by J. R. Ward
And that right there?
Was one of them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
John sat naked on an exam table down in the training center’s clinic, hands on his thighs, fingers fiddling with the stitched edge of the blanket he’d wrapped around his waist. Doc Jane and Dr. Manello, a.k.a. Manny, had stepped out into the corridor to talk, and on the patient side of the door they’d closed, he tried to translate the low murmurs.
It was like reading tea leaves. Just vague hints.
He was dead bone tired, but he was not going to lie back. He’d tried that, and had felt a rolling panic, sure as if he were trapped or tied down. Yup, sitting up was better.
The fact that the two docs, whom he considered friends, had put some distance between themselves and their patient for their little chat, suggested they didn’t know what the fuck was going on with the bite mark. Which was just awesome considering a black stain had developed in the last two hours, what had been red and swollen when he’d checked it at the gym now looking downright corroded—
As his instincts pricked, John sat up straighter and looked toward the door. Then, right on cue, a dark spice emanated from his body, the rich scent a calling card that, for once, he was not interested in sporting.
Xhex plowed through the exam room door at a dead run, all but wiping out on the tile floor as she pulled up short, thanks to the snow that was on her boots. Those gunmetal-gray eyes went to his shoulder. Narrowed. Stayed there.
“What the hell happened?” she demanded.
She was still dressed for out in the cold, her cheeks windburned red, her hair even spikier than usual. The fact that she did not carry another male’s scent suggested that she and Murhder had left things at an embrace, but he wondered how long that would last.
“John?” she said. “Are you okay?”
He watched her as she approached the exam table, and when he didn’t respond, she waved her hand in front of his face like she was thinking he’d fallen into a vertical coma.
To distract himself, he looked toward the door that was slowly easing itself shut. Evidently Vishous had come to the training center with her, because the Brother was outside in the corridor talking to the doctors. Made sense. He was both a medic and the son of the great Virgin Scribe.
They would be asking about the Omega, John was quite sure.
“John?”
He lifted his hands, wincing as his shoulder let out a holler. I saw you two together. You and Murhder—and don’t you dare bitch at me for following you to those woods. The fact that you went into a clinch with the guy totally justifies my—
“There’s nothing going on between us—”
Don’t tell me there’s nothing happening. I saw the way you looked at each other. John shook his head. I’m such a goddamned fool. I wasn’t even worried when people talked about him coming up here. I figured I had nothing to be concerned about.
“It’s not like that.”
The door burst open and Vishous came steaming in like he was about to go to battle.
“Let’s see what you got, son,” the Brother said. “I have a way with these things.”
For the first time, John resented the “son” thing. He was a grown-ass male who had seen real action in the field. Not some pretrans getting bullied by his classmates.
But he told himself nothing would come from starting a fight with anybody.
Besides, he was abruptly distracted by Xhex stepping aside, crossing her arms and staring at the tiled floor. You didn’t need to be one of her kind to judge her mood; she was a black hole off to the left, the toxic load of her emotions such that she nearly dimmed the overhead light.
Good, John thought. Even though that made him a bastard. But he was abruptly done with being the nice guy. He was always following the rules, doing the right thing, watching out for others. And what did it get him?
“Don’t be alarmed.”
As V spoke up, he glanced at the Brother—and recoiled. Vishous was taking off the lead-lined black glove that always covered up his curse, his glowing palm revealed in all its deadly glory.
Goosebumps prickled in warning all down John’s arms and his guts churned. That thing was capable of incinerating whole buildings, part blowtorch, part atom bomb.
To hell with your finger-of-God shit. V had been born with the Big Fucking Bang.
And the guy was extending it toward John.
“I’m not going to touch you,” V said grimly. “I just want to have a conversation with that wound.”
Oh, great, John thought. Let’s pull up a couple of chairs and watch the layers of my skin melt off like that guy’s face in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Doc Jane and Manny entered the exam room, but stayed back, the two white coats standing in identical arms-across-the-chest poses, literally pillars of medical knowledge and experience.
“Just breathe through it, John,” V said as he closed the distance between his hellfire curse and the bite mark.
John flinched. He couldn’t help it. And then warmth, like you’d feel when you were almost too close to a banked fire, radiated into his shoulder. As the heat intensified further, he had to fight not to pull away—except suddenly that wasn’t possible, even if he’d wanted to. Some kind of metaphysical lock had occurred between the brilliant white light glowing in V’s hand and the blackened wound, tendrils of energy emanating out of that palm and butterflying around the infection.
A grunting sound got John’s attention. V was straining, beads of sweat breaking out over his forehead, his chest pumping up and down, the muscles in his throat, shoulders, and chest bulking up—
Like a rubber band snapping, the connection was broken and Vishous careened back, slamming into a glass-fronted cabinet, breaking all kinds of things in a car crash way. John was also thrown to the side, and as strong arms caught him, he latched on.
To Xhex.
Her face was pale and she trembled, even as she had the strength to keep him from hitting the floor.
