by Julie Frost
This week sucked.
She wondered if she’d let too much slip, with all that “responsibility” talk she couldn’t stop herself from spouting. Fortunately, the pack dynamic had gone right over Alex’s head, and he’d instead blamed himself. Maddening as he was about being accountable for his own safety, he was serious when it came to his employees—which was one reason that people, including herself, were fanatically loyal to him.
She’d caught him in the living room the previous day, while Ben and Chambliss had gone to get Janni, talking personally and earnestly to Phelps’s widow—telling her if she needed anything at all to call his private line and he’d arrange it, and Megan had slipped away before he saw her. Ben’s abduction on top of Phelps’s death couldn’t be good for his state of mind.
Megan still somehow thought this was her fault. Her wolf didn’t contradict her. And now she had to worry about Alex, too.
She hated to admit it, but she honestly thought that if Janni and Alex brought anything back … it would be a body.
Chapter Twelve
Ben’s eyes blinked open.
Breathe.
Or … not.
Shit, he was dead. Apparently other people thought so too, because a blanket rested over his face and he wasn’t strapped to the table anymore.
His brow creased. If he was dead, he shouldn’t be feeling, well … anything. Right? And the blanket was soft and the table was cold and he was incredibly hungry and he had really sharp fangs—
Um. What?
He ran his tongue over his teeth. Fangs, upper and lower. He tried to get rid of them, told the wolf to go away and lie down, but it just panted at him in an amused fashion and sat there with its tail wrapped around its feet.
He cast backwards into his memory.
Vampire. Blood. Tubes and machines and McFoucher’s expression, which hadn’t been sad, exactly, but she hadn’t looked too happy either. And he recalled thinking that vampire blood in his own veins probably wasn’t the best idea ever.
Right before he died.
Except—he ran his tongue across his teeth again—he wasn’t dead, per se. And he’d grown a set of fangs, which had implications he wasn’t entirely comfortable with, but he was apparently going to have to deal. Because life wasn’t tired of flinging curveballs at his head yet.
Okay, so, vampire fangs. Fine. He hadn’t noticed Idna having them, so there was a way of making them disappear somehow. Frowning with concentration, he flexed something in his mouth and twitched when they snicked back to lie flush against his gums, inside grooves apparently made for them. Another flex, and they snapped forward. Awesome.
He was taking this a lot more calmly, he thought, than he ought to be. Where was the panic that always bubbled under the surface, waiting for the most inopportune moments to erupt?
It had been replaced by an uncanny quietude. For the first time in … forever, he was on an even keel. And that was almost as disturbing as waking up from the dead with quadruple fangs, along with a severe hunger that he intuitively knew wouldn’t be satisfied by anything less than hot human blood flowing down his throat in deep gulps fresh from a vein or, preferably, an artery.
Okay, that was just wrong. He closed his eyes for a minute and gripped the sides of the table, and his autonomic nervous system decided that breathing could commence again, even if he didn’t actually have to do so to keep from passing out.
And that made him aware of certain scents. The big bald tattooed werewolf—Nick, that was his name—was still in the room, along with a couple of other people, who were plain old everyday humans. McFoucher was gone, as were Ostheim and his wife.
Before waking up as a vampire, Ben would have hesitated. His wolf was smaller and not nearly as strong as a wolf created by whatever passed for “normal” among lycanthropes.
Now? He flexed his hands and bared his teeth. The steel of the table bent under his fingers. Nick had hit Janni.
And Ben was starving.
O O O
Alex pulled his ‘68 Mustang Fastback into the parking lot just as two other cars were heading out. Peeling out, more like, with squealing tires, revving engines, and panicked expressions on the drivers’ faces. He lifted a brow at Janni and parked, noting that only one other vehicle was left there. “This might be easier than we thought,” he said.
“Either that or it’ll be real bad news” was her gloomy rejoinder.
Leaving the car door unlocked in case they needed to make a quick escape, he pushed the door to the building open and looked around before motioning her inside behind him.
