Guard Wolf (Shifter Agents Book 2)

by Lauren Esker

  "I guess there's no reason not to teach you some. Not like we have anything else to do in here. I tested the bars and the locks when I woke up before, and they're both solid."

  "But if they can hear us ..."

  "They'll know, yeah. We'll just have to be subtle and careful."

  He slid his hand down into the gap between their bare thighs. Even in their desperate situation, her breath quickened, a little, at the tickle of his fingers on her skin. There in that narrow space, he brushed his thumb lightly across her skin, short deliberate swipes. "Morse code is short and long dashes, or beeps, or taps. That's 'A'. Got it?"

  She started to repeat it with the hand twined in his. He stopped her with his thumb, and turned their hands over; now her fingers were pressed against his leg, and hidden from the camera. "Go."

  She repeated it, and he nodded.

  They proceeded through the alphabet. It was tedious, but it helped take her mind off their situation. The lights never dimmed. She had no idea what time it was, or how long they'd been unconscious. Tim and Erin would be worried by now, surely? People would come for them. Surely.

  Avery had now reached "S" in the Morse code alphabet, and she paused in puzzlement. That wasn't right. The only Morse code she knew was SOS, because she and her siblings used to use it playfully in some of their childhood games. It was three short, three long, three short. So "S" should have been three quick taps, but it wasn't.

  Maybe American Morse code was different? But she'd thought it was international. That was kind of the point.

  No. He's teaching it to me wrong.

  Of course. That was why he didn't want her to learn with her hands visible from the camera. That way, even if their captors knew they were communicating with a code, it would be hard to decode the messages.

  They finished, finally, at 'Z'. Nicole's hair had dried into short corkscrews. Her siblings had all gotten their mother's straight hair, but Nicole had ended up with their father's waviness in hers. Lisa and Erin told her she was lucky to have some curl in her hair, but Nicole thought it was really more of a pain, especially at times like now, when she didn't have a comb or a mirror. All she could tell was that it had gone sort of spiky. She ran her hand through it to try to smooth it down.

  "I'm hungry," she said. "Do you think they plan to feed us?"

  "If they're going to keep us for any length of time, they'll have to."

  "What's the alternative?" she asked, suddenly nervous.

  "I think you can think of as many unpleasant options as I can. Let's not dwell on them right now. Not yet." He reached out and dragged his pad closer to her side of the bars. "Lie down with me?"

  They lay down, pulling their pads together into a discontinuous mattress, interrupted by the bars. Nicole silently cursed the bars that prevented him from taking her into his arms. It would have been nice for the warmth, but more than that, it would have just felt good. And right now she wanted something to feel good.

  "Who do you suppose Alan is?" she asked sleepily. "That Evans woman mentioned him."

  There was a silence. Then Avery said, "I assume he's the other ... you know. The ... person I've been looking for."

  "Oh." The other werewolf. "Is he a ... friend of theirs, do you think?"

  "Given how they seem to treat ..." He paused fractionally. "—my kind of people around here, I ... well, I was going to say no, but I did get the impression he was protecting Evans from me. She seems to think so. Maybe he is."

  "You fought with him," Nicole said. "You've seen him up close."

  "I have. But he's just as much of a mystery to me as he ever was. Knowing his name doesn't help."

  "You think ..." She hesitated. She didn't want to say it, but not saying it wouldn't make it any less true. "You think he's a—a test subject? A ... one of you they took and did things to?"

  "I don't know what else to think," he admitted softly. "He is one of us. It's not something you can fake, not that awareness of each other. Maybe your sister is right and we are a bit psychic."

  "Erin doesn't actually believe that. She was just throwing it out as an example of discredited science."

  "Discredited, maybe. But wrong? I'm not sure."

  Silence, then, for a little while. Nicole rubbed her hand up and down his side, lightly running her palm over his ribs. She was too scared and uncomfortable to feel any erotic urges in the moment, and even if the bars hadn't made sex impossible, the camera and the implicit watchers behind it would have. She had no interest in putting on a show for Evans' crew of voyeurs. She wouldn't have wanted to do that with anyone, but doing it with Avery seemed like a travesty. It would be a vulgar mockery of this tentative beautiful thing between them, that she was still afraid to examine too closely for fear it would turn out to be only a mirage.

