Masked By Danger by Christa Wick

Chapter Sixteen

Iris watchedas Oscar tried to move off the table, but other men entered the room just then, blocking his escape.

The first man wore clothes like the Bogeyman but colored green. The mask was green, too, with shaded goggles to cover his eyes. The second man was by the pregnant woman's table, standing at the end with his hands alongside her head.

"Place the cub on his stomach," the Bogeyman ordered, removing the fabric covering the tray. Several scalpels and a row of five ametrine crystals were beneath.

Selecting one of the surgical blades, he pulled the sheet from the woman. He balanced the instrument on her naked belly and then used one gloved finger to trace the curve of a smile on the underside of her stomach.

"A shame she doesn't scar each time," he murmured. "I've lost count of how many pups I've put in or pulled from her belly."

Oscar's stomach clawed its way up to his throat as he instinctively understood the man's intention. He looked away from the woman's torso, focusing instead on her face.

Dark blond tendrils escaped the plastic cap holding her hair in place. She was pretty. Familiar. Without her eyes open, he couldn’t be sure, but Oscar was hit with the sense of having seen her once before, remembering her blue-green eyes as clearly as if they were open right now.

The Bogeyman snapped his gaze up at the man behind Oscar. "I said on his stomach!"

Each word was issued slow, precise and louder than the one before it. The way the Bogeyman spoke scared Oscar. Everything he said was in anger. To Iris, he didn’t merely sound violent, he sounded fueled, crazed by unmitigated hatred. Of who, she had no idea.

The way he was patting Oscar on the head with his big hand seemed at odds with the way he was speaking.

His eyes matched his voice, though.

Evil.

The Bogeyman was pure evil.

Oscar could sense it, just as Iris could.

The assistant flipped Oscar roughly onto his stomach then. All at once, the boy lost the fight to be brave.

The Bogeyman didn’t seem to notice or care, his attention now solely on the task at hand. His fingers moved over Oscar's spine, tracing the vertebrae and delivering small pinches to the flesh every other inch.

At the same time, on the opposite table, blue light began to dance in the space between the second man’s hands and the pregnant woman's head.

Oscar looked over and saw her eyelids slide open, her sea-green gaze meeting his. The dance of light against her temples intensified as the worker standing beside Oscar wrapped his hands around Oscar's head.

Everything soon dulled. The white room faded, as did the once brilliant ocean hues of the woman's irises. The cold metal and even the dreadful sound of the Bogeyman talking to his assistants became muted. Distant.

Returning back to the woman, the Bogeyman took a scalpel in hand. With the tip of the instrument no more than a millimeter from the woman's flesh, he repeated the shape of the smile he’d traced on her belly earlier, marking the path he was about to cut.

"Time to meet your new baby brother, my boy."

* * *

Excruciatingpain surged through her body as Iris released her hold on the now shrieking cub thrashing around on her lap.

She tried to detach from the boy's mind, but her thoughts felt too heavily sedated to manage the feat.

She realized then her entire body had stopped taking orders from her brain as well, rendering her unable to let go of Oscar has he twisted and flailed in her arms.

Heavy-limbed, helpless, she watched a swift, violent change overtake his small form as he shifted to his wolf form for the first time.

His arms and legs lengthened, his nails sharpening to claws, his teeth to fangs. Hair sprouted along the snout that had replaced his nose.

Howling, Oscar swiped at her face just as Denver scooped the cub up.

Sharp, stabbing pain immediately sliced through the haze, but Iris still couldn't control her movements or her mind. She had ventured too deep into Oscar's consciousness, detaching from her own so thoroughly, her body was slow to recover and reconnect to her own psyche.

Her lips moved with the boy's as he screamed out, still trapped in his memory, his small, sharp-tipped fists pummeling the big wolf's chest.

“No, no, no! You're not my daddy!"

A new, blistering hot burst of pain cut Iris's connection with the cub then as her body began rejecting the silver jewelry embedded in her skin.

Flesh separated to push out the silver, her nipples splitting. Further down, between her thighs, pure, gruesome agony engulfed her.

She dropped onto the floor. Cade shot over to catch her and cushion her fall.

Immediately, Esme swarmed in front of Iris, the witch's attention pulled in two directions at once as Oscar continued to scream and thrash in Denver's hold while Iris howled in pain.

Next to Esme, an arm nearly struck her. The limb, covered in fur the color of iron left to rust, and dark purple paint at the tip of its sharp claws, took another swing at the witch.

The blow again didn’t land, because Cade was now restraining her wrist.

Her wrist.

Iris could feel Cade squeezing her hand, restraining her without hurting her, his voice and all his energy directed at her. "Calm your wolf, baby," he urged. "Feel me, let my wolf guide you."

She wanted to obey, but couldn’t. She continued to struggle against both Cade and Esme, physically and mentally.

Her field of vision shrank away.

Seconds passed as all the voices in the room coalesced into a single buzzing drone, save one. Oscar's shrieks was the only one that had yet to fade. They chased her down the black hole she was falling in, both her mind and body swiftly shutting down, stealing her from her surroundings.

“No! I don't want you to be my daddy!" screeched Oscar, the terror in his voice shattering her heart.

One final memory from Oscar came to her on the tail end of his scream.

The Bogeyman insisted all the boys call him father.

And with that final, horrifying thought, she crumpled to a limp, unconscious heap.