Janni shoved past him and poked a finger at his chest. “Look, Alex, I know you’re the man and all,” she whispered furiously, “but I’m the one with experience here. So I take point, got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, ducking his head. That was what he got for letting his instincts get the better of his common sense—even if she was ten inches shorter than he was.
They didn’t find anything in a thorough search of the ground floor, so they climbed the fire stairs to the next level. A deep growling sounded faintly down a corridor to their left, and they headed that way by mutual agreement. Janni stopped outside the doorway the noise came from and peeked in through the window, before spinning away and crashing back against the wall with a gasp. “Whoa.”
“What?” Alex’s eyes felt as big as dinner plates.
“Okay, I’ve seen my fair share of blood in this line of work.” She closed her eyes. “But I’ve never seen something where there should be a whole lot of blood but there isn’t any.”
“I—huh?”
“There’s body parts in there, Alex,” she hissed. “And they look torn off and fresh. But no damn blood.”
The growling hadn’t stopped, and it was accompanied by chomping and slurping. Alex steeled himself and had a look. His eyes slammed shut after two horrified seconds. A body lay on the floor, missing its throat, both arms at the shoulder, and one leg at the knee. One of the arms had been flung atop a lab table, pale and bloodless, covered with tattoos.
“At least that body isn’t Ben?” he managed, fighting to keep his stomach contents where they belonged.
“There’s that.” She sneaked another peek, cringing. “Oh. There’s a wolf.”
“Makes sense.” Alex frowned and squinted at the tableau. “Wait, the wolf’s Ben.”
“No way, Ben wouldn’t—” Janni stopped. “How do you figure?”
“The scars on his back made his fur grow in white streaks. Very distinctive, I noticed it when he wolfed the first time.”
She grabbed his arm. “But he’s eating that guy! What the hell did they do to him?”
Alex wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. The wolf’s head lifted, and he saw them through the glass. His ears flattened, and he backed out of sight behind a table. About a minute later, Ben stood up, human, bare-chested, wearing the jeans he’d disappeared in, and gave them a tight-lipped smile with half his mouth. Alex frowned at the bruises ringing his wrists, biceps, chest, and waist, and swallowed hard when he noticed the burn mark around Ben’s throat.
Ben pushed the door open. “Hey—oof.”
Because Janni had tackle-hugged him after stuffing her gun back into her jeans pocket. She buried her face in his chest and let out a sob. “I thought you were dead. What were you doing in there?”
“Taking care of some unfinished business. That guy hit you.” Ben wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her riot of curly hair, closing his eyes. “He won’t do it again.”
Alex repressed a shudder and swallowed some bile, remembering Ben’s threat that they wouldn’t find all the guy’s parts. “No, I guess he won’t.”
Ben was a whole lot calmer than Alex had expected him to be, and he wondered if their pet hacker was in shock. Alex himself would have been curled up in a corner with his arms over his head, and the fact that Ben wasn’t even breathing hard was … disquieting.
“Can we go?” Ben asked. “I’m sick
of this place.”
“Yeah, sure.” Alex headed down the hall and noticed that Ben and Janni didn’t let go of each other as they followed. “You can tell us all about it on the way home.”
Ben made a noncommittal noise, and Alex remembered how he didn’t like to talk about things like this. They clattered down the stairs and out the door into the bright sunshine, and then Ben retreated abruptly back inside, skin smoking, hissing in pain, swearing inventively and at great length.
Janni stared in horror. “What—what did they do to you, Ben?”
Alex just squeezed his eyes shut and put his face in his hand as he added two and two. Bloodless corpse plus sun allergy meant— “Vampire.” His voice was muffled, and he’d never wanted to kill anyone as much as he wanted to kill Ostheim at this moment. “Shit. Did they do it on purpose?”
Ben rubbed his arms, which were already healing from the sun damage. “I don’t think so. It didn’t work the same way on the rabbits. I think I was supposed to die.” He smiled, only it wasn’t a smile, exactly, baring his teeth for the first time and showing, yes, fangs, top and bottom. Terrific. “Can’t say I’m sorry I disappointed them.”
