“Anybody out there?” No one answered his call. “Hey, can somebody hear me?”
“I hear ya, I hear ya.” Heavy footsteps thudded toward the bed. Max turned his head. The vampire who stalked toward him probably weighed in at three hundred and fifty pounds of intimidating bulk stacked seven feet tall. His bushy red beard and beady black eyes looked more suited to a plaid shirt and overalls than the white doctor’s coat he wore.
“Paul Bunyan?” Max said before he could stop himself.
The doctor didn’t find it very humorous. “What do ya need? Keep in mind, I ain’t lettin’ you up, not ’til your Movement cred is established.”
“Bella,” Max wheezed. His chest ached with uncertainty. “Where is she?”
“She’s over there.” Dr. Lumberjack indicated a curtained-off cubicle not far from where Max lay. Fluorescent lights within cast ominous shadows of large medical machines.
At least Max could hear the steady beeping of a heart monitor. “Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. We’ve got her sedated to keep her from moving around and opening her stitches, but she’s gonna pull through.”
“And the baby?” He wet his lips. “I mean, you knew she was pregnant?”
“We figured it out.” The doctor raised an eyebrow. “Got a personal stake in it?”
“What do you think?” Max snapped. Then he softened. “I’m just looking out for her.”
“The baby is fine. We did an ultrasound for her file. Do you wanna see?” Before Max could answer, Dr. Bunyan flipped open a chart.
The picture he held over Max’s face didn’t look like anything at all, at first. Just a weird swoop of grayish lines against blue-black. Only when the doctor tapped the printout and said, “That’s the kid, right there,” did Max understand what he was seeing. Within a dark area shaped like a jelly bean was a grayish object that bore an uncanny resemblance to a shrimp.
“That’s the baby?” Max asked, looking from the image long enough to see the doctor nod. Max’s chest constricted as if his ribs were in a vise. “That’s…amazing.”
“Is there something you wanna tell us?” the doctor asked, whisking the picture into the chart.
Max shook his head. “I told you everything I know.”
The big man grunted in disbelief, but let the subject drop.
“Can I see her?” The fact she hadn’t spoken yet troubled Max. He didn’t think there was a sedative on earth that would shut her up.
“Sorry, can’t let you up yet.” The doctor tapped the chart in his hands cheerfully. “We’ll let you know when your Movement cred checks out, and then we’ll talk. But you can push this button—” he pressed a plastic control into Max’s palm “—if you want to talk to someone before then.”
“You mean if I want to spill something about the baby?” Max narrowed his eyes at him.
“Not necessarily.” Whistling, the doctor walked away.
The sound of a door closing echoed in the space. Max was alone. “Bella?” he whispered. When she didn’t answer, he dropped his head to the pillow and stared at the exposed pipes on the ceiling.
He had no idea how long he’d been asleep when Bella woke him.
“Max?” She sounded terrified. “Max!”
“I’m here, baby.” He tested the restraints. Still strapped in. “Keep your voice down, or they’ll come back.”
“They?” Her voice quivered. “Max, where are we?”
He studied the concrete ceiling and exposed ventilation system. “A warehouse, apparently. We’ve been arrested by the Movement.”
There was a pause in which Max heard her release a long, slow breath. When she spoke, she sounded much calmer. “Thank God.”
He hated to get her worked up again, but he’d never coddled her before and he wouldn’t start now. “Don’t be thanking him yet. They know about the baby.”
She paused again. “Oh?”
“Yeah, and I think they know where it came from.” He craned his head to look for any sign of recording devices. Though he didn’t see any, he wasn’t sure they were a hundred percent in the clear. “Though I’m not entirely certain, myself.”
She sniffled. Damn it, he’d made her cry.
“Don’t do that. I’m sorry.” When she didn’t let up, he said, as brightly as he could manage, “Hey, they showed me an ultrasound of it.”
“It survived?” The hope in her voice was tremulous. She was holding back, in case he answered in the negative.
