Sweat pooled between her breasts. More dripped from his brow. She could barely catch her breath.
Finally, she managed to open her eyes. Marcus had his head bowed and was breathing almost as heavy as she was.
“That was amazing,” she panted.
He looked up at her with eyes glowing bright gold, and smiled. “That was just the beginning.”
A laugh bubbled up through her before she could stop it. The absurdity of her life was hitting her hard. She was as close to happy as she could remember being in a very long time—because of a werewolf. Because of Marcus.
He slid from her body, but kept holding her close, nuzzling her neck and pressing kisses haphazardly over her skin. After a particularly long inhale, he let out a sigh and rolled to his side, propping himself up on his elbow to look toward the sky.
“What is it?” Tessa could only make out vague shapes of trees that were slightly darker than the cloud cover overhead.
“It’s going to start raining again. I don’t want you out in it.”
“I’m not afraid of a little rain.”
He let out a small laugh. “I don’t doubt it. From what I’ve seen, you’re not afraid of anything. Like Porter and Dexter.”
“No. Not like them.” She shook her head. “I seem fearless because I’m constantly terrified. But if I let the fear stop me, people will die. I’d never do anything again. I’d just sit in a corner and chew on my hair—and trust me, plenty of days that sounds really appealing. If I ever gave in to fear, I’m afraid I’d never claw my way out of that hole.”
“I get it.”
“Seriously?” She laughed. “The big bad werewolf understands fear?”
“I’m always scared, too. That I’ll lose control. Hurt someone. Turn them.”
She felt him start to move away, but sat up and put her hand on his shoulder. “You won’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I’ve met other werewolves. Talked to them outside of hunting or being hunted.”
She shivered at the memory. Edgar had insisted that she learn to entertain other dwellers. He had called them her new family.
“You’re nothing like them,” she said.
“I’ve never met another werewolf. All I know is my own experience. And even that’s been changing since I met you.”
“How?”
“I just feel…more in control. Like I’m finally getting comfortable in my own skin.” He chuckled. “Both of them.”
“I’m glad to be such a good influence.”
A drop of rain hit her shoulder, colder than she expected. She pressed herself into the warmth of his chest.
“Come on,” he said. “We can talk more back at the ranch. Figure out what to do next.”
She burrowed her fingers through his hair, pulling his head toward her for a brief, passionate kiss. “The only thing I’m interested in figuring out back there is how soundproofed the walls of your room are.”
Even in the dark, she could see him grin.
Chapter Twenty-One
They hadn’t left their little clearing immediately after that kiss, but still managed to make it back to the ranch just before the rain started in earnest. Remembering everything they’d done in the woods as they approached the barn, Marcus wasn’t sure they would make it to his room. The living room couch could be very comfortable…
He needed her in his bed as quickly as possible. Pulling his bike into the stark garage beneath the barn, he realized that wouldn’t be an option.
Dexter was leaning against the van, arms crossed over his chest.
“Glad to see you made it back okay,” he said.
Marcus killed the engine and set the kickstand as Tessa slid off the back of the bike. She stretched, lingering nearby as he finished parking.
Dexter’s presence implied that he was worried about Tessa. As if Marcus would ever let anything happen to her.
“Rip. Off. His. Head.”
Marcus didn’t want to get into it with his dweller. He just thought back, “Fuck. You.”
“Nice of you to wait up,” Tessa said.
Marcus’s voice was a low growl. “And completely unnecessary.”
“We disagree,” Dexter said. “Porter needs to examine Tessa immediately. She’s harboring an un-catalogued dweller, and that needs to be checked out.” Dexter pushed away from the van and approached them, keeping his gaze locked on Tessa. “We like to keep track of possible threats. Right, Marcus?”
Marcus growled and started forward. If Dexter wanted a threat, Marcus would give him one.
“Easy.” Tessa stepped between them, pushing against Marcus’s chest. “It’s a legitimate concern. Besides, I need to talk to Porter anyway.”
She wrapped her arm around Marcus’s waist, tucking herself in close. Marcus rested his arm on her shoulders.
“Lead on,” she said.
Dexter smiled, but the tightness around his eyes conveyed his disapproval better than any words could. Tessa had issued her own challenge.
If Dexter insisted that they go first, he’d be demonstrating that he thought of them as a threat—that he wasn’t willing to give them his back. Marcus knew he was always being supervised, but walking in front of Dexter now would almost feel like they were prisoners.
After pausing for a few moments, Dexter crossed the room to the door. He didn’t hesitate when it opened, leading them down the blank hallway. Marcus exhaled as Tessa pulled him along with her.
Porter and Vaughn were waiting in one of the secondary labs. Vaughn was shifting his weight from one foot to another, holding one of his shiny chrome clipboard computers. He called them PAWN units. He tapped on it as they entered, and the monitor over his shoulder flickered on.
“Okay, I get that you’re a genius designer, but how do you make those fancy gadgets?” Tessa said. “I mean, everything is custom.”
Vaughn smiled. “I own a tech company, and spread the contract work for components over multiple factories. Then I assemble everything myself either in the garage or my main lab down in…”
His voice diminished, along with his smile. He glared at Porter.
