by JL Merrow
I wasn’t going to argue with him on that. Hell, with Silke on his side, I figured I wouldn’t be arguing with him on anything ever again. “Chill, okay?” I made calm down gestures with my hands. “We’re all on the same side here.” Though it’d been a close run thing.
Jon was still scowling. “You just remember that, okay?”
I beat it back to Christoph and kept my voice low. “Guess the interrogation’s a bust. Hey, I got an idea. You can get into Schreiber’s computer, right?”
“Of course.” His certainty wobbled. “If he’s changed his password, it’ll take longer.”
“Hey, it’s not like we had plans for the rest of the day. Let’s go find out, okay?”
Chapter Twenty
Schreiber’s office was a small room at the back of the house. “We may need to break in,” Christoph murmured as we walked along the corridor. “Schreiber keeps the room locked.”
“Yeah? Like he’s in any state to stop us getting his keys?”
Christoph gave me a sidelong look. “Good luck explaining to Silke why we need to search her dying father’s pockets.”
“Okay, you got a point.” Even I wasn’t quite callous enough to suggest we wait until he died and do it then. Also, there was always the chance he might recover.
We were in luck, though. The door was shut, but the handle turned when Christoph tried it. “He must have been in here when we arrived.”
“Or maybe he didn’t feel the need for so much secrecy after we’d left home. Hey, how did you manage to get in here and hack the thing in the first place?”
“Schreiber was out,” he said, striding to the desk and pulling out the chair.
I smirked. “Can’t help noticing Schreiber’s is a hell of a lot smaller than yours. His desk, I mean. Obviously. So did you pick the lock, or did you just get lucky?”
Christoph cast me an amused glance and switched on the computer. “Neither. It was after he caught me in there that he started keeping the door locked.” His amusement faded. “It earned me my first experience of the cage. Fortunately Schreiber believed me when I said I just needed to contact my office, or I think my punishment would have been worse.”
“He locked you in the cage even though he didn’t think you were snooping? Jeez, he’s a sadistic bastard.” I shuddered.
Christoph shrugged. “We were all told no one was to come in here without him. I disobeyed.”
“What, so you had it coming? Face it, that asshole had a serious BDSM kink going on. Probably creamed himself thinking about you locked up in his pretty little cage.”
Christoph’s lips tightened. I thought he was pissed, but then I realized he was trying not to laugh. “Thank you. I’d rather not have had that picture in my mind.”
“Ugh. Now that you mention it…” I screwed up my face in disgust and made a mental note not to talk about the bastard in those terms again.
It turned out Schreiber had changed his password—by one whole digit at the end. It took Christoph all of three seconds to work that out. I perched on the desk while he opened up Schreiber’s email. “Check his contacts,” I suggested.
Christoph gave me a Duh look, his fingers flying on the keyboard. “There’s no address here.”
“What about snail mail?” I asked, looking around the room as if a big manila envelope addressed in block capitals to Dr. Leitner, Mad Scientist would magically appear.
“I don’t think so.” He swiveled around to glare at me. “You think I didn’t try and check?”
“Hey, you didn’t exactly have a clear field back then. You got caught, you told me. Which means you didn’t have time for a thorough search.”
“I kept a careful eye on post entering and leaving the house. There was nothing.”
“You mean you saw nothing. Doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything. Like you said, Schreiber started locking his office, so he obviously trusted you about as far as he could throw your house. So he’d have kept his mail secret too, wouldn’t he?”
“You can search—but we may as well try a more direct approach.” He swiveled back and started typing.
Dr. L.
Your advice is urgently needed. The American’s changes are not proceeding as usual. He appears to exhibit increased strength and mental agility whilst in his alternate form. This is an astonishing breakthrough and I urge you to come and examine him personally.
P.S.
“P.S.?” I asked. “P.S. what?”
Christoph gave me that Duh look again. “Peter Schreiber. It’s how he signs all his emails to Leitner.”
