My heart pounded so hard, I saw spots as I fell against the door. Cleverly was stiff and pale beside me, her lips pressed into such a thin line they were nonexistent. “What,” she said softly, “the hell is happening? Are those dogs?”
I nodded, gulping air. “Yes, dogs. Wild dogs, very bad. Let’s go. Now, Cleverly. We have to go now.” I made it back to my feet and seized her by the arm. A frantic look around the room showed me a major safety violation: no emergency exit. The wolf on the other side of the door thumped against it hard, making it bounce slightly in its frame. I backed away, tripping over my own feet and going down hard on my hip. “Shit!” Cleverly bustled forward and helped me get back up, supporting me as I swayed. I wasn’t sure how much was from my concussion and how much was from whatever worked in my senses trying so hard to keep me safe.
“Landry! Open this door! Fucking now!”
Cleverly yelped and ducked behind me. Because I, a wounded man standing at five foot eight and possibly one hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet, am a terrific human shield when faced with werewolves. A wereyorkie, I could take, but a wolf? Just call me puppy chow.
“Landry,” Cleverly whispered, “who is it?”
The wolf had been dun-colored, but it wasn’t Ethan. That much I knew. The were on the other side of the door had black tips to his ears and a white chest from what I could see before I closed the door in his face. Ethan didn’t when he was shifted. “Landry Babin,” the were shouted, “open this goddamned door or I swear to God, I will rip it off its hinges!”
Oh. Now I recognized the voice. I gently shook off my aunt and, after a deep breath that did nothing to help calm me, I opened the door just a crack. Tyler Stone stood, scowling and bloody, pressed against the door. Scowling, bloody, and naked. He pushed the door open wider, shoving me back and aside. He had it shut, locked, and a heavy armchair dragged against it before I could make my vocal cords work again. “Where’s Ethan?”
“Hey, man, great to see you,” Tyler muttered, voice full of false cheer. “Thanks for saving our asses. Wow, way to really put yourself on the line for your brother’s ex, Tyler. Totally above and beyond. You’re the best.” He was dragging more furniture against the doors, his metaphorical hackles standing at attention. And yeah, still naked.
You didn’t think weres kept their clothes on when they shifted, did you?
“You need pants,” was all I managed in response.
“They’re back in the car. Which is about two miles away, across the field and down along the bayou.”
Cleverly was definitely distracted by this tidbit of information. And I will tell myself that was the tidbit distracting her till the day I die, thanks. The snarling and fighting in the corridor was definitely louder now, human screams mingling with canine barks and yowls. “Did you let them in?” she asked, tearing her eyes away from Tyler’s… face… and pointing at the door.
His brows drew down, and he looked momentarily confused before shooting me a disbelieving look. “Seriously? I’ve heard of cognitive dissonance being a hell of a thing, but this…” He let out a low whistle. “This is some next-level shit. No,” he said, turning to Cleverly and speaking in an exaggerated slow voice. “I did not let the big bad wolves in. They were already here. I just brought some friends of my own, and if we don’t get the hell out of here now, someone will probably die.”
From the look on Cleverly’s face, I was pretty sure she’d checked out and was in a mental happy place. Which, considering where we were, wouldn’t be that difficult of a task to conjure. Hellraiser’s living room would be a happier place than where we were.
“How are we getting out?” I asked. “There’s no emergency exit.”
“Sure, there is.” He strode past us and grabbed the divan, lifting it as easily as most people would a folding chair. Without breaking stride, he hurled it through the plate glass window. An alarm went off, shrill over the already mind-numbing din in the corridor. “Grab your aunt and go,” he said, voice thickening, eyes taking on a golden cast. “Across the field. See that stand of pecan trees?” He pointed to a dark smudge some distance away, nails already lengthening, hands misshapen. “Head for those. Don’t look back, don’t slow down. You’ll hit the bayou about a hundred yards past the trees. Go east, follow it till it makes a bend and the car is there. There’s a dirt track. I left the keys in the driver’s side wheel well. If I don’t meet you there after ten minutes or if someone else shows up, go. Just get the fuck out, got me?”
