by L. E. Horn
“Lie on your stomach,” she ordered.
I stretched out on the clean sheets, and her small capable hands began checking the waterproof seals. She removed two with ruthless efficiency, giving me new bald patches, then patted the stitches beneath with gauze before applying fresh bandages. I protested when she pulled the towel down.
“I have to check the one on your ass. Don’t be such a baby.”
I grimaced as she yanked the bandage from the deep gouge along my butt cheek and dabbed it dry with a gauze pad.
“I think I can leave that one uncovered,” she said, stroking the skin around the cut. “It’s healing. Now turn over.”
My pulse pounded through my aching head, making clarity a scarce commodity. I clutched the towel with a hand and rolled over with exaggerated care. Sam placed pillows behind me so I could sit more upright.
As I’d been flattened against Dillon’s back when he did most of the damage, my chest was largely intact. My arms and thighs had taken the brunt of his rage. Sam checked the dressings on my arms and removed one where water had got beneath the seal. When she pulled it away, my eyes widened. It amazed me that I still had an arm attached.
She noticed my expression. “It’ll heal up fine. The wulf will see to it. But you’ll have interesting scars.”
I flexed my hand and it still functioned, although not without protest. She moved to my thighs and had to remove a bandage that ran from my knee to my hip. Stitches connected the deepest section, but below the row of sutures, the flesh had been torn away. Deep black bruising surrounded the wound, fading through the shades of purple, burgundy, red, green, and yellow as it dispersed into the tissues.
“Christ,” I said.
“They always look more impressive the next day.” Her voice remained unemotional. She dried the skin around it. “I’ll leave that inflamed one uncovered too, and I’ll get the doc to check it.”
I hoped the wulf in me was up for it. I was a mess.
A vehicle pulled up outside, and Sam got up. The door to my suite creaked open and, with a clatter of claws on bare floor, Keen launched herself onto the bed, where she bounced all over my sore body.
“Sam, meet Keen,” I gasped as I curled into a fetal position and shivered in pain.
“Keen, down,” Sam said, in a tone that resonated through me and the dog.
Panting, Keen sank onto the bed, watching Sam with an alert expression. The towel had vanished in the tussle, and I pulled at the sheets, managing to get them across the most important bits before too much was revealed. I hoped.
I grasped for a distraction by admiring the sudden perfect obedience of my dog. “Is that a wulf thing? I need to learn that.” I stared first at Sam, then at Keen.
I caught a glimmer of mischief in her glance and realized my attempt at discretion was a failure. My face must have been fluorescent as Sam held her hand out for my dog to sniff. Keen sniffed and wagged her tail but stayed down.
“Sam’s a natural trainer,” Josh said from the doorway. “Dogs, horses, men . . . we all jump when she snaps her fingers.”
I grinned up at him, ridiculously happy to see him standing there. I thought he looked worse than me, but that might have been due to the shadows in his eyes and the dark bruises and puncture marks on his throat. Teeth? My God, she came at him with teeth. How is he still walking?
Sam strode to the door, snapping her fingers as she passed Josh. “Good to see I have you trained, anyway,” she said with a smile. Her eyes returned to me. “Catch ya later, soldier.”
When she left, Josh sidled to the bed. “How are you feeling?”
Pushing Sam to the back of my mind, I focused on what I needed to say. “I feel stupid, that’s what,” I said. “I’m sorry, Josh. You were right. I should have waited for Chris. What I did almost got us killed.”
Josh’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You saved Peter’s life. No one could have known Chloe tried to kill him; you thought you were saving her from Dillon.” He frowned. “She fooled everybody. Even Peter.”
“And you’re lucky to be alive.”
“I don’t feel lucky,” he said, his eyes full of pain. “I tried to get her off, but she kept coming. Insanely strong. I couldn’t hold her back.” He shook his head. “Chris says she’s better off dead, instead of thrown into the wulfan equivalent of jail. Wulves don’t do well in prison. But I can’t stop thinking . . . if I’d been a little stronger or faster, she’d still be alive.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to go to prison,” I pointed out. “She wanted you to end her.”
