“So which bad guy do you want to try and stop? I’ll take the other.”
Ignoring the question for a precious few seconds, she walked in close and grabbed the front of his shirt. “Kiss me and make it count,” she ordered, and Ryan did just that.
When he pulled away, Ryan stepped back and drew in a breath. “I’ll take Travis. Just don’t hate me if I end up killing a member of your family.”
Heidi snorted. “No worries there. Travis is not my family. Travis hurt my family. I completely stopped caring about him when I saw what he did to you.”
Ryan nodded, jaw tight. “When you go after Diane Crane, remember she’s escaped from Brandi and Gareth, and pretty much everyone. They were talking about her on the plane coming here. Brandi said it’s like she’s got an evil guardian angel looking out for her.”
“I know,” Heidi said sadly. “She brags all the time about never getting stopped. I’m not going to do anything crazy. I’m just going to keep her from going to the helicopter if I can.”
“Be careful,” Ryan ordered. He kissed her hard once more, shifted back to wolf, and snuck out the door without officially saying goodbye. That was fine with her. She never liked that word anyway. It was too final.
Heidi waited a full minute, then partially shifted again. Nightmare mode was definitely more flexible than being human and more powerful than being wolf. Sneaking out the door, she set off in search of Diane Crane’s office.
17
Ryan slowed as he heard the helicopter’s engine running. It was a transport vehicle, big enough to carry several people away in it. Travis sat in the passenger seat beside the pilot, but the door was open. His head turned as Ryan stopped and stared at him.
Easing from the seat, Travis jumped down and pulled out a weapon as he advanced. Still in wolf form, Ryan paced restlessly, trying to think about what to do and how to take down the man when he had no weapons of his own.
The dart zinged by him, missed, and landed several feet behind him. His wolf reacted to the threat in the same manner all animals did when attacked and went with their fight response. He leapt automatically at Travis, his lean body stretching out to span the distance still between them with not much effort. His fangs went instinctively for his attacker’s neck, but ended up biting through a shoulder instead. They severed something because Travis screamed and struggled beneath him to get away.
The helicopter’s backwash as it unexpectedly lifted into the air blew him off Travis. Ryan’s head raised as he growled at the man in the machine escaping. Distracted, he missed seeing the hypodermic coming at him until it had been shoved into him. It ended up missing its real target, but did stick him in his leg. It broke off as Ryan jerked instinctively away from Travis.
His low growl of fury had Travis crab-crawling backwards as he moved towards him again. Then he watched the alpha grandson of the Black Wolf alpha morph into one of the biggest wolves he’d ever seen. Shit. He’d forgotten when he jumped him just how big the bastard’s wolf was.
Despite the odds being severely against him in animal form, thoughts of what Travis had done to him and to Heidi kept him advancing. The bastard’s betrayal of his kind marked him for death. He’d love nothing better than to help send him on his way. Maybe he wouldn’t survive this fight, but he would do his best to keep Travis busy until Brandi and Gareth arrived.
Travis’s fangs were flashing with a vengeance at him now. Ryan bared his too, fighting the lightheadedness of the drug that had managed to get into his system after all. He’d always been able to size up a fight well. It was something his father had taught him. This one wasn’t going to turn out in his favor, but he wasn’t about to run.
I love you, Heidi. He sent the words, hoping their connection was strong enough to carry them to her. There was no answer back, but he chose to believe his thoughts would find their way to his mate.
Then he did the only thing a wolf could do in his current situation. He leapt for Travis’s throat and knocked him down again.
Heidi smelled her and then she heard her.
In the next room, she stopped in front of Diane Crane, who was mumbling to herself as she shoved folders and strange equipment into a satchel. Knowing she couldn’t let the woman leave with any of that stuff, Heidi stepped into the space, filling up the doorway with her partially shifted form.
Her senses were as sharp as when she was her full wolf and she could smell the adrenaline. It took almost a minute before the panicking scientist saw her. It took another thirty seconds for Diane Crane to stop swearing enough to speak rationally. The hand Diane finally pressed to her thundering heart made her snicker. Apparently everyone was afraid of her in nightmare form. That suited her just fine.
