by Laura Taylor
Good God, what had she got herself into this time?
CHAPTER SIX
Three storeys below ground, beneath one of the Noturatii’s shopfronts – businesses that were set up to look legitimate but were actually used to channel funds and resources into the organisation’s real purpose – Jacob Green stood in the centre of the lab, taking his time as he observed the macabre view. Body parts, blood, the scientists lying in unnatural positions with throats torn out, necks broken. The smell was horrendous, but he simply ignored it, breathing through his mouth, and shot a disdainful glare at the scientists loitering in the doorway fighting not to vomit.
“And you just discovered this this morning?” he asked.
One of the scientists took a minute step forward, then retreated again when he saw he was getting blood on his shoes. “Yes, sir. Dr Andrews failed to send his usual report to headquarters last night, and he wasn’t answering his phone, so we came to investigate this morning.”
“You waited a whole twelve hours, and then came and started poking around yourself, instead of, I don’t know, calling security?” Sarcasm was thick in his voice.
“Uh… perhaps we could have handled it better,” the man admitted quietly, seeing Jacob’s glare deepen.
“What’s your name?” Jacob asked, not because he cared, but because he wanted to know who he was going to be yelling at later.
“Phil,” the scientist said. “Philip O’Brian.”
Footsteps coming down the hall got their attention, and moments later, Jack Miller stepped into the doorway, one of the security guards Jacob had brought with him. Unlike the scientists, his own crew were alert and competent, not prone to making mistakes or overlooking details.
“Sir?” Miller said. “The security videos are gone. Someone broke into the server room and took the discs, as well as the hard drive out of the server. Left a fucking mess in the process.”
Jacob turned back to the operating table. The metal cuffs that had held the research subjects on the table were closed, locked… “What about written notes? Backups from the computers?”
“There’s a clipboard in the research room. Andrews’ last entry was yesterday, 11:50 a.m. He said he thought they were on the verge of a breakthrough, and there’s a couple of pages of gibberish – one of the geeks could probably decipher it,” Miller added, jerking his thumb at the scientists, “but he talks a lot about subject eleven.”
“He was working on a subject at the time of the attack?”
“That’s the way it appears.”
Jacob looked at the restraints again. The ones for the subject’s wrists had faint red marks on the edge. Like someone had been straining against them. He tested the cuffs. Locked. “What do we know about this subject?”
A woman stepped forward from the small group of nervous, clipboard carrying intellectuals. “I had a look through Dr Andrews’ notes while we were waiting for you to arrive,” she volunteered, sounding a lot less nervous than the others in the group. “She was female. Late twenties. Chosen at random, no known medical difficulties, no distinctive physical features. There’d be a full profile on her somewhere, but we’d have to get tech support to hack the laptop. All the files are encrypted.”
Jacob gave the woman a second look. She was young, maybe in her mid-twenties, but sharp. Confident. And she looked none too bothered by the smell. “Name?”
“Melissa Hunter.”
Jacob repeated the name in his head, sure he was going to need it later. She had potential, this girl.
He looked down at the body at his feet, bending closer to examine the neck. “Tell me, Miller – these wounds don’t look like ordinary knife wounds to me. What would you say could have caused them?”
Miller, like all his guards, had been chosen because of a very particular skill set. He was ex-military, a recreational hunter, and had an eye for detail. He stepped closer, taking his time to examine the raw wound. “There are multiple puncture wounds, and the flesh was ripped rather than cut. I’m no forensic expert, but I’d say a wolf doing this would be within the realm of possibility.”
Jacob turned to Melissa, completely ignoring the more senior Phil. “I want a full report on whatever notes Andrews took. In plain English. Miller, get that computer back to headquarters so someone can start decrypting it. And the rest of you, start cleaning this mess up. I want the bodies burned and the lab operational again by the end of tomorrow.”
It was morning. Breakfast had just been delivered, and Dee sat alone on her bed, poking the bits of toast around the plate. It had taken her hours to get to sleep last night, and then nightmares had plagued her, with dreams of labs and knives and blood disturbing her sleep again and again.
Why the hell had she let herself be locked up again, she wondered, not for the first time. It had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, the threat of accidentally killing more people a clever manipulation by Baron to get her to cooperate. But she shouldn’t have listened. She should have run, fought, at least made an attempt at freedom, rather than just walking placidly into her own prison.
She’d spent the night coming up with outlandish schemes to get a message to her family, or to the police, each plan more ridiculous than the last. Her mother would be a mess. Her younger sister would be trying to hold things together, demanding that the police go and search for her, or fingerprint her entire apartment. Her father… she assumed he would have been told by now. But he lived in America, he and her mother having divorced when Dee was nineteen, and he’d married an American woman and moved away. He’d be worried, of course, but she wasn’t sure he’d come all the way to England just to hear the police tell them they had no new leads.
Sometime around 5 a.m. her mind had finally tired of chasing ill-fated escape plans and had turned itself to another puzzle – her escape from the lab. She’d let the scenes play out in her head again, remembering the wolf’s insistence that it could escape, that it could kill those who threatened her, and she lingered over its realisation that another man in the room was like her. A shape shifter. A wolf.