Josh fell silent for a moment. “What did she see in Dillon? You saw what he did to her?”
I nodded, feeling sick. “I think their connection was even more powerful than we realized.”
The hazel eyes widened. “A mating bond?” He chewed on his lip. “Why didn’t I think of that? It makes sense. When he slipped into madness, he took her too. She tried to control the beast in him, but she couldn’t.”
I gestured to the chair Sam had vacated. My limbs seemed weighted, exhaustion creeping up on me. But I sensed Josh needed to talk this through, and I owed him. Big time.
Not without reluctance, Josh sat. Or rather, draped—the man moved, as always, like he had no bones, loose jointed and supple. Keen shifted from her position and jumped off the bed to sit on Josh’s feet. He petted her absently, but I well knew Keen’s ability to soothe by mere presence.
“Tell me,” I said.
He took a few minutes to gather his thoughts. “Doc Hayek arrived not long after you left, and I debated going after you. I had just changed to wulf in the backyard when Chris arrived with Matt and Sam. In a bloody helicopter. They landed on the road.”
A helicopter. That’s how they got here so fast. “What happened to their hunt?”
“They got a few of them, but after that the hunt went south. They called it off, right before Chris got Peter’s call.”
Peter was lucky to reach his phone on the kitchen table. I didn’t even want to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t made it. Peter would be dead. Dillon had come unhinged. There were farms all around, houses full of sleeping people. My stomach twisted at the thought of that madness loose among them.
“Chris said he tried to call both our cells while they were on the way, but we didn’t answer. With everything going on, I forgot to check his message before you left. I got his last call just before they landed, but by that time you’d taken off.”
If we’d got Chris’s call before I hared off after Dillon, a few things might have been different. Like I would still have all my fleshy bits. Remember what I said about Fate being a bitch.
“Chris went ballistic when he discovered you’d gone after them. All four of us took off; the trail was easy to follow.”
“Dillon stank.” I grimaced. I could still smell his stench, even though I’d washed.
“Yeah. Chris says the madness does it.” Josh rubbed his face. “We found Chloe, unconscious. What he did to her—”
“It was awful.”
He nodded. “Chris told me to stay with her and I was just as happy to.” His gaze locked on mine. “I mean—I worried about you going after Dillon. But I didn’t think there was much I could do.”
I nodded. “They’re enforcers.”
He looked relieved that I understood. “I changed back to human and sat with Chloe, waiting for her to wake up, concerned about what would happen when she did. I expected her to shift, because we tend to when we’ve been unconscious, even if it’s just our extremities that alter. The sooner our conscious mind engages, the faster we regain control.”
Is that why Sam had been watching over me, in case the wulf ran amok?
“It didn’t alarm me when she changed. And to tell the truth, when she first attacked, I assumed she’d mistaken me for Dillon.”
Well, Dillon had black hair in wulfleng form, but Josh had been human. His dark skin and hair, I suppose, could have misled her. But his scent should have told her right off it wasn�
�t Dillon.
“She’d been brutalized,” Josh explained, as much to himself as me. “She couldn’t be thinking clearly. So I held her off and tried talking to her. But she got worse instead of better.” He leaned forward, patting Keen. “She changed, growling Dillon’s name through those wulf teeth. It made the hair stand up on my neck. So I told her you’d gone after him.” He looked at me. “I thought it would reassure her, that Dillon wouldn’t be back to do—more—to her.”
Oh, man.
“She lost it. Completely. Came at me with her teeth. I couldn’t keep her away. I’m bigger, but I couldn’t control her. She bit my throat and my wulf took over. It tore her loose and flung her.”
Josh hung his head. “She hit the tree hard. At first, I thought I’d knocked her out again, but her body twitched like she was seizing, and I realized a branch had penetrated the base of her skull. She died instantly.”