He kept his voice intentionally light. “Oh, yeah, everything is fine. Looks like a shrimp, but seems fine.”
She laughed tearfully. “Thank you, Max.”
“I’m the last person you need to be thanking.” He closed his eyes, resisting the urge to bang his head against the bed rails. It was his fault they were here. If he’d just calmed down, slowed down…
They’d probably have been captured by the Oracle. Brilliant.
“How did they find us?” Bella had dredged up her business voice. “No one knew we were there.”
“I don’t know. I suppose they’ll tell us, once they figure out we’re not working for the Oracle.” He thought about pressing the button to call someone in so he could demand some answers.
As if reading his mind, Bella protested. “No. Let them come to us in their own time. I want to be with you right now. Even if we cannot see each other.”
A reluctant smile tugged at his lips. “You know, I’ve always wanted to try bondage. I guess it works better when one person is untied.”
“I would prefer that person to be me.” She laughed, and when it died away, turned serious again. “Do you think they will harm the baby?”
“I think if they try, I’ll be busting some heads.” He said it extra loud, so if their captors were listening, they’d hear. Then, more quietly, only for Bella’s ears, he added, “You know I won’t let that happen.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “Max?”
“Yeah?” God, he wanted to have her right there next to him. Seeing the ultrasound had made the idea of the baby oddly real. He wanted to put his arms around her, to lay his hands protectively over her stomach. Did a baby move when it was just a tadpole-looking thing? Would he be able to feel it?
Bella’s voice trembled when she spoke. “I love you. You are the only one I love.”
Or have loved, was the unspoken part of her statement, Max knew. She was still worried he thought he wasn’t the father.
Well, was he? It seemed impossible, but there it had been, photographic proof. And Bella had said before that wolves were different when it came to sex. Even the most sexually active werewolf wouldn’t have more than one partner in an entire lifetime. It probably wasn’t as if she’d been banging some human guy in the busy month they’d been separated. She’d told Max as much, and as unbelievable as the whole situation seemed, he believed it.
“Yeah, I know. Don’t you worry about that.” He hoped that was enough. “And I love you.”
After a long silence, he realized she was sleeping again.
“Max, wake up!”
The room was pitch-dark. Someone had come in—day or night? he’d lost all sense of time—and turned off the overhead fluorescents.
“Max! Did they drug you or something?”
“Probably,” he rasped. That voice was so familiar.
“Open your eyes, you dork.”
He did. Anne, the eternally teenaged receptionist from Movement headquarters, stood over him, her porcelain-doll face etched with worry.
Max sighed in relief. “Oh, good. Can you go tell them I’m Movement so they’ll let me up? Or feed me?” Then he blinked, crucial details rising to the surface of his groggy mind. “Wait, you’re dead.”
“Um, obviously I’m not, ’cause I’m standing right here.” She leaned over him, squinting in annoyance at his restraints. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
“What?” He raised his head as far as he could from the pillow. “They’re Movement.”
; “They’re not Movement.” She slipped a bobby pin from her hair, which she’d pulled back in a tight configuration of dark coils. A thin black feather floated down from the marabou trim of her leather coat to tickle his nose as she leaned close. “Hold still.”
Max watched with grim amusement as she slipped the pin into the small brass padlock that secured the restraints around his left arm. Within seconds, his hand was free and she’d set to work on the other one.
“Okay, Velma, if they’re not Movement, who are they?” When his right arm came free, he rubbed his wrists with a grimace. Leather would never sound sexy again.
“They’re the Soul Eater’s people.” She grinned in triumph as she freed his right leg. “You have no idea what I’ve had to do to get in here.”
“How did they know where we were?” He sat up, finding it hard to be still while she worked to unlock his left leg.
She shrugged. “They knew you were at the cabin in the woods. They’ve been watching that place like crazy. So were we. I hear you really tore it up.”
