by Trina Lane
"At one in the morning? In a snowstorm? As a wolf?"
Nicole wasn't a suspicious person by nature, but something was making her bullshit metre ping like crazy.
"He just came off shift, and as you heard him say he actually prefers being in his wolf form. It's not unusual to see him out running no matter what the weather or time of day. Given the circumstances, this wasn't the smartest move he's ever made, but then again, Jeff isn't known for having a genius level intelligence."
"Then why is he your deputy?"
"Because he's very intuitive and has amazing reflexes. Let me go out there and see what he wants. However, I'm not going to screw up again so to be on the safe side, I want you to stay in here.” He went over to wall and took down a pistol. He checked to make sure there was a full magazine then gave it Nicole. “You know how to use this, right?"
She took the grip in her palm. The weight in her hand somehow reassured her. She flipped the safety to the off position and chambered a round with the slide. Her finger rested on the outside of the trigger guard, she pointed the barrel of the gun towards the floor then looked up at Cooper. “So are these like magical silver bullets or something?"
He smiled. “No, that silver thing is nothing but an old wives’ tale. These are plain old lead. But don't worry, they still hurt enough going in to knock us shifter off our paws. I'll open this door when everything is clear. The biometrics are set so that only Jaryn, Shaun, or myself can enter."
Cooper went over to the work station and started typing on the laser keyboard. “Hey, here's a fun fact. Did you know that the silver myth didn't even become popular in fiction until about a hundred years ago? Every culture has their superstitions about how to combat paranormal creatures. They assume we're derived from a source of evil, and therefore must have vulnerabilities that can kill or cure us. What they forget or simply don't understand is that being a shifter is nothing more the addition of an extra gene. Unlike vampirism, we're not a viral based species."
"So are you trying to tell me that nothing can kill a shifter but old age? Come on, even Superman had kryptonite."
"Oh, we can die from traumatic injury or poison or any number of things. But because we have healing abilities when we shift, it's simply harder to achieve.” He tapped the keys a few more times. “There, I've locked in the satellite's position so you can keep an eye on what's going on."
Nicole looked at the wall and saw an overhead view of her house and the land surrounding it. “Let me guess. You three aren't quite as retired as my mate led me to believe."
Cooper shrugged. “For the most part we are. We don't go out on missions anymore, but occasionally we still get a call for some consulting work. This set-up allows us to do that without leaving our homes."
Nicole shook her head and pushed Cooper towards the door. “Go."
Cooper left and the hidden door closed with the softest of clicks. Nicole didn't exactly like being locked up. It reminded her too much of her time at Adam's compound, but she refused to let the memories raise the panic in her once again. She needed something constructive to do to keep her mind settled. She turned and looked at the wall. It took her a few minutes, but she figured out how to make the image move by zooming and panning across different angles.
She didn't see any movement outside, and Jeff was no longer perched on her porch. It sure would have been nice to see inside the house and what exactly was happening. Too bad the super spy satellite didn't have x-ray vision. She snickered as she drummed her fingers on top of the desk, then jolted when the screen became a mass of colours. She tilted her head and realised that it was the shape of their home. She looked down and saw that her fingers rested on the laser keyboard.
"Oh crap, what have I done now?"
Okay, she could handle this. It appeared as though she'd somehow activated some kind of thermal infrared feature of the link. It wasn't x-ray, but at least she now had some kind of idea of what was happening in her home. The snow falling and land around the house was dark purple, the house itself a kind of greenish colour, and there were two shapes moving around—blobs really, that were somewhere between amber and pink.
"That's probably Cooper and Jeff. Heat makes brighter colours, right?” She looked around the room, which was the size of a large walk-in closet. “Who the hell is going to answer you?"
"So if that's Cooper and Jeff then I should be...” She looked at the wall again, and traced the lines of the house with her eyes. “There.” She pointed to the corner of the house. There was no pink blob where she knew Jaryn's office was located. “That's weird.” She glanced down at her hands then looked back at the image on the wall. “Clearly I exist, so where in the world is Nicole?"