We sat in silence for a few moments while I contemplated what Josh needed to hear and what was likely the truth. Maybe they’re the same thing.
“Do you think there was anything human left in her?” I asked.
Josh raised reddened eyes to me and shook his head.
“Because it doesn’t sound like it. Sounds as though she’d become as damaged as Dillon.”
He stared at me and huffed a hoarse laugh. “Are you sure you don’t have a long-lost twin named Chris? You guys are like two peas in a pod.”
“Hey, great minds, and all that,” I said.
“He’ll wait until you’ve healed, and then he’ll tear you a new one,” Josh predicted. “He’s still mad as hell you took off after Dillon.”
“Guess I’ll take my time healing,” I said, stifling a yawn.
“That’s my cue.” Josh stood. “Hey, Liam, don’t worry about me, I’ll deal. I’ll just add her to my list of nightmares.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. “Take Keen with you. I’m not good company at the moment.”
He brightened at that, and Keen followed willingly enough, once I told her to go. I’ve gotta get him a dog, I thought, hunching beneath the covers. I drifted off to thoughts of a certain red-haired she-wulf.
15
The next time I woke, my nose told me the body in the chair lacked the attractiveness of the last person who’d kept vigil. This one might threaten my recovery. At least, according to the rumors.
“I know you’re awake,” Chris said. “You’re breathing has changed.”
I sighed and opened my eyes.
“Hello, dead person.”
My eyebrows climbed. “Right. You went to all that trouble to get me through this, only to kill me now.”
He leaned forward. Although he’d schooled his expression into a glower of disapproval, the corners of his mouth twitched. “You seemed determined to complete that job on your own.”
“Touché,” I acknowledged. “Okay, I admit it wasn’t the brightest decision I’ve ever made.”
“If you’ve figured that out, I might let you live.”
I debated pointing out that he would have done the same thing, but I liked living. “I’m sorry I was so dumb. Forgive me, oh exalted one.”
“Now you’re cruising for a bruising.” He grinned—his teeth white against his coppery skin. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been hit by a freight train,” I confessed, sitting up. To my surprise, though, things felt a lot better, especially my ribs.
He noticed my expression. “Wulves heal fast.”
“So everyone keeps telling me.” I looked at him. “Peter?”
He lost his smile. “Still in a coma.” He shook his head. “If I’d dealt with Dillon when I should have, this would never have happened.”
I considered. “That was Peter’s call. And I think Chloe’s ties to Dillon were stronger than we knew.”
“Josh told me about the mate theory. It’s possible, and it would explain Dillon’s obsession with her. They’d known each other a while. A strong mate bond takes time to form, it doesn’t happen overnight.”
“If one mate loses themselves to the wulf, would it affect the other?”
“It could. Although I’m no longer convinced that Dillon just turned wulf.” He studied me for a moment. “How did he seem to you when you found him?”
I remembered when I’d seen him in the bushes. “Huge. Scary. Rank. I’ve never smelled anything like that before. His eyes—he looked completely mad. Insane mad, not just angry. Although the rage came off him in waves.”
“See, that’s what threw everyone about Dillon. Wulfleng that succumb to the wulf don’t go insane. Their humanity vanishes, consumed by the animal side. They become the ultimate predator, only they kill indiscriminately. But they are not, as such, insane. That’s a human issue.”
“But Alec—”
“Tried to kill me because I didn’t see how his human mind had snapped. He’d embraced his wulf, but the human within couldn’t cope with what he’d done. He became a wulf driven by an insane human mind.”
“So not all wulfleng that lose it have that problem?”
“No.” Chris grimaced. “The ones I’ve put down had reverted to the wulf. They were vicious and dangerous, but no longer human.”
That was an important distinction. No wonder Alec caught Chris off guard. Suddenly, I remembered something. “Dillon spoke to me.”
Chris sat up straight in the chair. “He did? What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Liam, you die.’ A bit caveman, but you get the idea.”
“If the wulf had been in full control, he wouldn’t have been able to speak.” Chris’s brows shadowed his dark eyes. “The human was alive in there.”