V cursed and pried himself off the busted shelving. Glass was everywhere—especially in his skin—and he peeled off his black muscle shirt.
Doc Jane went over and turned him around. He had several big shards sticking out of his back, like a porcupine.
“I’m going to have to deal with this,” his shellan said.
“We got bigger problems.” V unceremoniously pulled out a piece of glass and tossed the blood-tipped stabber on the floor. “That is not the Omega. And I don’t have a fucking clue what it is.”
Hours passed, and Xhex stayed with John the entire time. She worried he’d make her leave, but even though things were tense between them, he didn’t. Watching the medical team do their thing—taking samples to culture for bacteria and test antibiotic resistance, conferring with Havers, talking with Ehlena, the clinic’s nurse, having Payne come down for a healing assessment—Xhex relied on her symphath side to read the emotional grids of not just the team, but her mate.
The clinical staff, including V, were alarmed.
John was less so. Because his heart was breaking about Murhder, and that was the main thing for him.
And didn’t that just kill her.
“So here’s where we are.” Doc Jane stepped up to the exam table and put her hand on John’s knee.
Manny was right beside her. So was Ehlena. Vishous was off to the side, his back bandaged, his shirt on once more, the glass on the floor from the busted cabinet swept up a while ago by Fritz, the butler.
Xhex listened with half an ear to “no signs of infection,” “infiltration beyond the first layers of skin,” and “concern about the spread that’s occurring.” She was more interested in the doctor’s emotional grid. Jane was flat-out panicking. Underneath her calm demeanor and even voice, her emotional superstructure—which appeared to Xhex’s symphath side as a system of three-dimensional girders, like the shell of a skyscraper—was lit up in areas at the very core of her consciousness. Generally, the further out from that center, the more
superficial the emotions, and the colors and pattern indicated what sector: happiness, sadness, anger, or fear.
What that doctor was currently feeling? Straight-up hot red terror as well as deep purple anger at herself for not having better answers. And the shit was at the very heart of her.
Do I have to stay here? John signed.
“No,” Doc Jane said. “You’re free to go. But we don’t want you on rotation until we know what’s happening.”
“What’s going to change?” Xhex asked. “About how much you know, I mean. You’ve looked into everything.”
Was that black stain going to take him over? Kill him? Or worse . . . ?
“That’s a fair question. The Chosen Cormia is going up to the Scribe Virgin’s library as we speak. She’s going to search the volumes with all of the other sacred females. If there is something in them, it will be found.”
“Okay. That makes sense. But what if there isn’t?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
More conversation, none of it material. All Xhex wanted was a minute alone with her mate. An hour alone. A lifetime.
When they were finally by themselves again, he lay back on the table. Then instantly sat back up.
“John.” As she said his name, he looked at her. “No matter what happens, I’m with you. I got you. I love you.”
Shifting his eyes away, her hellren stared down at the floor and took a deep breath. As the silence stretched out, her anxiety climbed and she found herself breaking a cardinal rule. Out of respect for him, she did not read his grid—usually. Some things should be private, and she’d always wanted him to share of himself what he chose to, a gift given instead of a secret pilfered.
Now, she read him as she had read everyone else in the room.
Heartache. Utter and complete heartache. He didn’t seem to be concerned about his health in the slightest, but then that was a bonded male for you right there. Always thinking of his mate, and not just because it was the right thing to do. The single-minded focus was in their breeding, literally a part of their DNA.
As worried as she was about that shoulder wound, at least she could do something with his broken heart.
“I can prove to you there’s nothing going on between Murhder and me.”
John looked back over and she hated the wariness in his eyes.
“No, really.” She nodded. “I know just what to do.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The following evening, Sarah tied the laces on her running shoes, first on her right foot, then on her left. As she stood up, things felt nice and cushiony under her soles.
There were also good treads down there. Just what you’d want if you had to make a sprint for an exit.
Pulling on her parka, she picked up her backpack, one-strapped it and grabbed her keys. At the door out into the garage, she looked over her shoulder and wondered if she was ever going to see her house again.
She had spent the daylight hours scrubbing all the bathrooms, vacuuming the rugs, taking out the trash, mopping the kitchen floor. It was, she supposed, a reflex, like making sure before you left for a long trip you had clean undies on.
Just in case you were in a car accident.
Before she lost her nerve, she turned the alarm on, exited and locked up. Backing her Honda out, she tried to make like this was no big deal . . . just another Sunday night heading into work to check ongoing research results. Fortunately, she had done this before. Not all the time, but depending on where she was in her work, she had often headed into the lab on off-hours. Off-days. Even holidays like Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, Fourth of July.
Although in the last two years, those trips had mostly been to distract herself from the loneliness of her house. Her life. Her future.
Heading down her street, she stared straight ahead. There didn’t appear to be any deceptively nondescript sedans around, but who knew where the Feds were.
As she passed by familiar houses in the neighborhood, made familiar turns as she came to intersections, and stopped at familiar lights, she decided this was a bizarre experience. Most people didn’t know that they were saying goodbye when they did something for the last time. It was only in retrospect, after things changed forever, that they realized a period in their life, an era, had come to an end.
