Caged

Through wavering focus, I watched as Joseph yanked a drawer open on Catherine’s desk. Whilst my feet made unimpressive kicks in search of the floor, shuffling and clacking arose from his search before he whipped up his hand.

  In it, he held a syringe.

  My heart powered up until it sounded on par with a sports clacker. Grunts forced their way out as I struggled, and my legs flailed harder.

  The totally selfish urge to yell at Dad to get his act into gear and bloody well save my hide overwhelmed me, yet my conscience forbade me to make the plea.

  “Catherine should have let me kill you from the off,” Chad said, as Joseph rounded the desk toward me.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  My cheeks contracted as I sucked in breaths, puffing back out on each erupted exhalation.

  Do not let me pass out.

  I tried to lift my arms. Wading through a damn bog would have been easier.

  I tried to kick back my legs. All coordination had vanished.

  The bloody vampire had arms of steel and a grip cast from titanium that knew exactly which pressure spots would manipulate me into submission.

  Joseph stood before me and tapped at a syringe I suspected held wolfsbane. “This is probably going to hurt.”

  My hands curled into fists—that much I could control.

  “Nothing he doesn’t deserve,” Chad said.

  My teeth ground beneath the clench of my jaw. The whir of my pulse marred my hearing.

  “Where?” Joseph asked.

  “Neck.” Chad’s grasp flicked to the right and took my head along with it.

  I sucked air through my clenched teeth at the stretching of my throat.

  The needle came closer.

  A quiet joy illuminated Joseph’s eyes until they shone like polished onyx.

  A sharp scratch against my skin. A prick. A hint of pain.

  Panic insisted I do something. It screamed at me for just hanging there, for allowing them to better me, and erupted through my head as a roar until I saw only white.

  My neck snapped to the right so hard pain splintered through my spine.

  My legs whipped out to left.

  My entire body seemed to spiral—whump, whump, whump—through the air.

  What the he—

  I plummeted—fast. Hit the floor like I’d run into a man-sized baseball bat.

  “Urgh.” The groan sounded as though miles away though I knew it had come from me.

  Something squeezed my arm, and its yank over my head burned through my shoulder, matching that throbbing through my neck.

  The heat spread across my entire back like I was being dragged.

  “Ethan.” Sean’s voice—definitely Sean’s—reached me.

  Tingling bled outward from below my ear, across my collarbone, and down into my chest.

  “Dammit, Ethan, open your bloody eyes.”

  I shook my head. My brain seemed to slosh with the movement, left to right.

  “Now!”

  Cramps clawed through my calves.

  My knees shot up.

  An inferno raged through the muscles in my thighs.

  Growls. Snarls. Clashing. Thudding. Some alien kind of hissing.

  I heard every sound but as though through the throes of a tornado—one happening inside my head.

  “He okay?” Jack? “Did we get up here in time?”

  “No.” Sean’s voice again—filled with … dread? “It’s spread already.”

  My body shook, rolling from side to side.

  A sharp sting vibrated my cheek. “If you don’t open your bloody eyes this second I’m going to beat you senseless,” Sean barked.

  I forced my lids to comply. Almost closed them again when the brightness penetrated the shadows lingering within my vision.

  I blinked. Blinked again.

  Somehow, I managed to focus on the dark eyes in front of me, on the utter terror etched across every one of Sean’s features. A few more blinks and the doubled over position of my brother registered with me before I spotted the diving and flying bodies beyond him.

  My senses sharpened to the twisting and breaking of my skeletal structure and the foetal position I’d curled myself into.

  My arm shot out.

  I grabbed Sean’s shirt.

  My teeth ground, and my lips welded shut though a scream gurgled along my throat until my oesophagus tore, and I swore all the blood vessels erupted across my face.

  Agony coursed through me with the speed and strength of a tidal wave until my back arched against the attack. It hit my toes, torching the nerve endings there, before it switched direction and blasted back up, through my legs, across my lumbar, along my spine—crunching each vertebra into alignment along its route until it hit the base of my skull with enough punch to crack it.