“Who the hell are you?” Diane asked, working to steady herself. “Never mind—that was a stupid question. I don’t care who you are. But what are you? Because you look like every experiment gone wrong. I hope you don’t get stuck like that because you’re hideous. It might be the first time I’ve ever felt guilty about what I’ve done.”
Heidi stepped into the room, moving closer. “What I am is far less important than who I am because I’m going to be the first person to succeed in stopping you from escaping your destiny, Dr. Crane. I warned you I would while you were carving on me. Don’t you remember our conversations?”
“My. My. My. I do good work. Heidi the little Healer, I presume?” Diane ran a hand through her hair. “Gods, you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you? It’s such a shame I won’t be able to take you with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere… and neither are you,” Heidi said firmly, her voice deepening with her conviction.
While she was wondering what steps to take to stop the scientist, Diane marched to her bag and pulled a gun out of it. She aimed the weapon and took two shots before Heidi could even react. She felt her body jerk as each one hit her. Fire seared the areas. Her nanos scrambled wildly.
Despite the wounds, she still moved forward, finally reaching out a claw to knock the gun out of Diane Crane’s hand. True shock at her actions was on the woman’s face, but it didn’t keep the scientist from sneering at her.
“Those were silver bullets. Why aren’t they working on you? Randall’s notes very clearly said silver bullets incapacitate werewolves.”
Silver? Heidi paused to see how her body was faring. There was so much pain that awareness was cloudy. “Your torture taught me to deal with all kinds of pain. I’m thinking about returning the favor.”
“Travis will be here any minute. My guards will be here. You should escape while you can.”
Heidi narrowed her gaze and huffed out a breath. “Brandi and Gareth are on their way too. We’ll have our crazy party when all the guests arrive.”
She looked down at her hand. Her fingers were still claws. Going on instinct, she reached out both sets and ran them straight into both of Diane Crane’s upper arms, ripping down to shred muscles and tendons. The scientist screamed in outrage and what Heidi hoped was extreme pain.
When she finally pulled her claws out, Diane fell to the floor to writhe in agony, arms useless at her sides. She was crying now from her injuries, but Heidi pushed her empathy away. The wounds she’d given the scientist weren’t fatal, but they would require months and a lot of physical therapy for a human to heal them.
Holding her claws up to inspect for damage, Heidi watched as Diane’s blood dripped off them to the floor. She felt nothing about that. No guilt. No anger. Nothing. The fire raging within her and the nanos scrambling had monopolized all of her sensory attention. Strangely though, the fire of her injuries was lowering itself to a simmer.
“No more, Diane,” Heidi said, looking down at her victim. “I can’t let you experiment on anyone else. No more babies—born or unborn. You deserve to die for what I saw in the room down the hall.”
“Do you really think a little pain is going to make any difference if I’m successful? My work is too important. You can’t stop me from taking this evolutionary
step forward. No one can.”
“What you did to innocent people isn’t evolution,” Heidi declared. “It’s cruel and horrific. It’s the very antithesis of anything natural. You could be using your talent to save the world, but no, instead you’re wasting it on stupidity.”
Diane laughed. “You’re so naïve. The world itself isn’t worth saving, little Healer. Only a select few people are. Look at all the advantages you have now as this creature. Like it or not, my brother improved you. Hell, I improved you. You’re a hypocrite if you deny it.”
Completely losing her battle to remain stoic, Heidi started to answer, but a man’s voice stopped her.
“I don’t believe this. The mistakes keep getting bigger and uglier around this place. What the fuck are you supposed to be?”
Heidi turned and glared. Her eyes felt like they were bleeding. Maybe they were. “Travis,” she hissed through her fangs. If Travis was here, it meant Ryan had succeeded in stopping him from leaving, but hadn’t succeeded in his capture efforts.
