Dark Refuge by Kate Douglas

Emeline laughed. Em said, “I know you wanted to tear his throat out, but think of the mess.”
    A spiky-haired blonde wrapped in an oversized robe broke away from the group and walked over to Em’s side. “Is that Sissy? That wolf?”
    “It is. Beautiful, isn’t she?”
    “How did she do it? How did she know?”
    Em glanced at Gabe.
    Tell her, he said. But don’t mention the mindspeech. Sissy, are you listening? She turned her head and looked at Gabe. Good. We try not to let anyone know we’re telepathic. That’s a Chanku secret, okay.
    I understand. Russo moved. She turned her attention back to the man, bared her teeth and snarled. He lay still.
    “I saw Sissy downtown a couple of nights ago,” Em said. “We can sometimes recognize our own kind, and I suspected she was Chanku. She is. She’d actually suspected it herself, before she was kidnapped, and had taken the nutrients that helped her body make the change. We gave her more of the pills, and she made her first shift today.”
    “How do you know if you’re, you know, like you?”
    “I was born to Chanku parents, so I’ve always known, but if you don’t know, it usually starts with dreams of running in the forest, dreams so vivid that you can smell the scent of the trees, hear the owls at night, smell game in the forest, feel the crunch of pine needles beneath your feet as you run. We think it’s a genetic memory, something imprinted on our DNA. It’s powerful.”
    Wide-eyed, Janine stared at her. “I know. I have dreams like that. They’re all that keep me sane.”
    Em shot a quick glance at Gabe, and then another of the women spoke up.
    “I have them, too.”
    Dark-skinned with long, curly black hair, she was slender and tall and totally confident amid all the bodies on the floor. “My name’s Mbali. I’ve had those dreams since I was a little kid. Before my mother died, she used to say they were dreams the angels sent to keep us safe. Do they mean I can shift? Turn into a wolf like Sissy?”
    Gabe shifted, standing tall and comfortably naked, though the women weren’t quite sure how to take him. Em handed the gun to him and stepped outside, where she grabbed his clothes. He gave the gun back and slipped into his jeans. “I hear the sirens so the police and ambulance should be here in a couple of minutes,” he said. “Mbali, we’ll talk later, but yes. Dreams are a good indicator. Ladies, this was meant as a rescue of all of you. What these men have done is obviously illegal—sexual slavery is a crime, and they’ve held you against your will and forced you into prostitution. Even if you were prostitutes before you were captured, slavery is wrong. The police are going to question you. I want all of you to know that we can offer you a safe place to stay and help you get your lives back on track. We’ll pay for transportation if there’s somewhere you want to go, and if there’s a chance that you might be Chanku, you can stay at our place and take the nutrients to see if you are indeed Chanku if that is what you wish. It’s entirely up to you.”
    “Will you let me go home? Or at least call my parents? My name’s Mary Ryder, and Ralph kidnapped me off the campus at Berkeley over a year ago. My parents probably think I’m dead. I don’t have any dreams like you’re talking about. I dream about my family and my little sister.”
    Em pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and handed it to the girl. “Go ahead and call them, and tell them once the police get a statement you should be able to fly home. We’ll take care of the airfare.”
    Her whispered “thank you” was barely audible. She took the phone into the kitchen. Gabe grinned at the last two woman, a beautiful redhead with curly hair falling to her waist and an equally beautiful Latina with long black hair and dark, dark eyes. “Are you ladies okay?”
    The redhead grinned at Gabe. “We’re better than okay, though it might be nice if you lost the jeans. The view was a