  “Ethan, breathe.”

  I tried to part my lips. My jaw refused to budge from its locked position. The trapped snarls blocked my throat.

  “Breathe, damn you! Use your bloody nose, for God’s sake.”

  Somehow, despite the frying of my brain, a signal pushed through. As the sensation of knitting bone travelled the length of my newly-forming muzzle with the effect of painful popping candy, a gushed breath snorted from my nostrils.

  My whine broke out the second my jaw unclamped.

  Sean’s blown sigh mussed the hairs across my face, tickling the longer ones around my ears. “Okay, I think you’re through it.”

  I may have made it through the fastest and most incapacitating change I’d ever experienced, but every nerve in my body still buzzed and frazzled like the lit end of a sparkler, every muscle ached as though they’d been linked up to a twelve-volt battery for kicks, and the weariness trying to stake a claim on my brain had the potential to induce a damn coma.

  He twisted, peered over his shoulder, and spun back. “Just rest up. Don’t be a hero.” He ducked his face lower, brought his eyes in line with mine. “You listening to me? Just stay where you are.”

  I huffed out my compliance.

  He nodded. “Goo—” Sean grunted as his body shot backward, and he crashed into a bureau.

  The horrid sickly telltale scent engulfed me a moment before Joseph stole Sean’s vacated spot and smirked down at me.

  Rumbling brewed in my chest.

  He dropped to his knees.

  I tried to lift my head—though it seemed anchored by a ton weight—and rolled onto my front.

  “I’m going to enjoy this.” Joseph’s fangs slid down.

  My claws dug into the rug as I beseeched my legs to straighten and get me the hell away. When his face neared, his smirk growing into a smile of anticipation, a bubbling snarl discovered its outlet, rippling my lips on exit.

  The black in Joseph’s eyes did an impressive swirl before solidifying again. “You’re not as big or bad as everyone says.”

  My limbs forced me upright. They trembled like a damn leaf in the wind as my hackles puffed up, my shoulders hunched high, and I sent Joseph his final snarled warning.

  He only laughed, and as he darted forward, I rammed my lids shut and thrust toward him.

  My front paws hit rug. My legs gave out. My chin slammed the floor.

  I grunted and opened my eyes, shaking my protesting head to sharpen my focus, and spotted Sean throwing one punch after another at Joseph’s face and ribcage. Each connected, sending the vampire back a step, blood hanging from his chin like crimson drool.

  Blinking against the fuzzy edges of my vision, I observed the room.

  The chestnut coat of Odder lay still in one corner except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Jack Brosen crouched beside him, a hand stroking the wolf’s ruff.

  In another corner, two vampires batted what looked li
ke stakes at Dad, Josh and Darrel. All three wolves prodded their muzzles forward around the brandished sticks, nipping wherever they could before withdrawing and trying again.

  The stench of the undead seemed to fill the entire room, strengthening with each wafted movement. Nausea threatened to spill the contents of my stomach and sent my brain into a dizzy spiral.

  Wood panelling blurred, merging with the red of the rug. I shook my head clear and absorbed the room’s other occupants. Chad lay supine with enough of his body-exterior missing to be a problem, though I knew his dodgily-angled head would have been the cause of his death. Another I didn’t recognise by sight—but by scent knew to be vampire—had what once must have been intestine spilling from a trench dug into its stomach whilst the twitch of fingertips warned the job hadn’t been completed to the end.

  Above him, Odd gave a cry and drove down a fire axe with enough force to slice bone and split the weave of wool beneath the vampire’s decapitated head.

  A grunt tore my attention back to the left though my slowed mind struggled to keep up with the speed of my motion.

  Sweat dampened Sean’s hair, gluing it to his brow, dual southward trails competing to reach his jaw line. His T clung to his chest, also dampened by his body’s secretions. Despite Joseph being the one who took step after step backward, resembling a steak attacked with a meat mallet, Sean’s face held lines that screamed of unapparent pain.

