by Lynn Hagen
Zeus’s Pack 9
Rave
Logan leads a pretty simple life. That is, until he delivers a load of lumber to Hunter's Hardware and nearly gets blown up. Logan doesn't understand who would try to kill him until he's attacked outside the hospital, and then his home. The man after him is relentless.
Agent Monroe is sent to Pride Pack Valley to investigate. Under the guise of wanting to get reacquainted with Rave, he digs into multiple murders committed by a man who can control minds and make his victims kill themselves.
Rave is sent to retrieve someone Dr. Maximus Samuel feels is in danger. Little does Rave know that he will be rescuing his mate, who doesn't want to be rescued, even after being nearly blown to bits when his truck explodes.
As the body count begins to rise in Pride Pack Valley, Agent Monroe must find the man behind the murders. But his investigation leads him to Logan, his mate. Can Rave save Logan from Agent Monroe, and can the two of them stop Logan from going nuclear as he discovers abilities he never even knew he had?
Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 44,630 words
RAVE
Zeus’s Pack 9
Lynn Hagen
MENAGE EVERLASTING MANLOVE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting ManLove
RAVE
Copyright © 2012 by Lynn Hagen
E-book ISBN: 978-1-61926-745-9
First E-book Publication: June 2012
Cover design by Jinger Heaston
All art and logo copyright © 2012 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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RAVE
Zeus’s Pack 9
LYNN HAGEN
Copyright © 2012
Chapter One
Logan waited as Hunter signed the forms. He glanced around the hardware store, noticing that a few things had been added on since the last time he’d been at the store. There were new rows next to the nail section that held power tools and all the accessories a man could desire. The owner was expanding his business, and it looked nice.
“You can unload the lumber out back,” the hardware store owner said as he handed Logan back his pen. “And anything else that isn’t lumber can be stacked by the back door.”
Logan nodded as he shoved the pen in the front pocket of his ugly brown work shirt and then tore off a copy of the delivery ticket, handing it to Hunter. “Not a problem.”
Tucking the clipboard under his arm, Logan headed out front to his delivery truck. He climbed inside and then pulled the truck around to the back of the hardware store, backing into a spot near the door and turning off the motor. This should be a quick in-and-out job.
He hoped.
As Logan slid from the truck and headed around back to the door Hunter had specified, he heard the wind blow and leaves rustle across the concrete. A chill entered him as he shook his head. What was he expecting in the back of the hardware store, zombies? He needed to lay off the late-night movies. He was starting to spook himself.
He loosened the tie-downs, releasing the pressure on the thick, cloth material. No one had a forklift around here, so unloading the order would be by hand. Thank goodness Hunter hadn’t ordered much. Logan didn’t figure to be unloading wood for the rest of the day. He had better things to do, although, at the moment he couldn’t think of a single one.
If the order had been large, there would have been a forklift attached to the truck as well. It took Logan a little while to stack the last of the wood in the designated area by size and length. Once he was done, he walked around to get the few boxes sitting on the floor in the cab of his truck.
A soft breeze blew across the back of his neck, warm and subtle.
It felt like someone was standing directly behind him, blowing on his neck in soft tufts. Logan rubbed the tingling skin and opened the truck door. He grabbed the first box, carrying it inside and setting it next to the already-existing inventory that still needed to be put away.
The back room was cluttered, but not so much that Hunter wouldn’t be able to find what he was looking for. It was sort of an organized clutter. Nails were with nails, clamps with clamps, so on and so forth. He made sure he stacked Hunter’s order accordingly.
I wouldn’t want to mess the guy’s strange system up. Some people functioned better disorganized than neat and tidy.
Hunter was apparently one of those people that liked disorganization.
Logan walked outside into the warm spring air and felt goose bumps march down his arms. A low whistling noise drew his attention to his left, so Logan looked. But nothing was there.
He ran his hands over his head and went to the truck to get the rest of the boxes. Maybe that zombie marathon last night wasn’t such a good idea after all. He was imagining things, very bizarre things, noises and touches that weren’t there.
His buddy Cal was going to rib him good for his runaway imagination. They had only known each other for six months, but he teased Logan about his imagination. Logan grabbed the last two boxes and took them inside the hardware store, stacking them according to Hunter’s screwed-up system.
