Raven Investigation 04 - Electric Legend by Stacey Brutger

sweating out the toxins as fast as he could while Jackson was swaddled
in chains that had to weigh a couple hundred pounds, his body tensed to explode
into action at any second.
    Though they were all captured, she sensed no injuries. They
must have been taken by a blitz attack, caught off guard and shot with darts
from a distance. They wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be taken without a
fight.
    She castigated herself for not knowing they were in trouble.
    Some protector she was turning out to be.
    Raven struggled to remain human as her magic rose with her
agitation, threatening to expose her. Their captors thought the men were the
bigger threat.
    They were very wrong.
    Jackson didn’t take his gaze away from her, muscles
straining as he tried to break the chains. He must have seen her look, the one
that craved vengeance, and slowly shook his head.
    Annoyance rippled through her at being forced to back down
even if he was right. Without her dragon or power to back her up, she wasn’t
sure she’d be able to take them without putting her pack more at risk.
    They needed to wait until the drugs burned out of their
systems first.
    The cage slammed shut in her face with a resounding thud.
    Her heart dropped to her feet with a splat.
    A prisoner again.
    Trapped.
    She repressed the growl that threatened. She had to remain
calm or risk harming her men if she lost control. She wanted to unleash all the
pent up rage on the circus and obliterate it. She could overload the shifters
with energy and force them to change. Though they would be more dangerous in beast
form, it would also suppress their human side for a few precious minutes. The
bindings to the pack would waiver and chaos would reign.
    Her dragon could grab control, but there was a vital flaw to
the plan. If her dragon failed to rise, her people would be torn apart. She
could do the opposite and drop everyone where they stood but the sudden influx
of syphoning away all their energy could knock her out cold.
    She couldn’t risk that they would recover first.
    She’d bide her time for now, but the instant they moved
against one of hers, they were all dead.
     
     

Chapter Eight – Day 2
     
    DAY TWO: FIRST DAY OF CAPTIVITY –
MORNING
    R aven kept watch over the men all night,
determined nothing worse would happen to them. No one spoke, not with the guard
standing outside the small tent. The cages were tall enough for them to sit and
long enough for them to lay down if they curled up their legs. Though the men
were crammed into the miniscule space, they’d settled down, not quite sleeping
as they burned off the rest of the drugs.
    Paranoia kept her awake, and she’d spent all last night gathering
as much information as she could. She pushed tiny strands of energy through the
earth, holding back as much as possible so the shifters wouldn’t sense the
sudden influx. Current forked through the ground, registering anything with a
heartbeat. She did it over and over until she worked her way through the whole
circus, her hands trembling under the strain by the time she was done. Her
spirits plummeted at the sheer number of people. By her estimation, the circus
housed over fifty workers, a third of them some variety of shifter.
    That left dozens of humans, more than half of them soldiers.
    Some of the shifters had tried to help them last night, but
she couldn’t count them as allies, not if it meant going against their pack.
    The side of her face ached from the blow she’d taken, but
the gash on her temple had scabbed over. Temperatures had dropped throughout
the night, the metal cage offering little comfort. Dew glistened on the grass. Dawn
colored the horizon through the thin canvas, a smudge of red in the sky, when
the tent flap flew open.
    The ringmaster entered, and Raven blinked in surprise as she
spotted his animal form wrapped around him like cloak. The man was an honest to
god bull, sharpened horns and all, not to mention damned near a ton in weight.
He didn’t