He shoved me before I could respond. I grabbed hold of Cleverly and half-dragged her past the jagged broken glass spires sticking out of the bottom of the ruined window. She stumbled, slipped, and finally seemed to catch on that we needed to run. She was faster than I gave her credit for, shaking off my grasp as we ran hard toward the knot of pecan trees in the distance. Despite the pain from my injuries, I felt bone-deep relief. Finally, part of me was sighing. You’re doing what you’re supposed to do. You’re not like them; you’re prey.
I didn’t realize I was slowing until I noticed Cleverly had pulled ahead of me by several yards. The sounds of the battle in the clinic were faint now but still audible, dragging my attention back. I craned my neck to look but saw nothing other than the light spilling out of the broken window and dark shapes moving across the grass toward us. I had no idea if it was Tyler and the friends he’d mentioned or someone worse.
“You okay?” I panted to Cleverly, forcing my legs faster. She didn’t respond and, with a sickening lurch in my gut, I realized she was not in front of me anymore. “Cleverly? Cleverly!” There was no way she could have made it to the trees already, not unless she’d developed the power of flight, and I hadn’t passed her on the ground. A sharp, high scream pierced the night sounds around me, and I stumbled to a halt. “Cleverly!”
“Help!” she shrieked. “No! Oh, my God! No!”
“Cleverly!” I was on my feet and running in an instant. Her voice sounded like it was ahead of me still, but I couldn’t see her. She screamed again, and this time it ended in a gasping moan, loud and wet sounding. A howl, long and loud, rattled my bones and sent me to my knees. More howls joined in from all around me, rising up from behind hillocks, from the clinic, from the stand of trees. Something hit me from behind, and I went down hard. My entire body tensed and spasmed, trying to both curl into a ball and bolt at the same time. I succeeded in rolling onto my back as the were who had tackled me shifted away slightly.
“Tyler?” I panted. It looked like him, but it was hard to tell for sure in the moonlit dark, in the chaos. More wolf bodies hurtled past, and screams mixed with barks and grunts. Tyler—it had to be him—snorted, shook himself hard, and staggered a few steps away. I started to sit up, but he lurched back, leaning against me till I fell onto the grass again and pressed a paw down on my chest. He was breathing hard, rasping like it hurt to draw air. He fell to one side, his chest heaving, legs twitching, then suddenly went still.
“Tyler?” I reached out and pushed against his belly. He shuddered, sucking in a deep breath, but he did not get up. The sound around me was dying down, snarling replaced by grunts and low, canine huffs. A few human voices threaded through the wolf sounds. I felt detached, suspended between my own body on the grass and somewhere safe and far where I was just watching this like a bad dream. Everything was swimming and swirling, a sharp pain in my shoulder spreading down my arm and up my neck, dissolving into a too-hot sensation that slowly bubbled into lethargy. Hands grasped under my arms, yanking me up until I could be dragged.
“This was a noble effort,” a familiar but roughened voice sighed. “I was hoping this would go more smoothly, but they have such a flair for the dramatic. That’s what happens when you are not born to this but come into our world already tainted by humanity.”
My head lolled back, but I couldn’t make out the faces over me. Dark shapes moved around us—wolves I realized. Not everyone had shifted back. “My aunt,” I managed, though the words were slow and thick.
“She is not your concern at the moment.” We passed through a pool of light—we must have been closer to the clinic than I realized, moving through the glow of one of the tall lamp posts lining the drive—and I could see the sharp angles of David’s face. I made an effort and was able to crane my neck to see who had my other arm. Jeremy. Damn it. I’d hoped… Well. I’d hoped.
My body was numb, and I felt like I was not quite all the way inside it, drifting in and out of near sleep as my heels dragged through pea gravel, bits of rock and dirt sliding into my shoes. “Take him away.”
Away turned out to be some sub-level beneath the clinic. I faded in and out while they took me through the ruined front entrance with its blood splatters and a prone body, someone caught halfway between wolf and man. I supposed there was no point in trying to keep the facade going that they were normal humans there. We turned down a short, narrow corridor hidden behind a false bit of wall near the intake desk, ending in dull silver doors.
