Pack Dynamics

by Julie Frost

  That didn’t mean that they didn’t have their own politics and rivalries, however, and Megan didn’t miss the air of possessiveness Idna had over Ben, which was unmistakable even as a wolf. Well, no way would Megan put up with that, because Ben was her pack and these interlopers weren’t going to take him from her. She put herself between him and them and growled, her own intent clear.

  Ostheim, not standing on ceremony, leaped in for an attack, which was a breach of ethics and etiquette that shouldn’t have surprised her under the circumstances. He’d been doing that pretty much all along, hadn’t he? She parried his teeth with her own and raked his chest with her claws, while Idna jumped on Ben. Ben let out a surprised yelp and gave way, and Megan only hoped that he’d figure out in time that he needed to defend himself from her better than that.

  She had her own paws full, as Ostheim relentlessly snapped at her throat. She realized that this wasn’t some indiscriminate assault; they’d come here seeking Ben and wouldn’t be happy until he was dead for good. Vampire social theory meant that Idna’s sense of responsibility for Ben was even more inflated than Megan’s, and Idna meant to kill him before he became more of a liability than he already was. Vampires had a strict hierarchy that was breached only with gravest peril, and they didn’t create offspring without careful forethought. Ben, clearly, was a loose end they weren’t willing to leave lying around.

  They weren’t that far from Alex’s mansion—if she could just fight a rear-guard action for long enough, it might give Ben time to make it there just before daylight and duck indoors before the sun came up. Hans and Idna had to know that keeping Idna out past sunrise would be bad for her complexion, so hopefully they’d retreat before then.

  But Ostheim was bigger than Megan and Idna was older and stronger than Ben, even notwithstanding her recent illness and the fact that Ben was larger than she was by a good few inches and forty pounds. Not only that, but Ben still seemed unwilling to hurt her, whether because she was female or because she was his parent in the vampiric sense, Megan didn’t know. She growled at him, letting him know that his misplaced sense of chivalry was going to get him killed, maybe along with her.

  He seemed to understand where she wanted him to go, anyway. He was backing them towards Alex’s house without making it seem as though he was heading any place in particular. She noted this with approval, just before Ostheim’s teeth met in her shoulder and he wrenched her to the ground. She yelped involuntarily—

  And Ben hit Ostheim like a ton of bricks dropped off a twenty-story building.

  He was small, but he was fast, everywhere and nowhere at once. Ostheim turned, expecting an attack on his flank, but Ben was at his opposite shoulder, then his head, then his balls, overflowing with rage from the last few days and at long last faced with someone suitable to vent it on. Megan didn’t take any time to admire the efficacy of his attack, but drove in on Idna instead, and now the battle was truly joined.

  Snap and snarl and fang and claw, all of them were cut and bleeding from everywhere, but the tide had turned and put Hans and Idna on the defensive. At last, with the sun less than half an hour away, the Ostheims melted off into the scrub, no doubt going home to lick their wounds and ponder a better strategy.

  Ben nosed Megan and whimpered a question. She swiped her tongue across the slash on his face and shoved him toward Alex’s house, growling a little but waving her tail to take the sting out. She wouldn’t have him survive this only to have the sun blast him into a puddle of ash and bones when it came up. He went, reluctantly, looking back at her several times. She watched him until he got to the back door, then turned away and trotted off to her car, curling up beside the front tire to wait for dawn.

  O O O

  Ben scratched on the basement door, whining through the clothes he held in his jaws. Janni would be upset, he thought, but he could only imagine what would have happened had the Ostheims found him here at the house instead of in the Santa Monica Mountains with Megan.

  When Alex opened the door, Ben limped in and dropped the clothes. He collapsed onto his stomach, panting and bleeding.

  Alex swore, startled at his condition. “What the hell happened?” he asked.

  Ben just flicked an ear at him, like he could explain anything before the sun rose and he reverted back to human. All he really wanted to do was drink some nice warm blood and then sleep for several hours, but he had the feeling he wouldn’t be afforded that luxury. He was so tired that even the rabbits weren’t tweaking his senses all that much.

