by Mina Carter
“He’s a total loss. Post-traumatic stress disorder, completely unhinged. There’s nothing we can do for him here. We’ll ship him out in the morning to someplace with padded walls and hose-down surfaces, so he can talk nonsense and piss himself in peace.”
Jack suppressed a snort. That was Project speak for driving him out someplace private to put a bullet in the back of his head while the silver had him locked down. He and others like him could heal most things, but even they would struggle with a wound inflicted at point-blank range.
“What are you doing in here, Lillian? You know this area is out of bounds to all non-military personnel.”
The doc’s voice changed tone, and even in this form Jack could smell fear rolling off the woman. He had a first name to go with the “L. Rosewood” on her nametag. Yes, that was right, but she’d called herself Lilly in the lobby. Damn them and their injections. He’d lost part of his first memory of her. Instead, the beast snarled, its anger with the Project and the men who ran it increasing another notch.
Lillian.
He rolled the name around in his head as the doc approached. She edged around the bed a little more. Jack’s protective instincts flared. He didn’t care that he was pumped full of silver nitrate and strapped to the bed. If this asshole put a hand on her, Jack would take it off at the wrist. Perhaps even the shoulder. Yeah, the shoulder sounded like a good place to start…
“I needed something from one of the stores cupboards at the end of the corridor. Didn’t see the point in filling out seventeen forms, in triplicate, for a couple of dressings, so I used the back corridor.”
The doc made a small sound of surprise. Obviously he hadn’t known of another way onto the ward. Interesting. His little rose knew the layout of the place better than the military personnel.
“Then you were a bad girl, Lillian. Do you know what happens to bad girls?”
Jack didn’t need an expanded sense of smell to pick up the lust rolling off the guy. It oozed from his pores thickly, filling the room as much as it filled his voice. Feeling sick, Jack stopped breathing through his nose, but he could do nothing to block his ears. Come on…can’t the guy pick a better line to use for intimidation?
“They get told about their behavior, a note entered on their permanent record and let off with a warning?”
He wanted to applaud. Lillian’s voice was firm and no nonsense, without a hint of the fear he could smell on her skin as she edged around the bed away from the doctor stalking her.
He barked a laugh. “Very funny Lillian. I always did like that about you, you have a great sense of humor. Right now, though, I have other plans for that pretty little mouth of yours.”
“Okay, enough’s enough, Dr. Walker. I apologize for the transgression but—let me out.” Her voice grew sharper, and a fresh wave of fear rolled from her as the doctor blocked her escape. “My grandfather will hear of this.”
Walker snorted. “Yeah, right. Like you think I’m bothered about your grandfather? Sweetpea, you tell anyone and there won’t be a place you can run that I won’t find you. Understand?”
A growl started at the back of Jack’s throat. Low and full of menace, it hovered just on the edge of human hearing. He knew they wouldn’t hear it, not consciously. The tension in the room rose sharply. The human was dead. Deader than dead. He wasn’t even going to be a corpse when Jack was done with him…just a red smear on the floor.
He watched as Lillian tried to slip around the edge of the bed.
“Oh, no you don’t.”
Grabbing the edge of the gurney, the doctor rammed it up against the wall, and cut off her escape. Jack closed his eyes as the growl got louder. A woman was about to be raped in front of him.
Not on his watch.
Reaching deep inside, he called to the part of himself that wasn’t human. The part the military scientists had awoken after they’d persuaded him to “volunteer” for their enhancement tests.
“Nowhere left to run, Lillian. Now be a good girl. This won’t hurt.”
There was a scuffle. She screamed. A sound quickly cut off. Fury flared through him at the terrified whimpering that followed. He couldn’t see what was going on, but he could imagine it. Imagine how the human had her pinned in the corner, his hand over her mouth. Rage flowed through his body like a surfer at the crest of a wave. It galvanized his limbs, eating away at the silver that kept him more a prisoner than the restraints on his wrists and ankles.
“That’s it, baby. Just relax. You’ll enjoy it.”
