by Kira Stone
The pregnant tension lasted until the slam of another car door warned him that he had someone new to contend with. This place was damn hard to find by the mostly overgrown, gravel road that twisted through the Louisiana swamp. He wondered how it was that so many people suddenly knew how to locate him.
The man who strode into the small clearing was quite a surprise. He looked more like a Scottish laird walking about his highland hills than the swamp-happy Cajun type Chase had seen in the area. His fair skin had been burned a hundred times over, turning it to a weather beaten tan wherever it showed through the thin but extensive layer of clothing. His thick, long brown hair was wildly mussed. He had on hiking boots and a belt that carried a bunch of pockets and gadgets.
“Martin, what brings you out this way?” the sheriff said in greeting.
“Hello, Rex. Thought I’d stop in and give my new neighbor a hand.”
Martin wasn’t the most handsome creature under the sun, but he was certainly worth a second look. Chase had never seen him before in his life. How could he have possibly known that Chase had moved in?
He noticed the sheriff wasn’t entirely glad to see him. It was another subtle reaction, just a shift in his stance, a tilt of his head. There was also something wolf-like about Martin. Though he wasn’t on particularly friendly terms with wolves these days at least he knew they didn’t mask their feelings. Chase’s gut quickly decided this guy was more trustworthy than the law dog.
“Setting traps?” Rex asked.
Martin replied, “Doin’ a little educatin’. City boy like him needs to learn his ass from his elbow if he’s turning swamp rat.”
The sheriff looked from one to the other, and seemed to decide that backing off for now was better than sticking around. “Stay out of trouble, boys. I’ve got a fresh gator steak at home, waiting for the grill. I don’t want to have to miss out on that fine eatin’ because you’ve gone and done something stupid.”
Rex tipped his hat in a gentlemanly fashion as he walked back to his SUV. Chase waited until the engine started to fade before he turned to his other unexpected guest. “Now, Martin, suppose you tell me just who the hell you are and why you’re really here.”
“Martin Pejeau. And what might your name be?”
“Chase. Michael Chase.” He used it before, so he might as well be consistent. “That still doesn’t answer my question about why you’re here.”
“I heard the sheriff was paying you a visit, thought I might be able to help.”
“What makes you think I can’t handle the sheriff on my own? Why do you even care what happens to me?”
“You and I have a lot to talk about, and I thought saving your ass would be a good way to start. After all, trust has to start somewhere.”
“I don’t trust you any more than I trust him. You just —” smell better, he almost said. He clamped his teeth shut in self-disgust. Martin smelled like the wolf. There was nothing good about that.
“Regardless, I must ask you to come with me.”
“Hell no.” This day was getting just a little too weird. He needed peace and quiet to sort it all out.
“You must.”
Chase put his hands on his hips, trying to look defiant. He suspected the fact that he remained naked while Martin was fully dressed made the gesture far less effective than he’d hoped. “Give me one good reason why I should.”
From one of the pockets on his belt, he extracted a bloody rag and held it out. “You have a debt to pay.”
“I don’t owe you shit. I don’t even know you.”
“Not me, but you did injure someone today.”
The wolf. The creature’s howl of pain still echoed in his mind. That’s why Martin smelled so familiar. He’d been carrying part of the wolf with him. One mystery solved, but another remained. Who was Martin, and why did he insist that Chase had to leave with him?
And when had his sense of smell become so acute that he could identify individual scents more than ten feet away?
“What are you? A park ranger or something? You going to arrest me for cruelty to animals?”
Martin shook his head. “I’m a doctor, of sorts. I could really use your help with the wolf. He’s hurt pretty bad.”
“Why do you think I had something to do with it?” And why do you think I’ll care?
A genuine smile crossed his face. “He told me.”
“You’re crazier than I am.” Chase turned his back on the man and walked into his hut. It was beginning to look like he was going to have to abandon it and find somewhere else to live. Too many people knew where to find him. Even one was too many, especially when that one was the sheriff. Jackie would corner the man eventually and he could lead her right to his door. Chase didn’t want that to happen. He loved his sister, but he refused to let her bail him out of trouble this time. His mood was too unpredictable, his mind too unstable. He would not put Jackie’s life at risk. It was the very least he could do for her.
But what alternative did he have? Hike deeper into the swamp? His instincts had guided him well so far, but could he really live out there on his own? Would he lose what little humanity remained if he further immersed himself in the animal world?
The prospect didn’t bother him nearly as much as it should.
And that scared him.
Scared him enough to consider a third possibility. Going with Martin. He didn’t believe for a second that the wolf had told Martin where to find him. Chances were the man had followed a trail of blood or something, then made a few logical deductions that proved to be right. It was entirely possible the good doctor was lying about the wolf’s injuries altogether.
Remember the smell. Okay, so the wolf had been around him recently. There were plenty of explanations for that. And it didn’t matter where he went, so long as it wasn’t a place his sister was likely to find him. If Martin could assure him of that, maybe there was room to work out a deal.
After putting on his shorts and T-shirt and pocketing the few items Jackie could definitively link to him, Chase went back outside to find Martin patiently waiting. “Are you ready to go then?” he asked, as if the conclusion was inevitable.