  He’d gotten there just in time; the moon released its grip, and he found himself lying naked and human on the floor. Still panting and bleeding. “Ben?” Alex said.

  “I’ll live,” he gasped. He reached out and grabbed his clothes. “In a manner of speaking.” Stiff and sore, he took longer than he liked before his modesty was satisfied, and he rolled onto his back with his arm over his eyes. “Would have been worse if they’d found me here, though.”

  “They who? You look like you went fifteen rounds with a chainsaw.”

  “Close enough. Ostheim and his lovely wife decided to hunt me down and pay me a visit.” He was a little proud of himself for remembering that he needed to keep Megan’s secret. “Apparently they don’t think they’ve hurt me enough yet.”

  Alex swore again. “Vampire politics. Dammit.” Ben could hear him moving around, doing something, but couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes and see what.

  “Is this something I’m going to be stuck with until Ostheim is dealt with once and for all?” Utter exhaustion weighed Ben’s limbs. “Because I’m not hanging around here if it is, putting you all in danger.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Alex knelt beside him and pushed a glass into his hand. “Drink up. Look, Ben, my company got you into this, and I’ll get you out. Okay?”

  Alex had been nice enough to put a straw in the glass, so Ben didn’t even have to sit up that much to drink the warm blood. Everyone had adjusted remarkably well to his new diet. Including him. Ben wondered if life with Alex Jarrett was always this exciting and decided it probably was and that people were just used to molding themselves to new circumstances around him.

  He was tired. He didn’t even want to move, and dropped his head back to the floor. But if he passed out here, he’d be in everyone’s way, not to mention the fact that Janni would probably come unglued if she saw him cut to pieces like this. He was kind of surprised she wasn’t waiting for him in the basement, and he asked Alex about it.

  “I shooed her upstairs a long time ago. She was fretting pretty hard, though.”

  “She would.” Ben moaned and maneuvered his arms under himself. “Guess I should go up and let her know I’m back …”

  “Not yet, you shouldn’t.” Alex shook his head. “Shower down here first. Seriously, man, you look like crap.”

  “I feel like crap. If I have to dodge those two for two more nights—” He stopped, because it didn’t bear thinking about. Not only that, but he’d been bitten by a “real” werewolf. How that would affect him on top of everything else, he had no idea, and he had the feeling that no one else did either, not even Megan. And he wasn’t sure he could handle a shower on his own just yet, although he felt calmer about it than he had any right to. Oh, yeah. Vampire now …

  Son of a bitch. “Can I just crawl under the house and hide for the rest of my life? Would that be bad?” He felt a little better, with the new blood lending him its strength. “Is it a handheld shower head down here?” he asked, remembering Janni’s half-inch-away trick. If he could duplicate that, he thought he might be okay.

  “All my showerheads have the handheld option.” Alex cocked his head. “Why?”

  “It’s a thing.” Ben shrugged. “Don’t like water in my face.” He hauled himself upright and stumbled into the bathroom.

  He could do this. He could.

  He stared at the shower enclosure, and it stared back malevolently. Breathing was unnecessary, but soothing, and he inhaled for
two, held for two, and exhaled for two, three times, bracing himself. He turned the water on and took his clothes off while steam filled the room. The water in the bucket had been cold, so turning the temp up as hot as he could stand it would distance him from the horrific experience of being drowned. Of course, as he’d already noted to himself, he didn’t actually need to breathe anymore, so drowning wasn’t a logical issue. Telling his hindbrain that was a different matter.

  He stepped into the shower stall and let the water run across his shoulders and down his back in a pounding spray that felt pretty good, all things considered. He soaped up, and the bites stung but not as much as he expected as he rinsed off.

  And blood matted his hair—again. Ostheim had caught him across the scalp and along his eyebrow with a fang, and the steam had opened the cut and caused it to leak into his eye and down his face. He leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed for a few seconds, steeling himself.

