Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Sammy stood there, her hand still on the statue's groin as her heart beat madly. Had she really heard a man's voice in her head? And why in the hell was someone shooting darts at her?

One second she was trying to make sense of the chaos, and the next, men dressed all in black and armed to the teeth came rushing in the open bay door. They reminded her of something out of an action movie, outfitted as if they were some sort of black ops unit. They surrounded her, pointing weapons directly at her as if she were some sort of a threat.

There were six in total, but they might as well have been an army of a hundred, they were that intimidating. She had no idea what in the hell they were doing in the art gallery. It wasn't as if anything there would be considered a national threat or anything. Unless the government was totally against the plight of women.

There were days she wondered.

A man with green eyes that were rimmed with thick lashes narrowed his gaze on her as he held her in his sights. There was something in his eyes that said he was enjoying the fear he'd caused in her.

That he might even be getting off on it.

His dark hair was cut short and slicked back from his face. Had he not been holding her at gunpoint, she might have even thought he was attractive.

In fact, all the men were above average as far as looks and builds. It was as if they really had been cast by a Hollywood agent to play the part of soldiers. But the looks in their eyes said they were trained killers. Moreover, she sensed they weren't good people.

What she didn't sense was why they were aiming at her, or in the gallery at all.

Had the statue that had come in error been involved in a crime? Was it stuffed full of drugs? Did it belong to a crime boss?

Her imagination went wild.

When she'd safely ruled out the statue possibly containing a nuclear warhead, she eased closer to it. The giant hunk of stone felt a lot safer to her than the men surrounding her.

Her gaze fixed on the barrels of the guns and she wondered what being shot would feel like. Would it hurt? If so, how much pain would she feel before she died? Who would find her body later? Would her killers ever be caught? How would her parents take the news?

"Don't move," said one of them, as if running while loaded weapons were pointed at her was something she made a habit of.

She was pretty much frozen in fear and trying not to wet herself.

Running wasn't even on her mind.

It wasn't as if life in New York had prepared her for this level of violence. Never in all her years living there did she have someone pull a weapon on her.

"Boss?" asked another. "Since rendering the human unconscious didn't work, should we eliminate her?"

Eliminate her?

She was sure they didn't want her to weigh in on the matter, but if she got a say, she was going to go with not eliminating her. She tried to get what she'd been born with to rise to the occasion and zap the crap out of them. Nothing happened.

Of course.

Why would it?

That would be downright silly to have it be a help, not a lifelong hinderance.

The man with green eyes eased forward, lowering his weapon as he stared at her for what felt like forever. His attention swung to the statue. He removed his black leather gloves and shoved them into his back pocket.

He approached and Sammy stiffened, assuming he'd touch her.

He didn't.

He did, however, reach up and stroke the statue in a strange manner. It wasn't as if he was getting off on it, but there were notes of obsession there, just behind his gaze, as if he revered the statue.

"Interesting," he said, wonder in his voice.

Feeling overprotective of the statue for no reason she could explain, Sammy reached out fast and swatted the man's hand away.

The men still holding weapons on her jerked as if they were about to shoot.

The green-eyed man held up a hand, stopping them. "No."

Sammy swallowed hard. What possessed her to hit the man? Why should she care if he wanted to pet a stone statue? More power to him and his kink.

Yet, it did bother her.

Greatly.

She didn't want his hands on the statue. The notion of him being anywhere near it with any part of his body disturbed her. Left her wanting to plant herself before the stone statue as if she had a snowball's chance in hell of stopping the man.

Unless her nonhuman traits picked then to suddenly obey, she'd be torn through as if she were tissue paper.

Evidentially, the off-putting man knew as much, because he barely paid her any mind as he continued to stare adoringly up at the statue. He reached out, just shy of making physical contact with the statue once more. "They'll unlock all your secrets. They'll crack you open and strip you bare."

Great.

He liked to pet stone statues and he was certifiable, talking to the thing like it was alive or something.

Then again, she'd done something similar. Did that make her crazy too?

Next, he pulled a mobile phone from the breast pocket of his bulletproof vest and dialed someone. "We've acquired the target. Send the truck in, they were right, it's of substantial size." He paused a moment. "There was an issue with administering the drug to the human female we were told would be here."

Sammy swallowed hard, not liking where this was going in the least, especially since she was the woman in question. This had been planned? How had they known she'd be there? Had they arranged for the delivery to be running so late?