“I had help.” It had never felt so good to be out of bed before. “Thanks, Care Bear.”
“You’re welcome.” She motioned toward the curtained area where Bella lay. “Now let’s get her.”
Max pulled back the drape and froze.
He hadn’t seen Bella since before the accident. Well, during the accident, really. The stitched-closed gashes on her head and face came courtesy of the passenger window. Or the former passenger window, if he wanted to be technical. The shards had rained over them, and he’d seen her blood hang suspended in the air for a split second before it splattered across the dash. The bruise across her neck and upper chest bore an uncanny resemblance to a seat belt. He didn’t want to think about what the lap belt had done to her. The black eyes were unexplainable, but probably had something to do with her smashed, slightly out of shape nose and the tape across the bridge of it. Her right leg—the one closest to the point of impact—was bracketed by some weird metal contraption.
“It’s an external fixator,” Anne cheerfully explained as she lowered the side rails. “That takes me back to my last assignment. I fell the equivalent of sixteen stories out of a hot air balloon. Ended up with metal screws in my pelvis. Good old Movement medicine. They were thinking up things like that long before real MDs were.”
“How are we going to get her out of here?” There was an IV in her right arm and a catheter tube taped to her leg.
“I have a wheelchair in the car. You’ll have to carry her that far, if you can.” Anne untied the catheter bag from the rail and grabbed the IV bag from the pole. She tossed them onto the bed between Bella’s legs and pulled the bottom sheet free. “I guess scoop her up and carry her. That’s probably our best bet.”
“I think you’re right.” He leaned over Bella and pressed his lips to her forehead, trying not to smell the blood in the cut over her eyebrow. “Wake up, baby. We gotta go.”
“Go where?” she mumbled sleepily, a smile slowly spreading across her face. Her drowsy eyes shot open as she remembered their circumstances. “How did you get free?”
Anne stepped closer, touching Bella’s arm. “You’re not safe here.”
“With the Movement? Do not be absurd.” She looked to Max. “Tell her. Tell her what is going on.”
“She knows what’s going on.” He checked over his shoulder, sure that at any moment Grizzly Adams, M.D., would come in and shut down their whole operation. “These people are not Movement. They’re the Soul Eater’s guys. They were watching the cabin.”
There was a noise at the door. “They’re coming. I barred it from the inside, but they will get through,” Anne warned.
“Let’s go.” Max scooped Bella up as carefully as he could, though she cried out when he jostled her leg. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
“There’s another door.” Anne gestured to the side of the room, which had been blocked by the curtains. “Come on!”
They charged through the door, into a maze of industrial shelves coated in a thick layer of dust. At the other end—they had to run about the length of a football field with Bella crying out at each step—an illuminated exit sign glowed an eerie red.
It wasn’t a shaft of heavenly light, but he’d take it.
Anne ran ahead and kicked the door down.
“Was it locked?” he called over his shoulder as she let him pass through.
“I don’t know. The car’s over there!” She ran ahead again, sliding over the gravel in her platform combat boots.
“Easy, baby,” he soothed against Bella’s damp hair as he leaned down to put her in the back of the car. “Why the hell does the Soul Eater want us?”
“You know why!” Anne closed the door as soon as he slid inside beside Bella. The locks popped into place automatically.
There were no handles.
“Anne?” He pounded the window with his fist. The glass thumped dully. Bulletproof. Break proof.
Outside, three vampires ran from the building. Anne pulled three slim stakes from the waistband of her black plastic pants and threw them one after another without pausing to check her strikes. She didn’t have to. As she dropped into the driver’s seat, the vampires burst into flame.
“It doesn’t matter what the Soul Eater wants with her,” she managed through rapid breaths as she started the car. She turned toward him, leaning over the seat.
Max didn’t see the hypodermic until she stuck him with it. His vision swam and went dark. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was Anne saying smugly, “Because the Oracle wants her more.”