Considering what she was going to do? There was a good chance she was not coming home.
She had called no one.
No one to call. Nothing really to say.
As she’d developed her plan, she had made sure to keep her schedule exactly as it always was on Saturdays and Sundays with bedtime and wake up, the cycle of lights inside what she usually clicked off and on.
Nothing out of place. Out of sync. Out of order.
Her heart was pounding as she continued along the route to BioMed, and when she pulled up to the gatehouse at the facility, she wanted to throw up.
Instead of giving into the heaves, she put her window down and smiled in anticipation of the security guard opening his sliding door. As the partition pulled free of its jamb, she braced herself for a gun to be pointed at her head.
Instead, the guard smiled. “Hey, Dr. Watkins. How you doin’?”
“Good, Marco, good.” She handed him her ID and prayed he didn’t notice that her hand was shaking. “It’s cold tonight. You warm enough in there?”
“Oh, you know it.” He put a scanner on the barcode underneath her picture and the device let out a beep. “Just watching the Heat play the Bulls.”
“That’ll keep you toasty.”
“Sure will.” He gave her the credentials back. “I’ll see you on the flip side.”
“I’ll just be an hour or so. Checking on things.”
“Good deal.”
He closed his door. She put up her window. And then the twenty-foot-high chain-link gate trundled off to the side and the arm bar rose.
The lab compound was located a distance back from the guardhouse, and as she proceeded forward on the plowed two-lane drive, everything seemed both totally familiar and completely out of place. There was still this brilliantly lit road in with speed bumps every twenty yards or so and concrete barriers on either side. Still a vast, single-story complex connected by pediways. Still two parking lots to choose from, with spaces for a hundred or so vehicles.
As she headed to the right to leave off her car, one of BioMed’s roving security cops went by her in his marked sedan. She waved to him. He waved back.
And meanwhile, her mouth went so dry she couldn’t swallow.
There were a dozen or so cars, many of which she recognized, all of which were parked as close to the entrance as possible. She chose a spot she could drive through and face out.
God, she’d never had to think about making a getaway before. Then again, given the security here, if things went badly, like they were going to let her get back out here to the parking lot?
Disembarking with her backpack, she shut her car door and almost walked off without locking things. Her heart was still doing a sprint and a half behind her sternum, and the puffing of her breath into the cold air was so pronounced she looked around to see if she were being followed by anyone who would become suspicious. Could the FBI even get onto the property?
Probably not without a warrant.
A path had been shoveled and salted up the wide marble steps leading to the entrance, and as she got to the top landing, there was a familiar clunking sound as the lock was released upon her approach. Inside, she stopped in a vestibule that was heated and offered her card to the officer who was sitting behind a desk.
“You watching the Heat?” she asked as she heard a squawking under the counter.
“Sure am.” There was another beep as the guard scanned her ID. “They makin’ you work late again, Dr. Watkins?”
“Sure are.” She forced herself to smile casually. “What can you do.”
“Big boss man’s here tonight, too.”
Sarah hesitated as she put the lanya
rd around her neck. “Dr. Kraiten?”
“Yup. He came in with a couple of guys in suits.”
The FBI? she wondered.
“Well, it’ll be a party then.” She forced a smile. “I’ll see you on the flip side.”
She had no clue what she was saying or what he replied. And it took everything in her to wait calmly for the unlocking before she could enter the lobby of the facility.
Marble floors, white walls, long corridors in three directions. Security cameras everywhere.
As she walked off straight ahead, she was aware of the photographic portrait of Dr. Robert Kraiten that hung between an American flag and the New York State flag. He had famously started his first company with his roommate while still at MIT forty years before, and there had been many incarnations since, the mergers and acquisitions morphing the biotech firm into a global leader in pharmaceutical and medical device research. Kraiten, now in his early sixties, was probably worth a billion dollars, and he was showing no signs of slowing down. His original partner, on the other hand, hadn’t made it out of his forties.
She could remember Gerry telling her that the guy had come to a gruesome end when one of the labs had been burned down twenty years ago.
And didn’t that make her wonder now.
Kraiten, on the other hand, was most certainly thriving, even if she personally found his public persona cold and aloof. But maybe that was the secret to his success. Remaining detached from everything no doubt spared emotions when you had to make hard corporate decisions.
Without meaning to, she rerouted and stopped in front of the picture in its large silver frame. The black-and-white image did little to improve the severity and calculation of the man’s stare.
All she could think about was Gerry. And what secrets he had taken to his grave.
No, there was one other piece. She wondered who had put him up to it.
It required every kind of discipline for her to turn away and keep her pace slow and steady as she followed the corridors to her lab. As she went along, she was aware of every security pod in the ceiling, and she passed by a number of different research divisions. The office/lab setups were all the same, walls of frosted glass glowing with diffused light and preventing wayward eyes from divining anything of the work being performed behind coded doors.