bucked hard and high. Fuck it if the ring ripped his nose! He bucked again and again, swinging around where the rope controlled him, but it didn’t rip his nose. Instead, the rope snapped, and he went flying. Legs splayed, he skidded backward, then lowered his head at the lab coats struggling under the downed fencing. He ran his hoof along the floor, his warning to these monsters.

  One of them broke free from underneath the metal, and ran for an exit door. There was a big red button next to it, and just as Wreck charged the others, Lab Coat slammed his soft little hand onto it.

  Lights blared, and a siren sounded, but none of that slowed Wreck down. All he saw was red as rage burned through him. Men filed into the room. Guns fired. But he lost track of everything. All he focused on was one monster at a time. One lab coat at a time. One man who’d justified torturing shifters at a time. He bucked and kicked, slung his horns like weapons until he had cleared a path the way he came. Through the bull-wash and into the hallway, dragging the frayed rope from his nose. If he was hurt, he didn’t know. The adrenaline pumping through his veins made him numb to everything but the fury.

  Fuck being patient. He’d hunted for so long and seen what he needed to see in this Hell. Now it was time for vengeance. The animal required a pound of flesh for what had been done to his people.

  Three men poured from the bull-wash room, but he had a little space. He passed a window at the exact moment a bull slammed his head into the iron bars. Atta boy. Hagan with a tawny coat and missing an ear and a horn. Stitches stretched all the way down his face from the missing ear. His eyes were full of fire. Hell, yeah, Wreck wanted to release that fire. He slammed his head against a door and dented it. Backed up and charged again, and the door broke inward.

  The bull could’ve gone straight for him. That’s what big, old dominant bulls did, but he came barreling out of that room and barely looked at Wreck. He went straight for the men running at them down the hallway. They had Hot Shots poised and ready, but good luck getting much of a reaction from that demon. They’d taken from him, and he was going to make them pay.

  The bulls in the holding rooms went mad, bellowing a deafening noise. Let us out!

  Train Wreck wanted to, but he only released one more before a shot rang out and pain zinged straight through his shoulder. He could hear his bone shatter. Could feel it. He pitched forward as one leg went out, and the movement saved him. The second shot went right over his head. The wranglers were aiming to kill now.

  The black speckled bull he’d just released charged the wranglers, took gunfire while covering him. Wreck staggered up and charged, his limp deep.

  There was chaos, gunfire from three wranglers in the mouth of the hallway, but there was something they didn’t see. Something that made Wreck’s heart stutter with hope.

  Something was coming for those wranglers from behind, and their dull, human senses didn’t even warn them.

  Hagan’s Lace was barreling right for them, her head lowered, long horns ready, eyes black with rage. And right behind her came Dead of Winter’s speckled white and black bull, Two Shots Down’s white bull, and Quickdraw Slow Burn’s tan and cream bull. They were puffed up, and he could read their fury from here.

  They’d come for him.

  One of the wranglers was popping shots at the other bull, and one lifted his gun to Wreck. The wrangler smiled. Smiled as he began to pull the trigger, and everything slowed. Behind him, two long black horns stretched out and closed the space.

  Wreck was still charging, body on fire with pain, and just as Hagan’s Lace reached him, the wrangler fired off a shot that zinged right by Wreck’s ear. He could feel the wind from the bullet. Feel the power of the shot. It nicked his ear, but nothing more, thanks to Raven’s animal.

  Electricity blasted through him, and he bellowed and swung his head at the asshole who had shocked him.

  He didn’t know how long they fought in that hallway. Maybe seconds. The wranglers kept pouring in, and it wasn’t until Wreck got a look at the holding pens outside the open doors that he understood why.

  They didn’t have a choice.

  The boys had released the Hagans from their holding pens.

  The wranglers were trapped between the shifters they’d tortured.

  Just over the chaos of the crowded hallway, more shouting could be heard. Men. Dead had changed back and was standing in the mouth of the hall, yelling something Wreck didn’t understand. He had his hands up in a calming gesture, and Wreck charged through the fighting bulls to protect him. A shifter’s human skin was more fragile, and he was in the center of a whole lot of angry bulls. Wreck trotted in front of Dead, his leg seeping warmth and aching deep.

  “Wreck!” Dead yelled. “Clear a path! Get me to them!”

  Wreck looked across the sprawling holding room to see what Dead was talking about.

  On the others side, police lights lit up the unloading bay where the trailer had been.

  A flood of relief washed over him. Dead and the herd had brought help.

  He just wanted this all to be done so he could see Amber. Behind him, Two Shots, Quickdraw, and Raven’s animals meandered through the alleyway toward them. His people here were safe, but he’d left Amber at Two Thorns, and that ranch held just as much danger as this place. He needed to get to her and make sure she was out of the line of fire.

  Because until he knew his mate was safe?

  His mate.

  Until he knew his mate was okay…

  Train Wreck wasn’t.

  Chapter Twenty

  One night in the hospital had been absolute torture.

  Oh, Quickdraw had done well to update Amber on what was happening.

  The medical facility, the police raid, and the hours of statements they’d had to make.

  All of the bulls had needed to be re-penned because they couldn’t change back to their human forms with that awful medicine running through their veins, and that took time.

  The boys and Raven had to stay late into the night as evidence was gathered against the medical lab, and against Sloane and Helena.

  They’d already found a connection to two other medical facilities in the paperwork and call logs, and those were being raided right now before the media had been able to get any warning out to them.

  She scrolled through the pictures Quickdraw had sent her on her phone.

  One was of the awful medical lab Train Wreck had been taken to.

  Another was a black and white of Train Wreck’s silver bull, covered in mud to his knees, weight off his left leg, his shoulder wet with blood and a brand on his hip that looked horrifically painful. She figured he se
nt her the black and white version so she wouldn’t associate all the dampness on his fur with blood. It was easier to pretend it was sweat or water if she couldn’t see the red but, oh, she knew what it was. He was standing in a muddy pen by himself, and there were dozens of bulls in pens behind him, blurred out. A big gold ring hung from his bleeding nose, and a snapped rope hung from the metal there, and rested in the dirt. His head was erect and his eyes alert, looking at something above the camera. Quickdraw, perhaps.

  More were of the bulls in their muddy pens. So many were hurt and stitched up like Frankenstein’s monsters.

  There was one of Quickdraw carrying a white calf with a missing ear out of a set of double doors. He was holding her against his chest and talking to her, and there was moisture rimming his eyes. That one was hard to look at. That poor baby. Amber was so glad and proud that Train Wreck had risked himself to save these shifters.

  The pictures she kept going back to though, over and over as she waited for more news…

  Dead was standing by Wreck’s holding pen, leaning on the gate, and he and Wreck’s bull were just staring at each other. Their eyes were soft. It was a profile of them. Dead’s mouth was set in a grim line, and he looked like he’d aged ten years. There was such tender care in his eyes. On Dead’s other side was Raven, rubbing her mate’s back, her lips parted like she was in the middle of saying something comforting to him.

  “Wreck isn’t a bull now?” Amber asked softly.

  Cheyenne gripped the steering wheel harder and shook her head. “Some of the lab techs offered to help with the investigation for lighter sentences. They gave him an antidote, but Two Shots said he’s having a rough time with it.”

  “I want to stay with him tonight. Even if it’s bad, I just need to be near him. I need him to know I’m there.”

  “I would do the same with Two Shots,” Cheyenne said low.

  “I would do the same with Quickdraw,” Annabelle said from the back seat. “I guess that means you’re one of us now.”

  “I am?” Amber asked.