“Not quite,” Zachariah said. He shifted his arm underneath Scott’s shoulders for a better grip. “Probably will be soon if we don’t get him where I can take a look at him. Someone grab his knees,” he added, and Tate stepped up, grasping Scott’s legs.
“If he’s that bad, shouldn’t we take him to a hospital?” he asked as they carried Scott through the door Marie held open.
“No hospitals,” Zachariah grunted out. They started up the stairs, the process going slowly since Tate was walking backwards. “We have to keep a low profile. We can’t do that if we leave a paper trail everywhere we go.”
“Understood,” Tate acknowledged, “but what happens if he dies?”
“He’s not going to die,” Riley bit out.
At the same time, Ashton said, “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.”
“We’re not going to get to it,” she said. “Not even a consideration.”
“I’ll do my best,” Zachariah said. He smiled, tightly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Tate knew that look. He’d seen it on the faces of doctors when they didn’t hold much hope for their patient’s outcome. He’d seen it on police officers delivering bad news to the families of those who didn’t make it. Hell, he’d worn it himself a time or two. He didn’t say anything, though, not until they’d made it upstairs and laid Scott on the bed as gently as they could manage. Scott groaned faintly as his body was stretched flat on the mattress.
“Give me room to work,” Zachariah told the rest of them. Ashton herded them out the door, despite Riley’s protests. “You have any medical training?” he asked Tate.
“I’m a licensed EMT,” he said. “What can I do to help?”
“I need you to help me assess his injuries,” Zachariah replied. He dumped an orange medical bag onto the bed—Tate hadn’t even noticed he had it—and unzipped it, taking out a pair of trauma shears and beginning to cut Scott’s jeans off while Tate examined his torso.
It looked like Scott had been through a hell of a beating. Bruises in varying stages of development adorned his skin; there were particularly nasty ones over his ribs. When he pressed his fingers against the worst of the bruising, he felt the man’s ribs shift under his skin. “He’s got some broken ribs here,” he reported.
Zachariah didn’t look up, focusing instead on the slit he cut in the left cuff of Scott’s jeans. He grabbed the two halves and pulled, ripping the denim to the thigh. “I can’t say I’m surprised,” he said. “The asshole who took him, Brandon? He likes to hit. I think he gets off on it or something. You should have seen Ash when Brandon got done with him.” He scowled. “Fucking asshole.” He gently lifted Scott’s leg and examined it before lowering it back down. “He has an abrasion on his ankle, but besides that, this leg checks out. Now for the other one…”
Tate grabbed gauze and a penlight from the orange bag and examined the wound on Scott’s shoulder. He grimaced and began bandaging it as the sound of Zachariah cutting and tearing the other pant leg met his ears. Though he was focused on the wound he was bandaging, he couldn’t miss how Zachariah froze in his peripheral vision.
“Tate,” Zachariah said. Something in his voice made him look up. “Get away from him.”
“What?”
“Get away from him,” Zachariah repeated. “Now.”
“I have to finish—”
“Now.”
Tate held both hands up in a defensive gesture and took a couple of steps back. “What is it?”
“Go get Jax and Ashton,” Zachariah instructed. “And don’t come back into this room, no matter what. It’s not safe.”
As the SUV slowly pulled into the driveway in front of the abandoned house they’d been operating from, Brandon saw the front door standing wide open, and his face flushed red with anger. There was no legitimate reason the front door should have been open. Which meant either the idiots posting guard had gotten careless or Riley and her friends had been there. And considering how his luck had been running lately, he was more likely to bet on the latter than the former.
“What the hell’s been going on here?” he grumbled, unfastening his seatbelt. He didn’t look at the red-dressed woman in the seat beside his; he knew already that Ahm would be full of answers he didn’t want to hear.
“Do you want me to check things out, boss?” the man in the driver’s seat asked. He was one of Brandon’s men, Alex, brought along with him from the Agency, and he was a very capable, very well-trained agent. He also looked like he was itching to get out of the car as fast as was humanly possible. Considering the hulking mass of an Alpha werewolf sitting in the passenger seat, it was no wonder he was ready to get out.