A chill chased down my spine. “Well, he had a funny way of showing it.” But something occurred to me. “Could he have been sick? Maybe a brain tumor or some disease? Couldn’t we do an autopsy?”
A strange expression came over Chris’s face. “Well, see, here’s the real reason I’m sure something else is going on. Both Dillon and Chloe—their bodies have been taken.”
“Taken?” I sat up too fast. My healing ribs protested.
“Hey, easy there.” Chris rose and pushed pillows behind me while I practiced shallow breathing. “We were carrying your sorry ass here when a helicopter appeared out of nowhere—Matt ran back to see what it was up to but wasn’t fast enough. They’d taken the bodies and scrammed.”
“Didn’t you come in a helicopter?”
“Different machine. This one was black and flying without lights.”
I stared at him. “Like, military?” He nodded. “Has that ever happened before?”
“Not here.” The finality of his words and the concern in his voice made my heart stutter. He shook his head. “But my friend in Texas tells me they’ve had a few instances of bodies disappearing.”
We considered in silence for a long moment. I flung back the covers and swung my legs—with care—over the side of the bed. “Well, I need to piss. And then I think it’s time I got up. Frankly, with helicopters dropping from the sky, it sounds as though you could use my help.”
He braced me as I stood, the corners of his mouth in motion. “First, let’s see if you can walk. Then we’ll take on the helicopters.”
* * *
When the full moon arrived four days later, we arranged to greet it at Josh and Chris’s place. We spent a good part of the day moving Peter into the cage—an involved process, considering the number of tubes keeping him alive. Doc Hayek supervised the transfer, ensuring that everything stayed attached where it belonged. He informed us that he would remove them for the change, but he wanted the support for Peter right until sunset.
I had much on my mind, but none of it tortured me more than the utter stillness that Peter had become. The slashes across his throat and back had almost healed, but the older man remained in a coma and we didn’t know if he’d ever wake up.
Coma. The word took on a whole new meaning for a wulf. All wulfan and wulfleng were compelled to tu
rn on the night of the full moon. And, if the human wasn’t there to drive the show, the wulf would.
I remembered Dillon, and shuddered. Surely Peter wouldn’t go insane? I also couldn’t conceive of the wise man I knew ending up a mindless beast. As Doc Hayek adjusted the IV pole and catheter bag, I glanced over to Chris. Will he have to end Peter? Is this part of being an enforcer?
Chris returned the look. He still hadn’t forgiven me for taking off after Dillon. My assertion that he’d have done the same—yes, I’d been dumb enough to eventually go there—had only made him glower at me. I was right though. I’d caught Josh hiding a grin behind his hand and knew he was thinking it too.
Sam and Matt were up at the house with Josh prepping what they called the “after-run dinner,” which promised to be roughly the equivalent of feeding an entire football team. Apparently wulves came home hungry after chasing a full moon.
I leaned against the cage wall and stared at Peter. Until the old man opened his eyes, and Peter stood there, not just the wulf, I doubted I’d be hungry.
“Do you think the wulf will be active?” I asked the doc.
“Peter’s autonomic reflexes are good, and as near as I can tell, there’s no paralysis,” Hayek said, his face grim. “So it depends on the level of damage to the brain as to what will emerge when he changes. Best case scenario: it snaps Peter out of the coma.”
And worst-case scenario? The wulf is as comatose as Peter? Or fully active without him? I decided I didn’t want to know.
We’d shut Keen in Chris’s chain-link kennel for the evening. Chris told me that any other night of the month she could run with us. But the full moon brought too much wulf out and she’d be safer this way.
Anyway, I had enough to worry about. As I stared at the still form on the cot, my nose caught a subtle, spicy scent on the breeze drifting through the door. Sam. Apparently prepping food wasn’t top priority for a certain red-haired she-wulf.
“You worrying about the change?” she asked, moving up beside me. “I’m sure you’ll be just as pretty as before, even with the new scars.”