"Understood," he said with a nod.

A tiny gasp came from her when what she really wanted to do was scream. At the very least she wanted her natural-born gifts to kick in. Making armed men float before she zapped the ever-loving crap out of them sounded like a great plan to her. Much better than dying and no one ever finding out what happened to her.

But her body didn't cooperate.

Not so much as a spark came from her.

The man hung up and returned the phone to his vest pocket. He managed to pull himself from admiring the statue only to focus on her once again. The way his gaze lingered on certain areas told her exactly what he was thinking.

"Abel, what did they say?" asked another of the men.

Abel grinned. "That she needs to disappear."

"So we gotta kill her now?" asked another. He didn't sound like he was the brains of the operation. In fact, if she had to guess, he was expendable.

Abel continued to stare at her. "We could, or we could take her with us. Like a parting gift. When we're done, we'll dispose of her."

The others laughed and began nodding in agreeance with him.

Jerks.

The plot to every Hollywood movie she'd ever seen about art heists flooded her mind. Sure, the statue of the hot guy was incredibly lifelike, and the detail was out of this world, but all of this seemed like overkill.

The artist the gallery was prepping a showing for was well-known and sought after but not to the point armed assailants would be called in. A bidding war was a real possibility. An all-out frontal assault followed by making her disappear was not.

Sammy didn't cower in fear although the idea had merit. "Why, exactly, are you here?"

Abel motioned with his rather large weapon to the statue. "We came for the Shadow Agent. You're just a bonus, cupcake."

Shadow Agent? That was what Holland had said Ezra was. Were they searching for Ezra? If so, why would they think he'd be at the gallery, or in Savannah at all?

And had he just referred to her as a baked good?

Even with as scared and confused as she was, hearing the demeaning way in which he'd referred to her set her teeth on edge. Her ire caused an eyebrow to rise a second before she opened her mouth. "Cupcake? Did you really just call me that?"

He licked his lips. "Yes, I did. You're tiny and look good enough to lick until I reach the delicious cream filling. Then I just might eat you up."

The way he said it left a shiver of fear racing through her, as if the threat wasn't empty.

She didn't know what kind of cannibalistic jack-hole she was dealing with or what he wanted, but she did know there was no way she'd make it easy for him. If he wanted to get to her cream filling, he'd have to work for it.

With another dramatic lick of his lips, Abel chuckled, then smacked his chops as if he were eying up a juicy rare steak.

"You're tiny but you're fucking hot as hell. Too bad you're human. They tend to break so fast," he said, making it feel as if bugs were crawling all over her. "If securing the asset wasn't as high of a priority for me as it is, I'd take time with you here and now. As it stands, you're coming with us."

She nearly wiped at her arms and legs to make the feeling go away, but she didn't dare move. Deep down, she got the impression that sudden movements would only excite the man more. Like a cheetah who had its prey cornered.

More than once they'd referred to her as human—something normal people didn't bother commenting on or pointing out. No human walked around thinking of themselves in such a way. At least no one she'd known in her life ever had. The only reason anyone would bother pointing it out was if they, themselves, were not human.

Her thoughts went to Holland and everything her friend had told her since returning from the Middle East with a mate. Holland had stressed there were very bad people in the world who hunted women like them to use for nefarious reasons. Holland had referred to them as The Corporation, but what it boiled down to was that they were not good people.

Not in the least.

If they were there, that meant whatever they wanted wasn't going to be good either.

Holland had also hinted that the fact Sammy was adopted and was more than human could mean she had ties to it all. That was the real reason Sammy had avoided meeting the man named James at the clinic where Holland had arranged an appointment. She wasn't ready to have her bubble burst. As curious as she'd been when she was younger about who and what she was, she'd found something that resembled a normal life and things were great with her adoptive parents.

They loved her, and she loved them as well. They were her mother and her father.

They'd stood by her when she was little and made the toys in her room float during a temper tantrum, only to then cause electricity to spark from the outlet in the wall at the curtains, starting a fire. Thankfully, that had been put out and no one had been injured.

With all of that, her parents never once shied away from her or showed any sign of fear. They'd worked through it all with her, helping her learn ways to calm herself to avoid issues like that from happening again. And they'd never told a soul about her, refusing to seek outside help for fear of what the scientific world might do to Sammy if presented with the opportunity to study a child who was clearly more than most.

She didn't need answers for questions she no longer had.