The elevator reminded me of the ones hospitals used to move patients on gurneys, the ones that opened up directly into the morgue. Stainless steel walls, large enough to hold two gurneys side by side, or one semi-conscious man and at least four werewolves. When the doors slid open, I was taken to a brightly lit room larger than my kitchen. It was set up like a triage bay in a hospital but with one crucial difference: the exam table was fitted with institutional restraints. I twisted, trying to buck free from Jeremy and David, but my movements were still sluggish, and I succeeded only in losing a shoe as they drag-carried me to the table and plopped me down. I couldn’t even fight as my wrists were locked into the cuffs, Jeremy buckling them securely. He sighed something that could have been ‘sorry,’ but that was probably my addled brain trying to make things less terrifying.
David hovered near the end of the gurney, trying to catch Jeremy’s eye, but Jeremy loped back to the elevator, his lanky form folding in on itself like a wilting weed. Rosamund was ensconced behind a low, steel-sided desk, tapping rapidly away at a computer. David gave up on getting Jeremy’s attention, instead fixing a wide-eyed, unblinking gaze on Rosamund as he made a hash of tightening my ankle restraints. I held still, afraid to even breathe too deeply just in case it caught his eye. When he gave them a tug, he frowned, glancing at me quickly. I must have looked just as bad as I felt because he didn’t even try to make them tighter.
“Thankfully, we were able to get your records right up as soon as you were en route,” Rosamund said, smiling up at me from behind the desk as if this were just a pleasant day at the office. “Lucky for us, our system is the most efficient around. None of that off-site crap for us,” she tittered. Clapping her hands together once, she pushed back from the desk and sighed, the very picture of a woman satisfied with a job well done. “You, Doctor Babin, are quite the pain in the ass.”
“It’s genetic. Runs on my mom’s side.”
“And your father’s,” she said, winking a little too broadly, verging on the Panto dame. “You’re a dead ringer for him, did you know? Oh, maybe it’s in bad taste to use the word ‘dead.’ Is it?” Her laugh grated again—I think she was aiming for a silvery trill and landed squarely in donkey braying through a moving floor fan territory.
I’d never been really good at shutting up. I mean, I like to think I can do it. I really made an effort during med school, holding back my opinions when an instructor was particularly wrong or keeping my mouth shut when a date or boyfriend chose a crappy movie or ordered well done steak (seriously, what kind of monster). But, overall, it’s more of a bug than a feature for me to hold my tongue.
“I’ve heard more about my sperm donor in the past five hours than in the past twenty years,” I said, my words sounding as lethargic as I felt thanks to whatever they’d dosed me with. I wondered if they’d gotten me with the same thing twice or if now, I’d have to deal with the side effects and symptoms from two, maybe antagonistic, drugs coursing through my battered body.
Rosamund’s smile became very sharp. I wondered, for a brief moment, if she had been one of the wolves who’d hurt my aunt (I had to think she was hurt, not… not anything else, because if I’d let myself think she was worse than hurt, then I would lose my goddamned mind). She was still neatly dressed, not a hair out of place, not even a bit of dust on her shoes to indicate she’d tramped up that gravel drive outside. With a subtle nod to David and Jeremy who stepped into the elevator, she moved around the desk and paced toward me, keeping quiet until the elevator doors shut. “You are quite the little shit, Doctor Babin.”
“Again, genetic.” I half expected her to hit me or worse, but instead she just patted my damned knee again and smiled.
“Your aunt isn’t dead, in case you were wondering. She was a marvelous distraction though, wasn’t she? Some of the others thought you had planned this—the Stone clan trying to stop us—but I assured them you are not nearly that smart. You”—she tweaked my nose hard enough to make me gasp— “are a broken bit of wolf, aren’t you?”
The phrase made me jerk back in surprise. No one else, not even Ethan, had ever called that part of me a broken wolf. It was my phrase for it, something I’d figured out after meeting Ethan, after seeing how weres worked—at least as much as they let me see back then. My senses, my abilities, were all like theirs, just… less. Stuck halfway through the change, Ethan’s father had said. Like my brain started to do it but gave up before it got very far.
Rosamund saying that, though, calling me that… I couldn’t even try to muster a denial. We were pretty far past an attempt at I don’t know what you’re talking about.
“One of those drugs,” I said carefully, my cotton mouth making it hard to enunciate. “The soporifics… are they what’s causing the anosmia?”