“Go,” Brandon said with a nod. He wasn’t taking pity on the man; he wasn’t sure he was even capable of that emotion anymore. No, he just wanted someone to get inside and tell him what was going on in there. Alex was quick to obey, leaving the car idling as he climbed out and approached the front door.
Ahm shifted in her seat, her skirt slithering against the leather. There was a note of obvious impatience in her voice when she spoke. “This is all unnecessary,” she said, pressing her right index finger against her temple. Brandon glanced at her; she’d closed her eyes, like she was nursing a headache, though he knew full well she couldn’t get headaches. “The sorry excuses for guards that you left in the house are dead. They were each shot to death with a 9mm weapon. Scott Hunter is no longer in the house. They found him and took him.”
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
Ahm opened her eyes and looked at him, an eyebrow raised, as if she were returning the question with one of her own: Just how stupid are you? Brandon, deciding on the wisest course of action, shut his mouth and chose not to say anything further.
Moments later, Alex returned, confirming everything that Ahm said he’d find. Ahm looked smug in her rightness, and Brandon clenched a fist, wanting desperately to punch something but unsure of exactly who—or what—it would be wisest to punch. Opting for nothing, he instead turned his attention to Timothy Chambers, who was still sitting in the front seat, though with Alex’s confirmation, a low growl began issuing from deep in his throat.
“Really, Alpha,” Ahm admonished.
“They took something of mine,” Timothy protested.
“Oh, come on,” Ahm said. “He wasn’t yours. Not yet.”
“I put my teeth in him. He’s mine.”
“If you claimed everything you put your teeth in, you’d be overrun with the number of wolves in your pack,” Ahm pointed out. “And if you want to get very technical about it, he wasn’t yours and never will be, because you’re all mine. Every last one of you.”
To Brandon’s surprise, Timothy actually looked cowed by Ahm’s statement.
“Where do we go now?” Brandon asked as Alex slid back into the driver’s seat.
“After our wayward werewolf and his friends, of course.”
“And we’re going to find them how?” Brandon pressed.
The grin that crossed Ahm’s face was a frightening thing to behold: it showed her fangs and made Brandon feel like a rabbit sitting in the presence of a predator. He fought back a shudder. “Why, we’re going to use our Alpha’s nose,” she said. “After all, he can track any of his possessed anywhere they go.”
Timothy straightened in his seat, a determined look crossing his face. His hand slapped at the controls on the passenger door beside him, and the window rolled down, letting the damp, mildly humid air into the car. It stank like a swamp, and Brandon scrunched his nose in disgust. Timothy thrust his head out the window and inhaled deeply; Brandon was amazed he didn’t gag at the stench. Then he pointed ahead of the vehicle and said, “That way.”
“You sure?” Ahm asked. She didn’t sound like she doubted him in the slightest.
“Absolutely.”
Ahm grinned again. “Onward, then.”
Fourteen
The first thing Scott noticed when he came to was Riley’s scent. It was all around
him, flooding his nose and sending a tingle to some reptile part of his brain that said, Want. Need. He shifted, discovering that he wasn’t zip-tied to a chair, wasn’t dead. No, he was reclining back on an almost heavenly soft bed. Had he dreamed all of that? Had he been in bed with Riley all this time?
He shifted again, and the scent of blood and sweat reached his nose, overlapping with Riley’s smell. Was she hurt? Had someone hurt her? That foreign part of his brain roared to the surface, and his eyes snapped open. He threw himself off the bed, tumbling to the floor on all fours, then scrambled to his feet and looked around wildly.
“Holy shit,” someone said, and Scott’s head snapped in the direction of the sound. Ashton stood near the end of the bed Scott had been laying on, and as Scott turned his attention onto him, Zachariah pushed the scarred man behind him protectively.
Mates, that reptile brain told him. Instincts. It was just instincts. And those instincts recognized them as friends, companions, two people who didn’t intend him any harm.
