“Lana, I’ve been more than patient. I need answers. Why am I here? Why am I not in a hospital?” Then she asked the question she’d been dreading the answer to. “And where the hell is my family? Why haven’t they come to visit me?”
She must have done something horrible for her grandmother to sequester her off in a private home in the mountains, with a private doctor, nurse and security guard. If that’s who he was. God knew, Grandmother had never hired anyone who looked like him.
Which had her wondering, had Grandmother hired these people, or was something else going on? A chill she’d been trying to ignore prickled her skin. She was worth a lot of money. A lot. And nothing here was as it should be.
“I know I’ve been putting you off.” Lana avoided her eyes and wiped her hands down the legs of her crisply ironed dress pants. “But I wanted to be sure you weren’t going to relapse again. I guess you’re past that point and you’re ready for answers.” She cast a quick glance at Sam who didn’t move, just relaxed in his chair watching the show.
Lana pulled up a chair and sat down. “You see, Glenna—” The sudden out-of-place sound of a jazz choir singing the “hokey pokey” rang into the awkward silence. “Sam, stay here.” Lana got back up. “Sorry, Glenna, I have to get this.” She took out her cell phone and cut the music off with a tap. “Hello, Dr. Lana speaking. Yes, I understand.” Darting a meaningful look at Sam, she went inside and closed the door behind her.
Glenna picked up her fork, picking at the green salad that took up space next to the temptation of noodles, cheese and sauce. The first day she’d woken up, Lana had kept her on clear liquids: Jell-O, broth. Yesterday, simple food. Today, lasagna. Her stomach growled.
“We didn’t poison it.”
She looked up at Sam’s amused face. “I didn’t think you did.”
“Good.” He lounged against the cabin wall, looking as if he could hold the whole thing up by himself. “Eat the lasagna.”
Glenna ignored the fat and carb laden lasagna, instead taking a big bite of the crisp salad. Sam snorted then looked away. The back door opened and Lana came out, carrying a red medic bag with a large white cross.
“I’m sorry, Glenna, I have an emergency. Your questions will have to wait.”
Glenna’s hand clenched around her fork. “You’re leaving? Is this a joke? I need answers and I need them now. I’ve been here too long. I’ve got a job, a family, a wedding.”
“Anything I should know about?” Sam came off the cabin’s wall, his lazy expression going on alert.
“No, it’s fine. Just won’t wait until later.” Lana smiled at Glenna. “I know. I’m sorry. I was going to talk to you.” She tilted her head and nodded at Sam. “But it will have to be Sam, instead. He can give you the basics.”
Sam tensed. “Lana, don’t you think we should wait for you?”
“Sorry, Sam, I have to go. She’s waited long enough.” Lana descended the short flight of stairs to a battered red Jeep, parked next to an even older Suburban. “I’ll be a couple of hours, max.” She threw her bag in the back of the Jeep.
“Lana.” Sam crossed to the rail. “We should discuss this.”
“She’s one of us Sam. She needs to know it.” She got in and did a three-point turn. Giving a long elegant wave out of the window, she drove down the dirt drive, leaving Glenna alone with too many questions and Sam—the over-muscled man with dangerous eyes.
Chapter Seven
As Serena stood at the front of the Windy Gap council room, she was reminded power wasn’t always in who held the high ground. The three elderly women seated below her at the table in front of her were the most powerful of the thirteen member pack council. So powerful that, even though the other ten members weren’t here, she knew they held her job in their hands.
“The McReynolds woman, Glenna, she’s stable?” Anna Truewater, council spokeswoman, a fierce woman with steel grey hair and an even steelier expression, eyed her over alligator green reading glasses. Not even coming close to the five-foot mark, Anna was known for having a warm personality and keeping careful track of each member of her pack, but woe betide anyone who crossed her.
