Beautiful Creatures Series

Chapter 55: 13

Chapter 55: 13

Melissa sat at the bar in the Mausoleum, drowning her sorrows and fuming about the encounter she had with Gordon and his girlfriends. She was still infuriated that Mackenzie had dared to strike her. She was not going to let this go unanswered. Mackenzie would pay for what she did, and Gordon would suffer.

A dark-haired man in a black suit took the barstool next to her and ordered a drink from the bartender. Then he turned to Melissa. “Can I buy you a drink?”

She scoffed as she lifted her beer to her lips. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Well, aren’t you a pleasant one? No wonder your husband left you.”

She turned and looked at this man with great interest. “How did you know my husband left me?”

“I know more about you than you think… Melissa.”

She had an uneasy feeling. Was his man a hunter? He did not seem like the usual hunter type. He claimed to know a lot about her. Did he know she was a Lycanthrope? If he did, was he trying to blackmail her? If he was, he had a big surprise coming. With the mood she was in, she would not mind killing him.

Melissa looked over the man closely, trying to decide if he was a threat. His clothes looked slept in, and his square jaw was shabby and unshaven. No, she decided, she doubted he was a hunter. He did not look like one, and she was pretty good at spotting hunters.

“Ok, you have my attention. You know me. Who the hell are you?”

“Special Agent Lenard Meskler, FBI,” he introduced himself, offering her his hand. Suspicious, she shook his hand. “You came up in my investigation of your husband, Gordon Wilder.”

“Why is the FBI investigating Gordon? He is an incredibly boring man.”

“I’m not interested in Gordon. I’m interested in Mackenzie Starr, the woman he is living with.”

“Are you now?”

“You and I have the same problem.”

“Mackenzie?” He nodded. She knew her reasons for hating Mackenzie, but she was curious about what this man’s beef was with the young woman. “What do you want with Mackenzie?”

“I need her dead.”

“Go on,” the idea of Mackenzie suffering a particularly violent death was extremely appealing. Who better than a crooked cop to pin it on?

***

Makenzie sat in her chair, flipping through the channels in the Blood Moon Studios. She had come to work with Gordon once more, and as usual, she was bored. She was tired. Mackenzie stood up, which drew Gordon’s attention from the man he was working on. “I’m going to go for a walk,” she said, walking over and caressing his hair.”

“Give me an hour, and I’ll go with you,” he suggested.

“I’m bored. I don’t want to wait an hour. I’m just going to walk over to the grocery store and visit with Aurora a little. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“I don’t want you wandering off alone,” he objected.

“I’ll be fine. How much trouble can I possibly get into? The grocery store is two blocks over. I’m so bored sitting here.”

Gordon groaned. “Alright, I’ll join you when I finish up here. Please don’t go any farther.”

“Alright,” she kissed his cheek and left the tattoo studio. She started the walk to the grocery store and stopped halfway when she saw a dark car pull up next to her, the tires screeching. It stopped right next to her and out hopped Agent Meskler and Melissa. Agent Meskler opened the trunk of the car, and Melissa punched Mackenzie in the face, and while she was dazed, dragged Mackenzie off the sidewalk and forced her into the open trunk.

Mackenzie screamed for Gordon but had no idea if he could hear her. Agent Meskler punched her, knocking her head back against the trunk knocking her out.

***

Gordon was focused on his task wanting to finish quickly but not wanting to compromise the quality of his work. He knew Mackenzie got bored sitting here all day, but he had to work, and he did not want her home alone. She had stopped taking clients on when she found out she was pregnant. She had simply been too sick and irritable to deal with couples. Mackenzie had not walked out the door more than a minute ago when Gordon heard Mackenzie scream his name.

Gordon’s head snapped up from his job, and he waited to hear it again, and he did only seconds later. Gordon dropped his tattoo machine and left his client in the chair. He ran out of the shop, looked both ways and saw Agent Meskler slamming the trunk on Mackenzie. His gaze locked with Melissa’s.