Had Jaryn somehow built this secret space out of insulated materials? On the wall it didn't even look as though this room existed. There was only purple that matched the outdoors. The two pink blobs in the living room weren't moving, so Jeff and Cooper must be talking. Nicole closed her eyes and tried to open her link to Jaryn again.
"Please talk to me, Jaryn. I know something is wrong. Why can't I feel you?"
There was still no response from Jaryn, and her anxiety made it feel as though thousands of tiny firecrackers were going off under her skin. She stood and paced around the sealed room. The gun was heavy in her hand and she flipped the safety back on. If she had to use the weapon it would be easy enough to flick the switch, but as her nerves climbed higher with each passing second, it was probably safer if she wasn't tapping a deadly weapon ready to fire against her leg.
Nicole looked back towards the wall to see what Jeff and Cooper were up to. They hadn't moved. What the hell were they doing, having tea? There those two men stood, comfortable in her living room and she was stuck in this vault.
Suddenly there was an explosion of red on the wall. What the hell was that? One of the pink blobs fell down. Oh shit! It had to have been a gun shot. The red had been the blast of heat expelling from the weapon as it fired. Was it Cooper or was it Jeff? Was whoever had been shot, dead? Cooper had said shifter could heal, but the pink blob wasn't moving. If it was Jeff then obviously something had gone very wrong. If it was Cooper...oh God, if it was Cooper, would that mean that she'd be stuck in this room forever? It's not as though anyone else knew of her whereabouts. Had Cooper really given his life to protect her?
"Calm down, Nicole. There has to be a way out of here. Your mate would never have built this place without the ability to escape in mind."
She went over to where the door blended seamlessly into the wall. There had to be some type of release mechanism. She didn't see any biometric pad, key code panel, not even a stupid door knob.
"Open sesame?"
Guess voice recognition doesn't work either.
She looked back at the wall. One of the pink blobs started to move. It had crossed the space of the living room, and was headed towards the corner of the house where Jaryn's office was located.
Her eyes tracked the pink while occasionally flitting back towards the prone shape on her living room floor. Whoever was moving had reached Jaryn's office, and she breathed a sigh of relief when it walked over to the wall behind which she hid.
Yes! Cooper's come to get me out of here.
Nicole turned as she heard a faint click. She smiled while all the time preparing to chew Cooper out for leaving her in here.
"Hey, Nicky! I need you to come with me now."
Her smile evaporated as she stared at Jeff standing in the opening to Jaryn's war room, with a very large gun pointed at her.
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Chapter Twelve
* * * *
"Jaryn!” Shaun exclaimed as he ran into the room and slid to a stop beside him.
"Hey, Shaun,” Jaryn grimaced. “Can you do me a favour and get whatever is sticking out of my back the fuck out of me?"
"Where's Broyles?"
"Gone. Now if you don't mind?"
Shaun ran his hands down Jaryn's back. Jaryn felt when his
best friend's hands touched what he assumed was a knife stuck in his back and couldn't stop the shout from bursting out of his chest.
"Jesus, what kind of goat fuck did you get yourself into this time?"
Jaryn hissed as another bolt of lightning speared through his body. “You know me, I'm always out looking for a good time. You're going to have to pull it out. I can't shift with it in."
"That's going to hurt."
Jaryn growled. “No shit, Sherlock. Just...fuck...just get it over with. The goddamn thing is coated in something. I'm on fucking fire, man,” he panted.
Shaun gently wrapped his hand around the hilt of the knife. “On the count of three."
Jaryn nodded and prepared to shift the moment the knife was removed. The rapid healing he could achieve by shifting was the only way to prevent excess blood loss and stop the poison from advancing through his body.
"One...two..."
Shaun smoothly pulled the knife from Jaryn and he let out a howl that shook the rafters. He ordered his wolf to take over, but nothing happened. He tried again, nothing. Since the time of his first shift, Jaryn had never been unable to shift when he wanted to. He started to panic. Where was his wolf? He needed his wolf, now!