“A bit,” she admitted, looking pleased. “And the concussion has a bit to do with it, they think. All in all, it should clear up relatively soon. For now, though, it’s been in our favor.”
“Because one of you killed the Raymonds.”
Rosamund shook her head, pouting like she was disappointed in her very spoiled puppy. “No, darling, not one of us. One of you.” Roughly, she began a cursory vitals check. Fingers on my wrist, she glanced at her watch. “Bit high but not surprising. You’ve had a very busy evening.”
“Is there any point in asking what you’re going to do to me?”
“Please, Doctor Babin. We’re medical professionals here. Scientists! We’re not Bond villains!”
“To be fair, some of them were scientists, too,” I muttered, the lethargy spreading once more. I knew I’d be in for a few more hours of drowsiness if my general reactions to being anesthetized held true. A few more hours of being useless and unable to do anything other than sleep or, if I did manage to get loose from the restraints, being unable to escape.
Who was I kidding? I wasn’t going anywhere without Cleverly, even if a door opened right now and could spit me out directly into my house. And, I supposed I should try to find Tyler, too, if he was still alive.
“Speaking of Bond villains, I suppose I should make some sort of pithy statement or point out the obvious while you prepare to do some nefarious sort of experiment on me? Like the fact you have Sheriff Stone’s brother here somewhere, and no matter what state Tyler Stone is in, Ethan and likely the rest of the Stone clan will come looking for him.”
“That’s fine,” Rosamund murmured, moving away to enter my vitals into the computer on the desk. “Now, just sit tight.” She smirked up at me. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to collect more blood and some other stuff.” She giggled again, that grating baying sound, and the elevator doors closed between us. There was no doubt in my mind I was being watched. If they were spying on me in my patient room, they would definitely be keeping several eyes on me in whatever level of hell this little room happened to be in. Still, I gave a few hopeful, firm tugs to the restraints. Even the half-assed job David had done on my ankles held.
Shit.
I could just nap for a little bit. That might help.
Or, you know, it could just let you wake up dead or something.
Whichever.
I couldn’t sit up on the exam table, but I could wiggle around until I was tilted on my left hip, facing into the room. It bent my right arm back uncomfortably, but it wasn’t unendurable. The closest thing to me, other than the table I lay on, was a low, stainless steel counter with a built-in sink. Cabinets lined the wall above the counter, glass-fronted and full of medical paraphernalia, mundane (blood pressure cuffs, thermometer covers, empty sharps disposal bins waiting to be used) and, frankly, sinister. While a bone saw and rib spreader would not be out of place in my exam room, seeing them just casually resting beside a large box of gauze pads and a row of bagged saline solution did not inspire feelings of calm acceptance in my soul.
I tugged again on my restraints. Nope, a miracle hadn’t occurred. It was too much to hope that I could just slip out of the bonds and make a mad dash for it, but it didn’t stop me from giving the ones at my ankle one more little yank.
Something gave.
It wasn’t a lot, but the pressure eased a bit. I held very still, unwilling to glance down. Carefully, I pointed my right foot and flexed it back, trying to see if I could make the restraint ease a bit more. It held fast, but something was jabbing me through my sock. Resisting the urge to kick and yank, I rolled my foot again. If (who was I kidding, there was no if) they were watching, it would hopefully look like I was just stretching my joints out, trying to get feeling back in my feet.
Rolling onto my back again, a wave of exhaustion swept over me. It wasn’t true exhaustion but that deep tiredness that comes with anesthesia, the feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff and tilting forward just enough for gravity to take over. I fought it for what felt like a long stretch of time but was probably a second, maybe two, my eyes closing and body relaxing into a deep, drugged drowse. Even when the door clanged open and voices flooded the room, my eyes wouldn’t open all the way.
Part of me tried to fight as I was lifted onto another gurney, this one hard and cold. Metal, the tiny part of my brain that was alert supplied. Like in the morgue. That was enough to make me buck harder, shake off some of the tendrils of sleep trying to hold me down. Still, it wasn’t enough. Strong hands held me, and a sharp jab in my neck sent me deeper into sleep, the distant awareness of movement sending a creeping thrill of panic through my limbs even as they grew heavy and useless.