“Do all Schreiber’s emails make me sound like a prime candidate for dissection too?”
“You’re the most recently infected. It wouldn’t be as plausible for one of the rest of us to have suddenly displayed unusual signs.” Christoph didn’t meet my eyes as he said it, and I realized he was feeling guilty.
“Chill, okay? I’m fine with it. Like you said, he’s got to believe us or he won’t come.” Just before he hit Send, I put a hand on his arm. “Hey, you know you don’t have to do this, right? You beat Schreiber—why not leave it at that?”
“And sit here waiting for Leitner to become suspicious at the lack of contact and come along to resume control of his experiment? I don’t think so.”
My gut tightened. Couldn’t the bastard see I didn’t want him to risk his life all over again? Didn’t want to face maybe losing him after all? “You could leave town. Come travelling with me, maybe.” I tried to keep the pleading tone out of my voice, but I wasn’t sure I succeeded.
“I’m not going to run from him,” Christoph snapped, and clicked Send.
I felt like a moron for even asking. He was a successful architect, with his own firm and a big—if dilapidated—house in the country. No way would he give all that up just to hang out with a deadbeat like me. “It was a stupid idea. Forget I said it.” I got off his desk and started looking for a distraction. My stomach rumbled right on cue. “Hey, you know what? I’m hungry as hell. Is there any food around here?” I caught myself. “Duh. You’ve got a whole damn cellar full of food. How are you at operating a can opener?”
Christoph gave a sort of huff and followed me into the kitchen. “I’m sure you’ll correct me if I do it wrong,” he muttered.
It was probably just as well he was behind me and couldn’t see my grin.
I’ve never been one for cooking, much. Comes from moving around a lot and staying in places that don’t have kitchens. It turned out Christoph could rustle up a mean, hearty meal out of sausages and lentils, served up with egg noodles called Spätzle. We cooked up several gallons of the stuff—him directing, me just trying not to burn anything, including myself—and left the pot on the stove, figuring anyone who was hungry could help themselves. “Your mom teach you to cook?” I asked with my mouth full.
He nodded. “Not this dish, though. I was served it once in Baden-Württemberg and asked for the recipe. It’s a regional specialty. Farmers’ food.”
“It’s good. Heavy but good. I think I just put on ten pounds. Maybe I need to go muck out a stable or something to work it off.”
Christoph’s gaze raked me up and down, slow and deliberate. “I don’t think you need to worry about that. You look good to me.”
My trousers started to feel a little tight, and for a moment, I wondered if things were about to heat up again in the kitchen—but just then Michael and his boys proved there was nothing wrong with their noses by following them in here. They sat down at the table and got busy inhaling Christoph’s cooking.
Damn. We’d gotten more privacy in the hostel in Kreuzberg.
“We should take some to Silke and your friend,” Christoph said as he cleaned his plate, proving he at least was thinking with something other than his dick.
“I’ll take it,” I offered. I got up and started to fill a couple of plates.
Christoph pushed back his chair and stood. I noticed all eyes turned to him, and I guessed he did too, as he made sit down gest
ures with his hands. The king is dead; long live the king. Except the king wasn’t actually dead yet, and might not be any time soon.
“I need a shower,” Christoph announced. “After that, I’ll be in my room if anyone needs me.”
He moved a little stiffly as he climbed the stairs; I guessed the fight was catching up with him. I took the plates in to Silke and Jon and found them with their arms wrapped around each other. Like I said, true love. I still didn’t have a clue where that had come from. Schreiber hadn’t moved; he was still breathing noisily on the sofa.
I obviously wasn’t needed there—unless maybe they wanted a hand smothering the bastard—so I went to find out where Ulf had taken himself off to. I tracked him down in his room. He’d showered and changed into some loose track pants and a faded T-shirt. Comfort clothes. “Hey,” I said, poking my head around the door. “You okay?”