"Jaryn?"
He vaguely heard Shaun's voice in the dark room. Every muscle in his body tensed and streaks of lava coursed through his system. He closed his eyes and sank deep within himself.
"Help me, please."
There was no response, and as if part of his soul had been ripped from his body, Jaryn screamed in anguish. His wolf was gone.
"Alpha!"
Jaryn's body went lax against the floor. He didn't even have the energy to lift his head. Whatever Broyles had coated the knife with had killed Jaryn's wolf. His entire life Jaryn had been cognisant of who he was as a shifter, of what he'd been destined to achieve as the son of an Alpha, as a soldier, as a man. Now with his wolf gone, he was empty inside, alone.
Something pressed hard on his back and Jaryn was ripped from the litany of self-pity controlling his brain.
"What the fuck is with you man? Shift for fuck's sake!"
"Can't,” he whispered.
"What the fuck you mean, you can't? You have to."
"I...mean...I...can't!"
Even though the moonlight filtering through the wall of windows was the only source of illumination in the room, Jaryn saw Shaun blanch. His best friend stared at him with a cross between confusion, shock and pity. The last was the worst. With his wolf gone, not only had Jaryn lost a major part of his identity, but Shaun had lost his Alpha. He'd let his friend and brother in arms down.
"Don't fucking go there, man. We'll figure this out. Maybe there's an answer downstairs in that goddamn horror show of a basement."
"What are you talking about?"
"We need to get out of here, there's something I have to show you. God damn...you're bleeding like a stuck pig."
Jaryn felt trails of liquid seep down his side beneath the leather of his body suit and suddenly realised that he was cold. He never got cold. That was probably not a good sign.
Shaun grabbed Jaryn's hand and placed it on his lower back. “Press down and don't move."
The angle made it impossible for him to follow Shaun's orders to put pressure on his wound. His hand fell to the floor. He turned his head enough to see Shaun looking around the room. Shaun crossed to the dresser. He jerked open several drawers, rustled the contents then slammed the heavy wood shut time after time.
"Check the closet,” Jaryn suggested weakly.
Shaun yanked open the closet door with such force that it banged against the wall and caused Jaryn to wince, not only at the echo of sound that pulsed through his poison-ravaged body, but in sympathy for the several hundred year old walls. Shaun came back out with a shirt in hand. In a matter of seconds, his best friend fashioned a field dressing from the garment and had it secured around Jaryn's waist.
He tried to push up to his feet from his knees but almost fell back to the marble floor. Shaun's arm came around Jaryn and helped stabilise him. He lifted one of Jaryn's arms around his shoulders, and the two of them shuffled out of the master suite. Jaryn had never felt so weak in his life, and he hated it. He was not at all looking forward to walking down that grand staircase. When they got to the landing, Jaryn moaned and closed his eyes for a second.
Suck it up, you pussy.
He gripped the banister with one hand and used Shaun's body as a counter-support. If he didn't think he would fall right off the edge and plummet to floor below, Jaryn would climb up and slide down the gently curved railing just as he'd always dreamed of doing as a child.
Step by step, they slowly made their way down. The fucking poison was pumping its way deeper into his bloodstream, making Jaryn's muscles convulse and become weaker by the second. He wouldn't tell Shaun, but his vision was also getting a little spotty, and his ears rang with a chorus of bells that wouldn't stop.
They made it to the base of the stairs and Jaryn clenched Shaun's shoulder. “Wait up a second,” he gasped.
"Fuck this!” Shaun exclaimed and swung Jaryn up over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.
"What the hell? Put me down, or I swear to God I'll slip wolfsbane into your coffee for a month!"
"Shut the fuck up, Jaryn, and let me get you help before you fucking die on us. I would rather be shitting and puking my guts up than have to go home and tell your mate that you croaked because you were too fucking stubborn to admit you can't do everything on your own."
