by Lauren Esker
"Nah," Jeremy said, stepping back. "I'm a neutral party here."
Avery and Nicole scrambled up the stairs. His leg kept trying to buckle, but adrenaline kept him going—that, and Nicole pulling him frantically along. There was a commotion at the bottom of the stairs, and Avery heard Jeremy say, "I'm fired, remember? I'm not taking orders anymore. Now where's Ashley?" Then he swiped the card and they staggered out into the parking dock.
"Avery, you're hurt!" Nicole panted.
"Gonna be hurt worse in a minute if we don't get out of here." He grinned briefly and swiped a kiss across her lips. "Nice drop-bear save."
"I will never live this down," she moaned.
Right now he just hoped they both lived through the next few minutes. Hand in hand with Nicole, he stumbled to the storm drain.
The drain cover erupted upward just as Avery's fingertips brushed it. Propelled by a push from underneath, it fell to the concrete floor with an echoing clang.
Avery recoiled, almost falling on top of Nicole in his effort to push her away.
The creature that clambered out of the opening was, at least, familiar. Since the last time Avery saw him, Alan Lopez had deteriorated. He was neither wolf nor man now, just a bent and misshapen thing, his face a hairy ruin and his joints twisted into shapes that looked impossibly painful to move. He lurched out and crouched on the edge, swaying.
Avery's horror was tempered with terrible pity. When he'd last seen Lopez, there had been human intelligence in those eyes, even if they were tormented. Now they stared at him blankly, not the eyes of either man or beast, but those of a creature mindless with pain and uncomprehending despair.
Nicole made a small sound, almost a whimper. Lopez's head swung to orient on her.
"Alan?" Avery said.
If Lopez recognized his name, there was no sign of it in his demeanor. Muscles rolled under the matted fur of his shoulders, and he took a lurching step forward. He couldn't seem to balance upright anymore, but his four legs' different lengths and awkwardly twisted joints left him moving in a hitching, crabwise scuttle.
The stairwell door slammed open and Ray came out shooting. Avery threw himself, and Nicole, to the side, rolling into the limited cover provided by the concrete bumpers around the door. His ribs, hip, and wrist all registered vehement protest, especially since he ended up with Nicole half on top of him—a situation which would have been pleasurable at any other time, but not just now. She squirmed off hastily and flattened herself beside him.
"For God's sake, stop shooting!" Evans shouted. "That's my husband!"
Avery peeked out. Alan Lopez had been hit; one of his front legs—Avery wasn't sure if calling them arms was accurate anymore—dangled limply. His ears flattened, he stared at the two humans in front of the stairwell.
Evans interposed herself between Ray and her husband. With the trank rifle pointing at the floor, she held out her hand. Avery couldn't help thinking of a woman trying to tame a wild animal. But Lopez was not quite that. He reminded Avery more of a domestic animal gone feral, and those were always the most unpredictable and potentially savage.
"Alan," she said gently. "Come back to us. We can fix you."
"Get out of the way." Ray gestured with the muzzle of his assault rifle. "Those two are still out here somewhere, unless that monster got 'em—"
"That monster is my husband." She took another step forward, hand out, palm up. "He won't hurt me."
"Ain't you I'm worried about," Ray muttered.
Nicole's breath tickled Avery's ear as she pressed closer. "What do we do?"
Avery only shook his head. He could sense the whole powder-keg situation heading toward its inevitable explosion; the current stillness was like the moment of deceptive quiet after the fuse was lit. Lopez stared at his wife, and at Ray behind her, and Avery didn't think he knew either of them anymore. Evans was right; the wolf blood in him was tearing apart his humanity, piece by piece. Except the human in him was also tearing apart his wolf, and all he was left with was this broken shell of a body and mind.
The door to the stairs slammed open and Ashley burst out. "Mom—"
She bit it off in shock as she saw her father, but with that, the whole scene snapped into motion.
Lopez leaped forward at them, his flat bulldog-like muzzle open to display a mouthful of yellowed and crowded teeth, lunging much faster than his misshapen body seemed capable of. Ray fired at him. Evans cried out and flung herself to the side, but Avery saw her jerk in midair; at least one of Ray's bullets had hit her.