She snickered, and they both jumped into the car and sped off. Gordon took off running after them. Even at his top speed, Gordon simply could not keep up with a speeding car. As he ran past each shop, the others stepped out to see what was going on. He would never catch them as a man. His eye lit up, and Gordon let the change take him. In seconds he was on all fours and faster than he had. His torn close already miles behind him. As soon as the other saw Gordon chasing a car while

transitioning, they followed suit. They did not know what he was chasing, but they knew he needed help.

Gordon pursued the car with the pack at his heels. Catching up to the speeding car, Gordon came up alongside it and slammed his shoulder into the driver’s door, throwing his full weight against it. The impact sent the car swerving out of control and slamming into the side of the mountain, caving the front end of the vehicle. Gordon ripped the driver’s door right off and threw it out into the road behind him. Meskler was screaming and pulled his service revolver and shot Gordon point-blank in the chest six times.

Pain tore through Gordon, slowing him down but not stopping him. When Meskler ran out of bullets, Gordon clamped his jaws down hard on Meskler’s leg and dragged the screaming man from the car. Gordon shook his head violently, ripping Meskler’s left leg clear off, tearing it from the socket. Then he did the same with the left leg and both arms. Covered in blood, Gordon left Meskler in pieces all over the highway. Then he turned to go after Melissa, but she had run off, and the others had gone after her. Gordon was conflicted between going after Melissa or getting Mackenzie out of the trunk. He chose Mackenzie. He would hunt Melissa down later.

Gordon changed back and staggered in his bare feet to the trunk. He was covered in blood, and he found it difficult to get a grip on the hood. Summoning all his strength, he lifted the hood breaking the latch and tearing the heavy lid clean off the car. He threw it aside and reached in for Mackenzie. She was crying as she sat up and allowed him to remove her from the trunk. He carried her in his arms a few feet away from the car, and Gordon collapsed to his knees cradling Mackenzie against him, ruining her clothes with blood.

Mackenzie has hugging him tight and crying with fear. As soon as he was on his knees, Gordon’s vision became askew. His arms became weak and fell away, no longer holding her. He became dizzy and then collapsed on his side in the middle of the road. He could hear Mackenzie screaming for help,

but her voice was getting harder and harder to hear as he blacked out naked, shot, and bleeding to death.

***

Mackenzie watched as Gordon lost consciousness. It was at that point that she saw he was wounded. He had six bullet holes in his chest, and a pool of blood was forming beneath him. She recalled hearing gunfire, but she had thought Gordon had been missed. Mackenzie looked around at the empty road. She began to scream for help hoping the pack was still close enough to hear her. He needed help, and she could not give it to him.

She screamed as she knelt beside Gordon, applying pressure to his wounds, trying to stop the bleeding, but she was failing. It wasn’t long until she was surrounded by giant wolves. The back had come when she called. The shared looks as if communicating by thought. A tanned wolf laid down on its belly right next to Gordon’s body while a pair of brown and grey wolves nudged at Gordon’s body until he was draped over the tanned ones back. The tanned wolf rose then took off down the road toward Feral. The white wolf next to Mackenzie nudged her with its nose. Mackenzie assumed the wolf wanted her to ride it back to Feral. She climbed onto the wolf’s back and held on as it ran after the pack.

The wolves ran to Gordon’s home, and as they reached the house, they transformed back to their human forms one by one, gabbing Gordon before he fell on the ground. They carried him inside to the dining room, where they laid him on his back on the dining room table. Mackenzie hopped off the white wolf that had carried her back and watched as the wolf was replaced by Aurora. Mackenzie was awkwardly aware that she was the only one dressed. Everyone else was naked, but not one of them seemed to notice. Lycanthropes had a strange lack of modesty.

While the men and Aurora ran around the house searching for tools they could use in Gordon’s care, Mackenzie ran up to the bedroom and came down with five pairs of Gordon’s pants and one of her

dresses and a shirt from the linen closet. Returning to the dining room, she offered each man a pair of pants and Aurora the dress. They each thanked her as they put on the clothes. She assumed they dressed for her comfort, not theirs. Mackenzie draped the sheet around Gordon’s waist to offer him some modesty while the others worked on him. Aurora used the landline to call Aster at work and tell her Gordon was wounded.