At the thought of Nicole being told the news of his death, he immediately stopped struggling. He refused to leave his mate alone in this world. He hadn't told Shaun everything Broyles had divulged, and with his wolf not responding, Jaryn had no way of opening his link to his mate to find out what was happening back home.
"I hate you right now. You know that?” he grumbled.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Shaun crossed through the foyer, and continued towards the back of the house. “It's a good thing I'm supernaturally strong because you weigh a goddamn ton,” Shaun grunted.
"You remember that time in Libya? You weren't exactly a lightweight, smart ass."
Shaun started chuckling. “I'd forgotten about that."
"Dragged your busted-up ass for two clicks till we got to the ex-fil site. You conveniently came to right as the chopper arrived."
Jaryn had no idea where Shaun was taking him, but at that moment talking to his best friend was pretty much the only thing keeping him conscious. Despite his portrayed annoyance, Jaryn tried to keep his adrenaline down because he knew it would make the poison spread faster through his system. Fuck, he hoped someone somewhere really fucking soon could tell him what they were dealing with.
Shaun started down another set of stairs. Jaryn would never admit it out loud, but he was grateful for the ride, even if Shaun's shoulder dug into his gut with each stomp down the treads.
Jaryn lifted his head and the world spun on its axis. Shaun had said something about a basement, so he figured that's where they were. However, this didn't look like any basement in his experience. As Shaun carried him through the room, he saw glass holding cells that housed everything from a few little kids to teenagers. They all stood with their noses pushed against the glass and followed his and Shaun's progress down the aisle. A multitude of computers and test tubes and equipment that Jaryn was quite frankly afraid to know the purpose of filled the room. They went through a set of double doors, and Jaryn's world tipped end over end as Shaun set him down on what appeared to be some type of gurney.
What the hell is this place?
Jaryn moaned as a spasm of pain racked his body.
Shaun swallowed hard. “Hold on, buddy. I've got you some help."
Jaryn followed Shaun's gaze and his eyes widened at the sight of four men in lab coats bound together.
Shaun went over to the corner and yanked one of the men to his feet. He dragged him over to where Jaryn lay on the gurney.
"Yo
ur boss stabbed him in the back, and now he can't find his wolf. He's going to die if he can't shift and cure himself. Fix it!"
Jaryn's vision was little more than muted halos at this point. His breathing was shallow, and he knew he was in trouble. He pictured Nicole as he'd seen her last—the early colours of dawn making her bare skin glow as she slept peacefully in their bed. He recalled the soft feel of her skin and the warmth of her body pressed up against him. He loved her. He needed her. There was nothing better in his world than a moment in time when he made Nicole smile.
A sharp pain in his ass pierced his foggy consciousness, and a few seconds later Jaryn's vision cleared and his mind was once again sharp. He tried to shift and howled in joy as the familiar change overtook him. Colours turned grey and the world seemed to shift as his body changed shape in an instant. He was a large wolf, and naturally his perspective of the environment changed as he ended up standing on all fours atop the gurney. He let out a little huff and bumped Shaun with his snout.
Thank you!
Jaryn jumped off the table and stalked over to the corner, growling. He saw the scientists cower. Jaryn imagined it was probably pretty intimidating to the humans to have a black and white furred paranormal predator heading your way with murder in his eyes.
"Jaryn, don't. We need them."
He turned his head to look behind him and saw Shaun standing next to another one of the scientists. The man had saved him, had saved Jaryn's wolf. He figured that one could be allowed to live. He looked back at the remaining three in the corner and let out another growl. The scent of their fear permeated the air, and Jaryn was perversely proud.
He turned around and walked back towards Shaun. By the time he reached his best friend, he was human again. Shaun handed him some scrubs that were lying on a shelf nearby and Jaryn quickly dressed.
"Thank you."
Shaun smiled. “It's all good."
Jaryn nodded to his Beta then turned to the thin man beside him. “Now, who are you? Tell me what the fuck just happened, and what's going on here."