Chapter 25 Cathy

Chapter 25 Cathy

We were about to close the perfumery. Sales had been terrible, as they had been all month. Only a couple of perfumes and some moisturizers had been sold. This situation made me think of giving up because I was no longer generating enough profit, and I was keeping the company going thanks to the Paris branch. Still, if I kept using the profits to support the others, I would end up bankrupt.

"Mrs. North, come here quickly," Janna walked into my office without knocking, causing my heart to skip a beat. "You need to see this."

Janna was elated and pulled me by the hand, almost dragging me to the outside of the store.

"What’s wrong?" I asked almost with a shout, not understanding what was going on.

"Look." She pointed her finger across the street.

The street was blocked by patrol cars, and there were armed policemen walking in formation toward John Smith’s store.

"Ladies, please go back inside," one of the policemen in a hoodie approached us with his gun pointed at the ground.

"What’s going on?" I asked.

"This is an official matter. Please go back inside the store, and stay away from the glass.” Shocked, I went back inside along with Janna.

My heart had not calmed down. In fact, I started to feel worse. Since I had started taking the pills to cleanse my blood, all my senses had heightened, but so had the ailments the doctor had mentioned.

"You look very pale," Janna commented and helped me sit up. "Let me get you a glass of water."

"No need," I replied, but she brought me a glass of water anyway.

"Drink," she watched me until I drank the last drop. "I’ve noticed you don’t drink enough water."

In the store were the two of us, since due to low sales, there was no need for the girls to stay so late, but no matter what, Janna and Amanda took turns staying with me interspersed throughout the day.

"Hand me my cell phone," I asked, taking slow breaths to calm down. "I need to let Eric know to go straight home with Elliot."

She went into my office to get my cell phone, and I got up, leaning against the counters so I could see what was going on outside.

The cops had broken the glass door and forced their way into the store, but I couldn’t tell until I got up because of the loud blaring of police car sirens and the store alarm. They brought out several people in handcuffs, among them, the rickety watchman, some salesmen, and a couple of people I had never seen before, that from the pale of their skin and thinness of their bodies, it looked like they had not been out in the sunlight for weeks, if not months.

"I’ve never seen those people before," Janna said.

"Me neither," I replied, grabbing my cell phone. "They already got everyone out, but I didn’t see John Smith among them."

"Neither did I," she affirmed.

The cops locked down the place and surrounded it with tape. As the officers collected evidence, I saw a man dressed in black without a police uniform looking straight at my store and talking on the phone. I was startled at first until I recognized him.

"Andrew!" I shouted, making Janna jump.

"Who’s Andrew?" she asked.

"Please close the store for me. I need to leave," I asked my employee, grabbing my phone out of her hands and walking straight toward Andrew.

"Cathy..."

"Don’t say a word," I interrupted him.

The officers looked at us, but he waved them off, and they continued to carry boxes full of papers up to the squad cars.

"Let’s go somewhere more private. We don’t have to discuss this here," Andrew suggested noticing my anger.

"I don’t want to talk to you. I just want to know one thing." I kept my composure so as not to cause a scene. "This is Eric’s doing, isn’t it?"

He pursed his lips and sucked in a good pull of air. "Yes, but he only did it for you. He wanted to help."

"I told him not to interfere," I growled. I turned and walked away without another word.

I wanted to drive home and tell him straight up what I thought, but the road was covered with glass, and some patrol cars were still blocking the road. There was no way my car would get through.

"Cathy, I can take you to Eric. My car isn’t far," Andrew yelled at me, but I kept walking.

My heart was beating slowly, I felt like my blood was turning to fire, and for a moment, I forgot all the discomfort I had and walked to the other block clutching my cell phone, thinking of all the things I would say to Eric when he answered the call.

"Hey, love, I’m just picking up Elliot from kindergarten," he greeted me.

"Why did you do that?" I asked, biting my tongue. "Why did you snoop into my business when I asked you not to."

I heard the sound of the wind bumping the phone’s microphone and Elliot humming a tune, but Eric was silent for a moment.

"I did it because you weren’t well or sleeping properly. You were neglecting your health."

Eric was also holding back, and it was so our son wouldn’t hear us arguing.

"But I had been very clear. That was something for me to do," I said. "I’m not a damsel to be rescued. I can fight my own battles."

I could hear Eric’s breath hitching.

"I did it for us and for Elliot," he said. "He’s noticed your absence. Anyway, I don’t plan on talking about this on a call. Tell me where you are, and I’ll come to get you."

"No, I can take a cab," I said, hanging up the phone, not hearing what he was about to say.

I crossed a road to a bus stop to wait for a cab. As never before, the street was almost empty except for a black car parked on a corner. I heard the sound of another car and got out, thinking it was a taxicab, but it was just a white van, so I turned around to sit back down.

The van pulled up to the stop, and the doors opened very fast. I tried to turn around, but I felt a jab in my neck. Whoever was behind me put a black cover over my head.

"What do you want from me?" I screamed.

I tried to struggle, but my body was going numb. My legs couldn’t hold me anymore, and before I passed out, I heard the sound of another car approaching.

***

I felt like my body was submerged in the freezing sea, but my mind was sailing through the clouds near the warm sun.