But right about now would have been a great time to make everything around her float and for some electricity to shoot out of the wall outlets. If for no other reason than it might very well scare the men off—if they were merely human.

If not, she was well and truly screwed. She doubted men who could turn into animals, or whatever it was they might be, would be fearful of floating objects or a few sparks.

Then there was the whole fact that she couldn't make anything happen at will.

"Damn, she is really hot, boss," said another of the men, this one stepping closer to her. "What is that smell? I don't recognize it."

The guy next to him sniffed the air, and his eyes went from brown to amber and then back again.

Sammy bit back a gasp as she got her answer about them being human or not.

Eyes didn't change color like that in humans.

She eased forward and bumped the statue lightly. Some of the panic that had started to build began to lessen. She wasn't sure why. It wasn't as if the statue guy was going to magikally come to life and protect her.

She nearly laughed at the idea.

Abel pointed at the guy who had done the funky eye bit. "Back up the truck. We'll get Summerbee loaded. Anyone have zip-ties? We'll bind the woman's wrists and toss her in the back of the truck with him."

"I can't believe he fell into our lap like this," said another. "Who knew tracking him down would be so easy? What kind of idiot ships something this valuable outside of the built-in PSI channels?"

"Don't know but I, for one, am happy they did," added another. "Finding him was as easy as following the tracking code."

"I've heard about what a threat he is but look at him. He's a giant fucking paperweight right now. Some threat. One good whack with a sledgehammer would end him once and for all. A million pieces of former Outcast. Fitting that as soon as he's reinstated officially into the program, he's terminated."

She was about to question who Summerbee was when her mind instantly settled on the statue.

The very lifelike statue.

No.

They couldn't be talking about the statue as if it were real.

Could they?

As crazy as it sounded, she had heard weirder. Case in point, her best friend was now married to a man who could shift into a dragon. Then there was the whole voice-in-her-head bit. The voice had said things that made her wonder if it wasn't coming from the statue.

Could the thing actually come to life?

If so, would he be a help or another hinderance? She had enough of those as it was.

"Grab her," said the boss.

One of the men reached for Sammy and she twisted around, putting her back to the statue, dodging the man's grasp. She tried to make a run for it, stepping a few feet from the statue.

His hand darted out at her once more, but she managed to evade him again.

"Come on," said another of the men. "It's one human who is barely chest high. Grab her."

"I'm trying," said the man nearest her. "She's fast for a little thing."

He grabbed for her again and when his hand connected with her upper arm, she was thrust backward so hard that the wind was knocked out of her. The back of her head collided with a bulged part of the statue, and pain filled her head as blackness swarmed her vision. She felt her knees giving out from under her a second before she crumbled to the floor. Something warm and wet trickled over her neck.

"Way to go, jackass," said one of the men, disappointment obvious in his voice. "You used too much force and broke the human bitch. Now look at what you did."

"Glad I don't have to clean up that mess," said another, sounding more amused than disgusted. "Now, are you sure we gotta move this heavy-ass stone douchebag? Can't we just break him into a bunch of pieces and call it a win? What in the hell could the higher-ups want with him like this? It's not like they're going to get much in the way of samples from him. And hey, we can take a few broken bits back for them to do whatever the fuck it is they do."

A laugh filled the air. "Damn. The bitch was a bleeder. It's all over the place. She got blood on the target too."

"All they said was don't break him . Which is why we cannot hit him with a sledgehammer," said Abel. "They didn't tell us he had to come in blood free. And they're not going to care much about one human woman ending up dead. Dispose of the female's body and then let's get him loaded."

"Hey, did he move?" asked one of the men.

"Who?" questioned another.

"The target," said the man, his voice slightly off. "I swear he moved."

"Nah. Our intel says he's locked in this state. Nothing is going to break the magik he got hit with."

Magik?

Sammy blinked and tried to focus. A groan came from her.

"Holy shit. The human has some fight in her," said a man. "She's still alive."

"Not for long," added another with a laugh.

"I'm positive he moved," said someone.

"Relax. He didn't fucking move," replied another male—a second before the area seemed to explode into gunfire.

The overhead lights flashed before going out fully.

Something brushed over her, bringing with it a sense of safety, followed by the sounds of snarling, screams, and loud thuds. More gunfire came, the muzzle flashes lighting up their immediate area.

By rights, she should have been downright terrified, but oddly, her gut said things would work themselves out and that help had arrived.

