by Sarah Noffke
“I was trying to stop the werewolf,” he said. “I cut off my fingertips just when the claws came out and it worked. They are gone.” Orion held up his bandaged hand, like she could see how victorious he’d been. “Isn’t it great?” he said with a laugh that also resembled a weep.
“Oh, Orion, you’re mutilating yourself again. We need to talk about committing you, getting you the help you need,” Dr. Roland said, taking a cautious step forward. “The hospital called me and I already set up arrangements on the way over here. You don’t have to stay for long, just until we get your medicine schedule back to normal. This is chemical. It’s not you. We can fix things.”
She always knew the right thing to say. We. We can fix things. She was going to take care of him again, look in on him daily. They’d have their talks every afternoon like they used to. And when he had a bad night, threw things and yelled at the staff, she’d come by the next morning to make sure he was all right. Everything was going to be like it used to be. Everything was going to get better.
Then he noticed how soft her skin was around her jaw. His eyes slid down her throat and then landed on her chest where two perfectly rounded shapes peeked slightly out of her navy blue blouse, begging for his full attention. Orion shook his head. He’d never looked at Veronica this way. Never felt this lustful draw to her. What they had was real and not based on physical attraction, although he hoped that would come for both of them later.
He licked his lips, suddenly wanting to taste her. Needing to feast on her. The thought sent Orion back three steps until he knocked into a wall. That wasn’t him. It was the wolf. The wolf. That’s right. Things couldn’t be the same as when he was a resident of the mental institution. The werewolf would destroy all the good that came from being there.
“Stay away from me!” Orion said, grabbing a gurney and launching it at Veronica. She slid to the side, shoving it away with a look of horror.
“Orion, it’s okay. I’m here to help. Please let me help you,” she said, pushing her hands down in a calming way.
“No! You can’t help me. No one can. I’m a monster and I’ll only hurt you,” he said, and backed to the side until he found the hallway wall. Behind him, down the corridor, he heard voices. Frantic voices that were aware of the commotion. The wolf heard them say things that angered it. Restrain. Stop. Sedate.
Orion tore his focus back on Veronica, the woman he loved. The one he couldn’t have. She took another step toward him as the footsteps behind him grew louder. He swung his head in that direction to see two large men in scrubs headed his way. He knew what their jobs were. Without another hesitation he dashed toward Veronica, pushing her down hard when she reached for him. Then he sprinted for the exit, his hand now bleeding from knocking into something. Still he didn’t stop running. He had to get away. That was the only way to save the woman he craved, the one who would forever think he was crazy.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“The second time the werewolves changed, they exhibited fangs, claws, and hair growth. It is assumed that the fangs and the claws took time to grow in.”
- Olento Research, Canis Lupus Project File
The grass under Zephyr’s leather shoes was soggy. He had never liked carnivals. It was a place to lose money and get sick on sweet or fried food. Why any hard-working American would seek a thrill on a ride that was reconstructed at every carnival location, and faulty in numerous ways, was beyond him. Most people wanted to die, he usually concluded. Why else did they eat the things they did or do the things that were most likely going to kill them? And yet, he loved people and found that his mission in life was to protect a population who was constantly seeking to destroy themselves.
“You can’t come on Ferocity grounds. This is a closed area,” an overweight man said, hurrying over to them, buttoning his pants and fastening his belt as he did.
Zephyr was about to make up a phony excuse when Rox flashed her badge. “FBI. We have business here,” she said and hurried past the man with the red nose.
“If this is about the twins, I can explain. What they do away from Ferocity Carn—”
“Where is Connor Luce?” Rox said, and Zephyr was distracted by her tone. She sounded different. Professional. She sounded unlike he’d heard her before. No one would look at her blonde hair and mounds of makeup and mistake her for a “valley girl,” as he often thought of her. She sounded like an FBI agent, and more than that, she had authority in those short words.
“He’s…” the man said and trailed away. “What do you want with Connor? That’s who you’re here for?”