“That depends on where you plan to take me.”
“My lab.”
“You keep the wolf in a lab?”
Martin laughed. “Are you kidding? I don’t ‘keep’ him at all. But right now he needs me. And you. So he’s waiting for us, at my lab.”
“You talk about him like you know him. As if he has a personality.”
“Yes, I do and, believe me, he does.”
Chase found himself liking the doctor despite his lack of full disclosure about his motives for wanting Chase’s company. “Where is this place?”
Martin smiled again, a bit sheepish this time. “I won’t tell you that unless you agree to go with me. It probably wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway, since you’re not from around here. I can’t even promise to keep you safe. Casper is a wild creature, and there’s a chance you’ll come to harm while you’re around him.”
Chase surmised he was speaking from experience. He wondered just how close he and this wolf were, and if that’s where the wild animal had developed a taste for manflesh. Jealousy flared hot and bright, and Chase decided he was no longer interested in talking about the wolf. “I’m not asking for promises. I’m just looking for a place to lay low for a while, a place where no one can find me.”
“Now that I can promise you.”
Chapter 6 — Going Somewhere?
Chase doubted the wisdom of his decision once a second since he slid into the jeep next to Martin. He was even more skeptical when Martin pulled up in front of an old cemetery. “You do experiments on corpses?”
“Yeah, I do.” Martin got out and headed to the front of the jeep where he waited for Chase to join him.
“Uhmm… fresh corpses?”
Martin laughed. “You think I brought you here to kill you? I could have done that in the swamp and saved us both the car ri
de.”
“Not with the sheriff around.”
“We can stand here and argue about my motives, or we can go inside and help the wolf,” Martin said, his patience seemingly at an end. “Guess which one gets my vote?”
He turned his back on Chase and headed toward one of the tall stone crypts. Figuring his chances with the strange man were about the same as his chances of surviving alone in the deep swamp, Chase slipped out of the jeep and jogged after him.
“So what is this place really?”
The rusty hinges didn’t protest as much as Chase expected when Martin pushed open the door to the stone tomb. “Just what it looks like.”
“It looks like I’m about to be fitted for a six-foot by two-foot bed.”
Martin laughed. “I hope you don’t much mind bein’ disappointed.”
“I could stand it, I think.”
Martin lit a lantern sitting on the coffin in the center of the room. There was barely enough space to walk around. Martin nudged him toward the back of the enclosure, and Chase was immediately distracted by the tangle of spider webs that stuck to his hair and back.
“This place has been around a long time,” Martin said as he fussed with something Chase couldn’t see from where he stood. “Swamp land isn’t good for buildin’. Too soft. It isn’t all that unusual to see a coffin get spit out of the earth when it rains hard. But my great-granddaddy, he was a builder. Figured there had to be a way to use up some of that space under our feet.”
“So he built a cemetery?”
“He built a hell of a lot more than that.” Martin grabbed the lantern and stepped back.
Silently and steadily the lid of the coffin opened, as if being raised by hydraulic jacks. Chase stopped batting at the sticky strands. He’d never been more creeped out in his life.
Except maybe that morning when he’d realized just what the wolf was doing to him.
The wolf.
The wolf was in a coffin?
“No fucking way,” Chase told the crazy doctor.
“What?”
“Whatever it is you have in mind. I want out. Now.”
“Can’t open the crypt door when the coffin lid is up,” Martin informed him. “Clever, my granddaddy was.”
Apparently some of those brains trickled down to the grandson too. Martin had him neatly boxed in. He could try to figure out all the mechanisms that would gain him his freedom, or he could keep going along with Martin’s plan. Neither idea sounded ideal to Chase, but then little about this current life was.
He must have kicked puppies in a former life to be worthy of all this bad juju now.
“Coming?”
The question jolted Chase out of his musings. Martin was now on top of the coffin’s base, looking inside the container as if he were about to dive in. “You want me to get in there? With you?”
Martin smiled at him as he put one leg over the side. “Yeah. I do.”
Chase watched him disappear with the lantern. He seemed to be going down a ladder rather than stretching out to lie down. His absence gave Chase room to move. When he circled the coffin, he found Martin looking up at him from a black pit. The coffin was bottomless.
“Clever,” Chase admitted.
“Come on then. Casper’s getting tired of waiting.”
“Casper?”
“Your wolf.”
“He has a name?”
Martin apparently reached the bottom and stepped back a bit to give Chase room. “Sure. Don’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but I’m not…” Chase no longer knew what he was, so he just shut up.
“Don’t bother with the lid. I’ll go take care of things after you make yourself at home down here.”
That would be around the second coming of Christ.
Everything in his mind was screaming at him to leave, to chip away at the stone walls with his bare hands if he had to. His gut told him to trust the wolf and his doctor friend. It defied all logic, and yet Chase found his body moving to join his mysterious host before he’d even realized he’d made the decision.
It was muggy and hot inside the pit. Mineral rich loam seeped through the wooden slats that created the walls. He could stand up, but his hair scraped the uneven ceiling as Martin led him down a dim corridor.