The sound of sloppy kisses and whimpering filled his ears. Opening his eyes, he looked up through the window above the bed. Clear, you bastards, clear, he screamed silently at the clouds over the moon. He hadn’t asked for what they’d done to him, and he’d never complained. The least the bitch-fates could do was allow the disaster of his life to benefit at least one person.
He held his breath as, above him, the clouds parted. Moonlight streamed through the gap, cascading through the window and spilling over his prone body. Relief and strength flooded his system in equal amounts, slamming into his starved muscles. Hot on its heels flowed in the pain. White-hot pain that stole his breath as his energized body rejected the nitrate in his blood. He gritted his teeth as silver sweat beaded on his skin.
With a roar, he ripped the manacles from his wrists and ankles. The bed slammed into the opposite wall with a metallic squeal of protest as he launched himself from it.
Oh God. Lillian couldn’t believe what was happening. All she’d wanted was to check on a patient. Alleviate her concern. Not get pinned to a wall, being groped and pawed at as Dr. Walker tried to shove his tongue down her throat.
She knew Walker fancied her. He’d asked her out shortly after being transferred to the hospital with the military unit. Just the thought of him touching her with his cold, clammy hands had made her skin crawl so, politely, she’d let him down. Obviously he hadn’t taken that rejection quite as well as she’d thought.
Bile rose in her throat, her stomach rolled. She couldn’t believe he was doing this. Everyone, even the military staff, knew she was the old man’s granddaughter.
Whimpering in not-so-mock fear, she allowed him to pull her closer. He shoved his groin—and the thick erection—forward and ground it roughly against her. At the feeling of the hard ridge pressing into her soft belly, she almost lost it and kneed him in the balls. She held off. He was at the wrong angle for her knee to connect properly. She’d only get one shot, so it had to be right.
“Baby, you feel so good. I knew you’d be good.”
He planted sloppy kisses all over her cheeks and latched onto her mouth again with the rubbery fish lips she’d shuddered over with the other female staff. She gritted her teeth as he tried to force her lips open. So not happening. She’d bite his tongue off first, perhaps right after she planted her knee into his groin.
Just a little more, she begged silently as he shifted position against her. Just a little more and he’ll be in the right position.
Before she could put her big plan into action, the room flooded with moonlight and a full-throated snarl erupted behind Walker. Her heart thundered so loud she thought momentarily she’d imagined the growl. Opening her mouth, she prepared to bite Walker’s lip as she slammed her knee into his family jewels, but she never got the chance. The next instant the doctor was ripped away from her and slammed into the opposite wall.
Her chest heaved as adrenalin and surprise thundered through her. Her heart battering against her ribcage, she looked up, expecting to see one of the guards or maybe even a couple of the male orderlies who had come to her rescue.
It was neither. Instead, the bed lay empty, shoved against the wall. Harper loomed over her attacker menacingly, his back to her. She couldn’t see his face. What she could see was his ass as it played peek-a-boo through the back of the hospital gown.
On a normal day, the absurdity of the moment would have had her chuckling. Except this wasn’t at all funny. The threat of viol
ence lay like a mantle over the soldier’s broad shoulders, just waiting to manifest. And…her brow creased. He appeared to be growling.
A shiver ran down her spine, dancing merrily on each vertebra as it went. Harper’s hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as he stood over the doctor. As if he fought hard for control.
Lillian knew she should run. Raise the alarm. They had a patient loose. One who was, by the looks of it, capable of extreme violence. She could scream again, of course, but that wouldn’t cut it. They were a mental hospital. Screams were as common as cheap linoleum and the scent of pine fresh antibacterial cleaner.
Walker shook his head, expression groggy. He lifted a hand to the back of his head. His eyes widened as it came away dark with blood.
“What the…?”
He looked up before going stock still as he registered Harper stood over him. The blood drained from his face. She’d heard the phrase “as white as a sheet”, but she’d never actually seen it. Until now.
“Fuck.”