Sammy made out looks of stunned horror on some of the men's faces but then blackness returned. Whatever was in the darkness, hunting them, had them scared out of their minds.

Since they were scary to her, she wasn't sure she wanted to see what managed to elicit fear in them . Then again, not knowing what else was in the dark with her left her imagination running wild.

That didn't help at all.

She managed to push to her feet in a clumsy fashion, her hand going to the back of her head. It came away wet. At the reality that the liquid substance on her hand was blood—hers, to be exact—she gasped.

Her phone rang again, the screen illuminating the floor partially. It was close to her, and she bent to grab for it but lost her footing, falling to the floor once more. That didn't stop her from snatching hold of her phone and pressing answer.

"Sammy? Ezra's back from his errands and called a few of his friends there. As luck would have it, they're out and about around town, running down possible leads on something they misplaced, so they aren't far from the gallery. They said they'd be happy to move whatever you needed moved and close the door. They should be there soon. Sammy? Are you there?" asked Holland as Sammy fumbled with the phone, her hands wet with her own blood. "What is that noise? Ohmygod, is that gunfire? Sammy? Ezra, something is wrong!"

A shot rang out, striking the phone from her hand, causing it to burst into pieces that skittered across the floor.

She rolled to the side quickly as the air around her began to thicken once more, this time with a buzz of power to it. She knew what that meant—after all, if had happened to her enough in her life to recognize it for what it was.

A temper tantrum meltdown in the making.

Never had she been happier about possibly losing her shit.

A slight smile touched her lips. She was no man's cupcake.

Someone grabbed her ankle and she reached for him, pushing at his shoulder (at least she thought it was, since it was too dark to really tell). A loud buzzing sounded around her a second before a jolt of electricity went from her hand to the man she was touching.

That had never happened before.

She'd never been the source of the electricity, she'd always just sort of directed it from other sources—or so she'd always assumed.

He lurched back as the air around them lit with a blue arc of power. His eyes widened. "What the hell was that?"

"Grab the bitch! He's protecting her!" the boss yelled.

Sammy got to her feet and cursed inwardly as she stepped on a piece of the wooden crate that was now broken. She grabbed it off the floor and held it like a bat. "I'm not a bitch." She then thought harder on what she'd said. "Okay, I am , but I'm not a cupcake!"

Someone else bumped her in the darkness and she swung, hitting them with the piece of wood. They grunted but didn't go down. She drew the piece of wood back and then rammed it in their direction.

"Ouch! You staked me!"

Whoever yelled had a voice that was different from the men she'd heard prior. This man's voice was deep and accented with the South. It also made her feel warm and fuzzy inside.

None of the other men did that.

"Ha! His bitch staked him for us," said another.

Sammy turned in the direction of the voice and directed her anger at him. Blue sparks lit the air between her and the man. They struck him and he went airborne.

The overhead lights flickered and then came on. They were brighter than she remembered them being. That, or the blow to her head was still messing with her senses.

The loading area looked like a war zone. Bodies littered the floor with discarded weapons sprinkled around them. Blood, far more than the footprints she'd left, was everywhere.

She stood there, feeling woozy, trying to soak in everything that had happened. As she did, she realized someone was talking to her in a calm voice. Turning, she found herself staring up at a man who was shirtless, in a pair of jeans that were open in front, and who had a piece of wood sticking out of his upper chest, near his right shoulder.

His blue eyes were locked on her, worry in them.

He was oddly familiar to her. When she realized who, or rather what , he reminded her of, she stepped back slightly, shaking her head.

He looked just like the statue guy.

How hard had she hit her head?

The act of shaking her head in denial was ill thought out and caused the room to spin. Her gaze darted to the statue, or to the last spot the statue had been.

It was missing.

Not missing , she thought as the room continued to spin. Standing before me, staked, with amazing blue eyes.

It was official.

It was clear she was suffering the aftereffects of cracking her head on the thing.

Reaching up, the hunk who looked a hell of a lot like the missing statue took hold of the piece of wood embedded in him and yanked it free. He let it fall to the floor with a loud thud and stood there with a bloody wound, looking more worried about her than the fact he had a hole in him that she'd put there.

"Buffy, you're going to pass out," he said, his accent and voice causing the warm and fuzzy feeling to return.

Buffy?

Why on earth had he called her Buffy?

Sammy shook her head slightly and the room spun more, confirming the head shake was indeed a bad move. "I'm not going to…"