Travis looked at Diane bleeding all over the floor. “You’re going to owe me big for saving your ass this time, Dr. Crane.”
He lifted the weapon in his hand and shot her with a dart. Heidi looked down at where it had stuck in her hairy oversized arm. She pulled it out and flung it away. Heat suffused her as the fire within her burned hotter once more. This was not going to happen again. Travis was not going to get the upper hand.
She lumbered forward, heading towards him, slowed a bit by the sedative now coursing through her.
“Damn… I smell you now,” Travis said, chuckling as he looked her up and down. “I wish my grandfather could see the monster you’ve become. His remorse would be as great as my disgust of him. I could probably die happy.”
“I like the idea of you dying.” Heidi stopped in front of Travis, realizing she was eye-to-eye with him, which meant she was taller in this partially shifted form. That was a nice bonus.
“Where’s my mate?” she asked.
Travis smiled and shrugged. “What’s left of him is on the roof waiting for the buzzards. He’s not quite the bad-ass wolf he thought he was, certainly no match for mine.”
Anxiety flooded her. Was Ryan dead? She reached out with her mind. Ryan? But there was no answer. Would she know if something bad had happened to him?
She lifted a claw and pointed it in warning at Travis, wincing as it changed back to human.
The rest of her soon followed and she found herself staring up into the gaze of Reed’s younger, evil twin. She could still smell Reed on Travis, but he wasn’t Reed. In fact, he was nothing like Reed.
In her human form, there was very little she could do to him. Travis knew it—knew it and enjoyed it. He grinned down at her, his amusement over her shifted dilemma shining in his eyes. Her mind scrambled for ideas.
“If you knew how bad you looked as that thing she turned you into, you’d never shift again. What the hell did Dr. Fuck-Up do to you?”
Knowing Travis could decide to kill her any minute, Heidi reached out and grabbed his hands, wrapping her fingers around his wrists as tightly as she could. She focused her attention on him and prayed this would work quickly. “Listen to me, Travis. You’re going to help me keep Diane Crane here. You’re going to tell the guards to put away their weapons. You’re going to do whatever I tell you is best.”
Travis laughed hard, pulling free from her grasp as he pushed her away from him. “Why would I do something so stupid? Become Dr. Crane’s crazy monster doesn’t mean you get to boss anyone around.” He raised his dart weapon again. “Guess that first dart didn’t work. Looks like I’m going to have to use my last one on you. That does not make me happy, little Healer. You’ve reduced me to using up my precious silver bullets on the next werewolf that crosses my path. Dr. Crane here wasn’t the only one willing to pay for my werewolf apprehension efforts.”
In the split second Travis raised the tranquilizer gun still in his hand, Heidi ordered her fingers to change into claws. Nanos scrambled and she stepped into Travis, one of her claws piercing his skin to skewer several internal organs.
“Damn you,” Travis spat, backing away to un-impale himself. “I can’t believe you’d kill someone from your family. That’s just wrong for a Healer.”
“You’re not my family,” Heidi said calmly, stepping with him to keep him close. “Reed is my family. You’re a selfish bastard who steals babies for sicko scientists.”
Travis dropped the tranquilizer gun to grip her shoulders with both his hands. He tried to push her off, but she was still connected. “Get off me bitch.”
Her answer to that was to ram her other set of claws into his midsection on the other side. Now she was completely tangled up in him. Travis was trapped… but so was she.
“Damn it,” Travis said. “I’m your fucking family. I didn’t kill your mate when I took you. I didn’t kill you.”
Heidi grunted as she bent her claws inside him, curving them slightly as she ripped his insides. “Yes, you did. You killed my hope that you could be saved. For someone like me, that’s just as bad as you taking my life.”
Gathering energy, Heidi called out as she ripped sideways through Travis with both hands. Entrails and organs spilled to the floor before Travis’s brain even realized what she’d done to him. It was a fatal wound… a completely un-healable one. She’d known it, which is why she didn’t just sever a tendon or two like she had done to Diane Crane. She might have been tempted to heal a lesser wound in Travis. Putting guts back inside him? Not in her skill set.