  As Joseph’s back met with stone, determination showed in the tight line of Sean’s mouth and in the sharp focus of his eyes as he continued to hit—left, right, left, right, jaw, ribs, ribs, jaw.

  I hadn’t seen my brother look that seriously fucked off since another pack tried to take his mate.

  Amongst the red mush left of his face, Joseph’s fangs bared long below solid ebony eyes, and a keen from his throat pitched high enough to leave my eardrums humming. Another blow to his ribs knocked his entire body to the floor. His left knee seemed to refuse support on landing, and he stumbled forward.

  A final punch from Sean snapped Joseph’s head back against the wall.

  The vampire stilled on impact, his body slumping to an unruly heap.

  Sean staggered back a few steps. He swiped a forearm across his forehead, leaving a smudge of blood that bridged his eyebrows, and half-turned toward me, revealing dark spatters staining the front of his shirt. The instant his gaze settled my way, he frowned. “You okay?”

  I snorted the affirmative, urging my trembling limbs to turn back to the growls in the corner where I’d last spotted Josh and Dad.

  I needn’t have worried.

  With snarls rippling his lips, Dad savaged one vampire from existence. Beside him, Josh bit down on the other vamp and jerked back, bit down and jerked, whilst Darrell mirrored him as though synchronised. Each movement of the wolves tore flesh and incited low groans from the duo on the receiving end. Like a dozen idling engines, only growls responded.

  A gasp came from Sean’s direction, followed by a groan.

  I pivoted back to the left with enough haste to blur my vision, but even that couldn’t muddy Sean’s form hunched upon the floor, his arms cocooning his stomach; his features twisted.

  The strained tendons throughout his neck should have convinced me he was mid-change, and I’d have considered the idea if not for the lack of contortion to his body. Even the hand he flattened against the carpet seemed braced with tension.

  I whined at him, took a step forward, growling at myself when I listed to the right.

  His eyes, full of pain, met mine. “I’m … okay.” The fact he spoke through gritted teeth said otherwise.

  I padded a couple more doddering steps toward him until close enough to check for myself. My nose nuzzled into his neck. That he didn’t push me away spoke volumes of his distraction. A dozen snorted inhalations checked how much of the blood decorating his front belonged to him.

  “None of it’s mine.” His nod ruffled the fur behind my ear. “I’m good.”

  I backed up a little, intent on a visual for confirmation.

  Rouge showed in his cheeks even through the blood spatters—cheeks that contracted and puffed with his breaths. A high gloss still affected his eyes. Despite the additional nod he offered me, he still grappled with his abdomen like he had an alien roaming around in there.

  I growled at him to cut it out. His behaviour had me on edge.

  “I’m trying,” he murmured, telling me he understood.

  I growled again, nudging him with my muzzle to get himself straight. To get back on his feet. To quit rolling around like a pussy and giving me shit to stress over.

  “Okay.” The word came out a bark. “I’m on it, okay?”

  His supporting hand left the floor, he pushed up onto his knees, and his eyes rolled up into his head a split-second prior to his body slumping to the right.

  Behind him stood Joseph, the dart gun held in his hand by the barrel.

  I saw only red.

  Somewhere in the recess of my brain, it registered that every muscle throughout my body flexed. It acknowledged the weightlessness of flight. It accepted the instinctual reach of my jaw for the throat of my enemy.

  Not one of those actions seemed within my control.

  Neither did the snarls, the grunts, the growls, the rips, the slashing, the whip of my head.

  From somewhere beyond all of those, beyond the white noise of autopilot violence, the shouts and snorts and huffs and screams arrived as no more than a muted buzz.

  Something sliced the length of my right shoulder, though I couldn’t see what—not with single-mindedness blinding me to all but the endgame.

  A kick knocked my flank sideways, though I had no idea from who—not with the scent of Joseph’s syrupy blood seeping into my nostrils and masking all else.