A gnawing curiosity now demanded to know who he was.
Her first conclusion was that it couldn’t be anyone from this house. Baron had had no idea who she was or where she’d come from, and if another man in the house had rescued her, surely Baron would have heard about it.
But then again, Baron and his white van had been there just minutes after she’d fled the lab, which seemed a rather heavy coincidence if they weren’t involved. So just how many shifters were there in England?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening, and she looked up, expecting to see Silas coming back again. He’d been in a foul mood when he’d delivered her breakfast, barely speaking two words to her, and she’d figured he was the resident security thug, charged with keeping her under control.
But it was a very different person who walked through the door this time. Dee sat up straighter when she saw the woman, a skinny girl who looked no taller than Dee herself, and several years younger. She approached Dee almost diffidently, clutching a worn teddy bear to her chest.
“Hey,” the woman said. “How are you doing?” She noticed the tray still sitting on Dee’s knees, the food barely touched. “Oh, I’m sorry. Caroline sent me down to collect your tray, but if you’re still eating…”
“No, I’m done,” Dee said, standing up and setting the tray back by the slot in the wall that was used to pass things in and out of the cell. “I’m not hungry.”
The woman gave her a sympathetic look. “Yeah, you must be a bit turned about by all this.” Then she brightened. “Well, here.” She opened the slot and took out the tray, then pushed the bear through the gap. “This is Frank. He’ll keep you company. I always sleep better with a bear beside me.”
It was an odd gesture, and Dee immediately rethought her opinion on the girl’s age. Perhaps she was younger than she looked… but she accepted the bear with a forced smile and gave him a hug before setting him on
her pillow. “Thanks. That’s really sweet.”
The girl grinned, looking altogether pleased. “I’m Skip,” she said. The name sounded vaguely familiar, and Dee realised this was the girl who had lent her the clothes. She’d expected someone larger – the clothes hung on Dee, at least two sizes too big – but then again, Skip’s own clothes were too large. She wore a baggy, bright pink t-shirt with the word ‘Princess’ emblazoned in silver glitter and a pair of shorts that made her legs look like sticks. Her hair was cropped as short as a boy’s, but she wore a variety of chunky plastic jewellery – a turquoise necklace of thick beads, a bracelet of large plastic ‘diamonds’, and a bright blue ring on her thumb. The whole effect was rather disconcerting, and Dee tried to think of a polite way to comment on it.
“That’s pretty jewellery,” she hedged. But far from the pleased smile she was expecting, or even shy embarrassment at the compliment, Skip suddenly took on a hunted look. She glanced around the room as if looking for somewhere to escape, and fingered the necklace.
“I like it,” she said defensively.
“Yeah. So do I,” Dee said, not sure what she’d said wrong.
“It’s mine.”
“Okay.” This was getting weird. Time to change the subject. “You lent me the clothes, right? Thanks.”
Skip brightened right away. “Hey, no problem. Always happy to help. Baron said you got here wearing hospital clothes. But he says you weren’t in a hospital, cos I was all worried you’d been hurt, but he said nope, no hospital. And then I figured you’d want some real clothes to wear, and if you stay and don’t go crazy then Baron will buy you some of your own. I could go shopping for you if you like. Not, like, to a real shop, but I can buy anything online and get it delivered, and picking out some stuff for you would be real fun.”
Ignoring the ‘if you don’t go crazy’ part, Dee forced a smile. “That would be great. Thanks.”
Skip picked up the tray and sashayed towards the door. “I gotta go, but Baron will be down in a bit. Hey!” She stopped suddenly, turning back towards Dee with an excited expression. “Can I see your wolf? Tank said she’s beautiful and it’s not often a newbie has a good-looking wolf – most of them are all bedraggled and scruffy until they get the hang of shifting, but he said yours was totally sleek.”
And there it was, the stark reminder that, far from a normal girl with an odd fashion sense, the woman standing in front of her was a… a wolf. A wild animal in a cute, teenage package.
“I… I can’t shift,” Dee said, stumbling over the words as emotions swamped her yet again. “I haven’t learned how yet.”
Skip pouted. “Oh. That’s too bad. Well, another time then.” She bounced out of the room, managing not to spill the breakfast tray in the process, leaving Dee more confused and with more questions than ever before.
It was not quite half an hour later when the door opened again and, as promised, Baron let himself through. He came to stand at the front of the cage, giving Dee a thorough look-over. “Didn’t sleep, huh?”
“Not much, no.”
Baron nodded thoughtfully, and Dee imagined for a moment that he might be feeling sorry for her. “Well, let’s get started anyway,” he said. “First thing you need to do to get out of this cage is learn to control your wolf.”
“Um, on that note,” Dee interrupted, as Baron fetched a chair from beside the wall and brought it over. “Rather than learning to control it, I’d much rather just have it removed, if I could?” Baron had said yesterday that being converted was voluntary. So, she reasoned, if she hadn’t volunteered, then having the procedure reversed wasn’t an unreasonable request.
Baron stared at her silently for a long moment. “To my knowledge,” he said slowly, “there isn’t a way to remove it.”