It all happened too fast for Avery to be sure if Lopez was attacking his wife or Ray, or if Ray meant to shoot her or the monster bearing down on him, but Lopez plowed into Ray and the man went down screaming and still shooting.
Nicole had her hands over her mouth, and Ashley was standing in open-mouthed shock. Jeremy appeared behind her, but didn't seem to know what to do; he had his gun in his hand but only stood there with the muzzle pointed up in the air.
Avery started to stand up. He wasn't sure what he meant to do or who he meant to help, or if he was only going to take Nicole and try to get out, but he never got a chance. An extremely loud concussive thud echoed all around the parking dock, following by a tearing crash.
Avery had never heard anything like it before, and didn't realize what it was until, seconds later, an SUV with a somewhat crumpled front end came tearing around the corner of the ramp, going a lot faster than any reasonable person would drive in a parking garage. It skidded to a halt in front of the fight on the ground and Avery thought, Oh. That was the noise it makes when you ram a garage door with a Ford Explorer.
Another car, Cho's Mini Cooper, veered around the SUV and parked at an angle at the front, effectively boxing in the combatants. Jack was already leaping down from the SUV's driver's seat, sidearm in hand. "Federal agents!" he bellowed. "Weapons down, hands in the air!"
The only people currently capable of following these instructions, Ashley and Jeremy, instantly put their hands up.
Nicole gave a soft, breathy laugh of relief and stood up, leaning into Avery. He put his arm around her, as much to keep himself on his feet as to offer support.
Cho and Mayhew were now out of the Mini Cooper, and Casey leaped down from Jack's van. She knelt beside Evans. "We need an ambulance."
"There's one on the way," Cho said, cuffing Jeremy and Ashley with a certain amount of ineffectual help from Mayhew. "From the clinic, since I wasn't sure if we'd be needing—you know, special medical care for special people."
"You don't have to talk around it." Avery's voice came out hoarse. "They know what we are."
Cho raised her eyebrows, taking in his and Nicole's disheveled condition, and slapped the cuffs on Jeremy with a bit of extra force.
"Mom," Ashley wailed, slouching miserably in Mayhew's grasp. "Dad. Please, are they alive?"
Avery limped over to where Jack was bending over the matted hump of fur that had once been Alan Lopez. Jack looked up and shook his head.
"Looks like these two did each other in. You look like hell, by the way."
"Thanks." Avery realized he was shivering, looked for a place to sit down, and, not finding one, sat rather suddenly on the floor, where Nicole joined him. "You drove through their garage door?"
"Couldn't find another way in," Jack said, unrepentant. "It's all just warehouses up there, and everything's locked up tight."
"I told him not to," Casey put in. She was crouched over Evans, applying pressure with hands that were red halfway up the wrists. "And then it was obvious he was doing it anyway, so all I could do at that point was hang on."
Jack retrieved a blanket from the SUV and draped it over Avery and Nicole. "And you mocked me for my choice of wheels," he told Avery. "Let's see you do that in a Prius."
"No, I still think it's an absolutely ridiculous commuter vehicle, just like all the other overcompensation machines I've watched you buy over the years." Avery grinned a little. "But I have to admit it has its uses."
"Wait," Nicole said. Beneath the blanket, her hand found Avery's and clutched it. "What do you mean, warehouses? Aren't we in the EGL building?"
"No, you are not," Cho said over her shoulder as she and Mayhew escorted Jeremy and a softly sobbing Ashley to the back of Jack's SUV. "EGL itself is just your basic genetic-testing business. I don't think Evans and company are involved with the day-to-day running of the place at all anymore. Having to comb their paperwork and find this place was what took us so long." She shook her head. "I guess it makes sense. If I were an evil scientist, I wouldn't be stupid enough to do my evil labwork in a building with my name all over the lease."
"Excuse me," Casey called, "but where is that damn ambulance?"
"There's at least one more guy downstairs who might be trouble," Avery told Jack. Reaction was setting in hard now; his teeth were chattering. "I tore up his wrist, but be careful. There's also a guy I shot who's not going to be giving you any problems. I don't know if there are more."