Ulf bit his lip and nodded, the picture of a kid being brave completed as he laid aside a battered copy of Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen. Shit. I cast my mind around for something to make him feel better. “There’s, uh, food downstairs. Sausages and noodles and stuff.”
His face lit up like a neon sign, and he scrambled off the bed.
Teenagers. You gotta love ’em.
As he loped down the stairs, I wondered what to do now. Christoph ought to be in his room by now. Did wanting to see the guy qualify as needing him? Maybe he could use some down time. Hell, maybe he could just use a couple hours away from the needy American he’d been saddled with the last few days. He might not welcome any interruption.
Fuck it. He’d just have to deal.
Christoph’s bedroom was on the second floor. It was the third door I’d knocked on, and the only one I’d gotten an answer at. I opened the door to find him lying on the bed staring up at the ceiling, just like back at the hostel. Maybe it was an architect thing—for all I knew, the pattern of cracks told him how long the house had been standing and how much longer it’d be before it fell down.
“Hey. Can I come in?”
He turned his head in my direction. “Of course,” he said, in a why-are-you-even-asking tone that did a lot for my ego.
“Mind if I snoop around?” It seemed kind of rude to poke around his stuff without asking, and I was itching to find out a little more about the guy.
Christoph smiled. “Be my guest.”
The room had a lot more personality than the rest of the house. It was also cluttered as hell. I got the impression that anything Christoph really cared about, he’d stripped from the rest of the house and brought in here. Like it was a safe haven or something. A refuge from the pack. There were paintings on the walls, in the same atmospheric forest style I’d noticed in his office. Stacks of half-finished paintings and drawings were leaning up against the walls a foot deep. As I flipped a couple over, I wondered idly if they were all from before Schreiber had turned him or if he’d painted since. Then I got my answer. It was just a pencil sketch, not even finished—but it was Silke, transformed into the wolf. No question. I mean, hell, after today there was no way I’d forget the sight of her. I figured I’d see her in my dreams. And wake up screaming.
It was a great picture, but it was giving me the heebie-jeebies. I decided I’d suggest he give it to Jon, who’d probably appreciate it a hell of a lot more than I would.
“You ever do any of the rest of us?” I asked to take my mind off the image of her blood-soaked muzzle ripping Sven to shreds. “Although I guess maybe it’d be a little risky, putting that kind of thing down on paper.”
Christoph managed a sort of horizontal shrug. “People would just take it for a fantasy. But I doubt there’s much of a market. Would you want a picture of one of us on your wall?”
“Maybe,” I said just to be contrary. Hell, I’d go for a picture of him any day.
“Perhaps I’ll paint you, then.” He looked away, resuming his examination of the ceiling.
It struck me then, I’d never really seen myself in wolfman form. Not properly. A hazy reflection in a moonlight lake while my vision was clouded with bloodlust, that was all. I’d never changed in front of a mirror. Never had a good, long look at myself.
What the hell. Vanity was overrated. I moved on from the paintings to check out Christoph’s wardrobe—hey, the door was open, it wasn’t like I was prying or anything. There was a short row of suits that were sharper than I’d expected, and I wondered what he’d look like in one of them. The night we’d met, he’d been dressed casual, and he’d looked pretty good in that.
I glanced over at him now. He’d shaved—must have been tricky around those scars—and changed into jeans and a soft shirt. The whole look was smarter than I’d have expected—was he trying to dress for authority? Maybe he was just reacting against the crap clothes he’d been wearing the last couple of days. The shirt was a washed-out dark blue, and it suited him.
Suddenly I felt a mess—but it was too late to do anything about it now. I turned back to Christoph’s bookshelves, figuring they wouldn’t judge me.
“What will you do now?” Christoph asked.
“What do you mean? We went over this—we wait and see if Dr. Asshole Leitner takes the bait.” I didn’t look up from my perusal of his reading tastes. There was the predictable load of German authors I’d never heard of, plus a couple who rang a faint bell. At one end, a bunch of English paperbacks—Jack Kerouac, Harper Lee and Anthony Trollope. Go figure. I pulled out On the Road and flicked through for old times’ sake.
