“We’re safe and in our London location,” he said. “Know that I’m only agreein’ to stay on here because of you. England and I don’t see eye to eye.”
She laughed softly. “I wouldn’t think so. And Jimmy?”
Striker nodded his head. “Is recoverin’ nicely, thanks to you.”
“Duke?” Mercy asked, concern for him seeping into her bones. He should have been near her when she woke. The fact he wasn’t terrified her.
Licking his lips, Striker looked away. “Well, that’s another story.”
She sat up fast and her head spun. She touched her temple, her eyes wide, fear gripping her heart. “He’s dead?”
“Och, no. He’s nae dead. He’s unable to be by yer side.” He glanced to the far end of the room and it was then Mercy noticed a large hole in the wall, towards the floor. “Though, he’s tried to be on more than one occasion.”
“How long have I been here?” she asked, confused.
“Three days.” He swallowed hard. “You’ve had us worried, Doc. Do nae do that again. You hear?”
She nodded slightly. “I hear.”
“Good.”
The door to the room opened and Corbin and Boomer entered. Corbin offered a warm smile when he noticed she was awake. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired, but other than that, very good.” She sat up slowly and Striker helped by putting the pillows behind her back. “Tell me what happened.”
Corbin pursed his lips. “Mercy, you know what we are.”
She nodded. “Jimmy’s friends.”
He smiled warmly. “Yes, but in addition to that, we’re supernaturals. Each of us can shift into animal form.”
She nodded.
Striker groaned. “For the love of me feelin’ my immortal years tickin’ by, just tell her Duke shifted, got all crazed in the head, and is stuck in shifted form until he can calm his hairy arse down.”
Gasping, Mercy tried to get out of the bed. Striker caught her around the waist before she’d have fallen. She looked to the floor, realizing how far down it was. “How high is this bed?”
Striker kept hold of her, his laughter filling the room. “Made for men our size. Nae lil wee slips of thing like you.”
“I want to see Duke.”
“Nae possible right now. He’s, uh, less than pleasant to be around.” He set her on the bed and tapped his bandaged arm. “Took a chunk of me yesterday.”
Boomer pointed to the hole in the wall. “And has broken through the wall in an attempt to get to you. We had to chain him.”
“You had to what?” she asked, her voice barely there. “Why?”
Corbin stepped closer to the foot of her bed. “He’s a danger to you and others while stuck in a state of blood lust. Duke wouldn’t want us allowing him to harm you.”
“But he’d want to be chained?” she demanded.
The men all looked guilty.
“We tried tranqing him. He doesn’t stay down and he doesn’t calm down,” Boomer added. “Trust me, we didn’t want to have to resort to that but we ran out of options.”
“We had to lock him up for the flight here. It wasn’t pretty, Mercy,” Corbin said. He moved closer to her. “We’ve never seen a shifter male get this far out of control. We believe Duke thought you were dead, which prompted him to shift. There is no reasoning with him right now. We believe he needs to see you are alive and well. Seeing you in the hospital bed, out cold, didn’t help any. It made matters worse.”
“Take me to him,” she said sternly.
“Lass, is nae a good idea. You need more rest. The doctor here has nae cleared you to be up and about.”
She shot him a hard look and he backed up. “Take me to Duke.”
“Are you planning to do the arm thing where you throw me backwards again?” he asked.
She lifted a brow. What on earth was he talking about? “Just take me to Duke.”
“I’ll get a wheelchair,” offered Boomer. He stepped out of the room and was back within a few minutes.
Chapter Nineteen
Mercy sat in the wheelchair that Corbin had forced her into, steaming mad. She was perfectly capable of walking on her own two feet. They were simply being stubborn males—exerting their dominance over her. She wanted to box all their ears. Even if they would let her walk, which they wouldn’t, she couldn’t reach their ears with ease. Still, she’d try if given the chance.
More than that, she wanted to see Duke now, not wait for all of them to get around to pushing her as slow as they possibly could down the long corridor.
