by Lisa Childs
“Oh, God…” She had been hurt that badly? That she was disfigured? Hanging on to life? Pain clutched his heart, making it feel as if it was being ripped apart. “Not Kate…”
The door opened to that sterile stainless-steel clinic—except it didn’t look very sterile. Blood had spilled onto the cement floor and sprayed across some of the stainless-steel walls and surfaces. Panic and pain nearly paralyzed him, but he walked inside toward where the doctor bent over his operating table.
Why wasn’t he concerned about keeping the place sterile now? Was it too late for Kate?
“Is she…?” He cleared his throat. “Is she…?”
Ben whirled toward him, a scalpel held like a weapon. “Sebastian, you’re sure…?”
“He didn’t do this.”
“A werewolf is responsible for her wounds,” Ben said. “The marks on her skin indicate teeth bigger than canine.”
“Marks on her skin?” He moved closer to peer over the doctor’s shoulder. She lay back, her lashes dark against her pale cheeks. Her sweater was torn and bloodstained but only the sleeves were pushed up to reveal stitched wounds on both forearms.
“She fought him off,” Ben said, his voice catching with emotion and pride, “she fought until someone or something scared him away.”
Of course she fought him off. She was Kate. A human woman against a supernatural beast. The beast hadn’t stood a chance. Tears of relief and pride stung his eyes, but he blinked them back. “She’s going to be okay?”
“For now,” Ben said. “But she was awake when Sebastian brought her here. I don’t know if she’ll forget this time.”
But he’d drugged her again. That must have been why she was unconscious—that or fear over what she’d seen. God, she must have been so scared.
“And she won’t believe that it was a dog again.” Ben sighed. “Hell, she didn’t really believe it last time.”
So even though the attack hadn’t killed her, what she had learned because of it would. “Damn it…”
“Warrick,” the doctor began with the tone he probably used to deliver bad news to his patients, “I don’t think it was him, either.”
Warrick had been right. Reagan had gotten to them with his manipulations and mind games. No one knew better than he did just how damn charming Reagan could be. “But you had no problem thinking it was me—that I would do this to her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hell, it doesn’t really matter that it wasn’t me,” he said, his hand shaking as he reached out to her, skimming his fingers down her pale cheek. How much blood had she lost? Not as much as she would have had the beast gotten to her throat. He shuddered at the thought of Kate being brutalized like that homeless man in the alley. “I’m still responsible.”
Sebastian clasped his shoulder with belated support. “It’s not your fault.”
“You warned me what could happen to someone I came to care about…” He could admit to caring about her but his feelings went so much deeper than caring. Reagan had to know—that was why he had attacked her. She had fought him off, but she wasn’t safe.
While she wasn’t dead yet, she would be soon. Because of him.
*
Distress clutched at Kate. But it wasn’t hers. She fought her way through the grogginess that clouded her mind and paralyzed her muscles. That concern tugged at her, reaching her through the mist of unconsciousness. She felt trembling fingers on her cheek. And she opened her eyes to his face.
His topaz eyes were filled with fear and regret and that concern she’d felt.
“Shh,” she murmured. “I’m okay…”
His sexy mouth curved into a slight grin. “Of course you are. You’re fierce.”
She glanced around him, at Ben’s and Sebastian’s worried faces. And at the stainless-steel walls of the strange room. Blood spattered them. It wasn’t her blood. Just what the hell had gone on inside this room?
She knew where it was. That door at the back of Club Underground that was always locked and that Sebastian had once claimed there was no key to anymore because it had been sealed off. He’d said that it had once led to the sewers. Of course he’d said nothing about the room in between and what the hell went on in that room.
“Go back to sleep,” Warrick urged her. “You need your rest to recover.”
She shook her head, her hair moving against the cool surface of the metal table on which she lay. “No. I need to go find that thing…”
All hair and muscle and teeth.
The concern fled Warrick’s topaz eyes; rage replaced it with that murderous intent she had seen the first time she’d bumped into him. “I will take care of that,” he vowed. “Once and for all.”
“No.” Ignoring the dull throbbing in her arms, she reached out to him. “It wasn’t that man. It wasn’t a man that attacked me.” She shuddered as she remembered the growling and snarling and the snapping teeth of that horrific beast as it had attacked her, tearing at her flesh. “It wasn’t even a dog. It was a monster.”
He leaned down and kissed her forehead and promised her, “I will take care of it. I’m going to make sure it never hurts you again.”
When he tried to straighten up, she clutched at his shoulders, holding him close. “Don’t go after it. That thing will tear you up.”
That intense gleam hardened his topaz eyes, and he shook his head. “No. It won’t.”
The animal in the alley, the one she’d shot had had those same eyes. And it had not snarled or snapped at her. The one outside her apartment had been different—its gaze pale and cold. Were those beasts really animals?
Or…
“Warrick, what’s really going on?” she asked. “What are you really?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he stepped back—free of her weak hold on him. “I’m so sorry you got mixed up in the middle of something that has nothing to do with you.”
She lifted her bandaged arms again; they felt heavy, awkward and, fortunately, almost numb but for that dull throb. “It has everything to do with me now.”