“Vaughn, I swear to you, I will never tell anyone about your spaceship,” Tessa said. “I’ve been working with hunters for years, and never let it slip that dwellers are aliens.”
Vaughn half-shrugged and gave her a weak smile. “I suppose that’s something. How did you know about the origin of dwellers in the first place?”
“Some of them know.” She squeezed Marcus’s waist tighter. “Edgar knew.”
“How could he?” Dexter leaned against the wall, arms crossed.
“I think he was one of the original occupants of the ship.” She was trembling.
Marcus pulled her closer to his side, bending down to kiss the top of her head. He wished he could shield her from this conversation, but she’d made it clear that it was important to her to get through it.
Porter cut into their moment, his voice sharp. “It seems unlikely a specimen could live for that long.”
Tessa shrugged. “He regenerates.”
“So do any number of dwellers,” Porter said. “But most seem to age at a normal human rate. The longest lived beings we’ve encountered were only a few hundred years old, if that.”
Tessa shook her head. “Edgar is a hive creature, constantly replacing scouts as they’re lost to age or the elements or to…infecting others.”
“Like he infected you?” Porter’s voice gentled a bit.
“No. Not like what he did to me.”
“Right,” Dexter said. “Because what you are is more dangerous.”
Marcus started to growl. Tessa wasn’t the most dangerous person in that room. Dexter needed to remember that.
She blew out a shaky breath. “I know I should have told you sooner. I wasn’t planning on sticking around long enough for it to be an issue. But you don’t have to worry about me being a threat. My dwellers are contained.”
“Through you
r wristband,” Porter said.
“Yeah. The things aren’t strong. They can’t push past the elastic. And they won’t actively try to spread unless they’re triggered.”
Porter took a step toward Tessa. “Would you mind letting us take a closer look?”
Marcus expected her to balk, but instead she stepped forward. He willed himself to let her go. She held up her arm and Porter gently grasped her hand and elbow, peering intently at her skin.
“Do you know how many are in there?” Porter asked.
“A dozen or so at least.”
Vaughn let out a gasp. “A dozen? The ghouls we’ve encountered so far only have one dweller.”
“Those weren’t apex ghouls,” Tessa said.
“Most of what we know about ghouls, we learned from subject G-405,” Porter said. “A female ghoul who transitioned in her early thirties an undetermined amount of time ago.”
Vaughn tapped on his PAWN and the monitor displayed a picture of the ghoul Marcus had captured the previous year. G-405 had been skeletal-thin. Her clothes were tattered and dirty, her skin so gray it was impossible to tell what her complexion originally looked like, and her cheeks and eyes were sunken.
She looked like a walking corpse. She’d been a ghoul so long, she couldn’t even remember what her human name had been.
Marcus didn’t know how long werewolves could live. He knew that he seemed to be aging at the same rate as a normal human. He was spared the diseases and other unpleasant side-effects of not having an alien immune system constantly defending his body. But ghouls…
The alien parasites changed their hosts. Made them into something…else. G-405 could have been over a hundred, for all they knew.
Marcus remembered how easily she’d been captured—almost like she was tired of her existence. He couldn’t entirely blame her. He had caught her in one of the local cemeteries, feeding off of a dead body she’d dug up. What he didn’t understand was why Porter had been obsessed with her.
For several weeks, the ghoul had lived at the ranch. Porter had fed her, cared for her, and asked her endless questions—all the while, running test after test. Vaughn had been involved, developing new technology to get the data Porter needed.
Eventually, Vaughn had brought Marcus in and warned him that Porter was about to cross a line. He wanted to extract G-405’s dweller, even though they knew it would kill her. Painfully.
Marcus had overheard Porter arguing with Eli, the head of the Blades’ medical division, through Vaughn’s comm system. From the sound of it, another Blade’s life was on the line—someone important. Marcus thought the ghoul’s life was important, too. Apparently, she didn’t agree.
When Porter asked G-405 about the procedure, and told her it could save lives, she’d happily accepted. She said she could remember enough of what it had been like to be human to be disgusted by what she had to do to survive. She was done. If she could help people on the way out, so much the better.
Would Tessa ever reach that point? Was she already there?
“For ghouls, the dweller lives inside the host’s brain,” Porter said. “Transition includes the body’s tissues becoming extremely dehydrated, giving them a gaunt and emaciated appearance. That plus the change in skin color and texture makes them obvious dwellers.”
“It takes years for them to reach that point,” Tessa said.
Porter finally stopped examining her arm. His gaze snapped to hers. “It’s not part of their initial transition?”
“No. Becoming a ghoul isn’t as quick or dramatic as becoming a werewolf.” She shifted her weight and glanced over at Marcus again.
“Infect her. Let our nature fill her body and push out these invaders. Make her one of us.”
Shit.
That was tempting. What if his werewolf nature could keep Tessa from suffering the same fate—or worse—as G-405? But Marcus had no idea what trying to turn Tessa would actually do to her.
He was even more frightened by the fact that he wasn’t dismissing the idea outright.