  But there was a deep, visceral comfort in the touch of Avery's bare skin on hers. It was the same kind of satisfaction as a warm bath and cup of hot cocoa after being out in the cold, or a long and refreshing sleep after a tiring, stressful day. With her body pressed to his, even with the bars in the way, she could almost believe everything would turn out all right.

  Almost.

  "Well, isn't this cute," Evans' voice said.

  Nicole flinched and felt Avery's startled jerk against her body, the rapid beat of his accelerating heart. He sat up and put a protective arm over her.

  "Is it true," Evans asked, "that werewolves mate for life?"

  There was no one in the room with them. Nicole couldn't pinpoint where the voice was coming from. A speaker somewhere, certainly. Perhaps near the camera.

  "You tell me," Avery said. "Since you're the local expert on werewolves and all."

  "I would like your stay here to be a pleasant one, even if you're not being very cooperative," Evans said. "Can I bring you anything?"

  Nicole looked up. "Food, please. We're hungry." She ignored Avery shaking his head at her.

  "I think that could be arranged. Any dietary restrictions? Allergies?"

  "Not for me," Nicole said. Avery kept his mouth shut, his jaw locked tightly.

  "We'll have something down for you shortly, then."

  Nicole turned to Avery and rubbed his tense shoulder. The muscles were knotted so hard they were quivering. "You know we're going to have to eat their food sooner or later," she said. "It won't do us any good to starve ourselves."

  "I know," Avery said between clenched teeth. "But you better believe there's going to be a cost for that food. Oh, it won't be much, I expect. Just the answer to a few questions, maybe. This time. But every time we cooperate with them, every time we're friendly with them, every time we accept the implicit ground rule that we have to give up something in return for every basic human necessity they grant us, it'll make the next time a little easier. It's straight from the Stockholm Syndrome rulebook. Are you still listening to this?" he demanded, tilting his face up toward the camera. "We know how people like you work. I deal with them every day. Oh, not like you specifically, perhaps. But I know your kind, Evans. You're a monster. And that's what the SCB does. We stop monsters."

  The last words came out in a snarl. There was something terribly feral in his eyes, and Nicole sensed, like an electric charge quivering in the air, that he was on the verge of shifting.

  "Avery," she said. She'd never been afraid of him, and she didn't plan to start now, but there was something in his eyes right now that she did fear—not because she felt he might hurt her, but because she could tell he was losing ground on something within himself. "Avery, I don't think insulting them is going to help. Let's just take their food and keep our strength up for now, okay? All we really have to do is buy time, right? People know where we are. My family does. Your friends do. We're going to get out of here."

  She was trying to reassure herself so much as him, but a little of the charged tension ebbed out of him, and he dragged his hand over his face. "You're right," he said heavily. "But I don't think you quite understand the magnitude of what we're up against. They don't
have to torture us to bleed us of our self-worth and ability to fight back."

  The door gave a little click as the lock disengaged. Evans came in carrying a steel tray with two plates on it. A mouthwatering smell of bacon filled the room.

  Two people shadowed her this time. One was a different goon, just as big as the other one but somewhat older, armed with the same kind of fat-nosed gun the other one had carried, which Nicole was pretty sure was a tranquilizer gun. She hadn't had a chance to get a good look at them during the abduction, but she thought it was the same kind of thing.

  The other guard was a young woman. Rail-thin and plain, with her hair hacked off in a styleless cut just below her ears and an oversized sweatshirt hanging halfway down her thighs, she nevertheless carried a sleek black assault rifle cradled in her thin arms. She took up a station beside the door, behind Evans and the man with the tranquilizer gun, wearing a blank look on her hollow-cheeked face.

  "I'm glad you've decided to be friendly," Evans said. "And you're wrong. I'm not going to ask you for anything at all. I'm just going to feed you. How about that?"