“What do you think of this one?” asked Corbin, pointing to yet another framed piece of artwork. While she normally had a high appreciation for the arts, she just wanted to get to Duke and she had a funny feeling they were purposely prolonging the experience.
“It’s great.” She knew how she sounded—pissed. Because she was. She tried again to stand and Striker, who was pushing her, simply placed a large hand upon her shoulder, holding her firmly in place. Aggravated, she growled.
He chuckled. “That is adorable, lass. Do it again.”
“I’m going to bite you,” she said, looking back at him. She meant it too. She wasn’t above resorting to schoolyard antics if it got her point across. And she strongly suspected Striker only understood child’s play.
His long auburn hair fell partially into his face as he smiled wide. “I’d enjoy that and you know as much.”
“Grrr.” The man was insufferable. How did his own team members not throttle him? She was the one who put spiders outside rather than harm them and she was strongly considering hurting the man.
Boomer slinked up alongside her, and for the first time since she’d come to she took the time to notice his attire. It was very Goth, yet incredibly sexy on him. He was tall, as were all the men. His long, straight hair was pulled back at the nape of his neck. She was surprised to see he had piercings in his ears, lining all the way up one. What shocked her even more was the fact the studs looked to be silver.
“Miles,” she said softly. He glanced down at her. “I saw the doctors at the Corporation using silver to torture shifters. Don’t your piercings hurt you?”
“They do,” he said with a slight nod. There was a faraway look in his violet eyes. “I like the pain.”
Her heart tightened for him. What past did he have that had him taking comfort in pain? She knew how fast shifter males healed over injuries. She bet that whenever he took them all out, the holes closed over quickly and he had to re-pierce them. From the haunted look in his violet eyes, she suspected he liked that fact.
She reached out and touched his hand, unable to stop herself. He flinched at first as if contact wasn’t something he was fond of, but then seemed to take a calming breath, his hand finding hers. He glanced down at her again and she smiled when she realized he was wearing black eyeliner. He was very different from the other team members she’d met.
“I like you,” he said.
She got the feeling he didn’t like too many people outside his circle of friends. She couldn’t help but feel honored. “I like you too, Miles.”
“How come she gets to call you Miles?” asked Striker, a certain pout to his words.
Boomer glanced at him, still holding Mercy’s hand as they walked at a snail’s pace down the hall. He flashed a teasing grin. “Because she’s prettier than you, Dougal.”
“When we’re done here, I’m goin’ to give you an ass whoopin’ you’ll nae be likely to forget,” Striker warned.
Mercy looked back at him and rolled her eyes. “No. You’re not.”
“No?” he asked, seeming caught off guard. “I believe I am.”
She let her gaze harden, feeling almost mother hen-like around them again. “No. You’ll behave yourself or you’ll have me to deal with.”
He cleared his throat and his attention went to Corbin. “She’s doesnae even come to my chest and I’m afraid of her. Explain this to me.”
“As you should be,”
Corbin warned. “I recall seeing her turn a man into a puddle of goo.”
“I didn’t do that,” she protested, placing a hand against her breastbone.
“He came that way then?” pressed Corbin with a pleasant smile on his handsome face. The harder she looked at him, the more she began to notice the faintest hint of thin, white, barely there scars running from just under his right jaw downwards. They disappeared under his dress shirt. They were spaced as fingers would be—or claws.
Had the lighting in the hall not been just so, she probably wouldn’t have noticed them. They did nothing to detract from his looks. All the men were prime specimens in their own rights. But to her, Duke was the most appealing. And the one she wanted to be with now, not stuck being wheeled down a hall by men who clearly wanted to prolong the inevitable.
“Why don’t you want me seeing Duke?” she blurted, her voice raised as all kinds of horrible reasons why they’d keep her from him circled in her mind.
Corbin motioned for Striker to stop pushing her. He did. Mercy’s impatience grew by leaps and bounds. A sense of dread began to fill her stomach. There was a reason they were behaving this way and she was sure she wouldn’t like what the reason was.