“Then you’re staying?”
I put the book down and turned to stare at him. He kept on looking at the ceiling. It meant I could only see one half of his face.
The half with the scars. My gut clenched as I realized he was doing it deliberately. “What the hell is this? You got your house back, so now you’re kicking me out?”
That made him roll over and look at me. Damn, that gaze was intense. “No. But I thought you’d want to leave.”
It was what I’d said, wasn’t it? That I’d come back to the house with him, and after that, it’d be over. “It’s not over,” I said quickly. “We still have to see this through. Confront Leitner. Deal with Schreiber, if he recovers. I’m not in any hurry.” I held his gaze, willing him to see… Hell, I’m not sure what I wanted him to see. More than I could say out loud, anyhow.
Christoph’s expression softened, so I guessed he’d seen something, at any rate. “Well, I have plenty of rooms. You can have your old one back, if you like.” His voice held a hint of a challenge.
Finally we were speaking my language.
Chapter Twenty-One
I sat on the bed, close to him but not touching, leaning back on one arm like I was relaxed. I wasn’t relaxed. “I like this room better.”
“It’s already occupied,” Christoph said, his gaze drifting slowly along my body, so heavy I could feel it. The soft suggestion of a caress had me longing for the real thing.
I smiled. “That’s part of the attraction.” I stretched out on my side beside him, a mirror image.
Christoph drew in a deep breath and, closing his eyes, let it out again. For those few seconds, he seemed scarily vulnerable. Like I could reach out and do whatever the hell I wanted to him.
Shit. Didn’t he realize he didn’t have to surrender a goddamn thing to me?
All my life, I’d been putting up walls around what passed for my heart. Telling myself nothing and no one would ever touch it again. Maybe that’s why it’d taken me so damn long to notice Christoph had crumbled them with a glance.
“Do you want me here?” I blurted out, suddenly unsure.
His eyes snapped open. “Yes.”
Fuck. Was there ever so much heat, so much desire in one short word? I reached for him blindly, drawn by the need in his eyes that matched my own. He’d nearly died today. A lucky blow by Schreiber or a different decision on my part, and I’d have been alone now. Facing God knew what torment at Sven’s hands. But that part wasn’t real to me, somehow. C
hristoph’s death, though—I could picture that in 3D, surround sound conveying the timbre of his death rattle. Christoph made a small, wordless noise as my fingers dug deep into his flesh, trying to anchor him to this world. To me. He frowned and opened his mouth to say something, but I couldn’t face it, whatever it was. I stopped his lips with a kiss that bruised and soothed as I tried to drink in his very soul.
His mouth was incredible—hard, demanding, his tongue exploring me with barely banked aggression. Had I ever been this hungry in my life? I wanted him—needed him. Had to reassure myself, suddenly, that he was real, alive. I forced him down with my body, onto his back, and I straddled him desperately, pressing us together as if I wanted us to join up, become one.
I’d thought I’d been handling things well. But I’d been lying to myself. All the heat and horror of the day was spilling out of me right now as I smothered Christoph with my desperate need for closeness, for life itself.
“Leon,” he gasped. My chest tightened and seemed to shiver as he said my name.
“It’s okay,” I said, but I wasn’t sure who I was talking to, me or him. “I need you,” I added, because it was the truth.
“How?”
“In me. I want you in me.” I’m not… I don’t do this for everyone. Not even most everyone. I wished I could say it.
Fingers fumbled at the fastenings of my jeans—those same fingers that had seemed so strong, so certain before. I rolled off of him onto my side to make it easier and gave a shuddering groan as the zipper finally came undone. I wanted him to touch me—oh, God I wanted it—but instead he tugged at my jeans until finally I kicked them off. My underwear followed quickly. Christoph pushed up my shirt, too impatient to wait for me to get it off.