“Where does the fresh air come from?” Chase wondered aloud.
“Air vents, weather permitting,” Martin tossed over his shoulder. “Generator when it doesn’t.”
The rooms they passed were too dark to see much. Chase relied more on his nose to give him clues about their purpose. One harbored chemicals, the kind that fit Martin’s assertion that this place served as a lab. Another held a strong scent of Martin himself. Perhaps a bedroom or an office, where he’d spent a lot of his time. The next in line was a storeroom, then they passed a collection of cages that had held a multitude of different animals. Most of them were gone now, but their scent still lingered. And then, a few steps further down the dark hall, he smelled sex…
Raw, in-your-face sex.
And not just by one couple, but rather by a series of individuals, both male and female. It was as if he were inhaling the air that had witnessed hundreds of orgies.
Chase paused, momentarily stunned by the overpowering rush that smell brought to his body. A burning heat seared his nerve endings. His skin itched, his cock throbbed and it became almost impossible to focus on anything but the intense, erotic sensations nipping at his nervous system.
“In here,” Martin said, stepping sideways to let Chase enter the room before him.
Unintentionally Chase brushed against him. Warm, firm muscle met his arm. It set off electric sparks in his already overloaded system. His knees started to buckle.
Martin caught him around his waist. “Whoa, you okay?”
Chase turned to reply, but his voice died in his throat. He was a bit shorter than Martin, and coming face to face with the meat of his shoulder rendered Chase speechless. He wanted to sink his teeth into it, to feel the flesh part under the pressure of his jaws…
A low growl convinced him that would be a very bad idea.
“Now, Casper, don’t get your hackles up. I’m just helpin’ the man,” Martin said gently.
Chase managed to separate himself from Martin and face the wolf. The brute was bigger than he remembered, or maybe it was the small room that made him look larger than life. And damn healthy for a creature that was supposedly injured so badly that it would take two men to attend to him.
“Why isn’t he caged up?” Chase asked, unable to look away from the wolf’s amber eyes.
“Because he’s no threat to you or me.” Martin walked over to the large animal. The wolf growled a warning. “Oh, stop that. I’m tryin’ to prove a point to our friend Chase here.”
The wolf tolerated Martin’s caress of the fine black fur between his ears. Once. When the man attempted to touch him again, the creature snapped at him. Chase could tell he wasn’t really trying to harm Martin. Nonetheless, he took the warning seriously. No petting the puppy. Got it.
Not that he planned on getting all that close to the wolf again. His memories of their time together earlier in the day still haunted the back of his mind. He’d never forget, nor would he ever forgive himself.
“He doesn’t look like he’s in pain,” Chase commented, still wary about what Martin really wanted from him.
“Wait until he moves around.”
Martin went to the far wall and fiddled with something he found there. Seconds later the room erupted in light.
“Hey!” Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite as bright as a solar flare, but it felt that way to his sensitive eyes. Chase blinked rapidly while they adjusted.
The wolf emitted a series of whines and barks, and Chase had a feeling he too was protesting the abrupt change.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have your keen eyesight so I need more light. Sorry.” Martin withstood another barrage of what passed for lupine conversation, then added, “You need stitches. Would you pref
er I sew your muzzle shut instead of your shoulder?”
The wolf lunged, jaws snapping, but Martin neatly evaded him. Either the injuries were slowing the creature down or he hadn’t intended to do any serious damage. Obviously the two were comfortable around each other. For some reason, that made Chase extra nervous.
The wolf continued to whine at Martin.
“No, I’m not going to chain him up, Casper,” Martin said, sounding exasperated. “Not everyone appreciates being treated like an ignorant slave.”
“Chain me up?”
Martin winced. “To keep you safe. I don’t think it’s necessary, but Casper disagrees.”
Fuck this, Chase thought. Being locked up in a loony bin is better than staying with crazy people who take orders from rabid dogs. He started edging away, toward the exit. “Right, well, I think —”
In the next instant, the big beast hit him in the side and toppled him over. He pinned Chase to the ground by lying on top of him with one heavy paw on each shoulder. Chase tried to move his face so he wasn’t inhaling doggy breath, but that only rubbed his face in more fur.
Chase struggled to breathe in without getting more of that intoxicating lupine scent into his lungs. Every time he so much as thought about gathering energy to escape, the animal let more weight settle on his diaphragm, easing up only when Chase relaxed.
He coughed until the hair tickling his throat was expelled. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“He wouldn’t be so aggressive if you were more cooperative,” Martin told him.
“Right. It’s my fault because I have a problem with being locked up while this creature is free to jump anyone he chooses.” Chase glanced up into the haunting, yet strangely comforting yellow eyes. “Are you sure he doesn’t have rabies?”
Martin chuckled. “Quite.”
“Then why does he keep tackling me?”
“Maybe he likes being on top of you.”
“Not funny,” Chase muttered. The wolf seemed to agree, giving the other man a warning growl.
Martin addressed the wolf. “I’ll stop teasing him when you stop babying him. Chase has a strong mind. I say let him use it. Agreed?”