In a heartbeat, the doctor was all movement, scrambling up the wall as he tried to pull something from the pocket of his white coat. A gun. Shit, he has a gun. Lillian tried to call out a warning to Harper, but her vocal chords refused to cooperate. Her hand crept up to her throat. It was like a train wreck. She couldn’t stop it or look away.
The soldier didn’t need her warning. At the first sign of movement from Walker, he was already moving. His hand lashed out, open-palmed, in a slap instead of the punch she expected.
A small object flew out of Walker’s grasp and clattered against the single cabinet in the room. The doctor howled in pain and hugged his hand to his body as he sagged against the wall again. A wet, red darkness spread over his lab coat as he glared defiantly at Harper. She covered her mouth with her hand, staring at the blood. How had Harper done that? He had to have a knife.
“Screw you,” Walker spat in a voice thick with hatred as he cradled the injured hand. “You’re fucked. Doesn’t matter if you turn me or kill me. They know the place is infected now. They’ll level it with you and the little bitch inside.”
She walked over, leaned down and picked up the object. Small and square, it was an electronic device of some type. A small red light blinked ominously on the side, echoing the menace in Walker’s words.
“Infected? Infected with what?” she croaked as her voice finally decided to cooperate. What was Walker going on about? This was a hospital—they were very careful about any possible infections.
The fallen doctor laughed. Blood bubbled on his lips. Bright red, frothy blood. Lilly frowned. She’d seen blood from many sorts of wounds, and this looked wrong. It looked fake. She knew it wasn’t. Blood that color meant that too many things were wrong inside for the patient to survive.
“You really don’t get it, do you, sweetheart?” Walker wheezed as his breathing became more labored. What was going on? He shouldn’t have respitory problems from a hand wound. “Your precious captain here, and the rest? They’re not nutcases…they’re experiments. Military experiments. Lycanthropes. Where else do you think we could put them so no one would listen to a word they said, apart from a mental institute?”
Lillian laughed nervously as she stepped closer, all her instincts on high alert. Harper still had his back to her, so she couldn’t see his face. The seriousness of her situation started to sink in. If Walker was lying, then she was in a cell with a lunatic who’d just wounded a doctor with a knife he’d smuggled in. If what said Walker was the truth, she was in a cell with God knew what… Military experiment? Even the phrase had a bad ring to it.
Crap. She knew she should’ve stayed in bed this morning.
Blood. It called to him in a seductive voice. Jack stood his ground against its lure. Despite what they’d done to him, he was not an animal. Not a dog to be swayed by the scent of fresh meat, or tempted by the delectable treat that stood behind him.
Blood lust and lust of the more carnal kind fought for dominance, their battlefield his taut frame. His mouth full of lengthened canines, he couldn’t answer the doctor’s accusations. Not until he could talk normally. But what was he going to say, anyway? Sorry darlin’, everything Psycho Doc here says is true?
Yeah, like she would believe he wasn’t a nutcase right there.
Walker looked at him with glee even as the drugs to counter lycanthrope infection destroyed his system from the inside out. The Project’s top dogs were so scared of the virus being transmitted outside their test group that they pumped the rest of the staff full of some pretty serious shit to avoid them becoming infected. Unfortunately, it was a terminal solution. The drugs stopped them from becoming infected, true, but they also terminated any other sign of life.
“See? He’s a fucking dog. Practically pissing himself because he can smell blood and a hot woman. He’ll be wagging his tail and rolling over to let you rub his tummy next. Isn’t that right, mutt?” Walker’s voice turned scornful as he waved the hand Jack had shredded, splattering the floor in front of him with fat droplets of blood.
He couldn’t help it. Jack fixated on those red drops. His mouth watered. All his instincts screamed at him to pounce and slash…tear skin and muscle until the blood ran thick and hot. Gulp it and chunks of flesh down until the endless hunger in his gut was assuaged.
“Captain Harper? Are you okay?”