Serena didn’t know her well. In fact she didn’t know any of the women on the council well, with the exception of Esther, the thirteenth member and shamans’ circle rep. This was Windy Gap, and Serena had only lived here for two years. Two years of trying to prove herself, not just as a top dreamwalker and shaman, but also prove to the tight pack that she hadn’t caused the trouble between Gabe and his twin, Sam, on purpose.
She was finally making friends with pack members her own age, but she wasn’t sure how most of the councilwomen saw her. She thought they respected her work, but due to the incident with Sam and Gabe, she was surprised they’d asked for her on Glenna’s case at all. But they had. And she now she was in charge of the woman’s mental health—for better or worse.
“Yes, she’s stable.” Serena forced herself to keep her fingers by her side, not twisting together like they wanted to. “I was able to get her to put up a very solid wall and contain her memories of the attack. She doesn’t remember it happening, not even in her subconscious.”
“How can that be?” Cila Walkerson frowned up at her, the wrinkles in her face pulling together. “Surely she remembers on a subconscious level. Don’t we store that sort of stuff down there?” Cila was the oldest of the women, and she was someone who’d made her opinions of Serena plain over the last two years, with her cutting remarks deliberately made just within earshot.
Serena kept her expression smooth, and put on her best shaman-as-teacher voice. “We store our memories, as well as the things we’ve simply forgotten, on the conscious level. It’s like having a closet and only seeing the things in front, not the things hiding on the second shelf behind the clothes rod. Your long-term memories are back there, and you can find them, but you need to look for them on the back shelf.”
She checked their faces for understanding and received a brief nod from Anna, pinched lips from Cila, and a tight smile from Mart, the youngest at seventy-two. Most pack members understood a little of what dreamwalkers did, but usually the shamans’ circle took care of shaman business. Not the council. And definitely not a small, closed section of the council.
“Then there is the subconscious. It’s not a memory storage; it’s more the connection that helps us link things together. It’s where our conscious selves link to our higher selves. The memories in the conscious brain are all accessible to the subconscious, so it sometimes reminds us of things we have on that shelf. But the memories are still stored in the conscious brain.”
Serena took a deep breath. They looked like they were following so far. “What Glenna and I have done is built another storage unit. Think of it like having an extra cabinet in the back of the closet with a heavy duty lock on it, and then the shelf in front of it piled with stuff, and then the rod with the clothes. She put the memories of the attack in and locked them away. Unless she remembers to look for them, she won’t know even where they’re stored, let alone be able to find the key to open the cabinet.”
“You’ve screwed us, big time, dreamwalker. How are we to find the ones who did this?” During Serena’s speech Cila had clamped her hands on the arms of her chair and now her voice was harsh with accusation. Her eyes gleamed and her voice roughened as her wolf rose to the front. “How are we to know who attacked an innocent human and infected them with the Bite if we can’t question the girl?”
“And we need to find out why he chose her. She must know.” Mart’s querulous voice rose higher and higher with every word. “She survived the fever, but does she have the right DNA to become pack? We know she has the antibodies, but we don’t know if she’ll turn. What if there’s a way to figure out if a human has the DNA? What if the government can track us? We need to know!”
“Shush, Mart.” Anna patted her arm. Mart settled back against her chair, her soft wrinkled hands shaking as she bundled them tightly together in her l
ap. Anna gave Serena a stern look over her glasses. “Serena, it’s imperative you get her to remember who did this.”
A hard knot formed in Serena’s gut.
“I don’t think you understand. What happened to Glenna was horrible, she can’t face it yet. She may never be able to face it.” She put her shoulders back and squared off with the women who had control over her entire world. “I can’t do it. I won’t do it. It’s not only wrong, it’s a violation of my healing oath.”
“Surely she’ll be able to deal with this eventually?” Anna asked.