Janni inhaled and stepped out into the sun. “Vampire? Ben?” Her eyes were wide. “Will you go all grr and try to eat us? Because the vampire bunnies are vicious, and what you did to that guy …” She tightened her lips. “Do you still have your soul?”
“Been watching Buffy reruns again?” Now Ben just looked tired. “It’s not like that, okay? I haven’t lost my moral compass; I ate that dude because he was one of the bad guys and he hit you. And, not to put too fine a point on things, they took three pints of my blood before they decided that using me as a live dialysis machine for a vampire would be an excellent idea, so I was strung out and damned hungry when I woke up from being dead. I can’t heal without food.”
He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Also, I’m not on the verge of a panic attack for the first time in, like, ever, and I’d like to stop and smell the roses before you break out the stakes and garlic. If that’s all right.”
“Janni.” Alex put his hand up, trying to salvage something out of this catastrophe. “He’s not going to eat us. I’ve met Idna at parties, okay? She’s perfectly civilized and doesn’t go around eating people just to eat them. I’m sure Ben has enough self-control to do the same.”
“Thank you,” Ben said, holding his hand out to Janni. “Honey, please …”
Janni took another step back. “I’m sorry. I just— I need some time to process this, Ben. Okay?”
He slid down the building until he was sitting and covered his face with the hand Janni had rejected. “I don’t blame you. This is crazy. Crazier.”
Janni walked over to the Mustang without another word, her posture stiff. She climbed into the passenger seat while Ben watched from between his fingers, his mouth pulled down at the corners.
Alex knelt beside him. “I’m sorry, man.”
“What a clusterfuck. I won’t blame her if she leaves. PTSD is one kettle of fish. A vamp-wolf-thing who can’t even go out in the sun is a whole other level of awful.”
“True.” Alex felt terrible. The weight of responsibility for this whole disaster weighed his shoulders. “Meanwhile, there’s the matter of getting you home without setting you on fire.” He pondered. “The panel truck is our best bet, I guess. Let me call Megan.”
“The panel truck with the rabbits in it?” Ben shook his head. “Even if it’s empty, just, no. Smells …”
“Hrmph.” Alex flipped through his mental catalogue of the many vehicles he owned. “I’ve got a little utility van with no windows except the ones in front. That work?”
“Better.” Ben put his hand on Alex’s arm. It was cold. “Alex? Thanks for not giving up.”
“Well, you know. None of us did.” He squeezed Ben’s shoulder. “I’ll call Megan and get it out here.”
O O O
Megan drove up in a little white utility van, and Ben wondered how many traffic laws she’d broken getting there so quickly.
With a slight frown, she took in the fact that Janni sat by herself in the Mustang. “What happened?”
Ben decided not to beat around the bush. “They accidentally vamped me. Janni’s not taking it super well.”
Megan opened her mouth, closed it, and then just sighed. “So that’s why you need the utility van. Sun allergy?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“All right. Hop in. Alex, we’ll meet you and Janni back at the house.”
Alex’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead. “Wait, what? I’ll drive Ben, you drive Janni.”
“I never learned how to drive a car with a stick shift, Alex. I can take Ben, it’s fine.” Megan crossed her arms and gave Alex a why-are-you-being-such-an-idiot look. Ben had been the victim of looks like that from Janni, and he cringed inwardly.
“What? That’s something everyone should know. We’ll have to teach you,” Alex said. “Not today, clearly, but soon.” And then he visibly switched gears back to the topic at hand. “But, Megan, he killed and ate a guy that had six inches and seventy pounds on him.”
“Then he’ll be full. Go, Alex.”
Ben squatted on his heels at the side opening of the van. His vision had gone sharper, and he wondered if his eyes had turned amber. Not angry, but … determined. “I wouldn’t hurt Megan, Alex. Or any of you. Under any circumstances.”