  "Nice, if it's true," Avery said flatly. He'd gone steel-spring tense again, and moved his body slightly to interpose it, as much as he was able, between Nicole and their captors. "But it isn't. You are getting something from us, if only the fact that we're sitting here politely waiting to be fed, rather than clawing and spitting at you."

  Evans raised her eyebrows. "Really? You can claw and spit if it makes you feel better. You were certainly doing plenty of that when you woke up earlier. Do you want to see the tape, Ms. Yates?"

  Nicole felt a shiver run through Avery. "No," she said flatly.

  "Your decision, of course." Evans crouched in front of Avery's cage, out of reach. "I'm going to need both of you to move back."

  "See?" Avery said to Nicole.

  "It's only so I can be sure you won't attack me." She sat back on her heels. "We know, by the way, that werewolf bites don't transmit werewolfism. That's been thoroughly studied. I'd still prefer not to be bitten, however, and I've seen how fast and strong you are. Move back, please?"

  Nicole obediently slid back a few feet. She sympathized with Avery's anger, but she also couldn't see why he was being so stubborn. She'd read about Stockholm Syndrome and POW conditioning in her psych classes, and she understood where he was coming from, but it wasn't like a virus you suddenly came down with. One small act of cooperation wasn't going to induce a full-blown case.

  "See, your mate is too smart to engage in pointless acts of defiance." Evans pushed the tray over to the front of Nicole's cage. Next to the water dish, there was a little trap door that slid up, just big enough to put a plate through, or someone's hand. She put one of the plates inside the cage, followed by a napkin and plastic tableware, and closed the trapdoor again. "What do you think, Mr. Hollen? Aren't you hungry? Your kind eats more than normal humans, I understand. I'd also like to emphasize that I'm not asking anything unreasonable of you. I'm not demanding information. I just want you to accommodate me in one simple precaution."

  Avery didn't move. He might as well have been a statue.

  "Fair enough." She stood up, taking the tray and the other plate with her. "Enjoy your meal, Ms. Yates. Oh, one more thing." She made a small motion with her hand to the men behind her.

  Without speaking, the man with the dart gun shot Avery in the thigh.

  "Hey!" Nicole yelped.

  Avery lunged forward and crashed into the bars. He was still human-shaped, but he seemed to have forgotten that; he threw himself at the cage like a trapped animal. Evans blanched and stepped back, even though she was much too far from the cage for Avery to reach her, and the woman at the door silently pointed her weapon at Avery, while the man snapped another dart into his gun.

  "See?" Avery snarled. He was literally frothing at the mouth in fury. Nicole was frozen with shock, both at the sudden betrayal and his violent reaction. "See what they're like? This is what they are, Nicole. Remember that, and remember every time they act nice, every thing they do for you, is only because they're trying to ... control you ..."

  He was slipping downward, losing his grasp on the bars along with his grip on consciousness. "Nicole," he whispered, and then he jerked once and slumped over.

  "Avery!" She scrambled forward and tried to reach through the bars to him, but all she could do was touch his leg. "You bastards! Why did you do that? He couldn't have done anything to you!"

  "It's not about that. I assume the minute I'm out of the room you'll share your food with him, and I wanted to nip that kind of thing in the bud. Actually ..." She looked thoughtful, then turned to the man with the dart gun. "I was going to leave you together for awhile, but I'm starting to think it would be better to split you up. We can always have conjugal visits as a reward for good behavior, after all. Secure him and take him upstairs."

  "No!" Nicole cried. Tears were running down her face now. She hated it, but she couldn't help herself. She wrapped her hand around Avery's ankle. "Don't you dare!"

  Evans laid aside the tray and held the gun herself while her two companions unlocked the cage and secured Avery with heavy metal restraints. The man ignored Nicole's pleading and threats, and peeled her fingers off Avery's ankle as if removing an inanimate obstacle. The young woman kept darting sidelong, anxious glances at both Evans and Nicole, but meekly did as instructed.

  "You can't just keep drugging him! You'll overdose him or something!"

  "Werewolves are very tough, Ms. Yates. They can survive a lot more than a little bit of drugging. As you will, perhaps, see for yourself later."