Nineteen:
Hocus Pocus
I was still asleep when Nathan burst into the room. So, apparently, was Cyrus. He sat up beside me, glowering and squinting against the illumination from the overhead light.
Nathan looked from Cyrus to me, then scowled. “Get up. We’ve got problems.”
He slammed the door so hard a light rain of plaster fell from the ceiling.
“Well, that is a somewhat less pleasant wake-up call than I’d hoped for.” Cyrus eased from the bed, wincing as he stood. “And I think I’ll go back to sleeping on the couch.”
“Yeah, and he’ll stake you as soon as you fall asleep.” My muscles protested as I sat up. “Oh, it’s going to be a long night.”
“It was a long day. I’d forgotten how much you snored. And drooled,” Cyrus said, casting me a sidelong glare.
“I forgot how much you exaggerated.” I rubbed the corner of my mouth anyway, just in case he was right about the drool.
We limped out to the living room. Nathan looked like a man who’d rather be breaking someone’s legs with a golf club. It was going to be a long night.
“What’s going on?” I asked, sitting on the couch. When Cyrus sat beside me, I scooted away.
It didn’t go unnoticed, by either of them. Jealousy hit me from both sides of the blood tie, for different reasons, and I had to consciously divert my focus to the task at hand.
To my relief, Nathan cut me off from the tie on his end. “I got a call from some Movement vampires in Canada. It seems Max and Bella were in a car accident. Max was okay, but Bella was in bad shape.”
“Was?” Cyrus put his hand on my knee. Not possessively, though Nathan would probably see it that way.
I didn’t brush it aside. “But they survived the crash?”
Nathan nodded. “As far as they knew. But they’re not there anymore. They killed three Movement doctors and escaped. He left everything behind. Money, car, phone…there’s no way to contact him.”
“Why would they run from the Movement?” It didn’t make any sense. Max was still an active member. He didn’t have a mark on his head, like Nathan did. He wasn’t even hanging out on the fringe like I was, waiting for someone to get the notion to pick off some nonthreatening vampires.
Nathan considered a moment, then held up his hands. “I don’t know. They think they had help.”
“Help against the Movement?
That doesn’t sound promising. Who would help them against the Movement?” Cyrus said this without his trademark sarcasm. It was a good thing. Neither Nathan nor I would have appreciated it.
“They could have been kidnapped,” I offered helpfully. “Like, maybe somebody took them?”
Nathan shook his head. “Who would be able to get a vampire and a half-crippled, pregnant werewolf out of a warehouse under heavy Movement guard?”
“Someone they trust,” Cyrus said quietly, not looking at either of us.
“Excuse me?” Barely leashed rage swam beneath the surface of Nathan’s too polite inquiry.
Cyrus looked up, first at him, then me, then back to Nathan. “If someone in the Movement that they trusted helped them, they might not have resisted.”
“It’s impossible.” Nathan stood and turned away, raking a hand over his stubbled jaw. He looked as though he hadn’t slept. “No, it’s not possible.”
“Consider the situation,” Cyrus continued calmly. “You said they were heavily guarded. If someone wanted to get in or out, they would have to kill a lot more than three people.”
“The only person who could pull it off would have been an assassin,” I interjected. “Someone who could take on three vampires at the same time.”
Cyrus made an affirmative sound. “And convince your friends to go with them.”
“What are you talking about?” Nathan whirled, his face twisted with rage. He stabbed his finger through the air in Cyrus’s direction. “First of all, you’ve never been part of the Movement, so you don’t know anything about how we operate.”
“I know how we infiltrated and subverted it time and again,” Cyrus replied calmly.
“He has a point.” Why did I suddenly feel as if we were ganging up on Nathan?
A moment later, I didn’t care. Nathan glared at me, his eyes cold. “You certainly wouldn’t have any clue about the Movement works. It’s a group of vampires loyal to a common ideal. The key word being loyal.”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “What did you say to me?”
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