Nightshatter

by L. E. Horn

  So much for Doc Hayek’s reassurances that we could fight the virus on our own. For me, the only question remaining was how long I had until it tore my mind to shreds. Our theories indicated that Dillon had been infected for as much as five months, or as little as two. I wished the discrepancy didn’t matter, but it had dire consequences for me.

  Lethal within days. So Dillon wouldn’t have survived long off the antiviral. And although Chloe was wulfan, she hadn’t lost her memory like Peter and Josh. It all added up to one thing—Chloe and Dillon must have been taking the antiviral. “Dillon’s stuff . . .”

  “Chris is on it, sifting through Peter’s place with a fine-toothed comb. If the antiviral’s there, we’ll find it, although it’s possible the organization arranged to give them the shots away from the farm.” She hesitated. “If—whoever this is—stole the antiviral along with the virus—”

  “They might have a version that isn’t fully effective: the one Dillon and Chloe took.”

  “Which is why Dillon went crazy.”

  “And took Chloe with him.” My stomach twisted and I put aside my plate. “So there’s no cure?”

  Sam’s brows drew down and her lips tightened. “Not for wulfleng, not yet anyway. But infected wulfan are different. The good news is that Dr. Grone believes the newest version of the antiviral vaccine may help Peter and Josh. Being wulfan, they possessed immunity to the wulfan side of the virus, it’s the rabies component that’s affecting them. He’s started them on a series of vaccinations that might help, possibly even return them to normal. But because the virus can only be managed, not killed, they’ll need regular shots, likely for the rest of their lives.”

  The iron band around my heart loosened ever so slightly. Peter and Josh might be okay. Thank God. I sucked on my teeth. “So how long does he figure I’ve got?”

  Sam folded her hand into mine where it rested on my leg. The contact sent electric tingles up my arm to my body and almost drowned out her words. “You’re still resisting the effects of the virus, and it confused Grone until I told him you’ve received regular anti-rabies shots.”

  Distracted as I was, it took my mind a moment to catch on to what she suggested. “He thinks the rabies shots are stopping the virus?”

  “No.” Her teeth appeared to fasten on her lip. “Not stopping it. But dampening its effects, at least for now. Dr. Grone says you would already be dead, if it weren’t for your rabies vaccinations.”

  She met my eyes and swallowed. “What you did to that wulfleng and how you lifted the vehicle off Garrett—I’ve seen you tackle a three-thousand-pound bull. You can do things you shouldn’t be able to do, and Garrett believes you are what these people are trying to achieve: a soldier who can call on the best elements of human and wulf to succeed.” Her eyes, turning silver in the lamplight, studied my face. “Chris agrees and so does Doc Hayek. They’re afraid that if you infiltrate the camp of whoever is creating the mutants, your new talents may be discovered.”

  I looked away. “Did Garrett tell Jason about my partials?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can we trust Jason? Or will he go straight to the board?”

  “Jason is a rules guy, but I can tell he’s shook up about the possibility of a compromised board. I don’t think he’s telling the board much right now. Chris told Hayek in case you ever need his help. Chris is worried.”

  If I knew Chris, the enforcer had to be on a razor’s edge. He was an action guy, and he couldn’t do a damned thing to help either Josh or me. “How close is the lab to perfecting their antiviral?”

  “They’re close, but not close enough. They said another six months.” Her voice broke.

  Six months was too long.

  Sam cleared her throat and continued. “The antiviral is based on the shot you get when exposed to rabies but modified for the mutant virus. Dr. Grone doesn’t understand why the routine vaccination program seems to work in your case, but he says it might not for much longer.”

  I nodded. “So our best bet for a cure is to find whoever is behind this. They may be further along with the antiviral.”

  She tried to smile, but it only resulted in a quiver of her lips. “Grone is working double time on it, now they’re aware the virus is loose.” She squeezed my hand. “Chris doesn’t believe your success is just due to the rabies vaccine.” Her eyes traced the contours of my face. “Your ability to visualize the changes and your mental strength are also important. You don’t panic and keep trying until something works. I agree with him, Liam. You are special.” She reached out to run trembling fingers along my unshaven cheek, rasping her fingernails through the coarse hair.