“Where?” Rox said, her words clipped.
“He’s in sleeper row. In one of those trailers,” the man said and pointed at a line of semis at the back of the carnival. They could barely be seen over the booths and rides, which were currently shut down since the carnival wasn’t set to open for another few hours.
“Which one?” Zephyr said, striding forward, making his way to the area.
“How am I supposed to know?” the man said, tugging up his pants as they made to fall to the ground.
“Use your X-ray vision,” Rox said, still using that voice, the one that Zephyr enjoyed, respected.
“Okay,” Zephyr said, turning on the power that he owned. Immediately the area around him transformed. The rides and booths weren’t solid, but rather frameworks that he could easily see past. The things behind them, objects, structures, people, all took shape. And then the things behind those things were visible. Using his X-ray vision nauseated Zephyr. That was why he employed it sparingly and also because it drained him, making him feel like he needed to sleep for days. As they approached the back of the carnival grounds he was able to tap into the semis, seeing their contents. A few of the closest contained men, sleeping in bunks, but their build didn’t resemble Connor’s. How strange to sleep in a truck, like a horse being transported to a show. The only thing about it that made Zephyr more comfortable was the vents he spied along the top of the truck. At least these men, these vagabonds, had proper air circulation in their boxes.
The next truck contained more men, their skeletons telling Zephyr what they were doing. Lounging, playing cards, smoking. And then he saw one man in an empty semi, lying flat on his back. That shouldn’t have told Zephyr anything, but the object embedded into the guy’s ear was the clue. He had a large gauge earring in his left ear, just like Connor.
“He’s in here,” Zephyr said, pointing.
Rox jumped up on the back of the semi, pulling down on the lever and opening the door. The stench of mold and sweat spilled out of the truck, like trying to escape its prison.
“You saw him in here?” Rox said, squinting through the dark space. Bunks lined one wall and compartments the other. Nothing about the back of the long semi was tidy. Clothes and trash littered the floor so it couldn’t be seen.
“Up there,” Zephyr said, pointing to a top bunk.
“Has Connor done something wrong? He’s my newest member and also my biggest moneymaker,” the fat man said. “Maybe we can figure out a way to resolve this problem between the two of us. Maybe some cash will make you all drop your investigation.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Rox said, high stepping so she was even with the top bunk. “Oh, good, he left a tiny bit of heroin for you if you want to score a high.”
“No,” Zephyr said in a hush, grabbing the back of his neck. Drugs. That was Connor’s shortcoming. His vice. And he’d thrown himself back into the downward spiral.
“He’s passed out and his pulse is weak. I think we need to take him to a hospital,” Rox said, jumping down from her high place, her tone even and not at all morose.
Zephyr turned to the man still standing at the edge of the semi. “We’re done with you now. We’ll be taking Connor.”
“But he’s—”
“I suggest you turn and walk away right now unless you want the FBI investigating your shady business and thoroughly ruining you,
” Rox said.
“Okay, fine. Take him, just leave me out of it,” the man said, holding up his hands and backing away.
When he was out of earshot, Zephyr turned to Rox. “No hospital. He’s a werewolf on heroin. I don’t think that’s an option.”
“Well, he needs medical attention. I’m pretty sure he’s in a drug-induced coma,” Rox said.
“Then the people who are most likely going to be able to save him are the ones who have a staff of doctors and healers. Dream travel to the Institute and generate. Tell the medical staff to meet me at the submarine,” Zephyr said, climbing up to the bunk where Connor lay, his eyes partially open, but rolled back in his head. He was pale and smelled of the sickly sweet drug he’d consumed in what appeared in fatal amounts. Pulling him by the shoulders, Zephyr managed to drag Connor off the bed and drape him over his shoulder. “I’m taking him to the Lucidite jet. We will just have to hope he can hold on until I can get him to help.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“The third werewolf sighting happened in Los Angeles and was the first violent incident related to the case. A woman was murdered in a parking lot and reported her attacker was a werewolf, just before she died.”