One of the guys found a pair of needle nose plyers in the garage and a knife in the kitchen. He then stood over Gordon and pushed the tip of the knife into one of the bullet wounds, and began to cut the flesh, opening the wound wider. “What are you doing?” Mackenzie snapped.

“If we don’t get the bullets out, he’s going to bleed to death.”

“Can’t he regenerate? He told me he could regenerate.”

“These are serious wounds, and as long as the bullets are lodged in there, he cannot regenerate,” Lewis stressed. “We need to get them out,” Aurora put her arms around Mackenzie to comfort her as well as to keep her out of the way while Lewis pushed the plyers into the enlarged wound, digging around for the first of the six bullets.

“We should take him to the hospital,” Mackenzie insisted.

“No!” They all refused immediately.

“If we take him to a hospital, it won’t be long before they figure out he isn’t human. Then they will dissect him, and there will be little pieces of Gordon in specimen jars, and the humans will come hunting for the pack,” Aurora explained.

“If we get the bullets out, he may survive,” Lewis said.

“May?”

“He’s losing a lot of blood.”

Mackenzie paced the dining room floor while Lewis found and removed two more bullets. It was at this point that more of the pack showed up. Stanton, Darrell, Katelyn, and Aster had just arrived after having been called half an hour ago. They had all come running but had all been in Aspen working, and Aspen was thirsty minutes away even at top speed.

Aster was in tears when she saw her father lying bleeding on the table, fighting for his life. When Aurora explained what happened, her grief turned to rage that her mother would have played a part in her father’s pending death.

It took two and a half hours to remove all six bullets. While Lewis washed up, Darrell inspected the wounds trying to determine the extent of internal damage. Aster and Aurora brought clean water and rags to help clean the wounds. Darrell said there were some internal injuries caused by the bullet, and he did what he could to repair it. At this point, Stanton went out into the garage and brought in a large steel lockbox. He placed it on a chair and opened it. Mackenzie was surprised to find it full of hospital supplies. Mostly biodegradable suture threads, medical staples, an IV with a bag, and surgical type.

When asked where they had gotten the hospital supplies, Charlotte told her that some of the pack would occasionally go to a hospital and rob their supply closets for times like this when they needed a little more than just their natural ability to heal. While Darrell did his best to suture the internal wounds, Mackenzie watched and was impressed with Darrell’s skills. He was almost as good as a resident surgeon.

“We are going to need blood,” Lewis said, returning to the room. “Aster and Charlotte are the same blood type. Both women rolled up their sleeves, allowing Lewis to hook up an IV and take a donation form, each filling the IV bag with blood. Once they had given enough, both ladies sat down in the corner, trying to recover from the dizziness. Aurora fetched them both some fruit juice from the kitchen to keep them from fainting. Wile Darrell sutured, the exterior wounds closed while Stanton inserted the

IV in Gordon’s arm, and Lewis hung the blood-filled bag from a hook in the ceiling meant for the hanging plant he took down.

“That’s all we can do,” Lewis announced. “It’s up to him now.”

“You are just going to leave him on the table?” Mackenzie asked. “Wouldn’t he be more comfortable in bed?”

“Moving him at this point would only be hurtful,” Lewis explained. “But if you want to bring down some blankets and a pillow to make him more comfortable, I see no reason why you shouldn’t. Feeling that it was all she could do, Mackenzie went upstairs and brought down the pillow and blanket from the bed. She brought it to Gordon’s side. She lifted his head slightly and slid the pillow beneath it. Then she draped the blanket over Gordon to keep him warm.

Everyone was talking behind her about what happened. They were discussing hunting Melissa down and punishing her. Mackenzie took Gordon’s hand in hers and lovingly brushed his dark hair behind his ear. In the back of her mind, she could hear Gordon’s voice the night he told her most Lycanthrope parents did not live to see their child grow up. She hoped this would not be one of those times.