Corbin sighed. “Duke is stuck in wolf state, Mercy. He wouldn’t want you seeing him this way. In a few days he’ll come out of the blood lust haze.”
“We hope,” added Striker, gaining him a dirty look from Corbin. Striker shrugged, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “What? She is a genius. Do you nae think she’s going to figure out the longer Duke stays locked in wolf form the less likely he’ll be able to come out with ease?”
Mercy gasped, her lower lip beginning to tremble. She thought about some of the reports she’d read on what other facilities owned by Donavon Dynamics had done. They’d forced shifters into shifted form for months, even years. Their findings had not been good for the patient or test subjects. “The Corporation needs to be stopped.”
“We know,” Corbin said a certain sadness to his voice. “We’re working on it. Now that you’re up and we’re here, we can have you help decrypt the files you sent us.”
Mercy stared ahead, her emotions on overload. “I based my encryption off coding I found left behind by someone who worked at the Corporation before me. They were good. Very good.”
“Can you crack it?” asked Corbin, worry etching his face.
“Yes.”
“Yer one smart pixie,” said Striker.
“Pixie?” she questioned, not following.
He bent, his hair falling over her shoulder as he leaned in, grinning close to her face. “Do nae deny it. I thought I recognized Fae on you but it was off—different. Now I know where I remember it from. I once dated a pixie. Firecracker in bed.”
She found herself wanting to head butt him and she wondered how many others had the urge while around him. She already knew Duke had a short fuse when it came to Striker. She shook her head and pushed his face from hers.
He laughed. “Deny all you want, pixie.”
Boomer patted her hand. “Turn him into goo. That will teach him.”
“I’m seriously considering it,” she replied, eyeing Striker over her shoulder. “If only I’d been the one to do it to the guard in the first place.”
Boomer moved before her, her hand in his as he bent, going eye level. “Doc, it was you. Your magik raced over me back in France. I’m better at sensing magik than others. It was you. You just don’t want to admit it.”
She thought harder on his words and the anomaly in her DNA. Everything had happened so fast when they’d breeched the facility. All she could vividly remember was that Duke and the others would have been hurt had the guard used the device he’d had. She remembered thinking that above anything else, the guard could not be permitted to activate the weapon—then everything just sort of shut off for her. She thought about the strange tingling that had raced through her body and how she’d felt compelled to lift her hands. When she’d next had a lucid moment it was in Duke’s arms, being told everything was okay.
The realization that they were right, she’d done that to a man, hit her hard. She sank low in the wheelchair’s seat, trying to release Boomer’s hand. He refused to let her. He touched her cheek and she found herself captivated by his face—so exotically beautiful yet totally and completely manly. There was an understanding there. Like he totally got the turmoil she found herself in at the moment.
“Doc, it’s okay to be different.”
Hearing him say it somehow made it better. He was very different and seemed to embrace it. She nearly giggled at the sight of him in a fitted Danzig t-shirt. His black pants were hardly something one would picture a special operative in. They managed to be fitted in all the right places but loose in others, with buckles lining each side from hem to waist.
Also silver, but shaped like bats.
“Bats,” she said, motioning to the buckles.
He winked. “Throws ’em off my scent.”
“Throws who off?” she asked.
He smiled. “Anyone I let kind of close.”
“Those are real silver,” she said.
“Yep.”
The man liked to torture himself.
How sad.
“Thank you for telling me it’s okay and that I’m different but that being different is not a bad thing,” she said.
He surprised her by gifting her the tiniest of kisses on her forehead. He stood and withdrew his hand from hers. From the way Corbin and Striker remained strangely silent, their jaws agape, she wondered if this was some major breakthrough for Boomer.
“Duke might not recognize you,” Boomer said softly. “In this state, he might not understand who you are to him.”
Corbin neared her, a pensive look upon his face. “Stay back until we’re sure if he’s safe for you to be around.”