“Someday, maybe, but only when she’s ready to.” She had to make them understand. Had to force them to realize that opening that door for Glenna could cause her permanent emotional damage. A damage she might never come back from. “It’s not just that this is a trauma that could break any one of us. For Glenna, now is the worst time to be unstable. We have no idea what’s going on with her body. She has the Bite. She might be about to go through the change any day now.” Serena leaned into the hard, remote faces, as if getting her own body closer would make them feel her desperation to protect her patient. “We haven’t had an adult change in centuries. We don’t know what will happen. You can’t expect her to deal with finding out about wolf shifters, go through the change, and deal with an attack that had her waking up screaming for weeks. The mundane world thinks this is a made-up disease, that it’s not real. Glenna is about to find out that it’s very real. That’s more than enough trauma for one person.”
Anna softened her voice into something almost sympathetic, but her expression stayed emphatic. “Normally we wouldn’t ask this of anyone, but someone is out there attacking women and infecting them somehow with the Bite.” All the women exchanged uneasy glances. “Luckily for Ms. McReynolds, the police showed up. But all that means is the perpetrator is likely to try again. And every time he does, we’re exposed.”
Serena’s mouth dried. “You think he’s going to try again.” All the women exchanged glances. “You think he’s after something specific? Maybe someone specific?” She reached for the bottle of water on the table in front of her and took a good swallow. “Good God, I’d heard there had been other attacks but I didn’t realize someone actually has the Bite.
The Bite. The virus that gave everyone in all the packs their powers—that activated their sleeping DNA—was tightly controlled by the pack councils. That someone had violated their most sacred rule and exposed them to the world, was unthinkable.
She’d been too distracted with her patient and the situation with Sam, but now that she thought about it, stealing the Bite was the only logical way that Glenna could have the antibodies. Male shifters had the active virus only when they had the mating fever, but someone with the fever was focused on one woman, not several. She ought to know, it was what had happened between her, Gabe, and Sam. And the mating fever wasn’t something you could hide, not for very long.
This wasn’t one male, wild with the mating fever. This was something else. Someone from the packs had stolen the Bite and was attacking women—and infecting them. And Glenna could identify him—if she could survive remembering the attack.
“What we’re saying is—we need to know who did this.” Anna leaned forward, her green eyes intense through the thick lenses of her glasses. “We don’t want to hurt her unnecessarily, but by codling her, the security of all the packs is at risk.” She rose from her chair and stepped forward, looking up at Serena and pinning her with her clear gaze. “We know from our sources that the government is aware of our existence now. And they are trying to find us. Look at the misinformation they are putting out about the virus—telling the world that you go crazy and think you are a wolf. It’s ludicrous. But it means that everyone is on the lookout for strange behavior. The public is afraid of us without even knowing who or what we are.” She shook her head, the chains of her reading glasses swinging from side to side. “That stupid CDC. The odds of a human catching the virus are astronomical, yet they have every attack victim of any sort tested for antibodies. They’re on a fishing expedition. Our people are doing what they can to hide us from view, but it will happen. They will find us. And with every attack they have more and more reason to look.”
“But this was the only time someone has tested positive for the antibodies. Right? The other victims didn’t have the virus.” Again the three exchanged uneasy looks. Serena’s stomach tightened further. “Wait a minute—you’re saying the other attack victims did have the virus. How many others and does the CDC know? Did they survive? Where are they? I thought it was all just media hype. What the hell is going on?”
“We’re saying that you have a job.” Cila’s face was cold. “Do your job. The council is in control of the rest of the situation.”
“You’ve been keeping secrets from me, from all of us. This is Glenna’s life. If you’d told the pack, maybe she wouldn’t have been attacked. Maybe this person would be in prison.” Or, if the pack enforcers had gotten to him first, dead.
“We do what’s necessary. Of course we feel sorry for the woman, but pack comes first.” Even Mart’s face was hard. “And don’t think we haven’t been doing our best. The enforcers know what to look for, but there is no reason to let the general public know. No reason at all.”
“Pack morality aside, you have no idea what that woman has been through.” Serena looked from one woman to the other, searching for some empathy in their soft, wrinkled faces and finding none. “You’re asking me to throw away my vows, expose her to excruciating pain, and possibly watch her go through the change, all after traumatizing her?”