Jack laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed firmly. "On it. Cho, Casey, you got things here?"
"Want backup?" Cho asked from behind the SUV.
Jack's grin had some teeth in it. "I don't think they're going to expect a grizzly bear."
More vehicles were starting to fill up the parking dock, including the promised ambulance. Under the blanket, Avery slumped against Nicole. His hip felt like there were knives grinding into it, to match the stabbing pain in his side every time he breathed. Still, Nicole was warm and alive against him.
Alive. We're alive.
He looked up at a reverberating roar that made Nicole jump. Jack, thwarted by the keycard-locked door to the stairwell, had shifted into his enormous grizzly bear form. Avery watched with some amusement as his friend ripped the door off its hinges and flung it aside.
Oh yeah, Jack was pissed.
"There's going to be paperwork on that, you know!" Casey called after him.
Jack huffed a grunt and lumbered into the stairwell. He barely fit.
"And even more paperwork if you get shot, you lunkhead," Avery shouted. Jack was clearly paying no attention. Avery sighed and settled back against Nicole.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Nicole didn't want to be separated from Avery, but they only managed to stay together for the ride to the Evergreen Clinic, where they were shunted off into separate rooms. A brief examination found Nicole to be healthy overall, just a little dehydrated and, as she'd accurately self-diagnosed, suffering mild withdrawal from her SSRIs. Dr. Lafitte gave her a supervised light dose from the clinic's supply and insisted on keeping her for a couple of hours to monitor her response.
"I just want to take a shower and sleep," Nicole moaned.
"And you can do both of those things soon. I understand your sister is on the way with something for you to wear."
Erin showed up a few minutes later, and flung her arms around her sister. "You worried us to death, you jerk."
"Next time I get drugged and kidnapped I'll be sure to text and let you know," Nicole managed through a muffling layer of Erin's shoulder.
"You were drugged?"
"I was also put in a cage and almost shot."
Erin hopped up on the bed beside her, keeping an arm around her. "I told you EGL was evil. Can I kill anyone for you?"
Her sister's innocent words sent a deep shudder through Nicole. People had been killed—bad people, but human beings nonetheless. She still didn't know if Evans was alive or not. She'd hated the woman ... but she hadn't expected to watch her get shot. And how was Ashley dealing with it all?
"How are the kids?" she asked, to distract herself from her increasingly gloomy downward spiral.
"Oh, Hannah won her soccer—wait. You don't mean my kids." Erin grimaced. "They are an amazing handful. Tim's mom has been able to come by on a part-time basis to help out, but ... Nicole, dear, I love you, and I'm happy to help out, but you owe me."
"I know I do. You're the best." Nicole kissed her sister's cheek.
"I think they miss you, though," Erin went on. "You and Avery. They wander all over the house, like they're looking for something, and they've hardly shifted out of their wolf shapes at all. Which does make them easier to care for, I'll admit. But I think they're sad."
"They couldn't possibly have imprinted on us that quickly."
Erin shrugged. "Werewolves are different from the rest of us. People say so, anyway. I don't know how true it is, but they do seem to have senses we don't, sometimes."
"Should I tell Tim you're buying into the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo now?" Nicole teased.
"Pfft. Get out. I'm just saying, the hypothesis fits the evidence, and as a scientist, you have to keep an open mind." She frowned, then, her playful manner dropping away, and Nicole caught a glimpse of the desperate worry underneath—worry she must have been nursing for days. "Nicole, I don't know too much, yet, about what they did to you, or why. But I just wanted to say, as someone who is in the sciences, I am so goddamn sorry someone did this to you and Avery in the name of my chosen field. What they did to you was an absolute travesty of what science is supposed to be—"
"Erin. Honey. Shhhh." Nicole hugged her sister; Erin gripped her tightly, and for a moment they just clung to each other and rocked slowly on the bed.
"I would do anything to fix this," Erin whispered into her ear.
"Shhh. I know, but you aren't responsible for what happened to me, any more than the good parents of the world are responsible for the horrible, abusive ones."