  Shoves at my stomach jolted me back the other way. A shout vibrated through my ear—my name, I thought, though it arrived as no more than a distorted echo.

  When something nipped just below my right jaw line, I jerked that way. Teeth snapping. Lips rippling.

  The snarl I received in response matched mine, the warning it carried far outweighing my own for superiority. Still, I bared my teeth, grumbled out an irrational response until a jaw clamped around my throat and tossed me down.

  The instant I met with carpet, I bucked and kicked, the roar inside my head erupting from me in a show of fury.

  Whoever held me didn’t budge. Their hold didn’t slacken. Their stance refused to waver. The rolling growl thundered deep in their chest, tickling my flesh where they gripped me beneath the curl of their lips.

  Who the hell? I inhaled, long and deep. Only vampire blood sucked into my nostrils until I sneezed with enough force to sting. As I blinked to clear my watering, crimson-misted eyes, Josh’s muzzle nudged against my face. He grunted at me, his eyebrows twitching as he glanced above my head, and I realised whoever had taken me down still pinned me there. I also realised it had to be one of the pack if Josh hadn’t leapt to my defence.

  Dad. Should have known only he would have managed it with such ease.

  I tried to relax my body beneath him, failing when my muscles refused to un-tense.

  He must have recognised the effort as his grip loosened a little. Though he didn’t let go—not until I’d steadied my breathing, quit with the grumbling, and controlled my jerking legs that knocked against his like something possessed. Even then, he barely moved away, his breaths still rustling my ear tufts.

  I twisted to peer up at him.

  Intense concern and severe pissed-offness vied for dominance in his dark eyes. The snort of disgruntlement I sent him didn’t help much with that either. He nudged at me, his huff pretty much telling me to get the hell up.

  I rolled onto my front, the action an ungainly one as weariness and dizziness skewed my coor
dination. How I got from there to upright, I didn’t know, because as I pushed tall enough to match Dad’s height, all four limbs threatened to give up and collapse me back down with the grace of a busted deckchair.

  Dad’s head jerked to the left. A grunt burst from him. Like I’d spoken out of turn in class, he sent me to the damn corner. That stung even more than the evacuation of vampire scent from my nostrils. I let him know it with my snort before I spun away to oblige, wishing I hadn’t when he followed my rhino-plods across the room.

  Each step on the rug coated my pads in shit I’d rather I didn’t have to walk through until we reached the corner, the only spot in the entire room seemingly unaffected by carnage.

  I turned to Dad. His brows knitted together. For seconds, we stood there, eye to eye, neither of us moving, until he urged himself a little closer. He sniffed at my face before his nostrils trailed to my ruff, where he pushed into the thick hair and his inhalations deepened—checking for damage.

  My chest heaved beneath my sigh. I huffed at him to let him know I was fine.

  He didn’t quit with his inspection. Probably thought my assurance to be bullshit.

  In truth, it probably was. I couldn’t have been much farther from fine.

  My shoulders, my flank, my legs—all of them went under his scrutiny before he butted me with a grunt to change back.

  Could I, though? After the wolfsbane, would I be able to reverse what it had done?

  At another grunt, a shove, and the hunkering down of Dad’s head as he prepared to join me, I guessed I didn’t have much choice but to try.

  35

  Sweat saturated my flesh. My entire body stank like a cesspit. Wobbling affected my arms and legs, and they wanted nothing more than to sink me to the carpet, where I could sleep for eons, but pride demanded they hold me up whilst the other pack still shared the room with us.

  “Son?”

  I twisted my hung head, bringing Dad’s frowning, blood-streaked face into view beside my shoulder.

  “You okay?”

  I wanted to say no, that I felt like a steaming pile of shit. Like electricity, the after effects of the poison still hummed through my veins, fraying my nerve endings and leaving me twitchy as hell. Instead, I nodded, my voice hoarse with my mumbled, “Peachy.”