  Still unspeaking, Evans' henchpeople dragged Avery out of the room—although the young woman left with a final, haunted-eyed glance at Nicole. Evans slung the gun over her shoulder and picked up the tray. "Eat well," she said with a small smile, and left.

  Despair coalesced into rage in Nicole's chest. She stood up, picked up the floor pad and flung it across the cage with a primal scream. It didn't do much, just bounced off the bars and toppled over. Nicole grabbed the door of her cage and threw her weight against it. The bars moved only slightly, and sprang back to their former position as soon as she let go.

  Her eye fell on the plate of bacon and eggs, the thing that had incited her torment, and she reached for that, too, planning to smash it on the floor. Then she stopped herself. What she had said to Avery wasn't wrong. They needed to eat, needed to keep their strength up. Throwing a temper tantrum in the cage would do nothing more than give the watchers a show.

  Nicole showed both middle fingers to the camera. Then she sat cross-legged on the floor and pulled the plate into her lap. On the first bite, she hesitated. What if it was poisoned?

  No. She had to look at it logically. If they were going to kill her, they could've just shot her. And if she was going to refuse her food and water for fear of poison, she couldn't do it forever; there would come a time when she'd have to eat and drink, or die. Better by far to make the decision now.

  She stabbed a forkful of eggs, picked it up, and chewed mechanically. When that was done, she shoveled another forkful into her mouth. She didn't taste any of it. Every bite was another brick in the wall of grim determination that had begun to rise inside her.

  These people wouldn't get away with this. She wouldn't let them. She and Avery were going to get out, and they were going to make them pay.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Avery woke up sick. Even a werewolf constitution couldn't handle repeated doses of fast-acting sedatives without side effects.

  He rolled over, gagging—or tried to. He turned out to be restrained on his back. He managed to swallow the urge to vomit, with intense effort.

  "Told you that was a bad idea," a male voice said from somewhere nearby. It was vaguely familiar, but in his current condition, Avery couldn't place it.

  As the intensity of his nausea began to fade, Avery tried to relax. Too late to pretend he was still unconscious? Probably.

  "It
was a demonstration," Evans' voice said. Avery's lip curled instinctively at the sound.

  "You're just making more work for yourself. The woman was willing to cooperate, and now you've destroyed any goodwill she might have towards you." The nagging familiarity of the voice finally clicked into place: it was one of the people who'd tried to break into the Hodgson place. Mike, Avery recalled his name had been.

  "Don't forget who signs off on your paychecks," Evans shot back. "So what if she's cooperative? If she's not a werewolf, she's useless to us. Or, at best, she's only good as a test subject."

  Avery clenched his teeth and stilled himself against a rush of fury. He wanted to scream, rage, tear them apart. They wouldn't make Nicole into any kind of test subject, for anything. He wouldn't let them.

  And how are you going to stop them, genius?

  His body still felt like deadweight. If he hadn't been shackled down, he wasn't sure if he would be able to stand up yet. Besides, he clearly wasn't even capable of protecting himself in this situation, let alone someone else.

  How could you bring her into this?

  He took slow, deep breaths, trying to calm himself. Losing his head wouldn't help. For that matter, his behavior in the cage hadn't helped. It had only gotten him hauled off into a different and probably worse mess.

  He was lying on some kind of firm surface—an examining table?—and seemed to be restrained at the wrists and ankles. There was very little range of motion in the restraints, he found as he tugged at them, exploring their limits. It was probably pointless to try and break them. He doubted he was the first werewolf who'd been tied up on this table. All he could hope, right now, was that he could ensure he was the last.

  Oddly enough, despite his current vulnerability, it was easier to deal with being tied down than being caged. He was angry, sick, and ready to tear someone's throat out, but he wasn't walking the tightrope of panic as he had been in the cage. And he knew it wasn't rational, but that didn't help; it just made him all the more frustrated with himself that his past, a time so early in his childhood he hardly even had clearly memories of it, still had such a hold over him. Maybe if he'd been able to think clearly in the cage, he'd still be there, with Nicole, and he wouldn't be tied up now.