Erin sighed into her shoulder, and then sat back. She lifted a hand to pat at Nicole's scruffy, soaked-then-dried, haven't-seen-a-brush-for-days curls. "Want me to fix this for you?"
"There is no fixing it," Nicole said, but she turned around obediently while Erin whipped out a hairbrush from her stylish little handbag. Of course she had a hairbrush in her purse. Erin traveled prepared.
"You want your boy to see you at your best." Erin sat behind her, one leg tucked under her hip, and teased at Nicole's curls while holding her head straight with fingers curled under her jaw. "And I do mean boy. How old is he, anyway? You cradle-robber."
"Twenty-nine or thirty. Not more than ..." She winced. "A six or seven-year age difference. Okay, shut it."
"I never said anything."
"You were thinking it."
"Hi, ladies," said a deep, rumbling voice from the doorway, and Erin accidentally whacked Nicole in the ear with the hairbrush. Jack was leaning against the doorway, hands in his pockets, almost filling the entire space; Nicole was struck all over again by how huge he was. He was well proportioned overall, so he didn't seem that big until she saw him next to ... well, anything else for comparison. He had to be nearly six and a half feet tall. Of course, she'd seen him as a bear, so she knew why: he was a damn big bear too.
"Does your girlfriend know you're out flirting with other women?" she asked without missing a beat. Jack's slowly spreading grin let her know she'd hit the right note with him.
"What makes you think I'm flirting?"
"Fella, you're flirting just by standing there," Erin said archly, capturing Nicole's head again.
Jack laughed. "Who's this? I like her!"
"My sister Erin. Erin, meet Jack—Avery's best friend." Nicole tilted her head in an effort to escape Erin's increasingly aggressive ministrations with the brush. "Were you with Avery just now? How is he?"
"He'll be all right," Jack said, and the breath went out of her in relief. Of course, she'd known that—she'd been with him; she knew his injuries were superficial—but having him out of her sight made it harder to relax the anxious knot inside her.
"Can I see him?"
"That's actually why I came by. See if they were letting you out of bed, and if so, if you wanted to go hang out with him for awhile."
"I'd love to."
She slid her legs over the edge of the bed, then had to cling to Erin for a minute when dizziness threatened to swamp her.
"You sure you'
re up for it?" Erin asked.
"I'm up for it," Nicole said, jaw clenched in determination.
She felt a little better once she'd gotten dressed in the clean clothes Erin had brought. Her sister escorted her down the hall—a little embarrassing, but better than faceplanting on the linoleum—and Jack waved them into a room at the end.
Avery. She could barely see him; the lights in the room were dim, and Avery had an arm flung over his face. Helplessly, she moved toward him as if drawn by a magnet.
"Hey," he murmured when she laid a hand on his shoulder, lowering the arm he'd been using to shield his eyes. Sheets covered him to the waist; above that, he was wearing a hospital gown, with an IV in his arm. Bruises from the beating he'd taken at Ray's hands stood out in dark swatches on his arms, shoulders, and face. His right wrist was splinted.
"Jack said you were all right." She directed a glare at Jack over her shoulder. "Apparently his definition of all right is different from most people's."
"Nah, he's not wrong. I just feel like shit." Avery found her hand with his, and squeezed lightly. "Turns out getting shot repeatedly with ... okay, I can't remember the name of whatever it was they shot me with although the docs keep telling me, but seems it's not that good for you. Who knew."
"You'll be okay soon, though, right?" she asked anxiously.
"They say so. Guess they want to keep me for a little while 'til more of it clears out of my system."
He closed his eyes again. Nicole knew him well enough to know by now that he probably wanted little more than to crawl into a dark place, lick his wounds, and let himself heal. She couldn't do anything about that part, but there was one thing she could do.
"Can I ...?" She placed a hand beside him on the bed, the end to her unfinished question.
Avery slid over, and with a self-conscious glance at Jack and Erin, who were talking quietly near the door, she climbed onto the bed. Avery lifted the edge of the blanket questioningly, but she shook her head. She was dressed, and felt a little less weird about doing this in public as long as she stayed on top of the covers.