  I closed my eyes and leaned into her hand, and didn’t snap out of it until warm, soft lips touched my own.

  “Sam! No.” I pulled back, but she tangled fingers in my hair and wouldn’t let go. She eased the other hand up under the towel, dancing claws along my thigh.

  I thought my heart would leap right out of my chest and the wulf shredded me from the inside out, clawing to be free. Frantic, I pulled her hand away, leaving marks on my skin. “No,” I repeated.

  “Yes,” she said with a snarl, and the wulf shimmered in her eyes. “Liam, this is what I want. If I take shots for the rest of my days, so be it. We belong together.”

  I shoved my wulf back with vicious brutality and wrenched myself loose from her, leaving a tuft of my hair in her fist. She rose with me, stepping into my space, silver eyes blazing, and lips pulled away from teeth grown long and sharp. In a lightning move, she grabbed my hand to pull it up beneath her shirt. “If you can look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want me, I’ll leave.”

  I willed my fingers away from the warmth of her skin, but they wouldn’t obey. My body ached all over, locked in a battle between human and wulf.

  “Tell me to go.”

  I looked into her eyes and her anger faded.

  “I want this,” she said, her voice so quiet I barely heard her. “You’re so new, you can’t understand. Soul mates and Fate are intertwined. We can’t escape this. To try will leave a gaping hole that can never be filled.”

  Wulfan mate for life. I’d be damned if I would condemn Sam to live alone as a broken half of a mated pair.

  I felt something eating me up from the inside with every second I didn’t take her in my arms and make her mine. Something warm dripped over my lips and down my chin. My gums bled as the fangs erupted.

  Sam still held my hand beneath her shirt, but she reached her other one up to my face, toward the blood. Blood infected with a virus capable of altering her life forever.

  No.

  I ripped away from her, but as I retreated, she reached into her pocket. I moved to turn away, but she came at me, grabbing my arm, arcing around to plunge something into my neck.

  A needle. Shocked, I felt cold liquid surge into me.

  Love. Pain. Anger. Betrayal. They all crashed through me, even as the wulf broke free. I sensed the change begin to take me, but I couldn’t let him loose. Not like this, not without my control. With the blackness closing in on the edges of my vision, I forced him back.

  My last awareness was of Sam’s face, hovering over mine.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  10

  I tasted Sam.

  That couldn’t be right. Tasted her?

  I opened my eyes and—what the hell? I was staring out a windshield, at the painted lines on the highway racing toward me and disappearing in a never-ending sequence. My hands gripped a steering wheel. Am I dreaming? I tried to turn my head, but it was stuck somehow. I was stuck, looking straight ahead, and my face was wet.

  Why am I crying? Has something happened to Sam? To Peter? I tried to wrench my eyes away from the road, to glance around the cabin, but I couldn’t stop staring ahead—from a lower point of view than usual, almost as though I was hunched down in the seat. The hands on the steering wheel adjusted to keep the wheels on the road. The truck passed by a minor intersection, and the overhead
light reflected off the hands. They weren’t mine. Too small. A clean white bandage wrapped around the left forearm.

  What the . . . ?

  Gathering myself, I tried again to move, to blink, to do anything. And suddenly, I was no longer alone in my head. A rush of warmth nearly overwhelmed me.

  Sam.

  I’m in Sam’s body.

  There came a sensation of falling, and I flailed upright, panting in panic, claws emerging to tear at the cloth covering me. I was naked, in the bed in the hotel room. And although Sam’s presence, her scent—and God, her taste—surrounded me, she wasn’t there.

  I touched my face and rubbed at my mouth. My hand came away bloody. And smelling of Sam. The coppery, metallic flavor tainted my tongue. Why is Sam’s blood in my mouth?

  I remembered her coming at me, and the pain as she stabbed a needle in my neck. The wulf had risen snapping from within, and I experienced a moment of pure panic. Did I hurt her? I looked around, frantic, but there was no sign of me ripping into her. The room was quiet, nothing upturned, no blood on the pristine white carpet.