  “All right,” he said. “All right …” Lifting the showerhead from its bracket, he turned it to its narrowest, slowest setting. He started at his chin and worked it up his cheeks, and he only had to stop once to sit on the bench with his head between his knees before he tackled the slice across his forehead, leaning sideways so the water wouldn’t go anywhere near his nose.

  He tilted his head way back and worked the water through his hair, deciding this time to forego the shampoo and just run the spray through until it rinsed clear. Once it did, he replaced the showerhead with a shaking hand and a heart rate elevated far above the “normal” two beats per minute. His legs didn’t want to hold him up anymore, and he sat down with his head in his hands and his eyes squeezed shut.

  But he’d done it. A tiny smile played across his lips.

  O O O

  “That went well,” Ostheim said. He and Idna cleaned each other up as best they could as his driver took them home in the limo with no windows in back.

  “I said before that he was brave,” she noted.

  “You weren’t wrong.” She rarely was. “Miss Graham was no slouch either.”

  “She’s adopted him as pack, didn’t you notice? This is a problem, Hans.” She dabbed at an already-healing cut on his bicep. “We counted on him having no support system, because most of the time a new vampire loses their old family. Ben hasn’t done so, and they seem even more protective of him than they might have been previously.”

  “Then we’ll need to redouble our efforts to catch him alone. He killed Deiter. That’s not on the free list.”

  “Perhaps we should let them lull themselves into a false sense of security.” Her smile was feral. “Let them think they’ve warned us off. We have all the time in the world to be patient, now that I’m well again.”

  He thought about it. “That might be best. I have other things I can concentrate on for the moment. Not least of which—” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her hungrily. “—is you.”

  O O O

  Megan moaned as she stepped into the nice hot bathtub. That had been way more of a workout than she’d been planning, and she had reason to be grateful, this time, that Alex had cleared his schedule for the week. She rarely called in sick, but she had the feeling that she might today.

  The water eased her tired muscles, and she tilted her head back and spread her fingers and toes. The bites had started closing, and she was happy, once again, for her werewolf constitution. She felt faintly silly for wanting to take off from work for something like this, when she wouldn’t even be showing outward signs of it in a couple of hours, but, Lord, she was tired. Maybe she’d just go in late, with the built-in excuse of her “painful period” being more painful than usual.

  Yeah. She’d do that. If she could ever bring herself to get out of the tub, which was far more comfortable than it ought to be.

  Actually …

  She sighed. She should do it now, while she was thinking about it, because she was nearly falling asleep here, and it would be just like Alex to burst into her house with guns blazing because she hadn’t called and he was worried about her.

  “Fine,” she grumped, getting out and wrapping a towel around herself. Before she made the call, though, she turned her electric blanket on so it would have the bed nice and warm by the time she was done making her excuses. Then she could tumble in and sleep for a few hours before having to deal with whatever trouble Alex managed to get himself into in her absence.

  Because he would. He always did.

  O O O

  Janni wrapped herself around Ben, too emotionally exhausted to cry. He’d collapsed into the bed, kissed her, and immediately fallen into a deep sleep, without a word. Cuts and punctures marred his skin, although they were already healing, and without scars, too. That was something, at least—the psychic scars he bore were quite enough without adding more physical ones to his body.

  But she’d known that him going out like that was a stupid idea, and she was damned if he was going to do it again tonight, moon or no. She stuck her nose in his damp hair, which smelled of him and soap and something new and wild and not unpleasant, not at all. He’d managed to clean himself up, somehow, and she wondered how that had gone and wished he’d awakened her for it so she could’ve helped him.

  She was frightened by how very much she loved him at this moment, because she wanted a future with this man and had no idea if that was even possible right now—at least the way she’d imagined it. Time yawned ahead of her, misty and uncertain and dangerous, and she squeezed him hard enough to make him grunt in his sleep.