“We’re not asking.” Anna’s voice was hard. “This is your job, Serena. Can you do it? If not we’ll have to send someone else in, and I can’t imagine that would be best for the girl.”
Someone else.
Someone who Glenna didn’t know and didn’t trust, invading her dreams and forcing her to face her attackers. What was worse? For a stranger to invade her dreams and do the dirty work? Or would it be better for Serena to betray Glenna and force her to rip off her scabs?
Chapter Eight
Glenna watched Lana and the Jeep drive down the dirt road and out of sight into the trees. The sound of the engine died out. A breeze shushed through the pines. Insects buzzed and birds chirped, but there were no sounds of people. No cars rushing by or cell phones ringing. The isolation of the cabin, the sheer ignorance of her situation, permeated her nerves. She was all alone here, no city bustle, no job demands, no family.
“For God’s sake, take a bite.”
She’d forgotten Sam. Somehow the thought that she really wasn’t alone wasn’t reassuring.
She glanced down at her plate and the tempting lasagna, and her mouth watered. She shouldn’t. She had that dress to fit into and she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d eaten pasta. But it smelled so good, and she hadn’t smelled anything this good in too long.
She couldn’t eat it. Didn’t dare. One bite and she’d never stop.
Sam dropped down into the seat next to her. His large warm hand closed over hers and a tremor shot up her arm. The look in his deep, serious eyes held her prisoner as he sank her fork deep into the pasta and maneuvered its burden of temptation to her lips.
It hovered, just in front of her lips and nose, her stomach snarling at the aroma.
Her mouth opened.
He slid the fork in.
Warm, soft, tomatoey, all the mouth-watering flavors burst on her tongue. She shut her eyes and chewed in ecstasy.
Slow, luxurious bites of sin.
She opened her eyes. Sam’s dilated pupils right in front of her face should have been threatening, but instead her breath quickened in response.
“Christ, take another bite.” He leaned forward on his chair, tense palms splayed on his thighs.
Glenna knew she shouldn’t be doing any of this. Shouldn’t be eating the amazing rich pasta, shouldn’t be teasing the dangerous stranger. But both of them made her feel aware an
d alive. Just this once she’d be the one playing with fire.
She slowly cut into the pasta and raised another heavenly scented bite to her lips. His eyes tracked the fork on its journey to her mouth where she stopped and let it hover. Opening her lips, she pursed them to blow air on the lasagna.
His hand came up, but she leaned back and slid the fork home. She chewed. Savored the flavors, the textures, and the hot expression of appreciation on Sam’s face as she swallowed another bite of what she shouldn’t have. And then another. And another.
“Do you always eat like this?” His voice was hoarse.
“It’s been a while.”
“There’s more lasagna.”
Glenna looked at her plate and she squeezed the fork tight, horror twisting in her gut. She’d eaten the entire piece.
Sam was close, too close. She breathed in his scent of warmth and soap and spice and thought of eating dessert.
“No, no thanks. I’m done.” She relinquished the fork with a clatter on the plate and lay back in the lounger. “That was way more than I should have eaten.”
“I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.” Sam leaned back in his own chair, stretched out his long legs and crossed his booted feet at the ankles and grinned. “I think I need a beer.”
Mortification mixed with a panicky guilt washed heat up Glenna’s neck.
She straightened up on the lounger. This wasn’t right, it wasn’t her. She never lost control like this. Eating so much food. And devouring it like it was a sensual feast just so she could watch a man’s eyes heat. This wasn’t her.
“Lana said you’d talk to me,” she said, determined to change the subject.
“I’ll try.” Sam’s position stayed casual on the lounger, but his steepled fingers tensed. “What do you want to know?”
“This isn’t a hospital. Where are we?”
“This is Lana’s clinic. We brought you here because it wasn’t safe for you in the hospital.” He cracked his knuckles in a way her grandmother would have called vulgar. “You don’t remember anything? Do you remember being sick?”
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