Wiping the dust from his hands onto the front his pants, Logan stepped back outsid
e and stilled. The passenger’s door was closed.
He hadn’t closed it.
Or maybe he had and didn’t notice he had done it. Some things were done out of habit to the point people didn’t remember doing them. This could have been the case. Logan chuckled softly to himself, wondering if he was going to be this freaked out all day. He usually didn’t imagine things after watching one of his favorite horror movies, though.
But last night was the first time he had watched a marathon of them. That could have been what was freaking him out. At least, that was how Logan justified the huge case of the willies he seemed to have.
Sliding into the driver’s side, Logan turned the key to start the truck. He heard a whirl and then a click in the silence of the cab.
Something deep down inside of Logan made him scramble from the truck and then run as fast as his damn legs would carry him. He didn’t hear a boom or any kind of explosion as he rounded the brick building.
Damn, was he really letting his imagination get the better of him?
That’s it. No more late-night movies for me.
Just as Logan headed back toward the truck, feeling like a complete idiot, an explosion ripped through air, expanding outward toward the back of the hardware store. Wood, glass, metal, and fire rained down all around him as he huddled in a ball on the ground. He felt objects slap his arm and leg as he lay there curled up tightly, covering his head. His right side was the only thing exposed, and that was the side that took the brunt of the falling debris.
People began to run around back, and a small crowd began to form. Logan looked up from his arm, seeing the twisted metal of the truck he had been sitting in only moments before and the back of the burning hardware store.
“Hunter!” Logan tried to stand but swooned instead. He landed on his ass as something warm trickled down the side of his face. His nostrils burned from the acrid smoke billowing from the melted truck and the burning wood. He coughed a few times, turning his head as he spit on the ground. His mouth was even sore.
“You’re bleeding,” a man said as he knelt close to Logan. “Your temple, or maybe your scalp.”
Logan could only lip-read at this point. The explosion had done something to his hearing. He reached up and winced when he felt a low throb in his temple where his fingers had touched. Pulling his hand away, Logan found blood smeared on his fingertips. It didn’t seem real. None of this did.
Who would want to blow him up?
He had no enemies, none that he could think of. Winning at poker on Friday night did not constitute someone trying to kill him, especially since they wagered with quarters. No one should want him dead just because they had lost their laundry money.
So who the hell could it be?
The ringing in Logan’s ears was giving him a splitting headache.
It sounded like the Emergency Broadcast System was in surround sound as he closed his eyes and covered his ears. Logan rolled to his side and vomited violently on the ground, feeling the bitter taste of bile as it left his mouth. He felt off-balance and out of focus. He knew with his hearing affected, so would his balance be. The two sort of went hand in hand.
Someone touched his shoulder, and Logan swung onto his back, his arms covering his face. The person tugged until his arms finally lowered. It was a paramedic. The paramedic wore a navy-blue shirt and matching fatigue pants, the hospital logo stitched across the front of his left chest, right above his heart. The guy had an orange medical bag slung over his shoulder, which he sat down next to him once Logan was lying still.
Logan glanced at the truck once more, tears gathering in his eyes.
A fire truck came into view, and Logan prayed Hunter hadn’t been hurt. Hopefully the man had made it out of the front of the store.
He really didn’t know Hunter that well, but the man seemed like a decent guy. Logan didn’t want him hurt. An ambulance board was brought over and laid down next to him. The blue-and-chrome board was curled around on all sides, to stop its patients from rolling off.
There was reflective tape running along the inside.
“Hunter,” he said as the paramedic tried to lift him up, but it was only to put a neck brace on him. “Is Hunter okay?”
The man in the navy-blue paramedic uniform began to talk, but Logan couldn’t hear anything beyond the deafening ringing. He pointed to his ears. “I can’t hear you.”
The paramedic nodded.
That gesture didn’t answer his question. For all he knew, the man was just acknowledging that he understood that Logan couldn’t hear him. Although he was really praying the man nodded to affirm that Hunter was all right.
Another man, dressed in the same navy-blue uniform as the man by his side, came to squat at Logan’s head. The next thing he knew, Logan was being lifted. A black wave of nausea washed over him, and Logan closed his eyes, fighting not to vomit as he was placed on the board.