Wake up! A familiar voice whispered in my ear. Cathy, it’s time to wake up, don’t let your guard down. Then I realized the voice was the same one I heard in my dreams; it was my inner wolf trying to reach me.

I came out of my trance, still dizzy; it was hard to open my eyes, and the rest of my senses were still numb.

"I thought you would sleep all day," said a voice that I immediately recognized.

Someone removed my hood, and I could see a little blurry. I was in the middle of an abandoned warehouse, and there was dirt all over the place, plants that had grown on the walls, a pile of rubble, boxes stacked in a very bad state, three men in balaclavas, and John Smith in front of me with his one hand in his pocket and the other holding a revolver.

"She’s still asleep. Pour some more water on her," John said.

One of the men took a container full of water and poured it straight into my face. The water was ice cold and got into my mouth and nose, causing me to choke.

"What do you want from me?" I asked, catching my breath.

He laughed with a smirk, and the other men did the same. "I want you to pay for what you did," he told me. "You and your boyfriend somehow managed to sneak into my store and steal some documents and take some pictures, and thanks to that, now the police shut me down, and my face is all over the news."

"How did you escape?" I asked, spitting out the rest of the water.

"They never caught me. I had an informer in the police department," he added with a winning smile. "He warned me, and I was able to flee without being seen."

John had a different attitude. He was no longer the disdainful man with airs of superiority. Now, he looked aggressive, violent, and intimidating. I tried to move, but I had been tied to the chair so that it was impossible to move a muscle.

"You got what you deserved, you bastard," I screamed at him at the top of my lungs. I was not the type of woman to lower my face, I never was, and I wouldn’t do it in front of this man.

John didn’t take my comment well and brought his face closer to mine and locked me straight into the eyes. "Say it again," he said with a venom-laden stare and pressed the barrel of his gun into my stomach. "Not so brave now, are you?"

I gathered all my courage, spat in his face, and head-butted him with all my strength.

John fell backward and writhed on the floor, covering his face with his hands. He yelled in pain.

One of the men came over to him to try to help him, but John pushed him away. "Don’t touch me, or I’ll kill you too, along with this fucking bitch," he shouted, getting up from the ground.

John grabbed the gun away from the man next to him and walked towards me with a broken nose and a wound on his forehead that was leaking blood from the bucketful.

"See what you just did?" he tapped my temples with the barrel of the gun in a frantic manner. "Now I’ll put a hole in your fucking head."

I wasn’t ready to die. I thought about my son, Eric, and the few people I truly treasured. I wanted to live more. I wanted to marry Eric, see my son grow up, and visit new places in the world. I tried to force the ropes, but they were too tight, and not even my inner wolf was talking anymore, I was lost, and there was nothing I could do.

"Go to hell," I yelled as he put his gun between my eyes. I closed them, waiting for the shot.

"What the hell is that?" one of the men shouted.

John peeled the gun away from my head, and the howl of a wolf echoed throughout the warehouse.

"It’s a damn wolf," another of them shouted.

"No, I’ve never seen one that big. It’s something else," John said, firing at the wolf behind my back. The shots we so close to my ears that I could hear the bullets cut through the thin air.

I saw as if a black cloud flew over my head straight towards John, knocked him on his back, and with one bite, the wolf ripped his hand off with the gun still in it. John screamed in pain, and suddenly another wolf came out from behind the crates and pawed at the face of one of the men who had kidnapped me, knocking him unconscious.

The other two kidnappers tried to escape, but the wolves were quicker and, with a direct bite to the neck, knocked them unconscious.

"Shit! my hand," cried John crawling on the ground in the wolves’ opposite direction. "Please help." He implored, but the larger black wolf bit him in the neck, leaving him lifeless.

Are you okay? I heard Eric’s voice in my head clearly.

I was in shock at what I had seen. I had never witnessed anything like this.

Yes, I’m fine, I replied in the same manner.

The black wolf, with dark eyes, stood in front of me and shifted into Eric. He was naked, and his sculpted body was full of blood. Next to him, the gray wolf shifted too into Andrew.

"We have to get out of here," Andrew said, taking a knife from one of the corpses and cutting the ropes.

Eric carried me in his arms and led me to the black car I had seen near the bus stop.

"Thank you," I said, still recovering from the shock. "I thought I was going to die."

Eric got me into the car in the passenger seat and stood at the door, waiting for Andrew. While we waited, he stood next to me and wiped the blood off with a white flannel in the car.

"I promised nothing would happen to you while you were with me, Cathy. I will protect you for all eternity," he claimed.

"How did you know where to find me?" I asked.

"Andrew followed you all the time. As soon as he saw you being kidnapped, he called me and followed the kidnappers," he let me know.

I felt bad for the way I had spoken to Andrew back in the street. If it weren’t for him, Eric wouldn’t have saved me.

“I owe him an apology.” I hugged Eric. His body was giving off a little steam, and he was hotter than usual, but I still didn’t want to let go.

An explosion was heard, and the abandoned warehouse was covered in fire. Smoke and flames grew rapidly as I watched. Andrew emerged covered in ashes and bathed in sweat from a blaze twice his size.

"I’ve taken care of the kidnappers. Let’s go home,” Andrew said.