“What? But there must be something you could at least try-”
“Our society has existed for hundreds of years. And no one has ever found a way to achieve a separation once the conversion has taken place. It’s been attempted,” he went on as Dee started to protest. “Every single experiment has ultimately resulted in the death of the shifter.”
Dee’s heart sank. “But I can’t live like this. I can’t sleep. It kept me awake all night. It hates this cell, it wants to go outside, it hates the food you brought.” She pointed to the bowl of chopped meat sitting on the floor in a silver dog dish. “How am I supposed to live with an animal that wants nothing to do with me?”
Baron frowned at her. “You’re talking as if you and the wolf are two different people.”
Dee was taken aback by that. “We are.”
“No, you’re not. You’re one person, one mind, with two bodies. You are the wolf, Dee.”
“Then why does she know things that I know nothing about? Why does she want things that would never occur to me? How does she have so much control over me – my body, my sleep, the shifting – if she’s just another part of me?”
Baron took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Dee, you need to merge with the wolf. You need to accept it and embrace that part of yourself, or you’ll go mad-”
“I do accept her!” Dee protested. “Or at least, I’m trying to. She’s the one not accepting me. I offered to let her come out and eat dinner last night, but she refused. I offered to let her sleep on the dog bed, but she just snarled at me!”
Baron made a sound of disquieted confusion, and Dee felt her stomach roll. “Is that bad? Does that mean I’m going to go crazy?”
“I’m really not sure. Up until yesterday, I’d have sworn black and blue that it was impossible to force a conversion on a person, but it seems it was done to you, so maybe we should just play this by ear.” That didn’t sound promising.
“Okay,” she agreed, because really, what else could she do?
“Are there any other questions you have before we start?”
“Um, yes, actually.” There were about a thousand, but one in particular was most urgent in her mind. “How many shifters are there in England?” If there was another pack in London, maybe she could start figuring out who had rescued her from the lab.
“There are two packs,” Baron said, matter-of-factly. “Us – eighteen of us here – and a group to the north-east called the Grey Watch. We don’t tend to associate with them.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t like us, and we don’t like them. They’re extremely reclusive. They live in the forest and spend ninety per cent of their time in wolf form. Some days I think they’d like to forget they’re human at all.”
Dee thought that through. “So they don’t spend much time in cities then?”
Baron snorted. “Hardly. Closest they come is dropping into the local village now and then for supplies. They’d rather shoot themselves in the leg before setting foot in a city.”
If anything, the news made Dee even more confused. It didn’t sound like anyone from this Grey Watch would have come to London, much less have been poking around inside a warehouse lab. But if Baron was right, then that meant whoever had rescued her came from this house. “Are there no other lone wolves, excuse the pun? People who don’t want to join either pack?”
“No. Since the late 1400s, there have only been the two groups. This estate is associated with a larger group known as Il Trosa, or ‘The Pack’, that spreads all the way across Europe and into Russia. The Grey Watch have their own rules, but they’re just as careful to stay hidden. We’re both very careful with our recruits, and dissenters are not tolerated.”
Interesting. Dee’s immediate conclusion from that stark statement was that… wow… that someone from this house had broken into the lab and saved her, and that Baron didn’t know about it. She resolved to keep her mouth shut – at least until she could learn more about what was going on. If her rescuer wanted secrecy, they must have a good reason, and Dee didn’t want to inadvertently stab him in the back when he’d risked his life to save hers.
“Anything else?” Baron asked, and Dee meekly shook her head. “All rig
ht. Come and sit down on the floor then,” he said. “Let’s see if we can get your wolf to come out and play.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Three days later, Dee was reaching the end of her patience. She was sitting cross-legged on a cushion, trying to concentrate on Baron’s instructions as he sat outside her cage. “Imagine your limbs changing,” he was saying, his tone low and hypnotic. “Your legs getting shorter. Your feet and hands getting smaller.”
Dee concentrated, trying to imagine the shift in her own limbs, trying to reach inward to the wolf, asking her to help. But the wolf remained persistently silent, a disdainful huff the only response Dee had got from her all morning.
In the past three days, Baron and Caroline had spent hours with her, teaching, meditating, and explaining some of the rules of the Den. Dee had tried to remain upbeat in that time, but it was getting hard to stay positive when, by all measures, she’d made absolutely no progress. Baron had even said at one point that if he hadn’t seen her shift personally, he would have doubted she had a wolf at all.
In the meantime, she’d tried talking to her wolf, asking about her refusal to come out to eat or meet Baron, but she’d been met with silence or disdain at every turn. But one question she’d asked again and again was what had happened during their shift in the lab? What did the wolf know about their rescuer? Had they met him somewhere in this house?
The replies had ranged from unhelpful to downright baffling. Emotions and scents were the language of the wolf, and she’d bombarded Dee with an onslaught of fear, respect, delight and anticipation, combined with a host of smells that made little sense to Dee. There had been the scent of blood, fairly obvious after the massacre in the lab, then a smell that Dee could only describe as laundry detergent, then one that smelled like rain, and finally a scent that was undeniably male, sweat and soap mixed with a faint trace of cologne, but nothing that Dee could link to any particular person.