- Lucidite Institute, Werewolf Project File
“I don’t see why we have to keep practicing this. You already made me pass out,” Kaleb said, staring at Adelaide’s hand resting on the conference room table.
“For starters, my hypnosis worked on you because you have a monkey brain, and therefore I need to keep practicing. It may not work on people who actually have the wherewithal to finish high school, you loser,” Adelaide said.
“You really know how to make an outsider feel included, don’t you?” he said, scowling at her, but a lightness in his expression. These two could go on like this for hours and often did.
“And secondly, I was successful at hypnotizing you with an object, which is step one. However, the more difficult practice is to hypnotize with an empty hand gesture,” she said, drumming her fingers on the table in a rhythmic pattern.
“So besides making someone pass out, what else is the purpose of all this, Little Red?” Kaleb said, his eyelids growing heavy suddenly.
“It can subdue an enemy, open the doorway for implanting information or behaviors, and also grant me access to someone’s subconscious. It depends on the level of hypnosis,” Adelaide said, and suddenly tensed. Something was wrong! Something was really wrong! She spun to the side, then turned the other direction. The tabletop was empty, but that wasn’t right. Had she left her book in her room? That was unlikely. She’d lost it! Again she scanned the area, knowing the book had just been beside her—and then she spied it. The mischievous grin plastered on Kaleb’s face.
“The only human known to be blessed with the ability to stop time and you use it for fucking pranks. You’re such a bloody child,” Adelaide said and extended her hand. “Give me my book before I make your eyes bleed through hypnosis.”
“I don’t take you as the violent type, so no,” Kaleb said, pushing back and reclining in his chair, his dark brown eyes too delighted from his dumb trick.
“Give me my book now,” Adelaide said, her words a harsh whisper, and laced into them was the mind control she had honed with impressive efficiency. Like her father, she only employed it sparingly, but now was one of those necessary occasions.
Kaleb’s eyes suddenly dulled and robotically he reached into his jacket and withdrew the leather-bound book before depositing it in Adelaide’s long fingers. Later he would wonder why he’d suddenly been so compliant. He’d be slightly confused, but because she’d learned how to tap into people’s heads, like one gracefully tiptoes unnoticed across a floor, he wouldn’t suspect what her gift was.
The running feet at Adelaide’s back could only belong to one person. High heels made a dragging sound when one ran in them. She stood at once and spun to find Rox racing around the glass partition.
“Well?” Adelaide said, trying to sound cold, professional, like a boss expecting a report, appearing not worried that Connor could be dead.
“Connor is on his way back via the submarine,” Rox said, taking in a few quick breaths. “Dr. Parker will be on it to treat him. I just made the arrangements.”
“Treat him? Is he okay?” Adelaide said.
Rox now regarded Adelaide with a sideways, skeptical expression. “Your news reporter saw Connor and his location, but did she by chance see his condition, because you didn’t mention anything?”
“I didn’t find it necessary,” Adelaide said, wondering if that was true. Her agents needed pertinent information when in the field, but she’d withheld it and she wasn’t sure why. Maybe denial…
“Right, well then you know that he’s overdosed,” Rox said.
Adelaide bent her head down so she was regarding the carpet, which didn’t seem to mind her look of fury. “No, I didn’t know the extent of his condition.”
“Well, then you’ll want to know that he’s locked in a coma, it appears anyway, but I’m no doctor,” Rox said.
“What can I do?” Kaleb said, standing at once, his eyes buzzing with adrenaline.
“Not a damn thing. Connor got himself into this mess and if he dies, it’s his own bloody fault,” Adelaide said, angling around Rox and marching away. She couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid to go back to drugs. His files from rehab had reported that he had developed the mental and emotional intelligence to cope with the cravings. However, something had made him regress and she was pretty sure she was to blame for it. He’d wanted her forgiveness after he attacked her in werewolf form. Connor had come to her and apologized and she’d rejected him, turned her cold eyes away, only offering words of disappointment. Telling him she wished he wasn’t who he was. And he had obviously agreed and tried to end his own suffering. Maybe he’d been successful. Maybe he’d die on the submarine, or never wake up. She banished the thoughts and the aching feeling that accompanied that idea.