There was a blond man—somewhat unfamiliar, like he’d maybe met him once or passed him on the street—standing near the door. As Scott zeroed in on him, he picked out his scent, and before he could stop it, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. Enemy! Enemy! the instincts screamed. He took two steps toward the man, bumping into the bed he’d forgotten was there, and Zachariah flung his arm toward the blond.
“Get the hell out!” he ordered. “He sees you as a threat.”
The blond didn’t hesitate to do what Zachariah said, pulling the door closed behind him.
The second the door clicked shut, Scott’s shoulders relaxed, and his instincts let go and allowed him to return to himself. With his return, he realized his entire body ached like he’d been someone’s punching bag for a few hours. He sagged against the wall with a groan.
“Scott?” Zachariah asked, his voice cautiously questioning.
“What the hell happened to me?” Scott asked. He was shocked by how hoarse his voice was when he spoke. He cleared his throat, but it didn’t seem to help; when he spoke again, his words still came out in a rough growl. “And where is Riley? Is she okay?”
“Riley’s fine,” Ashton said, easing out from behind Zachariah. “She’s in the hall.”
As if on cue, the door slammed back open, bouncing off the wall behind it, sending Scott reflexively ducking into the corner of the room as if to avoid a blow. Riley stormed inside, her eyes wide, every bit of her demeanor suggesting urgency. “Where is he?” she demanded. “Jax said he was awake. Where is he?” Her eyes landed on Scott, still jammed in the corner, and she started toward him. “Oh God, Scott, are you okay?”
Scott felt a sense of alarm, and he put up a hand to stop her. “No. Stop right there,” he said. “Don’t come any closer. Any of you.”
Riley stopped so suddenly that her tennis shoes squeaked on the hardwood floor. An expression of nervousness and worry crossed her face, and she took a couple of steps closer to him before second guessing herself and stopping beside Ashton and Zachariah. “What is it?” she asked, and Scott almost answered before realizing she’d addressed the other two men in the room. “What happened?”
“He got bitten,” Zachariah said. His voice sounded tight, like he was being choked.
“Bitten? By what?” Riley asked. She looked at Scott. He didn’t have to answer her; she already knew what he’d say. He could see it in her eyes. He could also see that she already fully understood just how screwed he really was. “Oh God,” she murmured. “What do we do?”
“I’m not sure there’s much we can do,” Ashton said. “Contrary to what Jax is hoping, I’ve never heard of a werewolf being successfully turned back into a human when said werewolf killed the Alpha that turned him. There were sporadic legends about that when it came to vampires—as Zach proves,” he bobbed his head toward the man in question, who grinned, showing off the long fangs in his mouth, “but werewolves? Never heard of it happening before.”
“That’s not saying it can’t happen,” Zachariah said. “I’d be the last to say it can’t. It’s just that, as far as we’re aware, there have been no documented accounts of it happening.”
“Assume it won’t happen,” Scott told them. His head hurt, and the light in the room seemed overly bright. He bowed his head, looking down at himself as he massaged his temples. His shirt was missing, and his jeans had been cut up almost their entire length so they hung in tatters. He wanted to take them off, change into something a little more in one piece, but not while he had an audience. “What then?”
“You’re still you,” Jax said from the open door, and Scott glanced up to see him standing just inside the room. This time, the instinct that had screamed at him when he’d looked in Jax’s direction earlier didn’t resurface. “That’s not going to change. Even if we don’t figure out a way to reverse this, you’ll always be you. You’re just…more than you used to be.” He moved further into the room when Scott didn’t show any signs of reacting the way he had when he’d first woken up, though he too stopped short near Riley. He breathed in deeply and examined him closely, and Scott could have sworn the man ducked a little lower, like he was cowed by something he’d seen in Scott’s face. It was only when his head was on a lower level than Scott’s that he added, “A lot more than you used to be.”
“What is it?” Ashton prompted.
Jax stared at Scott for a moment longer then shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “We need to know everything you remember about what happened, not just to you but around you.”