Her voice behind him was the only thing that stopped the rising hunger, kept him from launching himself at Walker and tearing the man limb from limb to feast on his still twitching corpse. Jack traded one lust for another as his beast fixated on her instead. Female. Hot, sexy, fertile…he could read it all from her scent. An elusive, erotic fragrance that was hers and hers alone.
“Run, Little Red Riding Hood, run. Before the Big Bad Wolf eats you all up!” Walker cackled, sliding farther down the wall. He was gray. Jack could smell death on him as surely as if the Grim Reaper were in the room with them.
“First he was a dog, now he’s a wolf. Make your frigging mind up. And for heaven’s sake, let’s get some pressure on that wound. Where’d you get your license, off the back of a cereal box?” Lillian snapped as she grabbed a dressing from the nearby counter and stepped toward Walker.
Jack half-started toward her, reaching out to grasp her arm in an iron grip he tried to gentle. Touching any man, even a dying one, was a bad thing. The creature inside him wouldn’t tolerate his woman touching another. Touching Walker, with his infected blood, would be more trouble than she’d dreamed of.
“No point—” Walker coughed up more blood. Black this time. It didn’t stop when he finished coughing, dripping like oil from the corners of his lips. “Dead already.”
As soon as the words left his lips, Walker gasped. His body froze before his back arched in a hideous curve. The sharp staccato sound of his vertebrae snapping one after the other filled the room. With a final rattling moan, he slumped to the floor. Silent. The pool of darkness under him spread wider before it stopped.
“I-is he…?”
Lillian’s hand covered her throat, distress rolling off her in waves.
“Don’t look. He’s gone.”
He tucked her head against his shoulder, wrapping her in his arms and murmuring soothing sounds against her hair. In the face of her distress, his tenuous control strengthened, as though the creature within was content just being near her. He paused, savoring the new sensation. So used to the thing raging in anger and resentment, feeling it calm and almost content was a novelty.
It wouldn’t last long, he knew that. Walker had called in the cavalry, but these particular reinforcements wouldn’t be riding to anyone’s rescue. Certainly not his or Lillian’s, that was for sure. Walker had triggered the alarm, alerting Project Headquarters of a possible Lycanthrope infection. They wouldn’t mess around. There would be no quarantine, no medical tests to evaluate the hospital staff for possible infection. The Project had only one way to deal with an unsanctioned lycan infection…
Termination.
>
It would take them a while to triangulate the signal and link it to Walker. Then they’d spend time trying to raise the guards here. Guards Jack had to deal with, and fast. Adrenalin and the need for violence, never far away, rose again.
“Come on, sweetheart, there’s nothing we can do for him.”
Dropping a kiss on the top of Lillian’s hair, he guided her from the room. She shook, a fine tremor running through her slender frame. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and tell her it would all be okay, but he’d be lying. It wasn’t going to be okay. It was never going to be okay again. She’d seen too much, stepped into his world at the worst possible moment.
And, thanks to Walker, she could never leave.
Chapter Three
“Hiya, beautiful. What can I do for you today?”
The cheerful greeting never changed. Major Antonia Fielding, Toni to her friends if she had any left, let the door swing shut behind her and walked farther into the lion’s den.
The medical center on-site was state of the art. Despite the appearance of the buildings outside, weather-beaten concrete that had definitely seen better days, the inside had been gutted and refitted when the Project had moved in.
Now gleaming steel workbenches filled the labs she’d passed. They contained all manner of equipment for the modern-day Frankensteins that moved between them shrouded in white protective suits. All contained behind the safety glass that kept unauthorized personnel, like her, out. Most of it she had no chance of identifying, even if she wanted to. And the medical bay itself could have doubled as a set for the Starship Enterprise.
Feeling like the little pig heading right into the wolf’s lair, she walked up the middle of the room. Neatly made beds lined the walls, each one framed by its own set of curtains, like a masterpiece on display in the Louvre. Her gaze skittered away from the restraints. That sight, more than anything else, brought home that this wasn’t your average medical center. It wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, because the camp itself was anything but normal.