  He rolled over and enfolded her in his arms and legs, nuzzling her ear before relaxing. She was going to have to get used to him not breathing, or at least not breathing as much—she wondered if she could use it as a cue for nightmares or something. If he would even have nightmares anymore. This dynamic was going to take some getting used to.

  She snuggled into his chest. He was worth it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Isn’t that interesting,” Alex said, hanging up the phone.

  Janni had joined him in the basement lab a couple of hours after breakfast, leaving Ben to sleep, and she looked up from doing a background check on McFoucher. “Isn’t what interesting?” she asked.

  “Seems that Brandon Kincaid, Reed’s head lab assistant? Has cleaned out his desk and disappeared. He’s not answering his cell or his home phones either.”

  “Huh. Well, that’ll give me something concrete to do instead of flailing at shadows,” she said. “Be hard for him to not use his credit cards or do bank transactions. I take it you want to talk with him?”

  “Especially now.”

  “Well then, I’ll find him for you.”

  Alex’s phone rang, and the display showed Megan’s number. He looked at the clock, startled, because she never called this time of the morning. Usually she was already at his house or at the office, in fact. “Megan? Are you all right?”

  “Well, yes and no,” she said. “Nothing really to do with our current situation, but my little female problem is being more troublesome than usual.” She sounded pathetic. “Can you live without me until noon or so?”

  “As long as you’re here in time to remind me to eat,” he said, only half-joking. “You know, Megan, you work for a pharmaceutical company. Surely we make something that will help you with this.”

  “Not so far. I’ll see you at noon?”

  “Noon it is. Get some rest.” He scribbled a note to himself to get one of his divisions working on something for painful periods, because Megan’s problem was unacceptable to him on both a personal and business level. Especially since she had been so distracted by it that she hadn’t even asked how Ben’s night had gone. Not that he wanted to tell her, because she didn’t need the worry—and now he could put it off for a few hours.

  He went back to his computer monitor, breaking down the structure of the lycanthrope nanotech. Almost had it, and then he could set about doing something with it.

  O O O

  Os
theim’s driver took him to the office after dropping Idna off at home to get some sleep, and the first thing that confronted Hans, other than the fact that Lockwood had killed and eaten a staff member on his way out of the warehouse lab, was Dr. McFoucher’s resignation. And that wouldn’t do.

  She actually picked up the phone on the second ring. “Mr. Ostheim, I expected you to call me sooner than this.” She’d known he wouldn’t let her go without a fight, which was good, because he’d hired her for her cleverness.

  “What do you mean, you resign? You can’t resign.”

  “Can and did. Standard non-disclosure applies, of course, but those little experiments we did with more than one unwilling test subject? You don’t pay me enough for that. You can’t pay me enough for that, in fact.” She paused. “I’ll forget they ever happened, because I’ll get in trouble, too, and I’m sure you’ve cleaned up any evidence anyway, but I can’t continue to work for a company that expects that of me.”

  “We did good work there. You saved Idna’s life.”

  “At the expense of another, who would have objected strenuously no matter how politely you asked—had you bothered asking.” She sounded tired.

  He played a card he hadn’t realized he was going to until he said it. “Lockwood survived.”

  She barked out a humorless laugh. “Really. Because the heart monitor told a different story. I’m a doctor, Mr. Ostheim. I think I know dead when I see it.”

  He needed her. Her brains, her intuitive leaps, her willingness to go above and beyond in the name of the next great discovery. Not many people knew about vampires and werewolves; fewer would work with them and had the smarts to make actual contributions. “The procedure vamped him.”

  “Did it? Well. Good for him. I’m hanging up now, and I wish you the best of luck.”

  He struck before she could cut him off. “You’re not unlisted, are you? What if he comes after you?” He let her digest that question for a moment. “I’m insulated from his anger. I have my own security force, and I’m a werewolf myself who could most likely kill him without too much trouble if he decided to take vengeance on me. You, not so much.”