Kris had a brilliant idea, just as she noticed Zephyr carrying a passed out man out of a black SUV. It was Connor, but he didn’t look like how she remembered him when she abducted him. That one hadn’t been hard because he was passed out in an alley, shivering from cold and probably hunger. Mika had given her the easy men to abduct and Morgan the harder ones like Rio and Zephyr. Just once she wanted to prove that she was as good as her brother, maybe better since he was so impulsive and hyped up on testosterone.
That’s why she was about to call Mika and suggest that he send guards to the dry dock. Now that she realized some of the werewolves were being transported that way, it was an easy way to catch them. There was a ton of security, though, and bloody fights would probably be the result, but still it was a viable strategy. However, she couldn’t risk a call right then with Zephyr hurrying to the submarine entrance. She had to get on there with him, and that was going to take some stealthy moves, since a rush of people, who she supposed were Lucidites, were waiting for him and the passed out Connor. The entrance was clustered with personnel.
“Heart rate is sixty-five and dropping,” Dr. Parker said, eyeing the cuff on Connor’s arm. “Blood pressure is low.”
A nurse had prepared an IV and inserted an oral airway while the doctor assessed him.
Zephyr watched from the side as the doctor, a healer and a nurse, took various diagnostics. “Can you heal him?” he asked, looking at the woman in white scrubs.
She shook her head. “Not until the doctor makes a full assessment and even then I’m not sure. My powers don’t work well against drugs. They take over and control the body in a way that I can’t undo. Once the drug passes though I might be able to reverse the damage it’s caused on organs and the central nervous system,” she said.
Zephyr shook his head, but none of that really made much sense to him. He was used to doctors and medicine and not a metaphysical world where everything was joined. The discharged Special Forces captain let out a long breath that d
id nothing to loosen his chest. First he’d left Connor behind and now he’d let him get away and do this to himself. Why did the Lucidites even dare to call him the alpha wolf? He was failing his men, just as he always feared he’d do in the Special Forces. Can you really lead people when you yourself are lost?
Connor who had been passed out, then began to jolt, like tremors were ripping through his body. “He’s starting to seize,” Dr. Parker said, turning for the nurse, who handed him a syringe.
The nurse placed a mask over Connor’s blue lips, while Dr. Parker inserted something to stop the seizing into the IV. Again and again the pair worked, trying to fix Connor, trying to undo what the drugs had done to him.
“Come on Connor! Don’t you quit on me!” Zephyr found himself yelling at the doctor’s back, who took no notice of him as he stuck a syringe into the IV, administering yet another drug, but this one meant to save him. “Come on! Don’t give up!”
Never, not once had Kris seen anything like what she was witnessing now with the Lucidites, back at Olento Research. Olento didn’t treat its people the way the Lucidites did. She’d prowled around Olento watching as subjects went through testing, many times not making it out. More than a few times she’d seen the sight presently before her as Drake tried to save a chimpanzee or a human or whatever it was. And it surprised her gross morbid side the first few times when the subject flat lined and the scientist simply covered it up and wheeled it away.
Mika never seemed to care that he lost a subject, but rather that his experiment failed and it would cost him excessive money. But to watch Zephyr become overwhelmed by panic that Connor was about to die, softened something in Kris that had lay dormant. Working at Olento Research, she’d forgotten that people often cared for each other’s wellbeing because it was the human thing to do. People didn’t have to love each other, to want their life preserved. That was innate in most humans, and it was a beautiful thing. The Lucidites weren’t exactly what she’d bargained for when taking on this mission. She hadn’t expected to spy on these people and see a part of her own heart.