  I discovered the bandage wrapping my left forearm when I pushed back the covers. I tore it away to reveal a deep, two-inch cut. It had stopped bleeding, but when I sniffed at it, I smelled Sam. She had rubbed against the cut—no, my memory supplied—she had placed her lips to it and drank from me. I remembered soft lips and a lapping tongue, eliciting a wave of pure heat that rushed through me from head to toes.

  My arm, her arm. The bandage had also been in my dream. Had it been a dream? Horrified, I staggered from the bed to the bathroom and found bloody towels soaking in the sink. They removed any doubt. Sam fed from me and gave me her own blood in return. I stared at my reflection in the mirror, my eyes wide, remembering Garrett’s words about the physiological link between mates when they exchanged bodily fluids.

  Oh God, Sam. What’ve you done?

  I was swept back to the truck, and I sensed her satisfaction as the connection formed, faint and wavering, but there. Warmth and reassurance reached for and enveloped me—that and an emotion that swamped my senses, leaving me trembling. Me, a man of science, found myself in the body of the woman I loved, sensing the world through her. Impossible. Yet here I was. An aftereffect of the drug? What the hell did she give me?

  An indelicate snort followed by a burst of humor. No, this was real. She pushed at me—so solidly it seemed a physical thing. And then I got it. We were connected. If I saw through her eyes, she could see through mine. Sam had given me a means to connect to the enforcers—through a bond that should have been impossible.

  A bond that only existed between mates.

  I sensed her relief. She hadn’t been sure it would work, because I wasn’t wulfan and not all mating bonds connected in this way. My heart pounded, knowing that she would take this kind of risk on a hope, and the fear immediately twisted to anger. That she would take that risk, when she knew I didn’t want her to.

  Chagrin, but I sensed her determination—she might be sorry to upset me, but not that she’d done this. While my rage boiled, her concern took a different tack—she wasn’t certain as to the strength of the connection. Our bond was too new and likely to be erratic. A surge of annoyance—if only I weren’t so damned stubborn. She had done all she could, considering my reluctance.

  I recognized it was a gift that might save my life, but my rage grew, and she met it head on with anger of her own. I was being stubborn. This was a fated thing, and I needed every advantage to get through the next few weeks alive.

  I didn’t know if I heard all that from her or if my imagination supplied it, but my anger spilled over. It took me a moment to realize my wulf didn’t come with it. The mirror revealed my human eyes, no trace of the wulf. He was there, deep down, but curled up in a bizarre kind of contentment.

  It was the final betrayal. Sam’s actions might save me, but at what cost? My Sam was brave, but she was now really mine, just as I belonged to her. If what Garrett had said was true, her actions had linked us forever. If something happened to me, she might not survive. She also might not survive the virus she had consumed along with my blood.

  Sam tried to drown me in a flood of reassurance. She understood the risks and accepted them. She’d planned this to ensure I would do everything in my power to return.

  Clever girl. I couldn’t risk myself without risking her. I trembled with suppressed rage as I pulled back from the link and returned to staring at myself in the mirror. My human eyes appeared hectic and unfocused, and my head ached.

  One final tide of emotion—humor. I might have been another, more pleasant type of tired, if only I’d submitted to her plan A.

  I cut her off, brutally pushing her out of my head. She went, but only because she yielded. She’d pulled a true Sam, pursuing her objective with single-minded focus regardless of my feelings in the matter.

  And what would you have done in her place? The voice in my head possessed growly wulf overtones, and I gritted my teeth against it, turning on the cold water and scrubbing it vigorously over my face. My pile of clothes sat stinking in the corner, a reminder of the task that lay ahead. I admitted the mental link might mean the difference between success and failure of this mission, but that did little to quiet my anger. After repeated dunking, I admitted that the emotion was, in part, because submission didn’t come naturally to me. It was a characteristic I hadn’t recognized until this moment.

  A characteristic that Sam shared.

