The only button I’d seen had been the one she pressed to call her little army of rogues. We decided not to press it in case it alerted her to our presence. Instead, the men used some of their fancy tools to get the door open.
Shifters don’t use guns often because they won’t kill us, but as we crossed over the threshold into the dark tunnel, each of Liam’s men pulled one out.
I’d heard about Bane bullets used to incapacitate shifters, and I assumed that’s what was in their guns. If not, a bullet would still slow down an attacking shifter, so we had some added protection either way. The tunnel was so long I was beginning to think it was just an old sewer line until we turned a corner.
There was literally a light at the end of the tunnel. As we neared it, we heard a variety of sounds. People crying, wolves whining or howling, and every so often there was a strange buzzing sound. One I knew all too well.
As we turned the corner, nothing could have prepared me for what we saw. It was an enormous room bathed in bright light. They had painted the ceiling to look like the sky and the floor was cobblestone. Trees and plants decorated the room, and they’d placed little carts with popcorn, peanuts, or lemonade throughout. But on the right-hand side of the room, along a wall painted to look like a forest, were fifteen cages.
There was a shifter in each one.
Some were in wolf form; others were in human form. All the humans were naked and dirty. No matter what form they were in, they all looked emaciated and exhausted.
Outside of the cages, wandering around with little buckets of popcorn, were five regs. We stood in shock, staring at the scene in front of us. I flinched when the buzzer sounded again and almost threw up when the shifters shifted.
The whole torturing me in a cage thing made sense now. This is what she had planned for me. To be the center stage for her fucked up zoo.
The regs gasped, clapped, or screeched as they watched the transformation. I had to push aside the urge to tear out their throats.
“I’m going to make her hurt in ways she won’t enjoy,” I said, half wondering if there were any ways she wouldn’t enjoy.
I stepped further into the horrible zoo-like scene and whistled to get the depraved voyeurs’ attention. They all turned to us; their eyes wide with excitement like they were expecting a little sideshow.
“Shows over, you fucking sickos,” I said, the growl clear in my voice.
“Em, we can’t let the regs go,” Isaac said. “They’ve seen too much.”
“You think these are the first five assholes she’s had in here?”
“No, but I really want to kill them.” The humans gasped or screamed making Isaac grin at them, which freaked them out even more. Isaac’s love for regs was over.
“Me too, but let’s focus on Stella for now.”
“And what? Just let them go?”
Philip cleared his throat to get our attention. “I may be of assistance here.”
It took a second for me to grasp what he meant. “Oh yeah! That works. Thanks,” I turned back to the regs. “All right douchebags, line up over here. Make one wrong move and you die. Understood?” I pointed to the guns, and they all dropped their popcorn and moved where I told them too.
As Philip altered their memories, one of Liam’s men escorted them out and returned for the next one. The rest of us turned our attention to the shifters.
I moved to a cage holding a young female. “Hey, can you tell me how to open this? Is there something they press, or do they have a key?”
“There’s a control panel over there. They open each enclosure separately.”
“Great, thanks.” I moved over to the control panel and pressed all the buttons.
A series of clicks sounded through the room and the cage doors popped open. Liam’s men escorted the shifters out to the awaiting vans. They’d be taking them to his doctors to get them back to health… at least physically.
“Now to find the bitch of the millennium,” I said.
We searched every square inch of the place and found no secret doors or hidden buttons. She wasn’t there. We had found cameras in the corners of the room.
Since her men hadn’t come to attack us, I assumed she hadn’t been watching, or she had something else planned for us. We were alert on the way out and waited while the men checked our cars before we headed out. Liam left some of his men behind to gather up whatever evidence they could and secure the doors so Stella couldn’t get back in.
“I’m driving,” I said to Liam as we approached his car. He paused for a moment but opened the door for me when I growled at him.
I got behind the wheel and stared at it. I’d never driven a Tesla, but it was still a car, so how hard could it be?