“He’s nae safe for anyone to be around,” said Striker, giving her shoulders a small squeeze. “Idiot is so goin’ to be Asshole of the Week for months over this one.”
“Agreed,” added Boomer.
“Wasn’t sure anyone could top your attempted mating,” inserted Corbin. “That was classic.”
Boomer blushed.
Striker snorted. “At least you’ll always have the zoo.”
“Eat me,” replied Boomer.
Mercy wasn’t sure what they were talking about. She tapped Striker’s hand. “Can you take me to him now, please?”
“Aye.” He pushed the wheelchair into the cell, lined with cinderblock. It looked like a giant reinforced area made to withstand just about anything. That being said, the room had taken a beating. There, in the back of it, lay a huge black wolf—bigger than any natural wolf she’d ever seen. The thing was massive. Its hackles raised and it sniffed the air. The next Mercy knew it leapt up and lunged at Boomer. Had the wolf not been chained around the neck, it might have taken a chunk out of Boomer as well.
“Duke,” she said, her voice barely there. A year ago she’d have never believed anything in the way of men who could shift into animals existed. Boy, had her outlook on life changed. Had the men not explained they were taking her to see Duke, she might not have believed the wolf was him. Then again, it had Duke’s black eyes.
And, apparently his temper.
The wolf continued to growl at Boomer, baring its teeth. It looked like it wanted nothing more than to take a nice sized chunk out of Boomer.
“Hey, stop. She’s alive and here,” Boomer said, pointing back at Mercy. There was a note of desperation in his voice and she knew then Boomer was worried Duke might not come back from whatever was keeping him in wolf form.
The wolf didn’t seem to comprehend what Boomer was saying. It was then she understood why they’d chained him. It wasn’t to be cruel but rather to protect not only others but Duke as well. The blood lust they’d mentioned left him in a state of confusion. It broke her heart knowing she’d caused it. Corbin had explained why Duke had shifted—he’d seen her broken body an
d probably assumed the worst.
Her chest ached as guilt assailed her. This was her doing. He would have never lost control like this had she only listened to him. Had she just stayed put and let him clear the area Jimmy had been held in. She’d been too focused on getting to Jimmy to think of anything or anyone else and the cost of her actions was before her—chained to a wall. Mercy tried to stand to go to him.
Striker put a hand to her shoulder, keeping her in place with very little pressure. “Lass, he’s nae safe to be around. You’ve seen him. Now, you need yer rest.”
He tried to turn the wheelchair and take her from Duke. Mercy reacted and darted out of the chair with more force than she’d intended. She felt Striker grabbing for her, his fingers slipping as she fell right into Duke. They crashed to the floor and she rolled to his side. She had a half second to wonder if he’d eat her. The thought and worry were fleeting. He nudged her with his muzzle and then licked her cheek, his tongue feeling like sandpaper.
She laughed.
The others tried to come closer. The wolf turned and growled at them as they attempted to close the proximity between them. They lifted their hands.
“Duke,” Corbin said. “We just want Mercy safe.”
Mercy found her hand moving to the top of the wolf’s head. She stroked him like she would a loving dog. He turned, his ears lowering and his muzzle pushing against her. She glanced at Corbin. “He won’t hurt me. I know it with all my being.”
Striker didn’t look convinced.
Boomer on the other hand eased back and lowered his arms. “She’s right. Do you feel it? Duke is letting off mating energy. He knows who she is to him—so does his wolf.”
“And if his wolf tried to mount her?” asked Striker, before blushing and glancing in her direction. “Sorry.”
She shrugged and continued to pet the wolf’s head. “He won’t hurt me. You can go.”
Corbin shook his head. “Mercy.”
She eyed him, her gaze firm. “Go.”
He waved Striker back and Boomer went without incident. Corbin was last out of the room. He left the door open and she suspected they were all standing just outside of it. They worried about her. That was nice. She wondered if that was what family felt like.
Act of Mercy Page 14