  In that instant, Sam returned with a swift mental stroke, like the lick of a warm tongue from toes to hairline. It awakened every sense and left my pulse pounding through my body. Then her presence vanished like smoke, and I was alone.

  Only I would never be truly alone again, and the thought shook me to my foundations. For I recognized the dual nature of such a gift, and that it could be both a godsend and a curse.

  * * *

  I shoveled the leftovers into me, knowing they might need to last for a while. Then I showered the scent of wulf from my skin, scrubbed the towels and hung them to dry, and contemplated my filthy clothes. Putting them on again proved difficult. Once re-adorned with their stink, I left the key card on the table and descended the stairs to the rear exit. No sense in offending the night shift any further. The shredded sheets would give the staff enough to talk about.

  Even under the cover of early morning darkness, the area surrounding the hotel made me stand out, so I hugged the waterfront, intending to come around in an arc to Alexander Avenue. I hadn’t gone far when I sensed him.

  There was no mistaking that energy or its sudden focus on me. No chance to slip away. He stood clearly visible beneath the streetlights. I stepped into the deepest shadows of the trees and waited.

  “Liam,” Jason said, joining me.

  “You followed the truck?”

  He shrugged. “Trackers aren’t just for the living.”

  “You knew she’d come to me.”

  “Of course. You two are linked.” He frowned, as though the thought disturbed him. We were lucky the head enforcer hadn’t figured on Sam hauling my filthy self into a fancy hotel or we would’ve been trapped in the room with enforcers bouncing all over us. Of course, that might have stopped Sam from linking her fate to my own . . .

  Jason eyed me. “You look different. No wonder we haven’t been able to find you.”

  Although my gaze remained on the head enforcer, I stretched my senses to their limits. I didn’t detect any others around, but enforcers were accomplished hunters, and few carried an energy signature as powerful as Jason’s. Hidden in the ornamental shrubbery, I likely wouldn’t see them until they pounced.

  Jason’s powers of observation were keen, and he noticed my distraction. “I’m alone.”

  I regarded him with surprise. By now, he’d been told what I’d done to the mutant.

  “You’ve got balls,” I said.

  “Yep,” he acknowledged. “Officially, I’m to bring you in since the board is keen on lo
cking you up. Unofficially, you’re our best hope of nailing these bastards.” He sighed. “Are you making any headway?”

  I didn’t really trust Jason. If Noah got wind the enforcers were onto him, he’d vanish and take any chance of me infiltrating the network with him.

  “I am,” I hedged. “But if anyone sees us having a chat, I’m sunk.”

  Jason shrugged. “We’ve been questioning homeless people for the last few weeks. I won’t blow your cover.”

  “Can’t help it, either.”

  His brows drew even lower. “I can back you up in this. You don’t have to go it alone, Liam.”

  “Honestly?” I said, and he tilted his head at me. “You’re an enforcer to the core. You can’t do what I’m doing because these people will spot you a mile away. The best thing you can do is let me go. When I find them, I’ll call you and you can come in with all guns blazing.”

  The muscles in his jaw clenched. If I’d been having this conversation with Chris, I doubted he’d listen. His instincts to protect, to lead the charge, were too strong. But Jason didn’t make it to the top of the enforcer ranks by letting his passion rule.

  He seemed to reach a decision. “I didn’t tell the board about your plan. Or about the partials.”

  My eyebrows climbed. “Why not?”

  Jason shifted his stance and sucked in his cheeks before answering. “Between what is happening in Texas, and the virus’s origins in Winnipeg, I agree the board is compromised.”

  Wow. For a guy like Jason, that must have been a helluva pill to swallow. “So does anyone other than our immediate circle know I’m going in?”

  “No.” He grimaced. “But I trust my enforcers with my life. We can back you on this. The board only knows you’re AWOL. We’re supposed to be looking for you, but at the moment, that’s my only directive. Whatever you need, we can help.”

  “I don’t need an enforcer, but you need a chameleon. And that’s me.”

  I saw the brain at work, dissecting my words and revealing the truth. “I can’t say I like this, but I lack any better ideas. And I can’t plant you with another tracker without risking the board getting wind of it and using it to find you.”