“You should tell Porter everything.” Marcus took a step closer. “The more he knows, the better he’ll be able to help you.”
And if Porter and the Blades couldn’t, Marcus would. Somehow. Somehow not related to changing her.
“Apex ghouls usually create drones by spitting one of the dwellers in their body into their target’s ear.” Tessa pulled her arm away from Porter, cradling it against her middle. “If they can’t get a hold of their victim, they can drop it onto their hair or clothes. The closer to the ears the better, though. The dweller makes its way into the brain, and starts secreting chemicals that transform the body. But it takes time.”
“How much time?” Porter asked.
Tessa shrugged. “It varies from person to person. But the change takes place gradually. The first chemicals the dweller secretes make the human susceptible to suggestion from the apex ghoul. They become thralls. Edgar used to target rich people and get them to sign over their money to him. If they ran out of resources and couldn’t pass for human anymore, he would ditch them.”
“Nice guy,” Vaughn said.
“How long can the dwellers live outside of a human host?” Porter seemed determined to keep the conversation on track.
“If it’s a scout that’s never integrated with a host, indefinitely.”
“Indefinitely…” Porter shook his head. “The one we extracted only lived for a few seconds.”
“Extracted?” Tessa said. Her eyes widened in horror, her scent gaining a sharp edge of fear. “Oh my God. You took a dweller out of a ghoul?”
“We needed to study it.” Porter remained impassive.
“That’s vivisection.” Tessa took a few steps away from him, but then realized she was heading closer to Dexter and stopped. Marcus stepped toward her, but she leapt away, keeping all of them at a distance.
“Your concern is surprising,” Dexter said. “Only yesterday you were saying all dwellers should die.”
“A quick death,” she said. “As clean as possible.”
“No one is dying.” Marcus stalked up to Tessa, following when she retreated. He gripped her arms firmly. “No one here will hurt you. I won’t let them.”
More quietly, he added, “I’ll protect you with my life.”
She let out a shuddering breath, but didn’t lean against him as he’d hoped. Instead, she pushed him aside, standing next to him to face the others. Which…felt even better than him protecting her.
Tessa at his side, standing strong. It was as the universe intended things.
“G-405 volunteered for the procedure.” Vaughn’s voice was so low, it was a wonder anyone could hear it. He cleared his throat before continuing. “We were able to render her unconscious with an electrical charge just below the kill range, then froze her body while the extraction was performed. We monitored her brainwaves carefully the entire time to ensure she didn’t wake up…while it was happening.”
“But she must have known she would die,” Tessa said.
“Look at her, Tessa.” Vaughn pointed at the screen. “She’d been a ghoul for so long. Alone. She hadn’t been able to pass for human in decades, probably. No dwellers wanted her around, either, from what she told us. The loneliness was killing her more slowly—and cruelly—than Porter’s procedure.”
“I assumed the ghouls who left Edgar banded together.” Tessa looked stunned. “He was always surrounded by other dwellers.”
“That probably had resources and could be of use to him, from what you’ve said.” Vaughn let out a deep sigh. “I know the type—and it’s not limited to dwellers.”
The conversation was stirring up personal demons for everyone in the room, it seemed. From what Vaughn had shared with Marcus, Edgar sounded a lot like Vaughn’s dad. Using people and then discarding them when they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—serve him anymore.
As soon as Marcus had a chance, he would check in with Vaughn and make sure he was okay—make sure he understood that every
one in the pack was important.
“Ghouls are specialized necrophages,” Dexter said. “They eat human corpses to sustain themselves. G-405 said her dietary needs were driving her insane.”
“Lots of dwellers have to subsist on meat,” Tessa said. “But it doesn’t always have to be human. Couldn’t anything else work?”
Porter broke in. “We tried. Nothing else could sustain her form.”
“Ghouls eat humans,” Marcus’s dweller said. “It’s the only way they can maintain the integrity of their host’s cellular structure.”
Holy shit. His dweller had just given him some useful information. Horrible information, but still… How did it even know?
“I’ve always been here to help you, Marcus.”
Marcus stifled a chill. His dweller seldom used his name. When it did, it made the voice in his head creepier—made Marcus wonder what was really riding around with him.
“Great.” Tessa let out a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh. “Something to look forward to. Except I won’t be able to eat the dead. I’ll have to eat…” She was trembling again, her heart pounding fast.
“Apex ghouls can only eat the living.” His dweller was silent for a moment, then added, “And you are the one condemning her to this fate.”
Marcus shoved his dweller’s thought away. He took Tessa’s hand and interlaced their fingers. “We’ll find another way.”
She shook her head sharply. “I already have one. Porter, you probably stitch up your Blades all the time, right?”
“All Blade doctors do.”
“Have you ever performed surgery?”
Porter opened his mouth, then closed it again. “We don’t like where this is going.”
“Neither do I.” Marcus tightened his grip on her hand—her left hand—and pulled her closer.
“This is the direction I’ve been heading in ever since Edgar infected me,” she said. “But I finally feel like I have a chance—a real chance—at getting my life back. If all it costs me is an arm, that’s a fair trade.”
Pack Page 20