If only she’d had her gun on her…she could have shot the monster. Next time she would make certain she was armed. Hell, she would make certain that she was always armed.
Warrick shook his head again. “No. You need to forget about it. Forget about all of it.”
“All of what?” she asked. Just what the hell was going on and why was she the only one who didn’t know?
He gestured around them. “This place.”
She glanced at the blood-spattered walls and shuddered. She wouldn’t mind forgetting this room. But now that she knew about it…
“Forget what happened tonight,” he continued, and a muscle twitched along his tightly clenched jaw as he looked down at her heavily bandaged arms.
If only she could…
She could still hear the echo of that sinister growl and the snapping of those teeth…
She flinched at the too-recent memory of the pain those teeth had inflicted. Whatever drugs Ben had given her had dulled the present pain, but she wouldn’t forget what it had initially felt like. She couldn’t—no matter what Warrick wanted.
“And most of all, Kate,” he continued, his deep voice even gruffer with emotion and finality, “forget about me.”
“No,” she murmured as she suddenly felt weaker—dazed. Maybe she’d lost a lot of blood. She couldn’t remember anything but the initial attack. “Don’t go…”
But he stepped away from her—only a short distance but it felt like miles already. He had already emotionally left her.
“Protect her,” he told her friends, who were apparently his friends, too, since they cautioned him to be careful as he left the room and stepped through the door that led to the tunnels to the sewer. They knew he was going off to commit murder, yet they didn’t seem to care that he was going to become a killer. Or was he already one?
The grogginess crept back into her brain, probably along with whatever drug Ben shot into her IV, and consciousness
began to slip away from her.
Maybe Warrick was right; maybe she needed to forget it all but most especially him.
*
He had disappeared. For Warrick’s sake. So he didn’t do something crazy—something he would regret when he learned the truth.
Reagan only hoped he didn’t learn the truth too late. He knew the detective had been hurt. Reagan had been too late to save her from any harm. But her attacker hadn’t meant to kill her. Only to hurt her.
And infuriate Warrick.
The plan had obviously worked because Reagan could feel his brother’s rage. It echoed inside his own heart when he saw his cabin—the windows and doors secured with heavy chains and padlocks. Even if Sylvia had wanted to leave, she would have been unable.
And she had no doubt wanted to leave—especially after she’d learned what he had done. Unless she had been waiting for Warrick to reclaim her…
Did she regret choosing him over his brother? Did she think Warrick was the better man?
Reagan pushed his hand through his already disheveled hair. Hell, Warrick was the better man. He wouldn’t have put her in the situation that Reagan had.
She wouldn’t have become a prisoner because of his brother. He lingered in the shadows of the woods surrounding his cabin. He could have broken the links in those chains; they weren’t too heavy for him.
But it wasn’t just the locks holding her inside; there were guards, too, patrolling the perimeter of the cabin. They were guys he knew with whom he’d grown up. But he knew that they would kill him on sight—and shortly after that, Sylvia would probably die, too.
He couldn’t see her, couldn’t touch her, couldn’t talk to her and try to make her understand why he’d done what he had. He had to try to get through to Warrick, though—before it was too late for all of them.
*
Sylvia awakened with a gasp. But it wasn’t because the babies had kicked her. For once they were sleeping, too. She awakened because she could feel him.
He wasn’t just alive. He was close. Heat rushed through her, warming her blood and making her skin tingle with awareness—that awareness she’d felt the moment they’d met.
Had he come to rescue her?
But the locks were still at the doors and windows, the guards still pacing around outside. It was too dangerous. If he made his presence known, they would kill him. And her…
The babies shifted now, coming awake with kicks and punches. They were fighters—like their father. But he was only one; he couldn’t fend off the entire pack.
They would kill him if they saw him, if he stayed. “Please leave…” she murmured even though she didn’t expect him to hear her.
But then her blood chilled as the heat rushed away. He was gone. Had he heard her? Had he left?
Or had the guards discovered him and killed him? She gasped again—this time in pain and fear.
*
“I need your help,” he told Uncle Stefan. Fortunately his uncle was such a good leader for the pack that he didn’t have to be in St. James to rule. The pack respected him enough to follow his rules even when he wasn’t present. “I need another weapon. And more silver bullets.”
His uncle glanced around the vault, as if hoping to find the stolen gun. “It’s gone?”
“He took it.”
“Then you are at great risk,” Uncle Stefan warned him. “He could kill you.”
He could have, but he hadn’t. Instead, the coward had gone after Kate. “I don’t care what he does to me. I just have to stop him.” Not only had he lost the gun but he also had to admit, “I’ve lost his scent. I can’t pick up his trail.”
“Maybe he’s left Zantrax.”
Remembering Kate’s wounds, he shook his head. “No. He’s still here. And close. You have to get me the gun and bullets so that when I pick up his trail again, I will be ready for him. I have to end this now.”
“You needed to end this the day he killed your father,” Uncle Stefan remarked. “Before that even, the day he stole your fiancée.”