It was hard to look at his eviscerated body though. The open wounds were bad, but so was the absolute shock on Travis’s now dead face. Finally sickened by the violence of what she’d done, Heidi stepped away, letting his now lifeless body fall to the floor too.
Blood and gore and Travis guts were everywhere she looked. His human form disappeared as Travis shifted to wolf one last time. She looked away from what she’d done, covering her mouth with her hand to keep from retching.
“Heidi?”
It was Ryan’s voice that made her see them standing in the doorway. All of them were stunned and staring at her. Ryan with all his wounds looked like hell. Brandi and Gareth looked at her like they’d never seen her before. Only Yana didn’t blink. She nodded once in approval instead.
“What I said to him was a lie. Travis was family, which is probably why he was immune to my influence. I couldn’t let him take Diane away. I had no choice but to kill him,” Heidi whispered. Oh, God… Reed. What was he going to say? Would he hate her for what she’d done?
Gareth looked at his shocked and still silent mate, and then looked back at Heidi. “No,” he agreed. “You had no choice. Travis was a trained agent and would have killed you if it had suited his needs to do so. Your actions saved you.”
Heidi looked down at her bloody claws, which changed to bloody hands while she watched. Pushing past the others, Yana walked confidently into the room. She pulled off her shirt and efficiently wiped away what she could of the still wet stains on Heidi’s hands.
“I am sorry I not do killing for you. For my great sins, I work to pay for Healer head therapy,” Yana whispered.
For some reason, the young woman’s comment about her needing head therapy made her laugh. No amount of therapy in the world was going to erase her ability to become the nightmare version of her nano wolf. Diane was right about the improvement, but that didn’t make Randall Crane right for forcing the initial change on her. Learning to accept being a werewolf had meant accepting there was no going back to the innocent, unaware human she’d once been.
She managed to bring up a smile for the younger woman’s sake. “I don’t think I’m going to need therapy for what I did to Travis… but thanks, Yana. And thanks for bringing back help.”
“Spasibo,” Yana said, flinging the bloodstained shirt aside, but keeping her grip on the woman who’d ended her betrayer. “Maybe we drink a toast to Nicolai, yes? My unknown sister c
an offer up many prayers of thanks.”
Heidi smiled and chuckled. “Make my drink a double werewolf vodka. Katarina says that works best.”
Yana laughed. “Da. This I will do. I make it for you. I know recipe.”
Heidi looked back at where she left Diane Crane, but the scientist was no longer there. “I know you’re still here, Diane. I made sure you couldn’t crawl away.”
She pulled from Yana’s grip and stormed over to find Diane Crane hunkered down and hiding behind a filing cabinet. Grabbing the still groaning scientist by the back of her clothes, Heidi dragged her out and across the floor, throwing her badly damaged body at Brandi’s feet.
She looked at her Beta who had yet to say a word to her or meet her direct gaze. That told her just how much she and Gareth had seen of what she’d done to Travis. Brandi was in shock more than she was about her actions.
“I stopped Diane Crane from leaving but I didn’t kill her. If you want to do it, I’m fine with that. I’ll finish her myself if you ask me to. God knows there’s reason enough in every room of this place to want the woman dead, not even counting what she did to Yana and me. But I have something more redeeming in mind for her if you’re willing to hear about it.”
Brandi holstered her weapon. She made herself raise her gaze to her friend. Imagining the unspeakable horrors Diane Crane had put Heidi through had nearly driven her insane. Seeing Heidi do what she just did brought the reality of those horrors home. Danger Brain Diane had turned a natural Healer into a cold-blooded, vicious killer. She made herself speak because running to throw up was not an option with Heidi staring so calmly at her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get in here sooner. I’m sorry for what you went through and for Danger Brain Diane turning you into something even worse than a werewolf.”
Heidi shrugged. “I’m still breathing. I tell myself that’s what counts. I can’t worry about the rest right now.”
Heidi: Nano Wolves 3 Page 13