He swallowed a few times, the foul taste of vomit heavy in his throat as he was loaded into the back of the ambulance. As the doors began to close, Logan saw a man dressed in a black and expensive-looking suit watching him. It was nicely tailored. He had a black silk dress shirt underneath the jacket and one of those extremely thin, bone-straight, black ties running down the front of his shirt with a silver tie clip. The tie clip was the only color that stood out.
Everything else was the color of nicely creased darkness.
His dark eyes locked onto Logan’s, his expression indifferent as the ambulance doors closed, cutting off Logan’s view of the man. He closed his eyes and allowed the paramedics to work on him as the ambulance pulled away, rocking him back and forth as it rushed toward the hospital.
Logan was in and out of awareness as he was unloaded, placed on a gurney, and then wheeled into the emergency room. The ringing was slowly dying down. It was more like a soft hum now. But it was still hard to hear what people were saying. He caught bits and pieces, but nothing that he could use to string together what had happened to him or why.
A dark-haired man came into Logan’s line of sight, smiling down at him. Logan smiled back. There didn’t seem to be anything else he could do. The doctor in his white lab coat flashed a penlight in Logan’s eyes, nearly blinding him.
“What hurts?” The sound was muffled, distant, but Logan had made out the words.
“My entire body,” he replied.
The doctor started pressing into his stomach, feeling around.
Logan groaned, but managed to stay still. He watched as the doctor began to move his lips and then turned away, making it impossible for Logan to read what he was saying. The doctor’s voice wasn’t loud enough right now to catch any words, so Logan had to try and decipher the words from the man’s lips, if only he’d turn back around.
Would he understand the medical analysis anyway? Probably not.
The gurney began to move again, taking him inside an elevator.
Logan opened his eyes, and he was lying in a bed in some sort of room. Had he passed out? If he had, for how long? The walls were white, the sound of machines beeping all around him.
Logan could hear. God, he was thankful for that. Not being able to hear sucked. His head still throbbed and his body still ached, but he could hear. It was better than nothing.
Sliding from the bed, Logan realized that he was tethered by an IV and wires. He was in a hospital. He stood there on shaky legs, wondering if there was any permanent damage to his body. That had been one hell of an explosion.
And that only reminded Logan of the stranger standing in the crowd, wearing his crisp black suit with the silver tie clip, staring at Logan as if he didn’t matter. His eyes had been the color of charcoal and reminded Logan of something cold, something dead.
“I see you’re up and about.”
Logan turned, taking a long second before he remembered where he’d seen the man before. The dark-haired man was the doctor that helped him in the emergency room.
“I’m Doctor Samuel.”
“Logan Al
binster.”
“Ah, now we have a name to go with the patient.”
The voice was pleasant, light. It made Logan relax as he stared around the room. “What’s wrong with me?” He’d never needed a hospital in his life. He knew what they looked like, but he’d never been a patient before. The IV alone was bothering him.
“Nothing.” The doctor smiled kindly at him. “We’re just keeping you here as a precaution. All of your tests have come back negative.”
There was something in the way the doctor had said negative. As if that wasn’t quite the word he wanted to use. Logan wanted to ask what the doctor was hiding, but honestly? He just wanted to get the hell out of there.
The place felt sterile, cold, and unforgiving. All Logan wanted to do was go home. He wanted the wires off of him, the IV out of him, and his damn clothes onto him. If they weren’t burnt to hell from the explosion.
“I’m ready to leave.”
The doctor sat down slowly onto a shiny chrome stool, a polite smile on his face. “There’s a problem with that request, Logan.”
“And what problem would that be?”
The doctor had said his tests were all negative. He was up, feeling fine, and ready to leave. What was the holdup?
“The problem would be your blood work. I’ve run it three times but it’s still coming back with irregularities.”
Again, Logan had the distinct feeling that the word irregularities was not what the doctor had wanted to use. He was tiring of the game.
“Just tell me what’s going on. I need to get home.”
Dr. Samuel shook his head, confusion marring his handsome face.
The guy was handsome, after all. There was no denying that fact.