“Do we have to do this now?” Scott asked. The throbbing in his head wasn’t letting up—if anything, it was getting worse—and he wanted aspirin, a drink, food, and a little rest. Preferably in that order.
“No,” Riley answered, and at the same time, Jax said, “Yes.”
“Okay, everybody,” Zachariah spoke up, taking a step forward. “Let’s not start this shit. Jax.”
Jax scowled and folded his arms but didn’t respond.
“Right now, I’m more concerned with Scott’s health and general wellbeing than I am with grilling him about every little thing he’s been through over the past day,” Zachariah continued.
“If that’s the case,” Scott said, “is there a chance I can get some clothes that aren’t cut to ribbons? It’s a bit chilly in here.” He looked pointedly at Jax, hoping the man would catch a hint, and Jax stiffened like someone had jammed a steel rod in his spine.
“On it,” Jax said uncomfortably, and he retreated from the room like someone had attempted to set his clothes on fire.
“What the hell got into him?” Ashton asked.
“Me, I think,” Scott commented. He sank onto the end of the bed and rested his forehead in his hands. He could feel the changes coming over his body, the aches and pains that had been there since he’d woken up subsiding with every passing minute—the scrapes, the bruises, the broken bones, all of it. The otherness of it made him want to vomit. Was this what Zachariah had gone through when that Elise woman had turned him into a vampire? The gradual loss of his humanity, the stripping away of everything that made him him? He didn’t care what Jax said: he wasn’t himself anymore. He was still Scott, sure, but he was something else, too, something much darker than he’d been before. He was dangerous, more so than he’d been prior to all this happening to him. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally hurt one of his friends. Especially Riley.
The bed beside him dipped down, and he lifted his head to see the woman in question on the bed, her forehead creased with concern. She took one of his hands and grasped it tightly between hers.
The instincts in him surfaced once more, just long enough to murmur, Mate, before subsiding.
“Her name is Ahm,” Scott said. At the looks of confusion that Ashton, Zachariah, and Riley gave him, he clarified. “The woman in red that we were warned about. The one that attacked you.” He nodded his head toward Zachariah and Ashton. “She said her name was Ahm.”
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br /> “Ahm?” Ashton repeated. He scrunched his eye shut for a moment, repeating the word under his breath a few times, then opened his eye again and said, “That’s Arabic. Means mother.”
“I’ve known you for three years and had no idea you speak Arabic,” Zachariah commented.
“I speak eight different languages,” Ashton replied, “so it shouldn’t be that surprising.” He turned his attention back to Scott and asked, “What does she mean by calling herself that name?”
Scott closed his eyes and tried to think back to what had happened in that chilly basement, tried to remember the words the evil woman had said to him. “She said she was the mother of everything dark, all the stuff that comes from Hell except for the Devil. She said she created them. No, not created. Corrupted.”
“There’s no such thing,” Zachariah said. “That’s impossible. She’s lying.”
“Have you forgotten your Bible stories already, Zach?” Ashton asked. “There are stories about her. The Harlot.”
Zachariah slouched into a metal folding chair by the wall. “Oh God, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Wish I was. Sadly, I’m not.”
“Who is the Harlot?” Riley asked. “I’m not as familiar with the Bible as I should be.”
“The Harlot,” Ashton replied, his tone suggesting she was highly ignorant. A muscle under Scott’s right eye twitched, and it took everything in him to not come off the bed and smack the shit out of him for talking to Riley like that. “I’m not sure how to describe her. She’s not a fallen angel, but she’s not a demon, either. She’s something else entirely. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, he places her as the guardian of Hell’s gates. He says that when she was spawned by Lucifer himself—she’s described as having sprung out of his head, kind of like the Athena and Zeus story—she was called Sin. In short, Lucifer impregnated her, and she gave birth to some pretty ugly creatures, the forerunners of the vampires, demons, and other nasty shit we deal with every day. Essentially, she’s like sin incarnate, but she’s even more than that.”
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