“Why not? Also, the eye color isn’t helping your case.”
Whoops. “Sorry.” Ben closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them his vision was back to what passed for normal these days. “You’re pack. And pack looks out for each other. Simple as that. Also, Megan’s alpha around here, and I’d never try to challenge that in a million years.”
“Megan’s alpha?” Alex looked offended. “What about me?”
Ben scoffed. “She runs your life, man. You couldn’t function without her telling you when to actually eat.”
“I sign her paychecks!”
“A machine signs my paychecks,” Megan pointed out.
“Well … I signed the machine that signs your paychecks.”
“You just go on thinking that,” Ben said as Megan climbed behind the wheel of the van and started it up. “See? Alpha.”
Defeated, Alex mumbled something incoherent and stomped over to his Mustang.
Ben pulled the side door shut with a certain amount of finality. He settled cross-legged on the floor, leaning his head back against the side. “Janni’s afraid of me,” he said with a weary sigh.
“It’s a lot for her to take in.” Megan pulled them out into the street.
“Hell, I don’t blame her. I’m half-afraid of myself.” Ben shivered a little, even though he wasn’t cold. “I didn’t even hesitate. Nick had hit Janni, I was hungry, and it was the most logical thing in the world to just …” He shook his head. “I don’t want to be That Guy, Megan, the guy who hurts people just because they make him mad. You know? But there’s a beast in here, and I’m not sure I can control it all the time.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You learn to. Mostly. But the last few days have been tough on all of us.”
He remembered her kicking over the sniper in the kitchen and gave her a wry look. “Has it really been less than a week?” He stretched one leg out in front of him and rested his elbow on the other bent knee. No wonder he was exhausted. “Private detective work was supposed to be boring.”
“Life around Alex Jarrett is never boring.” Megan snorted.
“In spades. Is he always this intense?”
“He hardly ever stops.” Megan pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Except when he drives himself into the ground and collapses. He’s like a dog with a bone when he’s got something on his mind, and he plays as hard as he works. He went cliff-diving in Acapulco a few weeks ago. Drunk.”
Ben huffed out a laugh, because that sounded like Alex. “And yet he worries about you.”<
br />
“Not as much as I worry about him. I’m not the risk-taker with the impulse control of a gerbil on crack and the substance abuse problem.”
Ben lifted an eyebrow. “Considering you’re trapped in an enclosed space with a werewolf-slash-vampire doing sixty-five on the freeway, he might dispute that you’re not a risk-taker.”
“Alpha wolf here, and don’t you forget it.” She pointed back at him.
Ben’s mouth twisted sideways. “Well, he doesn’t know that.”
“Run with me tonight,” she said.
Ben was startled. He hadn’t even gotten that far yet, but the moon was pulling on him pretty hard. His bones itched with it, which was a new and not entirely unpleasant sensation. He tilted his head. “Yeah?”
“I never have company.” She shrugged. “I’d like some.”
“Sure,” he said slowly. “I think I’d like it, too. Sounds like a good stress reliever, if nothing else.” He sighed, again. “What am I going to do about Janni? I was going to ask her to marry me. This week. Bought a ring and everything.” He dropped his face into his hand. “I hate my life. Un-life. Whatever.”
“Hey, now, none of that. She’s just a little thrown right now. She’ll come around.”
“Wish I could be sure of that,” he said. He wasn’t sure of anything right now. Janni was a trooper, but this— “She missed her audition, didn’t she?”
“I don’t know if she’s even realized it yet. She hasn’t said anything.”
“‘Come work for my mom the private detective, Ben. Desk job. Perfectly safe.’ Wonder if she thinks that now?” He shook his head. “What’s our body count up to on this case?”
“Including you?” Megan asked.
One side of his mouth turned up. “Eh, I’m okay. Which statement, for once, isn’t as relative as usual.”
“Vampire who hates his life?”
“Walking and talking and not panicking, strong as an ox and still mostly me. Win.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Now if I could just convince Janni of that …”