But if Reagan hadn’t stole Sylvia away, Warrick would have never met Kate. He felt no rage over that anymore—only disappointment and pain over the betrayal of the people he’d thought he could trust the most.
“Reagan is my brother,” he remarked. “Why does he hate me so much?”
“Just because you share blood doesn’t mean you share anything else,” Uncle Stefan replied. “Your father and I had very little in common.”
“But you didn’t try to destroy him,” Warrick said. If anything, it might have been the reverse, but Uncle Stefan had always been patient and understanding with his older brother’s leadership.
“Your father was invincible.”
As he remembered the blood pumping from the hole in his father’s heart, Warrick sadly shook his head. “No. He wasn’t.” But like Uncle, he had once believed the same of his father—that nothing and no one would ever hurt him—least of all Reagan.
Uncle Stefan uttered a weary-sounding sigh. “He never considered Reagan a threat, so he didn’t see the ultimate betrayal coming.”
“Neither did I,” Warrick admitted, “until he took away Sylvia. But even then I never suspected what he would do to our father.”
He would forever remember the image of his brother, armed with a gun, standing over their father’s dead body. Reagan hadn’t denied firing the silver bullet into the old man’s heart. He hadn’t been upset at all—not guilt-ridden, just resigned and almost relieved.
“I guess he could not wait for his turn to become leader,” Uncle Stefan mused.
“He said he did it because of me,” Warrick shared. He shuddered. “But that makes no sense. How could anything he’s done be for my benefit?” But taking away Sylvia had led Warrick to Kate and a deep and genuine connection.
“I think Reagan feels threatened by you,” Uncle Stefan replied. “Even though you are the younger brother, you were always more alpha than he was. You were more capable of leading the pack than he would ever be.”
“Were?”
“Until you avenge the loss of your fiancée and your father’s death, you cannot reclaim your rightful place in the pack. A man without honor cannot lead.”
A man without honor could not live, either. That was one of his father’s rules.
“You need to take back your honor,” Uncle Stefan urged him.
“My honor be damned.” He cared nothing for it anymore. Or for revenge. He cared only for Kate. “I just want Reagan stopped. Now, before he takes away anything else I care about.”
“What do you care about, nephew?” Uncle Stefan asked, his pale gray eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Or should I ask whom?”
“Someone special,” Warrick said, his heart aching over just how special she was. “Someone I respect.”
“Someone you love?”
“Someone I don’t want getting hurt because of me.” Not anymore. She had already been terrorized and hurt because of him.
Uncle Stefan nodded, accepting his explanation. “I will help you stop Reagan. Permanently.”
“So you can get me another gun and more silver bullets?”
Uncle nodded again. “Yes. I will make sure you are prepared when you find him again.”
“I better find him soon.” Before Kate was hurt again.
Until they found Reagan, Warrick would have to stick close to her. To protect her—not just from his brother but perhaps from the whole Secret Vampire Society, as well. Now that she knew about the secret surgery room and had seen all the blood, the vampires would consider her a threat, too.
She was in so much danger.
While she knew that the beast that had attacked her was more than a dog, she had no idea what other creatures lived with her in Zantrax.
Chapter 11
“Are you sure it’s okay for you to come home?” Paige asked as she flipped on the lights in Kate’s apartment.
“I couldn’t stay in that place any longer.” Kate shuddered as she p
icked some newspapers off the couch so she could sit down. The walk up those four flights had drained what little energy she’d had left after last night. “What the hell kind of clinic is that? And what’s it doing in the back of Club Underground?”
“There are some things that can’t be explained,” Paige evaded the question. She plumped up a pillow and shoved it behind Kate’s back. “Some secrets that are safer kept.”
“There are too many secrets and too many unusual things happening in Zantrax.” The most unusual ones had happened since Warrick had turned up in the city. “I need to know what you know, Paige. I’m your friend. You can tell me.”
Paige settled onto the couch beside her. “It’s because you’re my friend that I can’t tell you.”
Tears of frustration threatened, but Kate blinked them back—too stubborn and too proud to shed them. She had been through too much to cry now, and she was afraid that once she started she might not stop. “I hate that everyone I care about is keeping secrets from me.”
“Everyone?” Paige asked, arching a blond brow. “Who is everyone?”
“You…”
“And who else?” Paige persisted. “The man from the bar—the one you denied knowing? It was obvious he knew you—the way he kept staring at you.”
Undressing her with his eyes because he knew exactly what she looked like with no clothes.
Kate sighed. “That’s not why you know about him. What have Sebastian and Ben told you about Warrick?”
“That you’re involved with him,” Paige said, her blue eyes filling with concern. “And that you shouldn’t be.”
“I shouldn’t,” Kate agreed, “because he’s keeping secrets from me. Dangerous secrets.” Incredible secrets because what she had considered in the clinic wasn’t even possible; the beast that had attacked her hadn’t been human. Ever. It couldn’t have been.
“It sounds like getting involved with him has put you at risk,” Paige said.
“I put myself at risk every day,” Kate said, “when I do my job. And even when I’m off duty, I’m still on the job.” That was how she had met him in the first place—trying to stop him from committing murder.